Inside the Monetary Reset: Why Gold and Bitcoin Must Go Higher

[Music] Let's be clear, Bitcoin is an international asset. We are spending like drunken sailors. Bitcoin is the only economic entity where the supply is unaffected by the demand. If you want to preserve your wealth, you have to convert that currency into an asset that's scarce, desirable, portable, durable, and maintainable. All right, thanks for tuning in to Scarce Assets. Really excited about this episode. We sat down with David Foley and Larry Leard and we discussed the monetary reshuffleling that's underway and that's really going to favor mutual reserve assets like gold and Bitcoin. And David and Larry, I will say they laid out the playbook of what's going on currently and what that outcome likely is. And so we talked about the rising volatility in traditional markets, collapsing trust and fiat financial system, the looming uh sovereign debt crisis, and then really the return to sound money, which is going to lead likely to a much higher repricing of gold and bitcoin. 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And then from there, you have your own Bitcoin custody uh sitting in segregated vault that you can view 247 on chain. You have inheritance planning that you can set up in minutes, Bitcoin back loans, IRA, buy and sell, and more. And if you need any help with making a transfer from self-custody or from an exchange, our team will even help you out with that as well. So, um, you just have total confidence moving through the process. And the final note would be that all on-ramp accounts are also insured by Lloyds of London and that's at no additional cost to the client. So, book a consultation at onrampbitcoin.com or just reach out to me, jaxonrampbitcoin.com, and I'd be happy to answer any questions and get on a call. Hope you enjoyed the episode. Gentlemen, great to see you this morning or afternoon rather. We're recording Scarce Assets and we're joined today by my co-host sometimes on Scarce Assets, Michael Tanguma. And then David Foley and Larry Leard are two guests of honor this week. really excited about this conversation because just before we hit record, there's been no shortage of things to talk about that have happened in 2025 and it's only been four months into the year. So excited to just catch investors up on what has happened, what what is worth paying attention to and ultimately where is everything headed. So, no one's better to speak to this really than David and Larry because we'll be talking about sound money assets. will be talking quite a bit about gold, Bitcoin, but also just the broader US dollar system and the reshuffleling that's happening within the monetary order. So, gentlemen, really thank you for your time. Appreciate you both joining us. How are the two of you doing today? Doing great. Thanks for having us. Always enjoy talking to you guys. Yeah, doing great. Jackson, Michael, great to see you both and uh good to be here. Excellent. So, let's just catch up on what has actually happened in 2025. It's been a a bit of a tumultuous year in markets, in the economy, in global trade. To level set markets, so if we have a quick scorecard of where markets have been this year, the S&P 500 down about 5% or so year-to- date through the 30th of April. NASDAQ down about 10%. Gold's up 25%. Gold's looking quite nice this year, as it did last year as well. And then Bitcoin's about flat, up only about 1% or so through the first four months of the year. But it didn't really feel like that in April in particular with the announcement of the tariffs on April 2nd. We saw a ton of volatility in traditional markets, alternative investments, including Bitcoin as well that have since recovered. But I'm I'm curious, gentlemen, what is really worth hammering home for individuals today? Because if I think about all the news that's happened over the last four months, I can't even recall it all. But I I want to more so distill what are the implications of what we've seen in January, February, March, and April probably particularly around the trade uh tariff announcements because that seems to be not just about, you know, what can we get back from China and and all these trade relations, but it's more so what is happening in terms of moving away from a US dollar ccentric system into potential neutral reserve assets. So Larry or David, whoever would like to go first, can you just cut us up on go first? Yeah. What's happened the first couple months? Yeah. Well, I guess the where my head goes to, Jackson, on that question is, let's just do chronologically. You know, Trump comes in very active obviously on day one with a lot of policy changes. Um, I would argue that even, you know, most moderates or Democrats in this country would be accepting of some of the changes that were necessary. for instance, a lot of government waste and abuse and fraud and um you know and and some other things that just need to be right aligned. Um I think the markets reacted favorably to that at first, you know, but I think then as you got into February, it became apparent that maybe Doge wasn't going to be able to cut, you know, as much as people were thinking, right? And and I think as we stand here today, it's more in like the 180 billion context. And now some more might come out with other Doge cuts andor, you know, government worker layoffs. Of course, you know, for every action there's a reaction. So you wonder if there'll be other things though that cause, you know, higher stimulus checks that are needed for, you know, unemployment or something. But I think it's quite clear to everyone though that Doge is not going to be able to cut the way you think. Um, I think that as we moved into later February, the tariffs became the focus and, you know, I think the markets started selling off a bit ahead of that. And then obviously when you get out to April 2nd, markets really, I think, were surprised and stunned at just how aggressive the Trump administration was choosing to be and and then you could debate whether that's just a negotiating tactic or whatnot. But uncertainty became the story. Uh to be honest, it's you know, you've kind of been nice rally back here in the last few weeks. I I think where I sit here today is kind of stunned to be honest that the market's only down 5% for the year. I mean, we're looking at Port Long Beach data with containers down 64%. We're hearing airlines talk about forward bookings for the summer that are down massively, like 35% plus year-over-year. If you look at the Chase credit card data from last week, it's down 12% now year-over-year on a weekly basis. That was down about 5% just a few weeks ago. It's accelerating. So, to me, there's no question we are in a recession andor entering it soon. You know, we're somewhere in the middle innings of that game. You know, I think the market's been kind of pricing in. Last point I'll make is well maybe Trump's going to cut a deal with China and they'll both blink and this goes away and or the Fed helps out. And to me there's a lot of uncertainty and I you know we if we want we can pull up this chart now that I just sent you this morning Jackson of you know when you look at the federal funds cuts versus in recessions and versus the S&P 500. The key thing to remember is that when the Fed cuts rates Yeah. As you can see here the red sha shades are recessions. The white line is the Fed funds rate. This is going back to 1971. Um, you can see in the 70s the Fed fund rates in the white line were jacking out massively as they were, you know, Vulker and and them and the Fed were trying to get a grip on inflation. The S&P 500 though is the blue line. And look at more recently though, let's just look at the starting from the right. Look at the 2020 mini recession during COVID. Then look at 08 um in the next big red. Notice that at each time on the white line when the Fed starts cutting rates right at the beginning of a recession, the stock market actually peaks and goes down. It goes down with the rates in the middle of the recession. We haven't really hit that yet. You know, you could argue that the blue line there of the last two months is showing that, but again, you're down 5% for the year. Um, I think that that's what I'd worry about now is that even if the Fed is coming to the rescue with fire engines, the whole stock market is incredibly expensive and I think that that's the risk. Um, so let me pause there so I'm not too longwinded, but those are some of the things I'm thinking about. Yeah, I mean my I I agree with everything David said. Um, I would also emphasize that what Trump really did when he went with this tariff plan, you know, kind of the mirror and basic, you know, um, plan was he he said, you know, no more Triffin's dilemma. We are we are not going to be um, you know, we we we're willing to sacrifice our role as the world's reserve currency in order to make trade fair and to disadvantage Wall Street versus Main Street. the sense you know argued that many times and and so in Trumpian style he did it very aggressively uh and it created quite a shock I mean we were down 21% uh in April uh on the 7th or 8th of course then you know his and his negotiating strategy we all know is is grab everything and then you know as necessary give back and so when the bond market fell apart as a result of his initial salvo um you know that the obviously went to him and said sir we got to back off on this or you know we don't have a bond market anymore and so they put the 90-day pause on and that's what's caused it's bounced back like David my view is that um I'm kind of surprised we've bounced back as far as we have but I think it's the muscle memory of you know um most people alive today haven't really seen a bare market the last I shouldn't say that most people who have been investment a lot of investment managers have seen very few bare markets the last true bare market was 2008 when the S&P went down 50 some odd % and um you know the damage that he did uh with announcing the tariffs even if he walks it all back right now today um I think is going to do what David suggested that it's going to slow the economy down and the market is priced to perfection and so I don't see how you know the stock market holds together and the US economy is is really driven by the stock market a lot but Sen has pointed out that the top 10% of the population owns 84% of the stocks the top 10% of the population also accounts for 50% of the spending. And so when you tell that top 10% that their retirement account is going down, they naturally pull in. They they think, well, okay, no new car, no no renovation of the house, less vacations, less restaurants, everything. We're seeing that all the data, the restaurant data, too. So, um I don't see how even if he turned around today and said, "Oh, I was just kidding." Which is not his style, and I don't think he'll do. uh I don't see how we don't have an economic slowdown of some magnitude and that that affects the stock market. And the reason that's important is that the stock market creates a lot of artificial wealth and makes people feel good and people feel comfortable and that artificial wealth also flows into the bond market and um you know the bond market is really what they're watching what they're concerned about. Ascent has said several times his biggest concern is the 10-year rate and he was hoping that by maybe you know popping the stock bubble or bringing stocks in a bit that there'd be a safety bid in the 10 year and there was briefly but then it reversed and went right back to where it was and you know what I think gold and Bitcoin are telling you gold particularly Bitcoin hasn't moved as much yet although Bitcoin moved last year is that you know they recognize the Fed is trapped and they recognize that you know that money printing a big print I would call is inevitable at some point and gold is very good at smelling that and and you know sussing that out. Of course there's some other things going on too with a lot of repatriation in the United States and so on so forth. We can go into that but I think you know my view is um I think if I had to guess about the rest of this year I don't think the stock market closes at this level. I think it closes lower as a result of economic slowdown and I think Bitcoin and gold closed much higher as a result of the knowledge that when that slowdown becomes apparent we don't really know where the Fed/Bent put is but there is one we know it's about 135 on the on the bond volatility index as Groman has pointed out and that at some point they will have to cut but it's interesting I just checked the CME um you know website uh CME Fed futures website I mean the meeting I guess tomorrow, right? Or two days from now. Yeah. Is calling for a 2.4% chance of a cut. So, they're not going to cut this time. He may say some dovish stuff, but they're not going to cut. What I what I found even more interesting is June, which is one year out, it's still only a 27% chance of a cut. So, by July, you know, there's a more like a, you know, 50 60% chance of a cut. So, I was just looking at the same data, Larry. Yeah. 75% chance that by July 30th, finally, the Fed wakes up and gets going, right? Yeah. So, so as always, they're they're behind the curve, you know, in terms of cutting. Um, but you know, that is what it is. I mean, Vulker, I mean, that's a slip. Paul wants to be Paul Vulker and he doesn't want to be seen as the guy Arthur Burns, the guy who caved into the president, you know, pushing him. So, he's probably he needs political cover to actually get aggressively looser. But as David pointed out earlier, even when he gets aggressively looser, once if if we set this in motion, if we set a downturn in motion, you know, where I think the Sent and Trump haven't entirely thought through what they're doing is, or maybe they have, and they're just willing to live with it, hoping that in four years it'll be better is that, you know, yeah, it starts off with, you know, the financials going down and Wall Street gets hurt and people a lot of people who voted for Trump don't own stocks because the stocks are owned by the top. Um, but but guess what? They all have jobs and you know if Ford starts making less cars then layoff you know they they lay off people on the assembly line. So um you know we're kind of we're in an uncertain period right? Can interject for one sec Larry. I mean, I think the thing that's interesting is boy, what a tough position Pal is in right now, right? Because he's looking at Portal Long Beach data down 64% almost knowing it's going to be like COVID where you're going to have shortages of a lot of goods perhaps, right? It'll depend on how many necessities. So that therefore your inflation rates in July or August hypothetically could start spiking at the same time then the job layoff starts spiking at the same time. like he's going to have some really tough bridges to cross out in July and August. I agree. The only thing that's really helped him is the price of oil. Oil has come in a good bit and that's been a positive and that's a big part of the inflation component. But I look as we all know the inflation numbers aren't accurate anyway. So so it's a you know it's kind of it's a tough situation that they find themselves in and it's tough for all of us investors if we're trying to get all the zigzags uh when you know when you go through a sovereign debt crisis which is what I believe we're in. Um, you know, there there going to be times you look really smart and times you look really stupid. I mean, we felt pretty smart when it went Bitcoin went from 58 to 109 or 108, you know, and we felt a little less smart when it checked back to 75, but you know, I'm pretty sure the next run is going to take it to 140. And I think I believe that next run is is in this year in this calendar year. How much um that was a great recap. something that comes to mind and I'm curious on because I know you guys have been fighting this fight a lot longer than we have in explaining to individuals what what value is and what money is, right? I always anchor back to uh the John Purart Morgan um you know gold is money and everything else is credit and I think we all probably agree here gold and bitcoin are money and everything else is credit. um this whipsawing, how much of it can persist before the market and our friends and family start to realize the emperor has no clothes? And and the reason I bring that up is everything you just described in a chart um that our friend Provian Bull had highlighted. It was about 20% of GDP um you know was wiped out and then brought back with a couple Trump tweets uh back, you know, a few weeks ago. And you just wonder, you look at that, you know, you think about your retirement and your capital and you see that just completely get wiped out in 48 hours and come back and you start to wonder like what is actually happening here and do I want to rethink everything that I thought about how I've constructed a portfolio. Yeah, that's really a great point, Michael. And in our most recent quarterly letter, we had a chart that showed that consumer sentiment is more negative than it's been in 35 years. So, you know, obviously people notice this stuff, right? I mean, um, now right now the happy talk is on and and maybe maybe it's all going to be okay. That's kind of what the market is saying. I know there are a lot of people calling for new all-time highs and it's all going to recover. Uh, we don't hold that view. We we think that, you know, this is going to leave a mark. I mean, that there's a lot of debate about the the angle of the downturn. Uh, David and I debate about that. I think it's going to be pretty pretty imminent and pretty severe. I think David thinks it takes longer and you know reasonable minds can disagree on on the pace but um you know the the you know when you rattle people as much as they got rattled with this market move you know I don't think things just go back to status quo we're in deflation it's all good you know economy is going to grow again I I think just to build on that I mean like Larry and I what we've talked about is you know like I'm looking at credit markets and trying to see all are we seeing you know pain picking up in the credit default swap market or in spread market. And the answer is a little bit, but it's really like wall of credit, you know, think of all the junk bonds that need to be refinanced. It's like 2026 27 is when a lot of that stuff's coming due. Um, but like it's tricky, right? Because like as Larry will say, like this is so much more on steroids though in terms of leverage the whole global economy. Not at this at the sovereign level, at the junk bond market level in the leverage bios that have been done in the valuations of the tech stocks in the fact that the Citadels, Millenniums and Jane Streets are levering up 50 to1 doing basis trades and you know like at any given moment I mean it reminds me it reminds me of the late 90s right where the Asian contagion in 97 you thought that that was going to start dumping the whole global economy but it could bounce back and then July of 98 Russian crisis and then long-term capital management, but the Fed bails it out and it bounces back and you get the 1999 blowoff top and then by 2000 it became apparent. And that's the only point I make to Larry like I I just think we could potentially be in one of these 98 periods where we're sucking kind of the final pee buyers in before things fall apart. Um, but there's a there's just so much risk in the system is I think there's a lot of leverage everywhere. And we just it just pointed out to me by a good friend over the weekend that, you know, even the paper Bitcoin stuff has grown. I mean, he was pointing to how now we're trading 14.5 billion dollars a day of Binance paper, you know, paper Bitcoin futures. And so for those who are kind of wondering why the Bitcoin price hasn't go up, there's part of your explanation. But people are going he said that from his contacts in the industry there are people shorting paper Bitcoin as a proxy for being long the the triple Q's or the NASDAQ and so they just view them as a linked trade and they can you know they can be long the stocks and short Bitcoin of course as we all know that's the wrong trade to make but they should be just the opposite of that but you know and and and that's why I think that's why when it does break there really is a potential for a God candle I mean there you know um at some point that paper will need to be covered. Um, and you know, we that's why, you know, some of the the numbers that are thrown out there are not crazy because there's not a lot of Bitcoin available on the exchanges. Yeah, it's kind of similar to I guess what's happening. Maybe we'll get into it with the the gold markets and and a lot of the physical being settled in China. But before going there, just curious on the the other side to um the stock market not being in the red to end the year like the the consensus or the common discussion points are tax receipts not being able to support um and also uh the deleveraging that you referenced. if you have a bond market predicated on a lot of the corporate bonds and being in the green not being able to support that long term um for the Fed to inject liquidity and make sure that we stay up until the right. That's the common way that it's described like what would what would cause or what would be the alternative to what you guys are describing that we end up in the red in the S&P. You're sorry Mike just stay alternative where where the S&P actually rallies between here and your end or No, so the opposite. So you guys are making the case that we're going to end up in the red like uh in the stock market to end the year. And I feel like the common narrative is that at least in like these circles that the Fed has to step in because from uh tax receipts being able to support the debt also with the bond market or uh corporate bonds like not being able to be sustained, you have a mass deleveraging if you start having you know equities trade at negatives. That's the I think the knowledge that's explained. What what's what are we missing on that side uh for it to end up in the the red at the end of the year? You want to go first, Larry? Yeah. I mean, I I think I think there's an interesting question, which is do you do we go down slow or do we go down fast? I mean, if we go down fast and hard enough and something really breaks, you know, we're back in a March of 2020 scenario and maybe we get a correlation of one, maybe Bitcoin comes in, gold comes in as well, maybe not as much. Um, and then the Fed will be forced to respond. I mean, if you know, the things we look at, you know, with eagle eye are, you know, the 10-year rate, the 30-year rate, the dollar, you know, Bitcoin and gold pricing and the stock market and, you know, if suddenly if there's not and and it appears that liquidity is getting very tight. We're seeing that. I mean, the Fed even signaled that because they took the QT program from 25 billion a month down to five and said it was nothing, but that's something. And um, you know, and we've we've had several Fed governors say, "We've got the tools. were ready to respond, trying to calm the waters. And you know, everybody's trying to quote unquote calm the waters, but um you know, if if it really does break and breaks hard, you know, if the move index goes back up to 135 and through it, they're going to be forced to do something. Um and uh you know, we don't know what that is, but we know that that that will be inflationary and it will involve getting more money into the system. I mean, look, they're trying all kinds of things. I mean, they're probably leaning on foreigners to maybe term out the debt for longer terms in exchange for tar, you know, tariff relief. I mean, they're, you know, they're doing all kinds of things to try and keep our debt in in a good position, but I think more and more people are becoming aware of the fact that it's not. I mean, big data point came out this weekend. I tweeted about it this morning. We're all aware of it. It Warren Buffett said, you know, we're potentially looking at a currency crisis here. And you know that's he's about as you know pro-American, pro- fiat, pro the system as it gets. And yet he even he is willing to the Overton window has recognized it to the point where he will talk about it now. Um and said you know a currency collapse is not good for anybody you know. So um there there signs to us that that's kind of what we're looking at. But I suppose I think David's view would be you know well we can maybe just kind of keep kicking the can along and the stock market will trend down but it won't be a disaster. I mean, to me, that's actually the hardest game for Powell to play. I mean, Powell wants to time himself out. I think he's done early next year. Um, and he's I think he's hoping he can just make it there without having to do another big print. But if if things break, and I think they are close to breaking, it feels that way to me, and that's what the price of gold is telling you, they are going to do another big print. And I think the the problem is that at that point, I'm not sure the print helps the stock market. I mean, you know, the print in 2008, the print in 2000, you know, and even well, the print in 2020 eventually helped the stock market. Took a little while, but it did. So, that that's kind of how I see it. I think the only thing go real quick on uh David's note or Larry's note on uh talk about Overton window changes like there's I'm pulling up a quote or yeah, quote from Warren Buffett's recent u shareholder meeting said the natural course of government is to make the currency worth less over time. It's kind of an interesting way to describe what uh you know the the solution for rat poisoning you know what he's called for the past I feel like 10 plus years in Bitcoin. Yeah. You know it's I was it was funny. I just had another conversation with a friend of Larry and mine named Walter Kitt. And uh we were talking this morning about that and the recap of the Bergkshire Hathway annual meeting on the weekend. And so Walter pointed out to me you know it was Walter's view. I I I don't think he might as be going public with but you know his view is like look at in the past when you know Ted at who works for Buffett at uh Berkshire Hathaway you runs the money um along with Todd Combmes that you know I'm assuming it was Ted he he bought Bareric gold but they held it for like a month and then sold it and Walter's postulation is well maybe the government taps Buffett on the shoulder and says hey we don't like you doing that because you're signaling to the world that you know there's a crisis but to Larry's point I think Buffett was quite clear this weekend in perhaps his final annual meeting that you know what we're talking about and and well and and and he's a really smart guy and you know I mean I don't know what his health is at some said he didn't look that great at that meeting but you know getting out right now wouldn't be a crazy thing for him to consider doing you know what I mean um to me it's a real signpost that you know we're we're in it and we're very we're getting very near the end when a guy like him is talking about it you you know, Dallio has been talking about others. It's it's now widely known that there's a real fundamental problem. I mean, he he cited Stein's law. I mean, I have a chapter in my book on Stein's law, which is if something cannot go on forever, it will end. And, you know, he he's pointing out that, you know, the the the finances of the US government are fubar, you know. Yeah. And it's not clear. I mean, there's there's no way to fix that without somebody enduring pain. Now policy choices and markets are going to determine who the somebody is. But you know it it the issue is coming to a head it appears to me. And just just to just to finish this thought of a conversation around markets this year, Michael, the question you asked and again the way I think about it is to me it's quite clear that the economic data is getting bad and and I can I'd be stunned if the stock market is not lower in the next four months to reflect that. Again, whether it's Chase card data or container volume like something's up. Um secondly, you know, to predict where stocks will be in the next nine months, it really does simply boil down to always every year, tell me what earnings growth is doing. And the S&P 500's looking for 13%ish earnings growth. That's a lot if we're about to enter that recession. Can these companies play defense? Like in my opinion, like an Apple probably can play defense by just having Chinese manufactured goods and about 40% of all Apple products are made in China. I'm sure they're working hard to get Singapore deals and Vietnam deals where Chinese products are moving to those other places getting stamped so that they're not Chinese-made goods. You just have to overmanufacture them a little bit more and then boom, you can send that to the US or Europe. I'm sure that games like that will be played. The question is how much does that hit earnings growth this year? To me that's going to be the governor on where we end the year on stocks. But to be sure this economic data for the next four months is getting diceier by the week. Um and I think that's going to be the challenge for stocks. One last point, you know, as Buffett talks and as Larry's talked about in his book, I think our thesis is that all roads lead to gold and Bitcoin here immediately. And we'll get into this. So, but to stay on point, like just the Fed is going to be forced to come back with more large assets. Deficits will increase dur during a recession. Uh, and ultimately, you know, your sound money assets are are just so undervalued. Whether it's looking at Dow to gold ratios, whether it's looking at, you know, one gold, silver, and Bitcoin are only 1.4% of global financial assets. In 1980, those were at 8%. Gold and silver at that time. sound money assets were over eight to nine percent of global financial assets like like just everything's coming this way as as the print happens and and as Larry says when the big print happens it's going to be apparent to every institutional investor in the world that they are trapped and they have no choice and you're going to see a massive rally. The bond market is going to really throw up at some point because as Groman says they are the sucker at the table. I mean a 30-year Treasury bond is just not going to hold any value compared to what you put into it. And um and that's going to become a problem. I mean, as we all know, they've got a roll between 7 and 9 trillion this year. Unfortunately, the 2-year rates are, you know, staying relatively tame. Although, even the two-year rate would imply that, you know, the Fed should be cutting, right? Yeah. No, those are all fantastic points. I want to get into them in a bit. One thing I wanted to go back to was the um Warren Buffett comments and David, it ties into what you said about the Barrett gold position that was was it a tap on the shoulder to not to not uh worry investors about the coming debt crisis and currency crisis. But I think this ties into and I want to hear your take because you guys know better than I would. So the trade policy ties into quite a bit of being pro- gold, pro-ne neutral reserve assets in the sense that gold is one of the few things that's exempted from tariffs. And I believe both of you also Luke Groman have spoken to the idea of the financial asset window closing similar to how the gold window closed over 50 years ago. And so if the US government is looking to disincentivize recycling of dollars into the US treasury market into tech stocks and wants to reward recycling of capital into gold and let's say physical assets, manufacturing assets, what what is that signaling to investors that are that are that should be paying attention to that? Yeah, I think yeah, Bent and Trump have talked about what they're going to do and Bant Bent is, you know, last June he said, you know, the monetary system's out of balance. We need a reset. There needs to be a Brett and Woods. I want to be at the table. And I think, you know, when you when you look at what we've got here in the in the Triffith dilemma sense, the dollar is overvalued because of the dilemma and and therefore gold and the dollar compete and gold has been historically undervalued traditionally because of paper gold. I think they've kind of stopped with the paper gold games. I mean, JP Morgan, you know, moved a lot of their gold back to vault it themselves. Um, I think there's a decent chance, a decent bet, and Groman and others have made the argument, and I kind of agree that all this gold being shipped back to the United States, they might be refilling Fort Knox. I mean, from my context in the gold industry, and having done this for a long time, I've heard a lot of chatter and a lot of seen a lot of evidence that would suggest that the Johnson administration shipped gold out of Fort Knox to help the London gold pool in the 60s. And he expected it to be returned and it wasn't. So, Fort Knox clearly has gold in it, but it probably doesn't have all the gold that we think. And maybe maybe that's what's put the bid under gold. You know, it's a sovereign bid. If not, it's certainly a lot of very smart wealthy investors have gotten aware become aware of the fact that you know we're in a sovereign debt crisis and they're saying you know what I just assume have gold uh as my neutral reserve asset you know versus a US treasury and I guess just to build on that I you know whether Trump and them are just trying to again to keep it really simple in my own mind if the goal is simply look we win this election in November of 2024 we have a mandate to rebuild build America and to change some of the course of the direction of where the country was going with woke and DEI type stuff that they're changing. You see the university budget cuts as an example. Um if it's really that simple, they need the dollar to decline and gold trying to drive a bid in gold is one great way for them to do that. Um and and as Larry said, you know, you see JP Morgan sending 4.8 8 billion of gold back to the United States here, I believe, in the first quarter. Um, you've seen other antidotes to Larry's point, whether Fort Knox might not have as much gold. That Germany twice in the last 20 years has asked the United States for some of the gold that they parked here after World War II. U they've asked for that gold back. They want to take it back into their own coffers. And uh, in each case, it took like several weeks and they never more years. Yeah. Yeah. And and and they never got the original gold back that they had placed here in terms of the invoice it labels on it and all that. So, um you know, there's a lot of question marks and but I think it it could be as simple as just like look, let's depreciate the dollar and rebuild America. If that means the stock market has to decline a bit and Americans have to consume less and become savers again like they were in the 1950s in this country, so be it because we need to buy Treasury bonds here. Um let's come over the top. I think they're thinking and and approve things like stable coins with a stable coin bill because they buy T bills. Stable coins do. Let's let's lower the SLR ratio for the banks and deregulate the banks so they can buy more treasuries. There's our answer to the shortage of foreign buyers that aren't buying the bonds like they used to because again since the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the foreigners have really aggressively dumped Treasury bonds and if we're not consuming as much going forward, that was that was really that was really an inflection point. I mean up until that point in time there had been a strong correlation between real interest rates um and you know and inflation and and gold and uh you know you you've seen those two now separate I mean um you know real interest rates have bifurcated from um from the gold price and uh you know what it tells you is that people really recognize that gold is is you know sound money and it's you know it's a big deep sound money market and you know Bitcoin is sounder money and better over the longer run but it's not as developed yet. So okay um yeah it it's to me it's it's it's very clear that what's happening here is a sovereign debt crisis and u you know I you know we don't know what they have up their sleeves you know to try to keep the system going. I mean, one other thing that I think is interesting, somebody pointed out was that the Brookings Institute, you know, put out a paper talking about how they would maybe preempt, the Fed would maybe preemptively give swap lines to some of the large hedge funds that are players in the basis trade. And the basis trade is a mechanism that the government uses to sell, you know, debt to people in the hedge fund industry who are scalping a small difference between current price and future price. And they lever that up very heavily. And uh you know the basis trade blew up in 2020 and Ken Griffin got bailed out because Bernaki was on his board of adviserss and I'm sure he made the call you know to to um you know to the Fed and said yeah to Powell and said hey you know if you don't bail these guys out I mean you know Citadel I I think is you know 20% of total volume it's a huge number 25% of all stock market volume goes through Citadel that's sort them out is Ken Griffin himself. Yeah. And so so you know they are trying behind the scenes to keep the plumbing going and to deal with this you know the Stein's law of you know the debt getting larger than the underlying GDP and money supply but and they're going to pull out every imaginable trick in the book and and and call it and say it's not QE but but ultimately they have to do some form of QE. They have to print more money. They have to inject liquidity in the system. I mean there have been talk I mean I think Roman pointed this out that you know arguably they're doing foreign QE like okay Japan you you know you buy more of our bonds and we'll give you lowcost swap lines to do it with so that you know I mean you know the our bond market is the vulnerability it really is and that move index tells you you know and the 135 there's a great chart of the move index that shows that the kind of the 135 level is the level at which trouble really begins to develop. Um excuse me just one second. Yeah. And I just to take the baton from Larry there. I I think that you know again I think what to what we're describing I guess is this is a highly complex system and the Trump administration could possibly pull you know this thing off. But we worry that it takes like going to get a needle in a hay stack to land the plane where you get the external revenue um service to be the real large payer of taxes and we're cutting taxes here in the US and the supply side economics takes off but the tariff thing plays off. I in my opinion I think even they're starting to realize that's going to be difficult and you know they're they're trying to do brain surgery here with a hammer and a chisel when you need an intuitive surgical robot to do it because in a complex system what you thought was an independent variable ends up turning on you quickly and is really a dependent variable and stuff falls apart and you saw that in 97 and 98 with the Asian contagion leading to some Russian issues that then leads to long-term capital management. And I think that that's the point. We just think something will go wrong during this brain surgery process which forces the Fed to have to come in massively with fire trucks and bazookas or whatever your analogy is and really just kind of bail this thing out. And I I think it's just a matter of when how is that three months? Is that a year and a half? I don't know. But like we're we're highly confident in the setup for gold and Bitcoin and how these things are going to play out. Yeah. when you take a couple years. I mean, I we have like 100% confidence in the shorter term it's a little harder to gauge, but it it appears as though we're getting we're getting to the point that's really important, you know. Could I ask you both your thoughts on the So I I pulled up a chart while we while we were talking about China gold uh or sorry China verse US this monetary reshuffleling and Larry you made the point that per perhaps there is less uh gold in Fort Knox than reported right so I pulled this chart 8,000 tons reported in America China is at 2,000 and so there's this interesting dynamic where I feel like I've heard heard or read about China under reporting their allocation to gold and then absolutely maybe the US is over reporting. So what do we make of this chart and actually the repricing of gold? How do you think about that between us and China? By the way, that's one of the great weaknesses of gold. It's pretty hard to verify, right? You can say you have it, but you unless it's been audited, which ours hasn't been since the Eisenhower administration. You don't really know. We know for a fact that the China number is way too low. And how do we know that? Um because a number of guys on Twitter and a number of gold analysts have followed the flows from Switzerland. Switzerland is the major gold refiner. If you're a gold miner, the odds are very good you send your dory to Switzerland and it gets refined into bars and coins and so forth. And so and Switzerland reports where they export their gold to and they've reported massive amounts of gold to exported massive amounts of gold to China. And also China is a large minor of gold themselves and they don't allow any gold to be exported out of their country. So, it's hard to tell exactly what portion of it is official and what portion of it goes to the Chinese people. I mean, I recall back in the earlier 2000s, the Chinese government was encouraging the people to buy gold. You know, they they wanted to make their country strong and they thought gold was the best currency. I mean, look, this hasn't this whole issue hasn't been lost on China. They were writing papers about this in the early 2000s. in 2015, you know, a Chinese uh central banker said something along the lines of, you know, that that fiat currency was in trouble and and that gold was the right solution. Um, and so, you know, there I've seen estimates as high as 40,000 tons of gold at official storage in in China. I think that's too high, but I'm sure it's more than 8,000. It's probably 20,000. Um, you know, that the data coming out of Switzerland suggests that strongly. So, and and you know, if we were to reset to a gold standard, the number could be it's like where do you where do you start? I mean, we're still at very very low numbers. If you take, you know, total gold value as against central bank balance sheets, I mean, we're in the 12% area. And, you know, in history, I mean, when the Fed was established, the rule was the gold balance had to be 40% of the outstanding money supply. That was actually Sir Isaac Newton's rule back in when he set up the Bank of England back in 1698 or whatever. But um you know so we we'd have a you know gold gold is in my view got to go to 5 to 10,000 that's just like jacks for openers and it to really in a crisis in a full-fledged crisis it could go much much higher per ounce. So it's still extremely undervalued and and of course if gold is undervalued then Bitcoin by extension is even more undervalued because Bitcoin still hasn't even reached the total size of of the value of the gold market and Bitcoin is a superior asset to gold because it's got less you know it's got less flow compared to its stock. So yeah, it's it's you can see it coming and it it could be quite traumatic and and that's frankly that's why I wrote the book because I just feel like so few people see this and you know average Americans everybody is going to get hurt by it and the only way that one can protect oneself is to have these sound money assets. Well, and the other thing is, you know, there's definitely correlation with the fact that the BIS is allowing gold to be a tier one capital asset. Now, it used to just be largely dollars and treasuries. So, that that's been part of the big driver of all these eastern central banks and southern central banks buying it. In addition to then the bricks where you know the Shanghai gold exchange was established to help the bricks country you know country blocks led by Russia and China to create their own trading system. Think how we have NAFTA or NATO as an example and and as they set that up I think the goal was to make sure each country that was at the table of the bricks has 5% of the reserves in gold. So between the BIS tier one capital asset of gold starting to be the thing that people buy instead of treasuries or dollars combined with the bricks phenomenon and then as Larry said the Russian invasion of Ukraine and us taking Russia's gold all these things have confluenced to make this run on gold and start slowly blowing up what has been a big paper gold short market. Uh, and again, we've talked about this in the past in other places, but the the London gold pool blew up in the late 60s, 67,68 time frame. Kind of reminds us of that a little bit. And and it was a lot easier to have paper gold out there shorts because theoretically people aren't coming calling for that physical gold every day. It's a lot harder to have paper Bitcoin short out there because people, you know, can turn on a dime on that thing and it can tighten up very quickly. So, I'll pause there. So, I'll own it, but I I I think that, you know, there's a lot of interesting things going on in both the gold space and ultimately in Bitcoin. Yeah. So, talk throw throw something out. Um, so is there do you guys see a an opportunity where they can thread the needle of recapitalizing this deleveraging with gold's repricing? And then also the thing that we I know we're going to get to but haven't fully talked about is like I think of Bitcoin today as like you know uh like putty like just not very valuable in their toolkit but it's going to turn like liquify into like gold where it can truly kind of get in integrated into all these different assets we're talking about that potentially going to you know delever and the angle I'm coming at it from is um we can go back from its inception to like post financial crisis but more than likely would like to just go back five years and we think about MSDR come about in 2020 and the financialization of you know really financing bringing capital markets BTC to the US. You have the ETFs in 23 which it's something I've naturally thought about but Groman's the only other person I've heard talk about how it was a little inorganic on how the ETFs were finally approved. They put the overhang of the GBTC kind of lawsuit, but it was really always a little strange that the ETFs with Coinbase and knowing institutional capital allocators, they don't really want to face Coinbase for a very long time and then they just were okay with everyone perking all the you know majority of the ETFs sitting there. you have um you know caner and so you have MSTR then you have the ETFs you have caner or not caner but you have tether in between that sucking down treasury markets for uh or demand that's growing caner is getting involved the gold repric or gold's you know you show those charts where we're repatriating gold to the US and then uh integrated in all that is you you mentioned the BIS tier one capital in the US the relaxing of custody rules and this knowledge that you're going to have to put, you know, some amount of treasuries next to BTC that you could see like this playbook forming of the thing we haven't talked about is Bitcoin at 500k or a million dollars where it actually starts to like help in deleveraging whether it's bonds u uh equity markets and other assets where it seems like the one angle where there's something that could help in rele dele help in the deleveraging that we know these guys are smart. We know they have a playbook. They've signaled that there's big moves for for Bitcoin to be had. And then we're seeing the the last part in all this is there's the playbook that Sailor's been out there. He reminds me a little bit of the reverse SPF. Like if SPF was the the black hat, Sailor's the white hat, and saying I'm going to open the playbook and I'm going to show everyone, you know, globally, but really us with the capital markets, bring your Bitcoin here to the uh you know, publicly traded companies and this will help in that story of relevaging and what you referenced in the growth kind of decreasing with this recession. Just anything there that you see could actually play out and helping thread this needle where you don't have this grand crisis. Obviously, they'll have to print. They're probably setting up for that. But where gold and Bitcoin can help the system kind of stay afloat. Larry, you want to go first? Yeah. I mean, I think, look, I think Vent gets it. I mean, he he was he said he was a gold bug, big, large gold holder. It's 40% of his portfolio. I think he believes in Bitcoin. Um, you know, I mean, the bit bonds are a great idea. Judy Shelton has talked about a gold back bond. I mean I think I think you know what what needs to happen and it may not be where they go first because you know governments tend to resist the right solution at first but what needs to happen is these neutral reserve assets need to be much higher in price compared to the government debt and the GDP needs to be much larger compared to the government debt and you know said he's not going to revalue gold but you know governments I mean until it's denied three times you don't know if it's true right I mean I I think they they could do a gold reval at some point and what they should do and they need to do and it would also involve a Bitcoin reval just so just so we're clear on that that so people know I mean it's it's for two reasons you and I have talked about with that one is so that you can repair and and improve the balance sheet at the Fed to be able to do more Fed help you need to inflate your way out of this debt to GDP problem right they need inflation exactly and and it needs to be sadly it needs to be pretty damn high inflation and it's going to be painful. There's just no way to avoid that. But, you know, as I argued in the book, um, you know, do we want to endure, you know, slow drip pain for many, many years trying to hold this broken system together or do we want to rip the band-aid off and do a reset and but know that on a go forward basis, you know, we're not going to have fiat money, you know, plaguing us anymore because we're going to be on a sound money standard. Um, you know, but it but the the problem, the thing that makes it tricky here is that this isn't China. we don't have a dictator, you know, we have a democracy and um you know, it's you need political cover to do those kinds of things. Um having said that though, I mean, here's Trump, he was elected a second time. They tried to kill the guy a couple of times. I mean, he may be just be thinking to himself, "The hell with it. I'm going to do what's what I believe is right, and you know, let's let the chips fall where they may." I mean, that's that's entirely possible that that's his thought process. I don't know. and and that's Groman's case for the ETF approval is ultimately if you have to inflate the currency you're oning consumers have to hold assets that are going to outpace that and that's the idea behind opening up the exposure for individuals to get it and then it feels like the cousin of that would be even in the public markets you know what we're seeing with corporate treasury companies adopting Bitcoin like this is if you squint you can see how almost every company ends up holding BTC and that naturally helps and kind of keep their valuation above. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, David and I very much subscribe to the power law as a good model for looking at how the price is going to behave in the future. It's in the book as well. I mean, there's a 97% correlation going back on a log log basis. But I think eventually the power law will get broken to the upside as a massive Gresham's law event occurs when it becomes completely clear. We all know the government's trapped. We all know they have to print their way out. We all know there's inflation coming. But we are a sub a very very small subset of financial the financial world and the whole financial world doesn't know that but I believe they're going to know that at some point and when they do you know the fiat currency arguably you know massively it either totally fails in hyperinflation or more realistically it fails badly through very high inflation for a bunch of years right I was gonna say if you guys could pull up that chart that I have with the 1970s volume because I it kind of speaks to this point I want to kind of walk through it and and just to point to Larry's point on that parallel theory. It would project that Bitcoin prices compound at 28% a year. Uh which would get you to about 330,000 a coin I think in 2030 and a million a coin in 2035. Um given the compounding and but as Larry said, if stuff falls apart, you could overshoot that to five standard deviations above that at any way along the path. But if you have that chart with this Yeah, this is a busy chart, but I just want to kind of walk through because this is how I think about it. Let me explain it. The the white line, this is 1968 through79. That period of go the gold line is gold bullion itself. We'll get to that in a minute. The white line is the S&P 500 and these these red and greens are just kind of the draw downs. We'll walk through it chronologically. The blue line is the Fed funds. So, let's walk through 1968, the Vietnam War, the Great Society, stuff like Social Security, Medicare, there was inflation. Incidentally, by the way, Buffett closed his fund in and around this time kind of like he's getting out now perhaps, but um I think that has more to do with age now. But but if you look what happened, look at how volatile first off on the S&P, the white line, look how volatile, down 38% there in that 1970 beginning of the recession and then followed by the red line red line up 75% from 70 through 72, then down 48% 73 through 74, then a rip of up 72% 74 through 76. Well, what was going on? Look at the Fed funds rate in blue. You know, the Fed was kind of cutting rates into that recession here in 72, but again, they're behind the curve. Remember, we said when the Fed cuts, markets usually are declining. So, be careful what you wish for. If people buying stocks today think that the Fed's cuts this fall are going to help them, usually that's in the middle of a recession. And then they were having to raise rates there in the 7374 because the inflation was spiking. Look at that 48% draw down then from that Fed raise. And then they cut rates too soon historic as we learned, right? They cut and and again there went the stock market as they were cutting and then Vulker comes along finally and begins ultimately him taking Fed funds to 10% but he ultimately took it much higher near 20 in 1980. I point that out because one, good god, the whiplash of the volatility in the stock market in the 70s and be careful and and the Fed being behind the curve and the Fed didn't know what the hell was going on. And then look at gold though, the steady compounder up 8x during that period. The miners up even more. Our view is that gold and silver and Bitcoin will be that type of steady window. And I point this out because I think what happens is when you get this inflationary period, just slowly but surely, institutional money realizes, boy, we got to have some more exposure to the inflation hedges like gold and Bitcoin and sound money. And and we're at 1.4% approximately today. Gold, silver, and Bitcoin is global financial assets. Gold was less than 1% in 1970. It ended up again over 8% by the end of that decade. We think I think something similar like this will play out with a with the Fed kind of unsure what the hell they're doing, whether they should be raising rates and being tight with policy on QT, whether they should be cutting and being behind the curve. I think your stock market, like you've seen here in the last two months, can be volatile, but I think your sound money assets, and we're we're there today, where again, gold, you look at Bank of America survey on institutional holdings of gold, it's it's less than 1%. you look at same thing with Bitcoin, it's even far less and and you're just we're kind of in these early 70s moments right now and it's just a matter of how things play out. But but to be clear, it's a much more leveraged system. Debt to GDP was 35% back here. It's 120% plus now. You didn't have 50 to1 levered basis trade hedge funds out there. You didn't have the junk bond market that has done what it's done to leverage. This is going to happen faster, quicker, more volatile. Um, but I I think the 1970s are worth studying because, you know, these type of movies will probably be seen again. Yeah, that's an excellent, excellent analysis, David. I didn't quite realize just how volatile the markets were. And it's particularly kind of funny how Bitcoin is often discredited for its volatility. But this is at that time in the 70s US equity market was probably in line in terms of its volatility profile that Bitcoin is today. I'm curious what will need to happen in terms of that shift where you mentioned what's the number right now 1.4% 4% approximately if we use around a 10 to 12 trillion gold value or call it a two trillion Bitcoin and silver's less than a trillion you're you're out of 900 trillion of global financial assets on Jesse Meyers chart you know so it's it's about one call it one to one and a half okay I'm I'm curious in particular around the Bitcoin since we've we've talked really in great detail about gold and one thing I I am still struggling struggling to parse out is just the relationship between China and the United States and their gold reserves because Larry mentioned perhaps it's 20,000 tons, maybe it's more. The reported number is 2,000. So, it's potentially 10x or more what's reported. And then the United States has 8,000 tons reported in Fort Knox. And so, you have these two competing superpowers at the table for the monetary reset. But then you have Bitcoin which has been dismissed by China at least to our knowledge and they banned mining in 2021 and the United States hasn't been that uh supportive of Bitcoin over the past couple years. But that tune has totally shifted with the Trump administration and now Bitcoin the narrative is starting to shift in favor of it to be a riskoff asset to be a geopolitical hedge. So, how much of an edge could the United States have over China and other adversarial countries if they continue to take a more Bitcoin forward stance? What are your thoughts there? I think a big one. I think that um you know, the establishment of the strategic reserve is huge. You know, but I don't don't consider the Chinese to be stupid. I think they've probably changed their view on Bitcoin. They may be mining it. They may even be accumulating it. We know that Putin gets it. um and they're they they are mining it and probably keeping it. I I think it's only a matter of time till everyone realizes that it's the winning asset, but it is safe to say that until recently, I think China had made a big bet on gold and they were very negative on Bitcoin. You know, as you can see, as a result of the Bitcoin, you know, they threw the miners out. Yeah. And I I think just to add on, I think that, you know, I I I think there's many reasons why you need to have as much gold and and and Bitcoin and silver as possible for your governments because when you get into these type of inflationary periods andor something more like Wymer where it's global this time because this isn't just the US, this is global 50 plus years of leverage. You could argue 100 years, but 50. And to have sound neutral reserve assets, sound money assets is critical on the other side of any potential crisis because then you can actually have people that have faith in your Chinese yuan or US dollar. That's why there's a little bit of an arms race to come grab these sound money assets. Um I don't know if you want to go ahead here, Jackson, this No, just pulling that up to support what you were describing and Dave and Larry were in terms of just amount of debt compared to gold and Bitcoin. Yeah. And it's just tiny, right? Relative to money supply and relative to that global debt and and and again, as we talked about earlier on the Jesse Meyers chart of of of relative to global financial assets, Bitcoin, gold, and silver are teeny weeny. And and I think that what happens is just as you get those tipping points, we the Bitcoiners and gold people that people kind of laugh at at a cocktail party like, "Yeah, you're missing the mag seven, Ron." But it's like no suddenly we be this our stuff becomes the interesting assets over the course of five years and because all that institutional money is slow to come in. Think of the 300 trillion of bond money that will not want to own T bills uh that are yielding 4 to 9% let's say because inflation's running hotter. Think of even stable coins that people are buying that are yielding four to five 7%. Those are basically just bonds. People aren't going to park in stable coins. are going to move rapidly out of stable coins into Bitcoin and gold itself. And so I think sovereign nations have to have those neutral reserve assets to so that people have some belief and they have some credibility in any crisis andor on a global reset of their money supply. Um and so we're just still early. I mean all of us Bitcoin and gold people were way early. I Yeah, I think when this thing gets rolling people are going to be stunned. I mean just absolutely stunned. It's going to be the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world. And it's because, you know, there's a fundamental, you know, paradigm change taking place. And, you know, thank I mean, thankfully, Bitcoiners and gold people are are early to the party. We get it. Some of us were way too early. We suffered for the last 30 years. But, but the point is, well, the Bitcoiners haven't suffered only, you know, much at all. We've just had draw downs from time to time. But, but the point is that, you know, that the times there are changing. I mean, you know, the the the Mag 7 um you know, is is massively overvalued. They're all massively overvalued and uh um you know, as a result, um people are going to realize that these assets perform better. I mean, the thing that will continue and I think make Bitcoin and gold take off is that they all investments compete with all other investments. And to be frank, that the US stock market has done pretty well for a long long time with an occasional draw down. It's been the smart thing to do has been to buy the dip. But if we now have, you know, tariffs, supply chain disruptions, I mean, just things like labor costs, you know, the the long shoreman got a a six-year 10% a year wage increase deal, you know, last fall. So, um, you know, the the the good times of increasing margins and labor losing, in my view, that's changing and that has negative implications for the stock market. Big negative implications. And, you know, investors chase performance. U Bitcoin is the best performing asset you know of the last you know 15 16 years and and actually if you look from 2000 to present gold has crushed you know the stock market as well and so um as as it becomes clear that the stock market is not a good place to store wealth people are going to look around and say what's working you know and gold's working bitcoin's working gosh why don't I have some assets there I mean one of the things I think is really interesting I think will happen at some point I talked about a friend this the other day how long will it be for some poor investor who went to his financial advisor and said, "Hey, I should buy some Bitcoin." And the financial adviser shout all over it, right? Said, "No, that's a really stupid idea." And the investor says, "Great. I'm going to get an attorney and I'm going to sue you for the loss, you know, because you misadvised me, you know, because this is the best performing financial asset in the history of of, you know, of investing. And you told me it was rat poison. Do you know what I mean?" And and I mean and at that point in time, you know, every financial adviser is going to realize, holy you know, we got to be smart about this. We got to we, you know, you've got to own some of this. I mean, the implications of that are just unbelievable. I mean, it's still, you know, it's hard for people to think of because they still look at it. Now, all my friends say, "Well, gosh, you bought it for 10,000, it's, you know, 85 or wherever it is now, 90 something." Um, you know, I'm too late. But what they don't understand is is Michael's comment that it's going up forever. Laura, hope you're enjoying the episode uh as much as I enjoyed recording it with David and Larry. Just real quick, if you're uh getting pretty bowled up on the future of Bitcoin, you of course need to make sure that your Bitcoin custody is secure and you have an inheritance plan that's reliable for you and your family. Or perhaps as the Bitcoin price appreciates, you want to be able to tap into liquidity such as Bitcoin back loans. Feel free to reach out to me, jsononrampbitcoin.com. happy to answer questions, get on a call. Uh, a lot of people don't know, but you can also land it on our website and you can complete onboarding self-service in about 10 minutes. And we work with folks domestically in the US, but also internationally as well. And the final thing is if you're not ready to work with us and don't want to shoot me a note or sign up, I would encourage you to check out our research uh, which you can sign up on our homepage as well. uh we're going to be publishing a really I think a really valuable report on the convergence of gold and bitcoin and uh why both of them are going to persist into the future um as we see both these assets repric and so that'll be dropping on the newsletter here pretty shortly so make sure you hit subscribe on the on-ramp research newsletter. Now back to the show. That's an interesting aspect we brought up with like institutional allocators when you think about pensions and intermediaries of like you know they'll reference the his history or not ready to look at it. It's like well are you prepared for somebody to question you know your credibility that you don't have an actual view or a coherent view. The other thing that um you referenced paradigm Larry and there's something to the paradigm shift is it really can't be underscored in how different the environment for somebody to recognize gold or bitcoin as money or as stores of value. Um you know I don't know if I'm sure you guys do this once in a while if you go to the grocery store and ask somebody just getting a sentiment check like what do you know about Bitcoin or whatever. I do this when I get my haircut. I'll just naturally start talking about things because, you know, all of us were probably not some of the best dinner guests depending on where you're at. You start talking about the world and everything's fine. You were talking about just like things that would a little be a little naturally u uh controversial and and she was open to it. This is just yesterday, so it's top of mind. And then I bring up Bitcoin and it was like I had a second head. Yeah. And it was just like this thing's going to be $2 million and people are going to be like that thing doesn't make any sense. you know, like we are just in a it really is a grand reshifting of how everyone's going to think and it's going to take a very long time. That's why I wrote the book to try and help people get their head around it. I mean, the same thing happened. There's a great video of Andrew Dice Clay standing on a corner in California saying, "I'll give you this uh you know, I'll give you this 10 ounces of silver, which at the time was worth $200. I'll give you a Hershey bar. Which would you prefer?" It's a fab fabulous video. She watch it. just Google Andrew and and you know nine out of 10 people took the Hershey bar because it was a candy bar they could eat, right? They had no idea. They didn't even know what the silver was worth. They had no clue, but they knew the Hershey bar would be would taste good, so they took the bar. Yeah, it it it's sadly, you know, um a lot of people don't think about these things. And and you know, in their defense, you know, the the the monetary system was well enough managed, particularly up till 71, that you really didn't have to think about these things, you know, that you just kind of assumed. I mean, you know, look, the dollar hasn't been a great store of value since its inception, but still, you know, the real the chart in my book I like the most is the one where it shows what happened after 71. And that's when the age of inflation began. And, you know, it's waxed and waned. But, you know, now we're kind of very much in that compounding endgame. And, you know, people people would better figure it out or they're going to get up hit upside the head because what they think is money is not going to be money in the future. The market is is going to tell them differently. I'll give you sadly. Go ahead, Michael. I was going to say sadly there's an order of operations to that because as we all went through this when you determine Bitcoin has some value, you're usually very uh defensive in the positioning and it's 0.1 or 1% or 2% and it takes a long gap between recognizing that as your store of value. And so there's just so much like time between that. That's why we, you know, part of this discussion was how gold and bitcoin are going to persist much longer than both sides that are usually at odds with each other would like them to. they just are going to be integrated into this whole kind of new world. Well, and I I think that, you know, it's interesting. I was at a a neighborhood kind of block party this weekend and one of the guys was reading Larry's book and he just kind of came up and asked me some questions and he's a smart guy worked in the financial services industry in Boston before he retired and u and he was just asking me kind of like well I get what you guys are saying what Larry's saying and and and this and that about Bitcoin and gold and and there you can sense the skepticism still of like do you really want to hold gold versus equities and mag 7 and as I think about it in my own head like as Larry said, it makes sense like for 40 some odd years reflexively you've been it's been your right decision to go buy equities and maybe that continues but I think what changes now is it's 50 years of debt you know parties throughout the world and now we're at 120% debt to GDP there's a demographic cliff coming at you visav the boomers that are on average about 7273 and their Medicare and social security checks are coming due faster and faster three billion3 trillion a year of US Treasury refinancings have to do with uh simp or sorry $3 trillion a year the government's having to spend now on Medicare and Social Security. They're going to have to issue debt to do that on top of the refinancings that they're already doing. And I think that people are cavalier about that. They're they're not paying attention to the fact that the 30-year-old set is not having the same amount of babies as they used to. Now, there's ways to fix it. I thought there was a guy at Bergkshire Athletes know me that gave a great presentation this week. I can give it to you for the notes if you want. Um on on how health care is the real challenge, right? The fact that lobbyists for big pharma are some of the biggest problems in our system because drugs in the United States you pay eight times more for a US-made drug than you do than they do in Germany. Why is the US subsidizing the rest of the world? And the answer is because as the guy points out, the lobbyists for big pharma don't have don't won't allow Medicare and them to really negotiate. And Trump had tried to set this up where you would have more transparency in that pricing during his first administration. And it just doesn't get done. The point is is that there's a confluence of things happening combined with the debt, combined with a massive bubble in equities that that this is a real complex system and something will go wrong. And then the question is how does everything kind of fall apart? And I hate to be a doomsdayer like that, but you can feel it at neighborhood block parties of you know people are still skeptical and it just tells me we are still so early on gold and silver and Bitcoin as a percentage of global overall financial assets. But it just takes one trigger. It takes one 1998 moment or 2000 moment of a pop in the bubble and then the money printing comes and with each of with each of these big prints it gets more obvious. I mean the 2000 bubble burst. They they blew a housing bubble. The housing bubble burst, you know, they they blew an everything bubble with Zer for all those years, you know. Then the 2020 event occurred and and before that the repo blowout, you know, and they blew another bubble and and you know, the next one's going to come and they'll have some excuse and the Fed will be, you know, the arsonist will become the firefighter and instead of printing, you know, 5 to 7 trillion in 18 months, they're going to print 10 or 15 trillion in in a shorter time frame. And more and more people are going to recognize that, you know, the house is on fire. And, you know, the right answer when the house is on fire is to get the hell out of the house. I mean, this is the analogy I use. You know, people say, "Well, it's 100,000 a coin. You paid 10." True. But, you know, the the it's sound assets are the so many assets are the lifeboat and the you know, the financial system is the Titanic. So, you know, I bought my seat for 10 grand. Great. You know, you got to pay 100 grand. Do you want the seat or don't you? you want to stay on the Titanic, you want to pay 100 grand. I mean, because and that's, you know, I hope the book made a compelling enough case for why it's just obvious that this is what's going to happen. I mean, there are, you know, there's a great um Hman Capital uh did a great chart that showed, you know, 10 or 11 countries that have gone through this and and this is not an uncommon problem. It's happened a lot of emerging, you know, market countries um that get to this level of debt to GDP and in every case they either have a depression, massive inflation or even hyperinflation. And so, you know, why do we think it's different with us? Well, because we're the reserve currency, we have the biggest military, etc. But all that's starting to fray around the edges. Um, but to David's point, it may take longer than I think. I think it, you know, I think it's going to happen tomorrow. I always have. I thought it was going to happen tomorrow in 2008, and I was terribly wrong. So, so take take my accelerated view with a grain of salt, but it does appear to be getting more urgent. Yeah, I think there's two aspects. one like the gold running first makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons like from a socioeconomic perspective because gold has been money for thousands of years. it's in the like DNA of our society and so as people recognize gold is more people recognize gold as money then it's a natural extension to say digital money but the thing that we haven't talked about here and it's been more theoretical for the past few years but you can see in practice how it helps move the Overton window and everything we're describing is AI because there's three components of it it's uh one is just the deflationary nature like it can help move the Overton window if you're going to just have an insane uh accelerated view of deflation and what that means across the board specifically around companies. But then the energy sector is another one as we've seen a lot of these um you know Bitcoin has always been the historical or the the the canary in the coal mine. Well, it's been this for the energy sector, right? Because you know, the Bitcoin producers are out there looking for the lowest cost of energy and now the AI is using them as their or the AI um the the people creating the data centers or running the data centers are looking at where their footprints are and saying, "Oh, that's the lowest cost. Now I can set it up." So that's another angle of energy and then uh the nuclear side of it where you're you start to like intertwine those markets. And then the last one is digital money in a digital world. If all this stuff is changing so fast, I think that's going to help and people be more receptive to well maybe there's this new currency, it'll help in that that like intertwining, but it's just a it's a brave new world. And like you said to folks at your your block party, it's a it's a it's going to be a scary one as well if they're not educated. And maybe the right word is it's it's it's just a really enhanced volatile world like we were showing in the 70s because of the confluence of factors of we're at the end of a 50-year debt cycle. You've got demographic changes, you've got technological changes with AI like you're saying, Michael, and on the one hand, AI will benefit society on so many levels, right? When you can make when you can have robots working 24/7, not just two factory shifts a day, suddenly there's more Nike supply of sneakers. the price of Nike's come down from 150 to 75, you know, all sorts of benefits of of of oil perhaps being more efficient. Therefore, uh, you know, we're watching the price of oil go down. Having said that, what is the cost of labor? What happens to is there a need for universal basic income? I mean, I'm talking to business school friends that are senior guys at Amazon and Shopify. Um, and I can go public as I think, but they're not even able to hire humans right now unless they can prove that a human is six times more efficient than the AI is going to be. And these guys have made the point to me that they think that the stock market and the global economy is completely unaware and underestimating just how big of an impact this is going to have on labor. And and so therefore, what's the yang of that to the ying of the benefits of deflation? And so again to us all roads lead to the need for money supply because you cannot have deflation when you have a debt problem like we have. Deflation is the devil. You need to have inflation and that's why they're going to have to inflate this thing out. So there's just so much going on in a lever fragile system that that's our view that I think the Trump administration in my opinion and Howard Lutnick and all them they're just they're misunderstanding. there's so many dependent variables that can blow up on itself and and and and it's just too fragile to be pulling off even though some of this stuff needs to be addressed and and so I don't judge them on that. Yeah. I mean, having said all of that, I mean I mean you give him an A for effort for trying to trying to change the system. I mean, the the alternative with the other with the other team would have been just let's print more and hire more and waste more money on stupid So, you know, at least we're trying to go in we're tacking in the right direction. But, you know, look, this is a fourth turning and fourth turnings are, you know, they're they're crises. They are they are really really hard. You know, I'm sure I remember hearing stories about my grand from my grandparents about the 30s and the World War II and all that sort of stuff. I mean, you know, it was it was tumultuous. I mean, and and it left the country in shock. I mean, in the 50s, the great fear was there was going to be another one, you know, and with the Cold War and everything else, I mean, it it was it was brutal. And uh, you know, I'm sure the Civil War veterans had the same feeling. And I'm, you know, the revolution, the American revolution was a fourth turning and, you know, a lot of the people who were revolutionaries ended up getting killed and lost all their property. Their families were murdered. I mean, it was it's horrible. I mean, a fourth turning is is a very disruptive event. Um, and you know, I'm not that's not being a doomer, that's just observing what's happened historically. Um, you know, that's why, you know, in the book I argue for, you know, the the smoothest way for this forth turning is to educate everybody that we need to do a monetary reset and then just do one. Yeah, you know, it's as simple as that. I mean, we don't need to kill a lot of people. We don't need to have a big war. You know, we just need to return to sound money. And if we do, things will get better. I mean, that is the bright side of the story. And that is that when countries have had hyperinflations or high inflations, when they return to sound money, things things repair themselves pretty quickly. I mean, most people just want to go to work and live their lives and get paid a salary and take care of their family and and live in a fair system. Um, you know, this system has become massively unfair and and everyone gets it and that's why you've got these waring political tribes fighting each other because things are tougher and uh and they know it, but they, you know, they can't put their finger on it. Again, that's why I wrote the book was just like guys are all missing the big picture. You know, if we fix the money, these other problems will fix themselves, right? And ju and just one other just to make sure I'm balanced here in my view because I I probably sound too doomsday. There are scenarios where the guy at the block party is right that stocks can go up because I suppose if I were being generous, it is a more software oriented society. SAS business models make good profit margins and and maybe those businesses can survive in an inflationary environment better than 1970s industrial style businesses that had no pricing power and had a lot of capital intensity. So things can go right. Um but I think again our view is it's a complex system and debt is debt and math is math and the compounding effects are such that so much more and more and more money printing needs to happen that that's what's ultimately going to drive gold and bitcoin that you know we'll go out on a limb and say it will be the they will be the best performing asset classes if I had to bet over the next decade than any than most stocks and so um I mean this is asymmetric yeah and I think to take the uh I think we all agree on the you know the deflationary nature has to happen. There is going to be a repricing of assets. Um I think Larry uh one or two pods ago that you joined we ended with uh talking about what are we looking forward to and I referenced like accountability and it's like what sound money brings back to the world. I just think about like meritocracy and just you know the value produced is how you get rewarded and I think that's where this goes. um where we had Tad Smith on the podcast uh last week and he referenced the logical and conclusion when you think about corporates adding Bitcoin, specifically listed companies, but any company over a long enough time horizon you start to weigh do you reinvest or put more capital into your existing business or do you just hold the underlying and that goes back to how this whole world the optimistic version it's going to be a long burn but ultimately those individuals will be able to uh leverage deflationary tools to create better products and services at a lower cost of production which will benefit society as a whole and that's how we'll rebuild this whole thing as everyone is repricing value. Um so I think that ultimately is where it goes and and there's no way around it because at the end of the day like if you have a better form of money and you're able to leverage the tools as they are you're just going to out compete the existing incumbents because there's too much fat, there's too much pork, there's too much bureaucracy. Uh and that's the exciting version of like that we look forward to because we kind of have a a vision of we don't know how we get there but we can see the book ends. And so now you find individuals like this group here and others listening that are ready for that new world and that's full of opportunity because the rest of the world in our view is mis mispriced. Absolutely. I mean we've done so many stupid things as a result of fiat money. I mean for for starters we wasted $8 trillion in the Middle East. I mean you know and and and paid for it with inflation not with taxation right um or the looting of uh that's what the the looting of what is it? I don't even know is it trillions yet on the Ukraine war like before this last administration. there's, you know, so much money missing uh from the past, like I call it 24 months. Um well, look at all the US A money they found that was being misused and some of these people who had they had accounts where they weren't even keeping track of the money they sent out. And I I remember in some of those wars seeing photographs of the government just sending pallets of $100 bills overseas. I mean, you know, was anybody really keeping track of that? And I mean, the defense department defense department audit was there's like several billion dollars they can't account for, right? So it's Yeah. when you when you get these behemoth systems, um you know, there's a there's room for a lot of mischief. Just a lot of mischief. And and we all pay for it. You know, we pay for it at the grocery store is the bottom line. And you know, I mean, as as you know, John Adams said, I mean, we you know, if we don't have an educated electorate that holds these people accountable, you know, they're going to rob us blind. And they have. And so, you know, the reason I wrote the book was to try and educate some of the electorate. But, you know, and some people are getting it and some people understand it, but some don't. But that's okay. I mean, it's, you know, over time, you know, the market will educate them if if you know, if they don't listen. What's been the biggest surprise? I know we're coming up on time. What's been the biggest surprise uh since the book's been out? I know you see uh the different showings and a lot of the the road shows you've been on, but what's uh some of the highlights? Well, for me, I don't know. I you know, I'd like to think it might have jumped into the mainstream now, but it hasn't. I mean, everyone tells me it will, but I would love to, you know, get a Rogan or a Tucker or a CNBC appearance just because I, you know, I knew that Bitcoiners would like it and they do. That's not really the audience. The audience is everybody else. Um, and it's it's slowgoing in that area, but it's not a terribly bad surprise. It just I should have expected it. Um, but, you know, we've sold a lot. I mean, we've sold about 25,000 books so far, so you know, that's including Walker's narration, which is very good. So, slowly getting there. I feel like Tucker is bridging out into the the Roman I mean he'll you know I think eventually you know if the book if what the book predicts kind of comes to be true then you know the odds of of a broader audience hearing it are good. I mean I know there are financial books like Rich Dad Poor Dad or you know Psychology of Money that have sold millions and millions of copies. I mean we got 300 million people in this country. It's like come on guys you know how do we sell how do we sell a lot more? But, and I'm not saying that so much from a making money on the book thing because you really it's surprising how little money you make by selling a book. But I'm saying it more because if we educate everybody then that when the sound money politicians arrive, you know, the the the message will be well received and we can get to the other side. And I want to get to the other side because I want to see that better world. And I want my kids and my grandkids to see I don't have grandkids yet, but someday I will. I want them to see that better world too sooner rather than later. Right. Well said. Well, gentlemen, uh, thank you so much for joining us today. Larry and David, I know you're both very well known in the space, but is there a handoff you want to give? Is it is it the book? David, is there anything else? Let me let me give one for David. David runs the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund. I'm a I'm a limited partner, a small minority partner in it. Um, but David and James run it and they've done really well. They had a great result last year. They're raising money now. They're doing a lot of really smart stuff. If you're an accredited investor, you should take take a serious look at it. Well, we have a few I wanted to ask you about that. If y'all have a few minutes, let's chat. David, we tal we talked uh f quickly when we were in New York and I had to jump out uh or you had to jump out of the cab, but anything you want to share on what you're looking at the thesis. Um we have a lot of folks aligned. You know, we obviously have our early writers fund and we're very big proponents of looking at the market through this new lens of returning capital and Bitcoin terms. Um and you guys have one of the most unique uh fund portfolio constructions in the sense of how you're blending, you know, different, you know, areas of the market and also the how you integrate or look to integrate Bitcoin as a treasury. So, we'd love to hear what's going on and how people can get in touch. Anything you want to share? Yeah, so first you can get in touch at bitcoin opportunity.fund and just fill out the contact form and we'll get in touch with you. But yeah, what we are doing is investing in public and private companies in the uh Bitcoin ecosystem. So, we're a hybrid hedge fund and and venture fund. Um, our view is just we're not averse to making money. Let's find businesses that are um good businesses with good management teams, you know, with the potential uh to make real good cash flow soon. Um, so everything on the public side, you know, we'll hold Bitcoin itself to lower the opportunity cost for any of our LPs that feel like they're forgoing that they're getting exposure to Bitcoin. But then things from like Micro Strategy to um you know some of the miners that we think are interesting if they have a power story to them um and have the potential therefore to have massive upside uh from great AI related contracts um or what have you and and uh and on the private side you know we've done some interesting things like Bitcoin back first lean loans to Cormintz a really good Bitcoin miner in West Texas is private we did a first lean loan to them that's been a very profitable deal uh where we got equity warrants in their business and made Bitcoin backed loans that we get paid more Bitcoin in form of interest. We recently just did one with a friend of mine who's Xane Capital where we're backing a company called Radar and Radar if you go on GAPS investor relations site you can read about I think a early March uh press release that GAP put out GAPS a venture investor in Radar we are too. uh we are advising radar on being a bitcoin on the bitcoin standard um with their cash flows and it basically what it is it's a AI related technology for better inventory management for retailers and that is obviously a critical thing in a very tough uh environment for retailers uh GAP and American Eagle um have beta tested the product and have had great success they liked it so much they are investors in it as well so are we now and we are advising them on a Bitcoin strategy so There's an example of a business that's not a pure Bitcoin related business, but it's a business that has a backlog of nearly a billion dollars in contracted revenue uh and the ability to have massive cash flows and we're helping advise them on a Bitcoin standard. Um so our view is, you know, we're buying in at a good multiple and and uh we're we're we can make a lot of money hopefully for our investors on deals like that. Can you share a little more without the specifics on some of the leverage buyout opportunities or thesis because I think that's super interesting given that it's kind of in the public you know mainstream with public markets but I think really cash flowing producing businesses that you can support from an operational perspective and also creating Bitcoin is something that a lot of private investors are don't know that exists but I think are going to be very interesting uh moving forward. Yeah. So like we've got like right now we're talking about another LBO situ or a situation where a company wants to roll up an industry a real good industrial industry that generates great cash flow with their cash flow. Obviously some of that will be used to serve as debt in their leverage buyout roll up of the industry uh and some of that cash will be used to be on a Bitcoin standard. Um but they are kind of Bitcoiners at heart the management team there. So, we've been having conversations with them about doing just that, doing a Bitcoin strategy, helping negotiate debt covenants and terms with lenders that would permit that. Um, so it's a little bit like Bitcoin back bonds to a degree and but for at the corporate level. uh and then and this is being able to buy in at three and a half times acquiring businesses that if you grow scale of this industrial service business into many many locations private equity folks are paying about eight times uh for scale businesses. So, if you can buy into a business at three and a half multiple, sell it at seven to eight, have a Bitcoin strategy along the way, uh, that works within a debt construct of a leverage buyout, um, that's interesting to us and and we're happy to be advisers, um, given our debt backgrounds of structuring these leverage buyouts as well as, um, being Bitcoiners. So, um, I think these are some of the unique things we're doing. Yeah, we have a some overlap in our private client base. obviously will be discreet, but there's somebody I can share. Uh he's a little bit of a wild card, but Josh McNeel is a is a good friend and uh he's been public, I think, on Twitter about investing. He's a client of ours and been loud about it. Um we got to get you guys, if you're interested, involved in the guild, which is a mix between our fund and and on-ramp private. So, it's just everyone in an application talking about private deals, what's happening in the market. Could be a good opportunity to share kind of deals you're looking to source additional capital and then also some investors. So, we can send you details if you guys are interested. probably love love love to have you guys involved. That'd be wonderful. Love it. Anything else before we wrap? We really appreciate the time as always. Yeah, the brick big print. Buy the book. It explains it all. Send it to family members. You know, buy the book. I think most people listening get it, but it's, you know, do for for what it costs. What is it 1525 to 25 bucks on Amazon? You can paperback 26 I think on hard cover. And it just it's just such a good explanation I think. I mean to me like college kids can read. I mean any you know even high school kids it's a just a great 101 level where Larry really broke this thing down to first principles. And I I just think it's an excellent read for anyone that's not even has an economics background. It's a great explanation of the situation where we find ourselves. Yeah. There's very few places to point someone to an individual resource and the big print is certainly one of those. So, thank you both for all the educational efforts. It's going a long way and I know it's going positive future. Thanks for giving us a voice and and supporting us and letting us, you know, talk to the world through your channel because you got a great channel. Yeah. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. No, it's very much appreciated. I got to call out every time I text Larry say you want to come on, it's it's like an ASAP yes. I'm always waiting for like I'm busy and he it's he's always yes. So, it's very much appreciated. Anytime you guys ever want to come on and share any news, you're always welcome. Thanks, guys. Great to be with you all. Thank you. Thanks, gentlemen. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onra Media is forformational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com/cont to schedule a consultation with one of our private client adviserss.