What Bitcoin Did - The Fed Pivot, Bitcoin vs Gold & The Return Of QE | Lawrence Lepard

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Lawrence Lepard is an investment manager and author of The Big Print. In this episode, he explains why the Federal Reserve has already pivoted back to money printing and why inflation is now structurally embedded in the system. We discuss the growing inevitability of yield curve control, what gold and silver are signaling and why Bitcoin is the most asymmetric response to policy failure and monetary decay. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN BITKEY SWAN FOLLOW: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/\_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Lawrence Lepard: https://x.com/LawrenceLepard

The reason they have to continue to create money is that the debt continues to grow. And if we don't create money, the debt will collapse. The debasement will come. Gold will keep running. Bitcoin is going to wake up and go from 90 to 270 or 3X easily. Everybody is saying, we realize that this is a house of cards. And the way to think of it is like a game of musical chairs. It's not a trade.

It's a trend. I do think that Big Prince on deck. And I do think that when it comes, Bitcoin will respond. it will respond ferociously. At some point, the thing is so asymmetric. It's just going to explode to the upside. Bitcoin's going to smash the system, whether they like it or not. Few people understand is how when this thing does hit, when this next wave does hit,

it's not going to 140, guys. It's going to 250 or 300 or 350. Larry LaPard, welcome back on the show. The last time we spoke was in September last year, and so much stuff has happened since then. I was kind of going back through all the macro events since then, and we've got a lot to talk about today, Larry. Yeah, we sure do, yeah. But how are you doing?

How is your Christmas break? Well, it was great. It's nice to be with you. And as I think I've told you, I'm trying to kind of reduce my podcast a lot, but yours is always, Peter had me on in the early days, and you guys have always been one of my favorites, so I'm never going to cut out WBD.

But I'm doing great. My vacation was good. I'm now in Florida. is, you know, I'm kind of in that old guy camp where I guess in America they call us snowbirds, which means I spend the summer in Boston and the winter in Florida. And it's also taxed advantage because Florida doesn't have state income tax. So I will be here into May and June. And, you know, it's pretty nice and sunny outside, whereas I just talked to somebody in Massachusetts

and they just got six inches of snow last night. Yeah, that's the move. I was obviously just in Miami to do the sailor interview. and the weather at this time of year is so nice. That's the place you want to be doing winter. Yeah, that's really great. But let's get into it, Larry. So when we were speaking last time, I think I titled the episode,

The Big Print is Coming, something like that, a classic Larry LaPard title. And we've not had the big print, but there has been the start of a little something. They've been doing the, what are they calling it, the buyback? The gradual print. Well, they call it Reserve Management, you know, and. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah, and it's really, it's notable what happened in the last two Fed meetings.

One, they stopped the quantitative tightening. And then two, they started saying that they were going to potentially do some reserve management because things were getting too tight. And they floated the trial balloon of $25 billion and maybe starting in 2026. And then at the Fed meeting in December, they came out and they said, no, it's not 25. It's 40 and it starts in two days, which kind of told me that, you know, they really were kind of, you know, they were under pressure to do it. And just to summarize for the audience, most people know this, the reason they have to continue to create money is that the debt continues

to grow. And if we don't create money, the debt will collapse. So they have to service it. And they've tried to be responsible and to reduce inflation. And I think it's an important point that they did not want to do this, Danny. I mean, they, you know, Chairman Powell wants to be Paul Volcker. He wants to tame inflation. And inflation has not been tamed. Even by their crummy broken measure, it's 2-7 to 3%. And we all know it's actually higher than that. So they haven't solved the inflation problem, but they've turned the money printer back on. And that's a big deal. I'm writing my fourth quarter letter, which will be out soon. It's free. I'll put it on Twitter. And we talk about that. And it's a very big deal. And so it's, you know, it's 40 billion of purchases

a month, which adds up to $4.80 a year, which is not the, you know, $3 trillion that Bernacki printed or the $5 trillion that Powell printed. But, you know, my sense is that's the start and it's, they pivoted and it's going to grow. And Lynn and I have had kind of a nice back and forth on Twitter where she says, well, it's the gradual print, not the big print. And I said, yeah, you're right. But it could morph into the big print, and I think it will. And I've actually got a chart on that.

I don't know if I was going to go into it, but we could talk a little bit about that if you like. Yeah, well, we can pull the chart up. But the thing that I thought was really interesting about this is that in 2008, when they did the big QE event then, it was in response to a crisis. And then with COVID, it was in response to a crisis. And then even with the BTFP thing, that was in response to like a small crisis within like the regional banks. But then this time, I don't know if it's the first time it's been like this,

but nothing seems to be happening, but they are still turning the money prints back on. And I don't know if it kind of signifies that the system just, needs this now. It's not a response to something. It just needs it all the time. I think that's a great insight on your point and I had the same thought myself personally that, you know, yes, the system does need it. It's almost a mathematical requirement or certainty and you're right. There is no crisis and yet, you know, they're trying to be preemptive. They know that if reserves get too tight, they'll have something like the repo blowout in 2019 and, you know, they can't have that and they don't want to have that. They're trying to fight off a

crisis by kind of gradually leaking more money in there. I think the problem they're going to have, though, is that the math is just compelling. And I think there are a couple, there are probably three macro signals that I see that say that they're really running out of time, and I'll point them out. Probably macro signal number one is the price of silver. Silver is up 157% last year and just continues to go straight up. And there's a lot to unpack there, but we'll just say, leave it at that. The other point is the price of gold, which is very similar. It hasn't gone up as much, but it's up, you know, 50% plus last year. And then the third item is, and I kind of continually retweet this every morning, is the Japanese 10-year bond. You know, Japan has been a source of a lot

of liquidity in the United States and really all over the world as a result of their carry trade, which was driven by their low interest rates. And interest rates in Japan kind of look like a chart of the price of silver. You know, the 10-year just kind of goes, it's up and to the right in a very steep fashion. So to me, there's some clues, not certainties, but clues that things are breaking and they need to print more money. And as we see, they just started printing more money. You know, I think that number of grow, I think, said that earlier. So you think this gradual print could turn into the big print? What would be a, and do you think it needs an event, a COVID-type, obviously not global pandemic, but like a Black Swan event

to turn into a big print? Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know. I really don't know. Yes, I mean, obviously a COVID Black Swan type event will clearly do it. You know, we're so leveraged that any kind of a serious downturn in the stock market or a blowup in the bond market would be. The question is, can we have the big print under just kind of normal circumstances?

And, you know, it took two big events to create those prior big prints. And so you would think, okay, it's going to take a big event this time. But one other, there's one other thing that's in the mix that I think makes it very, an interesting question, and that is, what's going on with the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve management? And, you know, the other, the subtext here is, you know, we've got Trump at war with, you know, Powell and, you know, is, I mean, it's very unusual for a Fed president to come out on a Sunday night and say that he's going to fight back against, you know, this group within the government that are asking him a lot of questions about the overruns on the building. And Trump,

kind of claims that's not him doing it, but that's a little bit hard to believe. And, you know, the fact of the matter is that, you know, Trump has really kind of got the Fed under siege. And, and as we all know, he has the ability to appoint a new Fed chairman in May. And a couple of names been bounced around for that. The original name was Hacet, Kevin Hassett, was very, very duffish, said, you know, he thinks interest should be one or two percent. And I think what happened is Trump might have gotten a tap on the shoulder from a combination of dissent and the bond market. I said, no, sir, if you do that, you know, you're going to lose the bond market. And, you know, I've often thought that the trigger for the next big print will be the 10-year, the U.S. 10-year yield, which has kind of been locked in plus or minus around 4%.

And they've been able to do that because the carrier, the basis trade has just grown enormously. Basis trade is three times larger than it was in 2019, which is shocking to me. Yeah, and that's, the basis trade is just they get, you know, hedge funds to buy and sell, you know, you know, treasury bonds in order to keep deals locked into a certain place. And they make, you know, they lever them up heavily and they, you know, they make a spread on the fact that nothing blows up. But when something does blow up, then they have to issue swap lines. And that was part of what happened in COVID.

You know, they had to bail out Ken Griffin and Citadel and a big participant in the basis trade. So, you know, if the 10 year were to start to move aggressively through 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, you know, to 5%, which I think is a very real possibility, that would lead to, you know, yield curve control. I mean, basically, you know, I think what's going on is gold and silver smell what's coming. It hasn't happened yet, but they think mathematically it has to,

and so they kind of smell it. And we've even seen things that are very, it's very notable to me. Stephen Moran is Trump's Council of Economic Advisor guy, and he got put on the bed board when the woman got accused of insider trading. And so she resigned. That was like the fourth instance of that.

And when he was getting vetted, to be a member of the board on the Fed board, he made a testimony that more or less said something along the lines of, you know, the Fed may have to at some point, you know, be in a position where they set policy on long-term interest rates. Well, that's code for yield curve control. And yield curve control says the Fed buys the bonds to keep the rates low. This is what third world in emerging market countries do.

What do they buy the bonds? What do they buy the bonds? What do they buy it with newly printed paper that, you know, grows their balance sheet. And, you know, and the Fed bond, and so once that starts, this has a little bit of the gradually, then suddenly, kind of component to it. And so, you know, if the Fed starts yield curve control and says, let's say we're going to lock, like they did after World War II, or during World War II, they locked in yields long,

long bonds at 2.5%. Let's say the Fed says, we're going to hold bond yields at 4%. We're not going to let the 10-year-go above 4%. And let's say, you know, Trump keeps talking the way he's been talking about you know, occupying countries and growing the defense budget from one trillion to five trillion. Well, then the next step is going to be, all right, you know, you're telling me I can only get 4% and we're spending like crazy. You know, there's 37 trillion, 30, almost 38 trillion dollars of U.S. Federal Treasury debt. The bond market is going to look at the Fed and say, sold to you.

Great. You know, you'll pay me for my bond at the 4%. You'll, good, I'll give it to you. and, you know, 38, I mean, their balance sheet right now is about $6.5 trillion, down from 9. So I think on the next big print, the Fed balance sheet goes from that $6.5 to, I don't know, 10, 15, 20. I mean, some big number, right? And if the entire $38 trillion came at it, you know, it would really go to a big number and would be off on the road to hyperinflation. So that's not my base case, by the way. I think we're just going to have high inflation. But, you know, all of these things, to me, you know, the markets are telling us, the silver market and gold market are telling us these things are in the works.

I mean, gold and silver are really great at smelling this stuff. And there's a chart I put out as well in the past. It's all over my Twitter feed and others that it showed. And this time reminds me very much of 2020. So the COVID event occurred. The Fed pivoted. They started printing a lot of money quickly. gold went from 1,200 to 2,000 quite quickly.

And Bitcoin just sat there, you know, for months. It was kind of locked between like $7,000 and $10,000. And, you know, it just kind of went sideways. And then suddenly it woke up that fall in October, and it just went on a tear. And in the next six months, it went from 10 to 60. So that's 6x. And so there was, you know, it was kind of like gold moved first, gold smelled it first, and then Bitcoin followed the flag.

and I kind of expect the same thing this time. Gold's doing its thing. It's moving. It says the debasement is coming. The debasement will come. Gold will keep running. And then at some point, as the debasement comes and the money flows in, Bitcoin is going to wake up and go from, you know, 90 to 270 or, you know, 3X easily, in my view.

So is it tomorrow? No. I mean, I have that as within six to six to 12 months, I guess. But I could be wrong. I mean, maybe they hold it all together, Danny. It's entirely possible that they hold it together. I mean, they're good can tickers. I'll give them that.

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tax loss harvesting, asset back loans and more. swan have helped over 100,000 clients since 2020, and if you're serious about acquiring and securing Bitcoin, I recommend Swam. Meet the team at swan.com forward slash wbd, which is swan.com forward slash wbd. Yeah, I'm not betting on them holding it together. I do want to get into the gold and silver trade because I think that's been like probably the most interesting thing over the last six or 12 months. Right.

But just before we do, do you want to bring that charter that you sent me because I think that shows how the balance sheet goes. exponential. Yeah, this is a really, I love this chart because this was done by my Oliver, who was a really great macro analyst. And let me just show this to you. So what you have here, Dan Oliver runs more McCain-Capel. All credit to him.

This is his chart, not mine. But I read it and saw this is really, this nails it. So in his title is American Money Printing Goes Exponential. And the chart starts in 1960. The lighter gray sloped line, that's kind of a, and a growth curve, you know, pretty much tied to the growth of money. So it's kind of 7% compound, compound growth. And as you can see, compounds something, 7%.

Eventually, it starts to go straight up, it's kind of exponential. And the black line is the Federal Reserve liabilities or the Federal Reserve balance sheet, which really is a measure of the reserves that they put into the system, which the banks then take and lend out, and that lending is what creates growth in M2. Okay. So what you can see is that they tracked from 60 to 80, they were together, all the way up to 2000, a little blip. But basically in 2008, you can see that, you know, the debt kept growing at an exponential pace.

And one thing that's not on here, I kind of wish it was, is the overall level of debt in society because it would, the debt level in society would kind of track the exponential growth curve. And, you know, the debt kind of got ahead of the balance sheet in 08, and we had a panic, and boom, they printed. And you can see it went up quite a bit from, you know, I think the Fed balance sheet was 850, pre-08 and it topped around three something three five I think at the top and then of course Yellen and Powell tried to reduce it and they did start reducing it but you can see the second arrow right there the repo COVID panic was 2019 you know New York repo rates blew out went up to 10

percent overnight and that was the first Powell pivot and so Powell at that point in time basically said, hey, you know, we can't keep tightening. We've got to loosen. In fact, we've got to do QE. And then, of course, COVID hit, and then all hell broke loose and it went straight up. And, of course, that's what created the 9% inflation peak that we had. And so eventually he figured out, and he said it was transitory, he was wrong. I mean, this is what happens when a lawyer is your central banker.

I mean, you can blame a lawyer for not understanding it. I mean, the one who should have understood is yell. Anybody, when they did this thing, basically, they grew M2 by 40%. So you can't grow them 2 by 40% and think you're not going to have inflation. I mean, I was just, you know, what were they smoking? So, right? But then he started tightening it.

But here, notice this. So they tightened and they came from the peak of nine. Now the balance you say six, five, okay? But look at how the interesting point is every time the money in the system, the black line, dipped below kind of the growth in debt line, the exponential growth in debt line, you know, a problem occurred. Well, look at where we are right now, right?

So what do you think is going to happen next? I mean, the black line is about, and the black line is turning up. This doesn't reflect the December change policy. So, you know, you just know what's going to happen next, right? This black line's got to go north of $10 trillion, and it will, in my opinion. This isn't just my opinion. This is kind of a mathematical fact. I mean, they could not do it.

And in which case, you know, the debt would start to default and everything would start to collapse. and we'd have a, you know, a de-leveraging cascading cycle that would look like 1929. And, you know, that would be extremely unpleasant. And, you know, if they choose to go in that direction, so be it. I'm making a strong bet that they will not choose to go in that direction. And I think it's a logical conclusion that they won't. But I suppose they could, right? That's a tail risk to the debasement trade that we're all in.

So, but this chart is basically why you think a gradual print isn't sustainable. because at some point, like, it just needs to keep up with the debt. That's exactly right. It's just not going to cut it. But so is there, like, when you say the tail risk, is the tail risk that instead of printing money, they start defaulting on debt and things like that? Yeah, yeah.

It's a possibility that they, you know, that they try and maintain discipline. I mean, I don't, I don't think it's particularly likely given, you know, what we know about what Trump has said and his policy. I mean, we've got Bessent saying, you know, that the Fed and the Treasury, need to coordinate policy. We've got Trump saying, you know, that we've got to be more of, I mean, it's becoming clear that this administration and a lot of people in government are kind of starting

to view this as, you know, we're going to make up the rules as we go along. We're in a great power competition with China and Russia. And whatever it takes to keep America in the position we want to be in, we're going to do it. And, you know, it's existential. They're using words like, you know, we've got to go to a wartime footing. And, you know, they did it in World War II, right? I mean, we We had to fight fascism. We took on all kinds of debt. We suppressed yields. Bondholders got killed.

Inflation was high. You know, I think that's kind of where we're heading. And they're telling you that. I mean, this is not some secret. I mean, Trump had a tweet on Truth Social where he said he wanted to see 20 to 25% GDP growth. Well, you can get that, but only if you have 15% of inflation. You know what I mean? Because you can't get real GDP growth.

I mean, it's not like we're going to increase our productive capacity, 25% one year. That's physically impossible. Is that impossible even with massive breakthroughs in like AI robotics? Those things will help. There's no doubt that all of the great technology we've got going on will help and it fights against, you know, the argument that I'm making. But I'm of the belief that it's too little too late, that it just, the problem is bigger than can be solved with the AI and the productivity boom.

I mean, we're, we are really in the later stages of this monetary decay. And, you know, things like the silver price. I mean, the silver price and the gold price have done things they've never really ever done before. You know, just they're kind of relentless. You know, they did this a little bit in the 80s with the, you know, the end of that. And Volker solved that by taking rates to 20%. But, you know, he had the space to do it. At that time, debt to GDP was 35%.

Right now, debt to GDP is 120%. 25%. So they've just, you know, the Fed really is kind of trapped. And in my view, they have to run it hot. And what's going to be interesting, and they can do that. And that will keep the economy going, by the way. But there's just no way that's not inflationary. I mean, that's the bottom line. It has to, it has to mathematically be inflationary. And Trump and Besant have said that their best bet is solving this problem is to grow their way out of it. And so that's what I think they're going to try. the best to do. We should talk a little bit about the

gold and the silver trade because I remember when you were in Bedford in March last year, we did a show and gold had already been ripping. I think it had just gone over like $3,000 or something. And you were saying then, you could see it having a run at sort of $5,000

and here we are like it, not even a year later and we're not far off that at all. What's been driving the gold and silver trade? Because I imagine this isn't just hedge funds. Do you think nations States are a big part of this. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, so, so central, a lot of things are driving it.

But I would say that the two biggest drivers are, you know, the dollar losing its status as the world's reserve asset, not necessarily currency, but asset. We used to save, I mean, since 2014, you know, net treasury bills held by foreigners have been flat to down. People just don't trust the dollar anymore. They can, they can see what we all can see. So that's, that's part of it. And then, you know, the Chinese and others, they've stood up the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

and the volumes there are huge. And, you know, you've now got China trading with Saudi Arabia, and if Saudi Arabia ends up with too many yuan and they don't want it, they can't buy goods from China for it. They just converted into gold. In the old days, with the petrodollar, they would have converted that excess into U.S. dollars. And so, you know, so you've got nation states going for gold as a neutral reserve asset.

That's part number one. You've also got central banks realizing the problem, and central bank purchases have been growing, and they're large and steadily growing. And you've got a third issue that kind of falls into a little bit of the conspiracy theory world. But, you know, I would consider it we all know that a lot of conspiracy theories have kind of become conspiracy facts. And that is kind of the, you know, the paper markets that have manipulated these things. I mean, the United States and others for years and years, and I know this, I believe this is absolutely conclusive evidence.

If you go to the Gav site or a lot of other places to show it, that there's, you know, they've, suppress the precious metals prices because they know that doing so helps their inflation numbers look better and you know they've done it by selling paper gold and paper silver and you can do that as long as buyers are willing to accept paper gold and paper silver and up until more recently that's been the case but what's happened and you see it this year in the data and it's really kind of stunning data Danny I don't have it right in front of me but trust me on this that people are starting to say yeah yeah that's nice I've got a derivative contract I've got a CME contract for you know one one CME contract is 5,000 silver ounces.

It's five bars at 1,000 ounces of piece. I know because I took delivery of one once. It bottomed out the trunk of my car when I put them in the trunk. And, you know, those, they're saying, you know, give me the silver. You know, yeah, I bought the contract. And it's funny. When I said I want the silver delivered, they're like, no, you don't. It's like, yeah, I do.

And they're like, well, you're going to be charges. And, you know, we're willing to pay you a small premium to not take delivery. I said, no, that's not what I want. I want you to give me the damn bars. And eventually they did. It took a lot to do it. And that's happening everywhere. Everybody is saying, you know, we realize that this is a house of cards.

And the way to think of it is like a game of musical chairs, right? I mean, a real silver bar is, you know, is a chair. And a paper silver claim, you know, that's not a chair. And so if you take the paper claim and say, I want the real bar, there are only so many bars. I mean, you know, the silver market is so financialized and so papered over that we buy an 850 million ounces of silver every year. We trade that in half a day. So, I mean, think about that.

I mean, there are days when we trade two times the annual mining volume on one of the silver paper exchanges. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. What that tells you is there's just a lot of paper claims against what's really being produced. And, you know, we're moving from a world where paper, you know, we've had 50 years of, you know,

the U.S. had the leading form of paper, and paper could be used to buy everything. And, you know, you didn't need to really have the stuff. And, you know, the bricks and others in the world are now kind of saying, well, that's all really nice that you got that paper. But show me the stuff. You know, I can't, you know, I can't build a solar panel with a silver paper contract. I can't, you know, build my Tesla with a silver paper contract. And you've seen it.

I mean, you've seen it. It's reached even down to the company level. I thought this was very interesting. A company I'm involved with, Samsung, so silver, and that's the other thing about, silver. Silver demand is really growing. Silver demand, silver is used heavily in solar now. It used to be used in photography. That's gone away because it's digital. But it's also being used in these new batteries that Toshiva and Samsung have developed. And they're not commercially yet, but they use a lot of silver. But the solar demand alone, I've read that the solar demand in China could consume over

half of, right now it's about 20% of world silver supply. And that will grow to over a half in the next five years if it continues at the current slope, right? And then you bring these Chinese, these companies who have these new solid state batteries that require a lot of silver, you know, they're going to have enormous demand too. And so if you took a lot of electric cars, a lot of electric batteries with these silver, you know, silver component, there's going to be demand getting added there. And to that point, one of those companies, I believe it was Samsung, went to one of the companies I'm invested in and said, we're going to invest $10 million in you on very preferential terms, slightly above market. But in exchange for that, you're going to agree to sell all your

production to us. Now, why does a user of silver do that? They do, and not at some fixed price. They're not trying to arb the price. I say, whatever the market price is, they are worried about their supply. They know supply is tight, and they want to have a guaranteed source of supply, so they're willing to make an investment in the company to help them and lock in that supply. So that's the kind of thing that's going on. So this is very real. And, you know, in Bitcoin land, others I've seen people saying, well, silver, you know, look at the chart of silver. It's a Barabla, this is a short, it's going to collapse like it did with the Hunt Brothers, like it did in 2011. I'm not so sure. I mean, you asked me my target price on silver. I mean, we'll be at 100 in days,

and, you know, I mean, how high up is up? I just don't know. But it's been suppressed for so long, and 50 was a base, was a ceiling for so long. We broke through that ceiling. At 200 could be possible. I've seen 500. It's not nuts. I mean, it's, you know, it's interesting that the precious metals, I say this a lot when people kind of laugh, but the precious metals have no top because fiat has no bottom. And I'm not predicting hyperinflation yet. It's not my base case. I just think high inflation is very likely built into the system.

And there's really no way to avoid it, I mean, other than letting everything collapse, which I don't think they'll do. So you think this sort of commodity ball run is nowhere near over yet? Absolutely. I'm going to say it my letter. I think we're in the second inning. I really do.

And it's very hard. I mean, look, my fund's up a lot. I've got investors saying, God, we've got all these profits. Should we take them? And I'm like, yeah, let's take a little bit. And we actually distributed 10% on the fund this year to our investors. Just said, yeah, let's, you know, it's prudent in case we're wrong to take a little bit of the profit off the table. But no, I think that, you know, this is a case if we're in early days of this kind of a problem.

unless we see sudden, and when I say this, people always chuckle, because it's not like, if we see sudden responsible behavior out of the United States government, you know, balanced budget, et cetera, that, you know, it's, well, look, it's not, you know, stranger things have happened, right? I mean, you know, if they got, if they started behaving in a responsible fashion, you know, then we'd have to reevaluate our thesis. But, you know, I mean, I see them going the other way. Like I said, you know, I was shocked when he said it. You said, you know, our defense budget is about just under a trillion dollars. And he said, we should take it to one five.

I'm like, sir, where the hell is that going to come from? Do you know what I mean? I mean, it's just, it's nuts. It's nuts. I mean, safety noise used to say the biggest threat to Bitcoin was responsible fiscal policy by governments, which really means there's no threat to Bitcoin. That's all. I mean, I think that's what most of us see.

I mean, but look, I've got my eyes open. I mean, I, you know, I'm, I've been burnt before. And I don't want to, you know, I'm not believing my own bullshit here. I mean, if I see, if there's evidence and the price starts to show me that we're wrong, then I'll react to that. But it feels to me like, you know, we are, I mean, I know a lot of people, I have investors. I've talked to people. I mean, in my cohort, and I know a lot of wealthy people, most of whom don't own gold or silver or Bitcoin,

they own stocks. And they're all talking about, and they're just like, God damn, Larry, I'm just too late. And I'm like, no, you're really not, you know. As you and I both know and agree. Bitcoin will be at a million someday and then some higher number than that. I think gold 10,000 is very doable. So buying it a four is not nuts. I mean, four and a half.

I mean, so it's, you know, to me, it's interesting because, you know, remember this year, one of the things I pointed out is that they've labeled this now. They've come out and they've called it the debasement trade. I mean, it really started in a big way in September right after the fall came in. At that point in time, Doge was dead. and it became very clear and the big beautiful bill had passed and so they're going to spend another three

four hundred million dollars more than they thought and it became and Elon had given up on it all because he's a smart guy and he realized he couldn't fix it so he walked away from it and yeah so you know at that point in time gold and silver just woke up and said

okay we know what comes next guys you know we're let's go and you know I think that these people who asked me, am I too late? I say to them, you know, it's not a trade. I mean, they call it the basement trade. It's not a trade. It's a trend. It's a multi-year trend. And I don't know what the top is. And will there be corrections? Sure. There'll be corrections in all of these assets. But

I think the trend in all all sound money assets, silver gold Bitcoin, is up and to the right, strongly. Yeah, the idea of a trade implies that at some point you're going to want to sell it back for dollars. Well, that's right. And I thought about that. I thought, should I sell some of my golden silver side, where would I put it? Now, it's interesting in my case, because I've got assets in both of these camps. As you know, one of the hardest things I've had to do in this whole goddamn, you know, sound money world is, and I got the Bitcoin who's, you know, criticizing me for being a boomer with rocks. And I got the rocks guys, you know, criticizing me for believing in magic internet money.

And I get all these trolls on Twitter. Trust me, fucking nuts. But, you know, it is one nice part about having that balance of these two assets is like, right now, I am trimming some silver mining, some silver and gold positions, and I'm buying micro strategy, because to me, micro strategy at 1-7 is just money laying on the floor. It's like, go pick it up. I mean, you know, the MNAV has gotten completely compressed. There's nothing broken with the thesis. You know, I sincerely believe that Sailor is a genius and he will continue to, you know, do what he's doing and that this will be a thousand dollar stock. So, you know, on a relative basis, you know,

Bitcoin and strategy are cheaper to me right now than gold and silver in the debasement trade. It's interesting, too, Danny. I'll point something out. You know, three years ago, Bitcoin was flying and gold and silver stocks were in the sewer and everyone hated them. And that was when a lot of Bitcoin said, why don't you just dump that shit? Do you know what I mean? It's like, ah, I don't know.

I think we got a couple more puffs in the cigar. I'm not going to give up, you know. And here we are. And it's kind of worked. And right now I got a lot of, you know, Schiff and all these other gold guys are like, Hey, see, the Bitcoin thesis is broken. It's all over, you know. It hasn't correlated.

We got five years of flat performance. I mean, Luke Groman, who I love and think is brilliant, and I've learned a ton from. You know, even he kind of backed away from it. I don't know. You know, maybe, you know, he lightened up. And I'm just like, gosh, guys, you know, to me, that just feels like, you know, this New York Times piece, right? And totally a total cheap shot hit piece on Sailor. I mean, to me, that's going to be like the magazine indicator, you know, inflation is dead or, you know, I mean,

a gold is a pet rock. I mean, they, you know, the journal published an article, gold is a pet rock right at the bottom in 2015. I mean, they almost nailed the low price of gold at 1,000. And here we are at 4,500. And so, you know, they're attacking Sailor. And I think in two years, Sailor's going to have the last laugh. And, and I, you know, Bitcoin's going to wake up and, you know, it's like the Christopher Walkins line. It's going to wake up and just show everybody who's boss.

So I'm very, I'm very sanguine about it. But that's because I've been at this for a long, long. time and I've seen these, you know, these psychological swings occur and it's just like same old, same old. Do you wish you could access cash without selling your Bitcoin? Well, Leeder makes that possible. They're the global leader in Bitcoin back lending and since 2018 they've issued over $9 billion in loans with a perfect record of protecting client assets. With Leiden, you get full cost-susty loans with no credit checks or monthly repayments, just easy access to dollars without selling a single sat. As of July 1st, Ledon is Bitcoin only, meaning they exclusively offer Bitcoin back loans with

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Speak to Anchorage for a quote and for more details about your security options and coverage. Visit anchorwatch.com today. That is anchorwatch.com. The Luke Groman one, I'm with you. I think Luke's brilliant. I've learned an absolute ton from him. I love his newsletter. I really enjoy having him on the show. But he sold at least a portion of his Bitcoin a couple of months ago. And the reason being was that he thought the four-year cycle was still a thing, which I just think that's out the window.

I'm more and more coming around to the fact that maybe it never really existed. Maybe it was just sort of the quiddity cycles. Like, I don't really know. I'm not sure that's his reasoning. When I heard him talk about, I think his reasoning was a little bit more that it was still trading like an equity. It wasn't trading like a neutral reserve asset. And I accept that.

There's some of that. I mean, it's started to detach from the triple Q's. But, and it is, it's clearly risk on, you know, versus gold, which is more risk off. But, you know, the thing about selling an asset with this much asymmetry to it. I mean, you know, so he sold it in the 90s, he's got to pay tax. So now he's, you know, he's got to, it's got to drop into the 60s or 70s to just get the same amount of Bitcoin after he pays his taxes on what he sold. Right. And so to me, to me, you're picking up Nichols in front of a steamroller, right?

So you're hoping it'll go to 50. and by the way it might go to 50 it might go to 60 I mean I have that in my model I my partner and I talk about this a lot we have it as about a 30% chance that we're not done with this Bitcoin correction and there's one more cleansing flush sometime in the next

three months before the real big print comes but I think that you know as I mapped out earlier I do think that big print's on deck and I do think that when it comes Bitcoin will respond and it will respond ferociously and so you know

I mean, Fred Kruger wrote a really good book, which I recommend a lot called Bitcoin One Million. And in that book, he had a very interesting statistic, which is that from 18 to 24, Bitcoin went up to 7 or 8X, you missed the 10 best days. You didn't make any money. I mean, so how do you, you know, how do you time this asset? And so it's a classic to me because as you're, you know, I thought your last interview with Sailor was really great. And I, you know, my take is he was just having a bad day. And I think he was a little hard on me unnecessarily. I'm not sure he really.

I think you guys were going to talk and past each other. Because he's right that anyone buying Bitcoin we should support. But you were right that not all of these, you know, Bitcoin Treasury companies are going to make. And some of them are pretty poor run, to be fair. So, but, you know, it's a situation where, you know, at some point the thing is so asymmetric. It's just going to, it's going to explode to the upside. So I don't get it. I mean, like I say,

Kruger said that, you know, 10 days, you missed 10 days and you lost money. I mean, I don't want to know when those. I don't want to not be there, I guess is the point I'm making, right? 100%. And like, I'm not someone who can predict the price of Bitcoin, but I would be surprised if it went back down to 50, 60K. And like, it could. It could.

And if it does, I'll buy more Bitcoin. But I don't, it's not my sort of base case. So the question I'd want to ask Luke is, when does he sort of, if it doesn't go down there, when does he capitulate and buy back in? I listen to him carefully, and he said he thinks it'll go down there. He expects, I think the other reason, and to be fair, he may be right about this. He does expect something breaking and a real deflationary flush that I think then leads to the big print.

I think that's more his model, that it's going to look like COVID or it's going to look like 2008. And that in that environment, you might see 60, 50, whatever it might be. and he would buy it he also in a more recent interview i listened because i listened to everything that says like i said he's brilliant um you know he he said look if it you know if it if it if it turns around and they start putting like crazy and the print comes and it goes to one 10 or 115 and i got to buy it back slightly or fine you know i'll do that um you know look everybody manages their own money in their own way and you know it's it's not a religion it's not like you know this you just all you're doing is you're making probability waste based bets and he's

been so damn right about so many things. He may be right about this one, too. Another really good guy I respect is Michael Oliver. He's not a Bitcoin fan, but he's a very good technical analyst, and his technical models show it going to 60,000s as well. You know, if you kind of look at it, an Elliott wave terms, the first wave down was an A round, then to 80, it bounced back up here into the 90s. That's a B, and then the C should take it below the 80. I'm not sure we get to 60. I could, 70s probably seems likely. But, you know, I bought some micro strategy yesterday. I mean, I just, I mean, I want to own a lot of micro strategy. I've got some cash from having sold some silver stocks.

And so I'm going to just kind of dollar cost average micro strategy for the next six months. Because I know that at 170, you know, I mean, if Bitcoin goes to 50 or 60, strategy is going to 110. But, you know, you can't, I mean, that's the thing. You can't get the absolute tops and the absolute bottoms. That's what Rothschild said. You know, you can't be a pig, right? I mean, when things are on the cheap side of the board, you buy them, and when things are on the expensive side of the board, you sell them. And by the way, that's why I've been selling a little bit of silver.

I mean, I think silver has still got quite a ways to run, but I could be wrong about that. So I've sold some. I mean, I've got silver that I bought, you know, in the 80s and 90s for $6 an house. You know, I mean, it's, what is it today? I mean, it's like 80-something. I mean, it's nuts, right? Yeah, that's not bad. Yeah, I've got silver right now at 94.

I mean, this is crazy. So, you know, if I didn't sell some, I mean, one of the things when I look at investing, one of the things I try and do is, because I've done this for so long and I've made so many mistakes is you try to minimize regret, right? You think when you're sitting there and looking at something, you say, well, if, you know, okay, so silver's at 94 and I think it's going to 300, okay? But guess what? It can also go down to 40 again. And if it's a 94 and I didn't sell any, what were you, some kind of an idiot? Do you know what I mean? So am I going to sell all my silver?

Hell no. am I going to peel off 5%? Yeah. And then what's cheap right now? Oh, micro strategy is pretty cheap. Well, maybe I'll sell 5% of my silver and I'll buy some micro strategy, right? So it's just, you know, that's, I mean, I'm a, you know, I'm a professional investment manager. That's what I do.

And so to me, it's all about kind of probability and odds. None of us know anything with certainty, but you can kind of lean, you know, you can lean into the things when you think you're on the right side of stuff, right? Yeah. I mean, so one of my, this might be a bit of a mid-car take on what's going to happen this year, But with the midterms coming up, like, Trump is obviously worried that if he doesn't do well in the midterms, he's going to get impeached, like, all sorts of stuff. He needs to have an incredible year, which means he needs the economy to be running, like, absolutely blazing. So he's going to do everything in his power, which is obviously why he's doing the stuff he's doing with the Fed, to just make the economy the best economy of the U.S. is at MSC. essentially.

You got it. And so, like, I don't know how you bet against Bitcoin in that environment. Like, I don't know how you can sell Bitcoin now with that coming up. completely agree with you. I mean, it's just, yeah, the politics of it all. I mean, what he said, you know, the aggressiveness of Venezuela and Greenland, I mean, all of it. I mean, it's just, you know, the one five on the, on the defense budget. I mean, you know, the money is, you know, they will find the money. They will spend the money. They will have. And, and, you know, the tell, the thing to watch, the thing is kind of surprising to me, but I guess it's the basis trade that's held it together

is that the 10 year, the U.S. 10 years hung in there at 4%. I mean, I just can't imagine who would want to own a U.S. 10-year bond paying 4% when you've got a government that's out of control. It makes no sense to me. But it is what it is. But at some point, I think that will break. And that'll be the tell. That is what I watch most carefully. So do you think if that's true and Trump tries to run this incredibly hot going through the rest of this year, asset prices will do really well?

Do you think he'll be able to do that without inflation coming back in a serious way? Well, yes and no. So as you know, there's a lag between the time when you print and the time when the inflation shows up, right? And they're probably trying to time it well, you know, that the sense, I mean, Powls out in May. You know, hopefully they get a new Fed share. Let's say hypothetically they can get the rates down to two or one. I don't know if they can. I mean, there is a board and they all vote, but I think they're going to really bully the shit out of the people at the Fed,

try and get them. That would lead to a whole round of refies that would leave to a lot of, you know, real estate transactions that would lead to a lot of borrowing and locking in those low rates. And by the way, it would bring down the U.S. interest costs because we've financed everything short term, you know, and our average interest cost right now is about 3.3%. I mean, if bills got down to 1.5%, you know, that trillion dollars for spending on interest would get cut and that would make the deficit smaller. So that's another consideration that they're facing. And, and, you know, all of those things will lead to rapid, in my opinion, M2 growth. But that doesn't necessarily happen immediately.

If you recall with COVID, they printed a lot of money very quickly starting in 2020. But the peak inflation was kind of 12 to 18 months. I'd have to go back and look at the numbers. But it takes a little while to show up. You know, so they might, you know, print the money, get the high, feel good. You know, and the inflation prints are still okay. you know and so they they cruise through November and they get the seats but guess what you know inflation in 2027 goes back and heads towards double digits you know what I mean I mean that's

just more kicking the can down the road yeah I could see that scenario that's kind of that's that's my best guess as to how it plays right Larry you're like a free markets guy and one thing that I've never really understood like Trump said that he wants to get the um rates down to like 1%, surely that shouldn't be the cost of capital. That seems too low. What do you think the cost of capital should be? Oh, it's way too low. Well, so none of us really know because we're living in a Betemkin artificial world.

Nobody, I mean, the real cost of capital is set by, you know, the balance of savings and investment demand. And, you know, and that would only occur if we didn't have a Federal Reserve and we had a true free market for interest rates. but we're so far away from that is to be ridiculous. I mean, if you look at the level of inflation we have, you know, across the capital should be higher. I can't answer the question because I just don't even begin to know

and things are just so crazy distorted. But, I mean, one thing I do know is true, though, if you look at the chart of what the federal funds rate is done since Volcker, I mean, you know, they jack it up, they drop it down, they jack it up, they drop it down. We'd almost be better off if it had just been set on autopilot at 4%. or something. Do you know what I mean? I mean, it's because we've got these enormous swings. I mean, you know, Volcroquet rates up to 20%. I mean, and setting, I mean, part of what created

this mess and has us where we are now, Danny, that's so screwed up. And I talk about this a lot in the book. I mean, ZER, the whole notion that capital is free. It's just insane. Insane. That's like a tautology. It's like a crime, it's like a chart crime against, you know, against capitalism. You can't have free capital. You know, okay, if you say, if you say, interest rates are zero, you're implying that money has no value, which one could argue that's true when it comes to Fiat. But, you know, I mean, ZERP was just a, it was ridiculous, you know, and it was a free subsidy to everyone who could borrow money. And that's why all these contillionaires got rich. And so, you know, it's, this is no way to run a railroad. It's just no way to run a railroad.

And, you know, that's all pretty depressing and it's tearing the country apart and you see all the bad social things that are happening in, you know, Minneapolis everywhere. And, you know, it all just comes back down to the money being broken, which again is why I wrote the book. I just, I wish the country understood that, you know, and I think most Bitcoiners understand it. It's the base layer that's broken. And it's not unsolvable, folks. I mean, if we go back to a sound base layer, you know, we've got all this great technology.

And we don't get into a world war and we don't all kill each other. You know, everything will reorganize. Now, there will be winners and losers, you know, people who hold debt will get wiped out, and there'll be a lot of inflation in the transition, but, you know, things will be good again. I mean, it's, it's sound, you know, we are all productive actors who will, with the right incentives, do the right things and make the world a much better place. And so, you know, all I'm waiting for is to get through this fourth turning and return to that sound money. The problem is that, you know, it's going to take, it's probably going to take crisis or semi-crisis.

conditions to get us there because, you know, the average boobus Americana's and certainly all the politicians aren't going to take us there on their own. Although one interesting possibility, and I've talked about this on other pods, is that Trump and or Bisset, you know, do something really, really bold, which is to try and do a monetary reset. And, you know, I don't know if they have the political space. I don't know if they have the guts. But, you know, we could theoretically skip the, you know, let's go to super high inflation. The country tears itself. part and currency fails by, you know, besent waking up one morning and saying, and Trump's and saying, we're going to revalue gold at $30,000. We're going to revalue Bitcoin at a million dollar coin.

And, you know, the government will now exchange your dollars for either of those two things. Bring us a million dollars. We'll give you a Bitcoin. Bring us your ounce of gold. We'll give you $25,000. Or, you know, give us $25,000. We'll give you an ounce of gold. And we're now on a sound money standard, period. And, you know, 1971, gone. Oh, and by the way, we're going to balance the budget by, you know, basically cutting expenses here and there. And, you know, the TGA would be revalued. And that markup of the TGA would be used to pay down the government debt. I mean, if they did that, it would be enormously painful for bondholders.

It would be enormously one-time inflationary. But it would, you know, so it's like ripping off the band. It would hurt like shit. But, you know, on a go-forward basis, we would actually have a sound money solution. Now, you know, that's my 10% case because I just, I don't know that they'll have the guts to do it. I mean, and even I may not be wrong about it. I mean, it's a scary step. I mean, I could be wrong about the way that it plays out.

So, you know, will they do it? I don't know. But I do know this. I do know that until we get back to sound money, I think inflation is going to be the problem of our age. And, you know, the more likely path on the whole thing is, I think inflation is because it's worse and worse and worse. You know, the blue team wins in 2028 and inflation really gets bad. Maybe the currency even fails with all their actions. And then, you know, I've said this in other pods. I really do believe there's some chance that we get, you know, Michael Saylor stands up and says,

hey, you know what? You know, I've studied history. I went down with my tea. I'm an engineer. I understand how this all got broken. I've got the receipts. I'm the richest man in the world because Bitcoin's at $10 million a coin. I'm going to burn my keys. I don't give a shit about any of that. I want to be the Thomas Edison slash, you know, Thomas Jefferson of our age, and, you know, elect me as president. We're going to reform the Constitution and reset this whole goddamn system. And that's my hope for my kids because, you know, the other, going the other direction, you know, it could be decades of pain, you know, trying all these other solutions that won't work. You know what I mean? I'm surprised you put the idea of

percent and Trump doing a monetary reset at 10 percent. Like that seems very, very high to me. 10 seems high or 10 seems low? No, 10 seems high. I think that would be the most bullsey move by any president ever, probably. I think that's right. But think about it. Think about it.

I mean, it's going to come down to Bacent. And Bacent basically said, you know, we need a new Breton Woods and I want to be at the table when it happens. They understand it. Moran understands it. I mean, Trump might realize that, you know, if he let's, I mean, let's say, let's say it's 2028 and inflation's raging and it looks like Vance is going to lose and blue team's going to win, you know, why not throw a Hail Mary pass and just say, screw it?

You know, let's try and reset this whole goddamn thing. And, you know, he'd get challenged in the courts and everything else, but, you know, Nixon did it. FDR did it. Lincoln did it. You know, I mean, the monetary stuff is supposed to be controlled by the Constitution, you know, Article 1, Section 8 in Congress, but, you know, that's not what's happened. There's a practical matter of the chief executive has done it.

And, you know, it's, I think it's 10. I do, I think it's, I think there is some possibility. I think they, you know, you have to remember, these guys, I mean, in my opinion, for all there, and there's some good things about them, there's, there are a lot of flaws about them. I mean, don't, you know, don't get me started on the Epstein files, but, you know, or those, or Trump coin, Trump and Melania coin, right? But, you know, I think they are thinking, you know, about what's truly best for America

and maintaining our sovereignty and our leading position in the world versus, you know, a couple, I mean, look, I don't love our government, but I think I love it more than I love the Russian government and the Chinese government. And so, you know, and I think they do too. And I think they basically want to try to maintain our position of leadership. And, you know, returning to sound money in this way would be, you know, in my view, would keep us in a leading position. And particularly if they have Bitcoin in the picture, I mean, because I don't think, I don't think China has made any kind of a bet on Bitcoin. And, and I think China has a lot more gold than they say they have.

So, you know, leapfrogging China with a Bitcoin piece of the whole solution would be a big positive in my view. Yeah, I mean, the risk I'm sure they would have to calculate is whether it's worth it to give up being like the global hegemon. But, I mean, I think it would be an amazing thing to happen. I don't know. You may be right. It may be high.

I mean, maybe I'm a dreamer. I don't know. It's probably, sadly, we probably just keep stumbling along down this road until it gets so painful that everyone demands a solution. I mean, you know, if, I mean, the, if we get kind of South America style inflation in the double digits, you know, I mean, this country has been through so much and people are hurting so badly. and you can already see it, you know, in so many different measures with the social fabric being torn.

You know, I pray that at some point in time, you know, the large remnant within this country will stand up and say, God damn it, give us politics, give us politicians who are willing to, you know, to balance the budget and return to a sound monetary unit. I mean, you know, I mean, another data point

you may not be aware of them. Judy Sheldon is a sound money person. She's a gold person. She's proposed the treasury bond with a gold piece or gold back into it or gold exchange clause in it so that you would be protected in terms of the purchasing power of your principal. And, you know, Andy Shackman says Sheldon told him that she was in a meeting with Trump, and Trump said, that's a great idea.

Maybe we do that in July of 26 when we have the 250th anniversary of the country. We introduced that bond. So, I mean, these ideas are not, they're not completely, you know, alien or far-fetched, you know, to the people who are in office today, that doesn't mean they're going to do them. I mean, the idea of like a gold-back bond or a bit-back bond is, seems like a no-brainer to me. That kind of thing I could see happening.

Absolutely. And I guess that would be a step in the right direction towards returning to a sound money standard. Absolutely. Yeah, no, absolutely. And they should do both of those things tomorrow. Yeah. I mean, and it's not, it's not that painful or that hard to do.

I mean, that's a, that's a step. It doesn't fully solve it, but it gets, you know, it gets your thinking. I mean, they tried to kind of do it. I mean, they were, you know, what they were hoping, what Bacent was hoping was that these stable coins were going to solve the problem, that there'd be enough stable coin demand for all those treasures. But if you actually run the math, you look at the size of the stable coin market versus the size of the treasuryville market,

Sabercorns are just too small still, and they're not growing fast enough to absorb it. So that's not going to bail them out. I mean, they've been kind of throwing Hail Marys, right? I mean, or they've been, you know, Doge was a Hail Merritt, you know, Elon, we're going to save $2 trillion. Oh, no, well, we'll save a trillion. Well, maybe this kind of doesn't work. Oh, shit.

I'm fed up. I'm smart. I'm not wasting my time here. I'm gone. I mean, it's sadly, sadly, it's a very, very broken system and reforming it. It's just no piece of cake. So, you know, but I mean, I believe in a higher power. So I think it's higher power sent us Bitcoin.

And I think that, you know, we're basically, Bitcoin's going to smash the system, whether they like it or not. And the only real issue is, I think, you know, the only real issue is that. on what time scale. And, you know, I, I kind of think that all this, I mean, fourth turnings tend to last between 20 and 30 years. This one started in 08. So 2028 is the short end of the line, and 2038 is the long end. This will get resolved probably in early 30s, in my opinion.

We're not too far away. Not that far away, actually, if we're, you know, talking, you know, five, six, seven, eight years. So, I mean, we're getting to the point where it's, you know, we're serious now, right? I mean, these metals moves are serious. I said on Twitter, and a lot of people laughed at me, but I said on Twitter, wouldn't it be ironic if silver was the Lehman Brothers of this cycle?

I mean, there's somebody, you know, if some big banks are short silver, you know, they're going to go, they could go BK. And if they do, their governments will have to bail them out, and then that will lead to, you know, all the leverage in the system could come cascading down. And, you know, there's your big print, right? Hmm. So. So one of the questions I've always.

had for you, Larry, and I've never actually properly asked you. So since the first time I think I ever spoke to you, you've been talking about how gold price was suppressed for decades. Do you, I guess this is a two-part question. Do you think that suppression is ending? And also, on the second question being, how do we avoid that for Bitcoin? That's a great question. Yeah. So, yes, I do think it's ending because people are demanding the physical and it's, you know, you're at the states where the, you know, that we can see the man behind the curtain and we don't believe him, so it's like, give me the goal. So yes, I think answer your first question, yes, I think it's happening for, it's having for a goal. Bitcoin thing

is interesting. There's a lot, there is paper Bitcoin. I mean, if you go to the Binance perpetual futures, you know, it has grown a lot. You can go and you can buy paper Bitcoin and somebody can sell you paper Bitcoin and you've got a contract on the Bitcoin price and no Bitcoin ever, you know, that was demand that you had, but no Bitcoin ever got purchased. So that market has grown a lot. James Check, check. Checked, maybe one of your countrymates that's done a really good job of this. He's got some great charges. You can subscribe to a service to get them, but we do.

And that whole market has grown quite a bit. I've often said that they had 50 years to perfect the gold manipulation scheme. And they had Cayman Islands entities. They had central banks that owned it. They had the BIS. They had all these different things. Bitcoin's a different animal. It's a lot harder.

One, it's not as old. Two, the suppression mechanisms aren't as developed. And three, one of the things that Bitcoin can do that gold never can do has done, Bitcoin can go up 6x in six months, right? And so, you know, when they had a problem with gold, I mean, a bad year for them in gold was a 20 and 30 percent. Well, they'd sell into it, create a narrative, drive it back down. And even if they needed to print the money to cover the 20 or 30 percent, that wasn't a lot

of money on a relative to keeping the whole system going bases. When you're short something and it goes up 6x, that's, you know, that's a come to Jesus moment, right i mean you know so if you're if you're suppressing it with paper bitcoin and in the price goes does that in fact that's part of what drives it to go up the six x is the fact that you know when when we break through this 26 you're going to see people scramble that are on the wrong side of that trade i mean there's a big part of wall street that said you know they had a pair trade where they're along the triple qs and short bitcoin and that pair trade has actually worked because the triple cues have hung in there hung in there and Bitcoin has failed.

I think it's a stupid trade because the triple Qs are overvalued. I think Bitcoin is undervalued. But as long as it works, it works until, you know, they get too far out over their skis and then it reverses. And that's what causes Bitcoin to trade like the wild animal it trades at. And so what I think few people understand is how when this thing does hit, when this next wave does hit, it's not going to 140, guys. It's going to 250 or 300 or 350.

I mean, because there will be so much, you know, there'll be two things happening. There'll be all the shorts who have to cover or else they're going to get their faces ripped off. And then it'll be a whole new category of long D-Gens who'll come in and he'll lever it and go along it. And that's what will shove it to 400. And then from 400, by the way, it'll correct back to 150. But, I mean, it's the nature of a speculative, you know, asset that's being adopted. You know, this is, and if you go, look at a very long-term price chart of Amazon, which is a simple, network-based business that had multiple, you know, when I had one 90% correction,

had multiple 60, 70, a lot of 40, 50% corrections. I mean, either it's going to take over the world or it's going to die. And right now, Bitcoin's in the, you know, right now we're kind of hearing, oh, it's not, I mean, I just saw a tweet this morning from a gold guy. Well, not really looking like digital gold, is it? And I was just kind of, you wait. You know, okay. You know, just, just wait.

You just relax. You know, it's not a straight line. But, you know, I'll take the other side of that bet, and in two years, we'll see who looks right. So you don't think it's an issue that so much Bitcoin is now being owned in like a non-self-custodial way through sort of Ibit, the options on Ibit strategy or treasury companies. Yeah, that goes to the issue of are they going to grab it all? And I suppose that's a possibility and it's always a risk. But let's be honest, Danny, I mean, we had to have the ETF. We had to have corporate adoption.

We had to have nation-state adoption, sovereign wealth fund adoption, and all of those things had to happen or this asset wouldn't become what we thought it was going to become. So they're all net good. I mean, as you know, I'm a real self-sovereignty nut, and I think having control of your coins is critical. But that, you know, for people who don't want to do that or can't do that, you know, the 6102 risk, I don't view as being that large yet. I mean, I think it's one of those things we've got to watch, you know, how dystopian does our government get?

I mean, let's map it out. So let's say it's now 2028 and sadly red team loses blue team wins. You know, and we've got, I don't know, Stephanie Kelton's the Treasury Secretary and the narrative develops that this great Keynesian monetary system that we've had going for all these years that's being ruined by these gold and silver and Bitcoin people. And we need to tax that shit at 90%. In fact, we need to go further than that. We need to just seize it. because they're ruining this country. They're ruining the financial system.

And so we're going to seize it. And here you go. Here's your cash. Send us your Bitcoin. Well, if you're in an ETF, you know, Fidelity and BlackRock, and they're going to comply with the law and send the Bitcoin in and give you the cash. The cash will buy less the next day. But that's just the way it's going to go down.

Same is true with the gold and silver. So, and that's one of the possibilities. I mean, it's one of the reason why I sincerely feel like we've got to make a lot of it. And by the way, the other thing is going to happen with absolute certainty. if you study history is taxes are going to go up. I mean, just, you know, it's, we've been lucky to have such a low tax rate environment. I mean, you got to remember when Reagan came in in 80, you know, top marginal tax rate in the United States is like 70%. You know, I mean, right?

I mean, it's, I mean, there's been, and, you know, with all this wealth inequality, I mean, you think a blue team in, in 2028 isn't going to jack taxes on everybody. Of course they are. It's going to be horrible. you know, which is also another reason why, you know, and I'm not, I'm not suggesting anybody don't pay their taxes or cheat or any of that kind of crap. I'm just saying that if you own money that's got no counterparty in your own possession and, you know, you lose it in a boating accident, you know, I don't know, how are they going to tax it? I mean, that's, you know, good luck with that, right? So, you know, it's a good, but it's a real consideration, right? Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely true. Like the 6102 is a sort of tail risk.

I think it's obviously possible. I don't think it's likely, but I could 100% see them taxing Bitcoin at an insane. Oh, absolutely. And using us as like scapegoats for the system. Oh, absolutely. Those damn sound money people. Jesus Christ, look at what they've done to our beautiful.

How dare they want to save their money. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I can't believe that they've done, they pulled this off. Right. And so, yeah, it's, um, it's, It's, you really are seeing these camps dividing, you know, between the socialist, communist side of the world and those of us who believe in liberty and freedom and all the things that are in the Constitution.

And, you know, we've got to fight like hell to make sure that our side wins, you know. And I think our side will win. You know, we're heavily armed. That's a positive, right? And not here in Australia. Well, I know, you guys aren't. Yeah, but you got brave guys that'll go tackle guys with the wrong. rifles. That guy was a stunt. Yeah, that was insane.

That was absolutely insane. While the police were terrified, just was that right. Yeah. Larry, I always love to talk to you. Is there anything that's happening in sort of macro world at the moment that we've not talked about that you want to? Well, let's see. I don't know. Um, no, I mean, I think, I think we kind of hit most of the high points. Um, I mean, I guess the big thing we didn't really talk about was what happens with the Fed becoming less or completely non-independent. Yeah, well, I think, yeah, we haven't talked about that. I think that in general, it'll be interesting to see because in general,

the history of the Fed has been that the chairman kind of pushes whatever the direction is and he beats everybody else into accepting his decisions. I mean, that's kind of behind the scenes what occurs. But as a practical matter, they actually really can vote and do vote. And so, you know, I don't think I've ever been, you know, and occasionally they'll have a few dissents, but, you know, it's never like gets down to a split vote where one, one person swings it. You know, it could become a very, very political organization, and Trump has made it very

clear that he wants to get as many seats, and he wants people who see it the way he sees it, and he wants lower interest rates. And so, you know, I think you've got to believe he's going to kind of get them. I don't know how far, how much, how quick, but I think he's going to get him. And honestly, you know, we kind of, you kind of need them. I mean, if you look at all the budget deficit, I mean, the interest expense is about a trillion two at the current run rate. I mean, you know, if interest rates go up, I mean, it gets worse, right? I mean, that's your death spiral.

And so, but if you could take the average interest rate down to one and a half percent, that would, you know, that would seriously help in terms of balancing the budget, right? Now, you know, it would also create massive growth in M2, which is inflationary. So, you know, pick your poison, right? But I think, I think, you know, this administration, I mean, it's interesting to me, I mean, another thing we haven't talked about, we haven't talked about the Supreme Court, right? Because Supreme Court's going to rule on these tariffs. I mean, and it's become very clear.

I read the journal, I read everything very carefully. It's become very clear to me that, you know, the court wants to say, no, these are tariffs really should be part of Congress, not the executive brand. But Trump has drawn it. So, you know, he said, well, how are we going to give the money back? And it's a national security. I mean, everything's being framed in terms of existential national security, fighting China, winning the overall war, you know, for being, maintaining, quote,

unquote, our empire, our position in the world. And in that, if you use, and if you use that argument, it's kind of like, what's the counter argument? You know, you can do anything, right? And so, you know, I mean, if they say, look, this is an existential threat, you know, the budget's going to blow up the country. You know, we got to take interest rates down. Fine. Well, then the bond market blows up and they say, well, that's an existential threat.

We can't pay big money on our bonds, so we're going to start buying them. I mean, that. You'll do yield curve control. Yield curve control. I mean, Danny, that's going to happen. Okay. I mean, that is going to happen. That has to happen.

mathematically, that literally has to happen. And I know it, I believe it. Most sound money people know it and believe it. But I think the average person doesn't believe it and won't believe it until it actually happens. But when it happens, they'll wake up and they'll believe it. They'll go, holy shit. This guy was right.

You know, it'll happen. And at that point in time, you know, money supply is going to explode again. And we're right back to, you know, where we are. So, I mean, I laid this all out in the book. And so it's just, you know, I mean, it's interesting to me. The book's done pretty well. I sold 50,000 copies, but people tell me that's great. I think it sucks.

Why do I think it sucks? Because there are hundreds of millions of people out there. And it's kind of like, you guys, you all need to know this. And so, you know, we really got this, you know, we really got to get it to go viral because if you want to protect yourself from this thing, which seems to be a very high mathematical probability, you know, the only way to do it is to fully understand it. But I think it's common. So I think I would end it on that note unless there's someplace else you want to go.

No, that's perfect. I mean, I think 50,000 books is pretty impressive, Larry. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. But I always love to talk to you. Maybe Yield Kerr control is the big print. We'll see what happens. I think one of the most interesting things about late stage Fiat is that these conversations just get more and more interesting.

Well, they do. And, you know, and something will surprise us, too. Something will happen that we couldn't even foresee and we'll get there that way. I mean, who could have foreseen COVID, right? Exactly. The math is, you know, I keep coming back to, you know, the math is what it is. And so how are you going to resolve it with this mathematical problem? It's just too hard to solve any other way.

Yeah. Well, let's close out. We'll sell a few more copies of the book. Where do people go and buy the big thing? Yeah. So I'll just show the cover. So the book is available on Amazon. It's interesting.

I can't get a publisher. And the reason I can't get us too edgy, which is fine. But it's there. It's hardcover paperback, ebook, and then also Walker read an audiobook. It's about 12 hours if you listen to it. So, yeah. And, you know, I wrote it because I wanted to orange pill the world. I wrote it because I want to try and protect the average person.

I tried to write it with enough detail to support my argument, you know, and the facts, but in a simple enough way that, you know, you didn't need an economic background and you shouldn't be intimidated by it. An average person can read it. You know, I mean, they could be a nurse or, you know, karma can. I mean, it doesn't matter who you are. You know, if you've got a functioning brain, you can read it and go, oh, I get it. Here's how they're screwing me, and here's what I got to do.

So, and they are screwing you, and there is something you can do. So that's, those are, you know, those are both good things to understand, right? Yeah, it's an awesome book. I love that it's not like a textbook. A lot of the Bitcoin books end up being like, you're reading. Oh, yeah, but they're great books. I mean, honestly, I look at Lynn's book, I look at Safe's book, and I'm jealous. Those are fantastic books.

And honestly, I borrowed heavily from all these people. I borrowed heavily from Luke Gromond. I mean, you know, I think what I've done and what people told me I'm decent at, and I'll accept the compliment is that I can take these complicated things and I can put them in words and everyone can understand. I can advance it in a crisp way so that people can quote unquote get it. And so I thought, you know, I'm 68 years old. I've seen how this country's deteriorated. I know how broken it is.

It really pisses me off. I want my kids to live in a better world. And so, you know, I thought, I've got to tell the story of how we got here because it's a fascinating story. And once you see it, you know, you can't, as you know, you can't unsee it. And then, you know, I challenge it. I challenge anybody to read this book and not become a bitcoins. I mean, I've had some very, very skeptical friends who've read it and go, oh, shit, I get it. I'm in.

There you go. Oh, there you go, right? Yeah. So thanks. I mean, I, I, yeah. Those of the books are great, but it's nice to have one that's like a narrative. It's a bit easier to read. It's easy to understand.

But go by Larry's book. Thank you, Larry. Always love talking to you, man. I hope I'll see you soon at some event. I'm sure I will. We'll be at an event for sure. Thanks, man. Take care. All right. Thank you.