What Bitcoin Did - The Big Print, Inflation & The End Of The Dollar | Lawrence Lepard

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Lawrence Lepard is an Investment Manager and Author of The Big Print. In this episode, he explains why the dollar system is “doomed,” how inflation is as much psychological as monetary, and why the Fed and Treasury are now trapped in a cycle of money printing and yield curve control. We explore why America may already be in a “fourth turning,” how gold’s surge signals a repricing of trust, and why Bitcoin is the ultimate escape hatch in a world of policy failure and political decay. Lepard also explains how U.S. intelligence agencies are using it to study hyperinflation as an existential risk, and why he’s convinced Bitcoin will hit $1 million. In this episode: - The Fed and the trap of yield curve control - The risk of inflation - Gold’s surge, Bitcoin’s inevitability, and the repricing of trust - Why America may be entering a “fourth turning” THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN RIVER ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN BITKEY Follow: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Lawrence Lepard: https://x.com/lawrencelepard The Fed's Third Mandate (TFTC Article): https://www.tftc.io/the-feds-third-mandate-the-looming-credit-crisis-and-bitcoin/

You can, Bitcoin fixes this, right? There's a way to solve this problem. I'm going to protect myself, and then I'm going to spread the word and try and get as many other people to protect themselves. And we're going to break this crooked system that they've got. The fiat currency, the dollar, is the Titanic and it's sinking. And I bought seats on the lifeboat, and they were cheaper when I bought them. Do you want a seat on the lightboat or do you want to stand the Titanic? I think this cycle takes us to kind of $200, $250 in Bitcoin.

I'm quite certain that Bitcoin will be a million dollars. What I'm not certain of is how much will have gotten, gallon of gasoline cost when Bitcoin's a million dollars. Something really breaks, and you know what they're going to do. They're going to bring out the monetary fire hoses. And man, when that happens, just look out. And this is how currencies fail. Once everyone realizes that it's part of the policy and they can never stop,

the currency is doomed. Sadly, you know, this is how hyperinflations occur. It could go to zero. Larry, it is good to see you, my friend. I think this show. Oh, great to see you as well, Dan. This show is coming at a perfect time. While I was prepping for it, I felt like a lot of the stuff that I've been being told for the last however many years started falling into place a little bit.

So I'm hoping that's true. We'll find out. But I think we've got a start on the Fed. They obviously had their meeting earlier this week and decided to cut 25 basis points. What do you think of their reaction to this? Do you think 25 was enough? Well, you know, look, to me, it's all kind of kabuki theater because, you know, the right interest rate is the one in the market should. determine. And we're so far from that. I mean, it almost doesn't matter. I mean, I think Powell played it straight up the middle. You know, he said a couple of interesting things. I mean, he said he thought

the risk to inflation had increased and inflation has not hit his target. He admitted that. But he also said he thought the unemployment mandate, the risk there had increased as well. And I think maybe driven by the revisions in the prior employment reports, you know, he wanted to lean towards the sides of being more careful. And I think he viewed the policy as being somewhat restrictive and he wanted to be somewhat less restrictive. But recognizing that, you know, both risks are there, several times he said, well, if inflation really becomes a risk, we've got the tools, we'll solve it. So, you know, he's still trying to bluff that they do have the tools they don't. I mean, what he kind of said in code is we're trapped, but he obviously couldn't say that. I thought one of the more interesting

developments of the meeting was that the newest appointed Fed governors Stephen Moran, a young gentleman who runs a council of economic advisors for Trump, voted against it. He dissented. The prior two dissenters fell back in line, which, of course, I'm sure, fits with, you know, trying to keep their boss happy. And, you know, Moran's dissent makes sense, right? Because Trump has called for cutting 300 basis points, and Moran wanted them to cut 50.

You know, there's some other interesting things that we were discussing before the show that have gone on with respect to Moran. there's a recent, it was a Marty Bent tweet, a summary of an AI of Moran's comments. I haven't had time to go back and look at the original comments, but in summary, what Moran said was something along the lines of, you know, perhaps the Treasury and the Fed will have to work together to coordinate to keep long-term interest rates in a certain level. And anyone who knows anything about history knows that that's yield curve control.

That's saying we're not going to let rates rise as a result of lack of faith in our debt. and that's fine. You can do that, but the way that one does that is one prints the money to buy the bonds, and so the money supply grows more rapidly. And, you know, in so doing, I went back, I was recently reading some things

on the old yield curve control example. Most people don't realize this, but well, we had yield curve control, obviously to some degree when we had QE, but there's another example of it. Post-World War II, you know, we had a lot of debt because we fought the war in one, and we had to take on that debt.

It was existential. you know, in order to control inflation, they had rationing and everything else. And coming out of that period in 46, they were in yield curve control starting in 42. They put the short rate at 3.8s, and they put the longer rates at 2.5%. And they just stood ready to buy whatever bonds were sold. And so they did that all the way into the early 50s. And there were periods, I think there was one month in 1947 when inflation was year-over-year, 18%. There was a year in early 1950 when, or month in 1950, when inflation year over a year was

21%. I mean, those are face-ripping rates of inflation. And the reason is that they were suppressing the bond yield to get the debt control to be controllable. And the only way they could do that was to grow M2. And so if we go back to that, there's just no doubt in my mind that we are going to have a lot of inflation. And so, you know, a lot of people say, well, how, when, and Is the dollar going to fail? I don't know. I mean, it depends a lot of things like policy choices. But what I do know is that we are in an inflationary cycle and it's not over yet.

I believe that very strongly. So I do definitely want to talk about the inflation side of this. But I also read Marty's piece for TFDC. I'll make sure there's a link in the show notes because it's a really good piece. But maybe it's worth getting into yield curve control because what I don't necessarily... So basically, that is them just putting a backstop on the sale of bonds and they'll buy them at a fixed price. So Japan did this. Correct. It's QE. It's QE as well. I mean, it's they go into the market. And by the way, they're kind of doing a little bit of it today. I mean, one of the things,

one of the things they've done is they've shifted a lot of the issuance into the shorter rates, which are lower than the longer rates. We have a normal year curve, not inverted. And so it's cheaper to sell short-term debt. And then Bessent has used some of that money that he got selling the short-term debt, and he's bought the long-term debt. and again, to keep those long-term rates anchored. And so it's a little bit... Brannacky did this back in the day. It's called Operation Twist,

where you sell short and you buy long and you're holding the rates down. And yes, I mean, what all this ties into, Danny, fundamentally, is that the bondholder is the screwy in this whole cycle, right? I mean, in an inflationary cycle where you got too much debt, we know because after Doge failed, and it really did fail, I mean, don't get me wrong, and they probably cut some bad programs.

But, you know, Elon's saying $2 trillion and $1 trillion. I mean, that's all a joke, right? None of that happened. If you look at the expenditures, they continue to grow, and our deficit this year will be as large as last year, perhaps a tad larger, depends on this month of September. But, you know, when Doge failed, and then they had, you know, Liberation Day created the panic

in the stock and bond markets, you know, percent kind of pivoted and said, well, you know, we're not focusing on that stuff as much. anymore. We're really going to, what we're going to focus is on growing the economy. And I heard that, and I fell out of my chair. That's code for, we're going to inflate the shit out of this thing and run it hot, right? And so, and then you've soon thereafter, you heard President Trump say, you know, and he went on his attack against Powell, which was well-deserved. But, you know, I mean, you've never seen a president behave so aggressively, you know,

regarding a Fed share, although there was some of that back in the 60s with, you know, beating up on burns and stuff. But, um, and, um, you know, Trump said rates should be down 300% or 300, yeah, 300 basis points. So 3%. So, you know, the Fed funds rate should be 1%. Well, you want to get inflation going again. You want to get a refinancing cycle. You want to get a debt growth cycle going again, you know, go back to almost ZERP. And boy, it's sure to, it's surely going to happen. Um, and so the thing is, you know, as you and I both know that in May, Powell's term is up. And Powell's going to appoint somebody who's I mean, Trump is going to appoint somebody's going to be very, very doveish.

And so, you know, you can kind of, I think what's going on is the market sees that. And the market's like, all right, I know it's coming. You know, they're going to print like crazy, you know, and markets look ahead, right? Markets aren't pricing for today's conditions. They're pricing where are we going to be in six months a year, a year and a half. And so, you know, how far out is May? What is it, eight months or something? I mean, it's not that far away.

So the markets can see it. And the first market to see it, as we'll talk about, is the gold market, right? because gold has just literally been on fire. You know, it's, I mean, I was listening to Luke Roman the other night, and he said, yeah, gold goes up on every day that ends in Y. It's been just relentless for the last year. I just thought that was a great way of putting it, right? On the yield curve control, so let me just make sure I've got this right.

So obviously the Fed sets the short-term rate. The problem is they can't control the long-term, but this is a way of getting that in check as well. Correct. It kind of just removes any free market dynamic. Is that right? Pretty much. I mean, and to be fair, I mean, if you really get technical about it, the Fed is not printing money when it buys those bonds. It's creating reserves for the bank. It's buying the bonds back and then putting a reserve asset on the bank's balance sheet.

But be absolutely certain. It's just one step removed from printing money because now that the bank has bigger reserves on its balance sheet, And it's a fractional reserve lender. It can lend more, and it will lend more. So, you know, unless they're isolated as they were, you know, after the great financial crisis, I mean, the Fed changed the rules, as they always do when they want to screw people, and decided they started playing interest on excess reserves. And that kept the inflation in check somewhat at a consumer level, although at an asset level, everything went kind of, you know, that's how we got into this everything bubble, was all that free money.

So even if it's not technically money, the actual outcome of it is exactly the same. Exactly. It's just one step removed. Yeah. I mean, and to be fair, I mean, even the Fed has said, you know, we've got a tool called the printing press. I mean, it really is money printing, so we might as well just call it that. Do you wish you could access cash without selling your Bitcoin?

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And for every hosted miner purchased, you get one week of free hosting and electricity. Of course, none of this is tax advice. Speak with blockware to learn more at mining.com. When we spoke, it was probably six months ago in Bedford, we were talking about the big print and you were saying like the big print is coming. but you weren't sure exactly what form it was going to come in. I think we said that we didn't think it would be like QE again. It would be something different.

Is this it? Is this the big print? Well, it's kind of the beginning of it. But yes, you're right. I mean, you know, they know they don't want to have to go to QE. They don't want to have to go to ZERP, although Trump probably does. They can do the big print via the banks. I mean, just by changing, you know, there's all these technical plumbing,

planetary plumbing things that, you know, even sometimes my head spins when I try and understand them. I mean, I think Luke and Lynn get them a little better than I do, but they can change the rules. And effectively, the banks are what keep the whole thing going, because the banks can create money. The banks can buy the bonds by creating money. And as long as they can get a positive spread, and my guess is the Fed will make it such that they do, because we already know, I mean, the Fed's running huge deficits, and that's based on the spread, right? And so, you know, they're basically giving the banks an enormous subsidy. In fact, as some of these people attack the Fed, they've been attacking them for that.

And it's not only they give them an enormous subsidy, but like 40% of that subsidy goes to foreign banks. So it's kind of like, hang on. It's like, why is our monetary authority subsidizing foreign banks? Well, the answer is to keep the whole financial system from blowing apart. But, yeah, so, yes, they, you know, they're very good at trying to rebrand and change and make, you know, hide the peas and shells. I mean, you know, I mean, the great, we've talked about this, but I'll just mention it again,

because I think it's so important. You know, Dodd-Frank outlawed bank bailouts, period. You know, Dodd-Frank was a reaction to 2008, said, you know, everyone was rip-shit pissed that we bailed out all those banks and was wrong, it was unfair, socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of us, lose our houses and stuff. So Dodd-Frank, you're not going to bail out to banks anymore.

The banks screw up, you know, they're going to have to take the hit. The shareholders, the depositors, etc. along comes Silicon Valley Bank, which is so ironic, it got itself in trouble because of ZERP, and they bought all these safe government bonds, which in theory had no default risk, but they bought them so cheap and with so much duration that when Powell started raising rates, you know, Silicon Valley Bank went tits up. And, you know, the rule should have said, okay, depositor of Silicon Valley Bank, you take a 20% haircut. That's what should have happened. But guess what? The depositors of Silicon Valley Bank were rich venture capitalists and Bill Akman

and a lot of people who had a lot of political sway. And so they got in there and they said, oh, no, no, no, you can't have that happen. If you have that happen, the whole banking system is going to go down. The FDIC won't be able to cover all the deposits. And so they undusted off another rule, which was kind of the systematic, you know, failure exemption. And they bailed them out, you know, just broke the Dodd-Frank law.

So, you know, this is a pattern that we just know will be repeated over and over again. It's frustrating. It's unfair. you know it just i mean people've read my book they said god the first half of the thing was so depressing i'm like yeah i know that's the point that's the world we live in the point you know i would never have written the first half if i didn't know the second half which is you know you could bitcoin fixes this right there's a way to solve this problem and while you might get depressed with the first half i'm hoping that depression leads you to resolve and your resolve is okay i'm gonna you know

we're going to break this thing and I'm going to save, you know, I'm going to protect myself and then I'm going to spread the word and try and get as many other people to protect themselves, and we're going to break this crooked system that they've got. So that's, you know, I guess that's a little long-winded answer to your question. No, that was great. So it's really like a semantic thing. It's not, it's not if the big print will happen. It's how. Well, I think that's right. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. It's happening. It's kind of happening, but it could get bigger, right? I mean, I think this is going to get exponentially bigger forever until it blows up. But on the yield curve control thing, the question I would have is, like, how much does this

lead to inflation? Because Japan have had yield curve control for, I don't know, a decade or something like that. And they've not had inflation. But I know they're a very different market. So what would it mean in the U.S.? Well, they're starting to have inflation. They are starting to have inflation because they import their energy and they were having trouble paying for their oil, you know, in dollars.

because the dollar was weakened. Yeah, and Japan's slightly different case. I mean, their budget is in much more balanced. They run a trade surplus, not a deficit. And they're a nation of savers. So it's not exactly apples to apples with us on the inflation front. You know, and they also tend to be kind of a trusting people, I think in general, the government and their systems.

I mean, inflation, one of the things I think people forget about inflation is that it's not just all these numbers on a page. Inflation is also a psychological phenomenon. If you believe that inflation exists, it kind of comes, you can bring it into being. Let me give you an example. You know, when the COVID inflation came out and, you know, the price of everything went up 30 or 40 percent, you know, the longshoremen and the airline pilots and a lot of unions realize, holy shit, we're getting screwed. Our money's not buying as much. We know it exists.

We believe it exists. We're going to demand higher wages. And they did, and they got them. I mean, the longshoremen got like 10% a year for six years. that's a lot bigger than 2%. And, you know, the airline pilot's a similar deal. And the point is that inflation flows through a system and everybody notices it's hitting them

and then they demand theirs, right? And so this is why, you know, people say, well, in a technical Austrian sense, you know, tariffs are a tax and therefore they're not inflationary. They're actually deflationary because they increase demand by taxing it and using it on something like the government. And there's some truth in that.

But the flip of that is, well, yes, That's true, except that if the producer passes it on to the user, the user sees a higher price. That user thinks the higher price is inflation, which to him it is, it's a higher price for the same thing. And then he turns around to his employer and says, hey, my money's not going as far. You've got to pay me more. So, you know, it's a self-reinforcing cycle. And I know about it a lot because I was young when it happened. But the 70s was the last time this really happened in a big way.

And there were three big waves of inflation. And we're in one of it. We're in that cycle. And to break that cycle, you've got to convince people that inflation is totally under control. And Volker did it in 80 by taking rates to 20 percent, almost bankrupted my father. But that's a side effect. You know, I mean, but it's great. I mean, some farmer drove to the Eccles building in D.C. in 1980 with a shotgun intent on killing Volker.

I mean, basically, the interest rates were killing him. And, you know, so, I mean, you got this, I mean, how can you have an authority that's charged with setting the rate of interest, they can have the interest rate somewhere between 20 and zero. I mean, both are extremes, and it just tells you how out of control the whole goddamn thing is. I mean, they'd be better off just to set it at 4% and leave it. You know, and then, I mean, right?

I mean, it's just, it's like we're swinging from one extreme to the other. So, I don't know, that's just kind of a tangent, but, yeah. I do think that idea of inflation being a psychological phenomenon is really interesting, because, like, I really had no real idea of what inflation was, until I found Bitcoin. And I think, like, if you ask my friendship group, people my age, until COVID happened, they wouldn't have been very well aware of what inflation was and how it impacted them. But my parents, who would probably be a similar generation to you, like, absolutely

know what it is because they live through the 70s. And so, like, everyone waking up to this is, I mean, it's kind of scary in one sense, but incredibly bullish for things like Bitcoin and things like gold. Oh, yeah. It's, yeah, it's insanely bullish for what we've got. we're still, you know, I still think if this is a nine-inning baseball game, we're in somewhere in between the second and the third inning. I mean, it's early days. And I spent a lot of my time talking to investors, wealthy people, or my clients, and others. And so many of them are, you know,

they're backward looking and they're like, well, they'll get it under control. And gosh, you know, gold's gone up a lot. Bitcoin's gone up a lot. Don't we sell it now? And I'm kind of like, well, no, you really don't because it's going to get worse, not better. You know, now they'll come a time when they've gone up a lot and monetary reform is being talked about and they're going to eventually address all these issues and solve this problem. And at that point in time, you know, it'll be a time to sell this and move back into productive businesses, which, you know, perhaps we'll be selling it five times earnings instead of 50 times earnings.

But we're a long way away from that right now. I mean, we're only just getting started. You know, people should think about this as we are early in the inflation game, not late. I think that's an important distinction to make. you know, I've used the price, fixating on a price is a very human emotion. If something like gold was $1,000 a bunch of years ago or $2,000 a year and a half ago, it's 36 now, it's very easy to think that 36 is expensive, $3,600 is expensive. But in fact, you know, to balance the entire debt burden, all the money that's been created

with the gold that we hold, if you compare it to the 70s model, you know, it'd have to be $90,000 ounce. So if that's really the case and we're at 3,600, you know, it's kind of cheap, right? And, you know, the model I've been using, I've been touting recently, it's just, I think it's a good metaphor is, you know, fiat currency is the, I mean, because the thing, here's, I'm talking, I'm encountering a lot of people says, yeah, I can't buy that because you bought it much cheaper, and I'm happy for you that you made all this money, but now it's high in price. I can't buy it. I mean, it's not a good investment to buy it this high. And I'm like, no, you don't understand you got the model wrong the model is that the fiat currency the dollar is the titanic and it's

sinking and i bought seats on the lifeboat and they were cheaper when i bought them but they're and they're more expensive to you and i'm sorry for that but you didn't buy them when i did but you know the question to you and you've got to address is do you want a seat on the lightboat or do you want to stand the titanic because you know the the the bitcoin seat is now 117 and the you know the gold seat is now you know three thousand six hundred your choice right and and how good a lifeboat you want to get on? You want to get on Bitcoin. Because if gold has to be... I think Bitcoin's a better... It's a better lifeboat than gold. But they're both, don't get me wrong. They're both going to work, Danny. I mean, it's, you know, they're both going to work.

Bitcoin in a much better way, but... No, I can completely buy that. But if gold should be $90,000 an ounce, like, I want to know what the Bitcoin price is there. I can't do the math, but millions of dollars. No, I mean, it's... It's 10 million dollars. I mean, it's, yeah. And, you know, to be honest, all these numbers kind of get hard to deal with and become a little irrelevant when you really are in a currency failure? Because, you know, I'm quite certain that Bitcoin will be a million dollars. What I'm not certain of is how much will a gallon of gasoline cost when Bitcoin's a million dollars?

Do you know what I mean? And because, you know, it will be there in part because we've had massive inflation. And, you know, that will hit everything. So, you know, it's the purchasing power you really care about. And we measure nominally with dollars at the base. I mean, as I said in the book, and it's, you know, it's. and I've talked about. I mean, I'm pretty sure my kids and grandkids will quote prices and Satoshi's, and the dollar will be kind of this historical remnant of our old broken monetary

system. So a car will be, I don't know, 20 Satoshes and a sandwich will be, you know, one, one hundredth of Satoshi. I mean, I don't know, who knows what it'll be, but the point is we'll have a different, the numerator will be a different thing. That's the world I want to live in. We'll get there. I'm sure we will. You said that you think inflation's coming back. Like, One of the things that I've struggled with with this Fed decision, they've obviously cut rates, but inflation is not at their target. It's just under 3%, I think. No, not even close.

And those are the numbers, by the way, right? I mean, the numbers aren't right. But I want to know, like, why, like, who are they doing this for? Are they doing this because they think it's the right decision for the economy? Or are they doing it because they're worried about their interest payments? Like, because they have that dual mandate at the moment. Maybe it becomes, like, there's, is it a triple mandate? Yeah.

But like it's stable prices and jobs. And it seems like jobs are really struggling and they've not got stable price under control. So what on earth do they do? Well, that's the thing. They're trapped. As we all know, they're painted into a corner. I mean, I thought, you know, I said, I listened to Powell. It's funny.

I was coming back from a trade show in Denver focused on gold mining companies. So I was with another guy and we were in the car and they had serious XM radio. It was perfect. I'm driving for an hour and I got to listen to Paul. I don't know. I don't like the guy. But I actually kind of felt sorry for him in the same. He said, well, you know, we're not at our inflation target and frankly, their inflation

risks getting worse. But in turn, you know, we've been trying to be restrictive and, you know, we're seeing the labor data is really starting to get soft, as we all know, there were huge downward revisions. And so we feel like, you know, he almost said, like, we're kind of pulling this out of our ass, but we kind of feel like we ought to lean towards the labor side. I mean, if I were, you know, if you were just kind of summarizing what he said, but he said, he did say, look, we're in a particularly challenging position. But a few people pushed him on the inflation, and of course, he did the old threat.

No, we think we can get it under control. And if we need to, we've got the tools and we'll do whatever we have to do, which implies they would raise rates. But of course, I don't think they will. I mean, I got to believe what Powell is doing is he's literally just counting the days until he can retire and say, I did my job, you know, system's still in one piece, you know, whatever it might be. I mean, all he's got to do is make it into May of next year,

and I'm pretty sure he's counting the days because he knows he's in a very, very tough spot. And who knows he may make it out? I mean, if there's any karma in the world, I kind of think there is. I actually don't think he's going to make it. I think something's going to break between now and May and he's going to be forced to pivot and do Zurp and QE

and all that other stuff. But we'll see. I could be wrong. You know, they're pretty good at Kian. kicking and they could just kick it down the can down the road until may and then at that point miran i'll be you know chairman or somebody else will be chairman and they'll drop rates aggressively and and it'll keep the economy kind of going but you know inflation we'll get into another wave of inflation and this one won't stop at nine it'll go to 15 you know um so that's that's kind of what i could see happening and and whoever comes in is likely just to be a kind of trump stooge and it blurs the lines between

got to be yeah got to be i mean he's not He's not going to blow this. I mean, he knows that, you know, keeping the economy going, and what he's going to hope is that that initial surge from the new guy coming in and printing money won't show up in the CPI data for a little bit of time. So you'll have an economy that's running strong. Everybody will have jobs. The inflation hasn't really gotten going yet, and that'll lead to, you know, President Vance. That's kind of what he's hoping. you know the the flip side of that possibility is that the inflation shows up good and hard and fast and the economy slows down anyway and then the Dems come in and say well you know we need UBI

and you know wealth taxes and you know blah blah blah blah and and they win and you know look out because we're you know it's all going in the other direction very quickly which would be terrible but, you know, I assume we're in a fourth turning, the typical fourth turning model is that you see this real political, you know, I don't know, people are dissatisfied with politics. And so one side wins and then they kick those bums out and then the other side wins and they kick those bums out. And I mean, just back and forth, back and forth.

I mean, that's definitely happening. And that's one of the areas where I wonder if the UK is sort of ahead down that path. I think you are. I think that's exactly what you guys are doing. And obviously, I mean, we don't need to get into the politics, but now there's this new party that while I agree with a lot of the stuff they say, are certainly very populist and who knows what happens. I think the fourth turning meme is, well, it's not a meme. It's life at the moment. Yeah, no, that theory, it's playing out in real time.

It's pretty amazing. I mean, all the horrific stuff that happened in our country last week with that shooting. I mean, I got to tell you, it just broke my heart. It's just so sad. It's funny. I was talking to a couple of people offline about that. And like I quite like Charlie Kirk. I didn't listen to a lot of the stuff he did.

But I saw him, you know, like if I was scrolling, I'd see his clips every now and again. And I thought he always seemed like a really genuine, like decent person, I thought. Totally agree. I mean, I have to admit, I'm kind of culturally deaf and I don't listen to a lot of that stuff. So I wasn't, I didn't know much about him actually before it occurred. But I, gosh, it's just heartbreaking, just tragic really. And really kind of a turning point maybe for our country. I mean, I just was like, wow, you know, I knew things are bad in America,

and I knew they're getting worse, but, and I guess I shouldn't have been surprised because we've had school shootings and, you know, I mean, there have been a lot of bad things going. I mean, you know, and I really do believe that this broken money is what's led to, you know, this dysfunctional society. I mean, my book talks about that. I mean, the deaths of despair and the hollowing out of the middle class. I mean, it's just been so much. And look, some of it, you know, couldn't have been helped.

I mean, some of it's just the technology and the changes that have occurred in our world. And the flip side of those technologies are that, you know, we're incredibly productive. You and I can have conversations from halfway around the world and broadcasts it in thousands of people. I mean, you know, there are a lot of positives coming out of the technology, but there were a lot of disruptions and negatives as well. And it's, you know, I mean, the good news is I think it's all leading us to a better place. and I remain enormously optimistic about where we will get to and the world my kids will live in. But boy, I mean, it's, you know, right now,

the last time I remember this country being this way, and I was 10 years old, was, you know, back in the 60s, you know, when the Vietnam War protests were just raging and there was all kinds of campus descent, and, you know, the Democratic convention in Chicago was, you know, was a mess. And then, of course, people started getting killed. I mean, JFK earlier in 63, but, you know, MLK and Malcolm X and Bobby and all of it,

it was just horrible, absolutely horrible. And this feels the same. Actually, it feels kind of worse. The funny thing about it, well, not funny at all, but like the interesting part about it is that how much it bothered me. Like, because like I say, I always quite liked him, but it bothered me in a way deeper way than I would have expected something like that too. Oh, me too.

And I think it is the fact that it just feels like a really pivotal moment. And it's like, it's right in front. I mean, obviously you literally saw it, you know, you saw the. Oh, it's horror. The video was just horrific. Yeah. I mean, good God. But it's really what that represents.

Like, the fact that discourse is broken down to the point that you have to shoot someone you disagree with is just disgusting. It's just absolutely, it's barbarian and disgusting. And after a thousand years of human progress to think that we've come to this, it's like, what? You know, I mean, yeah, it's just, it's absolutely horrific. So, but maybe it'll be a sober, I mean, you know, the bright side of it is perhaps a sober reminder for everyone to tone down the rhetoric and to recognize that, you know, it's one planet we're one people, most of us are alike, we just want to live our lives and not kill other folks. And to the degree we have differences, we've got to talk about them and work it out, not, you know,

kill each other. And, you know, there's obviously thousands of years of history of human beings killing each other, but I'd like to think we're moving away from that. And I think that, you know, one way to be to increase the odds that we're moving away from is to keep the system fair, you know, because I'd be willing to bet that, you know, a lot of the killing that takes place is driven by people who feel like they have nothing to lose. And the system is incredibly unfair to them. They feel it. And so they act out in a way that, you know, is horrific, right?

Yeah. It's like peak nihilism, peak disenfranchised, like youth. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I'm not, there's no joke. for it, but you can you can kind of analyze it and see how it could occur, right? Yeah, it's, I mean, I was going to say onto, I mean, it's definitely less depressing news, but it's still depressing news on the Fed.

Like, the one thing that I wanted to kind of get back to on that is, how much do you think the Fed actually matters now? Because I think the month of August, the deficit was something like $350 billion. Like, can the Fed even do anything? Well, yeah, well, they can print money. I mean, they do matter because they've got their hands on that printing press. And, you know, and they're going to matter in spades if Stephanie Kelton is the Fed, you know, is the president or treasury secretary. I mean, for anyone who doesn't know who Stephanie is, she's the champion of MMT.

MMT, yeah, and money printing. And so, so, yeah, they do matter. I mean, look, the markets matter more, but the markets follow, you know, the monetary authority. and, you know, if the monetary authority is going to print a ton of money, guess what? You know, the money is going to get massively debased. And, yeah, they matter. They matter a lot, really. I mean, that, they matter.

Now, you know, it's possible the market is going to, I mean, the events are going to make them not matter. Because if the currency fails, then they're not going to matter. Nobody's going to fall for that again. we're going to be transacting in Bitcoin and silver coins. You know, but for now, anyway, they matter. This episode is brought to you by the massive legends, Iron, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy. Iron are not just powering the Bitcoin network.

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that is anchorwatch.com. On the deficit side, so I was speaking to Joe Carlos Erie, I know you guys don't get along, but he's got some valuable stuff. And so I was speaking to him in Backyton, Vegas. And he was talking about the idea that when it comes to this kind of debt spiral, people don't talk enough about the productivity gains that we're going to see in the coming years

from things like AI and robotics. Do you think there is a path out of this through massive increase in productivity? not alone i mean i i share his belief that productivity is going to increase a lot and i share his belief in ai and what it can do for the economy but i think like most things you know the ai thing has gotten a little bit ahead of itself people a little bit too excited the studies i've read have said you know a lot of people who've done AI projects of you know corporations like 90 percent have not seen direct benefits from it but i mean just at my own personal level I mean, writing the book, doing some research, getting information quickly, it was massively beneficial.

I have some friends actually a relative who's a legal profession, paralegal going on to be a lawyer. You know, she says this is going to wipe out the paralegal profession because you can just do so much more so quickly. And she may be right. I mean, you know, yes, there will be productivity increases. But, you know, at the end of the day and robotics and, yes, I mean, some of the more, you know, repetitive, terrible jobs. I mean, you look at and read about what China is doing with manufacturing cars. You look at paint shops and how they're using robotics. I mean, yes, robotics will definitely make things more efficient, but, you know, it's pretty

hard to automate absolutely everything, you know, and it's not going to happen overnight. I mean, it's like the self-driving cars. I mean, they've come a long, long, long way. We're almost there, but we're not quite, you know, we're not all the way there yet. And so, you know, to me, to my way of seeing it, these, and those productivity Gives will benefit everybody. But, you know, the flip of that, Danny, too, is keep in mind that there are a lot of workers in the world, okay, let's say their jobs are replaced by AI, you know, okay.

Well, those workers have mortgages. Those workers have debts. You know, suddenly they're unemployed. You know, they, how are they going to, you know, they're going to transition into something else? Maybe the programming of AI. I mean, it's, you know, every, every default. The deflationary trend, you know, as Jeff Booth points out, every deflationary trend is a problem for a credit-based system that absolutely relies upon inflation and growth in credit to keep it going. And so to the degree that we have deflation in jobs, wages, productivity, driven by productivity, etc., that all creates more problems for a system that has to have credit growth, right?

And therefore, the only way to get credit growth is to misprice interest and, you know, and grow the money supply. And that's inflation. I mean, it's just a brilliant one. I mean, when he came out with that book, it was just such an insight that just we're trying to map a deflationary economy becoming more so, you know, and productivity increases are rapidly accelerating. We're trying to map that against a old monetary system that absolutely positively has to have credit growth or else the existing system collapses. So it's like, how do you do that? One of them has got to give. I mean, they're completely incompatible. But while they try and keep the sort of current monetary

system alive, I assume what will happen there is just UBI. I can't really see any other way out for them if we do enter that world. I think that's probably right. Yeah. No, I think that's probably right. I mean, I think, you know, and look, COVID was an interesting test case for all of that, right? I mean, gosh, you know, money just showed up in our bank accounts, right? You know, you know, You're a taxpayer, they've got your, you know, they've got your social. Boom, here's your, you know, here's your check. So they, you know, they tested it. They know it works.

They can do it. And, you know, boy, watch, you know, when inflation's raging and things are tough in three years, and Vance is running against AOC or whoever, I mean, heaven forbid Newsom, whatever, but, you know, then these kinds of things are going to be promised. And there's some segment of the voters who will go for that in a big way. I just looked up because I always think it's an interesting start. If you'd have put that $1,200 stimulus check into Bitcoin, it would have been worth $21,000 now. Isn't that stunning?

Wow, that's pretty cool. Incredible. That's really cool. So we've kind of framed this interview like the book. We've done the depressing stuff. I do have one more depressing question. And then we can get onto kind of the solutions. But if we do actually go into a world where the Fed are trying to do yield curve control,

does that really blur the line between sort of monetary policy and fiscal policy? Because obviously Lynn's been on this sort of fiscal dominance narrative for a long time now. And like, where does that leave us? Yeah, well, you nailed it. I mean, the fact is nothing stops the train. And one of the most disingenuous things that I think Powell has done is to say, well, I don't do fiscal policy. Well, you know, come on, dude. I mean, you're the guy who enables them to do what they're doing.

I mean, if he was honorable, he would say, look, either you guys clean up your act and balance the budget or I quit. Because, you know, you can't honestly do his job of keeping the money. sound when they're spending more than they're bringing in. You just can't do it. So to me, they're completely and totally linked. And interestingly, that's kind of where Trump and Bessent say they want to take it. That's what Moran said in his recent comments, right, that the Fed and the Treasury have to coordinate, you know, to keep the whole thing together. I mean, it's, it's interesting, you know, all countries learn from other countries. And China has been quite successful as a result of having kind of, quote, unquote, industrial policy, not being a democracy,

just saying this is how we're going to do it and we're going to move quickly and break things and make things better. And, you know, I mean, I wouldn't want to be in the Chinese political system, but you can't really argue with their economic success, right? And, you know, we've done it democratically, which is messier and slower and this, that, and the other. But in turn, you know, we're starting to see us acting more like them, like, okay, we need some industrial policy.

Boom, let's invest in MP materials because they have rare earth, so we need that shit. Boom, let's invest in Intel because chips are important to us, and we just want to take a big piece of it. Moran coming out saying, boom, maybe the Treasury and the Fed need to be joined at the hip because we need to have a monetary industrial policy kind of thing. I mean, that's what they did in World War II.

And they had to do it, right? I mean, it was existential. You know, these fascist countries that attacked us or were attacking Europe, and, you know, we wanted to prevent that and stop that. So, okay, fine, you know, let's whatever it takes. We're going to win this thing. And it was a different country back then.

Everyone got behind it. You know, you had the hero generation, and everyone agreed that this is wrong. We got to fight. And, you know, I mean, I remember my grandparents tell me you couldn't get anything. You know, you couldn't get tires. You couldn't get gasoline. You couldn't get meat. You know, you're eating rice and crackers.

And, you know, but they were like, you know, we all said it was okay because, you know, we're still alive. And once we win the war, you know, things will be good again. And they were right. And so, you know, arguably, arguably, you know, maybe America's going to have to go through kind of one of those, this whole generation is going to have to go through. one of those big changes where, gosh, you know what, the currency failed. Oh, my. That's a really bad thing. But I've studied a lot of currency failures. Talk about it in the book. Write about it. If we can avoid getting into a war, if we can stop the nuclear exchange, if we can stop killing each other,

you know, all the assets are still there. What just happens is just like you've kind of taken a monopoly board and you've, you know, tipped it upside down. So everyone who own the houses don't own them anymore. And, you know, all the math is different. People who thought they had a lot of money don't because it was fiat and it was worthless and people who thought they owned you know magic internet money were suddenly some of the richest people in the world i mean it's you know that's kind of where i think we're going which is strange but you know i see it that's what i see it's it's so strange and it's such like it is the weirdest thing ever but an incredibly positive thing i think changing the people who have the capital is what this world needs but it's oh my goodness yeah it's funny you saying like

in the 50s like the country is a different country because i don't even think you need to go back that far. Like in my childhood, I feel like it was a different place. Like pre-9-11, the Patriarch mass surveillance, like the global financial crisis. Like, the world I grew up in was different to the world right now. Like, definitely. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I just, it's just been a kind of continual long, slow slide. And I, you know, I was born in 57, you know, I had relatives who were in the war. I mean, you know, it's, yeah, it's just been a long, slow slide. This is a great country. And the West was really, at its peak in 46.

And sadly, we kind of pissed it away. I mean, we kind of had that winner's curse of, well, we got it all figured out, and everyone will just listen to us and they should forever. And, you know, then some evil people got in control the United States, and they murdered Kennedy, and, you know, the military industrial complex rose up, which, you know, Eisenhower warned us against, and, you know,

blah, blah, blah. And, you know, so you end up with, you know, Dick Cheney starting a war over mass-weapon, you know, mass extinction weapons, which did not exist. But, hey, he made $150 million. on his halberton stock worked out for him. Do you know what I mean? You know, so he could get drunk and shoot some guy with his, you know, with his shotgun.

I mean, it's just, it's horrific. I mean, I was at this conference last week. I was walking to this hall of, there's the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. I was walking through this hall. And they had all these photos of all the famous people who'd been there. And it was like Kissinger and Cheney and Bush. And I was just like, these guys are war criminals. You know, you got them up on the wall of this hall.

I'm like, these guys are war criminals. They killed millions of people. You know, what are you doing? I mean, yeah, it's just, I don't know, the West, we lost our way. We really lost our way, which is not to say that the East and the Chinese have it all figured out, or the Russians have it all figured out. I mean, you know, the one thing that's good about all these changes, it would actually be nice to kind of get back to a multipolar world where all of humanity could embrace the best of each culture, right?

I mean, there's good parts of all cultures, and they're bad parts of all cultures. and, you know, if we can kind of, I mean, and the thing that's so great about Bitcoin, as you know, and I know, is it separates money and state, but more importantly, it's just, it's the first game I've ever seen that's completely fair. It's absolutely completely fair. I mean, you think of almost anything else,

and it's kind of a might-makes-right situation, and yet Bitcoin's not that way. It's just a mathematical algorithm that's completely fair. I think that, I think the implications of that, I don't think we've even begun to scratch the surface. I mean, I was around when the internet came around and got started. And, you know, did I have any idea that you and I would be talking like this, you know, 25 years later?

And we'd be broadcasting it the thousands of people? No fucking way. You know what I mean? I remember when eBay popped up and I was like, wow, look at that. You know, a worldwide swap meet. I mean, everyone knows what a swap meet is, you know, or what the want ads are. You know, I want to buy your used bicycle. But gosh, you could put it up.

on eBay and sell it to anyone anywhere in the country. Wow, what a concept. And, you know, the same kinds of breakthroughs are going to occur with Bitcoin. You know, it's just, it's like, and you and I were talking before we started. I mean, what Alex Gladstein is doing, the change he's making in the third world. There's a part of that in the book about that, right? The way that Bitcoin has helped in the remittance of business. I mean, here are these poor people who, you know, they send relatives overseas to work. The relative sends money back to them. And Western Union and the money changes everybody else. They scrape. off, you know, 10 to 20 percent.

Well, what if that were actually in the people's pockets who did the work instead of, you know, in the middlemen? I mean, it's just there's so many benefits to having a fairer system, and this is a fairer system. A hundred percent. We need to get rid of these. I mean, I'm speaking to the choir, but I just, I get really excited when I think about all the positive shit that's coming, but it's, you know, meanwhile, we, you know, meanwhile, I have to sit in the car and listen to Jerome Powell.

Hopefully not for too much longer. So we've done all the kind of depressing old system stuff. Let's get into some of the more hopeful bits. Obviously, you've been a gold bug for a long time, and gold has been absolutely ripping. It's crazy, right? It's ridiculous. I don't know the actual figure of the amount of money gone into gold in the last 12 months, but it's outrageous. It's unbelievable, yeah.

Is this just natural sort of market dynamics coming from people reacting to this kind of monetary system? Or is this the repricing of gold? Is this driven by something else? Well, it can be both, Danny. I mean, I think it's both. And it comes at a lot of layers, right? Look, human awareness, you know, kind of moves in waves. And, you know, what starts off as kind of a crazy-ass idea eventually becomes common sense accepted reality.

I mean, you know, Galileo says, no, no, no, we're all circling the sun and everything thinks he's a friggin' nut. And the Catholic church wants to kill him. you know, and, you know, hundreds of years later, it's just, it's obvious. That's the way it works. And I think the same is going on with respect to fiat money, you know, and so, you know, what you can see is that the central banks have figured it out. Large hedge funds have figured it out. Black Rock has figured it out. Ray Dalio, the largest hedge fund manager, a very successful man, he's figured it out. And so, you know, what Lynn describes as nothing stops this train and what we've seen in terms of the behavior of the government and the trend in behavior of the government is that they just cannot and will not stop spending, you know, the system is constructed in a manner which forces them to spend, to keep it going and to buy

votes at an ever-increasing rate. And so it's like an alcoholicist to keep drinking more or a drug addict, you have to take more and more and more to get the high. Well, eventually you kill yourself. And that's what's happening with the system. It's eventually going to kill itself. And it's it's showing up, most notably, in the obligations, the trusted obligations of the system, long bonds, which used to be the base of the financial system, have gotten destroyed, particularly since 2020. And the things that are outside of the system that, you know, represent a form of money that the system can't mess with, Bitcoin and gold, have skyrocketed.

I mean, since 2020, in bond terms, gold's up, you know, 250 percent. Bitcoin's up, you know, 2,000 percent. I mean, it's, it's insane. And so that's a signal that something is going on here. And, you know, whether it's the people buying, you know, gold bars at Costco, or the people going to the coin stores and buying coins, or, you know, the blue-collar workers that I've worked with it, you know, that I know who take all their savings and put it in silver coins. I mean, it's just kind of coming from everywhere. And, you know, this awareness is just, it's growing and growing and growing. And yet, and yet, you know, the average person isn't really tuned into it.

And we're still, you know, as Sailor says, this is the gold rush. We're still, you know, I don't know where we are on the Malcolm Gladwell 10% tipping point. We all know the theory. You hit 10%, and then it's going to rapidly accelerate until you hit 90. The same time it got from 0 to 10 as the same time it goes from 10 to 90. Well, we're 16 years into Bitcoin. I don't think we're actually at 10 yet. I think we're maybe at 5.

But we're going there pretty quickly. And, you know, to my way of seeing it, you know, it's going to accelerate here in the next five or ten years. And so I, you know, I think we're all going to be stunned. I mean, I know in the fund I manage the things I watch, it's very easy to think, well, gosh, this has gone up a lot. And usually when you're investing and you have something that goes up a lot, I think maybe it's time to sell. And but then I look at the bigger picture and the construction of what's going on, and I realize that, now, if this is the fundamental shift that I think it is of growing awareness of everybody of the issue, then we don't sell until everybody's aware of the issue and it's no longer an

issue. And that's, you know, we're not there yet, not even close. So, you know, I, as you and I've talked about in the past, I mean, you know, I think gold's going to 10,000. I think Bitcoin's going to a million. I mean, and that's not that far out. I mean, within a five to six to seven-year window. I mean, I don't pay very much attention to gold, but on the Bitcoin side, I completely agree. And it's not time to sell. It's time to buy more. Yeah. But the thing with this crazy about throwing out numbers like Bitcoin going to a million is when

I first got into Bitcoin, people talked about a million dollars. And it always, even to Bitcoin, it's like, I think they knew it would happen eventually, but it still seemed like a crazy thing to say. But now it's like, it feels like it's right around the corner. I mean, I don't know if we'll get to 2030 before Bitcoin's a million dollars. I agree. It really does. I mean, you know, it's, so it grows an order of magnitude.

I mean, so it went from one to 10, 10 to 100, 100 to 1,000, 1,000 to 10,000 to 100,000. I mean, it's, was it six or seven orders of magnitude, and it's been around for 15 years. So now it was more rapid in the earlier years, but, and that's slowing down, as sailors pointed out, the ARR has come down. But, you know, it's going to do, it's going to do another order of magnitude. and this can do another order of magnitude after that. You know, I mean, someday it's going to go to $10 million. But, you know, that's probably quite some ways out because, like I say, it is slowing down. But, yeah, it, I mean, I remember very clearly back in the depths of, you know, the bull market or the bear market and gold and things were down.

And I don't know, this was 2016 or 17 or 18. And thinking to myself, boy, if this, you know, and I owned a bunch of Bitcoin, I think of myself, boy, if this ever got to 10, 20, 30,000, I'd be feeling pretty good about life, you know. I was like at four at the time, you know. And, you know, then it went up and I got to 20. I was like, you know, if this ever got to 100, I'd be feeling really good about life. And, you know, and now it's at 100. And, yeah, the goalposts kind of keep moving.

But it's a hard, I mean, I've said this before, it's a hard thing to get your head around. And I say that, I said this another podcast. I think it's an important point to make. We have never had a form of money that would not be diluted in some form or fashion. There's never been such a thing. Even gold, 1.7% a year,

every 45 years, the amount of gold on the planet doubles. 21 million, it's fixed. I think that fact right there explains why it can go up forever. Because the supply is perfectly inelastic. And so, and that's, and that, I think that fact right there is also why it's really hard for people to get their heads around it.

I think that's exactly right, because it's so simple, but then people end up getting stuck in the minutia and don't allow themselves just to believe that fact. Yeah, if you believe that fact, you know, if the demand just keeps on growing and the supply is fixed. The only thing left to change is price. The only thing left to change is price. Yeah, that's it. And by the way, and it's not, okay, so you know, you could have said that a bunch of years ago, but, you know, you would have, the volatility and everything, say, am I right about it? But man, now you got 16 years of this shit. Do you know what I mean?

And no financial asset. I mean, there's so many amazing things going on. How can you be a financial advisor, you know, of any kind, and not be pushing Bitcoin to your investors, or not even mention it, or poo-poo it, when it is the best performing financial asset in the past 16 years? Not by a little bit, Danny, by an enormous amount. You're just proving you're terrible at your job. Yeah, right?

How can you do that? I mean, you know, I guess. it. If you didn't get it out early around, fine. If you're skeptical, fine. If you're still skeptical, fine. But at some point, the evidence, you know, I mean, you're lying eyes. I mean, the price you just can't ignore it, right? I was talking to Eric Yakes about this recently, and he was saying the same thing. And I do understand why you might have been skeptical in, you know, 2015, 2016, 2017. But like, right now, all the facts are on our side. You can't disagree with what we're saying. It's just, it is factually accurate. Oh, you really can't.

I mean, there still is, you know, there still is a little bit of this, you know, core protocol risk stuff. I mean, I haven't dug deep into that. I don't want to express a view on one side or the other. I mean, I have some gut feelings about it, but, you know, I, let me say it this way. I remember being at Sailor's Place a long time, like in Bitcoin, Miami, a couple of Bitcoin, a couple of things ago, maybe three things ago, 22 or I don't know what year was. And a couple of us asked him, we said, you know, what do you worry about with respect

to Bitcoin. He said the only thing that could screw this up is if Core, you know, goes rogue and just does a bunch of stupid shit. And he said, even that, I'm not terribly worried about because of the consensus and the way that everybody votes on it. And, and I don't think, you know, it'll be allowed to go in that direction. Yeah. But, you know, there's that. I mean, and then more recently, people have said, well, the quantum risk is a real risk. And I'm not a computer scientist. I'm not an expert on that. All I know is what I read and listen to. Probably the one I trust the most is Lynn who says, you know, she doesn't see this being a risk within a five-year window. And to the degree that it did become a risk for cracking the Shaw 256, you know, eventually

you'd be a hard fork with its core, that's quantum resistance. So, you know, you set those two things aside, it feels to me, it feels pretty certain to me that it's going to continue as it has, you know, tick-tock next block, you know. Yeah, with the quantum stuff, there's stuff we can do to mitigate that if it ever becomes a real risk. And with the Knotts core stuff, like my opinion on it is that like ideologically, I get what the knots people are saying. But I really don't think that this new version of core is going to be any, like have any detrimental impact to Bitcoin. Like this isn't a risk to Bitcoin.

I hope you're right. I hope you're right. I know people are on the other side of that. I've listened to it. I, you know what? I'm not technical enough to figure it out myself. I really, I and I, so I don't want to express an opinion on just some half-baked, you know, view. I just don't know, you know. I mean, I think the, the important part, like this is a mental policy change. It's nothing to do with consensus. We're going to be absolutely fine. I'm convinced of that. I hope you're right. That's reassuring to me, actually, because a lot of my wealth is in Bitcoin. Yeah, I, like, again, my opinion, I'm not speaking for anyone else here, but it's not going to be a problem for Bitcoin. I'm pretty sure. I'm glad to hear you, I'm glad to hear you

believe that. Yeah, I hope you're right. I do. So can we just quickly talk about, like, the nation states that are buying gold? Because gold on the balance sheets of the central banks across the world has gone up tremendously. Obviously, as Bitcoiners, we think that that will one day be Bitcoin. Do you think we have an interim step where this is gold then Bitcoin? That's a really great question. Possibly, I just don't know. I mean, I think if America is smart, and I think there are some parts of America that are

smart in our higher government echelons. I mean, an interesting thing, I don't know if I've told you, I don't think you and I have this discussion. So I was at Bitcoin Vegas, you know, this last one. And a guy came up to me, I can't dox him, and I can't tell you who he works for it. He works for something very heavily associated with the defense and intelligence community in the United States. One of his prior employers is NSA. So I checked him out.

He's a real deal. And I said, what's going on? He walked up to me and he tapped me. He said, hi, I really liked your book. I said, oh, thank you. He said, you know, your book is burning up the halls of my, you know, where I work. I said, where do you work? explained. I'm not going to say what it was. And I said, why? And I said, that's as easy why. He said,

well, part of our job is to kind of look at every existential threat to the United States. And, you know, hyperinflation is a existential threat. And, you know, we're using your book as kind of a textbook to examine how and why hyperinflation is a risk and talk about our monetary, you know, the monetary risk that exists within the United States. It's been very helpful. And I was like, wow, that's interesting. So you take that, you combine that with Jason Lowry's book, You combine that with N. Lowry telling my partner, David Foley, saying to him, hey, you know, the people of the CIA, the DOD, the Pentagon, even high up in the Treasury, they get it. They understand that, you know, the monetary threat here. And they get that Bitcoin is the solution. They're not stupid. I mean, Mr. Moran, Stephen Moran is a bitcorner. He said it. I mean, he had tweets supporting Bitcoin. They get it. Now, you know, the Congress, the Senate, the executive branch, well, this one is a little better.

but, you know, they didn't get it at all. But these people understand that this is the superior form of sound money and therefore strategically important to the United States. So, you know, I think there's a chance, and I don't know if Trump will have the guts to do it before he leaves. I think some of it will depend on whether they think they're going to win the next election or not. I think if they go into the next election thinking, oh, no problem, you know, JD's got it locked up.

There's no chance of a loss. Then they may not be forced to do it. But I think if it looks like they're losing ground and JD isn't going to win the next election, you know, they might try a monetary reset right then, right there, and say, you know, we're going to a Bitcoin standard, you know, and, you know, which would involve a massive devaluation of the dollar, an enormous one-time inflation across the board,

but then actually a solving of the problem of sound money and forcing the government to balance its budget. So, you know, I mean, Besant has said things like, you know, we need another Brentwoods and I want to be at the table when it happens. What? you know, holy shit, you know, he kind of gets it. I mean, you know, it's not, I mean, it's funny. These politicians, in some ways they're stupid and in some ways they're not.

And, you know, you can't really look at the $37 trillion of debt and not realize that that's a big elephant in the room, right? So, and the executive branch was a history of the executive branch doing monetary resets. I mean, you know, the monetary policy in the United States is supposed to be set by Congress because it was said so in Article 1,8 of the, of the executive branch. Constitution, you know, only gold and silver money and much of us congressional think. Well, fine until, you know, Lincoln printed greenbacks, executive order, right? You know, FDR grabbed the gold, revalued it, executive order, right? You know, Nixon broke us off the gold standard, 71, executive order. So, you know, there's this history that just says, you know, the president can change the monetary policy. So, you know, what if they came out and said, guess what, guys, we're going

to a Bitcoin standard. You know, the new price of Bitcoin is a million dollars a coin. We stand ready to buy it or sell it. You know, the dollar obviously would depreciate enormously. And, you know, we're going to match that with a balanced budget amendment. And off we go. You know, in China and India are left there with their, you know, their thumb and their butt going, oh, fuck, now what do we do? You know, I mean, so, I mean, that would be the smart thing to do.

Now, you know, will we do that or will they, will they have the political cover or the guts to do it? I don't know, probably not. But it's the right thing to do. That's what we should do, you know, if you want to restore fairness. And at that point in time, you know, we could go forward in a much, much better world, you know, because all of this grift, all of this monetary nonsense would just go away. It just would. And the currency would be sound again.

Can we play that out a little bit? Because I'm, there's one kind of element that I'm not sure about. which is, let's say the U.S. did that, but continue to run a trade deficit. Would that not just end up with China having all the Bitcoin? Do they need to also fix the trade deficit? Well, yeah, but yes and no. The trade deficit by definition would have to disappear because we couldn't afford it, right? In other words, you know, suddenly we would have to pay in real money.

and if we didn't have the real money, I mean, their currency would appreciate massively in a way that we couldn't buy as much of their stuff and it wouldn't be cheap stuff. I mean, the reason it's cheap stuff is that they've been willing to hold our currency and they've been, you know, they've held their currency down, so they've been very, what's it called, mercantile

in their dealings with us. When you go to a sound currency and everybody's playing by the same sound currency rules, then yeah, okay, they can make cheaper shit, but we've got to have the money to really pay for it. We can't buy it. The way we buy it now is we issue debt to buy it. We issue paper which they're willing to take in order to buy it,

so we get more than our fair share of cheap shit. And they sell more, and they want to do that because they want to be a mercantile nation. If we suddenly are back to a sound monetary unit, well, yeah, they're making cheap shit, but we're not producing anything here that they want, they don't they're not going to take our dollars for it you know they'll only take bitcoin well then guess what suddenly we're going to have to actually earn and do something that the world really wants

if we want to buy the world's shit so the trade deficit would disappear follow what i'm saying yeah that makes sense i mean just by definition yeah so i mean it would just balance everything so that you'd have to i mean you know it wouldn't necessarily be good for the united states right away but we'd come back and find things to do i mean you know one of the things that i always marveled at this when I was younger, is how much better the U.S. lived than most of the world. I mean, it was because we had the reserve currency. I mean, we could print pieces of paper, send them overseas. People would accept them, even though they were somewhat worthless or had less worth than we

were attributing to them, and they would send us their shit. I mean, that was a great deal. I mean, it's absolutely insane when you say it like that. That's how it works. Yeah, I mean, it's a great deal if you can pull it off. And that's why, you know, that's why the American lifestyle has been as good as it's been, but, you know, I mean, sadly, you know, this reset is going to involve everybody in the world is going to have to pull their own weight in terms of, you know, you'll eat what you

kill. I mean, if, you know, if they're Americans doing good stuff and adding a lot of value, and I mean, look, in some areas, we're extremely competitive. In technology, we're damn competitive. I mean, Apple and other country companies, I mean, there's some things we do extremely well, and those will be rewarded, but, you know, there are other things that we don't do so well, and we'll have to either shape up and or we won't live as high a lifestyle as we can because we're not adding value there. I mean, again, that's a world I want to see. That's how the world should work. And hopefully it does in the future.

Just lastly, I know before you started, you pulled up a chart that I think we should look at. Because one of the things that you've said over and over again is that gold moves first, Bitcoin moves fastest. So you think that we're about to have a bit of an explosion in Bitcoin price. Yeah, let me just give me a moment here. Let me just find it on my screen. So this is a chart that my partner and I, David Foley, use a lot. Just for people watching.

So this chart, just on, so this is from 2018 to present. It's a little out of date because gold's now over 3,500. And this is the price of gold in gold and the price of Bitcoin in orange. Funny I can pick that color. But note the scales are very, very different. You know, gold has gone from 1,000 to, 3,000, it's now 3,600. So it'd be the upper right-hand corner.

It'd be a little higher. And the orange is Bitcoin, but again, the scales are different. It's gone from 10,000 to 117,000, right? So Bitcoin's moved a lot farther than gold, but that's not the point of the chart. The point of the chart is the synchronization to some degree.

They've kind of generally moved together. But here's what I found most interesting. Look at the beginning. Look at 2018, 2019, 2020. Look at how far. So there was a lot of monetary debasement in 2019 and 2020 as Powell pivoted, and then COVID happened. And you could just kind of smell the money printer warming up and going again. And look at how gold took off like a rocket, okay?

You know, and it went from, I don't know, call it 750 to, you know, almost up to 2000, right, at the peak in 2020. And during that same time frame, look at how Bitcoin just languished along. You know, I think on the scale here, I think it was around $10,000 about the time. it actually had been as low as five, but it was kind of 10 in this window. And then suddenly, when the COVID thing really started to kick in, everybody figured out what Bitcoin was. Holy shit. Bitcoin went from 10 to 60 really fast.

So gold moved first. Bitcoin crushed it when it moved, much, much more movement. Okay. So then they kind of both calmed down. Gold dipped down. Notice again, gold dipped first. Bitcoin was still running. Gold was dipping.

Whoops. Bitcoin followed it down. Sam Bankman-Fried played a role in that. Then notice how gold starts a level off and we got a secondary run in Bitcoin because that that whole run had been truncated by Bankman Fried and the China thing. So it's a little bit of an anomaly. Then gold's kind of flat. Bitcoin came down there. The correlation didn't really work too much. I think the correlation didn't work there though because that was like Checkmate describes that as the scam pump because it was basically all the arbitrage, all the FTX stuff, the 3AC stuff. I think you can almost ignore that second pump. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, I was thinking, yeah, you're right. FTCS wasn't 2021. It was over here. You're right. Okay. So then, so then, you know, then they kind of moved together. And actually, Bitcoin led gold down a little in 2022, tighter monetary conditions. Okay, so now Bitcoin is enjoying, you know, kind of the free money and everything. When the free money gets taken away, Bitcoin gets slammed hard. Gold got slammed, not as hard. But that's fitting with the, you know, Bitcoin moves a lot further and faster, right? But here, you know, and here, but here again, Notice this. In late 2020, gold starts moving up.

Bitcoin's still flat, right? Yeah, it comes up a little bit. Gold moves up even further. Okay, Bitcoin goes up a little bit more. Then you get a downturn in 20, 23. You know, gold starts moving down. Bitcoin's still going up. Oh, but Bitcoin follows gold down.

Okay. So now gold starts moving up again. And this time there wasn't much of a lag. Bitcoin catches up. Then Bitcoin really catches up. Then you pause, but gold moves out of the pause again first. Then Bitcoin comes. It goes crazy.

up again, right? And so my point here is just that they're correlated, but often gold smells at first. And right now, gold is cooking. We're over $3,600. We're running to $3,700. And everybody's kind of tired, you know, it's amazing to me, right? Everyone's, everyone's frustrated that Bitcoin's at $115. I mean, if you told me back here, Bitcoin was going to be at $115, I'd have said, hallelujah, right? I mean, and, you know, or that micro-stratity, I mean, I'm, I howl at all these micro-strategy people who are just crying in their beer that sailors done them wrong because micro strategy hasn't moved for a while. Well, just wait, guys. Microstratology is going to a thousand plus. And the point is that gold smells what's coming next, because it's already moving, whereas Bitcoin is still lagging a little bit. But there's another chart.

I don't have it here, but it shows M2, Global M2, and it continues to grow. And it's starting to go up. The Global M2 is now growing in about 4.8% a year. It actually went slightly negative when Powell tightened things greatly in 2022, but we're back to growing. We've hit an all-time high. And all I would say is, you know, Bitcoin people should be just rooting for gold because it's the early indicator. And so I fully expect that kind of in the tail end of this year, probably in the next, you know, three months, we're in September now. I see us at the end of the year at 140, 150 Bitcoin and maybe $4,000 gold. And who knows, maybe the Bitcoin overshoots and goes to 150. Maybe we correct a little bit then. And I think this cycle takes,

it takes us to kind of 200, 250 in Bitcoin. I think this cycle maybe takes us to 5,000 in gold. I don't know. You know, look, some of this is just reading tea leaves, and it's impossible to know with great certainty what's going to happen. But I find, I want to offer words of encouragement to the Bitcoin people. Don't be mad that gold's running be happy because it's about to come to you. And I own both.

You know, I own both. October is right around the corner. Bitcoin's going to rip. I think it really is. I really, and as we know, you know, that's the other thing back, I won't go back to the chart, but did you notice how the way it trades? I mean, it just does these long periods and nothing, and then it really moves. You know, it moves with authority.

And I mean, I have to say, I'm a little puzzled. When I look at all the, you know, the BTC companies and the corporate buying, I'm a little puzzled. It hasn't moved. I mean, there's been a lot of Bitcoin soaked up from a lot of sources. And I don't know, maybe it's been suppressed by some paper. I know, I do know, I used to have no fear of paper Bitcoin. Now I look at the size of the Bitcoin futures market.

It's gotten pretty damn big. I mean, the Bitcoin perpetual futures on Binance, the last time I checked, the numbers were quite large. And, you know, I don't know, 20 billion. I mean, it was billions of billions, a lot more than it had been in the past. And so, you know, so some people are on the wrong side of this trade. But guess what? They're going to get their faces ripped off, you know, when Bitcoin takes out 130 with

authority because we're going to probably be at 180 fest and then we realize. And, you know, as I like to say, they're going to have a deeply religious experience. So, so I mean, I think that's what we have to look forward to. So I, you know, but this, again, this, it makes it all very, very hard because and I think it's very important, you know, people sometimes say, well, what's going to happen this week, this month next year? You know, I've been around. I've done this for a long time. I've been through a bunch of these cycles. And I try to think in five-year timeframes. As you all know, You know, in four-year time frames, you've always come out ahead in Bitcoin. And, you know, trying to predict the next month or week or a half-year,

not half a year you can kind of do, but it's kind of a mug's game. You just don't know. But I'm pretty sure that, you know, in several years, you know, and I rely actually a lot on the power law model. I think it's a decent model. It explains a lot going backwards on an R-squared basis. Now, I eventually think it'll break to the upside because I do think we'll get into hyper-bitcoin I mean, one thing is, the other thing I would say that I think is a very important point, Danny and I would, you know, I want to make is that all of this is happening just in terms of kind of a small big print. I mean, we're kind of in a big print. I mean, they're kind of doing some shadow QE. They're kind of talking about stuff. We're anticipating lower fed funds, you know, etc. But this isn't really the big event yet. Okay. We're just kind of warming up. I mean, imagine something really breaks. I mean, a la 2008 or 2020 COVID. I mean,

And that's possible, not certain, but possible. I think it's likely within a two or three-year time frame. Something really breaks, and you know what they're going to do. They're going to bring out the monetary fire hoses. And man, when that happens, just look out. Yeah. You know, we're going to Fed balance sheet 50. And this is how currencies fail.

You know, the next time, it'll be bigger than the last time. It'll be more aggressive. There'll be more money printed. And there'll be a larger segment of the population that will say, oh, my God, they can never stop printing money. And that's the famous von Mises quote. Once everyone realizes that it's part of the policy and they can never stop, the currency is doomed.

It's just literally doomed. And sadly, this is how hyperinflations occur. It could go to zero. I don't wish that on America. I actually don't think that's the base case of what will happen. But it's a tail possibility if we don't get our shit together.

And so, and I feel very comfortable leaning on the inflation side. You know, is this going to, is this trade going to, make me fabulously rich? Who the hell knows? But is this better than any other trade out there? Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure about that. I mean, this is the right, you know, we are on the right side of this trade, you know, unless, unless suddenly Washington, D.C. gets incredibly responsible. And of course, when I say that, everybody laughs because that's not, it doesn't feel very likely. But, you know,

stranger shit's happened. And if things get painful enough, maybe they will get responsible. So we have to keep that in the back of our mind that, you know, if they get responsible, you know, if they get responsible, this isn't as obvious a trade. But, you know, as long as they're behaving the way they're behaving, I feel like we're on the right side. I put pretty low percentage odds on them behaving responsibly, but we will see. Yeah, we all do, but stranger shit's happened. That's true. I can't think of a better way to end the show than that, Larry. We've got the prints happening, the big prints coming, Bitcoin's going to rip. Things are looking good. Oh, that's the good. You know, I've got it here too. Don't hesitate to buy the book and pass it on. Obviously,

honestly, I'm, uh, it's a very self-interested, uh, shilling statement, but, um, actually, shilling is a negative term. I mean, in the most positive way possible. It's a great book. I think the book can help people. So, yeah, I think it can help people. So I, if, you know, if you care about your friends and family, pass it on because, um, you know, the way, the way we win this is we get more people to, um, advocate for sound money, because if we get enough, we'll get it. And if we get it, life will be better. I, I really, history shows that. And I, and I, and I want my kids to live in a better world so absolutely me too well larry i always love talking to you thank you for this um oh likewise coming hopefully i'll see you around at something at some point in the

near future but thank you there's no doubt there's no doubt thanks all right cheers take care