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

What you're telling me is that music is about to stop and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of darkness. 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. Hey, OK. I say when we sell. All right, welcome back to the last trade. We have a packed house today. For those who are not on video, we got Brian Cabela's Tim Kotzman and Michael Tanguma, my Co hosts. And we're joined by a special guest, Larry Leopard, author of the Big Print. Larry, how are you? Is the big print on its way? I'm great, Thank you. Yeah, I do think as the book describes. I do think the big print is on its way, though. The mathematics of the situation dictate that without printing more money, everything will collapse. And so we can kind of tell what's coming. And it's funny, as I was writing this book, I was afraid they were going to print before I got it out. I was very, you know, the last two months I've been on pins and needles thinking to myself, oh, please, please, please don't. Don't do the big print before I launch the damn book it. Seems like he timed it pretty damn well. Well, you know, my timing might be really good because I think it is coming in the next 12 months and the book's been out about a week and it's selling well. And, and so, and hopefully it'll accomplish my objective, which is to help people. You know, I just, I think that the average American is getting screwed by inflation and many don't understand why and they don't understand how to protect themselves. And so therefore the book, I mean, that's that's kind of why I wrote it. Yeah, Larry. Well, I, I've always appreciated your work as long as I've been following you probably since 2020. You're, you're one of the, I think most articulate people in the space and have been able to. Thank you. Really demonstrate what's going on here behind the scenes. One of the things I kind of learned through you and I, I put this in my own words, but the Fed's policy decisions are always either destroy the middle class or destroy the middle class because it's like, and it's not even hyperbolic in the sense that. Oh, it's really not. If they if they continue to let things be tight, then we have some sort of recession or potentially a depression on our hands, a total mess and they get. Laminated. Yeah, Yeah. Or you just let inflation run hot and then you destroy the savings and what little savings a lot of people have. But the debates. You get killed at the grocery store. Yeah. No, it's and the, you know, right in the start of the book, I kick it off with that chart that shows the wealth distribution. And it's just shocking to me that the top 1% of this country owns 92% of the wealth. I mean, they've just eviscerated the middle class, you know, with this financial system that's designed to and wealth in the elite and and leave everyone else, you know, paying for that in the form of inflation. Absolutely, yeah. One thing we've been doing to kick the show off as we we pull up the Bitcoin price, I think all five of us are very much long term investors. So I don't hold too much weight on what happens on a week by week basis. But since we last recorded Bitcoins, price has just been chopping around, hasn't moved much where I think we're in this period of consolidation. What we did see when the CPI print was announced this morning was that inflation came in higher than expected. Larry, you probably know better than I, but it was maybe the the biggest increase in CPI in about 18 months or two years. Yeah. What do you guys think has been just driving the price over the past week? Is there anything notable you've paint been paying attention to? You guys go 1st and I'll I'll react to it. Yeah. I mean on the on the CPI front, I mean, I think I've sort of reiterated this time and again, but I don't put a ton of weight into these government reported statistics. And I don't know if you guys saw there was a an article yesterday in Politico of all publications. I didn't read the whole thing, but the title was how Democrats were tricked into believing the economy was strong. And somebody screenshotted an excerpt from it. And this line is was pretty wild said if so, if you filter the unemployment statistic to include as unemployed people who can't find any anything but part time work or make a poverty wage roughly $25,000 that that percentage is actually 23.7% right? So just like it, it comes back to this idea of there, there isn't a lot of weight to be placed in these government reported statistics and you have to use other other methods of triangulation to to really understand how the economy is doing would be my take. Yeah, yeah. Tim or Jackson? I was going to ask you, Larry, So we have Trump who wants to lower interest rates. And that's something he was, he was very vocal in his first term about wanting to push rates lower. He's obviously someone who pays a lot of attention to the stock market and now to the Bitcoin price. And so he wants these numbers to go up as a barometer of what he thinks to be like the health of the US economy in our financial markets. So he's calling for lower rates. But with the higher print on CPI, again, we the disclaimer is, yes, we all know that it's you don't want to hold too much weight on this metric. But unfortunately, that's how policy decisions are made. And so the print came in higher than expected. And it's unlikely now. I think maybe one rate cut potentially this year or hold steady. I don't I don't follow it too closely. But Larry, what are your thoughts? We have Trump on one side who wants lower rates. Yeah. Well, that's we can get to that. First, let's just talk about the inflation and the Bitcoin price. I mean, I I just totally ignore these short term fluctuations. I mean, my view is bitcoins going to bounce between 90 and 106 and who cares, you know, And then when we get done with that flag, we're going to go to 140 because flags fly at half mast. And we were caught in the 58,000 club for a long time and then it broke out and went to 100. So project that again when the next steps 140 and that happens sometime later this year. Yeah, the inflation statistics are totally cooked, but they aren't going in the right direction. Even even being cooked, they still show an increase, which kind of puts Powell in a box. I mean, I tweeted this morning that he's trapped like a rat, you know, because he, they clearly haven't obtained their 2% objective. And they're, they said they were on the on the guide path to doing that. But I also tweeted a series of month to month changes and I mean, it's going the wrong way fast. And when you see this, my quarterly year end letter shows, you know, that like agricultural prices were up 28% last year. You know, you know, the longshoremen struck in October of last year and they got a six year, a six year deal increasing their salary at 10% a year. So the salary's going to go up 60% in the next 10 years. This is a major labor contract and a 10% labor bump doesn't really fit with a 2%, you know, inflation narrative. So as I've been saying, and as my book says, and we now live in an inflationary world. I mean, we didn't for a long time we didn't. But it turned in 2020. We had peak deflation March 2020. So now how's that going to get resolved between Trump and and Powell? There's going to be a clash of the Titans here. And I, you know, Trump can't fire Powell. The Congress could fire Powell, Trump wants lower rates. The world and, and the US needs lower rates, if if only to try and stop the debt doom loop. I mean, as you all know, you know, one the, the current U.S. Federal interest expense is running at 1.4 trillion. And if you go to the Fred website and chart that, and this chart is in my book as well, you know, it's kind of gone parabolic. And you know, we're, we've got to roll over between 7 and $10 trillion of, of debt this year and it's at a much higher cost than it used to be. And so that makes the deficit bigger, which then means they got to sell more bonds, which, you know, washrooms repeat. So they really need lower interest rates. And yet they've got an inflation problem or recurring inflation problem. And how this is going to get resolved, I don't know. They also handed Trump a terrible hand with a very overvalued stock market, one could argue. And I think the Fed in general is made-up of Democrats, not Republicans. One could argue that they want to see everything fall apart and on Trump's watch. So Trump gets blamed with it, stock market goes down and then that's what will enable them to do the big print. I mean, I think right now they don't have the air cover to do a big print because people are going to scream about inflation if they do it. But we'll we'll just have to see. I mean, it it, you know, the Fed is kind of just perennially wrong and and late on what they should be doing. I mean, ironically, they probably should be cutting now just to get the interest expenses down. I mean, but you know, there's so many policy moves that Trump can make here and, and at least he's got a good guy working with him. I mean, Besant gets markets and he knows what he's doing. And, you know, I was interfacing with Luke Roman yesterday and he was saying that, you know, what they're talking about doing is, is kind of an international form of yield curve control. I mean, one of the things I think they're going to try and do is they're going to try and beat people into tariffs that we're going to tariff you unless you buy our Treasury bonds. So it's kind of a it's kind of a form of coercion to to continue to keep this, this rickety financial system that the US has going. So, but it, you know, exactly how it plays out. I don't know, but it's like the the saying all roads lead to Rome. I mean, mathematically, sooner or later, you can't support this debt without more base money underneath it. I mean, Lynn has shown this time and again. And so we know that, you know, in the next 24 months, quote UN quote, the big print is coming. And you know, thus and and I wanted to warn people about that and try and encourage them to protect themselves. And that's why I wrote the book. Yeah, One thing just to call out, going back to the inflation, there's no better sign. I mean, we've been talking about this, Larry, you've been on multiple times last year about the numbers are cooked. There's no better sign of inflation than $12.00 eggs. A dozen eggs, right? It's just something, yeah. But going back to what you're referencing, like there's so many different facets of happening with Trump coming, things happening with Trump coming in, where does the correlation tie into tariffs and this gold market just like completely going bid. Yeah, right. Yeah, like because there's something happening there between tariffs, counterparty risk, gold. How do you see that like connection? Absolutely. Yeah, I know it's it's a it's a great question and it's a fascinating thing. I mean, as you know, if you read the book that that, you know, there's been a huge paper gold market that's existed for years. I mean, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin started it in the Clinton administration And you know, we believe those of us in the gold world believe they're probably 100 paper claims for everyone real ounce of gold, so that the gold market kind of resembles a game of musical chairs. We're owning a physical Oz is a chair and all the people who own paper don't have a chair yet. And what we're starting to see is you referenced, Michael, is that, you know, some of the people are saying, hey, give me my chair, you know, and over in the LBMA. And as a result, you know, they've suddenly said, well, you know, our, our delivery times have gone out to 8 weeks and they, they had some lame excuse like, well, the stuff is heavy. And, you know, there are a lot of lorries in the way that make it hard to get in and out of the building. I'm like, really, that's all you got, you know, And so it's arguable that we're starting to see a failure of the paper gold market and we're starting to see people realizing that, you know, fractional reserve gold is not the same as real gold very much with Bitcoin, you know, not your keys, not your Bitcoin. So, but to tie in the tariff piece of it, you know, the related thing, Michael, is that, you know, when we seized the Russian assets back in the war, when the war started, that sent a message to every single country, hey, you know, the US doesn't like what you're doing. They can freeze your financial assets, throw you out a swift, right. And so that kicked off another round of buying of central banks. And what we're seeing is kind of the world coming to grips with the fact that we need a neutral reserve currency that's not controlled by the US, you know, and, and more and more countries are starting to understand that. And therefore they're they're saying, well, you know, store my excess wealth in U.S. dollars. I think I'll pass, you know, give me the gold because I know it can't be debased. And I can see the US fiscal train wreck that's bearing down on them. And I know they're going to have to print a lot of dollars. And, you know, I think I've, I've heard, I've dug deep on what's going on in London and I've talked to a lot of people about it. And, you know, there are a lot of possible causes. I mean, it it also might be, you know, Besense a gold guy and there's he said, he said things cryptically that would indicate that maybe the US could be thinking about a gold price reset. You know, he said that there may be a Bretton Woods like event coming. And if there is, I want to be at the table. He said that last June. And so, yeah, with that kind of as a backdrop, I mean, I think they might have, they might have tipped their hand to some of their rich friends and, you know, big guys and you might have hedge funds saying, huh, if that's coming, we need to own gold. And therefore, you know, suddenly more demand at the LBMA. I'm just I'm speculating now. I can't prove any of that, but it it it seems like it could be right. That's what this really feels like is going to a unipolar world and on shoring manufacturing you naturally are it's an inflationary environment and right small Plaza Core 2.0 or whatever that looks like is right setting to bring assets back home because at a first principal level you need the assets home if you need to trade for other, if you need to erect things. So this is just like the precursor to whatever. I think that's right. Yeah. I think that's exactly what that's exactly what's going on. And, you know, and so it's it's so it's one of those things where, you know, it's it's better to be early than late, you know, and and I have two charts in the book that I think lay this out. I mean, in my view, important point to make. I think most Americans do not understand that we are in a sovereign debt crisis. I want to get up on a soapbox and scream that to the entire world. You know, a lot of people are denial about that, but we are. And how do I know? Look, in this, these are in the book, the two charts. One shows, you know, gold in terms of bonds and the other shows Bitcoin in terms of bonds. Since 2020, since 2020, gold in terms of bonds is up over 200%. Since, you know, 2020, Bitcoin in terms of bonds is up 2000%. So what that says, I mean, bonds, U.S. Treasury bonds used to be the base layer of the financial system. They were the most secure thing there were where large pools of money could go to safely protect that wealth. And what's happening? It's not working anymore. You know, these two other monetary assets are just kicking bonds butt in a big, big way. And and I don't think that's going to change. I mean, I think it's, it's more of a it's, it's as we all know, it's the gradually then suddenly I think we might be getting to the suddenly phase now. I don't want to say for sure that there's going to be a comics and or an LBMA default. I mean, I just, I don't know. We've seen we've seen things like this before in the past, Silver squeeze and some other things. And generally speaking, they're going to move heaven and earth to get this one back in the can. They know this is existential for them. They're going to try really hard. I mean, they'll, they'll call on every source of gold they possibly can to calm this down and make everything. No, no, no, don't worry. We got plenty of gold. It's all good. But you know, maybe they'll be successful at that. Maybe they won't, you know, but I'm watching like, get the popcorn, right? Yeah. That that was going to be like one of my questions, Larry was like what is what is the most or you know, comparable scenario to this in terms of a sort of rapid increase in demand for physical delivery? When was the last time we saw something like this and have we seen it to this extent, I guess? I don't think the I don't think we've seen numbers this large, but that's partly just because all the numbers are getting bigger with inflation for time. We saw it a little bit with a silver squeeze, but that was pretty quickly tamped down and solved. The Hunt brothers did it, you know, and then they changed the rules and screwed the Hunt brothers. It happened in 2011, and then they attacked gold at that point in time. Goldman Sachs and the central banks attacked gold in 2011 with a big paper offering that took gold from 1900 back down to 1000, you know, And so they might try that again. I mean, I look, you know, the other side is really good at this shit, guys. I mean, they've been, they've been fucking me over for 30 years. And so I'm very, very prepared to get fucked over again. I mean, I do not underestimate their ability to pull rabbits out of the hat. I mean, I thought Silicon Valley Bank might have been a trigger. And look at how they papered that over. I mean, they violated Dodd Frank. They changed the laws, all of it, but they stuffed it back in the can. I mean, remember, they've got all the communications tools they've got, you know, the military's the pilot, they got everything that they can use and, and they know that the, the alarm bells are going off and they know it. And so, you know, they're, you know, we're going to see some, we're going to see some serious counter moves on their part. And so I, you know, we cannot declare victory yet, not even close. But but it's fun to watch the smoke coming out of the out of the, you know, the windows, right? I mean, they clearly got a fire on their hands. What are you looking at there? What's this? Yeah, just to contextualize. So Brian, this was a tweet thread from. Oh yeah, the gold pool. Yeah, yeah, that was good for Mark Moss. Yeah. Yeah. So from 1961, I think kind of references were seven EU countries try to put out deserves, but effectively it broke and that shortly after gold went from 35 an ounce to $850,850.00 an ounce. A decade for that to happen, but yeah, that gold pool fell apart. So that was established for the Triffin's dilemma became acute in the early 60s when the US started running big deficits to finance the Vietnam War. And they formed a gold pool. And, and the, the, the purpose of the pool was to keep it at the $35 reference price because they were creating a lot more paper credit and paper Fiat than underlying gold. And they knew that if gold went up, that that was the Canary. And so they did that until 68 when France was under the direction of Jacques Roof decided to pull out because they could see that it was, they just, they couldn't do it. They didn't have enough gold. They couldn't fake it. And then, of course, three years later, while the Fed in 68 removed the gold backing of their underlying balance sheet. And then three years later, Nixon, you know, totally killed it and just we went off the gold standard. And and that, by the way, is, is, was really a trigger event. I mean, there's one of my favorite charts in my book is the, is the history of inflation in the US from the early time from 1800 to present. And what you can see is we had inflation before 1971, but there was somewhat mean reverting and self correcting. I mean, World War One was inflationary, World War 2, the Civil War 1812, they're all inflationary. But boy, after 71, the inflation rate just goes straight up like a hockey stick, you know, And so going off the gold standard was really the the kickoff event to, you know, the death of sound money in the world. And, and it's only gotten worse, you know, as we've gone along every every big print, it gets bigger. I mean, 2020 was bigger than 20/18/2000 and eight, 2008 was bigger than O3O3 was bigger than 98. I mean, they've just, you know, they just you can go back and see how they were continually getting worse, which is why I think mathematically we're now reaching the end game. I think this is going to get resolved. We're going to be back on a sound money standard sometime in the early twenty 30s in my opinion, because this problem's going to accumulate over the next six years and to the point where people are going to be screaming that we've got to go to sound money, you know? Yeah. And and so on that point, Larry, we're we're 50 years, a little over 50 years post 1971. As you mentioned, there's a lot of dysfunction in the US Treasury markets. Other countries that are adversarial or competing with the United States recognize that they're losing their shirt on debasement by holding fixed obligations of the US government to tie it back into the gold. And then I have a following question as well. From the conversations you've been having recently, I know you're, it's kind of speculation, but how do you weigh what's happening in the Asian markets with Chinese gold trading exploding? And you know you referenced the 2022 sanctions of Russia and how that's kind of shifted us into a multi polar world and moving away or into neutral reserve assets. How do you weigh that and demand in Asia and other markets with what you described earlier in the US and kind? Of that's a great point, Jackson. I mean, what you're saying about China, I hadn't mentioned that. But you know, so again, when we did what we did in 2022, there was a call to the world that, you know, the dollar is weaponized, right? And So what you saw as a result of that is the Chinese and the Indians and the Russians all started trading with, you know, the Middle Eastern oil countries in their own currencies, right? And, and the Middle Eastern oil countries say, OK, yeah, we'll accept yuan, we'll accept the rupee, we'll accept the ruble, although the ruble, Middle Eastern oil and Russia has its own oil, so it wasn't much trade there. But the point is these other currencies start coming in, whereas oil used to be all oil in the USI mean the petrodollar standard. There was a time when oil in the world was, you know, 95% priced in U.S. dollars. And I've, I've heard recently that that's gone down to closer to 65% and it's falling. And So what you had happening is you had, you know, countries like China buying oil for yuan, and then the Saudis would have the yuan. And if they didn't need something that China had the, the Shanghai Gold Exchange would very quickly, they could take that yuan, convert it into gold and, and, and they did. And so you've seen the volumes in the Shanghai Gold Exchange just explode to the upside. And, and so, So what we're really seeing is at a nation state level, you know, we've got game theory going on and what is money? And, you know, these nation states, they're not stupid. I mean, we're talking billions, if not trillions of dollars. And, you know, I mean, Putin himself has said it many, many times. I mean, why, why should I hold a piece of paper that can be debased, has been historically been debased at 7 to 8% a year for 20 or 30 years. It just makes no sense. And, and so more countries are figuring that out. And, you know, they're asking themselves, OK, if we have a trade surplus, what are we going to do with it? We're not buying bonds, US bonds. And so, yeah, it's, it's happening. And you, you can see it and it's, you know, Brent's a good friend of mine. I do believe in the dollar milkshake theory. The dollar might be the last one to go, but but we're seeing people take steps to return to an alternative neutral reserve currency. And just because it's in their own self-interest and it's, it's a matter of self-defense, you know? Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Michael. Yeah. I was just going to say, I think you know this better than we will, but I know Luke talks about this a lot post O8O9 with the socializing of the losses. And like, China's been not a net buyer of Treasury since roughly like 2012, 2013 once realized that we weren't going to pay back this debt or write it or like underwrite it appropriately. And so this has been going on for, call it, 12 to 15 years. It's only just accelerated and dumping this and, you know, accumulating more gold instead of anything else. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, it's it, it's just, it's, and if you think about it, it's just logical, right? And, and, you know, it's just, it's completely logical that, that, you know, if the US is going to behave in a manner that looks, makes it look like a third world country, you know, fiscally and irresponsibly, the world is going to say fine. You know, that's, that's not money that we want to hold. You know, we're going to, we're going to, you know, put our excess savings in something other than your bonds or your currency. I will, I will say the thing that comes to mind because you don't have to go directly there now, but it's I can't help but call it out as Coinbase, like Coinbase very much feels and like in the story London and having heavy concentration because you can imagine if the price of Bitcoin runs to two to 5X, they're sitting on trillions of dollars. I think roughly right now they're sitting on 700 billion in the total crypto market. Obviously it's not all Bitcoin, but point being is, well, how do you find out if they're whole, if they've suffered a breach and they don't have full because you can't see on chain the full, the total assets or if there's more claims on that, you'll ultimately end up with this like counterparty risk again embedded into the system. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I look, there's, there's people have asked me, does the, does the risk of paper Bitcoin exist? And I would say, yes, it does. Do we have a ton of paper Bitcoin right now? I don't think so. Not They've had 50 years to figure out how to manipulate the gold market. They've done a great job at it. Bitcoin's only been around 15 years and they've only realized it was an existential threat probably for the last five. So they and, and it moves a lot farther and faster. So it's harder to manipulate an asset that can do A5 bagger on you and really put you underwater quickly. But yeah, I mean, Sam Bankman freed had paper Bitcoin and it's possible Coinbase has paper Bitcoin. I mean, I don't like Coinbase as a custodian for so many different organizations. I mean, I, you know, just at a personal level, I had a Coinbase account. It was just a nightmare. I mean, I just, I, I couldn't imagine a worse company in terms of customer service interface, etcetera. You know, so to, to rely on them to hold my Bitcoin would be, in my view, just insane. I mean, I'm much, you know, I prefer, you know, the kind of services that river offers or, or strike or, or what you guys do it, you know, at on ramp and and so forth. So, yeah, it's, it's a, you know, it's a real problem. I mean, and, and the book talks about this too. I mean, I call we've got to ban financial derivatives. I mean, financial derivatives basically allow the person at the table with the biggest checkbook to win because they can overwhelm all the other bets. They can play poker and they can call when nobody else has the money to call. And if you're the BIS and you print the money, you know, you can call, right, Because if you lose, you just print the money. I mean, it's so, so the, the printer is just an amazing tool to allow the people who run the system to, you know, impolitely say to basically just fuck the rest of us. And, and that's what they've done. You know they've done it for 50 years. Yeah, I, I want to go back to something you you said a minute or two ago, Larry around, you know, you think over the next, we call it decade or so, we migrate back towards more of a sound money standard and we have to and, and I totally agree. And I think it looks like in practice, you know, some combination of, of gold and Bitcoin obviously, and that that sort of percentage difference on either side will depend on, you know, someone's age, someone's risk tolerance, all of that their, their ability to deeply understand Bitcoin. I guess one, one question in there is like do you think that the paper gold market you reference is sort of 100 to one type leverage on that? Like can that be corrected over the next decade? Like can we get to a better place in terms of gold and having a better, more pure sort of reflection of supply and demand? Well. I mean, I hope so. And I think the answer is yes. And I think, I mean, first thing to understand is they're both going to go up a lot, OK. But bitcoins going to go up more because it's got an adoption curve as well as a sound money component to it. Yeah. I mean, it's look at the the the math is quite, you know, is quite scary. This is in the book as well. I mean, there's a time in the 70s when you could take our monetary base to divide it by the 261 million oz the US owns. And you came up with a $35 reference price. It's like, OK, easy peasy. I get it, right? You do that math today to balance all the money we've created since that point in time with that 261 million oz because we haven't grown our gold reserve. The price of gold would need to be $80,000 an ounce. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's a 2900. So, you know, somebody's going to get hurt here. And there's going to be, you know, there's going to be, I mean, as, as Luke says, gold's going to trade in a different zip code, you know, if and when it gets reset. Now, let me also say, though, that I think it's important. And this is where Jason Lowry comes in. I think it's important and Loomis gets it and others get it. You know, China and India and Russia to a degree in the Middle East, although less so, have all made a big bet on, on gold. I mean, they're, you know, they see that the fractional reserve market's not working right and that the, you know, they, they understand the broken monitoring system and their solutions. Buy gold. Well, OK, fine. The better solution is buy Bitcoin. And so from a strategic point of view, and I have two minds on this because I never like seeing our federal government get richer or more powerful. But, but frankly, I prefer our federal government to the Chinese federal government. You know, the US could make a great strategic move by moving to a Bitcoin standard, just skipping the whole gold step. And and I hope they will, I hope they do. And that's what Jason's obviously working on doing. And he's, you know, he's got a role there that hasn't been disclosed yet, but I know he's working on it. And so, so the bottom line is that I think that we will go to a sound money standard and ultimately that sound money standard will have to be Bitcoin because gold's got so many flaws. I mean, it's hard to verify. You don't know who really has it. I mean, I look at the, the, the Fort Knox and West Point and Denver Mint and San Francisco Mint stores of it, they haven't even been audited since 1953. So we don't even know if we really have the goal we say we have. And I met with Ron Paul once and he told me he doesn't think we do. So, you know, so you got that problem. And by the way, the same thing with, you know, with all the other countries. I mean, how do you verify it? I mean, the beautiful thing about Bitcoin has got this triple entry accounting where, you know, you can show your address and show what you got. And so you know, and you can sell faster. I mean, you know, think about the shipment issues, etcetera. And well, in the false bar issue, I mean, you know, you can, you can take a tungsten bar and coat it with gold and you know, you can't detect that easily. So hopefully we, you know, the US will be smart enough. I mean, insofar as you want the federal government to succeed, and I'm mixed in my minds on that. The US will be smart enough to to to jump to just skip the gold step and go to Bitcoin. Yeah, I think I agree with you, Larry. I mean, I am like you where I don't want the federal government to continue to have more power. But I think part of this is Bitcoin would, could, could help the United States. And what we talked about, I forget if it was before or after we started recording, but with about 90% of the wealth concentrated in the hands of the top 1% in the US, Bitcoin could help reset things here in the US and help to drive that wealth concentration down if the federal government and the states use Bitcoin responsibly to empower the individual. And So what I'm hoping for, and it was something I wanted to pull up on the screen, is I hope that states will lead the way in the US as it relates to Bitcoin adoption. There's a nice chart here that was put out by Vanek, I believe yesterday. They looked at 20 state level Bitcoin reserve bills. And so if all of them were enacted, of course this this won't happen at least on the 1st pass through, but it would drive at current prices 23 billion dollars of buying or about a half $1,000,000 of Bitcoin. So what I would really love to see is states lead Bitcoin adoption here in the United States. Of course, I would want the, I know how this plays out from a game theory perspective. So I want the US to lead at a federal level, as you said as well, Larry, but I would really like to see things happen at more grassroots level, which is typically how bitcoins been adopted. It's happened to individuals. Totally. I mean, I think the better thing for the US to do would be to say, I mean, probably one of those positive things that government could do for Bitcoin, I recommend this in the book would be to remove the capital gains tax and declare that it actually is legal tender. It's another, I mean, the US should basically say, look, we've got 4 forms of money. They are the dollar, gold, silver and Bitcoin. You own any one of those four forms of money, you don't pay any capital gains tax, you know, and let them just all compete it out, which is the best, which is the best money, you know, and you can hold any one of those and, and off you go. And, and then I think furthermore, if I were the president, what I would do is I would strongly suggest to all my citizens, I would say you guys should be holding Bitcoin because, you know, this is a Bitcoin friendly country and we may have a Bitcoin strategic reserve. And, you know, ultimately, someday we're going to return to a sound money standard and Satoshi's, you know, the dollars. I mean, if, if what I'm describing occurs, there will come a day when the dollar just won't be relevant anymore. I mean, right now it's a good payment rail because everyone accepts it. Everyone knows what it is. And that's why the stable coins, you know, are necessary and they work. But but behind all of that, you know, the real, the real money is the Bitcoin, you know, or gold. Yeah, I'm curious, Larry, how you you mentioned what do you want to see happen, but what would you probability wait that we leapfrog gold? Because I think when I first I think that's the the rub that most people like. We talked about it a year ago and I brought it up. It's like individuals thought that 12 trillion or whatever was a magnet with gold and that Bitcoin just supersedes it. But in reality, we're now at 2 trillion and Bitcoin and gold is at 19 trillion, and it feels like there's so much entrenchment. It's like in our DNA what gold value is. So much. Time to that interplay is going to happen before we end up at the end state of it demonetizing. That yeah. I mean, it depends on how intelligent the leadership is. I mean, I think, you know, I think the CIA, I mean I've talked to Jason and he says the CIA gets it, the military get it. You know, I, I think it's a possibility that you know, that Vance and others get it, Vivec get it. But I, but I hear you, Michael. I mean, one thing that we should discuss though with this Bitcoin flipping gold issue that I think is interesting, but I I think far two people, yeah, a few people focus on. So let's call the gold market today 19 trillion, OK, and the Bitcoin market, let's call it round numbers, 2 trillion depending on the day. But that 19 trillion of gold, it's not really all available for sale. So you've got, you know, got antiquities and museums and all that kind of stuff. And you know, we're not going to go melt meltdown, you know, Tutankhamun's mask, right to, you know, for gold, you've got, you know, you've also got central banks who own 20 or 30% of the gold out there. They're buying, not selling. So that's not really available supply. And then you've got, you know, women who own jewelry, particularly in India and but China and other places. And you know, 30 or 40% of the gold in the world is around some woman's neck or it's in the form of jewelry, which by the way, will get melted down at 100,000 an ounce. But but today it's not really available. And so if you kind of think about if you're an investor and you're trying to buy gold, you've got to buy bullion or coins, which are maybe 25% or a little more of the total marketplace. So, you know, maybe the investment market for gold is 4 trillion or 5 trillion. So if Bitcoin were to double or triple from here, arguably it kind of would flip gold it, you know, in terms of its investable size. You see what I'm saying? I'll take the other side of that because it's very similar in saying like gold. So like I had this weird history before Bitcoin where I was like almost like a gold merchant. I ended up working at this like high end auction house. And ultimately what happens is you actually do melt the mask if the price makes enough sense. Because what happens with people's gold jewelry is when the price rises, people have all this old gold jewelry sitting in buckets or drawers that unlocks the price. So when they see it hit 3000, it actually comes back to the market. So make economic sense for melting the mask today. But if it's $70,000 a Troy oz, you're going to melt the shit out of that mask because. Right. Like, it just unlocks that capital. Yeah. You may be, you may be absolutely right. Yeah. No, no, the supply will emerge as a result of that. I mean, and that's true in the silver market, too. I mean, that you go in any coin store and you see all these old tea sets right, sitting around that some poor old family, you know, widow brought in and she sold it to the dealer for some fraction of what it was worth because he could. And he's, he's hoping to resell it to somebody who needs a tea set. But, you know, because there's a lot of craftsmanship in it. But if, you know, worst case, he can take that and send it to a smelter and, you know, get X dollars per oz for that silver. So, yeah, you're right. Price will. Price will create supply. Yeah. And the thing, the way I thought about this is from an individual perspective, right? The market's made-up of individuals and really realizing it's kind of funny to take the other side of this. Talking to you is like, how does somebody that's, you know, call them 50 to 75 stomach the volatility? Well, that's right. And the equate the easy answer, if somebody would say we'll just buy 2%, well then it's like what do they do with the other 98%? Hold negative yielding bonds and inflated equities? I'd rather them hold 70% in gold and 30. That's exactly right. And so I think in the size of Tim, I'm curious like on your thoughts on corporate treasury, it's the same thing of like, well, what do you hold your reserve asset if it's volatile, you can't get cut in half, 50% in a bear market and lose those treasury or lose those assets, but you can have some exposure to gold. Similar thesis. Now I think better tools and solutions get built out. We're talking to Argo. I think we're going to have on the pod. I don't know where this goes, but I can imagine where counterparty risk is starting to be felt in gold. You start to naturally need a better gold market that becomes trusted. And it's very similar in Bitcoin where we understood this very early because it's accelerated cycles, right? Because you get the boom bust when the exchange goes down. Counterparty risk, We have publication blocked by FTX. So the market was always sophisticated there and understanding not your gold, not your gold, right. So like I think that we start to now understand that counterparty risks exist in the paper claims and different products and services come about while we go in this world. Again, it's just as a thesis. I don't know that's how it plays out. Sounds right to me. I mean the balancing of gold and Bitcoin is something I actually deal with a locks. I have a lot of older clients and you know, you're 70 or 80 years old, you can't really comfortably put too much money in an asset that could go down 50%. You might need that money. You don't, you just don't want to have that happen. And, you know, and, and bitcoins going down over 50% four times. So everybody has to size it appropriately. I mean, the worst drawdown ever in gold was coming off the 1980 peak and it was 20 or 30%. And most years are, you know, if, if they're down years are small downs and they're up years, they're small to medium UPS. Obviously you don't have nearly the upside and gold that you do in Bitcoin. But in terms of actually preserving your underlying purchasing power, you know, gold is, is analog sound money and it's a it's not a terrible choice. It's not going to grow a lot. It doesn't lay eggs, but it, you know, it doesn't debase and you know, we live in a world full of debasement. So, you know, to me the, the, the new model is kind of, you know, gold has become the old bonds and Bitcoin is now equities, right? So you want to, you know, and they used to say you wanted to have your weight inequities, you know, and bonds equal to your age as the percentage of something, right? Yeah, you can eat your gold and you can eat your gold in Bitcoin like I mean, you can't, but you can because you can buy things with like you can well. That's the thing. I mean, yeah, neither, neither produces a yield, but but that's the other thing. I think we're going to go back much more to a world where you know, OK, so you know, you, you don't need a cash dividend or you don't need a yield per SE on your assets. If your assets are going up at greater than 3% a year, you can consume 3% of your assets by selling them and, and you're still in the same place wealth wise. And that's certainly what I tend to do when I retire some of yours out. Not that far probably though, you know, I won't have any income streams and that's fine, you know, but I'm pretty sure that, you know, by selling one or two percent of my Bitcoin every year, I'll be able to cover my operating costs. So, you know, and that's that's how I will deal with that. I know a lot of other people think, well, gosh, it's not real. You know, I want something that pays me a dividend or I want something that pays me income. Well, no, you want an asset that goes up in value every year. And if it goes up in value every year and you need to sell a small piece of that increase in order to pay your living expenses, well, then you do it, you know. And so that's how I view it. That's also where the no. The no cap gains would be. Well, that's right. And like, that's what it should be. Because really was. Glad you called that out because I think that's that's a that would be a more positive bullish signal than them stacking a Bitcoin reserve in my mind. I agree. I it's a it'll be huge and. I know Jackson, you want to come in, but I think the last part to all this is people have not weighted counterparty risk. And this is ultimately this is what we've been talking about for like a year now and have literally been doing a lot longer. But it's this notion of what is the weight that what's the price appreciation that an individual has for holding gold in their house or in a vault or Bitcoin on a hardware wallet or with on ramp or even an ETF in the in the notion of, well, not an ETF because there's counterparty, it's there. But this version of wool equities being oversubscribed, overinflated or paper gold, if the market goes bid on like from a risk perspective, you may hold nothing. And so even if you don't get to proceed 12% nominal games, games you get 9 or 6, whatever it is. Well, that's still effectively this is a exercise me and Marty used to do. Would you rather hold $250,000 in a hardware wallet or $1,000,000 in Wells Fargo? Right like or you? Know right you get. A certain point, and I think that's what now I'm going to realize. Yeah, well, that's exactly right. I mean, it's, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I know a couple things. Wanted to tease out and and hear some thoughts from the group. So Bitcoin and gold are interesting asset classes because they both have positive skew. And what that means is other traditional assets such as equities or fixed income securities, we associate volatility to be bad because there's more downside volatility in those asset classes than there is upside volatility. But gold and to a greater extent Bitcoin, have more of a skew toward upside volatility than downside. So volatility is not inherently a bad thing, but because of the traditional assets that investors have been using for decades now, they have this bias of downside volatility. You know, if there's typically a volatile event, it's to the downside. Well, Bitcoin, the opposite is true. And this is really crucial for retirees and people of retirement age because you have typically an outsized portion of a portfolio in fixed income securities. And there's a component there that's important because you need some sort of certainty as it relates to managing your cash as you move away from a steady income, right? You rely on the the investment portfolio to generate income or not maybe like we were describing, but Bitcoin can help with the debasement that your bond portfolio inevitably has and provide a hedge and kind of a balancing act where there's always going to be some amount of current income needs that retirees have. But if they have all their portfolio or majority of the portfolio in the fixed income, well, they may outlive their retirement. And so that's why to your point, Larry, there's more of an assert or there's more retirees holding larger allocations to equities now. That's why I think Bitcoin plays a really crucial role maybe as a small portion of portfolios for people in their 60s or 70s. But likewise, the flip side is the 20 year old or the 30 year old needs Bitcoin as well because every other asset class is tremendously overvalued. And not to say that that means those valuations will go down. I think they are going up because the debasement is happening at a more rapid rate. But Bitcoins really the only thing that I think will allow people beyond starting a business and growing that tremendously successfully over time. Bitcoins really the only investable asset I think that will help younger demographics catch up to wealth that older general or previous generations have had. I. Think I think that's right. I mean, one of the beautiful things about I've said this on that podcast and I think, you know, I think it's the most asymmetric that I've ever seen. I've been doing this for 40 plus years is it doesn't have a management team. You know, it's, it's very hard to pick good companies that are going to grow and succeed. And it's very easy to screw up a company. You know, there have been, I mean, blue chip companies get ruined all the time. General Electric got ruined. I mean, other blue chips have gotten ruined. And, and, and the way to build wealth is to compound something over years and years and years and years. And so and you know, how do you know that a company is going to have good management over years and years? You don't. And, and yet, you know, here we are. We've got this thing is kind of management free, right? We've got, you know, we've got an algorithm, we've got a distributed network, we've got nodes. We, you know, we've got the checks and balances. I mean, we're beyond the stage where anyone could do a 51% attack. I mean, it's just, it's a thing of beauty because it's, it's, you know, it's growing at the value of Metcalf's law. It's growing, you know, exponentially as a result of adding linearly to the base layer of people using it. I mean, I, I've just never seen anything like it, which is again, part of the reason why I just felt like, God, I've got to write this book and just explain, try to explain to the average person why they really need to own this thing. Because, you know, in 10 or 15 years, the outcomes of those who, of us who did versus those who did not, they're going to be really different. I mean, they're going to be, you know, I mean, it's going to be like our kids are going to be thanking us that we did this and, you know, and, and they're going to be who didn't do it. And they'll be like, Jesus, why are those people so well off? And, and we're not, you know, by comparison. I mean, maybe we used to be well off, but you know, on a relative basis, everything has changed a great deal. So, you know, it's yeah. And I just, I, I didn't want, you know, I wanted to have a book that the common man if if they get a hold of it and read it, you know, could could, you know, say, OK, I get it now. I understand what's happened to me and and then I understand what I got to do to protect myself. And then, oh, and the the subsidiary benefit is not only does number go up and I'll do better investment wise doing this, but guess what? There are all these other subsidiary benefits about making the world a better place, making things fairer, stopping wars, helping the third world. I mean, you name it, it's got all these other you know, it's, it's, it is fix the world. It's not just fix the money, right. It's. One thing, Larry, too, that that's really critically important here that you just touched on is that you're entrusting management teams with your retirement and that's becoming a more concentrated position that people have. I just pulled up this chart as you were speaking to this where make it a little bit larger. But in the matter of a decade, the Magnificent 7 went from 11% of the S&P 500 to about 30%, right? So what people are doing with their retirements is parking 30% of their index fund into the success and the ongoing success of seven companies. And so as we know, companies lose their market share all the time, right. The the largest companies 20 years ago are not the largest companies today. And so I think that that is an under appreciated risk in the market. And these are also they're 30% of the market, but they're also driving the outsides of the returns. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but these are generating virtually. Almost all the returns are in these names. Yeah, no, I and again, the book mentions this and tries to warn people. I mean, I look at a lot of my boomer friends and they have a very, very large portions of their net worth in the market and it's worked for them. And so they they naturally kind of assume it's going to continue to work. And you know, with these extreme valuations that we now have, you know, I don't think that's a rational assumption. I think, you know, I can't say for sure, but there's some probability it's not going to work as well as they think. And, and these things are priced to perfection. And so, you know, I personally happen to think that a lot of people who are long all those stocks are going to experience regret, you know, when those things mean revert. But you know, when's that going to happen? I don't know. I've been calling for that for a couple years now and hasn't happened. So it may not happen. I could be wrong. I think it was like a top ten last year, made-up like 75% of the returns. Yeah, even just so even just the mag seven I think was like 55 or 60% contribution to 2024 returns. No, I remember 2000s. It has a feel. It has a 2000 feel to it. I mean, it's like this, you know, NVIDIA and Cisco in the book I talk about this, they traded about the same revenue multiple at the peak. And Larry, your kicker is it's going to happen sooner than later because of just deflationary tech. The reality is these companies can go all compete those other ones. So that's what. I was going to say like the execution risk is higher than ever, right, Like the, the competitive risks are higher than ever. So I totally agree their price of perfection and, and I think you know it, it's, it would be unwise to to attempt to store value in seven companies that may be disrupted overnight for the next 10 or 20 years. Yeah, I mean, we saw this deep sea comes out of out of the blue and everyone's like, whoa, hang on a second. Something you called out, Larry, that thinks is super important. We don't do it well enough. Like I think as people educating is asymmetric, but not only to the upside, but in the truest sense to the downside as well. Because if you don't adopt it, most people I think think, well, I'm happy with My Portfolio and I don't want one percent, 3% risk asset have to figure this out. Like I'm, I'm OK, I'll miss out on some of the upside. But there's actually the alternative, which at an individual level, as you mentioned, is going to be fundamentally different in 15 years. If they're holding cash or cash equivalents, similar to like what Tim focuses on the corporate treasury side. If you're not holding a better form of money and you're not recapitalizing your business with this, you're effectively going to get out competed because another company will do that because it's just self preservation. And so everyone, you can either lose or win by figuring out when they get to play the like, play the game. That's exactly right. Bitcoin custody is evolving and as institutional allocators increasingly look to incorporate digital sound money into their portfolios, risk management and operational excellence are paramount. Full self custody and single third party custody expose institutions to significant vulnerabilities. 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We recently launched Onramp Institutional, a dedicated segment of the business designed to provide secure, innovative Bitcoin custody and advisory solutions for institutions worldwide, providing allocators with robust security without compromising on accessibility and allowing them to tap into a comprehensive suite of financial services, from trading to lending and more, all built to institutional standards. Discover how On Ramp Institutional can elevate your firm's Bitcoin strategy. Schedule a consultation with our team to learn more at on rampbitcoin.com. Yeah, One thing this conversation reminded me of was Peter Thiel's presentation, I believe at the Bitcoin 2023 conference. He had a really nice chart that showed in 1980 the gold market cap was 2 1/2 trillion and the equities market cap was 2 1/2 trillion. And then when he presented it must, it might have been in 2022. Now that I'm thinking of it, the gold market cap was 12 trillion. Now it's 19 trillion as we talked about and the equities market cap was 115 trillion. So they used to be a parity golden equities 40 years ago, but now it's like a 10X in the equities market cap than it is in gold. And I wonder if this all ties into what we've been discussing where it's not about gold and Bitcoin competing, right? It's not about Bitcoin superseding gold's market cap. I think they both go up for all the themes and, you know, work that you've done, Larry, on the topic. So I think what ultimately happens is we have this concentration in equities. That's probably where some of the the money capital flees from to go into the sound money. Access, there's absolutely no doubt. I mean, that's been and Jesse Meyer has the great chart on this. We've all seen where, you know, those equities have worked and because they've worked, people have continued to go into them and chase them and and they've they've partly worked because, you know, Zerp, you know, which we had for so many years from O 9 to 15 and then again during COVID that just created it was very easy to do carry trades. And, you know, I mean, you look at Citadel and what do they do? They just, you know, they borrowed, they borrowed cheap and they invested in equities and they make the spread. And so you just got a lot of that that if and when it comes time to unwind. Yeah, this is Jesse's chart. Thank you. I mean, any of that, although, you know, set aside real estate for me is a slightly different piece. But all of that other money, you know, bonds, money and equities, you know, all it has to do is start to realize, you know, we're at risk of debasement and inflation and they're going to come chasing that $2 trillion. And that two on 900 is less than 2/10 of 1% or right around 2/10 of 1%. So, you know, there was a time back in the 80s you referenced to Jackson where, you know, gold was 10 or 15% of, you know, investable market caps. I think your numbers were a little off. But you know, so if we're at 2/10 in, you know, in equities or in the Bitcoin right now, I mean, Bitcoin could go up 10X. Bitcoin could go from 100,000 to a million. It would still only be 2% of total assets. And 2% is not a big percentage. So, so yeah, there's, there's a lot of upside here. I mean, I, I think Bitcoin is going to go up 10X and then I think it's going to go up 10X again. So what does that mean? That means $10,000 or $10 million a coin. I think that's going to happen. You know, I'm not saying exactly what time frame you got. You probably got to give me 15 years for that to happen, but but it's going to happen in my view. And that's, you know, sailors target is higher than that. So, you know, it just seems pretty natural and obvious to me. It's a It's pretty clear for anybody, like listening or paying attention, that the new administration's going to leverage Bitcoin as some component of its policy. But it can't be done at 2 trillion. It needs to be 10. That's the. Thing that's exactly. Why? I think we end up faster where we're thinking. And and as as we all know, I mean, you've you've heard and you've heard not not the cent, but the one of the whoever the cryptos are was I can't really guys name he's more of a shit quote. So what's that? David. Sachs, yeah, you heard Sachs say something like, you know, these things create, they create demand for stable coins, right? Because the stable coin buyers are big buyers, the treasuries, right, You know, the short treasuries. And so, yeah. So I mean, if you if you, if you make a bigger number for all of Bitcoin and then therefore you have a bigger number for all of stable coins. And therefore the stable coins need to buy the treasuries back though underlying coins with the cash that they bring in. Well, guess what? You got another buyer for treasuries. And guess what? We really need buyers for treasuries because we're running big deficits. So. So yeah, everything, I mean, and even Trump said something along these lines. I mean, you know, they recapitalized the world back in the 70s by going to the petrodollar standard and they marked oil UP4XI mean a similar thing could occur with Bitcoin where they need him. They actually it's policy where they actually need a much higher Bitcoin price. And it's a forced, it's a full circle because the last piece which you described is they're more than likely going to put some policy where you have to hold 10 to 20% of reserves if you're a bank in treasuries from a capitalization ratio with Bitcoin. So you're fine with that if you're making money on the bitcoins appreciation and fees and then treasuries to issue stables. So it is that like intermediate Petro and just gets the free float around all these other assets. That's exactly right. And, and look, I mean, the problem is we've got too much debt that's inappropriately valued in price. It's not money good in terms of real values. And so I mean, it's pretty simple math. We just have to mark it down. And what do you mark it down against? You mark it down against, you know, forms of sound money that that can't be debased. And the two choices are gold and Bitcoin. And, and you know, it's not like we haven't seen this before. I mean, Roosevelt did this in 33 and 34 and he grabbed all the gold and then he devalued it 70%. And so, you know, this is this is how, you know, I mean, it's a debt jubilee, right? I mean, they're written about in the Bible. It happened in Mesopotamia. I mean, it's just, you know, when you got, when you get, you get to a stage in a society in an economy where the debt is so large you can't carry it anymore, someone's got to give. And that's kind of, you know, the reason for the book. And I think the book is timely in this respect. I feel like we're kind of at that point, you know, I mean, look at it in the 2020 example. I mean, you, you had, what did you have $17 trillion of negative yielding, you know, debt. I mean, what's that all about? You know, I got to pay you. You know, I got to, if I put money in your bank, I got to pay you to have it there. I mean, come on. I mean, you had 0% interest rates for eight years. And I mean, it's just, it's nuts. I mean, we've, we've hit the end of this. You know, Keynesian debt is good. I need debt to grow, you know, blah, blah, blah. But all that nonsense that Keynes, you know, laid out, which I, I totally debunk in the book, and we've hit the end of that model. It's that's not working anymore. And so we're going to a new model, 4th turning. And the new model is going to be sound money based, you know, and, and, but how we get from there there here to there is going to be messy. I mean, it is a lot of policy choices, a lot of different ways. I mean, I don't, I don't think hyperinflation is in our future, but it's not off the table. I mean, if the next administration is blue and, you know, Andrew Yang does universal basic income and Stephanie Kelton becomes Treasury Secretary, you know, guess what, We're going to have hyperinflation, so. Guess what? We're moving to Dubai. Yeah. Larry, I, I have a question for you. Could you speak to what's going on with the Feds reverse repo facility and just how that ties into the big print because all of the lowest level and four years or so? Yeah, so when they so they printed so much money in the last round of of printing, you know, in the in the COVID example, that there was a lot of excess money in the system. So they bribed the banks to pocket at the Fed through these reverse repos by paying a high enough interest rate to get them to do that. And then as the government ran these deficits and there weren't buyers for the debt, they increased the rates on the short term treasury bills and and made it more attractive than having the money in the reverse repo. So the reverse repo money then came in to buy the Treasury bills and that was a nice, nice trick that Janet Yellen pulled for a bunch of years. But guess what? She's at the end of the road. I mean, I think it's peak the RR PS were, you know, a couple trillion. I know there were over one 1 1/2, maybe even closer to I can't recall, But and then they got drawn down. You know, now they're down to, I don't think is it 70 billion, 80 billion? It's a small or no, maybe 700 billion. It's a small number. No, you're right. It's 76 billion. I mean, yeah, OK, that's what I thought. And so, so that, that, you know, that bunch of money that was used to finance the federal government that's been drained, that's gone. So it's kind of like, OK, now what's, you know, what's next, right? And they're going to have to think of something or else interest rates are going to go higher because there aren't going to be enough buyers for these bonds. Now, I, I suspect what they'll do is they'll change the SLR, which is a supplementary leverage ratio that the banks have. And they'll let the banks buy an unlimited amount of Treasuries without any penalty without looking at them. And maybe they've already done some of that. This, some of this monetary plumbing is pretty arcane and I, you know, Joseph Wang and, and Lynn Alden are the two that have the best view of it 'cause they just study it like the Hawk and Luke Roman too. But, but they'll do, they'll do things that I think will, you know, try to allow them to get the debt sold. But at some point I believe the interest rates are going to continue to go higher. I mean, if you look at the, the, the dashboard that I look at every morning, you know, I look at the price of gold, I look at the price of Bitcoin, I look at the S&P and I look at the, the, the yield on the tenure. And the yield on the tenure is a big and important one, but not enough people look at it. I mean in September and the fall of 2023, the yield on the 10 year went through 5%. When we're in the rate hike tightening cycle, if you recall, like within weeks, 12 Fed governors came out and said, Oh no, no, we're done. You know, we're good. We're not going to hike rates anymore. And the yield and it came back down. I mean, so, so we kind of know that the feds break point is if the yield on the 10 year goes through 5%, we've got real problems. And so, so if that starts to happen, I think what we can assume is that the Fed is going to come back in and they're going to reverse their policies, maybe start to cut rates, maybe do yield curve control, you know, maybe reinstitute QE. But it's to be fair, I mean, they've really got a pickle. I mean, Jay Powell is trying to play Paul Volcker, but he can't because Paul Volcker had 30% debt to GDP and Powell's got 128 percent debt to GDP. So he's, he's screwed. He's kind of trapped. I mean, if I were him, I'd just want to get out of there because at some point there's going to be 1 hell of a mess here. And, and, but we do. And, and the book talks about this as well. We also know how that gets resolved when I mean, the hell of a mess is what gives them the opportunity to do the next big print and just say, well, we had to do it because if we didn't do it, you know, the ATMs would have stopped working, right? So, so that's, that's in our future if there's a hell of a mess. And meanwhile they're going to do these incremental things to try and keep it going down the road. You know, I mean, they did one with Silicon Valley Bank that kicked it down the road. You know, they did it in September, They did it when we had the repo blowout in 2019. I mean, all these different things they do and they'll, I'm sure they have some more up their sleeve, you know, that'll just ignore that. Don't worry, it's all good. We got it. You know, we, I thought I heard rumors and I thought they were maybe working on one for commercial real estate where they would have some kind of a commercial, you know, like a like a BTFP program for CRE people. You know, OK, give us your bad commercial real estate debt. We'll give you 100 cents on the dollar and you can pay us back over some long period of time. I mean, but but no matter what you call these things or how they structure them, they're really all the same thing. They're just printing money. They're just, it's the feds saying we're going to give you money to keep the system going. That's because that's all they do. And, you know, but they need political cover. So right now he's trying to be a tough guy. And until something breaks, you know, he doesn't really have the political cover to do it. But they'll do it in backdoor ways. I mean, you know, Besent, you know, and Trump saying to foreign countries, hey, we're going to put tariffs on you. And I suspect the thing that's not being said is unless you buy our treasuries, you know, and then the country might say, well, we don't have the money to buy our treasuries. Fine, we'll give you a swap line. You know, So I mean, it's, it's all, it's all quite insidious, the way they figure out ways to create the money, but the money will get created because if it doesn't, the thing will collapse. Yeah, though. Well said. I mean, it's tough. It's tough to keep up with all the acronyms. It is new. Programs that come out. And they keep moving the piece of shells around and they and they gaslight us and they lie. I mean, you know, in my book, I've got all the so many of the lies and Paul saying, you know, what we're doing here is not printing money. Well, bullshit. You know, come on. Of course it is. You know it is. I mean, it's just, it's horrible, right? Yeah, it's all obfuscated under these complex and convoluted programs, and they tell the public that it's good for that. They've. Got this Rube Goldman machine, Goldberg machine running and they they claim they're the wizard and that they can keep pushing the levers and make it keep running and it's all going to work. But Toto is pulling back the curtain and you know, we're all starting to realize the wizard doesn't know what the hell he's doing. And so, you know, it's, it's, and then sadly, you know, the next one's going to be even worse than the last one more inflation. So, and that's, and by the way, that's when we do get the reset guys, when everybody in the country realizes they can never stop. And the system is so, so badly broken that in spite of the pain that it might cause to make the transition sound, money is the right alternative. I mean, the, you know, the optimistic side of the book is that there have been a lot of companies, countries who've had high inflation. They've even been countries who've had hyperinflation. But here's the really good news when when that happens and you return to sound money, things get better fast. Things get better really fast. So this is, this is a simple, this is a simple issue. We just need to go to sound money. Now. The people who are running the current system, they don't want to see that happen because the system benefits them. So they don't want to. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Which is the with the tinfoil hat like it's always felt a little inorganic for me with the 2024 reversal with the ETFs, I guess it was late 2023 from the SEC perspective and then 2024 they went live. If you were going to have inflation, you have to naturally onshore people need to be able to spend money. They need some asset that in that appreciates faster than the rate of money supply. They're going to need exposure to hard assets. And what easier way to get exposure via, you know, securitized version of that. And then also the regulatory regime drastic shift. It's kind of works well for the narrative because it's Trump in in a different administration. But it feels like it was just bound to happen either way because this path happens and then you don't have an actual asset to escape to, which leads kind of in a, yeah, I mean. Thank thank God they approved the ETFs. I mean, I to be honest with you, when that was going down, I was afraid they weren't going to. I thought, you know, that could it could have gone either way. I mean, I'm sure that I'm sure the, the large banks and the Elizabeth Warren's of the world did not want that to happen. But fortunately, you know, Larry Fink and the black rocks on the other side of the world did and they won. And so, you know, so we've got an ETF and, and to me that that was huge, absolutely huge. When that happened, said, OK, we won, you know, because before that there was still some question mark of whether or not the government was going to, you know, tax it, try and regulate it, prevent it, whatever it might be. But, you know, they had, you know, that, that, you know, a lot of my normie friends said I'm never buying this thing because I don't know what the government's going to do. Well, when the government approved the ETF, they had to change their view. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. How are your You talked about one of the last pods we did your Harvard peer group when you went back to the. It's, it's funny. So the, the, the smartest of them get it. The guys I went to, the smartest guys in my site, they totally get it. They're in, they're buying it. But the, the ones who've played the game and have benefited greatly from the Fiat system, a lot of, and I think of PE guys, mostly in venture capital guys, they're pretty averse to it. And partly because the system's been very good to them. And, you know, I think, I think a lot of us who've embraced Bitcoin, we've done it because we felt pain and, and we were kind of, and we're looking for a solution. And, and so we're willing to think outside of the box to find a solution to deal with the pain. You know, if, if you're a normie and have played the Fiat game and you've made a ton of money, you're not really feeling any pain and you know, the system feels OK to you. And, and in fact, this thing kind of sounds edgy and maybe it threatens your, you know, your master of the universe, like status. And so, you know, so there's a lot more of that Michael, than there is of the people who get it. But the real smart ones get it. You know, they're, they're, they're, they kind of look through it and they're like, oh, shit, I get it. And, and they, they realize, you know, I mean, like, look, Fink, I mean, Fink was a Fiat Lord, a total Fiat Lord. He's running BlackRock, right? But what he did was he, he did the homework and he said to himself, Oh my God, this thing's inevitable. You know, I better, you know, I got a choice. I can ignore this. And he would have ended up like the Vanguard guy and gotten fired. Or I can embrace it and figure out a way to, you know, have my firm make money off of it. And so he embraced it, which is great, you know. Yeah, Larry, I, I'm curious what you make of Doge and everything Elon's doing, because to me it's it's it's somewhat of a corollary to what you just described around the emperor having no clothes and with this moment on the monetary side. And it's similar in the sense of people waking up and realizing we've just been wasting money and there's no accountability in government like that. I think that bleeds over to the monetary realm of being like, why do we? Why do we trust the Fed again? Yeah, well, I hope you're right. I mean, you know, look, you know, it's a complicated case. You know, I'm, let me say the following things. I'm, I'm all for more government efficiency, uncovering waste, cutting back expenses, trying to make things better. I think the people who are imagining that doge is going to be able to completely solve the problem and that the monetary debasement issues, I mean, that's a joke. I mean, that's absurd because 80% of the stuff you can't really touch. Yep. But I'm, but I'm all for cutting back and I, I hope they're successful at cutting out the waste and the stupid stuff and and so on and so forth. The doge coin itself. I just don't get it. I mean, I just, I, you know, and, and I, and I have to say, you know, I mean, I, I've never been a shit coiner. I, I don't believe in most of you know, most of what's crypto is foreign to me. I try to be open minded and understand there might be some legitimate use cases. And a sailor says if a crypto coin is distributed ethically, you know, and managed ethically and there's a legitimate use case, OK, I'm open minded to it. But in general that hasn't been the case, as we all know so. Yeah, maybe to round things out, Larry, we've been doing a segment on the show called The Single Point of Failure of the Week. And the purpose of it is to call investor attention to counterparty risk or potential other risks. Doesn't necessarily need to be counterparty risk. We've talked about inheritance risks or physical threats, you know the the proverbial $5 wrench attack. But we like to call out something once a week to inform investors and just have them think through like potential risk to owning Bitcoin and safeguarding it for the long term because we're all long term investors. But to get from the 100K Bitcoin to a million to 10 million, there's going to be a lot of pitfalls and there already have been a lot of pitfalls. So Michael, Tim, Brian, I'm curious to hear if anything caught your attention over the last week. One thing just wanted to flag that, I thought it's an interesting stat and it's kind of a forewarning of maybe what's to come is that there's been 4.7 Bitcoin purchased by MSTRI, BIT and FBTC for everyone Bitcoin that's been mined since the halving. And so I'm all for ETFs. I think it opens up the asset class to a lot of investors who otherwise wouldn't invest into it. And same thing with MSTR. If you want to allocate to MicroStrategy, feel free to. But I think the issue here ultimately ties back into counterparty risk. And my concern is that we have a decentralized asset, but the custody of it is extremely centralized in Coinbase and other large custodians. And so I don't necessarily have a risk I saw this week, but I want to just call out and make people mindful of there will be some sort of friction or pitfall that exists within these large players at some point this cycle. I think. I don't necessarily think it has to be Coinbase, but I do think that people should be wary of having their Bitcoin with one custodian, at least for all of their stack. Yeah. I think the, the ones that call out, they all kind of not to pick on them, but it is Coinbase. There's like 3 flavors I've heard in the past, call it 5 business days. Yesterday I spoke with somebody that from Silicon Valley didn't really go deep down the rabbit hole, but it bought a stack in 2013, lost half of it because she put it into Block Fi's yield product. And so she just lost 50%. She doesn't know now about Coinbase or counterparty risk there. But in that same fashion, I know Jackson, you've been working with larger clients to help with Coinbase. And Coinbase is an interesting beast because it came out a week ago that there was a report that they lost 300 million, not billion, yeah, 300 million in losses from hackers last year. But here's the kicker is because they have such a large user base and lack of focus, they make it insanely hard for the good people to take their money out. Because I think, Larry, you had some problem. Oh, I had it. Terrible time. It was awful. But then it's so because they have such a large tax surface, they make it hard for the good people to take their money out and then easy for the bad people to take their money out because they don't actually have the processes to manage that. So we have folks trying to take their assets out, worried about counterparty risks that are halted. They have nobody to call on while there's these losses happening because of social engineering. All the robo calls you get, the little you see. I still get, I still get calls from Coinbase security. I mean, I'm just like, it's, it's absurd. And of course I know it's that's not who it is, but right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there was one other in the news Jax. And I think I, I shared it was, you know, unfortunately just another, another kidnapping of, of some crypto founder. And I think Jameson Lopp shared it on, on, on X. But yeah, just, you know, always, always be aware of your, your single points of failure and, and try to mitigate those as much as possible would be the take away from, from this segment. And, and we're going to keep hitting on it because, you know, people need to think about this critically, think about their setups and, and understand that these risks are only going to accelerate as we move from 100K to a million to $10 million Bitcoin, the attack services are going to grow. That's right. And that's that's really just an advertisement for you guys and what you do. And by the way, I mentioned you guys in the book. I hope you when you read the book you'll see it. Awesome. Yeah, there were there, I said 22 custodians that I recommend. Were you guys in Unchained? Because I know, I know people at both. Yeah. So, so, yeah, look, it's, it's important and and you know, key and address management is it's tricky. I mean, these are the nuclear codes. I always have been, always will be. And you know, and wrench attacks are a real risk and opsec counts and so on and so forth. So, but you know, it's, it's, these are not unsolvable problems. They're, they're very solvable, as you guys know. You just need to find honorable people that you can trust and work with to help you solve them. And that's why, that's why your business exists. We appreciate it, Larry. It's a different conversation, but it's a a key theme I've been talking to more. We talked more with clients about is like one of the hardest differentiations or differences between Bitcoin and gold. Obviously there's a supply cap, there's you can move it over the Internet, but it's really this notion that you have governance built into the asset, which you didn't have with gold, so it had to centralized or with Bitcoin, you can have, you know, this version of multi say, where multiple institutions can hold the assets and no funny business can happen. And you can now start to see a large pools of capital can come in and feel confident. If you have B&Y, Fidelity and Charles Schwab hold a key, what are the odds they're going to collude against you? So these natural like primitives will start to grow. We didn't need them at $10,000 Bitcoin, but at 500 K that becomes a very big issue and counterpart. Your Oh yeah. But in your house? Or do you want some of these all? Both actually don't really work in that world for all of your wealth. Correct. Yeah, No, correct. It's it's, it's an important issue and it'll be, it'll grow increasingly important over time. And obviously that's good for your business, as it should be. It's a legitimate problem that needs to be solved. One thing just to call out before we jump is on the last call we did Larry, at the very end we were like we talked about what are we looking forward to? And one of them was accountability, like accountability back in a system when you have sound money because effectively you have to provide value or you don't get the gold or the Bitcoin, right? And this kind of reminds me of, again, it's an interesting, all these things happening together of what's happening with the DOGE, the department, what is the department of, of what does DOGE stand? For government efficiency. Yeah, that we're coming back to bringing gold, Bitcoin. We know there's a lot of the sound aspects to the economic policy of the US Well, you naturally just can't spend money. You can't print money to pay for inefficiencies which historically have been there. Yesterday was the big thing about the 50 year old, like you have to go into mine shaft to like retire somebody from the federal government or whatever, like these inefficiencies being in. Did you see that or no? I didn't. I guess what, Brian, do you know what I'm talking about? Like the? Yeah, it was. It was something Elon was describing in his little press conference yesterday. I I forget what the actual. It's something about like the record keeping and there's only yeah. When somebody chaps of some kind. So this is actually, I mean, based on what they're explaining, when somebody retires from the federal government, they and there's a certain like amount of groups, call it, you know, I think actually paying anything, if you're paying on like government payroll, if you want to retire, they can only at a Max do 24,000, I believe a year. Because what they have to do is take these records and they put them, they go down a mine shaft that's like 55 years old and you have to manually go down. And there's only so many records that can go down there in amount of intervals in a given day. So you Max people that can actually retire from the federal government. And he's just describing like how insane. But so the point being is that there's this interesting aspect of accountability coming back to like work. We've seen this with the amount of layoffs that would happen because interest rates rise. And so you naturally don't have free money. So you have to be very discerning and how you allocate that capital. So point being is this is the market. This is the way we're going. It's going to be new oxygen. Some people aren't going to know how to breathe because they've been paying for a very long time. But this is going to kind of like the world healing effectively. Yeah, there's, there's no doubt. I mean, I think so many things will continually get better as a result of these changes. You know, we're, we're seeing it and that's, that's the promise of Bitcoin. I mean, that's why Bitcoiners are optimistic people. You know that that's, we've got a mess, but there's a solution. And the book talks about, you know, the, the first part is the problem, which if you read it and you can get pretty depressed about, yes, it's very real. But you know, the, the second part is the solution. And, you know, I think universally, those of us who've been in Bitcoin a while, you know, you develop a real conviction that that things will get much better as we as we slowly but surely March toward a sounder money system. It's fair to everybody based on a math mathematical protocol, not based on, you know, 12 guys sitting around, men and women sitting around a table in DC setting the interest rate. I mean, it's just, it's nuts. It's totally nuts. It's caused so much pain for so many people and it's not fair so. What was the most rewarding part of the book or biggest learning that? You've finishing it. I mean, when you get near the end of it, you're just like, oh God, I just gotta get this goddamn thing done, you know? You wanted. To take you start to start to finish. So I kind of started it May, June and it was written by December 31st and then January was layout, which is actually quite an evolved process to make it look good and be accurate and you know, so forth. But you know, I learned some things historically that I hadn't, you know, as it dug deeper into the history, I mean it it, it cemented my views. I mean, I didn't realize how inflationary the War of 1812 was. I hadn't studied that before. You know, I learned a lot more about the inflation that occurred after World War One and after the Civil War. I late in the book, I discovered how just stunning the returns are from network businesses, from Metcalf's law businesses. I mean, until I hadn't run these numbers. I mean, I don't know if you guys realize that since the day that it went public, Amazon is up 218,000%. You know, Google is up 9000%. I mean, this is a new investing paradigm and I don't think there's ever been a company. A large company that had increased that much in value in 20 years. And I know I went and I checked General Motors and IBM and some of the other Big Blue chip names and then which are equivalent size, none of them would have those kinds of returns over 50 years. So, you know, networking businesses are just different. It's just they really are. And and so, you know, you know, brought up as I was on Graham and Dodd and, you know, value investing and seeing the returns that you could get when you got invested early in a big network and in my eyes just popped out. I was like, holy shit, this is really important and different. And so I missed those because when I looked at those, I said to myself, they're too expensive. I knew they were growing. That's it wasn't hard to see Amazon was growing. It wasn't hard to see Google was growing. But you did the numbers and he said, God, it's way too expensive. I can't pay this. They don't make enough money. You know, the PE ratio is insane. There is no PE ratio. They're losing money, but you know that that was a big mistake on my part not to invest in them, right? And so, you know, I'm not going to make that mistake again. And so Ioffer that for everyone who's looking at Bitcoin and saying, well, this is too expensive now. Well, you think it's expensive now? Wait till it's 10 million. Do you know what I mean? I mean, because it's it's got the characteristics of those businesses. In fact, it's bigger than those businesses because you know, Amazon touches what Walmart does and you know, so forth. But Bitcoin touches everything because money is involved in every area. So this, this is, you know, again, just another argument for why I tell all my clients, especially the older ones who are afraid of it. And you know, OK, fine, you know, I'm not telling you to put all your money in this, but you can't. You got to get off 0 because if this thing goes up 1000 X, which it should, you know, you're going to, you know, your, your relatives, your errors are going to really resent the fact that you didn't, or they're going to really thank you if you did, you know, so you know that that that and I wasn't, I, I hadn't done that math to come to that conclusion until I actually wrote the book. I was starting writing the book. I started playing around. I was like, Oh my God, this is different. Yeah, that's a really exciting and it's a great. There's a lot of books out there, but I don't think 1's taking this tact of speaking to the everyday man that feels it. We've seen it from being in these industry for a while. It's always the plumber, the athlete, the firefighter, the individual that feels inflation day-to-day is a lot easier because Bitcoin's not an IQ test, it's a common sense test. Yeah, but then to give. Them and it's an ego test and those people don't have big Tragify egos, you know, right? Yeah, it doesn't take a lot of ego to want to buy your family eggs. Like you either preserve your wealth or you don't. It's again, a visceral feeling, so amazing that you did that. And I don't know if you want to plug the Bitcoin Investor Week in what you're going to be doing there because I think we're going to get some. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Actually, I will mention that because you had asked about it. So there's something going on. There's a conference going on up in New York and end of February, last week of February. I'm actually not going to the conference, but I'll be there that week for a couple of media things. And Tuesday night, Pub Key, which is owned by Bitcoiners down in the village. I'm going to go down to Pub Key and do a book signing between 5:00 and 10:00. So I'll just be hanging around shooting the shit. Anyone's welcome, come bring their book with you. I sadly, I won't have books for people to sign. I mean, here's a good example of how Amazon operates. I've tried to buy authors books. If I want to pay full price, I can get them delivered in three days. If I want to pay the printing cost, which is you know what they'll sell them to me at it's 60 day delivery. So, so I won't have any books to sell. But if you bring your book, I'll sign it. On ramp, we'll have plenty of books. We'll have some for clients and then prospective client for Larry to sign. So we'll we'll come with a heavy hand of oh, that'll. Be great. Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, awesome. Thanks Larry for coming on. Really appreciate. It appreciate it always fun to talk to you guys. I love I love your group love what you're doing. I've known Michael forever known you Jackson for a long time other guys less but getting to know you as well. So it's it's all good right. I mean let's just let's just get out there and orange build the world. That's that's the mission. The mission is to try and help as many people as we possibly can because you know, and we know this is a solution and a lot of people just don't know about it. Yeah, thanks for all the hard work. Larry, thank you. Thank you guys. We'll see you in New York. See you in New York, yeah? Thanks, Larry. 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.