{ "episodeId": "SLP608", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "lawrence_lepard": { "name": "Lawrence Lepard", "role": "guest", "tag": "LAWRENCE" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:11", "start": 11.15, "text": "Hi everyone, and welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast, brought to you by Bold, the best place to buy, save, and store your Bitcoin using a two or three multi-signature vault where you control the keys over at getbold.io, that's for the American listeners. Now rejoining me today is Lawrence Lepard, he is managing partner at Equity Management Associates and always has a lot of interesting- Things to say on macro, Austrian economics, and, what's happening around the world. so, first of all, welcome back to the show." }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "00:38", "start": 38.01, "text": "Thanks, Stefan. Really nice to be back with you. I always enjoy our conversations. I should also mention I'm an advisor to the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, which is a--" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:45", "start": 45.09, "text": "yes." }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "00:46", "start": 45.51, "text": "Yeah. Bitcoin fund that's doing pretty well, and they're gonna be raising another fund soon, so I'll just mention that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:50", "start": 49.71, "text": "Great. Yeah. So look, let's start. there's, I think there's" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "01:00", "start": 60.1, "text": "There's no shortage of trouble in the world. Government" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02", "start": 62.06, "text": "debt, sadly. Yeah, it's unfortunate. I think-- Yeah, well, you know, let's, let's start on the debt question. I think this is something you and I have spoken about before. Last I checked, it was, you know, it's the second of October now, it's, thirty-five point four trillion is the national debt, last I checked, and, it, it just doesn't seem to have any sign of, slowing down." }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "01:26", "start": 85.8, "text": "Well, that's right. Arg Recently, put a fire under a couple of the hard money assets, gold and silver, was about three weeks ago, the US government came out and announced the deficit, the monthly deficit was three hundred and eighty billion dollars, when the anticipated was two hundred and ninety. So, so it was ninety billion dollars larger than what they thought. I mean, now you can't take the three eighty and multiply it times twelve because it's lumpy, but if you did, that's four point eight trillion dollar deficit. I mean, we're clearly running a two trillion dollar deficit, but- I would say arguably it's even a, a bit larger than that, and, and there's always been a little bit of a disconnect between what they report as the deficit and the amount that the debt grows. They managed to sneak some stuff around and not run it through the, the P&L, the income statement, because the debt, you know, if, if we run a two trillion dollar deficit, the debt might grow two point six trillion dollars, and I don't know where the po- other point six came from, but you know, the government's pretty good at kind of fiddling with" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "02:27", "start": 146.96, "text": "There is no discussion or thought in Washington, D.C. about how to address this problem. I thought it was extremely telling that, you know, in the, in the, you know, the Kamala Trump debate, there was zero conversation about, you know, the deficits and the debt and how it was gonna be dealt with, and, and very similar last night in the, in the Walls Vance debate, so there was a little talk about inflation, there was no talk about the US fiscal situation, which is really, you know, kind of mirroring the situation that we've seen We've seen before in, in developing countries. I mean, this isn't, you know, there's no mystery as to how this plays out and what happens. I mean, we've seen this pattern over hundreds of years in a lot of countries, we've just never seen it in the largest country with the world's reserve currency. And, you know, so, you know, I mean, Venezuela did this, and Zimbabwe did this, and, you know, Brazil did this, and Argentina did it, and, you know, a couple times, and, you know, Serious, you know, fiscal problems, and then they've led to trying to solve those problems by printing money. but they're just, they were smaller countries, they weren't the world's reserve currency, and of course, now we've got the world's reserve currency, you know, following that same playbook. And, as you and I both know and agree, it's just, it's not gonna end well, you know? It's, you know, the only-- I mean, there are a lot of possible endings, but, you know, inflation is almost baked" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "03:57", "start": 236.64, "text": "Similar to nineteen twenty-nine, where there's all kinds of default everywhere. So, and I, I think that at the end of the day, the central bankers won't allow that. They'll, you know, they have a printing press and they intend to use it, and they will use it. they've shown us that multiple times, and I think they view inflation as a lesser of two evils, with the other evil being, you know, deflationary collapse. So Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:18", "start": 258.05, "text": "And I'm curious your view on this idea that, one thing that comes to my mind is it seems Now, I'm Australian, but it's as an example, I heard that basically neither side mentioned all the COVID tyranny, and maybe the reason for that is both sides, both major parties were complicit, and maybe in the same sense with government debt, it's that both sides are complicit on this, other than a few libertarians, you know, the Thomas Massies and Rand Pauls and Ron Pauls of the world. The-- and maybe if you went back like ten years or something, there was Paul Ryan or someone like that, although not a libertarian, but that was probably the last you seriously heard of actually trying to cut the size of the state, isn't it? I think that's right." }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "05:00", "start": 299.78, "text": "I mean, there were maybe a few other names in the Republican Party who were trying to cut back on the spending, but it's a very, very short list. And, and yes, I mean, it, it appears to be that the, the choice, the Washington, DC choice has been, let's pretend this problem" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "05:18", "start": 317.81, "text": "And, you know, that, that's fine. And, and, you know, on a day-to-day basis, you know, the country keeps running, right? I mean, the GDP just grew reasonably well, and, you know, inflation has come down, not as much as they say, but it has come down, and, unemployment, while it's creeping up, it hasn't exploded upward. I mean, the, the economy is kind of bumping along, and stock markets, the US stock market's close to record highs. So, so, you know, to an" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "05:48", "start": 347.77, "text": "I think that, I think that DC won't react until they're quote unquote forced to react, you know, and that, that, that's, it's very similar, you know, I remember six, two thousand six, seven and eight, I mean, there were, you had to be blind not to kind of realize there was a housing bubble taking place, and yet, you know, Bernanke and others were saying, you know, no, we've never had a, no, there's no problem here, houses have never turned down on a nationwide basis, et cetera, So, so when you have a real significant economic downturn, a de-deflationary impulse, you know, housing can go down a lot, but they didn't admit that at the time, and, and I think that's the same thing here. And so my view is at some point we will be back, quote unquote, in crisis conditions, and, you know, then that will justify the next big print that will take the government, you know, balance sheet from, you know, the seven trillion that they've managed to reduce it to down from, say, nine, you know, the No more, and, and that's because if they stop printing the money, I mean, all the debt has to be serviced, and the GDP growth isn't growing, you know, they need GDP growth to be faster than the cost, than the interest cost, than the underlying, so they, they need real negative real interest rates, is what I'm describing, and if they don't have 'em, you know, there, there's gonna be another point in time at which the lines cross and things break. And so it's a little hard for all of us to know that, and I don't-- I know for Bitcoin it's a little frustrating 'cause it kind of been trapped in this, you know, downward trending wedge, you know, between kind of sixty-five and fifty-five. But, you know, gold smells it, which I think is pretty interesting. I mean, you know, as you're aware, and, and, you know, gold is-- gold is hitting record highs. And what, what I think that-- and this, by the way, this is what happened in the twenty eighteen, nineteen, twenty period too. Gold broke out from thirteen sixty five, Bitcoin just sat there, you know, and then ultimately Bitcoin went racing by gold, which is what'll happen this time too. Bitcoin will outperform gold massively. In this next run, but gold move first. And the reason is that more people know about gold, it's more broadly held, and, I think that people, you know, I think the gold is very good at quote unquote smelling future monetary debasement. And if you look at the conditions we're in right now, it's very clear to anyone with a calculator that, you know, we are going to face serious future monetary debasement, whether it be in a month or in six months or a year, it's coming." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:19", "start": 498.59, "text": "Yeah, I think that's a great, way to explain it. I think that's true that it's, you know, we've seen gold move first, but then Bitcoin is the fastest horse and it sort of moves afterwards, but it pumps even harder than gold does. So I think that's what we've historically seen, so it's probably a fair guess to say that could happen again. Yeah, I don't" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "08:35", "start": 514.73, "text": "doubt my mind that's what's gonna happen. I mean, I think, you know, when, when things break, you know, gold's gonna go through three thousand and Bitcoin's gonna go to a hundred and fifty, you know Because they both, they both represent sound money. I mean, one is old and analog and, and tired and widely distributed, the other is new and growing and, and therefore has a lot more upside because of, you know, the, the low level of adoption. I mean, I'm always, you know, crisis, Bitcoin on Twitter always has that, I'm always amazed at the chart where the, you know, still the entire Bitcoin market is only one trillion dollars in the context of nine hundred trillion dollars of financial assets in the world. I mean, we're talking just a, a, amount of money in the world is invested in this, in, in the soundest asset in the world. And so, you know, as time goes by, more and more people are gonna come to realize that this is the soundest asset, and they're gonna adopt it, and it's, you know, that, that, that disparity is gonna close, right? I mean, Bitcoin's market cap is gonna be much higher than it is right now." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:36", "start": 576.09, "text": "So on the government debt, we can get to gold a bit later as well, but, on the government debt, there's a lot of different views there, right? Some people are kind of like, \"Oh, this is the debt spiral, it's gonna take away, it's gonna get away from us, it's gonna cause this big recession.\" And then maybe there's kind of the middle view, which is maybe something like a soft landing that, you know, the government is just gonna, you know, US government is just gonna keep printing, maybe GDP number will go up," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:06", "start": 605.77, "text": "And the have-nots, right? It'll be the, some people call it the K-shaped, you know, recovery. I guess the question I'm thinking is, how much longer can they just, you know, keep kicking the can? I, I think one, one caution I would have is that we wanna be cautious not to sort of say, \"Oh, it's all happening now,\" because they could, they could keep this thing going for a lot longer than any of us really, you know, realizes. I" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "10:30", "start": 629.58, "text": "think that's true, that's true. But, but, 08 and 2020 or 2019 was, you know, was smaller than, you know, the one before that, and, and, and, and the printing size of each round is larger, and, you know, the issues are, are, are getting to be more obvious and more, and more and more people are becoming aware of them. And So, but yes, you're right, and, and we don't know how it plays out, and it's all you can do is say probabilities. I mean, you know, we could have a kind of a quasi-melt-up boom where the stock market making new highs, employment being, unemployment being relatively low, businesses being relatively healthy, you know, the debt level continuing to grow at all levels, everyone just keeps on leveraging themselves up, and, you know, I think that, that, that's a possible outcome, but I think if we do have that outcome, It's gonna be inflationary. I mean, I think one thing I think is true is we saw the first, you know, we had peak deflation in March of twenty twenty, right? That was kind of, you know, when the, when the ten-year sold at sixty basis points briefly, that was a, that was a really deflationary impulse, and, and, since then, you know, we, we've gone the other direction, you know, and at various points in time and various speeds, right? When they, when they printed forty percent of the money supply But I, I think it's very clear to me that inflation is gonna heat up again, and, you know, you're already starting to see it when China is-- we're, we're doing this right now, China just came out with a big stimulus package the last two weeks, where, you know, they decided they're gonna support their banks, inject money into the economy, I mean, kind of all the, you know, all the above on the money printing scale. And, you know, the, the day that happened, I mean, I think, you know, commodities Up on the day. and so, so yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any doubt that the governments will try to keep the system functioning, and if the release valve is inflation, so be it. You know, the economy's going, you know, ticking along, but it's inflationary. you know, I, I think, I think there's a pro-- there's a possibility, though, that, that they lose control of that inflation on the next one, and that's, that's really the issue. The issue is, you know, w-we're in a period here where we're shifting from everyone believing in the deflationary trend in the stock market, which we had for forty years, and the, the correct choice was always to, quote unquote, buy the dip, because really, if you bought the-- from two thousand and eight onward, if you bought the dip You didn't, but you've been very, very well rewarded, and, and, and that's all because the overall deflationary trend was in place, interest rates were lower, so stocks were the best alternative. I think as we've turned the corner here on that issue, and you see it other places too, like you've got this potential dockworker strike and, you know, labor all over the world is, is realizing that their purchasing power just got destroyed by forty percent, and guess what? They wanna share. They're like, \"Okay, you wanna keep the economy running, that And, you know, I mean, the dock workers want sixty to seventy percent over ten years. Well, even if you take that, it, it divided evenly, it's at six percent a year. That's a lot more than three. So w-we've entered an inflationary world, and, in my opinion, and so that's what's gonna, you know, ultimately create the problem because the, you know, the government has to sell bonds in order to finance these deficits, and, and they want lower interest rates, and so they will, you know, I think Powell's Fifty at the next meeting, fifty at the meeting after that, because he knows that with the federal debt the way it is, that, you know, the one point two trillion dollar run rate on the interest cost is just destroying the budget, and they've got to get that down. Now they're gonna get it down in the form of doing more short term bills, because no one wants to buy the long stuff. And so, you know, where I, where I ultimately can see this going is as this inflation gets worse, you know, the bond market is gonna continue to sell off, and, and, and maybe even the stock market starts to have some trouble because, you know, the margins start to get squeezed, labor's pushing costs up, and, and, you know, the consumer's not exactly thriving, and so they can't, you know, the higher price Prices they buy less, and so, you know, and when the stock market rolls over, you know, then it's kind of game set match on this whole thing because there's a lot of wealth effect there, and that's where a lot of tax income comes from. And, you know, the government, the US government's running fiscal deficits of about six or seven percent of GDP, and in the two thousand crisis, the two thousand eight crisis, when those occurred, deficits went up by between eight and twelve percent. So let's take the average of ten. You know, so, so, you know, okay, we're running six already, and then we have a downturn, and so, you know, tax receipts go down 'cause the markets are down, and, you know, social costs go up 'cause we need more food stamps and, you know, welfare, and so, so now we're running a seventeen percent deficit. Well, that's, that's real third world banana republic kind of stuff. And, and you're also starting to see in the dollar, you know, the dollar is just about to break through one hundred, which is kind of" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "15:46", "start": 945.54, "text": "I think, you know, I think the release valve is going to be, you know, lower dollar and higher inflation, and, you know, the, the bond market, when they lose the bond market, that will be, you know, that will be the big tell, and that will really light the fire underneath the, the hard money assets, you know, golden, golden Bitcoin. And the reason, the reason that's the case is that the, you know, if the bond, if interest, if, if people start not buying the bonds and interest rates start going up, it makes the That's the doom loop, that's the debt doom loop. The deficits get larger, et cetera, et cetera. So eventually they're gonna have to do what they did in World War II, and they're gonna have to say, \"Hey, you know what? We're, we're gonna cap the interest rates at X, Y, Z, or, you know, call it-- in World War II, the case is two point five percent, but we're gonna have to cap interest rates at three or four percent, and to the degree that they go above that, we're gonna All roads lead to printer go burr, you know? And when printer go burr, that's what creates the inflation. And so, you know, it's just, it's just a, it's a vicious cycle, you know, that, that happened once before in the '70s, but, you know, the debt to GDP then was thirty-five percent, not a hundred and twenty-five, and so Paul Volcker was able to shove rates up high enough to get it all under control. But I, I, I don't think this time they're gonna be able to do that, 'cause if they shove rates up to twenty percent, the entire world will go bankrupt. So, so my, my view is we, we, we now live in an inflationary world, and people really need to think about that in, in the context of their investments and how they're gonna protect themselves, and, and therefore the need for sound money. And, I mean, just as a, as an aside, I'll, I'll give a plug. I mean, I'm writing a book" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:40", "start": 1060.05, "text": "Oh, great. Yeah, I'd love to take a look at it. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "17:42", "start": 1062.05, "text": "when I do it, maybe I can come back on your podcast. But I mean, the, the long story short is, I, I think the thing that some people are missing, I mean, I know that the consensus on Wall Street is, \"Ah, we're gonna get a soft landing, inflation's under control, the three percent's gonna become two, we're gonna go back to that, you know, happy days that we had from" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "18:02", "start": 1081.61, "text": "'08 to twenty twenty, you know, twenty twenty or so, I, I just don't think that-- I think there are too many, you know, potential problems in that scenario to, for that to actually occur. Yeah. And the, the biggest one, the biggest one being the deficits, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:20", "start": 1099.53, "text": "Yeah. Now, one question I do have on the inflation question as you were discussing it. Do you, in your mind, are you distinguishing here with, let's say, CPI inflation and asset inflation, or are you just saying we're gonna see both, or maybe one more of asset inflation than the CPI side of it? Where are you at there?" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "18:35", "start": 1115.04, "text": "That's a great point. I mean, I look in general as in the, in the conversation we just had, I was talking more about CPI and, you know, living standards and, and the PCE that, that, you know, goes off of. but, you know, there's been a ton of asset inflation" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "18:53", "start": 1133.22, "text": "Doesn't mean they can't become even more extremely overvalued, and, you know, the stock market is more expensive than it was in nineteen twenty-nine. I mean, John Hussman's done great work on this. I mean, for the stock market to go back to using the, the, the historical metrics, and, and you can say they don't apply this time, but I think they do, for the stock market to go back to kind of a normal level that would represent somewhat fair value, it would need to fall by sixty-five percent. So, right? Now, you know, everybody who's got all their IRAs and their retirement accounts invested in the stock market, and they hear that number, and they, they ought to be shocked. I mean, I know I would be if I had all my money there. because, you know, it's, it's not like bear markets have been outlawed forever. I mean, what's happened here is we've just got a bubble that's really, really big and keeps getting bigger. But, you know, having analyzed historically, you know, dozens of bubbles, you know, I, I can say with a high degree of confidence that all bubbles ultimately burst And the mean revert. And so, you know, I think the, you know, I think that the, I mean, or, or, I mean, the other alternative, of course, what we're talking about here, the, you know, the, the, the forces, we've got two forces going on, right? We've got an inflationary force and we've got a deflationary force. Debt is inherently deflationary in the longer term, because what you're doing is you're bringing consumption in earlier, and then you gotta pay it back later. And, you know Create a, it's like, you know, drinking or doing drugs. You, you create a high, but then you gotta, you know, work it off. On the other side, there's, there's a, there's a price to pay on the other side of it. Of course, what's happened here is nobody wants to pay that price, and so, so they just keep getting higher and higher, and, You know, so, I mean, I-- and, and the, and there's, there's another alternative, which is rather than pay it off, rather than have the collapse, rather than have the deflationary forces take over, that the inflationary forces just keep getting worse and worse and worse and worse until the underlying currency system involved just disintegrates. And, you know, von Mises said this first. I mean, it's, it's either, you know, when-- if you have a credit boom, you, you know, you've either got to stop it at some point and" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "21:06", "start": 1265.55, "text": "Currency's worthless, you know, because yes, I mean, we're all getting paid millions of dollars a year and, and, you know, stock markets at record highs and so on and so forth, but the currency's got no value. And, you know, it's, you know, gasoline is twenty dollars a gallon and a hamburger costs two hundred dollars and so on and so forth. So, so that's, that's one of the possible outcomes. I mean, I, I rate the hyper-infla- which I call super-high inflation bordering on hyper-in" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "21:36", "start": 1295.55, "text": "20%, possible outcome. I mean, I, I would have rated it lower five years ago or ten years, a lot lower ten years ago, but it's, it's increasing, you know, because of the way these people are behaving. And it all depends on what the policymakers do. You know, if they, if they behave poorly, they can bring that result about much more quickly. you know, they're gonna, what they're gonna try and do is what they've done historically, which is, you know, balance inflation and deflation and kick the can down the road and keep the system functioning but even in that case, even in a best case scenario where they quote unquote stick the landing, you know, it's, in my opinion, they can't stick the landing on inflation There will have to be inflation because, you know, the alternative is the debts aren't payable. So," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:22", "start": 1341.88, "text": "yeah, so there's a reckoning to come. There's a" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "22:24", "start": 1343.74, "text": "reckoning to come. The question is just, you know, how much, when, how fast, you know, and, and none of us really know, right? but I-- But what I do know is if you look at asset class buckets, I know which ones, what side I wanna be on in which ones. I mean, I, I don't wanna be anywhere near any bonds, especially bond--" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "22:44", "start": 1364.2, "text": "Inflation, they're like, they're licking their chops these, these long bonds and thinking, \"These are great,\" but, but no, I don't, I don't think so. you know, stocks, it's mixed. I mean, the, the some industrial stocks, some commodity-based stocks that aren't so expensive will, will probably hold value, grow, or do well in an inflationary environment, but I think a lot of the, you know, a lot of the tech stocks, a lot of the things that, you know, Are not tied to commodities, are, are, are deeply, are, are largely overvalued and therefore are gonna decline in value. So, and I think the, you know, I think in the next ten years, the two best performing or three best performing asset classes are gonna be, you know, Bitcoin, gold, silver, and, and then to a lesser degree, real estate. And of course, the negative on real estate is you can't move it, and you got all these, you know, taxes to pay to, to own it and maintain it." }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "23:35", "start": 1415.17, "text": "So, yeah, so And what I find amazing to me in the United States is, you know, I have a lot of friends who've done well in the fiat world and have made a lot of money, and, and they have enormous stock portfolios, and they've-- and those portfolios have been very good to them. I mean, they've owned Google, and they've owned Microsoft, and they've owned Apple, and, you know, they've got nothing to complain about. And, but their, their view is, you know, why would I ever sell any of that right now? It just, it's worked" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "24:09", "start": 1448.53, "text": "But, you know, some of these people have like zero, you know, assets allocated to what you and I see as pretty, pretty obvious and likely very asymmetric bet, which is sound money," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:19", "start": 1458.88, "text": "you know. Back to the show in a moment. This show brought to you by CoinKite dot com, the creators of the best Bitcoin hardware security devices, such as the Coldcard Mark IV and the new Coldcard Q. Now, we use Bitcoin hardware security devices to keep our keys offline, our private keys offline. Now, the way these work is- is you can do that setup, write down your twelve or twenty-four words on the, the seed word cards, and keep that secure. Now you can use this device to interact with the Bitcoin network using software such as Sparrow Wallet, Electrum, or Bextra Desktop or Nunchuk as a few examples. Now you have a range of security features that you can use with these devices such as passphrases, you can use Seed X or, or my favorite is multi-signature. Now if you're starting in a basic way, just start with the device and the USB-C cable, plug it directly to the computer and use it that way, and then later improve your setup. But I believe these devices are great at helping secure your coins, especially as you start to migrate up into multi-signature security. But don't be disheartened or don't be, scared away, they are accessible, and I think you actually do learn about Bitcoin in the process. So to get yours, go to coinkite dot com, use code Livera to get a discount on your cold card, the lead sponsor of this show. So is Bold, the best place to buy, sell and save Bitcoin. For listeners in the US, Bold lets you secure your financial future with complete peace of mind by integrating a low fee Bitcoin only brokerage with next gen multisig vaults. With Bold, you can smash buy Bitcoin or set a DCA plan for only zero point nine nine percent fees and seamlessly deposit the Bitcoin direct to your Bold Vault. The Bold Vault is a two or three collaborative multisig where you hold two keys and Bold holds one as a redundant backup, protecting against loss. Or theft. You can use Trezor, Ledger, or cold card hardware wallets to spin up a Bold Vault in just a few minutes, and the Bold Vault is the only collaborative custody vault available with zero monthly fees. They're also offering zero fees on your first ten thousand dollars of Bitcoin buys and twenty five dollars of free Bitcoin when you buy a hundred dollars of Bitcoin or more. Try Bold today and upgrade your stacking experience over at getbold dot io. And now, back to the show. Yeah. So let's get into the gold question. Yeah, sure. Obviously, I know you came from the world I think it'll be interesting to get your thoughts, you know, here we are, October twenty twenty-four. What is the perception of Bitcoin amongst gold bugs? And also, if you could just maybe add some commentary on, who do you think is buying gold right now? Is it central banks or high net worth or wh-what, what kind of demographics are we talking about? Yeah, let's" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "26:55", "start": 1615.48, "text": "start with that one. So one of the things I find interesting, and I, I tweeted this out about a week ago, in the United States, the gold ETFs have been shrinking. you know, they're, they're not, I mean, the, the size of going-- so, so the US ETF buyer hasn't been buying gold ETFs until very recently they started to turn up. that's in contrast to the Bitcoin ETFs, which have been growing. and I think, you know, I think a lot of that's age related. I think older people buy gold, younger people buy Bitcoin. what's, in my opinion, supported the gold price is The sovereigns who've been very large and re-record, you know, record level buyers over the last five years, but even more than that, just, just international businesses that have kind of come to realize that if they store their treasury assets in, you know, T-bonds or dollars, that they've, they've got a melting asset, that it's, it's not gonna hold its value. And so, you know, you've seen enormous growth in the volume on, you know, the Dubai Gold Exchange and the, and the Shanghai Gold exchange. And so I think there are people who may be doing trade in dollars, or they may be doing trade in, you know, rubles or Chinese yuan. But, you know, at the end of the day, if they don't have a, a, a cross border need to go back and spend whatever they receive, you know, like, like say the Chinese, you know, pay for oil with the yuan, well, if the oil vendors aren't in need of something out of China, my gut is they're taking that yuan and they're converting it into gold, you know I think the world is slowly-- I mean, there's a lot of evidence, and you gotta look kind of between the cracks, and you can't prove it, but you can see volumes and so forth, that-- that I think there's a lot of evidence that would suggest that there's a very big trend among savvy financial people around the world that, you know, the dollar's no longer a good store of value. and that, that gold is a much better store of value. So I think that's what's generally been driving the gold price. Now, as the US stock market rolls over, and I think it might be in the process of doing that, but I could be wrong, I think you've, you've-- we've started to see some upturn, you know, in, in US ETF gold buying. One small piece of anecdotal evidence, though, that I do find interesting and fun, is that Costco, which is a big warehouse, you know, retailer here in the United States They've been just, they, on every quarterly call, they talk about the record volume of gold bars they're selling. And so, you know, there's some segment of the US population that's pretty aware of the fact that the dollar is losing value, and they go to Costco and they pick up a gold bar, and, they, and they consider that to be savings, and, you know, rightly so and intelligently. So, I mean, you know, I'd like to orange pill them and have them do the same thing with Bitcoin, and ultimately probably they'll get there" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:43", "start": 1783.21, "text": "Yeah. So" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "29:43", "start": 1783.43, "text": "that's, that's the story there. To your earlier question about gold and Bitcoin and gold people getting Bitcoin, I, I go to these gold shows and I find it's split about fifty-fifty, Stephan. I mean, I think- I think about half the gold people are like, \"Oh yeah, I totally get it. You know, not necessarily selling my gold, but I've got Bitcoin too. I, you know, it's, it's, it's digital gold, it's the future. There's, you know, an adoption curve. I mean, they, they get it.\" And then the other half are the Peter Shifts of the world who are just, they're deep, they're deep into their, their old trade and they're frustrated that, you know, something's come along to maybe steal some of the" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "30:24", "start": 1824.13, "text": "Heuristic decision of, oh, that shit's self-rott, I'm not touching it. and, you know, I, I get that. when I counter that, what I try and explain to them is that Bitcoin and crypto are two different things. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, but there are no other cryptocurrencies that are Bitcoin, not even close. And the, the Bitcoin represents a technological innovation, that, that is, is incredibly rare, incredibly important, which is legitimate, provable digital scarcity. And so, and, and I think that technological innovation is gonna change the world of money, and that's what we're in the process of watching right now. It already has, but, you know, we're only fifteen years in, and it's gonna take some more time for it to fully penetrate the entire world, but it will, in my opinion. So, so to me, it's, it's a much more asymmetric bet than gold." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:11", "start": 1871.44, "text": "This show brought to you by Mempool dot space, the world's leading Bitcoin visualizer, and now they've got an accelerator program." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:22", "start": 1881.7, "text": "Now you can fix this at, with the mempool accelerator. The way it works, you can go and search your transaction, scroll down, click accelerator, and you don't need an account, you can pay with lightning, and then it'll show you it's now in the process of being accelerated, and then after a few minutes, it's confirmed. And so this is a great way to help you out if you are stuck, and this can happen where maybe your wallet doesn't have RBF or CPFP, or it might help you in situations where it's impractical to go and re-sign. So And thirdly, even in some Lightning scenarios, perhaps a forced close, you might not be able to use RBF, and so in this case, the Mempool Accelerator can help you out. So keep it in mind, and you can find out more over at mempool dot space slash accelerator. This show also brought to you by Nomad Capitalist. Nomad Capitalist is a leading provider in terms of offshore tax and lifestyle strategy planning and implementation. They can help you go overseas and legally lower your taxes. As many of you know, I- I grew up in Australia, but I left. I was sick of it in terms of the taxes and the COVID tyranny and all these other things. And so that's why I left, and now I live in Dubai. But that's not necessarily the place for you. You have to think exactly what works for you, for your family, for your business. And Nomad Capitalist have worked across dozens of different countries. They've helped people get passports, residences, bank accounts, and all kinds of other things. And importantly, it's not just about choosing one place, it may be multiple places, and it Of how your business fits with your family and you as an individual. Nomad Capitalists have helped many, many people in terms of going overseas, and if you're interested, go to nomadcapitalist dot com slash apply. This is applicable for people with a net worth above one million US dollars. That's nomadcapitalist dot com slash apply. So turning to the US election. So it's the second of October, the election is coming, I believe, fifth of November. So it's about a month from now. Yeah. There was recently the VP debate. Right, as you mentioned, JD Harris, sorry, JD Vance versus, Walz, and, it looks, from last I checked, it looks like tr- it's kind of like a coin flip at this point. So I'm curious, your views on the election and what that would mean for Bitcoin, let's say next year." }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "33:39", "start": 2019.12, "text": "Yeah, that's a, it's a great question, and nobody has the answer. I mean, the problem is I don't think you can trust the polls. I mean, I have to say my, you know," }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "33:52", "start": 2031.66, "text": "He played well last night against Wals, I think Wals looked like a dunce and really fumbled the ball. you know, I, I, I think that, I think that from what I can see, if this is a fair election, and that's a big if, we'll discuss it in a minute, Trump wins this. I think that, you know, enough of the country is hurting badly enough, based on the economy, the inflation, the economic policies of the administration, that they're gonna say, you know, get me I, I, you know, I want out, I want, I want to go to the other side. so that, that's, that's my gut, you know, feeling right now. However, you know, I, I've read and seen and investigated, you know, all the shenanigans that happened with the last election, and, you know, I recognize that it's probably, you know, four or five states, and within that, maybe four or five counties per state. So, you know, I, I think if you could, you know, jam twenty And so this is what Stalin said, it's not who votes, it's who counts the votes. And, yeah, I mean, I, I hate to be that cynical, but I just, I don't put anything past the other side. I mean, two, two attempts have been made to murder, you know, Trump and, and his being president again is really kind of existential for a lot of people. I think from a crypto point of view, There's no doubt Trump would be more friendly, because he's talked about, you know, having a light touch in terms of regulation, maybe even making it legal tender, et cetera, et cetera. I wasn't thrilled when I saw him announce that he's gonna do his own Trump shitcoin, which, you know, I mean, some guys, it's just you can't- He can't get to so certain people, right? I mean, he just, he, he likes to, he likes to try and make money and he likes to promote people, and he just, it's in his nature. So, I was disappointed when I saw that, but, but of course, of the, you know, of the two, of the choice between the two, it's, it, for me, it's obvious because one is much more pro-business and pro-cri-cri-uh, pro-crypto and pro-bitcoin than the other. I mean, I think" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "36:02", "start": 2162.38, "text": "Tried to block a lot of the onramps. I'm an investor and custodian, Caitlin's had an enormously difficult time, and, I mean, the, the politics and the bullshit that, you know, the administration has pulled, and, and the administration and the Federal Reserve have pulled to, you know, to try and keep, you know, Bitcoin and crypto within their sphere, i-it's just, it's outrageous. and if there, if we had fair courts, you know, we'd be winning enormous damages, but my sense is we don't have fair courts either. yeah, you know, but I, but honestly, I can't tell how it's all gonna shake out. I mean, the, the bull case for Kamala is there is a-- and I know some of these people, there is a, you know, I, I think that, the, the abortion issue, is, is, is a hot button for a certain portion of, on both sides, you know? And, and the fact, you know, there, there, there are women who are, you know, irrespective of where they are on, on, you know, the economy, they're, they're gonna vote that single issue, and they feel like there's a lot more women's pre- you know, women's choice and, and freedom and reproductive rights and so on and so forth, and you can call it whatever you want, in the Democratic Party. So I think if the Republican Party kind of got their act together on that particular issue and arrived at some decent compromise, you know, the, the Democrats would be just completely dead But, you know, that's, that's the one issue that I think, you know, gives, gives Kamala a little bit of, a little bit of strength. So we'll just have to wait and see. I mean, it's-- we're gonna know very, very soon, no matter what happens, the other side's gonna be very upset and probably claim fraud, and, you know, we'll have to see. I, I certainly hope that Trump wins, You know, I, I intend to vote for him, I vote in Florida, and I intend to vote for him. So, but we'll see. it's, it's a, it's a tough call. I mean, one thing I will say on both of them, though, I, I don't think, you know, I think, I think Kamala spends more faster. Okay, I think, you know, there's more UBI, there's more debt forgiveness, there's just, you know, I mean, she thinks she's got an unlimited checkbook" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "38:13", "start": 2293.46, "text": "and" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "38:19", "start": 2298.9, "text": "Deficits, what deficits? We can just print to handle it, you know, that's that side. I, I think there will probably be a little bit more restraint on the Trump side. I mean, I-- but, you know, I, I, I caution that, I, I, you know, he says he's gonna balance the budget, he says he's gonna, you know, cut all these costs. I mean, my sense is, you know, but he also wants to cut taxes, my sense is it's gonna be pretty hard for him to really make a big dent. I Luke Romans done some good work on this. I mean, you know, to, to get the bal-the budget close to being balanced, they would need to kind of take thirty to forty percent out of the defense budget and Social Security and Medicare So, you know, think of what are the odds-- just think about that forever. So what are the odds that, you know, the retired population of America is gonna live with a thirty to forty percent benefit cut? And that the defense, you know, establishment's gonna live with a thirty to forty percent, you know, expenditure cut. I mean, it's, I, I, I think the odds of, of that happening or going through Congress are just extremely slim, you know, absent some total crisis. And, you know, the, the total crisis is that, you know, the dollar is plunging, you know, gold, gold is going to five thousand, Bitcoin's going to two hundred and fifty thousand, the bond markets in disarray, interest rates are going up, and the Fed Monetize all the debt. I mean, that's a crisis, and if that happened, you know, then maybe the people in Washington would face the, the music and say, \"You know what? We've got to, we've got to balance this shit or else the currency's going to zero.\" I mean, that's, that's kind of the extreme case, right? I mean, when Gresham's Law really gets going. But I don't think that, you know, we're not there yet. We're not even close to there yet. We're, we're still in the, hey, this is no problem, we can spend whatever we want, stage of things. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:04", "start": 2404.49, "text": "You know? It, it does, I mean, maybe it's an academic exercise, but, if we were to look at kind of an honest pathway of trying to, let Would it be like, okay, all these millennials and Gen Z have to kind of agree to pay into the system, but not get anything out of it when they're old, and, you know, the retirees on their side would have to-- the pensioners would have to kind of take less, the military would have to take less. I mean, maybe it's just completely, like, just not even happening. I, yeah. I'm curious what it would look like." }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "40:39", "start": 2439.36, "text": "I feel like it's so far gone, Stephan, that it's, it's unlikely to ever, you know, to get to There's some relatively simple things or, or simpler things you could do. You could, you could, you know, cut back on all the foreign aid, right? So you're not gonna send money to Ukraine. You could, you know, take down the footprint of the US military. We've got bases all over the world. you know, you could take down, you know, the, the, the cost on some of these defense systems, and we're building all these weapons that really, really are actually kinda dinosaurs because a, a Stinger missile can take, can wipe out a, you know, multi-billion dollar battleship or a, you know, or a, a multi-hundred million dollar airplane. Do you know what I mean? I mean, it's, so, so you'd have to cut back a lot there. I think on the, on the bene- on the, the, You know, it, it wouldn't strike me as unusual or, or maybe harsh in terms of, you know, if you're kind of trying to pull, save the country and pull everything together, you know, to means test Social Security and Medicare. I mean, you know, if people have a certain level of assets, I mean, I, you know, I, I've actually started to collect my Social Security, I'm old enough to do it. it's a small number, but it, you know, great. I mean, I, I paid into the system And said, \"You know what? You, you're, you really, you know, you're too rich. You really don't need this. We're gonna, we're gonna, even though you paid in, we're gonna cut you off.\" I'd accept that. I mean, for the good of the country, I'd accept that. and I, and I suspect other wealthy, you know, retirees would, but again, you know, that doesn't really get you there. You can increase taxes on, you know, on, on billionaires and, and, you know, you could" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "42:32", "start": 2551.5, "text": "You've got companies that are just extraordinarily talented, that pay zero tax, and, and, and they live within this system, and yet they pay zero into the system. And, you know, particularly at the tech level, you know, you've got some companies that really are effectively monopolies because of the way the, the, you know, the network system has evolved, such that, you know, like a Google, a Microsoft, a Facebook, I mean, these are monopoly businesses. And, you know, if you were to, you know, put some kind of a, a I'm saying, look, we can't break you up 'cause we can't make three Googles, but since you are Google and since you're earning these outrageous profits as a result of your position, you know, we're gonna subject you to a minimum tax of five percent, you know, for the good of the society, you gotta pay in. And, you know, I, I mean, some people, you know, will scream at that, but, you know, there's, there's a social argument for doing it, right? I mean, so I-- But the answer to your question is sadly Sadly, I think it's really, really, really too far gone, and there's gonna have to be a very meaningful monetary and system reset. I mean, this is-- I think you and I've discussed this before that we're in a fourth turning, right? And, and everything's broken, and, you know, you can't really fix badly broken things with little band-aids, you know, just means testing, so you're not gonna get there. You know, sadly, we're gonna run into a wall, there's gonna be a fairly substantial crisis, and then- And then everybody's gonna have to sit down with a piece of paper and go, \"Okay, you know, we really blew this. The Keynesians were wrong. The sound money was the problem. You know, hyperinflation has wiped out everyone's wealth.\" Let's reboot and let's start with a new system. You know, the money is gonna be X and, and people will trust it because it's, you know, defined by code and, and limited in supply, and slowly but surely the economy will rebuild. And, and that's the thing, it's, you know, that, that, that process that I'm describing would be enormously painful. But the other side of that process, I mean, I've studied hyperinflations throughout the world for the last hundred, a couple hundred years If you don't kill people and you don't destroy the technology and you don't, you know, if we don't go radioactive, you know, all we're really talking about here is the money is broken and the money fails. And so if you reset with a new form of sound money and everybody says, \"Oh, these are the rules, I get it, I'm gonna play inside those rules,\" then guess what? You know, we'll-- the, the economy will regenerate itself. I mean, it might take a few years, it might be kinda ugly, there'll be winners and losers. For sure, people who have bonds will be, you know, crushed. But, you know, we'll come out the other side, and, and I think in a, in a way that, in, in my view is, is the system will look much, much better and be much fairer. And there's, there's something, you know, as bad as the, the, the transition might be, what I guess I'm trying to say, I wanna be an optimist 'cause I know a lot of people in the Bitcoin space are optimists, and I'm, and I am too the prob- the, the one thing I have a little trouble with, I, I know some Bitcoiners are just like, \"Well, we can, we can slowly creep over to there and it's all gonna be good without a day of reckoning on this other stuff.\" I'm not sure how that happens. I'd, I'd like to hope that can happen. But But, I mean, there's, there's, if, if Bitcoin wins, there are going to be losers, and, and that's gonna create some serious pain in, in a lot of areas. So, but I, you know I think, I think if people who embrace Bitcoin and save in Bitcoin terms, your kids, grandkids, and great-great-grandkids are gonna notice the difference in a very meaningful way. In a very, very meaningful way. And so, that's, that's why I do what I do in terms of advocating for this, this kind of quote-unquote perfect form of money. I think that's why Saylor does what he does. I think it's, and really, it's why we're all doing it, right, Stephan? I mean, we're-- You know, if you've got a libertarian bent, you realize that the problem is that the state controls the money and they use it as an instrument of power to control all of us and to create wars and And that's all evil stuff. And since we're not in a position to rein the state in on killing people, we are in a position to rein them in on, on money, because we don't have to use their money, we can use our own money. And we've now got a form of money that's totally fair, widely distributed, everyone plays by the same rules, can't be messed with. that's, that's a very, very powerful thing. Very powerful. And so, you know, give it enough, give it, give it time, you know, another ten years, another twenty years at the most, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna solve the problem, in my opinion. So we're, you know, we're going in the right direction, but I know it's frustrating. I mean, I, you know, a lot of people say, \"Hey, we're stuck at fifty-eight thousand.\" Well, yeah, we are. It's annoying. But I, I said I, I was with, Natalie and James yesterday, and I said, \"Um, here's my prediction. I think by the end of this calendar year, we'll be over a hundred thousand. Bitcoin's forming this nice declining flag.\" Top of the flag, it looks like you kinda break out at sixty six from the flag. You break out from the all time high at seventy two or three? I think when we go through those, we're gonna squirt up to a hundred, like, you know, very quickly. So, and, and I think, and I think the, you know, the, the gold is a tell, the gold hitting records, and the, and the awareness on the, on the part of a larger and larger part of the world that something's wrong. I mean, the, the disconnect is, you know, you've got guys like Krugman tweeting, \"Hey, we've, we've done it, we've landed the plane, two percent inflation, three percent, it's all good, everything's great,\" and I'm like, and I tweeted back to him, I If that's the case, then why is it gold-- why is gold at a record high? You know, if, if, if you successfully landed the plane and inflation's under control, then the price of gold should be going down. Not hitting new all-time records, right? It's hitting new all-time records because it says, \"You guys are debasing the currency, and you're gonna have to debase it more in the future.\" That's what gold is telling us right now. And so, you know, it is what it is. I don't know, that, that was a long-winded answer. I should, I should let you ask questions. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:43", "start": 2922.78, "text": "but let's, let's talk a bit about the, the whole suppression narrative, right? I think that's something that people have spoken about for years in the world of gold, and some people are starting to say this in Bitcoin also. I'm personally not as convinced about it, but I know, for example, someone like Caitlin Long has spoken about this in the equity world, where people were, let's say People, and so there was this kind of over-pledging of the same asset, so, you know, and I guess the other thing would be, look, gold is at all-time high, so it's difficult to argue that it's being suppressed if it's just now hit all-time highs, right? Yeah, it's," }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "49:19", "start": 2958.77, "text": "suppression's a relative term. You're right, it is at all-time highs, and, and it has been suppressed, over the years, you know, let, let's frame it, okay? If we went back, we were on a gold standard in '71, it was loose, but, you know, it was international exchange, but we, we were on a gold standard. And one could take the monetary aggregates and divide it by the gold that the United States held and come up with a thirty-five dollar reference price at the time, roughly, okay? Did the same math today, Stefan. the gold price would have to be eighty thousand dollars an ounce. So okay, all the money that's been created divides-- So, so the point is Yeah, we're, we're hitting record highs, but we've, we're still a beach ball that's been held way underwater. Do you know what I mean? If, in other words, if you wanted to have the currency backed by gold today at a hundred percent level, you'd have to go to eighty grand. Now, everyone who's done currency analysis knows you don't have to have a hundred percent backing to have a gold-backed currency, you can have twenty percent backing. So, so maybe gold has to go to twenty thousand, but even twenty thousand is a lot less than, you know," }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "50:24", "start": 3023.78, "text": "But it has been suppressed, we know that. There's a lot of paper gold, and, and Caitlin's right, I mean, there is the risk of paper Bitcoin. you know, Sam Bankman-Fried had paper Bitcoin. He had Bitcoin on his balance sheet or he'd sold Bitcoin to customers, he didn't have the underlying. and, and there will always be that risk. I think that a couple things mitigate that to a degree. One, Bitcoin is more transparent than gold. You know, you can see the ledger, you can see what's where. two Being willing to share the Coinbase addresses they have where, where their coins are, it's like, oh, this is good, you know? So, you know, so, the other thing is that, that in, if you look at the gold market, the, the size of the gold market, the futures in the gold market, it's, and, and the daily trading, it's multiples of the size of the underlying. And in the case of Bitcoin, that's not true. There are derivatives, there are futures, there are options, but, but the size of those are small relatively to the underlying. So I don't think they've had the time to develop the Bitcoin suppression schemes the way they-- you know, the, the gold suppression-- I mean, they started suppressing the price of gold in the '60s, and so they've had a long time to perfect this. You know, Bitcoin, the, the other thing I, I would say is, you know, I mean, they, they've They did it, they did it with the BIS, but they also did it out of the Cayman Islands and these third party, you know, anonymous accounts that I, I saw in twenty thirteen that were trading enormous volumes of gold that only could have come from a sovereign. is that, you know, the, the sovereigns recognizing that this is a matter of national security, you know, would say to, you know, they would, they would take on a short position knowing that if they got run over, they could just print the money to fill the hole. but in, in A big up year for gold would be twenty or thirty percent, right? Well, Bitcoin's a different animal. it's, it's, it's a different thing when, you know, I mean, in, in twenty twenty, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, I mean, it went from ten thousand to fifty thousand, that's five X, you know, very quickly. that's a bigger, if, if you're short it and you're trying to manipulate it, that's a really big hole to fill. So, you know, I, I kinda tend to lean toward Bitcoin isn't manipulated? But, you know, in any big financial market where there are a lot of players, you know, there will be those who will try and, and there will be-- I mean, I'm sure that-- I mean, there is paper Bitcoin out there. There are futures contracts on Bitcoin. They don't have the underlying. So that's, that's paper. and if that market were to grow, you know, rapidly and aggressively, I would become more concerned that, you know, that there is a Bitcoin suppression scheme taking place. But, but I haven't seen enough to get me convinced that's the case. And yet I've studied the gold market enough to know with absolute certainty that there are, you know, probably a hundred claims for every ounce of hard, hard gold in the world. I mean, there's so much paper gold out there. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:20", "start": 3200.39, "text": "But isn't that difficult to take in-spec redemption of gold compared to Bitcoin? That's the problem. That's the" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "53:24", "start": 3204.48, "text": "problem. That's the problem. I mean, it's how do you ship a billion dollars worth of gold? It costs a ton of money. You know, and so, and, and so the central banks and the bankers and the depositors, they all just say, \"Trust me, bro.\" You know? Yeah. And, and that, and, and history shows that that's not necessarily a good thing to do. I mean, you know, we have two hundred-- The US has two hundred and sixty-one million ounces theoretically. I don't really think we do. I mean, I, I think the temptation to raid those ounces over the last fifty years has probably been pretty substantial. I'm sure we have some of it. But, I, I, you know, I'll, I'll bet some of that's been sold or, or used, you know? I was actually speaking to a very sophisticated gold guy the other day, and he said, \"Well, look,\" he said, \"Look, it's not a...\" And he, he was involved with the GLD at one point, and he said, \"It's not really a matter of...\" Paper gold all the time, he said it's more a matter of, well, it is paper gold, but he said, you know, the gold ounces are there, the problem is two people might have the same claim to the, you know, the same, a claim to the same ounce. You know, that it, it, it's fractional reserve, right? That's, that's what fractional reserve is. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:27", "start": 3266.88, "text": "yeah. And so, yeah, we might see maybe more of a push for proof of reserves, in Bitcoin land, and, you know, that might help, but of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:38", "start": 3278.09, "text": "Not your coins, not your coins, what you call self-custody, but, you know, I think we will see, more people interested in doing that, and that in turn, like, in a way, we all have an incentive to encourage that because that's gonna help pump the price even harder. Absolutely. And so- Let me, let me just add" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "54:54", "start": 3293.74, "text": "one other thing that I think is important, 'cause somebody asked me this the other day, and I, I think it's, I think it's worth mentioning. And, you know, and I'm not out on you know, it's, it's co-let's, let me say this, the, the US government approved the ETFs, right? It's convenient for the US government that a lot of Bitcoin sits in ETFs in big, well-known financial institutions, right? Because if a president were to say, \"You know what? The American dollar is falling, and golden Bitcoin is the reason that that's fall- and it, the measures, and it's very obvious that it's falling,\" we're gonna do a sixty-one or two, and guess what? We're gonna call up every big ETF and say, \"You need to send that Bitcoin to us, 'cause it's gonna be part of our strategic reserve. We'll pay you cash, whatever the dollar, you know, the dollar value is right today, and you send that cash out to all of your holders, and, you know, we now own that Bitcoin, they don't. And of course, the next day, Bitcoin would go up ten x. but, you know, the point is, that's, that's a sixty-one o two in the Bitcoin world, and that's, you know, I look, I've got some of those ETFs in my IRA accounts, you know, at brokerage firms, I couldn't buy, I can't go buy native Bitcoin and get the coins with those accounts. But, but o-others Bitcoin that I have, I have, you know, under, under my own control or, or controlled other parties 'cause I have multi-sig and all kinds of security stuff." }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "56:19", "start": 3379.09, "text": "But the is an important part of the risk mitigation strategy because, you know, when, if and when the dollar gets in a lot of trouble and these fiat currencies really are failing, and I'm thinking three or four moves out. I don't think that what I described about, you know, the, the government saying, \"Hey, we, we gotta have this Bitcoin, we need it as a strategic reserve,\" I don't think that's an impossible thing. I think, I think it's actually possible So, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:48", "start": 3408.34, "text": "So if you had to guess, let's say next year, where do you kinda see gold and Bitcoin getting up to? Where could you see it going to? And do-- are you kinda expecting like a big drawdown like we've seen historically?" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "57:01", "start": 3421.09, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I, I kind of have looked at the cycles and I've looked at the power law and I, you know, and- I, I think on the next ramp, I think, I think there's, I think we're somewhere, we're somewhere short of what I, what I call the next thing I call the big print. Okay? So the, the next big print is gonna come when something breaks, maybe the bond market, maybe the stock market, whatever it is. And And the government realizes that they've got to, or else everything's gonna collapse. That's coming, outside date on that's eighteen months, inside date on that's tomorrow, medium date on that, six months maybe, six to, six to nine months. I think when that occurs, Bitcoin will go and exceed the power law, we'll get a two standard deviation move above, and we'll pump to three hundred, three hundred and fifty. I think gold will probably run to, you know, I mean, now I'm beginning to think four or five thousand. I mean, it's kind of, it's, it's getting closer to three, right? I, I used to say it'd run to three, and now, three is too low. you know, I think silver will probably run to," }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "58:02", "start": 3482.4, "text": "you know," }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "58:07", "start": 3487.2, "text": "The possibility that we get such severe deflation that even in light of the big print, everything still kind of, quote unquote, collapses, a la twenty-nine, and there'll be an enormous scramble for liquidity? and the Fed will do everything it can to provide liquidity, but absent literally sending out checks, in the form of UBI to everybody, the economy will be collapsing, and this is, this is kind of David Hunter scenario too. and in that case, you know, the Bitcoin will probably correct from that two or three hundred peak back down to eighty-five or hundred, you know, and gold will correct, g-gold will have a serious correction too, because we'll have a really deflationary impulse. I think then, then the next move is you'll get, quote unquote, the bigger print, right? okay, you know, the economy is totally collapsing, nobody has any money, the prices of everything are falling, you know, we're literally gonna do UBI where we're gonna send every family a check for fifty thousand bucks to kinda keep things going, and, and to me, that one will be the last one. And at that point in time, you know, Bitcoin will go to a million, Gold will go to, you know, twenty, thirty, forty thousand, you know, and, and effectively the currency will fail, and there'll have to be some kind of political meeting of the minds to- Solve the problem. And, I kind of see the timeframe on that as probably twenty twenty-seven, maybe, you know, maybe as late as twenty thirty, twenty thirty-one. I mean, if you look at this as the fourth turning, and you look at the average length of fourth turnings, you add, you start at two thousand eight, which is what I do, and you add the average length, you kinda get into the late twenty twenty Period, like twenty-seven, eight, nine, kind of period, twenty twenty-eight, you know? I see, yeah. So in a sense, you're seeing" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:45", "start": 3585.28, "text": "kind of, you know what I mean? Yeah. So in a sense, you're seeing kind of two more cycles to come, basically. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "59:52", "start": 3592.33, "text": "I mean, at some point, at some point I think if, if, you know, absent, b- you know, intelligent and, you know, I, I mean, by the way, at any point in time, all of this could be stopped by a, by a monetary reset and responsible behavior out of Washington, D.C. But I think, I think absent a crisis, I just don't see how that gets done. I don't, I don't think that happens. So I think, sadly, we're gonna have to drive toward a crisis, and I think the crisis will be, as I've described, you know, a few years out And, and then at that point in time, people will be so frustrated, so angry, so hurt, you know, so broke that the, you know, that, a politician who stands up and says, \"Hey, you know what? The problem really here is we don't have sound money, and we've got to go to a sound money standard. Here's what it's gonna look like, here's how it's gonna be, and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna reset and start over.\" that person will win overwhelmingly. you know, I, I mean, I know some think the US will break up and this and the other, I think now that it's much more likely to be just kind of a constitutional convention, that, that kind of, you know, tries to reset the rules and, and hopefully the people involved in that will do a good job, so that we can put the world back on a sound money footing. And, I mean, once that happens, boy, things are gonna get great. I mean, it's, you know, all the technology we've got, all the developments, we're, you know, there, there are a lot of, I mean, apart from all this money system being broken, there are a lot of great things happening in the world. I mean, it's, you know, the efficiencies, the electric cars, all" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "01:01:24", "start": 3684.28, "text": "T as an example, I'm just, I'm blown away with how, you know, how much information I can gather and how quickly I can gather it by asking a question to my cell phone. You know? And, and, and I, you know, you see these robots that are coming along, I mean, these longshore guys, boy, they better get a good deal this time because, you know, ten or fifteen years, they're not gonna have jobs. you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of, you know, there are a lot of good deflationary forces that are gonna raise living standards for all of us. I mean, if we get nuclear power going, which we really need to do, I mean, it's, you know, but as, as So, you know, I mean, they're, they're, they're, you know, they're contrasting things going on in the world. There are a lot of good things and there's some very bad things. but, you know, government not having the printing press, I think, will lead to, you know, a, a much lower strife world, you know, as, as we talk here, we're just, you know, we're talking a period of time where we've got a couple of wars going on and they're very ugly and a lot of people are suffering Because these centralized governments, you know, can, can pay for these things, and if we had a more decentralized system, nobody would vote to go kill other people. So, you know, it's-- so, so a better world is coming But, you know, the, the getting through this particular storm, I, you know, I, I, I don't wanna, I can't blow sunshine up people's skirts as they say, you know what I mean? It, that we are, we are in a storm, and, and I think to, to deny that or to try and be positive and optimistic and sunny in light of that, I, I think that's, I think you're doing, I think you're doing yourself a disservice. I think we've gotta recognize that we are in" }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "01:03:14", "start": 3794.34, "text": "a storm." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:17", "start": 3797.52, "text": "Yeah, so, look, I think that's a great spot to finish up here. So, listeners, you can find Lawrence online, I'll put the links in the show notes. Lawrence is managing partner at Equity Management Associates, also advisor to the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund. Lawrence, look forward to catching up with you sometime soon, and of course, I'll check out your book when it's out. So, we look forward to chatting soon. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "lawrence_lepard", "time": "01:03:36", "start": 3816.93, "text": "we'll chat soon. Thanks, Stefan." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:38", "start": 3818.01, "text": "Nice to be with you." } ] }