Why the US Government Needs $1M Bitcoin with Larry Lepard

Jackson Mikalic (00:01.024) All right, welcome back to The Last Trade. We have a packed house today. For those who are not on video, we got Brian Cabellus, Tim Cotsman, and Michael Tanguma, my co-hosts, and we're joined by a special guest, Larry Lappard, author of The Big Print. Larry, how are you? Is The Big Print on its way? Lawrence Lepard (00:05.272) You Lawrence Lepard (00:16.846) I'm great. Thank you. Yeah, I do think as the book describes I do think the big print is on its way the Mathematics of the situation dictate that without printing more money everything will collapse and so we can kind of tell what's coming and It's funny as I was writing this book. I was afraid they were gonna print before I got it out And so so I was very you know the last two months. I've been on pins and needles thinking to myself please please please don't don't do the big print before I launched the damn book Brian Cubellis (00:46.448) Seems like he timed it pretty damn well. Lawrence Lepard (00:46.88) And well, you know, my timing might be really good because I think it is coming in the next 12 months and the book's been out about a week and it's selling well. so, and hopefully it'll accomplish my objective, which is to help people. You know, I just, think that the average American is getting screwed by inflation and many don't understand why and they don't understand how to protect themselves. And so therefore the book, I mean, that's, that's kind of why I wrote it. Jackson Mikalic (01:14.488) Yeah, Larry, well, I've always appreciated your work as long as I've been following you probably since 2020. You're one of the, think, most articulate people in the space and have been able to really demonstrate what's going on here behind the scenes. One of the things I kind of learned through you, and I put this in my own words, but the Fed's policy decisions are always either destroy the middle class or destroy the middle class because it's like, Lawrence Lepard (01:18.539) Thanks. Lawrence Lepard (01:25.646) Thank you. Lawrence Lepard (01:39.342) Yeah Brian Cubellis (01:40.048) You Jackson Mikalic (01:42.228) And it's not even hyperbolic in the sense that if they continue to let things be tight, then we have some sort of recession or potentially a depression on our hands, a total mess and calamity. Or you just let inflation run hot and then you destroy the savings and what little savings a lot of people have with the debasement. Lawrence Lepard (01:44.054) No, it's really not. Lawrence Lepard (01:52.494) They get unemployed, yeah. Lawrence Lepard (02:00.317) Yeah, you get killed at the grocery store. no, it's and you know, right at the start of the book, I kick it off with that chart that shows the wealth distribution and it's just shocking to me that the top 1 % of this country owns 92 % of the wealth. I mean, they've just eviscerated the middle class, you know, with this financial system that's designed to unwealthen the elite and leave everyone else, you know, paying for that in the form of inflation. Jackson Mikalic (02:28.298) Absolutely. You know, one thing we've been doing to kick the show off is we pull up the Bitcoin price. I think all five of us are very much long term investors, so I don't hold too much weight on what happens on a week by week basis. But since we last recorded, Bitcoin's price has just been chopping around, hasn't moved much. I think we're in this period of consolidation. What we did see when the CPI print was announced this morning was that inflation came in Lawrence Lepard (02:33.483) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (02:56.322) higher than expected. Larry, you probably know better than I, but it was maybe the biggest increase in CPI in about 18 months or two years. Yeah, what do you guys think has been just driving the price over the past week? Is there anything notable you've been paying attention to? Lawrence Lepard (03:12.5) You guys go first and I'll react to it. Brian Cubellis (03:16.656) Yeah, I mean, on the CPI front, I think I've sort of reiterated this time and again, but I don't put a ton of weight into these government-reported statistics. And I don't know if you guys saw, there was an article yesterday in Politico of all publications. I didn't read the whole thing, but the title was How Democrats Were Tricked Into Believing the Economy Was Strong. And somebody screenshotted an excerpt from it. Lawrence Lepard (03:25.742) I'm ready. Lawrence Lepard (03:41.654) Brian Cubellis (03:44.515) And this line was pretty wild. So if you filter the unemployment statistic to include as unemployed people who can't find anything but part-time work or make a poverty wage, roughly $25,000, that percentage is actually 23.7%. So just like it comes back to this idea of there isn't a lot of weight to be placed in these government reported statistics and you have to use other methods of triangulation to really understand how the economy is doing would be my take. Jackson Mikalic (04:18.786) Yeah, I want... Lawrence Lepard (04:19.158) I'm Jackson. Jackson Mikalic (04:21.708) I was gonna ask you, Larry, So we have Trump who wants to lower interest rates. And that's something he was he was very vocal in his first term about wanting to push rates lower. He's obviously someone who pays a lot of attention to the stock market and now to the Bitcoin price. And so he wants these numbers to go up as a barometer of what he thinks to be like the health of the U.S. economy and our financial markets. So he's calling for lower rates. But with the higher print on CPI, can we The disclaimer is yes, we all know that you don't want to hold too much weight on this metric, but unfortunately that's how policy decisions are made. And so the print came in higher than expected and it's unlikely now, I think maybe one rate cut potentially this year or hold steady. I don't follow it too closely, but Larry, what are your thoughts? have Trump on one side who wants lower rates. Lawrence Lepard (05:13.038) Yeah, well, that's we can get to that first. Let's just talk about the inflation print and the Bitcoin price. I I just totally ignore these short term fluctuations. I mean, my view is Bitcoin is going to bounce between 90 and 106 and who cares? You know, and then when we get done with that flag, we're to go to 140 because flags fly at half mast and we were caught in the 58,000 club for a long time and then it broke out and went to 100. So project that again. The next step is 140. And that happens sometime later this year. Yeah, the inflation statistics are totally cooked. But they aren't going in the right direction. Even being cooked, they still show an increase, which kind of puts Powell in a box. I tweeted this morning that he's trapped like a rat, you know, because they clearly haven't obtained their 2 % objective. And they said they were on the glide path to doing that. But I also tweeted a series of month-to-month changes. And I mean, it's going the wrong way fast. And I you can see this. My quarterly year-end letter shows... you know, like agricultural prices were up 28 % last year, you know. You know, the Longshoremen struck in October of last year and they got a six year, a six year deal increasing their salary at 10 % a year. So the salary is going to go up 60 % in the next 10 years. This is a major labor contract and a 10 % labor bump doesn't really fit with a 2 % inflation narrative. So. As I've been saying, and as my book says, we now live in an inflationary world. We didn't, for a long time we didn't, but it turned in 2020. We had peak deflation March 2020. So now how's that going to get resolved between Trump and Powell? There's going to be a clash of the titans here. I, know, Trump can't fire Powell. The Congress could fire Powell. Trump wants lower rates. The world and the US needs lower rates, if only to try and stop the debt doom loop. mean, as you all know, the current US federal interest expense is running at $1.4 trillion. And if you go to the Fred website and chart that, and this chart is in my book as well, it's kind of gone parabolic. And we've got to roll over between $7 and $10 trillion of debt this year. And it's at a much higher cost than it used to be. Lawrence Lepard (07:31.65) That makes the deficit bigger, which then means they got to sell more bonds, which, know, washrooms repeat. So they really need lower interest rates and yet they've got an inflation problem, recurring inflation problem. And how this is going to get resolved, I don't know. They also handed Trump a terrible hand with a very overvalued stock market. One could argue, and I think the Fed in general is made up of Democrats, not Republicans. One could argue that they want to see everything fall apart on Trump's watch so Trump gets blamed with it. stock market goes down and then that's what will enable them to do the big print. I mean, think right now they don't have the air cover to do a big print because people are going to scream about inflation if they do it. But we'll just have to see. mean, the Fed is kind of just perennially wrong and late on what they should be doing. I ironically, they probably should be cutting now just to get the interest expenses down. mean, but there's so many policy moves that Trump can make here and And at least he's got a good guy working with him. I Bascent gets markets and he knows what he's doing. And, you know, I was interfacing with Luke Roman yesterday and he was saying, you know, what they're talking about doing is kind of an international form of yield curve control. I mean, one of the I think they're going to try and do is they're going to try and beat people into tariffs. We're going to tariff you unless you buy our treasury bonds. It's kind of a form of coercion to continue to keep this rickety financial system that the U.S. has going. So, but it, you know, exactly how it plays out, I don't know, but it's like the saying, all roads lead to Rome. mean, mathematically, sooner or later, you can't support this debt without more base money underneath it. mean, Lynn has shown this time and again. And so we know that, you know, in the next 24 months, quote unquote, the big print is coming. And, you know, thus, and I wanted to warn people about that and try and encourage them to protect themselves. And that's why I wrote the book. Michael Tanguma (09:30.862) Yeah, one thing just to call out. Going back to the inflation, there's no better sign. I we've been talking about this, Larry. You've been on multiple times last year about the numbers are cooked. There's no better sign of inflation than $12 eggs, a dozen eggs, right? It's just, but going back to what you're referencing, like there's so many different facets of happening with Trump coming, things happening with Trump coming in. Where does the correlation tie into tariffs and this gold market just like completely going bad? Lawrence Lepard (09:43.264) Right? Isn't that something? Yeah. Lawrence Lepard (10:01.644) Yeah, right. Michael Tanguma (10:02.722) Yeah, like because there's something happening there between tariffs, counterparty risk, gold. How do you see that like connection? Lawrence Lepard (10:08.814) Absolutely, yeah, I know it's a great question and it's a fascinating thing. mean, as you know, if you read the book, there's been a huge paper gold market that's existed for years. I Larry Summers and Robert Rubin started it in the Clinton administration. we believe, those of us in the gold world believe, there probably 100 paper claims for every one real ounce of gold. So the gold market kind of resembles a game of musical chairs. We're owning a physical ounce as a chair, and all the people who own paper don't have a chair yet. And what we're starting to see is, referenced Michael is that some of the people are saying, hey, give me my chair. And over in the LBMA, and as a result, they've suddenly said, well, our delivery times have gone out to eight weeks. And they had some lame excuse like, well, the stuff is heavy and there are a lot of lorries in the way that make it hard to get it in and out of the building. I'm like, really? That's all you got? So it's arguable that we're starting to see a failure of the paper gold market, and we're starting to see people realizing. that fractional reserve gold is not the same as real gold, very much with Bitcoin. Not your keys, not your Bitcoin. But to tie in the tariff piece of it, the related thing, Michael, is that when we seized the Russian assets back in the war, when the war started, that sent a message to every single country, hey, the US doesn't like what you're doing. They can freeze your financial assets, throw you out of SWIFT. Right? And so that kicked off another round of buying of central banks. And what we're seeing is kind of the world coming to grips with the fact that we need a neutral reserve currency that's not controlled by the U.S. You know, and more and more countries are starting to understand that. And therefore, they're saying, well, you know, store my excess wealth in U.S. dollars. I think I'll pass. Give me the gold. because I know it can't be debased and I can see the US fiscal train wreck that's bearing down on them and I know they're gonna have to print a lot of dollars and you know think I've heard I've dug deep on what's going on in London and I've talked to a lot of people about it and you know there a lot of possible causes I mean it also might be you know Basant's a gold guy and there's he said he said things cryptically that would indicate that maybe the US could be thinking about a gold price reset Lawrence Lepard (12:24.462) You know, he said there may be a Bretton Woods like event coming and if there is I want to be at the table. He said that last June. And so yeah, with that kind of as a backdrop, I mean, I think they might have they might have tipped their hand to some of their rich friends and you know, big guys and you might have hedge funds saying, huh, if that's coming, we need to own gold and therefore, you know, suddenly more demand at the LBMA. I'm just I'm speculating now. I can't prove any of that, but it seems like it could be right. Michael Tanguma (12:32.378) That's it. Yes. Michael Tanguma (12:51.226) That's what this really feels like is going to a unipolar world and on shoring manufacturing you naturally are, it's an inflationary environment. And so there's no plaza core 2.0 or whatever that looks like is every re setting to bring assets back home because at a first principle level you need the assets home if you need to trade for other, if you need to import things. So this is just like the precursor to whatever's coming. If you don't like it. Lawrence Lepard (12:59.352) Right. Right, exactly. Lawrence Lepard (13:15.202) think that's right. Yeah, I think that's exactly what's going on. so it's one of those things where it's better to be early than late. And I have two charts in the book that I think lay this out. In my view, important point to make, I think most Americans do not understand that we are in a sovereign debt crisis. I want to get up on a soapbox and scream that to the entire world. A lot of people are in denial about that, but we are. And how do I know? Look, these are in the book, there two charts. One shows gold in terms of bonds and the other shows Bitcoin in terms of bonds since 2020. Since 2020, gold in terms of bonds is up over 200%. Since 2020, Bitcoin in terms of bonds is up 2000%. So what that says, mean, bonds, US Treasury bonds used to be the base layer of the financial system. They were the most secure thing. They were where large pools of money could go to safely protect that wealth. And what's happening? It's not working anymore. You know these two other monetary assets are just kicking bonds But in a big big way, and I don't think that's going to change I mean I think it's it's more of a it's as we all know it's the gradually than suddenly I'm like we might be getting to the suddenly phase now I don't want to say for sure that there's going to be a comics and or an LBMA default I mean I just I don't know we've seen we've seen things like this before in the past silver squeeze and some other things and Generally speaking, they're gonna move heaven and earth to get this one back in the can. They know this is existential for them. They're gonna try really hard. mean, they'll call on every source of gold they possibly can to calm this down and make it really, no, no, no, don't worry. We got plenty of gold. It's all good. But maybe they'll be successful at that. Maybe they won't. But I'm watching. It's like get the popcorn, right? Brian Cubellis (15:04.878) Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions, Larry, was like, what is the most comparable scenario to this in terms of a sort of rapid increase in demand for physical delivery? When was the last time we saw something like this? And have we seen it to this extent, I guess? Lawrence Lepard (15:22.284) I don't think we've seen numbers this large, but that's partly just because all the numbers are getting bigger with inflation over time. We saw it a little bit with a silver squeeze, but that was pretty quickly tamped down and solved. The Hunt brothers did it, and then they changed the rules and screwed the Hunt brothers. It happened in 2011, and then they attacked gold at that point in time. Goldman Sachs and the central banks attacked gold in 2011 with a big paper offering that took gold from 1900 back down to 1000. Brian Cubellis (15:35.716) Mm-hmm. Lawrence Lepard (15:51.686) you know, and so they might try that again. I mean, I look, you know, the other side is really good at this shit guys. mean, they've been, they've been fucking me over for 30 years and so I'm very, very prepared to get fucked over again. I I do not underestimate their ability to pull rabbits out of the hat. I mean, I thought Silicon Valley Bank might've been a trigger and look at how they papered that over. mean, they violated Dodd-Frank, they changed the laws, all of it, but they stuffed it back in the can. mean, remember, they've got all the communications tools, they've got the military, they've everything that they can use and they know, the alarm bells are going off and they know it. And so, know, they're, you know. Brian Cubellis (16:15.289) Yeah. Lawrence Lepard (16:33.518) We're gonna see some serious counter moves on their part. And so we cannot declare victory yet, not even close. But it's fun to watch the smoke coming out of the windows, right? I mean, they clearly got a fire on their hands. What are you looking at there? What's this? Michael Tanguma (16:49.454) Yeah, just to contextualize, so Brian, this was a tweet thread from... Lawrence Lepard (16:53.697) yeah, the goal pool. Yeah, that was good for Mark Moss. Michael Tanguma (16:56.186) Yeah, so from 1961, think kind of references were seven EU countries try to pull their reserves, but effectively it broke and that shortly after gold went from 35 an ounce to $850 an ounce in about a year. Lawrence Lepard (17:01.315) Yeah. Lawrence Lepard (17:09.954) decades for that to happen. yeah, that gold pool fell apart. that was established for the... Triffin's Dilemma became acute in the early 60s when the US started running big deficits to finance the Vietnam War and they formed a gold pool and the... purpose of the pool was to keep it at the $35 reference price because they were creating a lot more paper credit and paper fiat than underlying gold and they knew that if gold went up that that was the canary and so they did that until 68 when France under the direction of Jacques Rouff decided to pull out because they could see that it was they just they couldn't do it they didn't have enough gold they couldn't fake it and then of course three years later while the Fed in 68 removed the gold backing of their underlying balance sheet. And then three years later, Nixon, you know, totally killed it and just we went off the gold standard. And that, by the way, was really a trigger event. mean, there's one of my favorite charts in my book is the the history of inflation in the U.S. from the early time, from 1800 to present. And what you can see is we had inflations before 1971, but they were somewhat mean reverting and self-correcting. mean, World War I was inflationary, World War II, the Civil War, 1812. They were all inflationary. Boy, after 71, the inflation rate just goes straight up like a hockey stick. And so going off the gold standard was really the kickoff event to the death of sound money in the world. And it's only gotten worse as we've gone along. Every big print gets bigger. mean, 2020 was bigger than 2018, 2008 was bigger than 2003, 2003 was bigger than 98. mean, you can go back and see how they were. Continually getting worse, which is why I think mathematically we're now reaching the end game I think this is going to get resolved We're going to be back on a sound money standard sometime in the early 2030s in my opinion Because this problem is going to accumulate over the next six years and to the point where people are going to be screaming that We've got to go to sound money Jackson Mikalic (19:10.83) Yeah. And so on that point, Larry, we're 50 years, a little over 50 years post 1971. As you mentioned, there's a lot of dysfunction in the U.S. Treasury markets. Other countries that are adversarial or competing with the United States recognize that they're losing their shirt on debasement by holding fixed obligations of the U.S. government. To tie it back into the gold. And then I have a following question as well. Lawrence Lepard (19:16.43) Yeah. 53, yeah. Jackson Mikalic (19:37.944) From the conversations you've been having recently, I know it's kind of speculation, but how do you weigh what's happening in Asian markets with Chinese gold trading exploding? you referenced the 2022 sanctions of Russia and how that's kind of shifted us into a multipolar world and moving away or into neutral reserve assets. How do you weigh that and demand in Asia and other markets with what you described earlier in the US and kind of... Lawrence Lepard (20:02.53) That's a great point, Jackson. I what you're saying about China, I hadn't mentioned it, but, know, so again, when we did what we did in 2022, there was a call to the world that, you know, the dollar is weaponized, right? And so what you saw as a result of that is the Chinese and the Indians and the Russians all started trading with, you know, the Middle Eastern oil countries in their own currencies, right? And the Middle Eastern oil countries say, okay, yeah, we'll accept the yuan, we'll accept the rupee, we'll accept the ruble. Although the ruble... Middle Eastern oil and Russia has its own oil so it wasn't much trade there But the point is these other currencies started coming in and whereas oil used to be all oil in the u.s I mean the petrodollar standard there was a time when oil in the world was you 95 %? Priced in US dollars and I've heard recently that that's gone down to closer to 65 % and it's falling and so what you had happening is you had you know countries like China buying oil for Yuan and then the Saudis would have the yuan and if they didn't need something that China had the Shanghai Gold Exchange would very quickly they could take that yuan and convert it into gold. And they did. And so you've seen the volumes in the Shanghai Gold Exchange just explode to the upside. so what we're really seeing is at a nation-state level, we've got game theory going on on what is money. And these nation-states, they're not stupid. We're talking billions, if not trillions of dollars. Putin himself has said it many, many times. Why should I hold a piece of paper that can be debased, has been historically been debased as seven to 8 % a year for 20 or 30 years? It just makes no sense. And so more countries are figuring that out. And they're asking themselves, okay, if we have a trade surplus, what are we going to do with it? We're not buying bonds, US bonds. And so yeah, it's happening and you can see it and it's... Brent's a good friend of mine. do believe in the dollar milkshake theory. The dollar might be the last one to go, but we're seeing people take steps to return to an alternative neutral reserve currency just because it's in their own self-interest. It's a matter of self-defense. Jackson Mikalic (22:14.146) Yeah, go ahead Michael. Michael Tanguma (22:15.706) Yeah, I was just gonna say, think you know this better than... We will, but I know Luke talks about this a lot post-08, 09 with the socializing of the losses and like China has been not a net buyer of treasury since roughly like 2012, 2013 once they realized that we weren't gonna pay back this debt or underwrite it appropriately. And so this has been going on for call it 12 to 15 years. It's only just accelerated and we're dumping this and accumulating more gold instead of anything else. Lawrence Lepard (22:31.278) Correct. Lawrence Lepard (22:34.967) Right. Lawrence Lepard (22:42.99) Correct. Lawrence Lepard (22:48.878) Yeah, that's exactly right. mean, it's just, and if think about it, it's just logical, right? And, you know, it's just, it's completely logical that, you know, if the U.S. is gonna behave in a manner that makes it look like a third world country, you know, fiscally and irresponsibly, the world is gonna say, you know, that's not money that we wanna hold. You we're gonna put our excess savings in something other than your bonds or your currency. Michael Tanguma (23:17.69) I will... I will say the thing that comes to mind, because we don't have to go directly there now, but it can't help but call it out as Coinbase. Like Coinbase very much feels like in this story London, and having heavy concentration, because you can imagine if the price of Bitcoin runs to 2 5x, they're sitting on trillions of dollars. I think roughly right now they're sitting on 700 billion in the total crypto market. Obviously it's not all Bitcoin. But point being is, well, how do you find out if they're whole, if they've suffered a breach and they don't have full, because you can't see on Lawrence Lepard (23:25.411) Yeah. Lawrence Lepard (23:29.294) Thank Michael Tanguma (23:48.873) the total assets or if there's more claims on that, you ultimately end up with this like counterparty risk again embedded into the system. Lawrence Lepard (23:58.158) Absolutely. mean, look, there's people have asked me, does the the risk of paper Bitcoin exists? And I would say, yes, it does. Do we have a ton of paper Bitcoin right now? I don't think so. Not they've had 50 years to figure out how to manipulate the gold market. They've done a great job at it. Because it would have been around 15 years and they've only realized it was an existential threat, probably for the last five. So and it moves a lot farther and faster. So it's harder. to manipulate an asset that can do a five bagger on you and really put you under water quickly. But yeah, mean, Sam Bankman Fried had paper Bitcoin and it's possible Coinbase has paper Bitcoin. I mean, don't like Coinbase as a custodian for so many different organizations. mean, just at a personal level, I had a Coinbase account. It was just a nightmare. I I couldn't imagine a worse company in terms of customer service, interface, et cetera. So to rely on them to hold my Bitcoin would be, in my view, just insane. I I'm much, you know, I prefer the kind of services that River offers or Strike or what you guys do at OnRamp and so forth. Yeah, it's a real problem. And the book talks about this too. I mean, we've got to ban financial derivatives. Financial derivatives basically allow the person at the table with the biggest checkbook to win because they can overwhelm all the other bets. They can play poker and they can call when nobody else has the money to call. And if you're the BIS and you print the money, you can call, right? Because if you lose, you just print the money. So the printer is just an amazing tool. to allow the people who run the system to impolitely say to basically just fuck the rest of us. And that's what they've done. They've done it for 50 years. Brian Cubellis (25:44.337) Yeah, I want to go back to something you said a minute or two ago, Larry, around, you think over the next, call it decade or so, we migrate back towards more of a sound money standard. And I totally agree. And I think it looks like in practice, some combination of gold and Bitcoin, obviously, and that percentage difference on either side will depend on someone's age, someone's risk tolerance, all of that, their ability to deeply understand Bitcoin. Lawrence Lepard (25:56.782) You have to. Lawrence Lepard (26:14.51) All right. Brian Cubellis (26:14.756) I guess one question in there is like, you think that the paper gold market you referenced is sort of a 100 to one type leverage on that? Like, can that be corrected over the next decade? Like, can we get to a better place in terms of gold and having a better, more pure sort of reflection of supply and demand in that market? Lawrence Lepard (26:35.369) Well, I hope so. I think the answer is yes. I mean, first thing to understand is they're both going to go up a lot. but Bitcoin is going to go up more because it's got an adoption curve as well as a sound money component to it. Brian Cubellis (26:40.858) Yeah. Lawrence Lepard (26:48.158) Yeah, mean, it's look at the math is quite, you know, it's quite scary. This is in the book as well. I mean, there was a time in the 70s when you could take our monetary base to buy divided by the 261 million ounces the US owns and you came up with a $35 reference price. It's like, okay, easy peasy. get it, right? You do that math today to balance all the money we've created since that point in time, with that 261 million ounces, because we haven't grown our gold reserve, the price of gold would need to be $80,000 an ounce. It's at 2,900. You know somebody's going to get hurt here and there's going to be you know there's going to be I mean as Luke says Gold's going to trade in a different zip code you know if and when it gets reset now. Let me also say though that I think it's important and this is where Jason Lowry comes in. I think it's important and Loomis gets it and others get it. know China and India and Russia to a degree and the Middle East although less so have all made a big bet on on gold. I mean they're you know they see that the fractional reserve. market's not working right, and they understand the broken monetary system and their solution is buy gold. Well, okay, fine. The better solution is buy Bitcoin. And so from a strategic point of view, and I have two minds on this, because I never liked seeing our federal government get richer or more powerful, but frankly, I prefer our federal government to the Chinese federal government. The US could make a great strategic move by moving to a Bitcoin standard, just skipping the whole gold step. Brian Cubellis (28:15.674) Mm-hmm. Lawrence Lepard (28:15.758) And I hope they will and I hope they do and that's what Jason's obviously working on doing and he's you know, he's got a role there that hasn't been disclosed yet, but I know he's working on it and so so the bottom line is that I think that We will go to a sound money standard and ultimately that's how my standard will have to be Bitcoin because gold's got so many flaws I mean, it's hard to verify. You don't know who really has it. mean, I look at the Brian Cubellis (28:35.951) Right. Lawrence Lepard (28:39.534) The Fort Knox in West Point and Denver Mint and San Francisco Mint stores of it. They haven't even been audited since 1953. So we don't even know if we really have the goal we say we have. And I met with Ron Paul once and he told me he doesn't think we do. So you know, so you got that problem. And by the way, the same thing with, you know, with all the other countries. I how do you verify it? I mean, the beautiful thing about Bitcoin is you get this triple entry accounting where you can show your address and show what you got. And so... You can sell faster. Think about the shipment issues, et cetera. And the false bar issue. You can take a tungsten bar and coat it with gold and you can't detect that easily. So hopefully the US will be smart enough. Insofar as you want the federal government to succeed, and I'm mixed in my minds on that, the US will be smart enough to just skip the gold step and go to Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (29:26.032) You Jackson Mikalic (29:31.596) Yeah, I think I agree with you, Larry. I I am like you, where I don't want the federal government to continue to have more power. But I think part of this is Bitcoin could help the United States and what we talked about, forget if it was before or after we started recording, but with about 90 % of the wealth concentrated in the hands of the top 1 % of the U.S., Bitcoin could help reset things here in the U.S. and help to drive that wealth concentration down if the federal government and the states use Bitcoin responsibly to empower the individual. And so what I'm hoping for, and it was something I wanted to pull up on the screen, is I hope that states will lead the way in the U.S. as it relates to Bitcoin adoption. Lawrence Lepard (30:01.16) Absolutely. Lawrence Lepard (30:17.132) Yes. Yes. Jackson Mikalic (30:18.794) There's a nice chart here that was put out by VanEck. I believe yesterday they looked at 20 state level Bitcoin reserve bills. And so if all of them were enacted, of course this won't happen, at least on the first pass through, but it would drive, at current prices, $23 billion of buying or about a half a million dollars of Bitcoin. So what I would really love to see is states lead Bitcoin adoption here in the United States. Of course I would want the... I know how this plays out from a game theory perspective, so I want the US to lead at a federal level as you said as well, Larry, but I would really like to see things happen at more a grassroots level, which is typically how Bitcoin's been adopted. It's happened at the individuals. Lawrence Lepard (30:56.578) Totally agree. mean, I think the better thing for the US to do would be to say, I mean, probably one of the most positive things that government could do for Bitcoin, I recommend this in the book, would be to remove the capital gains tax and declare that it actually is legal tender. It's another, I mean, the US should basically say, look, we've got four forms of money. They are the dollar, gold, silver, and Bitcoin. You own any one of those four forms of money, you don't pay any capital gains tax. You know, and let them just all compete it out. Which is the best, which is the best money? You you can hold any one of those and off you go. And then I think furthermore, if I were the president, what I would do is I would strongly suggest to all my citizens, I would say, you guys should be holding Bitcoin because, you know, this is a Bitcoin friendly country and we may have a Bitcoin strategic reserve. And, you know, ultimately someday we're going to return to a sound money standard and Satoshi's, know, the dollars. mean, if what I'm describing occurs, there will come a day when the dollar just won't be relevant anymore. Right now it's a good payment rail because everyone accepts it, everyone knows what it is. And that's why the stablecoins are necessary and they work. But behind all of that, the real money is the Bitcoin or gold. Michael Tanguma (32:08.45) Yeah, I'm curious, Larry, how you mentioned what you want to see happen, but what would your probability weight that we leapfrog gold? Because I think when I first, for the first two years, I think that's the rub that most people, like we talked about it a year ago and I brought it up, it's like individuals thought that 12 trillion or whatever was a magnet with gold and that Bitcoin just supersedes it. But in reality, we're now at two trillion and Bitcoin and gold is at 19 trillion. Lawrence Lepard (32:17.022) I don't know. Lawrence Lepard (32:36.258) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (32:36.364) And it feels like there's so much entrenchment. It's like in our DNA, what gold value is that so much time to play that interplay is going to happen before we end up at the end state of it, demonetizing that. Lawrence Lepard (32:40.27) Yeah, yeah. Lawrence Lepard (32:47.278) Yeah, I mean, it depends on how intelligent the leadership is. I think, you know, I think the CIA, I mean, I've talked to Jason and he says the CIA gets it, the military get it. You know, I think it's a possibility that, you know, the Vance and others get it, Vivek get it. But I hear you, Michael. mean, one thing that we should discuss, though, with this Bitcoin flipping gold issue that I think is interesting, that I think far too few people focus on. So let's call the gold market today 19 trillion, okay? And the Bitcoin market, let's call it round numbers 2 trillion, depending on the day. But... That 19 trillion of gold, not really all available for sale. you've got, you know, you've got antiquities and museums and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, we're not going to go melt down, you know, Tutankhamun's mask, right? To, you know, for gold. You've got, you know, you've also got central banks who own 20 or 30 % of the gold out there. They're buying, not selling. So that's not really available supply. And then you've got, you know, women who own jewelry, particularly in India, but China and other places. And, you know, 30 or 40 % of the gold in the world is around some woman's neck or it's in the form of jewelry, which by the way, will get melted down at 100,000 an ounce. But today it's not really available. And so if you kind of think about, if you're an investor and you're trying to buy gold, you've got to buy bullion or coins, which are maybe 25 % or a little more of the total marketplace. So, you know, maybe the investment market for gold is 4 trillion or 5 trillion. So if Bitcoin were to double or triple from here, arguably it kind of would flip gold. in terms of its investable size. You see what saying? Michael Tanguma (34:22.906) I'll take the other side of that because it's very similar in saying like So like I had this weird history before Bitcoin where I was like almost like a gold merchant. ended up working at this like high in auction house. And ultimately what happens is you actually do melt the mask if the price makes enough sense because what happens with people's gold jewelry is when the price rises, people have all this old gold jewelry sitting in buckets or drawers that unlocks the price. So when they see it hit 3000, it actually comes back to the market. So it made economic sense for melting the mask today. But if it's $70,000 a troy ounce, Lawrence Lepard (34:51.438) Okay. Michael Tanguma (34:57.429) you're gonna melt the shit out of that mask because it just unlocks that capital flow. Brian Cubellis (34:58.704) You Lawrence Lepard (34:59.278) Yeah, you may be absolutely right. no, the supply will emerge as a result of that. mean, and that's true in the silver market too. I mean, you go in any coin store and you see all these old tea sets. right sitting around that some poor old family, know, widow brought in and she sold it to the dealer for some fraction of what it was worth because he could, and he's hoping to resell it to somebody who needs a tea set. But you know, cause there's a lot of craftsmanship in it, if the worst case he can take that and send it to a smelter and you know, get X dollars per ounce for that silver. So, so you're right. Price will, price will create supply. Yeah. Michael Tanguma (35:36.698) And the thing, the way I thought about this is from an individual perspective, right? The market's made up of individuals and really realizing it's kind of funny to take the other side of this talking to you is like, how does somebody that's, you know, call them 50 to 75 stomach the volatility and they quit the easy answer. Somebody would say, well, just buy 2%. Well, then it's like, what do they do with the other 98 % hold negative yielding bonds and inflated equities. I'd rather them hold 70 % in gold and 30 Lawrence Lepard (35:53.678) That's right. Lawrence Lepard (36:06.008) That's exactly right. Michael Tanguma (36:06.652) So I think in the size of Tim, I'm curious like on your thoughts on corporate treasury. It's the same thing of like, well, what do you hold your reserve asset if it's volatile? You can't get cut in half 50 % in a bear market and lose those treasury or lose those assets, but you can have some exposure to gold. Similar thesis now. I think better tools and solutions get built out. We're talking to Argo, I think we're gonna have on the pod. I don't know where this goes, but I can imagine where counterparty risk is starting to be felt in gold. start to naturally need a better gold market that becomes trusted. And it's very similar in Bitcoin where we understood this very early because it's accelerated cycles, right? Because you get the boom bust when exchange goes down, counterparty risk rehypothic and blocked by FTX. So the market was always sophisticated there and understanding not your gold, not your gold, right? So like, I think that we start to now understand that counterparty risks exist in the paper claims and different products and services come about while we go in this world. Again, this just as a thesis, I don't know. That's how it plays out. Lawrence Lepard (37:07.854) Sounds right to me. the balancing of gold and Bitcoin is something I actually deal with a lot because I have a lot of older clients. you know, you're 70 or 80 years old, you can't really comfortably put too much money in an asset that could go down 50%. You might need that money, you know, you just don't want to have that happen. You know, and Bitcoin's gone down over 50 % four times. So everybody has to size it appropriately. I mean, the worst drawdown ever in gold was coming off the 1980 peak and it was 20 or 30%. And most years are, know, if they're down years, they're small downs and if they're up years, they're small to medium ups. Obviously you don't have nearly the upside in gold that you do in Bitcoin, but in terms of actually preserving your underlying purchasing power. know, gold is analog sound money and it's not a terrible choice. It's not going to grow a lot. It doesn't lay eggs, but it doesn't debase. And we live in a world full of debasement. So, you know, to me, the new model is kind of, know, gold has become the old bonds and Bitcoin is now equity, right? So you want to, you know, and they used to say you wanted to have your weight in equities, you know, or in bonds equal to your age as the percentage or something, right? Michael Tanguma (38:09.892) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (38:20.237) Yeah, one of the... Michael Tanguma (38:20.238) Yeah, you can eat your gold and you can eat your gold in Bitcoin. Like, I mean, you can't, but you can because you can buy things with it. Like you can actually take it. Lawrence Lepard (38:26.444) Well, that's the thing. mean, yeah, neither produces a yield, but that's the other thing. I think we're to go back much more to a world where, know, okay, so, you know, you don't need a cash dividend or you don't need a yield per se on your assets. If your assets are going up at greater than 3 % a year, you can consume 3 % of your assets by selling them. and you're still in the same place wealth wise. And that's certainly what I tend to do when I retire some years out, not that far probably though. I won't have any income streams and that's fine, but I'm pretty sure that by selling 1 or 2 % of my Bitcoin every year, I'll be able to cover my operating costs. So, that's how I will deal with that. I know a lot of other people think, well, gosh, it's not realistic. I want something that pays me a dividend or I want something that pays me income. Well, no, you want an asset that goes up in value every year. value every year and you need to sell a small piece of that increase in order to pay your living expenses, well then you do it. And so that's how I view it. Jackson Mikalic (39:26.03) Yeah, I totally agree. mean, think this... Brian Cubellis (39:26.244) And that's also where the no cap gains would be absolutely massive, right? And like, I'm glad you called that out, because I think that would be a more positive bullish signal than them stacking a Bitcoin reserve in my mind. Lawrence Lepard (39:29.718) Well, that's right. That's exactly what it should be. Lawrence Lepard (39:42.41) I agree. It would be huge. Michael Tanguma (39:44.69) And I know Jackson you want to come in but I think the last part to all this is people have not weighted counterparty risk and this is ultimately this is what we've been talking about for like a year now and have literally been doing a lot longer but it's this notion of what is the weight that what's the price appreciation that an individual has for holding gold in their house or in a vault or bitcoin on a harbor wallet or with onramp or even an ETF in the notion of, well not an ETF because there's counterparties there, but this version of will equities being over subscribed, over inflated or paper gold, if... the market goes bid on like from a risk perspective, you may hold nothing. And so even if you don't get the perceived 12 % nominal gains, you get nine or six, whatever it is. Well, that's still effectively, this is an exercise me and Marty used to do, would you rather hold $250,000 in a Harbor wallet or a million dollars in Wells Fargo, right? Like, you you start to get to a certain point and I think that's what now we're gonna realize. Lawrence Lepard (40:40.95) Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's exactly right. I mean, it's, yeah, that's a good point. Jackson Mikalic (40:52.046) Yeah, no, a couple things I wanted to tease out and hear some thoughts from the group. So Bitcoin and gold are interesting asset classes because they both have positive skew. And what that means is other traditional assets such as equities or fixed income securities. We associate volatility to be bad because there's more downside volatility in those asset classes than there is upside volatility. But gold and to a greater extent Bitcoin have more of a skew toward upside volatility than downside. So volatility is not inherently a bad thing. But because of the traditional assets that investors have been using for decades now, they have this bias of downside volatility. You know, if there's typically a volatile event, it's to the downside. Well, Bitcoin the opposite is true. And this is really crucial for retirees and people of retirement age. because you have typically an outsized portion of a portfolio in fixed income securities. And there's a component there that's important because you need some sort of certainty as it relates to managing your cash as you move away from a steady income, right? You rely on the investment portfolio to generate income or not, maybe like we were describing, but Bitcoin can help with the debasement that your bond portfolio inevitably has and provide a hedge and kind of a balance Act where there's always going to be some amount of current income needs that retirees have. But if they have all their portfolio or majority of the portfolio in the fixed income, well, they may outlive their retirement. And so that's why, to your point, Larry, there's more of an associate or there's more retirees holding larger allocations to equities now. That's why I think Bitcoin plays a really crucial role, maybe as a small portion of portfolios for people in their 60s or 70s. But likewise, the flip side is the 20 year old or the 30 year old needs Bitcoin as Jackson Mikalic (42:45.392) because every other asset class is tremendously overvalued. And not to say that that means those valuations will go down. I think they are going up because the debasement is happening at a more rapid rate. But Bitcoin's really the only thing that I think will allow people beyond starting a business and growing that tremendously successfully over time, Bitcoin's really the only investable asset I think that will help younger demographics catch up to wealth that previous generations have had. Lawrence Lepard (43:14.826) I think that's right. I one of the beautiful things about I've said this on the podcast, I think it's the most asymmetric bet I've ever seen. I've been doing this for 40 plus years. It doesn't have a management team. It's very hard to pick good companies that are gonna grow and succeed. And it's very easy to screw up a company. Blue chip companies get ruined all the time. General Electric got ruined. mean, other blue chips have gotten ruined. And the way to build wealth is to compound something over years and years and years and years. so, and you know, how do you know that a company is going to have good management over years and years? You don't. And yet, you know, here we are, we've got, this thing is kind of management free, right? We've got, you know, we've got an algorithm, we've got a distributed network, we've got nodes, we've got the checks and balances. mean, we're beyond the stage where anyone could do a 51 % attack. I mean, it's just... It's a thing of beauty because it's growing at the value of Metcalfe's law. It's growing exponentially as a result of adding linearly to the base layer of people using it. I mean, I've just never seen anything like it, which is again, part of the reason why I just felt like, I've got to write this book and just explain, try to explain to the average person why they really need to own this thing. Because in 10 or 15 years, the outcomes of those of us who did versus those who did not. They're going to be really different. mean, they're going to be, you know, I mean, it's going to be like our kids are going to be thanking us that we did this and, you know, and they're going to be people who didn't do it. And I mean, like, Jesus, why are those people so well off? And we're not, you know, by comparison. mean, maybe we used to be well off, but, you know, on a relative basis, everything has changed a great deal. So, you know, it's yeah. And I just, I didn't want, you know, I wanted to have a book that the common man. Michael Tanguma (45:00.196) Yeah. Lawrence Lepard (45:04.138) if they get a hold of it and read it, you know, could, could, you know, say, okay, I get it now. I understand what's happened to me. and then I understand what I got to do to protect myself. And then, and the, the subsidiary benefit is not only does number go up and I'll do better investment wise doing this, but guess what? There are all these other subsidiary benefits about making the world a better place, making things fair, stopping wars, helping the third world. mean, you name it. It's got all these other, you know, it's, it's, it is fix the world. It's not just fix the money, right? So. Jackson Mikalic (45:33.634) Yeah, one thing Larry too that's really critically important here that you just touched on is that you're entrusting management teams with your retirement and that's becoming a more concentrated position that people have. I just pulled up this chart as you were speaking to this where, I'll make it little bit larger, but. Michael Tanguma (45:33.741) It's a great. Jackson Mikalic (45:52.334) In a matter of a decade, the Magnificent 7 went from 11 % of the S &P 500 to about 30%, right? So what people are doing with their retirements is parking. Lawrence Lepard (45:52.443) wow, look at that. Jackson Mikalic (46:03.95) 30 % of their index fund into the success and the ongoing success of seven companies. And so as we know, companies lose their market share all the time, right? The largest companies 20 years ago are not the largest companies today. And so I think that that is an under-appreciated risk in the market. And these are also, they're 30 % of the market, but they're also driving the outsize of the returns. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but these are generating virtually almost all the return to the index. Lawrence Lepard (46:30.398) absolutely. All the returns are in these names. Yeah, no, I, again, the book mentions this and tries to warn people. I mean, I look at a lot of my boomer friends and they have very, very large portions of their net worth in the market and it's worked for them. And so they naturally kind of assume it's going to continue to work. And, know, with these extreme valuations that we now have, You know, I don't think that's a rational assumption. I think, you know, I can't say for sure, but there's some probability it's not going to work as well as I think. And these things are priced to perfection. And so, you know, I personally happen to think that a lot of people who are long all those stocks are going to experience regret, you know, when those things mean revert. But, you know, when's that going to happen? I don't know. I've been calling for a time for a couple of years now and it hasn't happened. it may not happen. I could be wrong. Michael Tanguma (47:19.514) Yeah, I think he was like a top 10 last year made up like 75 % of the returns but Lawrence Lepard (47:25.23) Alright. Brian Cubellis (47:25.776) Yeah, even just so even just the mag seven, I think was like 55 or 60 % contribution to 2024 returns. So I totally agree there. Go ahead. Lawrence Lepard (47:34.345) Yeah, and look, I remember. I remember 2000s. has a 2000 feel to it. Nvidia and Cisco, in the book I talked about this, they traded about the same revenue multiple at the peak. Michael Tanguma (47:47.79) But, your kicker is it's gonna happen sooner than later because of just deflationary tech. The reality is these companies can go out-compete those other ones. So we saw this with, yeah. Brian Cubellis (47:56.497) That's what I was going to say, the execution risk is higher than ever. The competitive risks are higher than ever. So I totally agree, they're price to perfection. And I think it would be unwise to attempt to store value in seven companies that may be disrupted overnight for the next 10 or 20 years. Lawrence Lepard (48:18.21) Yeah, I mean, we saw this deep seat comes out of the blue and everyone's like, whoa, hang on a second. Michael Tanguma (48:18.5) Something. Michael Tanguma (48:24.762) Something you called out Larry that I think is super important, we don't do it well enough like I think as people educating is asymmetric, but not only to the upside, but in the truest sense to the downside as well. Because if you don't adopt it, most people I think think, well, I'm happy with my portfolio and I don't want 1%, 3 % risk asset have to figure this out. Like I'm okay, I'll miss out on some of the upside. But there's actually the alternative, which at an individual level, as you mentioned. fundamentally different in 15 years if they're holding cash or cash equivalents. Similar to what Tim focuses on the corporate treasury side, if you're not holding a better form of money and you're not recapitalizing your business with this, you're effectively going to get out competed because another company will do that because it's just self preservation. And so everyone can either lose or win by figuring out when they get to play the game. Lawrence Lepard (49:15.918) That's exactly right. Jackson Mikalic (49:18.402) Yeah, one thing this conversation reminded me of was Peter Thiel's presentation, I believe, at the Bitcoin 2023 conference. He had a really nice chart that showed in 1980, the gold market cap was two and a half trillion and the equities market cap was two and a half trillion. And then when he presented, it might have been in 2022 now that I'm thinking of it, the gold market cap was 12 trillion. Now it's 19 trillion, as we talked about. And the equities market cap was 115 trillion. trillion. So they used to be a parody, gold and equities, 40 years ago, but now it's like a 10x in the equities market cap than it is in gold. And I wonder if this all ties into what we've been discussing where it's not about gold and Bitcoin competing, right? It's not about Bitcoin superseding gold's market cap. I think they both go up for all the themes and you work that you've done, Larry, on the topic. So I think what ultimately happens is we have this concentration in equities. That's probably where some of the money capital flees from to go into the sound money assets. Lawrence Lepard (50:23.494) There's absolutely no doubt. mean, that's been, Jesse Meyer has the great chart on this we've all seen where, you know, those equities have worked and because they've worked, people have continued to go into them and chased them. And they've partly worked because, you know, ZERP, you know, which we had for so many years from 09 to 15. And then again, during COVID that just created, it was very easy to do carry trades. And, you know, I mean, you look at Citadel and what do they do? They just, you know, they borrow cheap and they invest in equities and they make the spread. And so, You just got a lot of that, that if and when it comes time to unwind. Yeah, this is Jesse's chart. Thank you. mean, any of that, although, you know, set aside real estate for a minute, it's slightly different piece, but all of that other money, know, bonds, money and equities, you know, all it has to do is start to realize, you know, we're at risk of debasement and inflation and they're going to come chasing that $2 trillion. And that two on 900 is less than two tenths of 1 % or right around two tenths of 1%. So You there was a time back in the 80s, you referenced it Jackson, where gold was 10 15 % of, know, of vegetable market caps. I think your numbers were a little off, you know, so if we're at two tenths in equities or in Bitcoin right now, mean Bitcoin could go up 10x, Bitcoin could go from 100,000 to a million, and it still only be 2 % of total assets. And 2 % is not a big percentage. So yeah, there's a lot of upside here. I mean, I think Bitcoin is going to go up 10x and then I think it's going to go up 10x again. So what does that mean? That means $10,000 or $10 million a coin. I think that's going to happen. Now, you know, I'm not saying exactly what timeframe. I you got to you probably got to give me 15 years for that to happen. it's going to happen in my view. that's, know, sailors target is higher than that. you know, it just seems pretty natural and obvious to me. Michael Tanguma (51:53.85) Thank Michael Tanguma (52:11.832) It's pretty clear for anybody listening or paying attention that the new administration is going to leverage Bitcoin as some component of its monetary policy. But it can't be done at two trillion. It needs to be 10 to 20. So that's why I think we end up faster where we think we're going. Lawrence Lepard (52:19.842) Yes. Lawrence Lepard (52:24.558) Well that's the thing, it's exactly. Well, as we all know, mean, you've heard and you heard not not the sympathy. Well, whoever the crypto czar was, I can't really guys name is more of a shit. What's that? That's yeah, heard. It's actually something like, you know, these things create. They create demand for stable coins, right? Because the stable coin buyers are big buyers in the treasuries, right? You know, the short treasuries. And so, yeah. So I mean, if you you make a bigger number for all of Bitcoin. Michael Tanguma (52:37.668) David Sacks. David Sacks. Brian Cubellis (52:38.778) sex. Lawrence Lepard (52:56.758) and then therefore you have a bigger number for all of stable coins and therefore the stable coins need to buy the treasuries to back the underlying coins with the cash that they bring in. Well guess what? You got another buyer for treasuries and guess what? We really need buyers for treasuries because we're running big deficits. So yeah, everything, I mean, and even Trump said something along these lines. mean, you know, they recapitalized the world back in the 70s by going to the petrodollar standard and they marked oil up 4X. I mean, a similar thing could occur with Bitcoin where they need him. It's policy where they actually need a much higher Bitcoin price, you know, to help. Michael Tanguma (53:30.776) And it's a full circle because the last piece which you described is they're more than likely going to put some policy where you have to hold 10 to 20 % of reserves if you're a bank in treasuries from a capitalization ratio with Bitcoin. So you're fine with that if you're making money on the Bitcoins appreciation and fees and then treasuries to issue stables. So it is that like intermediate, hetero, it just gets the free flow around all these other assets. Lawrence Lepard (53:48.205) right. Lawrence Lepard (53:55.778) That's exactly right. look, mean, the problem is we've got too much debt that's inappropriately valued in price. It's not money good in terms of real values. And so it's pretty simple math. We just have to mark it down. And what do you mark it down against? You mark it down against forms of sound money that can't be debased. And the two choices are gold and Bitcoin. And it's not like we haven't seen this before. I Roosevelt did this in 1933 and 1934. He grabbed all the gold and then he devalued it 70%. And so, you know, this is how, you know, I mean, it's a debt jubilee, right? I mean, they're written about in the Bible. It happened in Mesopotamia. I mean, it's just, you know, when you get to a stage in a society and an economy where the debt is so large you can't carry it anymore, something's got to give. And that's kind of, you know, the reason for the book, and I think the book is timely in this respect, is I feel like we're kind of at that point. know? I mean... Look at it, in the 2020 example, mean, you had, what did you have, $17 trillion of negative yielding debt? I mean, what's that all about? I gotta pay you, if I put money in your bank, I gotta pay you to have it there? mean, come on, I mean, you had 0 % interest rates for eight years, and I mean, it's it's nuts. We've hit the end of this Keynesian debt is good, I need debt to grow. you know, blah, blah, blah, all that nonsense that Cain's laid out, which I totally debunk in the book, and we've hit the end of that model. That's not working anymore. And so we're going to a new model, it's a fourth turning, and the new model is going to be sound money based. But how we get from here to there is going to be messy. mean, there's a lot of policy choices, a lot of different ways. I mean, I don't think hyperinflation's in our future, but it's not off the table. I mean, if the next administration is blue and Andrew Yang does universal basic income and Stephanie Kelton becomes Treasury Secretary, guess what? We're gonna have hyperinflation. Yeah, exactly. Jackson Mikalic (55:57.272) Guess what, we're moving to Dubai. Larry, I have a question for you. Could you speak to what's going on with the Fed's reverse repo facility and just how that ties into the big print? I think I saw as the lowest level in four years or so. Brian Cubellis (55:59.281) You Lawrence Lepard (56:11.0) Sure, I mean that- Yeah, so they printed so much money in the last round of printing, you know, in the COVID example, that there was a lot of excess money in the system. So they bribed the banks to pocket it to the Fed through these reverse repos by paying a high enough interest rate to get them to do that. And then as the government ran these deficits and there weren't buyers for the debt, they increased the rates on the short-term treasury bills and made it more attractive than having the money in the reverse repo. So the reverse repo money then came in to buy the treasury bills. And that was a nice trick that Janet Yellen pulled for a bunch of years. But guess what? She's at the end of the road. I mean, I think it's peak. The RRPs were a couple trillion. I know they were over one and a half, maybe even close to two. can't recall. And then they got drawn down. Now they're down to, I don't think, is it 70 billion, 80 billion? It's a small, or no, maybe 700 billion. It's a small number. Yeah, okay. That's what I thought. so that bunch of money that was used to finance the federal government, that's been drained. That's gone. Jackson Mikalic (57:02.638) No, you're right. It's 76 billion. Lawrence Lepard (57:12.62) So it's kind like, okay, now what's next, right? And they're gonna have to think of something or else interest rates are gonna go higher because there aren't gonna be enough buyers for these bonds. Now, I suspect what they'll do is they'll change the SLR, which is the Supplementary Leverage Ratio that the banks have, and they'll let the banks buy an unlimited amount of treasuries without any penalty, without looking at them. And maybe they've already done some of that. Some of this monetary plumbing is pretty arcane. And I, Joseph Wang and Lin Alden are the two that have the best view of it because they just study it like a hawk and Luke Grohman too. But they'll do things that I think will, you know, try to allow them to get the debt sold. But at some point, I believe the interest rates are going to continue to go higher. mean, if you look at the dashboard that I look at every morning, you know, I look at the price of gold, I look at the price of Bitcoin, I look at the S &P, and I look at the yield on the 10-year. And the yield on the tenure is a big and important one, but not enough people look at it. I mean, in September, in the fall of 2023, the yield on the tenure went through 5 % when we were in the rate height tightening cycle. If you recall, like within weeks, 12 Fed governors came out said, oh, no, no, no, we're done. You know, we're good. We're not going to hike rates anymore. And the yield came back down. I mean, so we kind of know that the Fed's break point is if the yield on the tenure goes through 5%, we've got real problems. And so... So if that starts to happen, I think what we can assume is that the Fed is going to come back in and they're going to reverse their policies, maybe start to cut rates, maybe do yield curve control, maybe reinstitute QE. But to be fair, they've really got a pickle. mean, Jay Powell is trying to play Paul Volcker, but he can't because Paul Volcker had 30 % debt to GDP and Powell's got 128 % debt to GDP. So he's screwed, he's kind of trapped. I mean, if I were him, I'd just want to get out of there. Because at some point, there's going to be one hell of a mess here. And the book talks about this as well. We also know how that gets resolved. I mean, the hell of a mess is what gives them the opportunity to do the next big print and just say, well, we had to do it. Because if we didn't do it, the ATMs would have stopped working. So that's in our future if there's a hell of a mess. Lawrence Lepard (59:28.75) And meanwhile, they're going to do these incremental things to try and keep it going down the road. You know, I mean, they did one with Silicon Valley Bank that kicked down the road, you know, they did it in September. They did it when we had the repo blowout in 2019. mean, all these different things they do and I'm sure they have some more up their sleeve, you know, that'll just ignore that. Don't worry. It's all good. We got it. You know, I thought I heard rumors and I thought they were maybe working on one for commercial real estate where they would have some kind of a commercial, you know, like a like a BTFP program for CRE people. know, okay, give us your bad commercial real estate debt. We'll give you hundred cents on the dollar and you can pay us back over some long period of time. I mean, but no matter what you call these things or how they structure them, they're really all the same thing. They're just printing money. It's the fed saying, we're going to give you money to keep the system going. That's because that's all they do. You know, but they need political cover. So right now he's trying to be a tough guy. And until something breaks, you know, he doesn't really have the political cover to do it. But they'll do it in backdoor ways. mean, know, percent, you know, and Trump saying to foreign countries, hey, we're going to put tariffs on you. And I suspect that thing that's not being said is unless you buy our treasuries, you know, and then the country might say, well, we don't have the money to buy your treasuries. Fine, we'll give you a swap line. You know, so mean, it's all quite insidious the way they figure out ways to create the money. But the money will get created because if it doesn't, the thing will collapse. Jackson Mikalic (01:01:00.588) Yeah, well said. I it's tough to keep up with all the acronyms and new programs that come out. Lawrence Lepard (01:01:05.3) It is, it is. And they keep moving the peas and shells around and they gaslight us and they lie. you know, in my book I've got all the, so many of lies. I Paul's saying, you what we're doing here is not printing money. Well, bullshit. You know, come on. Of course it is. You know it is. I mean, it's just, it's horrible, right? Brian Cubellis (01:01:06.233) You Jackson Mikalic (01:01:23.5) Yeah, it's all obfuscated under these complex and convoluted programs and they tell the public that it's good for them and... Lawrence Lepard (01:01:27.116) Yeah, I mean, they've got this Rube Goldberg machine running and they claim they're the wizard and that they can keep pushing the levers and make it keep running and it's all going to work. But Toto is pulling back the curtain and we're all starting to realize the wizard doesn't know what the hell he's doing. And then sadly, the next one's going to be even worse than the last one, more inflation. And that's, and by the way, that's when we do get the reset guys, when everybody in the country realizes they can never stop and the system is so badly broken that in spite of the pain that it might cause to make the transition, sound money is the right alternative. mean, you know, the optimistic side of the book is that there have been a lot of companies, countries who've had high inflation, there have even been countries who've had hyperinflation. But here's the really good news. When that happens and you return to sound money, things get better fast. Things get better really fast. So this is a simple issue. We just need to go to sound money. Now, the people who running the current system, they don't want to see that happen because the system benefits them. So they don't want to see it. Yeah, go ahead. Michael Tanguma (01:02:33.806) Which is... Yeah. which is the with a tinfoil hat, like it's always felt a little inorganic for me with the 2024 reversal with the ETFs. I guess it was late 2023 from the SEC perspective and then 2024 they went live. If you are going to have inflation, you have to naturally onshore people need to be able to spend money. They need some asset that appreciates faster than the rate of money supply. They're going to need exposure to hard assets and what easier way to get exposure via a securitized version of that. and then also the regulatory regime drastic shift. It kind of works well for the narrative because it's Trump and a different administration, but it feels like it was just bound to happen either way because this path happens and then you don't have an actual asset to escape to, which leaves everyone kind of in a very bad spot. Lawrence Lepard (01:03:20.429) Yeah. Yeah, mean, thank God they approved the ETFs. mean, to be honest with you, when that was going down, I was afraid they weren't going to. I thought, you know, it could have gone either way. I mean, I'm sure the large banks and the Elizabeth Warrens of the world did not want that to happen. But fortunately, know, Larry Fink and the Black Rocks and the other side of the world did. And they won. And so, you know, so we got an ETF. And to me, that was huge, absolutely huge. When that happened, I said to myself, OK, we won, you Because before that, there was still some question mark of whether or the government was going to tax it, try and regulate it, prevent it, whatever it might be. a lot of my normie friends said, I'm never buying this thing because I don't know what the government's going to do. Well, when the government approved the ETF, they had to change their view. Michael Tanguma (01:04:09.134) Yeah, I was going to ask about that. How are your, you talked about one of the last pods we did, your Harvard peer group when you went back to the ring. Brian Cubellis (01:04:15.888) You Lawrence Lepard (01:04:16.13) You know, it's funny. So the smartest of them get it. The guys I went to, the smartest guys in my sector, totally get it. They're in. They're buying it. But the... The ones who've played the game and have benefited greatly from the fiat system, lot of them, and I think of PE guys mostly and venture capital guys, they're pretty averse to it. And partly because the system's been very good to them. I think a lot of us who've embraced Bitcoin, we've done it because we felt pain and we're looking for a solution. And so we're willing to think outside of the box to find a solution to deal with the pain. You know, if you're a normie and have played the fiat game and you've made a ton of money, you're not really feeling any pain. And you know, the system feels okay to you. And in fact, this thing kind of sounds edgy and maybe it threatens your, you know, your... master of the universe like status and so you know so there's a lot more of that Michael than there is of the people who get it but the real smart ones get it you know they've kind of looked through it they like shit I get it and they realize you know I mean like think I mean think was a fiat lord a total fiat lord he's running black rock right but what he did was he did the homework and he said to himself my god this thing is inevitable you know I better you know I got a choice I can ignore this and he would have ended up like the Vanguard guy and gotten fired or I can embrace it and figure out a way to you know have my firm make money off of it and so he embraced it which is great you know Brian Cubellis (01:05:53.541) Yeah, Larry, I'm curious what you make of Doge and everything Elon's doing, because to me, it's somewhat of a corollary to what you just described around the emperor having no clothes and this moment on the monetary side. And it's similar in the sense of people waking up and realizing we've just been wasting money and there's no accountability in government. I think that bleeds over to the monetary realm of being like, why do we trust the Fed again? Lawrence Lepard (01:06:18.63) Yeah, well, I hope you're right. you know, look, you know, it's a complicated case. You know, I'm let me say the following things. I'm all for more government efficiency, uncovering waste, cutting back expenses, trying to make things better. I think the people who are imagining that Doge is going to be able to completely solve the problem and that the monetary debasement issue is solved. That's a joke. I mean, that's absurd because 80 % of the stuff you can't really touch. Brian Cubellis (01:06:41.083) yeah, mean that's... Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Lawrence Lepard (01:06:47.982) But I'm but I'm all for cutting back and I hope they're successful at cutting out the waste and the stupid stuff and and So on and so forth the Doge coin itself. I just don't get it mean, I just I you know and and I I have to say, you know I mean, I've never been a shit coiner. I don't believe in most of you know, most of what's crypto is foreign to me. try to be open-minded and understand there might be some legitimate use cases and as Saylor says, if a crypto coin is distributed ethically, know, and managed ethically and there's a legitimate use case, okay, I'm open-minded to it. But in general, that hasn't been the case, as we all know. Jackson Mikalic (01:07:31.884) Yeah, maybe to round things out, Larry, we've been doing a segment on the show called The Single Point of Failure of the Week, and the purpose of it is to call investor attention to counterparty risk or potential. Lawrence Lepard (01:07:39.95) You Jackson Mikalic (01:07:47.118) Other risks doesn't necessarily need to be counterparty risk. We've talked about inheritance risks or physical threats, you know, the proverbial $5 wrench attack. But we like to call out something once a week to inform investors and just have them think through like potential risks to owning Bitcoin and safeguarding it for the long term because we're all long term investors. But to get from the 100K Bitcoin to a million to 10 million, there's going to be a lot of pitfalls and there already have been a lot of pitfalls. So Michael, Tim, Brian, I'm curious to hear if anything caught your attention over the last week. One thing just wanted to flag that I thought it's an interesting stat and it's kind of a forewarning of maybe what's to come is that there's been... 4.7 Bitcoin purchased by MSTR, IBIT, and FBTC for every one Bitcoin that's been mined since the halving. And so I'm all for ETFs. I think it opens up the asset class to lot of investors who otherwise wouldn't invest into it. And same thing with MSTR if you want to allocate to MicroStrategy. feel free to, but I think the issue here ultimately ties back into counterparty risk and my concern is that we have a decentralized asset, but the custody of it is extremely centralized in Coinbase and other large custodians. And so I don't necessarily have a risk I saw this week, but I want to just call out and make people mindful of. There will be some sort of friction or pitfall that exists within these large players at some point this cycle, I think. I don't necessarily think it has to be Coinbase, but I do think that people should be wary of having their Bitcoin with one custodian, at least for all other stack. Lawrence Lepard (01:09:20.085) I am. Michael Tanguma (01:09:30.116) Yeah, I think the... the ones that call out, they all kind of not to pick on them, but it is Coinbase. There's like three flavors I've heard in the past, call it five business days. Yesterday I spoke with somebody that from Silicon Valley, didn't really go deep down the rabbit hole, but bought a stack in 2013, lost half of it because she put it into BlockFi's yield product. And so she just lost 50%. She doesn't know now about Coinbase or counterparty risks there. But in that same fashion, I know Jackson, working with larger clients to help with Coinbase. And Coinbase is an interesting beast because it came out a week ago that there was a report that they lost 300 million, not billion, 300 million in losses from hackers last year. But here's the kicker is because they have such a large user base and lack of focus, they make it insanely hard for the good people to take their money out because I think Larry, you had some problem in that. Lawrence Lepard (01:10:24.762) I had a terrible time. It was awful. Michael Tanguma (01:10:26.17) But then it's so because they have such a large tax surface, they make it hard for the good people to take their money out and then easy for the bad people to take their money out because they don't actually have the processes to manage that. So we have folks trying to take their assets out, worried about counterparty risks that are halted, they have nobody to call on while there's these losses happening because of social engineering, all the robo calls you get, the little you see. Lawrence Lepard (01:10:48.43) I still get calls from Coinbase security. mean, it's absurd. And of course I know that's not who it is, but you're right. Michael Tanguma (01:10:56.239) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:10:58.106) Yeah, there was one other in the news, Jackson, that I think I shared. was, you know, unfortunately, just another another kidnapping of some crypto founder. And I think Jameson Lopp shared it on on X. But yeah, just, know, always always be aware of your single points of failure and and try to mitigate those as much as possible would be the takeaway from from this segment. And we're going to keep hitting on it because, you know, People need to think about this critically, think about their setups and understand that these risks are only going to accelerate as we move from 100K to a million to $10 million Bitcoin. The attack services are going to grow. Lawrence Lepard (01:11:42.656) I think that's right, that's really just an advertisement for you guys and what you do. And by the way, I mentioned you guys in the book. I hope when you read the book, you'll see it. Brian Cubellis (01:11:50.742) Awesome. Appreciate that. Michael Tanguma (01:11:50.866) next. Lawrence Lepard (01:11:51.468) Yeah, I said two custodians that I recommend were you guys and Unchained. Because I know people at both. Yeah. So yeah, look, it's important. key in address management is it's tricky. I mean, these are the nuclear codes. Always have been, always will be. And wrench attacks are a real risk, and opsec counts, and so on and so forth. But these are not unsolvable problems. They are very solvable, as you've Brian Cubellis (01:11:56.824) wow. Awesome. Lawrence Lepard (01:12:21.402) guys know, you just need to find honorable people that you can trust and work with to help you solve them. And that's why your business exists. Michael Tanguma (01:12:28.015) Yeah. Appreciate it, Larry. It's a different conversation, but it's a key theme I've been talking to more. We talk more with clients about it's like one of the hardest differentiations or differences between Bitcoin and gold. Obviously, there's a supply cap. You can move it over the Internet, but it's really this notion that you have governance built in to the asset, which you didn't have with gold. So it had to centralize. Where with Bitcoin, you can have this version of multi-sig, where multiple institutions can hold the asset. So no funny business can happen. And you can now start to see a large pool of capital. Can come in and feel confident if you have BNY fidelity and Charles Schwab hold the key What are the odds they're gonna collude against you? So these are natural like primitives will start to grow. We didn't need them at $10,000 Bitcoin, but at 500k That becomes a very big issue and counterparty risk and in your house Or do you want coinbase at all? Both actually don't really work in that world for all of your wealth Lawrence Lepard (01:13:16.802) yeah. Lawrence Lepard (01:13:22.894) Correct, yeah, correct. It's an important issue and it'll grow increasingly important over time and obviously that's good for your business as it should be. It's a legitimate problem that needs to be solved. Michael Tanguma (01:13:37.057) One arm. thing just to call out before we jump is on the last call we did at the very end we like, we talked about what are we looking forward to and one of them was accountability, like accountability back in a system when you have sound money because effectively you have to provide value or you don't get the gold or the Bitcoin. And this kind of reminds me of again, it's an interesting all these things happening together of what's happening with the Doge, the department, what is it? Department of, what does Doge stand for? Lawrence Lepard (01:13:55.576) right. Brian Cubellis (01:14:06.116) government efficiency. Michael Tanguma (01:14:07.804) that we're coming back to bringing gold, Bitcoin, we know there's a lot of the sound aspects to the economic policy of the US. Well, you naturally just can't spend money, you can't print money to pay for inefficiencies, which historically have been there. Yesterday was the big thing about the 50-year-old, like you have to go into mineshaft to like retire somebody from the federal government or whatever, like these inefficiencies being in, did you see that or no? Lawrence Lepard (01:14:33.644) I didn't know. Michael Tanguma (01:14:35.354) I guess what Brian you know what I'm talking about like the Brian Cubellis (01:14:39.31) Yeah, was something Elon was describing in his little press conference yesterday. I forget what the actual details were. Yeah, there's like mind shafts of some kind. Jackson Mikalic (01:14:44.77) It's something about like the record keeping and there's a lot, yeah. Michael Tanguma (01:14:48.024) When somebody leaves, yeah, so this is actually, mean based on what they're explaining, when somebody retires from the federal government, they, and there's a certain amount of groups, call it, you know. I think actually, anything, if you're paid on government payroll, if you want to retire, they can only at a max do 24,000, I believe, a year because what they have to do is take these records and they go down a mine shaft that's like 55 years old and you have to manually go down and there's only so many records that can go down there in amount of intervals in a given day. So there's maxed out different people that can actually retire from the federal government. And he's just describing how insane. But so the point being is Lawrence Lepard (01:15:22.318) to use it next. Michael Tanguma (01:15:31.164) that there's this interesting aspect of accountability coming back to work. We've seen this with the amount of layoffs that have happened because interest rates rise and so you naturally don't have free money so you have to be very discerning in how you allocate that capital. the point being is this is the market, this is the way we're going. It's gonna be new oxygen. Some people aren't gonna know how to breathe because they've been paid for a very long time but this is gonna kind of like the world healing effectively. Lawrence Lepard (01:15:51.854) Alright. Lawrence Lepard (01:15:57.25) Yeah, there's no doubt. I think so many things will continually get better as a result of these changes. You know, we're seeing it and that's the promise of Bitcoin. I mean, that's why Bitcoiners are optimistic people. know, we've got a mess, but there's a solution. And the book talks about, you know, the first part is the problem, which if you read it, you can get pretty depressed about. Yes, it's very real. But the second part is the solution. I think universally those of us who've been in Bitcoin a while, you develop a real conviction that things will get much better as we slowly but surely march toward a sounder money system that's fair to everybody based on a mathematical protocol, not based on 12 guys sitting around, or men and women sitting around a table in DC setting the interest rate. mean, it's it's nuts. It's totally nuts. It's caused so much pain. you know, for so many people, it's not fair, so. Michael Tanguma (01:16:58.574) What was the most rewarding part of the book or biggest learning that you found? Lawrence Lepard (01:17:02.19) finishing it. I mean, you get near the end of it, you're just like, oh God, I just got to get this goddamn thing done. You know, I learned. So I kind of started at May, June, and it was written by December 31st. And then January was layout, which is actually quite an involved process to make it look good and be accurate and so forth. Brian Cubellis (01:17:12.57) How long did it take you to start to finish? Brian Cubellis (01:17:20.169) wow. Lawrence Lepard (01:17:29.294) But, you know, I learned some things historically that I hadn't, you know, as I dug deeper into the history, I mean, it cemented my views. I mean, didn't realize how inflationary the war of 1812 was. I hadn't studied that before. You know, I learned a lot more about the inflation that occurred after World War I and after the Civil War. Late in the book, I discovered how just stunning the returns are from network businesses, from Metcalfe's law businesses. mean, until I hadn't run these numbers. I don't if you guys realize it, since the day that it went public, Amazon is up 218,000%. Google is up 9,000%. This is a new investing paradigm. I don't think there's ever been a company, a large company, that had increased that much in value in 20 years. I went and I checked General Motors and IBM and some of the other big blue chip names, which are equivalent size. None of them had those kinds of returns over 50 years. So networking businesses are just different. They really are. so brought up as I was on Graham and Dodd and value investing and seeing the returns that you could get when you got invested early in a big network. And my eyes just popped out. I was like, holy shit, this is really important and different. And so I missed those because when I looked at those, I said to myself, too expensive. I knew they were growing. It wasn't hard to see Amazon was growing. It wasn't hard to see Google was growing. But you did the numbers and you said, God, this way too expensive. I can't pay this. They don't make enough money. The P-E ratio is insane. There is no P-E ratio. They're losing money. But that was a big mistake on my part not to invest in them. And so I'm not going to make that mistake again. And so I offer that for everyone who's looking at Bitcoin and saying, well, this is too expensive now. You think it's expensive now, wait till it's 10 million. Do know what mean? I mean, because it's got the characteristics of those businesses. In fact, it's bigger than those businesses because Amazon touches what Walmart does and so forth. But Bitcoin touches everything because money is involved in every area. this is, know, again, just another argument for why I tell all my clients, especially the older ones who are afraid of it, OK, fine. I'm not telling you to put all your money in this. Lawrence Lepard (01:19:51.234) But you can't, you gotta get off zero. Because if this thing goes up a thousand X, which it should, your relatives, your heirs are gonna really resent the fact that you didn't. Or they're gonna really thank you if you did. And I hadn't done that math to come to that conclusion until I actually wrote the book. I started writing the book and I started just playing around. was like, my God, this is different. Michael Tanguma (01:20:19.79) Yeah, that's really exciting. It's great. There's a lot of books out there, but I don't think one's taking this tact of speaking to the everyday man that feels it. We've seen it from being in this industry for a while. It's always the plumber, the athlete, the firefighter, the individual that feels inflation day to day is a lot easier because Bitcoin is not an IQ test. It's a common sense test. But then to give them the Lawrence Lepard (01:20:39.65) Yes, and it's an ego test and those people don't have big trad fi egos, know, right? Sorry. Brian Cubellis (01:20:44.804) Right. Michael Tanguma (01:20:45.882) Yeah, it doesn't take a lot of ego to want to buy your family eggs. Like you either preserve your wealth or you don't. It's very, again, a visceral feeling. So amazing that you did that. And I don't know if you want to plug the Bitcoin investor week in what you're going to be doing there, because I think we're going to get some. Lawrence Lepard (01:21:01.948) yeah, yeah, actually I will mention that because you had asked about it. So there's something going on, there's a conference going on up in New York, end of February, last week in February. I'm actually not going to the conference, but I'll be there that week for a couple of media things. And Tuesday night, Pubkey, which is owned by Bitcoiners down in the village, I'm going go down to Pubkey and do a book signing between five and ten o'clock, so I'll just be hanging around shooting the shit anyone's welcome to come bring their book with you. Sadly, I won't have books for people to sign. I here's a good of how Amazon operates. I've tried to buy authors books. If I want to pay full price, I can get them delivered in three days. If I want to pay the printing cost, which is what they'll sell them to me at, it's 60 day delivery. So I won't have any books to sell, but if you bring your book, I'll sign it. Michael Tanguma (01:21:49.698) OnRamp will have plenty of books. We'll have some for clients and then prospective clients for Larry to sign. So we'll come with a heavy hand of a book. Yeah. Lawrence Lepard (01:21:55.822) That would be great. Yeah, I appreciate that. Jackson Mikalic (01:22:01.41) Well, awesome. Thanks, Larry, for coming on. Really appreciate it. Appreciate all your hard work. Lawrence Lepard (01:22:03.534) Most of all, it was always fun to talk to you guys. I love your group, love what you're doing. I've known Michael forever, known you Jackson for a long time, other guys less, but getting to know you as well. So it's all good, right? I mean, let's just get out there and orange pill the world. That's the mission. The mission is to try and help as many people as we possibly can because we know this is a solution and a lot of people just don't know about it, right? Jackson Mikalic (01:22:27.842) Yeah, thanks for all the hard work, Larry. It's much appreciated. We'll see you in New York. Lawrence Lepard (01:22:29.684) thank you. Thank you guys. See you in New York, yep. Brian Cubellis (01:22:33.243) Thanks, Larry.