The Last Trade E073: The Orange Wave with Larry Lepard & David Foley

What you're telling me is that music is about to stop and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous extra ever assembled in the history of gutless 1974198792972000. And 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, I say, when we sell. All right, everyone, well, welcome back to the last trade. This week we have Michael Tanguma and Jesse Myers, my Co host. Just a quick admin update. So Jesse's going to be stepping back from the weekly cadence and we'll be doing more of a monthly cadence on the show so he can focus more on producing research and content, which I'll speak for the team. We're really excited about because as someone who's, you know, been following the Bitcoin space a long time, Jesse's one of the people who has really put out the top tier content, research, educational material. So excited for Jesse to be ramping that up. And this week we have Larry Leopard and Dave Foley joining us. Gentlemen, how are you doing? Thanks for making the time. Thanks. Guys, I'm doing great. How about you guys? Yeah, good to be with you all. It's exciting week, I think of two. Better guys to have on the pod to talk about what is going on right now. Yeah. Yeah, it's been it's been really exciting and I actually had a dream last night that Bitcoin was ripping 300,400 thousand 500,000. And when I woke up, I wasn't sure if it had actually happened or not because the price action while it hasn't been that bullish just yet, it has been really exciting to see, you know, breaking through the previous all time high from earlier this year. And I think we're still a little bit short of the CPI adjusted all time high. We might have another couple thousand to go before we breakthrough that. But anyways, Larry, Dave, thanks for joining us. Maybe we could just start with any initial thoughts on election results, you know, specifically as it relates to financial markets or the economy, just, you know, what are the implications of Trump winning this week and how are you guys thinking about it as investors go? Ahead, Dave I. Was going to say I was going to let you go ahead so I could think. I think, yeah, I guess quick thoughts rambling around my head. Larry and I were talking earlier yesterday and obviously this morning, too. I thought that David Brooks had a good article in the New York Times today. Someone had forwarded to me and, you know, I think he's kind of calling attention to just basically look, you know, clearly America has spoken. There's a lot of people that are left behind. I just saw the Saint Louis Fed Palm Valley Capital had a good piece in their letter, Q3 letter of, you know, showing that the top 1% of Americans have an average net worth according the Saint Louis Fed of $35 trillion in total. And the bottom 50%, I think I'm getting my data right. A bottom 50% have yeah, sorry, $35 million. The average net worth is $35,000,000 to the top 1%. And the bottom 50% average net worth is only $57,000. And so clearly people are feeling pain from inflation. And as David Brooks points out, like it's time for people to realize this wasn't about Trump and Kamala. This was about there's a bunch of disenfranchised people in this country and, and, and, you know, they have a vote, too, and they have a voice. And you got to respect that. And so Larry and I've talked a lot about this is a, it's about broken money and it's a broken system. And that's why we all know this here in the Bitcoin space and and gold and silver bugs know it too. And, and I think you just saw that. I think that that's the reaction. So I guess that's kind of. Yeah, that David Brooks for people who are curious, that David Brooks article, I retweeted that. So that's on North Park Twitter for Pete and that's a I've got the the free share guest so it's not behind a paywall. So you can actually go read it. It was quite thoughtful. It's a hell of a hell of a headline here. It says voters to elites. Do you see me now? Right. And, and, and it was a great headline in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, that's the story. I mean, it's, and a lot of people on, you know, in the, in the political trenches are, are trying to say it's something else. But I, I think it's, I think it's as simple as what Dave just said. You know, you, you have a 40% inflation. People are hurting badly in this country, all except for the people at the very top. And, you know, they're going to throw the bums out. And the problem, you know, I don't think the problem's going to be solved in two years or four years. My guess is, I mean, if you look at the last several elections, they've always, they've thrown the bums out, you know, and I think they probably will again in two years and they will again in four years as well. So, you know, the money's broken. That's the core issue. And I, I, I hope that that, you know, the team that's been picked here addresses that issue, you know, because I think it's going to come to a head in the next couple years. That's that's my timing on it. But but one just come and bounce back on that too is like it feels like 2016. This was the exact same referendum that sent Trump into Washington right of hell. JD Vance wrote a book about it that created his famousness of Hillbilly Elegy. And so, you know, you could argue it's the same thing, but but there's a lesson in that. Like, this is not an easy fix. It's not so simple to come in and snap your fingers. And, And I know that it sounds like John Paulson is one of the leading candidates to be treasured secretary. And it sounds like he might be one of the more highly probable ones because he and Musk have been spending a lot of time talking about, you know, the cuts that they're going to make and they think they can cut 1 1/2 to $2 trillion off of expenditures. That'll be interesting to watch and see what that looks like and how you do that when Medicare, Social Security, defense and interests are all upwards of 1 to $1.5 trillion of that. So I'm sure there's waste. I mean, sure, it begins with Ukraine. Prob. That's the best hope. I mean, I think Trump can kind of hopefully quiet down some of the Mideast and Ukraine stuff that will save some money. And then and then it's a matter of, OK, do they peel back the Inflation Reduction Act stuff? But now your brain should be going to the Lin Alden point. Like that's incredibly important stimulus that kind of kept this economy going. So what happens when you do that? Does that tip us into recession? Does that force things like the commercial real estate loan issues? The CMBS default rates continue to Jack. They were up another 1% on the delinquencies. I should say delinquencies, not the fault. They were up another 1% last month. They're up 100, you know, up from 4 1/2 to 9 1/2% essentially over the last kind of nine months or so. So you know, what happens does do we cause a recession and, and, and, and you don't stem, in which case the deficits only get bigger because now you've cut taxes. They'll probably do that. So I don't want to, I'm sure we'll talk about a lot of these things, but you know, that's where our heads are at now is we're trying to figure out where the pucks going on the fiscal policy front and what that means. But I think, I think all of us, I'm guessing. I, I think it's, I think it's a very important point that people who think that they're going to be able to just easily take $2 trillion out of the, you know, expense bucket are just, they're dreaming. I mean, 80% of it, you know, is, is Social Security, Medicare, you know, defense and, and interest. Now they can maybe get the interest down if they lean on the Fed to keep cutting rates. I saw some tweets suggesting that, you know, I'm sure Trump will do that and the Fed will continue to tilt towards short term funding versus long term. I mean, I, we find it very interesting that there, it looks like the, in the, in my opinion, they're slowly in the process of losing the long bond market. They just aren't a lot of, you know, there aren't a lot of people who want to own 1020 and 30 year debt securities in the country. That's this unbalanced fiscally. And, and you know, we've got the 10 year at 4 mid fours. I mean, the last time that created a problem was when it went over 5 in the fall of 2023. And that's when they said they were going to stop raising rates in order to kind of stop that. But we know kind of five 5 1/2 is kind of a danger level for the for the 10 year. You know, that higher 10 year, by the way, is affected the mortgage market, right? I mean, David has the exact numbers, but you know, the long mortgages got cheaper there for a while, but that's going in the wrong direction. That's not going to be good for housing. Housing is a big part of the economy. So, you know, I mean, look, Trump's going to have his hands full here, no doubt. And, you know, they, they, I mean, hopefully they will do the right things, but you know, it's going to be no matter who would, no matter who's in this role, they've got it. They've been dealt a very bad hand in terms of the mathematics of the government, you know, financial condition. I think one thing to to add though, or just to maybe take a step back, back to the election. And it really feels like a, a renaissance is upon us, at least from the millennial side. I think there's a lot of excitement from this notion of we've had a lot of calls as maybe you guys have as this week from folks overseas. And as much as some people were surprised here, it's like 2X in other countries like the UK, Ireland, because the level of just effective propaganda is so heavy. And then the Renaissance goes back to whether it's Twitter or any kind of quote UN quote alternative media where you cannot any more hide the truth. If you are a truth seeker, you will find it in this notion of this new administration, like a kind of at least embody or is is open to it. And then that ties into Larry and Dave and and the teams like there is a lot of pain and there's a lot of problems. But the reality is the first step in fixing them is you have to be knowledgeable and awareness of them and what the problem is. And it feels like that's the silver lining, at least with some of this stuff is that now these pipes are opening. We're talking about strategic reserve. We're talking about a lot of things that had never been in the Overton window. And how do you solve for this? And we all know once you kind of like, have a solution, you ultimately can change the power structure. That had been historically not. Yeah. I think that's absolutely right. I mean, you're seeing, you know, you're seeing a lot of very high level people who understand what the problem is. They're coming to understand it more, you know, and you got brilliant investors like Paul Tudor Jones who realize that inflation is the way out. I mean, as a practical matter, unless they want to take, you know, a depression and when this bubble burst, if the stock market bubble were to burst, it'd look like 1929. The market's more overvalued than it was in 29. So as a practical matter, if they want to keep the economy running, they've got to inflate. They just absolutely have to, right? And they will, in my opinion. Yeah, and one thing, Mike, you just triggered my head is like I I'm surprised at how shocked everyone is that that Trump did this. Now, I don't know if it's because look, let's look at our own biases. We're in the Bitcoin space. We're paying attention to sound money and inflation issues and maybe we've traveled a lot. So going to things like Nashville conferences, you meet with a lot of people throughout the cross sections of America and you saw kind of, hey, there's a wave here. But like step back for a second. Like, I think it's some whenever that first debate was in May or June, Like we all sit there on our couches like, Oh my God, Biden literally is out of it. And Trump gave that famous funny punchline that night in what it was a really well debate, a good debate by Trump where he held back. But he says, I don't know what he just said and I'm not sure he knows what the hell he just said. You know, it was a brilliant line. It was the right one punch that he gave and that was it. He was very disciplined. He was not so good in the Kamala debate, but that was so that was the opening. And then it began then with, you know, assassination attempts and then she's appointed without running a process and then they wouldn't put her up for interviews. And the last points I'll make is you look to what we, Larry and I and James had talked a lot about was the Call Her Daddy podcast. The views on that were like low hundreds, thousands, which means she was not resonating with the 24 through, call it 4 year old women. And then the Oprah ratings were like a few 100,000 little more than call her daddy, I believe. And so therefore she wasn't resonating with the soccer mom slash 60 year olds. And so they wouldn't put her even on Joe Rogan. Like she was a terrible candidate and and it was a terrible campaign by the Dems. I often wonder, like maybe they knew after that first debate they were screwed and they were just like, let's just rundown ballot and, and, you know, not put her out there. I don't know. So I'm an independent. I don't have a dog in the fight. I'm, I kind of feel like my party's Bitcoin, like we're just independent people that want health and happiness for our families and freedom. So the last point I'll make is like, yes, some of this was about freedom too, of people feeling like they're lied to by their government and and they're treated like fools and they they don't like the direction of the country and they just want some of that back. And so I'll pause there, but I think that's that's my only last thought on the election is it's about the money. But I also think there's some of that wanting the country, I think. That's right. That's that's back to Michael's point. You know, we the Overton window has shifted. You know, Joe Rogan is, is better than the New York Times. You know, the mainstream media if if they're not completely and totally dead, if they weren't dead before, they ought to be dead now. Even these famous forecasters who missed called the election. I mean, you know, polymarkets was a better predictor of the outcome than anything else. I mean, it, it, and this is the beauty of the Internet and, you know, open communication, distributed networks and, and, and it's, it's just going to have such a huge impact on the world, you know. Yeah, David, I'd, I'd say I'm, I'm also, I'm a bitcoiner. That's my party and has been for a number of years now. But before that I was a coastal elite liberal. And, and I, I have a kind of a, a tale of two worlds on social media. My Twitter is, is Bitcoin and, and I get that echo chamber. And then, you know, my Instagram and Facebook. That's, that's, that's all this time capsule from that old life. And it's been amazing to see the, the total disbelief again from, you know, my old Stanford classmates who went canvassing for the last two weeks, you know, and, and they're just as shocked as they were in 2016. Side note, I guess that's how long it takes to forget, you know, that you're making the same mistakes again. I remember looking at the, the, the in detail maps after the 2016 election, showing the redshift in the Rust Belt. And, and just like, how did, how did the pollsters miss this stuff? And now this time around, it's, it's polymarket. There was that French guy who made $40 million betting on Trump in polymarket and learning a little bit more about that. He's he's been talking about it in the last few days of he was smart enough to realize that there were some polls that were asking the neighbor question of who will your neighbor vote for? And that that represented a a few percent of a delta from what all the other other pollsters were getting by asking what who are you going to vote for? Interesting. And so that right there is enough to that's a few percent. That's that's the election that explains that like 3% bigger numbers that Trump got then all the pollsters thought he was going to get. And it was just because there's some sort of stigma. There's some shame still of like, people aren't willing to come out and say like, yeah, I agree with Trump and the liberals have gone too far. Well, Larry and I were talking about that famous Dwight David Eisenhower quote, right, that I think you said I despise people in the gutter on the right and the left that hurl rocks at people in the middle, Meaning Eisenhower not only warned about the military industrial complex, he warned about partisan politics that divides us. And so I'll pick on both the Fox News and the MSNBC crowd. I think these people are so out of touch with America and these issues that it makes me realize how early we are in Bitcoin and how early we are in this whole inflation trend that these people have no idea what this fiscal financial crisis will look like whenever that happens. I have no idea if that's six months or six years or somewhere in between, but it's not far off. And and I don't want to be a dooms Sayer day or whatever, but like there's massive risk out there. And it I guess that's one last thing that opened up for me this last two days is man, people's heads are in the sand. Like completely don't get it. They think this is about Trump and Kamala when it's completely about something else. So, David, you, you disagree with Kamala's ads saying that we're going to stop corporate price gouging and that's the the root cause of inflation? I mean, it's got to be the grocery stores that are to blame for sure, with their razor thin margins. I mean, the whole thing's just it's just so stupid. And to watch AOC last night on some tweet that she ranted out. I mean, just it's nuts. It's we're hot and it's both, it's both sides of the aisle. We're hijacked by these morons on the extremes. And with all due respect, I should be careful with using that word moron to anyone. But it's annoying, right? Because we're we're forced to deal with all this crap. But look, I think we're all hedged for this. So, you know, but I, most people aren't and it, and it's sad because I, you know, we all have these text groups, I'm sure with our college friends or high school friends. And you know, I think my high school friend Juan, there's like only a couple of us that are bitcoiners and I, and I feel bad. You know, I think some of these guys think that we're kind of outlandish. They just don't understand yet. And and yet, I think they're starting to slowly learn. Are you ready to secure your future with Bitcoin? At Onramp, we're revolutionizing how you can save for retirement. Onramp has just launched the industry's first Bitcoin IRA product with multi institution custody, designed to give you unparalleled security, transparency, and Peace of Mind. With Onramp, you can verify your assets on chain and protect them with the support of three independent institutions, reducing risks and enhancing security. At Onramp, we believe that Bitcoin is the most important asset of the 21st century. The hard part is securing it right. There are shortcomings with keeping your coins on an exchange, but also with setting up your own self custody arrangement. Onrev solves for these concerns. Our multi institution custody solution maximizes security and minimizes counterparty risk, ensuring that your Bitcoin remains securely in your possession and provides built in inheritance planning to ensure your family is protected as well. Onrev provides Peace of Mind for your Bitcoin journey, whether for your whole stack or for part of it, as a complement to your existing self custody setup. For more information about our services as well as our new Bitcoin IRA product, check us out at on rampbitcoin.com. I'm hopeful that we now that we have this unity party and we we have both Republicans, Democrats, independents kind of joining forces. And it's tough to say if Trump actually understands Bitcoin. I would lean, I would error on the side that he doesn't quite yet. But certainly RFK Junior seems to have a very deep understanding of Bitcoin and then those that were advising his campaign seem to be Bitcoiners as well. So I'm curious then, this is really the first Bitcoin administration. Trump's made some bold claims that he wants Bitcoin to be made in the USA. So what is there's obviously a lot of doom and gloom out there as it relates to just the fiscal situation that we find ourselves in and frankly almost every sovereign nation finds themselves in these days. But what is what role is Bitcoin going to play in your opinion, as it relates to the US strategic reserve or other ways that we should be thinking about it in terms of a more bright orange future rather than a doomsday type of scenario? I think that, you know, Trump, it's interesting, as you recall, a few years ago, Trump was not a Bitcoin supporter. Do you know what I mean? I don't think he really understood it, but he was negative on it. You know, three years ago or so, I think Vivek got into his ear and he he listened to that. And now, now he's got JD in his ear and he's got Senator Loomis in his ear and. You know, I, I have to say, you know, Trump is Trump, right? I mean, he, he found his own shit coin. I mean, come on, man. You know, I mean, he's in favor of Bitcoin good, but you know, he launches a shit coin. Come on, Eric, you know, get get with a program, man. So it just goes to show you that none of these guys are perfect, right? But I, I think that, you know, I mean, my gut is they're going to, they're going to bring Jason Lowry back into the administration of the Pentagon. I mean, I, you know, they're going to probably listen to what Saylor has to say. I mean, I, I think, I think it's very bright and I, I think they will, you know, form a strategic Bitcoin reserve, hopefully between now and the end of the year. You know, as I understand it, the government does have a couple 100,000 bitcoins that they got in confiscation from somewhere else. And I hope that Biden doesn't try and sell those between now and the year end. So there's the beginning of your strategic reserve. And as you know, Lummus introduced a bill into Congress. And so, you know, we'll see where that goes. But the point is, yeah, I, I think they're, you know, I think they're starting to get it. I mean, Kennedy clearly gets it. JD Vance gets it. He says he has 6 1/2 of them. You know, Vivek gets it. And then I have to say Trump is, you know, there's some good things about Trump. There's some bad things about Trump, you know, whatever. But, you know, if you look at him, you know, he, he's evolved and he's, you know, I'm very, I'm very positively encouraged by the people that he's got around him. And if he starts listening to those people, you know, I have a high opinion. Tulsi Gabbard, I you know, I have a high opinion of RFK and others you know. I'll throw out a, is a very bullish case for Bitcoin in America, but the individual, the individuals you referenced as being in the ear on Bitcoin or are on purpose, not the individuals that are actually leading on the Bitcoin stance and the, and the folks there. This is obviously a take. It's not for certain, but it is the people that have been in Bitcoin for a very long time that are very influential. It's like the notion of a who's the best monopoly? It's like Google, but they never say they're a monopoly, right, Because you never want to say you're a monopoly. And then when you aren't a monopoly, you say you are a monopoly. You go to Peter Thiel, who JD Vance is a, you know, protege of Elon Musk. Right. You go to that and so if that's the angle and they understand because they're very 2nd and 3rd order thinkers and they understand the fiscal policy and how do you get out of a position? You start to construct a whole plan before it's even out in the open of like how do you actually become? And so like that's the bullish take of there are actual thinkers. I mean, I know Jason Lowry and I don't know personally, but I know there's the book and the things he's done, but he's very like newer folks that have come into place versus like a lot of the guys you think about. Even Shamath, you know, Jesse's reading about his back in like calling this thing Smuck insurance in case of all the stuff in 2011 twelve. There's some very deep, influential people in politics that if anything's happening there, the folks behind the scenes working this plan long before it ever in an example. Of very possibly, although I have to say I don't think Elon completely groks Bitcoin. I don't know. What do you guys think? Do you think I. Think he deeply groks Bitcoin. I think it's really Oh yes, insanely groks Bitcoin. He it's a it's a show, you know, offline, there's a lot of things to there's a lot of like actual anecdotes that I've heard from very like people been in this space for a long time. That evil that's. True, that's positive. The doge thing is like a deflection. It's a it's a joke. Yeah, I watched him do some other stuff and I thought to myself, this guy doesn't get it. What? What do you think, Jesse? We got $3 billion. He has to get something. Yeah, I, I, I feel like the doge thing was such egg on his face that that you wouldn't make that mistake. Like going on SNL and talking about Doge at the, at the exact top of of Doge. I think that's humiliating. I, I think that I, I wonder about Elon. I've, I've wondered this, that like his, he thinks he knows money because of PayPal. And so you're going to, you're going to have a certain arrogance and certain hubris of like, no, like, I know how this works. And you're going to be slower to be open to other people teaching you about money. And so that's that's, that's been my mental model of like, I don't think Elon gets it yet. And it's understandable if he doesn't because of that. But you know, I would love to be wrong on that. I would love for him. To be wrong too. I just don't know. Yeah, I mean, if he the thing that's and he expects us to talk about it. But if you really think about it like consensus isn't that hard, right? Like the notion of consensus and, and, and a not distribution, but decentralization. And like, how would you keep something 21 million? Like so like Elon's pretty smart. Like it's kind of far fetched for him to believe like, well, what makes a good money? Like the, the, the leaps aren't like that hard to get for somebody that is that intelligent. Like now there's the different orders of magnitude where somebody like has the bias of the yuppie elite that can't get past it, but that is more of a like social construct than like an intellectual 1 anyway. So it's just like part of the reason we're like, Elon shouldn't have a problem in grokking why like doge can't be money because you can just make more of them. And if you can make more dollars, that's not money. Yeah, you're right. And Elon has had a an interesting few years of has probably challenged his his trust in the system. And so maybe he would be maybe he's more open to it now. Maybe he he got it years ago and it has been a a smokescreen the whole time. But yeah. Yeah. And like when it just to add to that is like, I'm sure everybody's had these discussions. It's been kind of like insinuated since the ETF. Everybody's placing their chips on the table from financial institutions on like how they're going to integrate Bitcoin. And then the second part is the Vance and I don't know if it's Vivek, but there was it strive there RAA that's like one of the first to integrate Bitcoin. Like these guys are putting everything like around because they already know what's what's coming, you know? Yeah, what? What are the implications of that? You know, Elon gets it or he doesn't get it. Maybe he does. Vivak understands it. RFK, all these people surrounding Trump understand it. Trump still launching chick coins. So maybe there's a lack of understanding. But nonetheless, the US finds itself in an unsustainable debt situation. But there is also the talks with Senator Alumnus and a lot of support there with him, a potentially $1,000,000 million Bitcoin that they want to have in a strategic reserve. So it was like, how do you even think about that as relates to the unsustainable fiscal situation, the $2 trillion deficits, Fiat currencies being credit based and having to continue to debase. But at the same time governments stacking Bitcoin, the hardest form of money, scarce digital bearer instrument. How does that potentially mitigate some of these risks or this path that we're on as it relates to just further Fiat debasement? Yeah. I have some strong thoughts on this, but I'm super interested. In Larry and. David's take. Here go first, Jesse. Well, I guess to tee it up, I think that a Trump administration here on Bitcoin is very mildly good for Bitcoin, probably considerably good for crypto. Except if the strategic Bitcoin reserve actually happens, then it's extremely bullish for Bitcoin. And probably not so much because America would be a buyer, but because if there is any sort of real momentum around that, then the the geopolitical game theory kicks into OverDrive and there will be sovereign buyers for Bitcoin outside of the US all over the world. And so like, is it possible that happens this year? Yes, and that would be an unbelievably bullish for Bitcoin and current, you know, total valuation of $1.3 trillion. That that would be outrageous. So yeah, I, I teed up that way first of like Trump might be like not, not that important for Bitcoin or very, very important. Well, so, so let me just react to that because my view is this, the strategic Bitcoin Reserve is a great idea. And he might be able to prevent them from selling the 200,000. I think the odds of Loomis's bill passing are as close to 0 as possible. And I say that because, you know, I think what'll happen is, you know, it's you've got to get senators and Congress people to as a majority want to do it. And what they're going to do is they're going to consult with the Federal Reserve, who's the keeper of the currency in the US Treasury. And they're both going to come out and treat it the same way they treated Judy Shelton's nomination of the Fed board, which is they're going to go berserk and say that if we do this, I mean, you know, as Sailor points out, the first country that started, we can print money to buy Bitcoin. But you know, which is great because then the country would have Bitcoin. You know, that the US government would have Bitcoin. Although arguably, I'm not sure I want a big central government to have more power. I mean, I'm kind of mixed on this. I mean, I like the separating money from state. I'm not even sure I want Jason Lowry in the state to win and have a bunch of Bitcoin, right? But but here's for sure the put the people that are Fiat masters, the people that are in positions of power, the Federal Reserve in the US Treasury are going to mount an extremely aggressive campaign to suggest that having the US government print money to buy Bitcoin is a bad idea, an extremely dangerous an idea, an idea that will probably destroy the dollar. And so you think, you think senators and Congress people, a majority of both are going to do that. I think the odds of that are 0. You know, I'll build on that. I mean, last time we met with Jason Larry up here in Boston right before he moved to Florida when he was leaving MIT. This is not, you know, this is nothing confidential. So we can disclose it. It he had said that. I remember I asked him, I said, well, what's your sense when you sit inside with Biden in them and the administration, how does it go? And he, how's this discussion about Bitcoin go? And he said, look, he goes, the Pentagon absolutely was like 100% behind Bitcoin. They're like, this needs to be strategic reserve asset. This is critical. You know, you got to have some money weapons, so to speak. It was the treasury, though, that ruined that always rules the day down there and yelling and then we're like, hell no, you know, you will destroy the dollar. And and so now it's interesting, right? Like I'll throw a slight slider in. This is like, I wonder if this treasury, well, it is impressive that Trump's going to have it feels like a full mandate with complete control. But maybe they worry that they don't want to trash the dollar or maybe Luke Roman's right. They do want to trash the dollar and build back America. I think that's kind of hard though. And I'm not sure life's black and white. I think it's really complex and Gray that like we're so relying on all these importation of goods made in in China and in hell, even oil. We don't we can't even refine our type of oil. We have to get Saudi Arabian oil that, you know, we're relying on others that you can't. You got to be careful what you do to the dollar. But I wonder if the Bitcoin back bonds is kind of what you're going to see to keep rates in the form of yield curve control. But that's one way that I think they could kind of finesse that, which also would be incredibly bullish for Bitcoin. So I don't know. I mean, I think that go ahead. What you just what you described the end state Jesse, if you remember like we did this, we kind of backed in this on accident. We talked with Joel Rebel back in the day when they were doing in Wyoming talk in discussions to do the sovereign stable coin backed by like BTC. And we're like, that's interesting because like you first start with a dollar to dollar, but then if you want to incentivize, whether it's to the integrity of the backing or some yield or whatever, you would put a little bit Bitcoin and you put more Bitcoin to accrue more of the dollars. And then this. So that was like how this initially we started talking about it. And then Marty a few months ago had brought up, I guess this was a conversation in circles in Nashville about, well, what if you start to put, you know, Bitcoin on the long on 30 year bonds and how do you start to incentivize the purchase of that? And I must want to know how you go from A-Z. But ultimately you can see how you can slowly progress into the weaning confidence of a dollar into a unit that can get turned into this and then ultimately you just use it. And so I think there's something there basically and. You could argue the distinction without difference to a degree, Michael, right? If I were criticizing my own argument that that's the same difference, they're going to theoretically have to buy the Bitcoin to store as a reserve asset to back the bombs. But there's a slight nuance maybe of a signal that you're sending to the world of we're not trying to trash the dollar. I mean, you know. So anyhow, I'll pause there. And and and there was there was a nuance in I forget the details here, but but Senator alumnus proposed that the bill has a different source of funds rather than printing dollars. I I forget where you know what Piggy Bank is being used there for for purchasing Bitcoin, but. The only source that wouldn't be inflationary would be well, and even this would be inflationary if they did what Luke Roman suggests, which is to say they revalue all their gold, you know, up to 10 or $20,000 an ounce. I. Think that was part of the option set which. She was talking about and and that's, I mean, that's an interesting issue, right? The dollar is overvalued. We've got too much debt. I mean, people wonder how we get out of this without, you know, kind of blowing up the world or having hyperinflation. And I think the answer is, you know, as bad as he was, we've got to do something similar to what Roosevelt did, which is we've got to structurally devalue the dollar maybe in a one time move so that the debt is more livable. And you know, I think the, the best candidate with which to do that today. And you could do it in two steps. You could do it with both of them in parallel. But because gold is so widely understood around the world and, and there's more of it in the market cap is 17 trillion, not, or 18 trillion, not 1 trillion or 1.5 trillion. You know, you, you, you revalue gold and, and effectively what you've done is you've devalued the dollar and you know, you say, you know, OK, we're, we've got 261 million ounces of gold, which we assume we do. We may not maybe even audit it to prove that you've got it because it's one of the problems with gold. It's not very verifiable. And you know, we're going to mark it up to $30,000 an ounce and we stand ready to buy or sell gold at $30,000 an ounce. Last time we chatted with Larry and David, but I don't think this came up is Larry was historically a gold bull, but then turn Bitcoin realizes me money. But now we're sitting at, you know, the bull market that gold, gold believers been waiting for, say at 2700, which one, Larry, which one is, is going to get us out of this mess? Well, so hang on just a second. I mean, what you're, what you're talking about is which is going to be a better asset longer term, which is going to perform better term and what the ultimate solution is. The point that I'm trying to make is that it's pretty hard right now to revalue based on Bitcoin when bitcoins got a $1.5 trillion market and, and absolutely no payment rails, no background, no support from every other major central bank, etcetera. And so, you know, we've got, we, we don't have time to wait for Bitcoin to grow, you know, in order for this to happen. And so, you know, my sense is that the way this will happen is it'll be a 2 step process where they'll move first with gold and then and then the Bitcoin will be the ultimate winner. Yeah, unfortunately teasing I was just referencing because of the the gold notion, but also the the other side of that coin is that the gold's or the bitcoins always verifiability that you reference. So you start to back it with, you start to back it with gold and then you start to get the games played on top of it. Everybody's. Offside. Bitcoin's better in every single respect. The the difference is it is, you know, the question in my mind is Bitcoin ready for it? Do you know what I mean? You know, 4000 transactions every 10 minutes. I mean, you know, you should see the volume that gets done in gold every day around the world. I mean, it's just enormous, so. We've talked to Jim. Rails, you know. Yeah, like Stan Druckenmiller, we know like guys used to be his chief Lieutenant, as he said. The thing about Stan is he loves both. But he said he can call JP Morgan and put $1.5 billion in gold derivatives down in 14 seconds. He can't put that kind of exposure yet on Bitcoin. So and, and look at the central banks throughout the world that are buying gold and you're going to have to have the whole bricks monetary system. Everyone's keeps thinking is the bricks can have a currency. It already has a backing basically on gold. Everything is going to be backstopped by gold over there. It's the net settlement layer. So this is where you like it or not. Like I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive. I think is Larry's at the end of the day, Bitcoin is the scarcest and we can't even call it a commodity. It's a scarcity, but it it's the scarcest asset in the world and therefore supply and demand is going to overwhelm in terms of the price upside knowing people don't even have a clue I think of just how big that will be over the next decade. And yet gold can be a a great performer as well. I mean they're. Both. They're both new. And what we need is a neutral reserve asset that can't be printed because the printer is what's ruining the world. The printing press, monetary printing press, has ruined the world. We're at the end of the great Keynesian experiment. And so, you know, we've got to, we've got to devalue all that printed money in terms of something that's real. And there are two candidates, ones been around 5000 years, the others been around 15 year, but you know, they, they're both going to get used And I, I could argue for going to either one. I just think it's going to be more difficult and messier to jump directly to Bitcoin. I think the countries, just like the countries that were on silver lost out to the countries that were on gold. Like the people who, you know, who've made all their bet on gold and don't have a bet on Bitcoin, they're going to suffer. I mean, and I think this is a place where, you know, China and Russia and India own a lot of gold. And, you know, strategically, geopolitically, strategically, if the United States wants to get ahead of those countries, we should go to a Bitcoin standard, just skip the whole gold step. I think it's a practical matter. You know, it's going to be hard to convince all the various players in the world, all the central banks in the world to just immediately go to Bitcoin. We see them going to gold right now. Some of them are going to Bitcoin. But Bitcoin's just, it's still just, it's such an infant. It just needs to get bigger, you know? I mean, when Bitcoin's $1,000,000 a coin, it'll be a different matter, you know? Yeah, I think we'll, we'll see Bitcoin growing up in in a funny way to it makes it so that the individual still has an opportunity to to do better than than than nation states because they'll they'll, they'll go through gold first. Yeah, for the point. Look, I've never, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm all in for Bitcoin and I think Bitcoin is vastly superior to gold. All I'm describing here is what the way I think that the cards are likely to be played and that this is likely to unfold, you know, in what I think is a monetary reset that will occur sometime before 20-30 based on the math as I kind of interpret the math today. So in the next six years, we're going to have a credit event and, you know, a monetary event that's going to really shake the world to its core. And, you know, the, and, you know, I think both of these assets will do extremely well in that event. Extremely well. Which one? Which one is chosen as a reserve? That's a matter of politics, really. I think, I think the interesting thing here too is that we were talking about trashing the dollar and the status quo is trashing the dollar. The what we've been living through for the past 50 or 100 years is trashing the dollar and through a debasement of currency. And what we're kind of talking through right now is that sound money is going to be needed to restore any sort of credibility among other nations in the dollar. And whether it's gold or Bitcoin, it I feel like it would be goal just kind of given where Bitcoin is as an asset class and technology. It's still Larry, as you mentioned, kind of an infant compared to a 5000 year track record. But none the less, I mean, it is going to take something because the status quo trashing the dollar means yield curve control. It means, you know, we have the long dated U.S. Treasuries continuing to spike in yields. Yet the Federal Reserve is. I'm not sure if it happened yet, but likely going to. Reduced interest rates, right, so they just. They just cut 25 basis points, basically said that they're holding off on taking away QT, but you know that generally they think it's kind of balanced between inflation and unemployment risks right now. So I would call it was right down the middle of the fairway with a three iron is what they hit today. Yeah, yeah. And that, that makes sense. So then it's like, all right, well, the bond market is sniffing out who wants to touch long dated U.S. Treasuries, right? And then in the front end of the curve, you have the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates. And it just seems like there will be some necessary action as relates to adopting sound money to bolster the US dollar. If the US dollar wants to stay relevant for the next 50 years, then gold and Bitcoin likely both will have to play a role in preserving. The problem is that that's growing at between 7 and 10% a year and GDP is growing at 3% a year. And that's an example of Stein's law that can't go on forever. And so, you know, they've absolutely got to run hugely negative real interest rates. And so This is why they've pivoted towards more and more bonds being bills and short dated things versus the long stuff. There is no demand for the long stuff because people aren't stupid and you know that. And then yet, even in spite of this pivot towards the short end, you know, the federal interest expenses up over a trillion dollars a year, like close to 1-2 trillion run rate. And so, you know, we're starting to look like a third world country where you've got to finance it all in the short term stuff. And they're going to have to start cutting the rates. And of course that's going to lead to another, you know, bout of inflation that's going to lead to probably a higher high in the stock market, which is grossly overvalued. But it doesn't really matter. I mean, they've, we've got to, we've got to grow our way out of this thing in an afflate, we've got to have inflationary growth or else the whole thing collapses. And so the inflationary piece is the piece that suggests that, you know, the two absolute no brainer investments for anybody are, you know, forms of money that cannot be printed. And the only two that really exist are are Bitcoin and gold. So you know, it's they're both going to do stunningly well. And I think people are going to be shocked. I think gold's going to 5010 thousand, maybe 20,000. I think bitcoins going to multiple millions per coin. So, you know, and you know, Bitcoin will outperform gold, but but it's not as though gold is going away, you know, and the transition between the two is just a matter of time. I mean, it's like the pound and the dollar in the 1800s and 1900s. I mean, eventually the dollar became the world's reserve currency, but for quite some time the pound was the world's reserve currency. Does your Bitcoin custody setup keep you up at night? Maybe you still have coins sitting on an exchange. Worried about hackers? Or maybe you've set up your own self custody but don't feel safe with your Bitcoin savings stashed on a little plastic device in your desk drawer? Gain Peace of Mind with Onramp and our multi institution custody solution. Here's how it works. Onramp creates a dedicated multi sig vault just for you. 3 separate institutions each hold a key, Onramp bit go and coin cover, but none can move funds unilaterally. Instead, only you have control over your coins with on ramps multi institution custody. You'll sleep better at night knowing your Bitcoin is stored with best in class security on chain with fault tolerant multi sig. If you believe your Bitcoin is going to be worth a lot someday, don't jeopardize that future by exposing your coins to hackers on exchanges, $5 wrench attacks in the real world, or perhaps most importantly, the risk that you might screw something up with a highly technical self custody set up. Onramp's Multi institution Custody eliminates single points of failure, reduces your personal attack surface and technical burden, and provides access to financial services that allow you to confidently secure your Bitcoin, including inheritance planning, insurance backed warranties for all balances and transactions, low cost trading and more. Bitcoin is a once in a species asset. Secure it right. Learn more at onrampbitcoin.com. One thing that's interesting is that Bitcoin at 75,000 is now the 9th largest asset globally. So while we were talking about it may take a while for Bitcoin to surpass the market cap of gold, which is 1718 trillion. Bitcoin is now the 9th largest asset. It just surpassed Meta and it's standing around 1.4 close to 1.5 trillion and I think it's only two or $300 billion behind the market cap of silver now. So it is pretty interesting to think that, you know, Bitcoin is one of the 10 largest assets in the world and we're still at this point where it's, it's widely misunderstood by certainly any of my peers from the traditional finance base. Like I, I feel like I'm still like an orphan in, in the sense that I don't really know too many people from my days at BNY or Stifel and the fund manager space that have really started to understand Bitcoin. And Dave, I'm curious like, is that your experience as well? Yeah, completely. You know, I, I'll give you some antidotes here like, yeah, whether it's guys I used to work with on Wall Street that call up and they're like, yeah, I see you're involved in this kind of what? Tell me about it. And you can kind of just hear kind of the skepticism deep in there at which it, which I've explained to them. I said, hey, that was me in 2015 and I was skeptical too. And Larry and I used to have these debates about gold versus Bitcoin then and he was right, I was wrong. And and then then eventually I saw it a few years later. But I think it's natural and healthy for people to question anything in life before you dive in and enter, I'd say, you know, I got ex hedge fund colleagues that are calling me. I swear some of them might have the carousel capital trade on of shorting MicroStrategy and long Bitcoin. And that's what they try and play is just the spread. And I've explained to them like that can blow up on you six ways. And here's how. And that's a mistake. And you're underestimating the fact that MicroStrategy has leverage and and can leverage it. They they are arbing it. They have a flywheel going. You're better off just joining the trend and taking 2 1/2 percent of your portfolio and putting it in Bitcoin. And if if I David Foley, I'm an idiot and wrong and the whole Bitcoin thing blows up, you'll never miss the 2 1/2 percent. But if I'm right, you're going to way outperform a lot of your peers. So people just don't understand asymmetry. You know, look, I think we saw it with the elections. We're talking about being in conversation. You know, we're all, you know, it's like those little Charlie Monger isms, right? We're all kind of like anchored into our biases and, and, and we, we have more mental models and we and we think we know it all. And then Nate Silver has it all figured out that Kamala has got this thing in a landslide. We're just, it's there. It's to be honest, it's, it's naivete, it's arrogance, whatever you want. So I think that, look, I think that the Larry thinks the world have showed this is a real asset class to go through numbers like I I have a hard time seeing, like I've talked about with Brian Estes that whether this thing really has 10% penetration the Bitcoin space. I think if you look at and Jesse, you and I know talked about fours, like I think it's in the low single digits, yes, and and very low. And I think that I think the thing that we always look at is, you know, out of not, you know, Michael, Jesse, Michael Sayre uses your chart in, in his all the slides, right? If there's 900 trillion of global financial assets, Bitcoin, gold and silver essentially are just under 1% of global financial assets. Well, at the end of the 1970s, sound money assets, gold and silver at the time were like 7 or 8% of global financial assets. We get an inflationary period or something far worse. I can promise you you'll be up at 8 to 10% of global financial assets that are likely inflated from here are going to be a lot higher. And so therefore, you know, the obvious thing is bond money, that's where it's going to come from is right, the 300, you know, call it 250 to $300 trillion of bond money that's out there. It's going to be easy to go grab 1020% of that wallet share that will come flying into bonds when you get a real rate environment that is going against them. And so Sailor always talks about Bitcoin grabbing gold and I get that. But really to us, the low hanging fruit is the bond money that's going to come calling for sound money assets. So this is it's just a matter of when. Yeah, I completely agree with all of that assessment. I, I, you know, I think right now we, we've been talking about like how they're going to have to inflate away the debt to make it more manageable at some point in the future. But like I think that's already happening. I think that playbook to some extent, I think there's some parties who are aware that that is happening and I don't know, I think that they're not all on the same page about it because people, you know, it's not that well coordinated. But I think inflation is higher than the CPI numbers. I was struck yesterday, Luke Roman surfaced to chart from Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary, who pointed out six months ago that, you know, if you if you run, then if you run the inflation numbers based on the yeah, this, this chart, if you run the inflation numbers based on 1980s CPI basket. Well, we actually peaked at 18% inflation in the last few years. And Larry Summers point was, was that of course, of course an incumbent is going to lose in an election if you, if your real inflation is 18% at some point during, during, during a president's tenure there. But I think that that speaks to like, if that's true, if 18% inflation is really what has been going on, then then bonds are are negative in terms of, you know, they're, they're destroying wealth every every year you hold bonds, you're actually destroying wealth. If you know, as this chart suggests, we're still in the high single digits inflation rather than the low single digit inflation that that official government numbers state. And, and so then it comes back to, well, what's the value proposition of holding bonds? It's that you're going to do slightly better than inflation. And that's, that's the store of value proposition of bonds. But if if we're already living in a world where that is not true, you're actually destroying wealth by holding bonds, then what are you doing holding bonds? And then here's this new asset that because of its different set of characteristics, does deliver on that promise of you put value in it today and it grows in purchasing power over time and staves off inflation. There's 300 trillion sitting in, in bonds destroying wealth. And it can all it has to do is wake up and migrate over to to Bitcoin and and I think we will see a continuing exodus of that. And then bringing it back to the Jackson, your question at the top of like, how early is it for, you know, how early are we still bitcoins, what's called 1 1/2 trillion dollar asset and nobody seems to get it. You know, David, David's talking about his his conversations with his his peers, hedge fund managers should know should have a deeper understanding of this asset. And nobody seems to get it still. So we're a tiny, tiny slice of the world that has woken up to the reality of this thing. And we're at 1 1/2 trillion dollars of value. And I think that sort of speaks to how big this thing can get. You know, if, if I think that Brian Estes numbers those paying me, I think that he he says what's like 30% adoption rate already of Bitcoin. It's like absolutely not. We are. 1%. We are way less than 1% Yep and and and that's easy to to figure out because you can go look on chain and see how many how many people have 0.1 Bitcoin, how many addresses have 0.1 Bitcoin in them? It's 4 million yeah. And so you know if if that's a measure of true adoption that you're you have put some material savings on chain, then I think that's a a reasonable measure of true understanding and adoption of Bitcoin. Well that's that's 1-2 thousandth of the world. So you know, you're not at 1030% or whatever adoption that Brian Estes says. And so that makes it that much earlier for Bitcoin. So 1 1/2 trillion is just the beginning of us getting to 100 trillion and I think eventually 200 trillion. Well, it's sticking with that election analogies because we're in that season, right, That it's a little like the pollsters, like, you know what? I don't know what the hell they're all looking at and ate silver in them, but just look around at your neighborhood and your peers. Like you're saying like, like again, you could look at call her daddy podcast for Oprah ratings versus Trump's YouTube and Twitter hits of Joe Rogan and the 10s of millions of viewers. And you can kind of get a sense they'll ask that same thing of your neighbors, like, and your colleagues, like how many own Bitcoin when you go to a PTO, you know, parent party or something like it's so small and, and, and granted, I live up in Boston where it's kind of stayed capital, I would argue with the mutual fund industry, but you know, and I'm probably considered the renegade in the space. And you know, I think two years ago, people felt bad for me like God, that guy's running his family into the ground and in the Bitcoin space and that now they kind of look at you thinking Aussie cocky. And it's like, I'm not cocky. I'm just, you know, just playing the odds of where we see the world going and where the pucks going. And that's our job to protect wealth and to protect our clients wealth. And so, but yeah, I think that that's all you have to do is understand kind of that anecdotally how early we are. I think, you know, a couple other thoughts that on my head of like, let's let's give him floor for a minute and a half. Like if we think about what this administration is going to do, I think the obvious highest probability of things are I actually am hopeful that he can pull off something with Ukraine and and Israel and quiet things down with Russia. If he can negotiate it. I think they will cut taxes, obviously, or, or reinstate the Trump tax cuts that are expiring in January. I think then, then Paulson or whoever the Secretary of Treasury is and the the doge group led by Elon Musk, Department of Governmental Efficiency. It's kind of funny that he calls it that. You know, they'll come up with some cuts. Now the question is, where's the beef, right? Are they real cuts or are they bullshit cuts that are kind of, you know, like I could see something like, you know, they cut expenditures on the Inflation Reduction Act stuff, but they start putting it into fracking and drill, baby drill to go get oil down to $50 a barrel because that does stimulate productivity in the economy. But then what I worry about is the bond market. And like Larry and I were talking about like, like I, I could argue if I were being optimistic and charitable that the mark bond markets are paying attention to CPI and they're saying, OK, Feds on track to get to 2 1/2 percent. They're kind of guiding to that again today. So you put A50 basis point premium on the short end of where they need to get to over that. So about 3% target fed funds, they're 4 1/2 area now after today's cut. So they have a 150 basis points more of cuts to go theoretically, but then your, your 10 year treasury yield should trade in about 150, a 175 over that 3% target. So it should end up around 475, five percent, 10 years fair market value when you wake up a year from now. Well, that's where you are now. What I'd worry about is what Larry is talking about earlier is if they lose control of that bond market, if this inflation rears its head or just the balance sheet starts to matter, that's when this thing like fireworks go off. And that's where to your point, some huge percentage of that bond money is coming running over because of the inflation, because they're losing control of the bond market. Like that's the obvious 1 of what can go wrong that creates the next financial crisis. And and so back to administrative policies, like this is a little bit like brain surgery. I think we all wake up on Election Day and people are like, they'll solve it. It's like, this is brain surgery. Like if they cut the stem on the Inflation Reduction Act, you're pulling a massive amount of stimulus out, you better, you better spend elsewhere. And that's why I'm not sure the deficit can really be reduced. And, and I think ultimately Bitcoin and gold and silver will continue to March on. We're going to have pauses and ebbs and flows. But like this, this train will just keep going. And so I'll pause there. But that that's kind of what I see as the real interesting debate of the next 40 days for all of us in the money management businesses this administrative from policies and then thinking about bond markets in the in the Dixie over over the next year. I think that's kind of where my head goes to today. And, and that scenario you, you paint of, you know, possibly inflation running again would be an, an echo of what happened in the 70's, the sort of bullwhip effect of inflation having several peaks, three really where each the, each one was bigger than the prior. And it strikes me, I, I didn't live through that, but it strikes me as human nature that that the measures that were put in place then to try to solve inflation and then you OK, you ease up on the, the measures once you start to rein it in. It's a very human psychology trap that we could be falling in again here. Yeah, I know, Larry, if you want to comment on that before I do. Yeah, I mean, I, I lived. Through you on mute can. You hear me now? No. I'll, I'll pipe in. And Larry's. Yeah, I'm Larry's. Might have to take all these. Yeah. Like I was gonna say, I was a kid born in the early 73. And so the only thing I remember the 70s was like, I remember America just didn't feel that wealthy. That's for damn sure. You know, you'd take your two week vacation or one week vacation as a family, and you were grateful. And to some degree, we're probably happier. We weren't as entitled as a society. You helped your neighbors out. The second thing, I can remember the gasoline lines where even houses could go on certain days and wait in a 2 1/2 hour gas line. And I remember the kids in my town selling lemonade on the side of the road in those gas lines. And so like, yeah, I think as you just described, I mean, inflation is a monetary phenomenon. And the money supply has grown at over 7% for the last 50 years, since 71. That's the real inflation rate. It's not 2 1/2 percent CPI. That's why people are pissed and feeling it because just because Kamala and Biden tell you that inflation's checked back to 2 1/2 percent, you should be happy. Well, good God, you've dealt with like 45% increases in home prices in the last four years alone. Grocery prices are up in the, you know, somewhere north of 20% cumulatively. And so it's if not more and it's expensive and, and salaries haven't kept up. So now I think what you see is you got wage inflation. I mean, think about every strike you're hearing about in the settlements, whether it was the East Coast ports recently and you know, or airlines and, and, and I think that that stuff, we're in that cycle and, and this is now you chase it and, and it's hard to combat it as all the famous economists have talked about. And so, but I think that, you know, tell me what the next crisis is that relates to that bond market or tell me how bad the recession is on the next one and how why these deficits go. And you can kind of just smell the money printer go really fast. And then suddenly, you know, again, sound money's flying. And, and it's really tough to put back in the bottle unless you're willing to take the economic pain like Paul Volcker did, putting us into that double dip recession in the early 80s. That's that's going to be the choices they're going to have to make. And as everyone knows, these politicians that they're on two year election cycles, they'll already be talking about the midterms in February. You know, they're not going to want to make a lot of cuts if Elon and and John Paulson are serving up a lot of cuts. So this is hard. You know, we're we're in a cycle. And so again, I, I don't, we don't get a lot of adjective over it. It's like over the medium term, we know how this is going to play out with the probabilities are. But the next six months, you know, it'll be an interesting tennis match to watch here on some of these things. Yeah. One thing that I thought was particularly interesting and Dave, I agree with everything you just said there about the bond market and having to think through what what the next crisis or inflationary spike could be and how how will policy makers react to it. One thing, I'm not sure if you caught it or Jesse believed Michael, you listened to it, but the Howard Lutnick podcast with Pomp was really interesting to hear someone who's has the Wall Street mentality and background in the business mentality think about how to manage the US fiscal position. And he focused less on, he did focus a bit on let's say the expense side of the equation and what could be done to reduce the deficit there. But there were some really fascinating ideas about how to leverage of the assets within this country just as it relates to he mentioned, like natural resources and energy. But there are a lot of interesting things that I'll probably end up butchering it. But just the idea of the US government potentially taking equity stakes in startup businesses to, you know, have equity position there. And if the businesses are successful and they are able to help those businesses achieve success over the long term, they're growing their equity valuation, which could offset some of the future liabilities of the country. And then just a ton of, like I said, natural resources energies that haven't really been tapped into that I think supersede like many other countries just in terms of what we have below the Earth's crust here. So I thought that was particularly interesting. Not sure if you guys have any thoughts there. But it's like interesting to hear someone step into the room without the politics background, similar to how Trump did it and say and have all these unorthodox ideas about how to manage the government's balance. Sheet and just to add me a second part absolutely fascinating podcast from really listening the best one I've probably heard in years because there was one part of that. The second part was how we managed 9/11 and it's just absolutely incredible because he has a like very sad story growing up with both losing both his parents and you kind of realize the only way somebody can manage losing 600 employees is because you had that resiliency that resilience built in really incredible. But the second part of what Jackson referenced was effectively tariffs and the understanding again, maybe Dave or Larry, if you're you're still on can speak to this because not a student of this notion that a, there wasn't always an income tax would be majority of or a lot of the income came from the the notion of tariffs. And then after the wars, we wanted to, you know, offshore or bring in like, how about the other countries effectively bring it in their imports, but then effectively exporting all of like the things that were built here. And it's like, no, no, if you want to play ball, you have to pay. And it sounds so crazy, but it's it's like when you've broken down from a business perspective, it's like, well, what didn't you want to take care? It's like I was trying to explain this to my wife. It's kind of butchering what's happening, but it's effectively globalism versus like running the country as a as a as a company, right in Trump effectively cares about the country as a company versus trying to like make everyone else happy. And because of that, you piss some people off, but you end up taking care of the country and the people that are there in this thing. And so that was part of that, like Lutnick positioning is that there's half on like unorthodox ways to accrue value to the country. But then the second part is, how do you actually just like, cut off things or make things be made here? We should bring back capital. Yeah. Can you guys hear me? Can you guys hear me now or not? We can hear it clear. Go. Ahead. Oh, that's good. I got technical difficulties. Yeah, You know, so. So what's happened in the last 50 years is we've offshored our manufacturing base through the strong dollar policy and it's been great for the elites and it's been really shitty for the average American. And and that's completely reversing. And Groman does the best job of of laying this out, but it needs to reverse because the wealth inequality and all the political division we've got is because, you know, most Americans are getting screwed while the coastal elites are getting rich. And so, yeah, I mean, we let China into the WTO in 2000 and and they were supposed to trade fairly with us. They didn't. We couldn't sell things into China. They could sell things here. And, you know, there's a lot of sense to having an America First approach to this whole thing. We've got to reassure some of our manufacturing base. But again, it all goes back to the currency and the strong dollar and the fact that we don't have a neutral reserve currency. I mean, that's why it happened. And so, you know, we defended the world with the biggest military, but we also were able to export our inflation to all of them. And they're getting pissed off about that inflation and our military is not such a big deal anymore. And, you know, I mean, as an example, Grumman points out that we couldn't really even fight a war now if we had to. I mean, the the components we need to fight a war are made in China. So if China moves on Taiwan, we're screwed. We can't do it. We can't fight back. So, you know, this all got to change. And I don't know that, you know, I really like the notion that Trump and all these administrations are going to try and do the right thing. I'm I'm all for that. Having said that, the events are going to overtake these guys. I mean, I, I have a very strong view that this everything bubble is going to pop in some time in the next six years. And that when it does, it's going to be a complete, you know, turn over the table, all new cards kind of situation. And at that point, we'll have to build back from the base of strong money or sound money, some combination of gold and Bitcoin. And you know that the existing political stuff that we have that you won't even recognize it. It'll all it'll all change. It'll have to change because it's just we've gone way, way, way too far in One Direction and we're about to go back in the other direction with a vengeance. That's kind of how I see it. I think the only thing I'd add to it is, you know, obviously let's a really smart guy and I'm optimistic too. I want to be, I just think that it's not black and white. For instance, like to Larry's point, the time for the US to have utilized tariffs was in 2000, 2001 with China before they were able to establish such a manufacturing base when we had real leverage. And it was poorly negotiated by the US at that time. And even Hank Paul Simmer when he left Goldman was a Treasury Secretary. Like, you know, he was kind of complaining even when I was at Goldman and Paulson was running Goldman, he used to complain about China not opening up the markets for Goldman Sachs. Like the iron fish should have been put down then because now it's late, because now the problem is you have Smoot Holly risk where if we start going with tariffs and you could substitute and I got a list from this pause. A couple people have said it's great. You can, I've heard someone say you could drop income taxes and just go like tariffs and it's like a VAT type thing, but it's like it's incredibly inflationary as we learn with Smoot Hawley in 2930. And that you, you can have massive policy error on that. And then the consumer ends up just, you know, not being able to afford this. The inflation rages and we get into those cycles that we talked about of, of chaos. So I don't know how, I don't think it's going to be this black and white easy on that front. And and yet I'm curious to see what they're what they're cooking up. And and they're smart guys in the room, I think. But it's just it's not, it's not so black and white. And I think, yeah, I mean, I think, I think, look, I like the idea though, of, of Trump playing hardball with China to say, open up your markets. I thought I remember even Jamie Dimon talking about that five years ago of how Trump was doing a good job. He basically let the whatever that economic council was, that Dimon was a part of that group in Silicon Valley. We're basically driving the agenda for Trump's negotiation strategy with China. And, and, and his Diamond pointed out Trump did a good job listening to those groups and just fighting their fight. And so that's one of the positives I think of Trump is he listens to business, to Wall Street, to technologists and says, OK, yeah, I'll go negotiate. I just worry that it's too late. Like, I don't know how you solve it cleanly. This is like brain surgery again, that that I think these guys have to deal with the economy. I, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be Treasury Secretary or the Fed chair. I think there's a lot of real tough situations going on in the next few years. There's one. Aspect that we haven't talked about, like I think one we probably would objectively agree. The other one's a little bit ties into the brain surgery. But the first one is we always end up in these positions where we overextend ourselves on the price appreciation of Bitcoin. The market comes back, but then we all get to hang around and see all the fundamentals grow while nobody else knows, right? So we all would agree like risk adjusted, this is the absolute best time and the amount of plumbing that has been built to bring in capital is insane. And so like, independent of the brain surgery, incorporating Bitcoin into offsetting this, we're probably primed to see some price appreciation at levels we've never seen before because of the amount of, you know, visibility. And again, the strategic thing, whether there's any chance it's the Overton window that Jesse's talked about with like back in the day when Lummus brought this up. And then it's just like, now we have a president. So, so point being is there's game theory with that. So that's just incredibly bullish in the sense of you get to sit back and look at like, like it's there was a tweet. I've always thought about this. It's like the Bitcoin price could be 500 K tomorrow. And like what really changed from a fundamental perspective, it's just mispriced. Now the second part goes into the brain surgery. And it's just something I thought of over the course of this paw that I don't know, like if this is this is this is giving them a lot of credit if this was part of it. But to your point, what we talked about is, well, this asset's too small. It's only a trillion and a half. Well, what size does the asset need to be? Does it need to be gold's previous market cap? 10 trillion? Well, that's actually only 6 acts from here. And what's 6 acts from here? What is that 360 K 350? Like how far are we from that? Six months? Is it a year? You know, like so you can start to like mess with dials potentially where you can use this asset to do things. And again, nowhere near smart to understand how to perform that brain surgery. But I don't think it's as far fetched because it's this notion of it took 15 years to get to a trillion dollar asset. It's going to be a lot quicker to get to $10 trillion asset. I think we all know that. So there's something interesting there that it'll be, it'll be fun to watch. Like I, I can't help but be optimistic with everything because we've it's been so Barry for so long with every with all that's happened that post this election, I'm just going to like take the white pill forever until proven otherwise. Yep, I hear that. Yeah, yeah, React to that real quick. It's just that there also needs to be more access, right? Like this was a big year in particular for Bitcoin because of the ETFs. You know, the five of us didn't have to wait for BlackRock or Fidelity's ETF product to come out for us to want to allocate to Bitcoin. We've been doing it and we figured it out ourselves with Bitcoin native products. But most of the market may not want Bitcoin native products as they exist today in the sense that if they have a Charles Schwab account, it's very easy to purchase ETF shares and then forget about it. It's much more painstaking of a process and at least requires intentionality to be seeking out a Bitcoin exchange. You'll purchase it and then go through a process of trying to understand how do you secure the asset. And we talked a lot about that. But, and Michael, maybe it was your point originally, but we have a $1.5 trillion asset class in front of us at the moment. But Bitcoin could have been potentially A2 or a $5 trillion asset class after 15 years if there were different solutions to meet people where they're at. And I think that's what I'm also hopeful for, just seeing firms like Shrive Asset Management, Vivex firm wanting to step into Bitcoin in a wealth management capacity. If you imagine how much the ETFs did for credibility for Bitcoin in the traditional finance space, if you have other firms beginning to offer new access and entry points and differentiated ways to access and invest in Bitcoin, that's going to be really important for the industry. So I am excited about that. And funny enough, Cantor led the series Be for Strive. So there you're starting to see this kind of ecosystem in the traditional finance world that's really bullish on Bitcoin and wanting to invest directly into the ecosystem. Yeah. And Larry and Dave, maybe just to give us a little of a shout out, but I don't know, did you guys see that the first UK pensions allocated to Bitcoin this week? I did not see that, no. So the first UK pension they allocated to Bitcoin. But here's the kicker, if they allocated to our on ramp Bitcoin trust, if that thing didn't exist, they wouldn't have allocated because they couldn't find a solution without counterparty risk. And so while it was just the first pension, I think they advise over 100. The point goes back to Jackson, independent of us being involved in it is a reality of people want to put material wealth in this asset, but they can't find bulletproof solutions because at the end of the day, they can't wrap their head around putting it on a hardware device and God forbid losing it or leaving it on Coinbase. And we all know the things that have happened with centralized exchanges. So that's the real exciting part is as we professionalize this asset class for serious people, there's going to be the products that exists. And once people find out that there's ways to get exposure to the asset in a security like fashion, while not having the underlying counterparty risk of a single custodian, but then also being able to take delivery. That's going to start to really put, you know, the market kind of like at least the the knowledge that there's better products out there. And then ultimately we all know kind of the the product at the end of the day that that fulfills the the needs of the end client are going to win. Yeah, no doubt about it. And then and you look there, you know, there are huge, huge advantages of just controlling your own Bitcoin and using guys like you guys to do that is critical, right? And I think that, you know, some funds obviously are constrained in terms of regulatory reasons, can't custody their own assets. But as those solutions develop and all that, there's no doubt. I mean, having your own possession is ideal. And so no, that's, that's phenomenal. Great, great work by you guys. Yeah, it's, it's a pretty exciting time. I mean, I, we were talking on another pod a day or two ago about this. I mean, I, if you look at the, you know, the power law model, which I subscribe to until it breaks to the, you know, to the upside. You know, we, we easily get to Max's number of two 32130 thousand a coin, you know, sometime next year. And and it's entirely possible that we squirt well beyond that in the 34500 range. I'm not sure I'd be a buyer at 500, but you know, it's, it's really this, this ramp is going to be something to behold and it's going to kind of, I think put put to rest forever. The notion that this is not a real asset class, You know, at that point, I mean, and sadly, you know, a lot of people will be paying 250 for it and only to maybe, you know, have it draw back down to 125 at some point. But it's coming. You can just feel it coming. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm incredibly bold up for the next 6 to 18 months. Yeah, it sure. It sure does feel like it did in in 2020 around this time of, of year or two around the election. You know, we were, we were at 10,000 I think starting October four years ago and then got up to 13,000 at the end of October and and that was just the beginning. And Jesse, you know, let me let me jump in on you there too. I remember that period very well. And I held them both. I mean, you know, the clue is gold, right? I mean, gold has just been relentless and it it broke 2070 and it marched to 2700, you know, in a negative interest, real interest rate environment without, without a, without missing a beat. And so, you know, gold is a much more widely distributed asset that more people are focusing on, you know, the the issue of monetary debasement. And so the Bitcoin always follows it, but then it goes way beyond it in terms of performance. And that's what's going to happen here. You can just feel it. Yeah, just feel it. Yeah, there's. Larry, thanks. Time last. Yeah, go ahead, Michael. No, I was just going to say I have the the chart. Yeah, Larry, I don't know if you can see it. It's like even this time last year or four years ago, we hadn't even broke the all time highs, right? You know, it's not necessary even that it's the having cycle that does it, although obviously it makes sense. It does because it creates more scarcity. But someone has said late, it's really the election cycles that drive this thing, right? It's when you get the post election uncertainty that you get this lift off right after it, right, post November. So, you know, I think it personally, I think it's both, right? It's the happening and the election cycle. But it makes sense, as Larry said, that right now after gold's, you know, run hard higher here over the last 5-6 months, it feels like it's about time for Bitcoin to take that baton and go. Yeah. And and Larry, thank you for for keying me in on that dynamic with gold. It is kind of amazing to look back in time and see how gold's legs up in the past preceded Bitcoins following it and of course with much greater amplitude when Bitcoin finally does move. And I, and I, and I wonder what that is, but I, I guess it could just be that people who are into gold are hard money 1st And, and you know, they're, they're focused on the sound fundamentals of gold and investors in Bitcoin, I think unfortunately are, are still probably 90% like this is a risk on tech asset, you know, and so there's. Certainly some of that, yeah, I agree with that. But I think it's shifting. I mean, more and more investors of Bitcoin or sound money people. But but yes, I mean, a lot of people said it's really heavily correlated with the NASDAQ. But I think in this cycle that's going to break because I think the NASDAQ is going to eventually the bubble in the stock market is going to burst. It cannot go on forever unless we just have a total crack up boom, in which case Bitcoins going to a million. And I think when this bubble burst, then then, then what's going to happen is what I call the big print. It's going to have to be bigger than the last one and that's going to just drive all these assets. They're just going to go nuts. I mean, it's going to be and people are going to wonder what the hell is going on. I mean, including the people in the Treasury and the Fed. They're going to, you know, Powell is about to be, he is going to truly be a deer in the headlights. He has no idea what he's playing with here. He's he's way over his head. Yeah, gold RIP in that 2000 mark was the big tell because like after that it was it was game over. Yeah. And that the last print, Larry, was 10 trillion in the US, 20 trillion globally for the COVID stimulus. Yeah. I mean, I, I personally, I back back to the envelope thinking that we're kind of the, the Fed balance sheet is going to have to go to between 20 and 25 trillion. I mean, imagine, imagine if you will, the stock market burst and just the implications of that for taxes, for transfer payments, all of that stuff. And imagine they, they go QE, they go yield curve control, they, they expand their balance sheet massively and it's still not enough. You know, very similar to in the beginning. I mean, when March 2020 came around, Paul started with 40 trillion dollars, $40 billion a monthly purchases didn't even move the needle. He had to go to 120. And and that's what's going to happen this time. Each one of these things has to become progressively bigger. The printer has to run harder with each event. And, and I think that's kind of speaks to again, back to how this is not black and white, you know, with Lutnick and these guys trying to solve it. You know, you got to remember, like Bernanke and Bernanke had to keep the gas, the pedal to the metal in terms of quantitative easing and low rates for a long time into yell and then taking over for him. Powell's the one in 2018 that tried to raise rates and dial all that back. And then the repo market broke. Like it's so important for growth, this GDP growth to have this government stimulus, both monetarily and fiscally. And so if they if they, you know, they almost don't have a choice but to keep that going. And Delary's Point in her typical recession, you should see the deficit Jack out to about four to $7 trillion on average, right, Depending on what tax receipts do and the state unemployment benefits to kick in. Because taxes go down, tax collections go down during recessions. So if you're doing that combined with the fact that there's just so much debt in the system and then, you know, this goes into, you know, the, the, the Van Hoesington guys of, of, of, of kind of how there's so much debt, like just because you're cutting taxes, I'm not sure consumers and corporations can keep pushing on a string and spending, spending, spending, there's probably going to be a marginal propensity to save at some point, which is going to force the government to have to come back to spending. And cutting taxes to drive deficits higher. So there's so many things that likely just speak to as Paul Tudor Jones said it all roads lead to inflation. All roads lead to deficits and larger deficits and then the inflation as well. And so again. It's the classic gradually and then suddenly and we're in the, we're in the gradually piece. But but boy, it's getting, you know, it's getting faster, you know, it's getting faster, it's getting larger. I mean, you know, they, they weren't even able to, Powell wasn't even able to tighten. He started tightening in early 2022. And by fall of 2023, the tenure went through 5%. And they panicked and they had 12 guys within 10 days say, I don't know, we're done. I mean, they, they just, you know, you just know what's going to have to happen here. I mean, it's, and it's, it's, you know, it's hard to see if you're not watching the stuff day-to-day, if you're not deeply involved, you don't know what these guys are. I mean, the feds got a third mandate. The third mandate is really the most important one, which is financial stability and continuity. And we just know they'll break all the rules to keep that going. Excuse me, They have in the past. Yeah, those are all good points. And it makes sense. I mean, you can't really undo all of the fiscal irresponsibility of the past several decades in one term. So it'll be interesting to see nonetheless what kind of unconventional methods could be used to try to balance the budget. I know there's talks of it but. Absolutely. And I'm, by the way, I'm rooting. I'm rooting for them. I don't want to see all this. This happened, but I'm just saying mathematically. Likely. Likely to. Happen right yeah and I agree with that well I know we we're we're up on time anyway so unless there's anything else that was really top of mind Dave and and Larry want to thank you both for jumping on I'm sure I would think that most people if not all are familiar with the two of you but maybe you just want to give a hand off as to what you're working on these days and where is the best place for people to get in touch I'll. Let I'll let Dave do that because POF doing another one another, then there's a lot going on going on. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm involved. James Lavish and I run the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and we are looking to launch a second fund here shortly. And Larry and I also are affiliated with Equity Management Associates. So those are the two things that I'm involved in. And so you. Might mention, you might mention your rough returns so far this year in the BOF. You've been doing pretty well. Yeah, no, I, yeah, I don't. I, I, I should look what it's up here. But yeah, no, we've done, we've done well. I think we're up, you know, I don't know, 60% plus on a gross basis and all that. But so, yeah, I think things have gone well. Awesome. Thanks for for coming on. If anybody's listening wants to get a hold or is in contact with us, we can put you in touch with Dave and Larry and then David to the extent you're interested in talking to some of our private clients about what you're building. Happy to set something up where we can get a like a round table. We do them with other asset managers across the board in the Bitcoin ecosystem. So happy to facilitate that if. It makes sense, Michael. Thank you. Thanks gentlemen, appreciate the time. Larry, I don't know if you want to mention your book. Oh, yeah, I'll, I'll plug my book. So I'm writing a book. The goal is to have it out the end of the year might slip a month early end of next year. The the, the, the overarching goal of the book is to write something that an average citizen of any position or financial level of knowledge can read and say, Oh my goodness, I understand what's wrong. I understand it's the money. I understand what the Fed has done to us. I know what I have to do to protect myself. And I know what I have to do to make the world an overall better place above and apart from protecting myself, that is to say, take take money creation away from the state, because that's what's ruined our world. And so it's it's about a 200 page book, but it's easy explanation. I've really borrowed from everybody else. And Jesse, I've got your chart in there, which is one of the most fabulous charts ever. The, you know, the total available market for all these assets. And yeah, it's hopefully it's a book that will see something people can give to friends and neighbors and people will read it and go, Oh yeah, I see you got a good point. When is it now, Larry? Your end is the target. I'm working hard with an editor right now. It's it's surprisingly difficult to get to a final edition, but it's not going to slip much beyond your end. Put us on the put us on the hook for some of them. We'll not that our clients might need them, but we can give them to them for their for their friends and family. So shoot me a note. We'll definitely get down to 50 to 100 at least to start and send them to. Or whatever. Yeah, whatever. That would be great. Just 10 seconds on and having read it myself, it, you know, these drafts and helping Larry with it. What I like about is it one of my favorite books of all time was Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation. And what I loved about it was not only because of the great stories of the people that grew up during the depression and that World War Two generation, but each chapter was like 3 pages, 4 pages long. So it is the best nighttime book reading because you could get one or two chapters knocked out, go to sleep, work the next day, then come back and, and plow through four more the next night. And, and that Larry's kind of written it like that, where I think it's a really good piece that builds on it. And it's a really great educational thing. I think actually every high school kid in the world should be reading this once it's out. That's exciting. Well, yeah, I I'm always looking for new resources because The thing is with Bitcoin, there's just so much information out there and I really struggle to find the best one individual resource to point people to and also be digestible as well. So Larry, excited for that. You've done so much great work over the years. So excited to check it out. It's not a text. I mean, I think, I mean, I think Lynn and Lynn and Safe and Jeff have written much better books. This is meant to be, and I borrowed a lot from their books, by the way. This is meant to be something that you know anybody could read quickly and easily and get the gist of our message. Awesome. I'm excited for that. Appreciate you guys coming on and look forward to the next one. Thanks gentlemen. You guys, as always, thank you for having us. Thank you, David. Thank. You Larry guys. Thanks all. Thank you guys. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onramp Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private client advisors.