The Last Trade E021: Is This Time Different? with Larry Lepard

What you're telling me is that music is about to stop, and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of bodarous extras ever assembled in the history of doubtless 1974198792972000? Whatever we want to call this, it's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves, I say, when we. Sell, hey, I say when we sell. Larry Leppard is this time different, Marty. It's never different. There we go, Burr, I've been watching this shit show since 19. Well, I started in 82, but 87 was the first one. And you know, there's a long list of the Fed playing its role as the government backstop. Hell, the first one was really in World War One when and the Fed was created in 13, and they immediately broke their charter and helped finance World War One. So they got 100 years plus of doing this shit now and they're getting good at they're doing it faster and they're doing it with bigger numbers. That's about their range. Larry, I saw it on Twitter. You were talking about it. You've got your your your HBS reunion coming up. Yeah, I do. So I I was 1983. So it's 40 years and I'm going back. Yeah, go. Ahead, what do you think the the If you were to do a pulse check with your classmates there, what do you think they think is going to happen? Is it soft landing, Hard landing? How do they feel about it all? It's a great question, Jesse, and that's why I can't wait to go. I really want to dive in. I've got an event tonight, a dinner tonight and then you know, and and a lot of these guys are Fiat masters. Many of them have made, you know, multiples of, you know what I've done have been much more successful. They'll be looking down their nose at me but but I want to see who's doing what and what they see and how they see it unfolding. And my sense is they're going to be like, you know, the typical 60 plus year old boomers that hey, it's all pretty good and we're not too worried about it. You know, I I don't think, I mean, I think they'll they'll see that there are issues, but they'll kind of assume that they're all going to be solved as they have been in the past. So, you know, we'll see. I do know a couple of guys who are bitcoiners. So it's not like it's not like a zero set of HBS grads who are bitcoiners. And a couple of guys I stayed in touch with and they get it totally and they're into it. They put you all in the back of the room? Yeah. What's that? They. Put you all in the back of the room? Yeah. They'll put us in the back of the room, right? Yeah. Hang on. Say let me just close my door because my wife, you know, one of the things that will be interesting and I'm. I'm kind of looking forward to it. I, I, well, I don't know if it'll happen. Rob Kaplan was in my class. You know the the Dallas Fed guy who traded on insider information on the S&P 500. I don't know if it'll come back or not but if he is I'll, I'll smile. I'll smile at him when I see him. You know, we'll have to see. Have to see what he says. Yeah. No, it's the school's changed so much. It's gone so woke and it's so expensive and it's. I don't know, I, you know, there's a part of me that thought, you know, I didn't want to go see these people but then now you got to do it. You got to. It's a it's a data point right. I'll learn something from from being there so. I'm surprised you weren't going to put Kaplan in the headlock and give him a nuggie. I think that's, yeah. You know, look, it'll be like I say, I I would be prepared to go toe to toe with any of these guys. I I will say this, I went to a post 2008, like in 2010 or 11 HBS had a seminar where they brought in. Who did they have? They had Larry Summers. They had Geithner. I think they had. They had Paulson, Hank Paulson. Hank Paulson is an HBS grad. Geithner's not. Summers is a Harvard professor. And they had a couple of other guys up on the stage, and they were making the argument that what they did in 2008 was right and that it was necessary and that they saved the world. And they invited HBS grads to come and attend this. It was in the big amphitheater there. There were probably 700 people in the theater, maybe maybe five, between 5 and 700 people in the theater. And guys there had the balls to say, to get up and say, is there anybody who thought what we did was wrong? And no hands went up. So mine did. And I stood up and I said, yeah, you know, what you did was completely wrong. It was criminal. You know, you changed the rules in the middle of the game. You know, you bailed yourselves out. You enriched yourself, I mean, the whole thing. And you could hear a pin drop. Right. And he kind of got Geithner. And I kind of got into an argument back and forth. And he said, well, you know, clearly, you, you know, clearly you love the Old Testament. You know, you think we should have been an eye for an eye or tooth for a tooth. And I was like, no, I just like, I like the New Testament as well. I like the the concept of truth and honesty. And we went back and forth and it was very obvious that I wasn't playing really well with the crowd. You know, a lot of them there, you know, a lot of them were prior to my question being answered. A lot of them have raised their hand. No, what you guys did was great. We loved you guys. I mean, some of them were looking for jobs, I'm sure. And you know, I I could tell that, you know, it was all I did. I wasn't getting hissed or booed, but I could tell that there was a lot of animosity towards my, you know, like how dare this guy stand up and take a shot at these esteemed gentlemen. And so I went out after the, you know, the first coffee, the coffee break after that. And I would say about 2/3 of the people shot me dagger eyes and you know, this, that and the other, but maybe maybe 20% of the people came up to me and were like right on, man, that took fucking balls to say that shit, you know, because some of them knew I was right, you know. So I mean these people are, they're despicable. They're just absolutely despicable. And you know, to try and do a tour where they, you know, renovate or try and rehab. I mean, that's the other thing. You could almost tell they knew that they were wrong and what they've done was wrong. And here they were out there trying to kind of get by in and portray that. Oh, no, no, no. It was all OK. It was all we could do is what we had to do, right? I was like, no, that's just not the case, you know? Plenty of Yes Men. If if your portfolio goes up as a result of stimulus, you know, people, people think that's just fine. Yeah, exactly. Well, and what they don't realize is, I mean, you know, in my view, that set of bailouts was of huge, you know, stepping stone or block in creating the toxic culture that we've got in this country right now. You know that. I mean, half the country knows that it's a rigged game. You know, more than half a big piece of the country knows that it's a rigged game. And and there was never a better example of it than that. I mean, I I used to post on Twitter that photo of the guy who had spray painted on the garage of his house, You know, three tours in Iraq and no bailout for me. Remember that? Remember that photo? And I just thought, Yep, that's about right. You know it. And it's very interesting now we look look back 15 years later and it seems like we're getting into a similar situation. I mean we we last had you on, I was looking at the numbers June 2nd of this year and that's why we wanted to bring you back particularly right now considering everything that's happened between. Now and then we had the extension of the debt ceiling yet again and that has caused the debt to run 33 1/2 trillion rather quickly. I just saw the National Debt Twitter account highlighted that we printed $40 billion worth of debt yesterday. TS Amazing. If you do the math, if we continue with that rate, I mean now some of this has got to be because they held everything back for the September 30 deadline, right? And now they're catching up. I assume that's what's going. On and historically this is the time of year where they have to add the most, right? As of now, yeah. But you're right. It's one weight of like 6 billion or 10. I mean, it's a big number, right? It's yeah, I was running the math recently, a few days ago, since we lifted the debt ceiling. We are on an annualized 6 1/2 trillion addition to the national debt. So over four months we we that's what we're doing on annualized basis that's that's $18 billion per day that is 10 million, $12 million per minute that we are adding to the national debt. I don't have time to even look in these numbers. I see it pop up in my feet and in my head I'm like, oh, we just hit escape velocity every day. It's been like 20 billion, 40 billion like, oh, it's almost over. I mean we made the joke to open the show is this time different and that's again why we want to bring you on Larry because something does feel a little different here. Again going back to your first appearance June 2nd, TLT was trading at 102, it's currently trading at $86. the IT seems like people are beginning to realize that U.S. Treasuries may not be as rest risk free as advertised. What what do you think is happening right now with with all these? I think that's right. I think it's accelerating. I mean it's you know look it was inevitable. I mean about a month about three or four months ago remember there was some article out praising Jay Powell and how well he was doing, what a good job he'd done of controlling us all. And I thought to myself that was like the the, you know the death of equities cover on business week. I thought to myself that's it. You know the bottom is in for gold, Bitcoin, etcetera. Because you know it's he he and and it's I don't know if you saw his last presser but I I thought he looked nervous. I thought he you know and they know they're in trouble. I mean with the guy saying shit like we're you know we're navigating under cloudy skies with a sex and I was like come on you idiot. You know at least you say you got a GPS or something. I mean you know I mean I can't believe a guy would admit that and they all say you know lots and lots of uncertainty and and you know where they're going with all this which is when it breaks again which it's in the in the process of doing it. It inevitably will do they'll all use the standard excuses Well who could have seen this coming and of and of course we need to do yield curve control it's obvious you know and so and they will just just as quickly as the narrative turn from we don't have an inflation problem to inflation is transitory to you know we're going to stop inflation no matter what it takes and take rates up from now until forever. You know we'll be back to the Fed will be back to buying its own bonds and I think the difference this time is that the bond market is going to kind of say okay we get it. You know the joke has been on us and and and no Moss, we're we're out of here and you're already seeing that you know in the 10 year and then today's shitty 30 year auction. I mean what did 0 heads describe it as horrible I think was the word they used. You know the and you see it in the 10 year. You know the Japanese 10 year has has gone from a negative rate up into the 80 bips and that was the biggest currency for current for carry trade. I mean there's just all kinds of indicators all over the place and so it feels to me like something big is happening. We're on the cusp. I mean The thing is the stock market is a big part of this confidence in this whole scheme. And you know we we bounced off the 200 day moving average last week. But it looks like today we're we're starting to roll over again. And you know we're running the thing that I find most amazing, Jesse, I'm sure all all three of you guys, I'm sure you have the same reaction. Isn't it amazing that we're running an 8% deficit of GDP and we've got kind of ostensibly healthy economy, you know, full employment and healthy stock market. I mean what happens when those conditions change, which they they will and they are, you know, we're going to have a 1520% of GDP deficit, it's going to be deficit's not going to be two trillion, it's going to be 5 and and that and that in addition to you know, quantitative tightening, which I I think that's the first thing they're going to pitch out the door. I think pretty soon they'll say, well, you know, we don't need to do this QT anymore. Part of the reason I think that is because Kashkari said the other day that they thought they'd get the balance sheet back to pre, pre COVID levels. So he's their number one liar. So we'll see. Yeah, it it, it is amazing that can't be overstated enough that if this is healthy, if this is not a recession and we're we're on track, we're in the last four months we've been adding an annualized 6 1/2 trillion dollars to to the national debt. This is supposed to be healthy right now. Like what happens when the stock market properly rolls over with where interest rates are at and the damage is finally materializes, and then we have a genuine crisis. What the hell will the stimulus look like then? Well, there at a point where they can't even. Bake the metrics enough to make it look healthier. They're trying to, I mean jobs report from last week, I think it was what, plus 336,000. But if you dove into those, it was mainly driven by people taking second and third jobs and part time jobs and older people taking jobs. And then behind that you also have more people, quote UN quote leaving the workforce because they have been able to find a job. So they just get removed from the denominator of the unemployment. Obviously today we had the recession or excuse me, the inflation CPI data come out higher than expected. But people like Paul Krugman out there saying if you take out food, shelter and used cars, inflation's very low right now. We've successfully tamed inflation. Mission accomplished there. That's what he said. Yeah. Well, the other thing is they've kind of redefined the mission. Have you seen a couple of Fed speakers were saying things like, well, the new neutral rate should be 3%, not 2 or 4% like actually Krugman had said it should be 3 or 4%. So they're going to, you know, my sense is the next narrative change would be they're going to declare victory on inflation and and pivot and and because, but they're probably going to hold off as long as they can on that. It's going to take the stock market going down a bit more. They've, I think they've kind of got the bond market over under control as a result of this. No more increases, no more rate increases. But we'll see. I mean the wild card that they probably didn't count on was that another war would break out. And I was stunned to see that Biden was asking for $100 billion. It was just, you know, one and done on Ukraine. I mean you know, and I've, I've read Harold Mamgren, who's of old Washington inside. I mean, war is really expensive. You know, in the last period of time when we had a serious inflation problem, it all came about as a result of the Vietnam War. And, you know, yeah, so it's it. Look to me, 40 years of deflation is clearly over 40. You know, we are going into an inflationary period. I saw somebody tweeted out the chart of the, you know, the breakevens, the inflation breakevens, They're still way too low. I mean, I, you know, with all the, with all the company, with all the labor that's out on strike, I mean and and these people aren't just asking for 3% bumps or 5% bumps. And the UAW wants something between 20 and 40%. I mean it's, you know, I mean and what's what's sad and ironic is you know that that once the economy rolls over, those people are going to, you know, feel lucky if they have a job because, you know, layoffs are going to start because, you know, demand is going to go down. I mean, to me it's just, it's an unbelievable shit show and it reminds me very much. I mean, I feel like I watched, I lived the 108.1 in real time, was very involved with short Bear Stearns, could see it all in the summer of 27 when those two funds blew up. And as you know, Bear Stearns failed in March. And this to to me, we're in August of 2008, maybe early September. So I I think the next three months are going to be just an unbelievable shit show. I mean, if I and I'm, I'm wrong a lot. So I caution everybody to take my advice, but I would just say I think the stock market's going to get smashed in the next two months. The people are going to think, well, that'll be good because there'll be a bid for bonds. I don't think that's going to materialize and I think the combination of the two is going to freak people out, including the Fed. And they are definitely done. And then it will only be a matter of time until they one, they'll peel back QT. The two they'll start talking about cutting rates and ultimately we'll be back at Zerp and QE And and you know, I've got my quarterly report. I'm running it right now. It'll be out in about a week. I'll I'll post it on Twitter, people can read it. There's a brilliant chart by Lynn Alden in it which shows base money as against total debt. It's just a great chart and it's in her book, which by the way I highly recommend. I just finished reading. It's a great book and you know they just, this isn't, this isn't hard folks. I mean this is Richard Russell and Flater die. And if they do not continue to create monetary units, the existing monetary units they have and the debt and the structure that they've built, it's all going to collapse because it can't be supported without new money coming on the scene. It just can't it's it's just math. So, so therefore, you know, we we are in the absolute right place. But it's, you know, it's rather sad because it's going to create a lot of pain all around the world. It already has, but it'll create even more. But the only way to get to the other side of this 4th turning is to have it, and then to, you know, start doing the right shit. Yeah. And as it pertains to Treasuries particularly, I think the last six months specifically have planted the seeds in people's minds, even if the Fed. Does see the writing on the wall. Reverses course, stops QT, stops raising rates, eventually lowers rates, prints more, buys more bonds. I think the seed has been planted that these things are not risk free. And even if the Fed does reverse policy pretty aggressively, that seed is going to germinate and grow. People are just going to have those looming doubts in the back of their mind. I think that's right. And then I think it's very interesting. It's kind of the common knowledge game. I think it's very interesting. I mean, Luke Groman does a great job pointing this out. And you read all this stuff and, you know, I mean, you're seeing it written about in the Wall Street Journal. I mean, hell, I retweeted it just a few hours ago. The I MF says the debt condition in the US is not sustainable. I mean, this is starting to be widely recognized. And and yet in spite of that wide recognition, I still think the markets haven't really adjusted to it. I mean, anyone who thinks we're, you know, if you look at the, the five by 5 inflation swaps, I mean, they're still in the 2-3 range. I don't have them right in front of me right now, but the last time I checked and you know do does is there anybody on this call or in this country that that really thinks we're going back to two or three percent inflation? I know I don't not not with the conditions that we now have. And you know and I think I think one of the reasons, one of the mistakes people are making is I think well, okay fine, you're going to have a recession and the economy will slow down and therefore inflation will come in. But this is where I really remember the 70s very, very clearly. You know, it's called stagflation. You can have zero growth and and and increasing prices. They're not. They're not mutually exclusive. Well, that's the thing I think everybody forgets about. We structurally like broke things in 2020 by putting people effectively in a box and shutting down manufacturing where things never came back, right. And then the things that did came back and we then increased, what was it, 6 trillion or whatever, a third of all dollars. So they're chasing less goods and then more companies have gone under since then given all the you know, whether it's inflation, people not going back to work, all the things that we know that the. You referenced it earlier in the the strikes so that if everything stayed static, you're still going to have same amount of dollars chasing less and less goods as like this destruction has occurred. And what's scary, and what's scary is you increase the dollar amount and we and we continue with that destruction and the inflation just gets even even crazier when we think about like going into 2024, what that looks like, these all roads lead to what you reference is. It's a great point. I mean it's some of the inflation is caused by the supply side and the way that you address the supply side shortage is you make capital investments and you add capacity. And as as Luke and others have pointed out, I mean interest rates going up, shale oil topping out, oil prices not being as high enough to justify more shale development. And you look at the new drilling in the shale area, it's not very high, you know and and you look at what it takes in terms of CapEx. I mean part of the reason we developed shale was because of Zur. You know, when capital was free, you would spend the capital to go do that sort of stuff. Well, capital is no longer free and so there is not new supply coming on. And and so you know, in a funny way, the Fed thinks it's fighting inflation and solving the problem by increasing interest rates. But there's some pretty smart economists that would actually argue that that's not the case, that that what they're doing is wrong counterintuitively, even if they want to get inflation down. So it's it's a little backwards. Yeah, yeah. It's in retrospect looking at all this and looking at the rapid rate rise regime that the Fed has been embarking on for last two years should have been obvious. You're going to Jack up the cost of capital when people are already under economic stress and. Expect them to go invest in the economy. It's just not gonna happen. And I would argue like the layoffs have already hit like an extreme point. You layer on layoffs and then bankruptcies. These companies can't service the interest payments on the debt that they've accrued. That's right. I mean all the so allthe.com stuff for all the high tech stuff is already being kind of somewhat eviscerated. And then, you know, you've still got the CRE bomb out there ready to go off and that's going to take out the other half of the banking system that didn't get taken out, you know, with Silicon Valley. And you know, and then you've got the housing market. I mean, housing is a big market in the United States. I mean, building development, all that stuff, that's a big market. Well, everyone who's in a 3% mortgage, they're frozen. They're not moving because there's no way they want to give up that old mortgage. And what's the, what's the 30 year mortgage rate at now? I don't know. I believe I saw something around 8:00. Yeah, it's at 8% now. Yeah. So that's not good for young people trying to, you know, buy a house. And I mean, you know, the sad thing about this whole thing as a boomer, I say this, I mean, I, you know, and I is how badly my generation has fucked this all up. And and I, you know, I don't put myself in tire, although I've benefited from it. I don't put myself in tire in that camp because I've been fighting this system for 30 fucking years. But it's just, it's outrageous. You know how? I mean, I look at my kids in their 20s, They're all doing well. They all have good jobs and they're growing and making money and all that kind of stuff. And yet they all look at me like, Dad, I'm never going to be able for to buy a house. And you know, I can't really argue with them, you know? And that's sad, right? You know I. Feel that pain. I mean, in my Stanford MB, A class, we're in our mid 30s now. I think about a little over half of us still don't own a home and you're talking about. Stanford. Yeah, Yep. Mid 30s. Prime of their career, right? Still feels out of range for us and crazy. Yep. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. By my mid 30s I had my second house. The first one was a shitty little condo and second one was a really dinky house, but it was a house, so. Yeah, well, it it it is, it feels validating to hear a boomer acknowledge the the millennial plight that that we suffer with. We you guys have gotten screwed. I mean, I'll tell you where you're. I'll tell you where your advantage vis A vis the boomers though. And I see, you know, momma say you guys are also no, no, you're about to make it up with a vengeance because all the boomers are invested in bonds and all this Fiat shit that's going to become worthless. And at least you guys have got 50 years of earnings power in front of you, you know, so you're so you're a 70 year old boomer, you've retired, you know, you got your Social Security check which eventually won't buy you anything. You've got your savings, which unless you put it into Bitcoin or gold are going to go to 0 and you know you're going to, it's going to be pretty ugly for you on a go forward basis. Whereas you guys, there are fewer of you and there's going to be a need for intelligent people who are smart and willing and hard to do the hard work and you're going to reprice and whatever the new currency is, I mean you're going to get lots of Sats for the work that you do. So you know that's that's the, that's the upside of your, you know, of your condition. The downside is that right now, you know, yeah, it's it's upside down so. It does. It does feel like there's almost an irony there of of what what has worked for the last 40 years has been the 6040 portfolio because we drove interest rates from 15 to 0. And and your generation rode that wave and it worked great. And the irony is that because it works so well, I think almost well, the vast majority of your generation is probably pretty committed to that investment strategy going forward. Absolutely no. It's at. Exactly the time when that's going to flip. That's exactly right. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's it's investing in the rearview mirror and you know it's it's so clear to me. It's funny too because I started in this business in 81 a long time ago. You want to know what the consensus view was back then, the consensus view was bonds were absolutely death stupid. You would never want to own any bonds. Stocks were close to as bad, but maybe a touch better. And really the only thing you wanted to own was gold and real estate. Those were the at $800 gold and you know, real estate had gone up. I mean my parents bought a house in the early 60s in Ann Arbor for 30 grand and by the end of the 80s it was probably worth 400. So, you know, it had done A10 bag or so or more. So, you know, real estate was a good investment. Gold was a good investment, oil was a good investment. And Marty, you know if you had any relatives down there in Texas in the oil business you know and remember the old Supertramp song, you know everyone from Texas, everyone's a millionaire. I mean and and that's that's what led to all the that's what led to all the bumper stickers in the in the late 80s, you know Oh dear God, please give me another oil bull market this time. I won't fuck it up. Right. Because Texans really were very rich in the late 70s. Eighties people in Texas made a ton of goddamn money with the oil boom and but in in turn you know smart guys like Gary Schilling went out and bought 10 year zeros on the OR 30 year zero bonds. You know, and and by the mid 80s he said, you know, he he tweeted and there he put out in his newsletter, there's no tweeting back then he put it on his newsletter. I made enough on these bonds so my family is set for life, you know, because he bought a 0 coupon, you know, when the coupon was 14% right, on a 30 year. I mean think about that. I mean you know, stuff that turned out to be 10/15/20 baggers, you know. So yeah, it's it's the exact mirror of that condition, right? But it sounds like. Well in it's funny you say mirror because it's mirror coupled with a like clown like that sounds like not peak soundness, but there's some real good fundamentals and 1st principles in that logic. And if you mirror that or if you flip it? You know just the common this notion that everybody's their wealth or majority of wealth is held in the in the stock market. If you think based on that, it just came to my mind that might be the most insane thing in you're leveraging like execution risk along with we know what like new technological innovations we can bring up AI. It's like, so my my whole. In a portfolio, my whole net worth is tied up into the execution of you know emerging tech could just completely flip upside down versus like we're talking about gold, oil, real estate. Like that makes sense. Is like anchor to the real world production value aligned with if it might be inflated. I can't tell you how many wealthy friends I have that own big positions in the fangs. You know that and made a lot of money in them. I mean and Tesla, all of them. And I begged them and told them to sell. And they just can't do it. They just can't do it. They can't see it. You. Know Larry, I don't know if you if you saw and we can share it later but there's this idea where we talk with institutions and there's this belief that there's a bunch of error between the price of Bitcoin and zero, right. And we know after looking at this and you were just at the Pacific Bitcoin Conference then you've seen it first hand the the building, but we have, we launched this terminal to show whether it's transactions, hash rate, all the fundamentals. But if you invert that back to the stock market, like you're referencing the fangs, there's just like a bunch of error between the like multiples on the revenue and then whatever it's trading. I think we've called like NVIDIA at the what, 250X. But yeah, it's just, it's absolutely insane. It's the opposite, where people don't think there's any fundamentals in Bitcoin and you can point to nodes and all the things of why there's value around the network versus Facebook. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, to this day I still, I still don't really understand those stocks. I mean, and I, you know, shame on me. I missed them. I mean I I I missed them because I just didn't understand the value proposition, you know, clearly enough. And I, you know, I missed them and it's, you know, shame on me. I I got all the Internet stuff. I wrote the Internet from 9434 all the way up into two thousand and that's when I got out. But I, you know, I I would every year I'd screen for the fastest growing stocks and I'd say, well, yeah, Amazon's one of them. But, you know, Jesus Christ, they're just selling stuff online and they're selling, you know, they're selling a dollar for $0.90 and they were able to do that because they've got free capital. You know, why should I want to invest in that? What I didn't realize, of course, he would ultimately put everybody else out of business and then he could raise prices. It was just classic old, you know, rubber Bear and Monopoly strategy. But yeah, I I missed a lot of that shit, to my regret. I would argue you didn't miss it because by you, you know, for whatever reason not aligning with it. You you saw Bitcoin. For what it's worth, because I think it's very, it's very easy. If you find, you know, the Microsoft or whatever, it's like similar to what we talked about the 6040, it's like, oh, I'm a genius. I don't need to look at anything else. So I think it happens exactly like the way probably happened, the way it was supposed to happen. I mean, I was too old fashioned and too much of A sound money guy. I mean I, you know, I I just, I you could see that what Bezos was doing was, I mean he would never have been able to build that company without Zerp. I mean that's you know that Zerp basically allowed him to build the thing because capital is free. And so when capital is free you can sell $0.90 for you know or you can sell a dollar for 90 cents or whatever. Vice versa $0.90 for a dollar and you're okay, you're losing money or a dollar for $0.90 you're losing money but it doesn't really matter. You just raise more capital and you, you grab share and people, people like that, they like buying, you know, a dollar for $0.90 and you're losing the money. I mean, look at the look at the Amazon losses way back when. I mean, I got to give Bill Miller a lot of credit and he, he saw through it and he was like, you know, he obviously could see a time when they would put all the small retailers out of business and then be able to slowly but surely creep their prices up and and make a lot of money. I mean it's, I hadn't studied enough of the economic history of the robber barons because that's what a lot of them did. That's what Sears and a lot of others did. But you know, so be it. I mean, you don't get them all right. But I to me, Bitcoin is a no brainer because it's really just the, you know, it's the Internet of money and you know it's it's Metcalf's law. This thing is going to just continue to grow. And I, you know, I take great comfort. I listen to sailors stuff and I take great comfort in knowing that these ET F's are just right around the corner. And there are a lot of people right now that need to buy Bitcoin, probably even want to buy Bitcoin, but they can't really buy Bitcoin. I run into people like that. They're like, well, how do I buy it in ETF? Well you can buy GB TC, but it's you know it's at a discount and there are issues and no, no, I just want to buy it like okay fine. You know buy it get a treasure get a swan account you know go to Unchained. They'll help you buy it. But you know they're not they're not there yet, just people aren't there yet, but they will be. You know they will be with the next run up and that's coming in my view sometime and you know if I think it's going to actually happen before the having, I think the having's going to turbocharge it. But I think we're, I think we're on the cusp right now of coming out of this whole. I think I think in the next three months there's going to be a lot of turmoil in the markets, stock and bond and that's going to that's going to drive a very serious bid for gold and a very serious bid for Bitcoin because people are going to see that these things are not like the others. I mean you know people say well Bitcoin's, you know been in a bear market, well has it really, I mean what is it up this year, year to date is 70% or something. It's one of the best performing asset classes, you know, year to date. Now some of that's because it was beaten down on the FTX thing. But, you know, to me it's it's just such a nobrainer. It's just a complete and total nobrainer to own a shit load of Bitcoin. I mean, if I were 30, I'd be 100% Bitcoin right now. I have told other people this. I'm about half Bitcoin, half gold and silver, and that's just because I, you know, I want to dampen out the volatility of the Bitcoin a little bit. So yeah. Yeah, wow. So, so in the next three months and then that would mean like the Fed has to step in with major stimulative efforts and that would cause the Bitcoin bull market before the having. Is that sort of the arc that you're. Yeah, I mean the having is the having. I think it'll turbocharge it, but I think I think the bid is going to come for for all of these sound money assets when it becomes when, when the when the soft landing narrative disappears which I think is going to happen and when the stock market really rolls over which I think is in the process of happening. We're right against the 200 day moving average and that's going to get taken out and then you know. But Larry in the in in March 2020, when everybody freaked out, I remember well. The claim? Yep, the claim. Correlated to one you know with with all that in fact it led everything. It was this the fastest way to get liquidity. So people sold their Bitcoin and yeah, it's. Not crash led to a Bitcoin crash. Yeah I I I don't actually see and this is just me personally, I don't actually see a correlation OF1 trigger event. I mean so the GFC, you know you had all the banks very leveraged and it and it blew up and you could see it and there was a, you know there was a correlation OF1 trigger event and I was long gold and I mean I My Portfolio there went down 50% in a in a week. I mean it was horrible. March 20th of COVID was the trigger event. I don't think there's a trigger event here. I think there's just a rolling bear market and more and more recognition of what's going on and that is the economy is rolling over, stock markets overvalued. They they're not going to be able to land the plane gently. Inflation is persistent and it's going to continually surprise to the upside and as a result of all of those things that what will catch a bid, what bonds will be the worst place to be. Stocks will probably be the second worst place to be. I mean, at least they represent a long duration asset that can reprice. And Bitcoin and gold will be the two best place to be and Bitcoin will be better than gold. But they'll both catch a bid because they are, you know, forms of their monetary instruments that the government can't print. And and one thing that'll happen with given the fiscal situation we're in right now and the kind of quote UN quote the doom loop that we're in. I mean one of the charts I love to show whenever I'm talking to anybody is the chart of the US federal government interest expense. I mean it's literally just kind of shooting to the sky and we were talking before the show as you know about how quickly they're adding debt right now if they if you annualized out the debt growth rate right now they they've had $6 trillion of debt the next year that's not going to be that bad, but certainly going to add 2 and maybe 3. And you know as as all the debts short and so as it all resets into the five, 5% cost range, you know what are we going to be at 35 trillion of debt, you know times 5. So that's one. Was it going to be 1/8 of interest expense, I mean, yeah, right. I mean it's there you go. Thank you. That's a great chart. And for context it's it's you know the the defense spending is 800 billion so that we're talking about adding to. US militaries, so as, as the awareness goes up of this doom loop that we're in where, you know, they just cannot get things under control, I think that our stuff's going to take off. Now, what could throw a wrench into all this? And people laugh when I say this, but it's not unheard of and they may be forced into ultimately doing it. If they were to means test and cut Social Security and Medicare, get out of some of these war expenditures and try to balance the budget, that would, that would obviously slow down kind of what I'm describing, but today that would. Require the the appetite from the boomers who are ready to collect their Social Security and still the most engaged voter base. Well, not only that, but the political will during an election year to to make those types of changes. That's why exactly Marty. And that's what I think. I just think that the odds of us going in that direction, you know, until something really breaks or things get a lot worse, I mean I think ultimately we might be forced to go into that direction, but we're not. You know, there's still people out there running around thinking that we're in a normal environment, we're going to return to a normal inflation rate and the economy is going to have a soft landing and everything's going to be okay. In my view, those people are all on drugs. I mean they are just, they are just completely dreaming. And the odds of that happening are like less than 10%. You know, as I see it, you know, the economy is going to roll over, you know, and it's just going to flow through everything. And as a result, the deficits will get bigger. They're going to have to sell more debt. The rates are going to go higher. That's going to make the interest cost higher. I mean we know. We all know it. It's, you know, washrooms repeat. And so, you know, eventually the things that we own, the gold and the Bitcoin are going to get heavily bid and they're going to be the area that's performing. And you know, suddenly owning bank stocks or owning the Magnificent 7 isn't going to be paying and what we're doing is going to be paying. And there's nothing that attracts capital faster and it works. And you know, it's it's already working really. I mean gold is within spitting distance of its all time high. Gold in all currencies is at an all time high. I mean it's just below its all time high in the dollar and of course the dollar is the strongest currency is as Brent points out. But you know the the these things are going to start to work and people are going to realize that you know owning NVIDIA, whatever multiple of whatever you know is, is is not a sensible thing. And that a I is going to take years to fully develop and permeate the economy and etcetera etcetera. And and as a result of all of that you know meanwhile you know we're running short on oil. You know India and China are using more and more oil per capita every year. They're huge countries. You know, all the marginal growth was in the shale oil that stopped. You know, we've got unfriendly countries who control a lot of the oil supply, Russia and Saudi Arabia, who probably would prefer us to not be as powerful as we are. So they're not going to also help us out. I, you know, I'd say it looks pretty bleak for team deflation. I think we got serious inflation for a long time and that with, you know, history shows it was serious inflation you want to have. Sound assets that can't be printed. Now the problem is, is we've all seen, I'm sure, Jesse, you've seen at the the Weimar chart that Dan Oliver did you know this shit's volatile, right? I mean you know my fund went up a crazy amount in 1999 and then 2000 and since then I've given some of it back because of the tightening cycle. But you know they the at the end of the day the third Fed mandate is keep the system together. And when things start and right now the big Cry is inflation's eating us alive. I I would expect that in a year the Big cry is going to be this economy is falling apart, save us Fed. And guess what they will. I mean not not in an inflation sense but in a printing money sense they will save to keep the system going because they prefer that to an outright collapse. And who knows maybe maybe they'll be maybe in there somewhere they'll be a Lehman like event that'll briefly create a correlation of 1. But I actually don't think there's, I can't see the trade the way I can't see the trigger the way 08 was a trigger or the way COVID was a trigger. I think it's just more of a consistent trend in the direction that I've described. And it's arguably already begun with the BTFP, that's right. And that comes up for what? Was it washed it in March or April and it was supposed to be a one year? Isn't that historical? Isn't that historical? I mean, we absolutely know they're going to roll that over, right? Yeah, and more necessary now than ever. The unrealized losses on those instruments are like 1 1/2 trillion. Now is that right and? Bank of America loans like 110 billion, yeah, I mean exactly. So yeah, look it's it's things that have broken and things will continue to break and and and you know none of us can really see how this is going to play out exactly. But but I But you can see which way the wind is blowing. Do you know what I mean? The one thing that's fascinating in in Larry, you have to have been you've been thinking about this your for your professional life as gold is like counterparty risk and you mentioned volatility. It's like volatility is great if you at least own the asset. If you actually like, you can eat. You can buy something with the gold with the coin like that in video when it turns upside down. What are you, what are you going to do with it when when the market reprices it? And it's just funny because we can talk about the performance, but there's going to come a time and it's just it's natural it has to because there's not enough capital compared to the the amount of assets. And so ultimately, like you have this asset that you're holding, but eventually people start to wake up with like am I going to be holding the bag with this? Do I want to be holding the bag with this? Like what is this actually worth if I need to trade it for oil or just trade it for goods? And that doesn't isn't get priced in enough or doesn't get really talked about when it comes to Bitcoin. This is also why I think like the the ETF is kind of tightly related to all of this because when people's flight goes from, oh, I need to hold this asset is performing, I want it. They're going to go oh, I'll just go to the BlackRock ETF versus thinking about like well let me understand this a little further, a little deep deeper because that's ultimately what you're kind of paying for. It's like one of the performance, but you can even think about half of it, the value if we're we're heading. Is the understanding that the assets you hold, you cannot actually get dollar value for them when you need it most. That whole counterparty risk is just not really priced in into Bitcoin. In like that argument we we talk about it from like a performance perspective against you know volatility, but it's fact that you actually own it and all this other stuff you don't you just have a number on the screen. Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, I don't know if you've seen there was a paper out recently. Somebody asked me to comment, was it the great, great taking or whatever talk about how all these, all these shares that we think we own, we're really in DTC and there's been a lot of legal wrangling that suggests that maybe they could all grab them and rug us. I don't know. Yeah. No, look, it's it's a mess. And you know, I I think that I think they're going to be people. I mean, you know, go look at a chart of Arc. You know, I mean, it's to me. This is a series of rolling bubbles. You know the first one was the venture capital bubble and that was ARC. So look at you know look look at what Kathy Woods did there and and you know now we've got the and that was the fangs which was really kind of Arc as a proxy for ARC. And now we've got the Magnificent 7 and you know to me we hit peak we heat peak peak bubble, peak everything bubble was December of 2021. The first leg down was December of 2022 or was all of 2022. You know, the worst year and, you know, 50 years for bonds and stocks simultaneously, 6040 got wrecked, OK? And then, you know, now we're in a bounce and everybody's like, OK, If you go back and you look at the Great Depression, how it all fell apart back then, there was actually a very, very big bounce similar to this. This has gone a little further. But you know, there's the initial crash in 29 and there was quite a bounce in 30. And then, you know, then it rolled over and then we really went down and it just didn't stop until, you know, you'd lost 80 percent, 85% of the Dow's value, you know, at the bottom, I believe in 31. And you know, I mean that's what I think is going to happen to NVIDIA holders. I mean I think that you're going to lose, you know, 70 or 80% of your money. I think it's going to happen to Tesla holders. I'm not commenting on the cars or the guy, but I'm just saying the stock and I think a lot of these things are just they're going to, people are going to realize that they were just chasing a mirage. There's nothing, there's not there's not a there there. And meanwhile, TikTok next block, you know 21 million, we're at 19 and change wherever we are in terms of supply. A lot of them are locked up as we all know. And as Saylor points out, when these ET F's come in and eventually they will frustrated with how slow it is, but eventually they will, that's just going to unleash a ton of demand. And you know Bitcoin still was it 505 hundred $60 billion market today? I don't know the exact figure today, but it's not much different than that. And and we've talked we're talking trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of stocks and bonds and financial assets and cash. I mean, once once people realize this is Gresham's law, once people realize that all of those things are melting and that they don't represent fundamental value, they're gonna they're gonna go and and bid our stuff, you know, which is fundamentally Bitcoin, but it's also silver and gold, you know, cuz you can't print those, so. Yeah, that's the thing too. Like, I wonder the timing of the ETF. Does that act as a massive tailwind or is that a sell the news event, many other countries getting into the mining game? It seems like the fundamentals around the protocol around the network. I mean, River just released their annual Lightning Network research report yesterday and the Lightning Network activity has grown, yeah, so 1212% over the last two years during one of the worst bear markets that we've had. Bitcoins, very short existence here, almost 15 years in, it seems like things are really developing in the background, despite the lack of enthusiasm around Bitcoin. From your norming crowd, if you will. Yeah, I mean obviously the norming crowd. Chase's number go up right. With respect to your sell the news comment, I I I'm not concerned about that because I really do. I'm with Sailor. I really do think there is a lot of money out there that will get allocated to this that today just can't do it. They're not going to go through the, you know, cold storage, self sovereignty, all that. They're just not going to do it and they're not going to buy an ETF like AR, GB, TC because it sells at discounts, close in fun, big fee, blah, blah, blah. But when, when, when they can get a BlackRock product that gives them a 50 bit cost per year to own the underlying coin. And of course I hope BlackRock really does this. We can, we can debate whether or not they're going to really be honest and buy the coins. But that's different debate. There's just a lot of money out there. You know, RIA money. I mean I I, I talk to a lot of RI A's. I know who they are. I know how it works and how much money there is in those and and all of them are going to just say you know what this is working. It's the sharp ratio is good. We need to put 5 or 10% of what we've got. You know of our clients stuff in here. The the amount of money that 5 or 10% of the entire RIA based in the United States, right. It's huge, it's trillions and trillions of dollars again as against a $500 billion market cap and not you know think of what piece of the 570 odd billion is actually available for sale on any given day. I mean it's as we all know the big piece of that is in deep long storage that you know, you're not getting mine for you know less than a million a coin and I'm not even sure I'd sell it there, but there's a lot that's just not going to shake free. So you know maybe you say 30% is, is potentially tradable of the 500. So it's what's that 150 billion of maybe tradable Bitcoin that could be bought at some higher prices and you're talking about a couple of trillion dollars coming after that. You know it's it's it's pretty obvious that to me that it's extremely exciting what's going to happen here And and and we, you know, we can frontrun it in a sense, as Saylor says you you know these things are coming. You know the money is there. You know what the price of the coins are today. It's like just put it all together. This is this is a rare opportunity you know to to buy corn at you know 27,000. I mean, it's, you know, it's a good deal. And I think, I think it's kind of telling too that you you talked about how you you rode the.com enthusiasm from 94, was it until 2000? Yeah. It which would be quite that would mean that you saw it quite early and we're. Excited about the trend that you saw and probably then you saw it as clear as day and that. I mean, sometimes I doubted myself, but I could see it. Yeah, I mean the notion what it was, I could see clearly and I didn't know how it was all going to shake itself out. I mean it, you know a lot of things happened that I didn't expect to happen but but I could see, I mean for for the Krugmans of the world and the people who were Pooh poohing and I could see, no, no, they're just dead ass wrong. This is this is enormously important. It's enormous development and that's what this is too. I mean I forget the number go up, forget all the sizzle, forget all the arm waving. When I talk about Bitcoin of people now, I try to really talk about this is like a fundamental technical innovation. And I define it as the fundamental technical innovation here is we created a system that provides digital scarcity that never existed. Think of anything digital. You know, a file, a digital file was replicable infinitely. You know, photos, papers document anything that was digital. You can make a million copies of it. And these guys, you know Satoshi, that I think they were a bunch of Satoshi's working together, they created a foolproof system, you know that that has for 14 plus years, you know, provided provable digital scarcity. And it turns out that scarcity is probably the most important quality of money, of sound money, as safe as pointed out, you know, in in terms of stock to flow and, you know, the having it all the way, they, you know, they asymptotically get to the 21 million. It's brilliant. And yeah, it never existed. And so now that that exists, the world's different and people need to take that into account, You know, it's, it's the same thing. I mean, you know, when the Wright Brothers flew, the world became different, you know, and nobody could foresee that you would have a supersonic jet that would take you from New York to London in three hours. But that's where we ultimately went. And you know, they're going to be similar similar changes that are going to occur as a result of having digital scarcity. It just will be and and so to me, you know, to be able to buy a piece of the underlying of a fixed number of underlying tokens that provide that digital scarcity, it's it's a sailor points out, it's like buying Manhattan real estate. And you know, the people who bought in 1750 probably thought they overpaid compared to the people who bought in 1660. But the people who bought in 1850 thought they were paid compared to the people who bought in 1750, you know, and even the people who bought in, you know, 1973 probably thought they were paid compared to the people who bought it in the 40s. But guess what? You know, there was only so much of it and Manhattan was Manhattan. And you know, this is a, this is a similar thing. There's there's only so much of this stuff and it's the base layer of money. So it's it's just going to go a lot higher and it's got to, you know, the the, yeah, the, the two things. I mean, people say to me what can go wrong here is one, there could be a technical problem and even Lynn addresses this in her book and she puts it as less than half a percent probability. And I agree with her. The second thing would be if everyone lost interest in it and the adoption slowed down. But we don't see any evidence of that. And so absent one of those two things, you know, these coins are worth somewhere between half a million and five million a coin probably within my the the remaining span of my life. I think the half million would certainly within the remaining span of my life. The 5 million might take a bit longer. So. So to me, I, you know, I pound the table every time I get I can. I know you guys do too, you know, cuz I'm trying to save people. You. Know. And then we have external validation from people like David Marcus this week. Isn't that something? Yeah, I love that. Yeah, somebody who was given the task by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook to go. Create their own digital currency in Libra. And that sort of hit at that end and he had to do some introspective thinking and came to the conclusion like, Oh well, it's. I'm pretty convinced that Bitcoin is the only opportunity we have to actually bring digital money to the world. How about Fidelity as well? I don't know, Marty, Did you see that Fidelity came out the report that basically signaled that Bitcoin is completely different than all other digital assets? I haven't read it yet, but I did see people tweeting about it. Everybody, everybody gets there eventually. I mean, Larry Fink has is caved on it. Do you know what I mean? I mean, there were, I mean even even Jamie Dimon, who said he originally would fire people for, you know, for doing it, I mean now they're, you know, they have a department that writes research on the future of Bitcoin. I mean, you know, the more it's just a matter of understanding. It's just a matter of time and understanding. And once you come to see it, you see it and it is a better idea. It's time has come and it's slowly but surely, you know, getting disseminated into, you know, the entire, the entire world. And you know, that's it's so much like the Internet. It's the same thing. You know, it's like, why do I need an Internet strategy? Who cares about the Internet? You know, Wall Street Journal. Now this isn't going to amount to anything. Well, look at all the you've seen the charts on advertising in the Wall Street Journal versus advertising on Google. I mean it's just like, you know, print media has just been destroyed and that's what's going to happen here. You know, everything that's Fiat based is just going to get destroyed and everything that's in this area is just going to continue to grow. You know, it's pretty obvious. It's so clear. It's so clear how it's everyone is living on an analog unit of account still, and we live in the digital age and here is this digital unit of account a digital monetary standard. That has its digital advantages over the analog status quo, and we saw exactly how this played out with information, and now it's happening with value. And for some reason, people are slow to realize that this is the second part of the Internet. And to be fair, it's also, it's got to get easier to use. I mean it's, you know, I mean, self custody is scary for a lot of people and it's not simple to use. I mean I, you know I don't a G you guys. I mean you remember when the Internet was you know you put your phone in a modem and you heard a bunch of you know and and dial up and it was originally 2600 bought and then of course you put a card in your computer and that hooked up at 9600 and then eventually we got to broadband. And I mean I remember when the first days of the Internet it was green screen there was no there was no browser. You know you were literally just you're typing in you know on DOS, you know green screen stuff and you know we're we're well beyond that stage but I don't think we're, you know, we're not at we're not at the 2000 stage where it's really pretty easy to use a browser and and a large part of the world has broadband. I mean you know we need feta men. We need we need a lot of things to make it easier for the average person to use it. For for that matter, Larry, I think that what we're working on is almost an American Online. That's about right. That's I think that's a very good comparable. Yeah, right. We're kind of in the America Online stage where it's real and it's working and it's pretty well spreading. But we're not. It's not nearly easy enough for you know, obvious enough to the average person you know. People need better ways to get Bitcoin and hold it and because most people are not prepared to like roll up their sleeves and you know set up a modem back in the dialup era and and wade through all the technical junk that you have to do and we're we're in that transition now of going from difficult. UI UX to to mainstream and and and bridging that gap of of like this goes from scary technology to like oh OK I feel comfortable and we're we're we're laying we're navigating that right now and and in the UX absolutely right. I mean you know as Marty pointed out earlier the the, the stats on this lightning stuff and Lightning itself. I mean you know, I I always one of the things I always viewed as a shortcoming Bitcoin was the the slow settlement and the you know, I mean great security but how the hell are you going to buy coffee with it, right. I mean bravo to the people who brought us Lightning. I mean what a fabulous thing. I mean I was at pack Bitcoin and every transaction I did was just a Lightning transaction. In fact I had a couple of guys one guy had a mun wallet and he said how do I get money in there? And I said well you know you gotta you can't really Mun doesn't have a a cash you know a Fiat interface. It's just a I said you got to buy the Bitcoin somewhere else and send it to your Munwall. I said I don't want to do that. And he says, you know, I had a lot of money in my Munwall. He says, well, I got to give you $500. Will you send me $500.00 of sats? I said yeah, sure. So he pulls out his wallet and he gives me 5 crisp $100 bills and I got his munwallet and took the address and I sent him a bunch of sats and it cost me less than a penny. But but Larry did you collect your? Cast Did you write down your tax news? And did you? No, I didn't take a fee and I didn't do my tax report, I mean. You remember my tweet on that? I mean, let those assholes try. I mean, yeah, some of my Bitcoin is very low cost and what am I gonna do, report a dollar game when I buy a cup of coffee? I mean, give me a fucking break. Hey, later. One thing I do think is worth bringing up because I know we're bullish on BlackRock, I think. There, there's going to hit any escape velocity between like mindshare that we're already starting to recognize of like the dollar, what's happening in the world's messed up. People are looking for answers. Bitcoin will will do a certain price thing, whether it's 100K250K where effectively you just need a certain amount of like mindshare to be associated with you know describing value to it but to the BlackRock point or easy centralized. Solutions I I feel very strongly we need better ones built before that happens because if they're not built I think exactly what happened to gold happens to Bitcoin. Like I don't think it's a preordain your like it's a it's predestined to be successful as long as the price goes up. Because I think the difference and we talk about it the difference between Bitcoin and gold and there's a few but one of the biggest ones is, is multi cig. It's this fact that like the asset does not need to sit at a central entity and to be held. And if you imagine a world where the price does go vertical, this theory is correct. And you get to a hundred 250K and then people are just like, oh, that's the thing, a price against all other assets. And now you have like BlackRock by the way of Coinbase and potentially maybe the US government and maybe three other custodians around the world that take this quasi, you know, ETF tokenized BTC rapper and everybody just goes into it and that's accepted. One day you wake up and you actually don't hold that coin at all. And so I think that is one of the things that like doesn't really get talked about, it's why we focus on what we're building here. But it's really that like for these large scale pools of capital, there really has to be ahead of the education or there get ahead of getting ahead of the education about the asset, why it's different and why your counterparties need to be kind of like really looked at. Because ultimately we're we're having discussions like now with folks that they're thinking from first principles they maybe came from the gold side and then are like looking at this asset. But then understanding OK, if I have a financial vehicle I need to know I want to be able to take delivery of it. I maybe don't want, you know, a custodian that has only, you know, one entity as a counterparty. So I think it's just an important thing is is to bring up and then and I know you know this stuff, but it's like the guys that you're chatting with, I think it's important part of the education process because if everybody just assumes Blackrock's the savior and we all just go into BlackRock ETF because it's easy, I don't think that actually ends up well. It ends up short term, good for us long term. I think it brings a lot more pain. I completely agree. I mean, there's a there's a lot of risk in centralized holders of Bitcoin because they could abuse the trust and. You know, let's be, let's be honest, let's be, you know, realistic about it. You know groups like BlackRock have abused that trust in the past. And I mean, I so there's a lot of debate about how much paper Bitcoin there is, how much paper Bitcoin there's likely to be. And you know, my view is bitcoiners need to win this whole fight. You know quickly and and and before you know the powers that be on the other side of the equation, try and figure out a way to manipulate the Bitcoin price with paper Bitcoin. And you know we've we've got a lot of advantages because it's a, you know, it's a it's triple entry accounting, everyone can see the Ledger. I mean hopefully there'll be enough chain analytics going on that as Bachrock grows we'll be able to see where their buys go. We'll be able to figure out which addresses are BlackRock addresses and see where their buys are going. But you know, they can. If they're tricky, they can keep adding a bunch of addresses and you know, there's nothing to say that a BlackRock, if they wanted to be evil, couldn't do what Sam Bankman Fried did and. You send them money and say, hey, buy Bitcoin and they say, yeah, we bought Bitcoin for you, but they never did. I mean, and and that's paper Bitcoin. And that's not beyond the realm of possibility. And as we know, there is a futures market in Bitcoin. It's not very big. I don't think they're manipulating it now, but I mean these are the tools they use to manipulate gold. And I had a tweet exchange with Lynn yesterday. It was a great exchange where she said, look, you know this moves faster. Where it's on chain you can see it. You know the the gold thing is, it's understandable how they manipulate it a lot of times, said I said, yeah yeah lane, you're right. And and one of the benefits of Bitcoin, you know, vis A vis gold is gold never went up 5X in 14 months, you know, so. So you know if you're on the other side of that trade, if you've manipulated Bitcoin, try to manipulate Bitcoin, sold paper Bitcoin and goes up 5X, you're going to be wrecked. Unless, of course, you're the BIS, or the Fed or the US Treasury. And you did it through an account in the Cayman Islands, You did it off balance sheet and you own a printer, in which case you don't really care. You just, you know, keep selling more because I think that's what they've done with gold. So you know, this people who say, well, if Bitcoin's different, therefore there's no chance of Bitcoin being manipulated. It's, it's riskfree. Caitlin. And I strongly disagree with that. You got to look at the parties involved at the table here and you know these parties are not necessarily trustworthy. So, so yes, Michael, your point is extremely well taken that you know to make the situation better and more robust, we should have tons of custodians lots of whom are trustworthy. Like I know the one you're setting up and like the one I backed Caitlin, I've invested in custodia like the one I know she's you know setting up and will not have paper Bitcoin and and probably even better first principles. Everyone should just, you know, cold store their own damn Bitcoin. I mean it's you know, take custody, you know, be self sovereign. You know, then then you don't ever have the risk of that problem. But I, I, I suspect that in the next 10 years we will hear of people getting rugged. You know, people thinking they bought Bitcoin, but they bought paper Bitcoin and it was fraudulent and then they, they got rugged. Whoever they dealt with didn't have the real coins. I mean, I I can't imagine that won't happen again. There are bad actors out there, right? So. Yeah, I I think you know FTX will happen again, but in the in the next wave it might be. Large Wall Street firms who engage in rehypothecation of HT. F Assets and. Suddenly they're the ones when the tide goes out, 70% that they're screwed, that are the institutions go under. Yeah, and they could go BKI mean. Caitlin has said that to me many times. She thinks she thinks a G sib will get on the wrong side of this and get wrecked. She thinks they can't help themselves from rehypothecating this stuff and and using paper. And that then they will get wrecked. And I you know that may have to happen, right? Completely agree. Exactly right. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's gonna happen. But I do. Billy, on Michael's point. What on ramps building what Unchanged just launched what Swan announced with their vault. Products like that just has to be the standard where you have if you're not gonna hold your own Bitcoin custody, your own Bitcoin and you're using a third party custodian, you should. Ensure that they're leveraging bitcoins native multi sig properties and then distributing that key risk among institutions but their own reputations that they don't want to blow. Completely agree. And I think, I think you guys are doing it right. I'm obviously, I know it's there's a competitor in a way, but obviously put in the plug for Caitlyn. I think she's doing it right too. And you know there's room for a lot of people in this space. But yes, that's what we got to do. There's room for everybody we're talking. It's all the money in the in all the money in the. World Well, that's. Right. And and I actually think it's very similar just to the having the money printer. Like you can't help yourself when you have the the to be able to print the money. In the same way you can't help yourself if you can move the assets without being like having a check on it. And the check can be easily just being able to let the withdrawal happen because the market will always tell you if you have enough because they'll call on it. But that's the problem concerned with BlackRock is you're never going to be able to take it out and what do you mean, what are you going to exchange it for? Is that unit that keeps inflating away. So it's this like interesting dynamic and it'll be good for Bitcoin like everything is, but at the same time it's just like people have to be aware what is happening because they ultimately if they might get caught off sides at a certain point. Well, and and you know, one other way we'll know if if the market suspects that is what if there's a differential price between the BlackRock coin and and you know, other coins, right. I mean it it's entirely possible that if people thought, but you know, BlackRock weren't being honest about it all, that they would. Like they would trade it at a discount to what the coin itself trades at to be taken custody of. So I mean, we'll have to see how that develops. Yeah, I mean, I think you're about to mention if a GBTC already does that and. Well, exactly, yeah. I was going to say same same thing, but I think GBTT does that. Not because people don't think they have the coins. I don't know. I could be wrong. I think it's more because they know that they don't actually have the ability to flatten it out. In other words, they can't. Sell more shares and use it to buy the coins, you know, but, but but perhaps it's because they don't have the coins. People were afraid they don't I don't know. Look it's you know we don't know how it's all going to unfold. But you know I applaud you guys on what you're doing. I mean, I think it's a that's that's the right way to be approaching it and I think that, you know, there are more people doing it, right. So that even if a bad actor like a black like, like, I'm pretty sure fidelity will do it, right? Right. I mean I, you know see that's that's The funny thing and why I mentioned, I didn't say it earlier it's been a long day. But like the counterparty risk that you refer to when we talk to folks like yourself that get Bitcoin, when we bring up like the trust that we launched that allows for in kind delivery, this is standard or they have a few. There's precedent you probably know if sprawt in Canada and then O allens with Vanek and most folks that are in that camp are like Oh yeah, it's really like this but it's almost like a nice to have. It's like oh I can take delivery versus like no, that was the first principle thought if you ever want exposure to gold without without holding the underline because it's a check. But we just got so far away for the past 40 plus years of not worried about the counterparty risk that I think that all comes swooping back around where you are going to be worried about the counterparty. And that's going to be the first question that you think of when you put your Bitcoin into one of these like vehicles whether it's a security like vehicle or an exchange that's the biggest concern is a counterparty risk. We just haven't had to deal with it. We've been living in this like frog boiling in the water of like oh it's always fine they're always going to deliver. But one day, and it's coming that people are going to stop delivering on their their, their promised is when it comes to whether whatever the asset is. And then that's the day that you hit that, like, threshold of the price of Bitcoin. And then they start to wake up that I can take delivery of it. And it's like, oh wow, this is what was happening. And that's when the price just goes forever, because it's just like, well, what the hell were we doing here the whole time? Yeah. Well, it's. Yeah. And what you're talking about is kind of hyper bitcoinization. And I think, I think it's going to happen with gold. I mean I think there are 100 claims on every ounce of gold that really exists in the world. And I've often thought that it's some, I mean if gold were to trade into a different zip code, I think GLD would be in a lot of trouble. You know, they they claim to have a bunch of gold, but I'm pretty sure they don't have everything they say they have and so. You might actually, Bitcoin actually might get a boost from watching, let's let's say gold moves 1st and then GLD blows up. That's going to be a very positive thing for good Bitcoin custodians like yourself because people are going to say okay, you know, we've seen this movie. I mean BlackRock by the way is the custodian I believe for the GLD. So yeah, it's like a little camera, it's a little camera on your gold allocation. They do this in the Texas Bullion Depository that they stood up the sovereign bullion. They put you little camera on your deal, like we don't need a camera. You just have an on chain address. Your Bitcoin sits there. If it moves, you know the not a big custodian. Yeah, you can see it. I mean, and yeah, the fact that the chain is public, I mean that that is a beautiful thing. The problem is people say, well, yeah, yeah, everyone's gonna black rocks gonna be able to, you're gonna be able to see what their address. There's no way Black rocks. I gotta tell you that shit. No, that that's exactly does. Like you reference they they pretty much have the coin. They have good auditors, they're using Coinbase, but the point is they'll never tell you where the addresses are. So you're just hoping to God that they're sitting there? Exactly, exactly. And then to the degree that, I mean there's transparency that's, you know, that's what you want, right. Trust, you know, don't trust. Verify. Yeah. So it's, look, it's it's all good. I mean, you know, it's all good. I think the, you know, the most fascinating thing that I'm watching right now is I'm watching the government squirm. And they, in my view, they are squirming. And I think the, I think events are going to overwhelm them in the next, you know, six months. And you know the Fed will, they will have to develop a different narrative because the one they're on now will not allow the system to keep functioning. And we know that's. Part of their mandate, so. Yeah, I think they're properly screwed right now. That's right. That's, that's said a different way. That's about right. They are, they're screwed. Yeah, they it's checkmate. Really. I mean, it's maybe a few more moves left, but it's, you know, every move is kind of checked to them. They're in trouble. I always, I always think of the the visual metaphor of like painting yourself into a corner. Yeah, that's a good let's do it. They've just got their their paint roller and A and a bucket of paint and they're just in a 1 foot by 1 foot square corner that's left in the room and they have to keep painting. What's going to happen? Yeah it's that's that's a good metaphor. I mean yeah it's you know it's nobody said it wouldn't be interesting. It's, you know. My, my biggest thing and for my investors I get is everyone's just impatient and and I'm impatient but but I also want to consider that you know I was impatient in 2008 you know and here we are all these years later. I mean you know what's a few months and you know, I, I I can't see how we don't see some real resolution of these issues in the next year. I just can't see it. The math, you know and and absence some miracle, you know. Sex machine. You know, productivity, whatever it might be. I just don't see how they get out of the of the trap that they're in, you know, so. Yeah, interesting times. Same time to be alive right now and that. Would be scary. Yeah, it is. Look, I mean, these 4th turnings are supposed to be hard and you guys are the hero generation. You're supposed to drag us out of it, so. And I'm sure you will. That's why I wore my Cam out today. So it's to be prepared to to go to battle to drag us out of this mess. Yeah, there you go. We have a plan. We have a plan. I know you do. And you're executing the plan and it's gonna work. So we're, you know, we're good. I know that. It's just, you know, we gotta, we gotta watch all the moves. Yeah. Just making sure. That we take care of the women and children along the way to get them on the boats. And. Well, Larry, appreciate you joining us. Second repeat guest that we've had. On the last yeah, I really enjoy it. You guys are great. We're all on the same team and like minded, so I'm happy to be with you. Anytime you want to do this, well, yeah, I acted. Go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to say we'll see what the national debt is next time we do this. I'm sure it'll be several trillion higher. What are we if we're talking a year out, I think, I think they add 4 trillion this year. So what are we at 30? 33 1/2 and a. Half. OK. Yeah. So you're talking you're getting close to 40 now? Yeah, well, I said to Preston when we're speaking at Pack Bitcoin that it's pretty clear to me that the next move on the Fed balance sheet takes us from 9 to 20. I think that's right, right? Yep. That's scary. It's just it's nuts. I mean, So what comes after a trillion, A quad trillion or quadrillion, I mean. Quadrillion. I don't know. Why Mar comes after? A trillion. No, Larry, you had mentioned, I forgot the term you just used. But we're like minded and one thing we get a little caught on when we have this show and guess the the Fed speak, you know, we talk about you know percentage or inflation and what it is soft landing. Like obviously there's no soft landing happening anywhere. And early I caught, I caught you in a little Fed speak. You were saying that your your friends back at HBS were were more successful than you because they had like 3 actions like, no, they weren't. We we we know this like kindred spirits. This like common mind is like we never sold out to the system. And so that's why we we were able to have these discussions they can identify. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm talking in in Fiat world terms, right. Yeah. They're more successful in the terms by which I measure my life and my achievements. I'm very happy with where I am and infinitely more successful. I've got a great wife and I've got 3 great kids and I have a meal on the table and I'm working at something that I care a lot about and I'm passionate about and I think my legacy will be, you know, that guy swore a lot and he fought for the right shit. That's right. Sound. Sound. Money, Benchmark. It's the sound. Money and you know, I I, you know, there were I would I could tell you guys a lot of stories. There were a couple of times in my career where I really could have sold out. I mean two of them were so obvious and I would be multiples of my current net worth. I mean big multiples. And in both cases I mean it was really like it was like in what was the movie where you know you have the devil on one shoulder and the Angel on the other. It was like Animal House and the guy was trying to decide whether to. You know, to nail the girl and she's passed out or whatever. And you know, the the devil is like, you know, come on, do it. You know you'll be rich if you go for this. And the Angel was like, no, man, don't do. And in both cases I went with the Angel and I'm really glad I did. But but you know, I, I I mean, they're guys I hired who, you know, they're they're flying multiple private jets. Right. And. You know they've they've managed to take the Fiat system and run up the score in in in their world now. You know they they probably have they have alcohol problems they have marriage probably have a lot of issues. So you know I don't regret the choice, but you know the choices were there and I, I, I, I decided to go the way I went. So it is what it is, yeah. I'm already facing that with with my Stanford class. We're only 10 years out, but we already have two of them approaching billionaire status. But you know, but they've been playing Fiat games very successfully. I don't know anything else about their lives at this point. And look, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with succeeding. Some of the guys in my classes have succeeded extraordinarily well and and and done it by legitimately adding value, and I'm all for that. I have no problem with success. The you know, the the ones that that annoy me are the people who've cheated and and there's a lot of that. So but, you know, God has a sense of humor. And, you know, I, I, I mean the the. 64 portfolio is in trouble. Yeah, if you and if you laugh last, you laugh best. I mean, I think that, you know, the way, the way we defeat these people is not not with, you know, not with guns and and knives. The The way we defeat these people is we just bankrupt them. And you know. Defeat them with scarcity, huh? Yeah, I mean, if, well, if if Fiat becomes worthless, and I this is, I know this is a fringe view and I get attacked for it a lot. But I truly think by 20-30, you know, Fiat's worthless. I mean we're we're on a Bitcoin standard, you know, and you know, if that happens, you know, I mean I think the odds that Jerome Powell has bought any Bitcoin are zero. I think the odds that Ben Bernanke has bought any Bitcoin are 0. You know, I think the history books record both of them as being descendants of John Law and you know, people who you know fucked over the world with with monetary witchcraft. And you know, I think the the descent, you know, the people who you know who were fighting for sound money. You know we become the the you know the John Adams and the Sam Adams and the well not Alexander Hamilton cuz he believed in central banks. But you know what I'm talking about. You know, the the founding, the founding fathers who were actually legit, The Jeffersons, etcetera. That that, you know, believed in kind of the sound shit, right? Because yeah, on that thread, that's like the single handed most exciting. The exciting thing I'm looking forward to is just accountability being reintroduced back into the world. Like in the very micro sense of like why is this person in this this role? Or like why how do they get here versus versus to the most macro like anybody just clicking buttons to do whatever they want and mucking up a whole system. Like accountability has been completely like truth, that the foundational layer has been completely taken out of society and. Just to see that back is all, all I really like. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I could not agree more that some sense of of cosmic justice and a humbling of of these people who are frauds would just that alone makes it worth it. Even if even if our stuff doesn't work, we don't get, you know, we don't benefit economically. Just just to see an honest society again would be would be such a huge development and of course all the positive implications for war and everything else. So yeah, that's that's why we're in it. You know, that's why we're in it. And and as Marty says, I mean one of the things I love about Marty when ever from I first met him, one I swiped his idea of and fix the money, fix the world. I heard it with Marty 1st. And then I'll never forget the first time we spoke Marty And I was like, I don't know I was a little feeling a little down that day or something. And I said, oh fuck, you know this battle, it just keeps going. And Marty just looked at me with just serious. I was like, fuck that shit man. We're going to win. I just know we're going to win. And I was like, OK, man, your mouth of God's ears, I'll sign up for that because I feel like we're going to win. But you know, we all have moments of doubt, right? That's actually, it's a really good story because it that's like something that's always given kind of I've really enjoyed. We did a lot of this. We had these conversations when we on board bitcoiners, new bitcoiners that are a little older and I never like experienced seen in somebody's eyes, like the like somebody that experienced the life. Their life for like, let's call it 40 to 60 years. And they thought they saw it, all right. And so it's like, we're good. You got my family. I got my business. And then they like, found Bitcoin. And so they're just excited and they're talking about, OK, how do I custody this and what do I do? And it's like they just got another, like, wave or another chapter in the story. And you've talked about this before. We're like, you've been doing this for so long. And then you see this group of people come in and they're like, hey, we're we're ready to pick up the, the we're with you, right? We're with you. You know, it's like, it's like the reinforcements arrived. I mean, I'm 66. I'm beat up. Been fighting this battle for years. These assholes have been winning. Every time I turn around they win. And it's like, I read Safe's book and now I got 30 year olds, 20 and 30 year olds quoting von Mises to me and Marty telling me we're going to fucking win and I'm like, yeah, let's fucking go. See, it's the coach to me. I've coached a couple of championship teams and it's it's all mentality. Yeah, there you go. It's like, sign me up, you know? Speaking of which, I wanted to, I wanted to get your input on what the fuck is Portnay doing buying a $40 million mansion? I mean, Jesus Christ, you know what the carrying cost that thing's gotta be. He has that much money. He's. Not well. Well, you got to feel Maxie's to bail him out. The Disney's, the Disney money or whatever. Is that what it is? I don't know. Yeah, I read that. I thought, Oh my God, that's crazy. I mean he owned 49% of the company when they sold the pen for 500 mil, but I think that was. A cash and stock deal and I don't know how well Penn stocks do it. I guess that'll support a $40 million house. But I, you know the taxes, I mean that's got that house going to cost 1,000,000 bucks a year to run, that's for sure. I think he knows there's something wrong with the system, too. He just can't put his head around Bitcoin because he's been, like, rugged by all these other stuff that they've told him to do. So he's like, oh, I'll just buy the real estate. It can't be bad bet, yeah. Nantucket's a nice place and I'm sure it's a beautiful house, so it you know, it won't have zero value. But I don't know. Strikes me as a tad extravagant, but whatever. He's he does have some Bitcoin exposure. He said publicly. Oh does he Oh, that's nice to know. Yeah that's nice to know. I you know, it's interesting I found a lot of people have Bitcoin exposure that I didn't necessarily think would you know and I've and I've orange pilled some tough cases. I'm for giving his last name but the guy who runs quoth the Raven Chris. For sirens, yeah, Chris Irons. I've orange peeled him. He's he's all in now. Really. That was a tough one to crack. That's a big one. Yeah. Until I guess recently, the year ago he was, he was the complete kind of, yeah. And I was completely against it. I think it is. I, you know, actually I had dinner with Brent Johnson the other day and he confessed that he owns some Mr. Dollar milkshake in that. Interesting. Yeah, I think George Gammon owns some too. I mean, they're not they're not willing to go on stage and promote it, but I think they're they're kind of in the back of their mind doing the, you know, shit, you know, maybe not. Maybe having zero of this doesn't make sense. I mean they which means that the beginning of understanding is taking place, right? Well, they're sharp too. You see something hit 70 almost tick 70K retrace and it's been hanging around and people it's like, well, I mean you know might as well get you know they're not they're not stupid. They're starting to get it. Yeah, I mean the the, you know, the thing that that I think Brent always had, the I think the thing probably one of the biggest amongst savvy people, the biggest thing that I encounter now, they get the scarcity, they get how it works. They get the all that they're they're convinced the government's going to somehow break it. Do you know what I mean? Shut it down and break it. And So what I find I have to do is just point out to them how through civil disobedience and 12 words, we're just not going to let them break it. They can't, you know, it's just it's it's impenetrable. And yeah, they can. They can try and outlaw. They can threaten to send us to jail. They can do all kinds of things. They tax the shit out of it. But good luck. Good luck finding it. Good luck grabbing it. They can't. And and the international game theory of exactly Salvador becoming a lot more attractive if the US is straight coming in about the creation and you know so the America decides to tax it 90% and confiscate it. Well, I'm going to learn Italian. You just might learn Texan first, because yeah, that would work. I honestly believe that like Texas banning Bitcoin be the same as Zen banning gold at this point. Like, I mean it's gotten to this point like the adoption that's happened here, we still probably they're not going to do it tomorrow. So you have another two years of like this inertia that's going there. It was 3% of the grid capacity is going to minors right now in Texas. Yeah, now we've got a big investment one down there called Cormin, which we really like. That's a great, great one. Yeah. So we'll have your Uncle Larry's ranch down in Texas. Yeah. I like Texas. I'd be I'd be happy to come down there. I just got my license to carry. So I'm I'm I'm good to go and yeah no it's it's it's going to work as as Marty says we're going to win we're going to win we're. Going to win their their the government, the Fed essentially. Hurry up. How are your kids doing what? You got 2 right. Got 2? They're almost 4 and 16 months, so I'll enjoy that. That's the best. You'll miss them when they're gone. I miss mine all the time. That's yeah, that's what actually, I've been gone at a retreat for 10310 Nice this week, and so I flew straight from Salt Lake City to the studio. And so when we wrap up, I'm gonna go say, what's up. To the wife on the boys St. first time all week. Yeah Larry, I'm convinced we're gonna do the like the JP Morgan, the Rockefeller like we're just gonna bring the family into the business. So you just they never get too far in this next, the next time you just like you just started having them ready to extend the the business line. So yeah that makes sense. Jesse, where do you hang out? What's your where are you dialing in from? Yeah, I'm, I'm in LA, but I am moving to Texas in. Three weeks? Yeah. Yeah. I like Texas. Texas works. I mean, I'd love to see Texas and Florida succeed. I've got a house in Florida, so. Tags it baby Texas, yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll have to coordinate to get you down here next. You're probably done with travel for this year, but 2024? We'll figure out when we can all get together. Yeah, we'd love to do it. Yeah, it's. The The season is turning here in Texas, too. My wife is extremely happy. It's not 110 degrees every day anymore. It's pumpkin. Pumpkin patch season. Time to get out there. That's right. Going to 1:00 tomorrow night, guys. I got to run. I don't know how much time. We're on the same boat. Yeah, the same boat. Yeah, I got a 5:00 I got to do. But it's really great talking to y'all. I'm happy to come back anytime. Huge respect for all of you and what you're doing, and if there's any way I can help you, I'd be happy to do it so. Well, the feeling is mutual. You keep crushing it as well. And we're gonna win. We're gonna win if you're out there listening. You know what? Ever since you told me that, whenever I get a little bit done, I think you know what already told me we're gonna win. And I believe him. So I'm you know. It's all mentality. You gotta have a winner's mentality. It is. It's, yeah, mindset's a very big part of of life and I work on that a lot. So we will win. Thanks for joining. Yeah, good to see y'all. Do we need to upload or is there anything we need to do or? No, you can sign off. We've got this sounds great. Thanks guys. Take care. We'll see ya. Bye. See you guys next week.