Lawrence Lepard: Bitcoin HODL'ers will become the wealthiest people in the world

Here’s how and what that looks like…

Mar 16, 2024

Summary

In this conversation, Lawrence Lepard discusses the recent approval of Bitcoin ETFs and the regulatory clarity it provides. He also explores the possibility of a 6102 scenario, where the government could attempt to confiscate Bitcoin. Lepard highlights the importance of self-custody and the need to be prepared for potential risks. He emphasizes the volatility of Bitcoin as a tool that could be used to scare people away. Lepard concludes by urging people to learn from history and be aware of the potential risks associated with traditional financial systems. The conversation explores the themes of government manipulation and rule changes, the misunderstanding of government and power, the need for a reset, the potential wealth and political power of Bitcoiners, the altruistic nature of Bitcoiners, the trajectory of Bitcoin's price, the multiplier effect and Bitcoin's market cap, the bullish case for Bitcoin, deflation and its misunderstandings, the role of government and the monetary system, and government corruption and double standards. The conversation covers the unfair game of fiat currency, the role of Bitcoin as a solution, educating others about Bitcoin, the network effect of Bitcoin, the transition to hyperbitcoinization, and the potential collapse of the dollar.

Takeaways

Government has a history of changing rules to benefit those in power and with money.
Many people accept government without realizing that they have the power to change it.
Bitcoiners have the potential to become some of the wealthiest people in the world and can bring positive change to politics.
Bitcoin's price trajectory and market cap have the potential for significant growth.
Deflation is not inherently bad and can lead to increased efficiency and productivity.
The current monetary system is designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
Government corruption and double standards are prevalent. Fiat currency creates an unfair game, allowing Wall Street and financial players to grow their wealth at the expense of the average working individual.
Bitcoin provides a solution to the problems of fiat currency and offers a way to protect wealth from inflation and government manipulation.
Educating others about Bitcoin is crucial to accelerate its adoption and push the transition to a better financial system.
Bitcoin's network effect and its fundamentals continue to grow, making it a strong investment choice.
The transition to hyperbitcoinization may happen sooner than expected, potentially leading to the collapse of the dollar.

Timestamps:

00:00 The Power of ETFs and Regulatory Clarity

08:49 The Possibility of a 6102 Scenario

22:10 The Importance of Self-Custody

22:54 The Need to Learn from History and Be Prepared

23:48 Government Manipulation and Rule Changes

25:10 Misunderstanding of Government and Power

26:27 The Need for a Reset

27:31 Bitcoiners as Future Wealthy and Political Power

28:13 Bitcoiners as Altruistic and Charitable

29:00 Bitcoin's Price Trajectory

29:53 The Multiplier Effect and Bitcoin's Market Cap

30:59 The Bullish Case for Bitcoin

34:00 Bitcoin's Potential Wealth Distribution

37:31 Deflation and Misunderstandings

41:37 The Role of Government and Monetary System

43:16 The Fallacy of Infinite Growth

50:23 The Role of Central Bankers

53:27 Government Corruption and Double Standards

58:26 The Unfair Game of Fiat

59:27 Bitcoin as the Solution

01:00:25 Educating Others about Bitcoin

01:02:08 Bitcoin's Network Effect

01:03:11 Bitcoin Adoption and Orange Pilling

01:04:07 Bitcoin's Resilience and Future

01:05:06 The Transition to Hyperbitcoinization

01:06:15 The Bond Market and Bitcoin

01:07:04 The Log Chart and Bitcoin's Growth

01:09:10 Takeaway from the Madeira Conference

01:12:26 The Potential Collapse of the Dollar

Transcription

Lawrence Lepard

Yeah, and I'll go wherever you want. Yeah, I mean, obviously the big story of late is the ETFs. You know, the analogs here, I don't know if you watched any of my tape in Madeira. I gave a good talk about how, yeah, how this kind of looks like Microsoft. You know what I mean? I mean, Microsoft is the base layer of the PC. This is the base layer of money. I I just, I couldn't be more bulled up. I mean, you know, it's just...

Brandon Gentile

Right.

You know, I don't know if you've looked, we could touch upon this whole, this relates to the ETFs. We could touch upon this whole multiplier thing. Have you noticed how, you know what I'm talking about? You know, like eight, roughly $8 billion has gone into the ETFs and the market cap of Bitcoin as a result of, since that started, the market cap of Bitcoin has gone up by 300. So that's a 37 multiplier. And the reason that occurs obviously is a lot of coins are in strong hands.

And you know, gosh, I mean, if you start thinking about it, I mean, you know, seven, I mean, we should record this with 700 trillion of financial assets, 1 .3 trillion of Bitcoin. I mean, it's kind of like, man, oh man, I mean, you know, I don't want to sound crazy or, you know, hyperbolic, but I mean, it's just, it's like, you know, I think, I think we might all be really, really surprised by how much this thing can go up and does go up. I mean, I,

I saw Samson Mao in Atlantis. I mean, he's just like, he's like willing to bet his kids on the fact that we're only a million bucks. I mean, I, you know, Jesus, if we go to a million bucks, that's going to be life altering and, and, and frankly, a shock to the existing legacy finance guys. Um, and I don't, I don't think we will go there. That sounds a little high to me, but I, boy, I think two or 300 is very possible after the halving, you know, um, on this next run. Uh, cause you got a lot of things coming together. I mean, I.

The piece that's interesting to me on both gold and this is that the Fed really hasn't capitulated yet. I mean, they're going to have to, but they haven't. And yet both gold and Bitcoin are making record highs. So, you know, you think it's good now. What happens when the Fed does yield curve control or they capitulate or, you know, because we kind of know what they're going to have to do eventually, right? So.

It's, you know, I couldn't be more bulled up on the price of this stuff. I really, you know, I think it's, um, we're in a very interesting period. I mean, as Saylor said, it's we're in that gold rush period where, you know, you've only got 10 more years of, you know, real mining supply. And after that we get down to a very, very little left. So, um, and, and it also appears to me that we're just coming past that 10 % tipping point.

Somebody, I was at a meet up here in Naples the other night and somebody told me that there were roughly 300 million wallet downloads. Oh, is that right? What was it? Let me get these numbers right.

It had up to 300 for the year. I know it was a million wallet downloads per day worldwide. I don't know how he got that statistic. I don't know if that's accurate, but if it's any, and that was up from like a couple hundred thousand a year ago and before that, you know, 50, 50 ,000. So, you know, yeah, right. So what it suggests is just that there's a lot, a lot of, you know, adoption taking place and you know, we know what that means, right? So.

There's only like you like we talked about many times before, right? I when there's a demand shock, but there's little supply price, the only thing that moves, right?

That's the thing. I mean, I think, you know, Preston said it very well in a tweet sometime in the last month or so where he just said, you know, the world, the world doesn't understand just how, you know, solid the hands are that hold this shit. I mean, it's not like it goes to 75 and oh yeah, there's going to be a ton of supply. No, everyone who's in this is like, we're playing for a million. I mean, I think, I think when we get to a million a coin, you're going to see some people selling obviously.

And all along, there'll be people selling. I people always, you know, this is a savings technology and people always have reasons to just save. I mean, they send a kid to college, they want to buy a house, you know, whatever. So there will be supply. But, you know, most of us, I know, you know, I'm not, I mean, this high that we're at right now, it's nice, but this is nothing. I would never consider selling at this level. So, and I think, I think most hardcore Bitcoiners feel the same way, right? I'm sure you do.

Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, let's roll. Mr. Larry Lepard, thank you so much, brother, for coming on today. I appreciate you more than you know, and we have a special relationship, which I really appreciate.

Thank you. You're very kind ever ever since we suffered through that CrossFit workout at Pacific Bitcoin you're you're you're a friggin beast I mean, that's everyone. I don't think most people know that you played for the USA hockey team. You're one hell of an athlete but Anyway, yeah, I know you're a good friend and I'm happy to be on your pod anytime you like so if you want to listen.

I'm still sore from that. Well, yeah, I'm also 30 years younger.

Well, if I'm in your shape, Larry, in 30 years, then I'm doing something right. Well, let's just say that. Let's do that. Thanks.

Well, I'm not where you are, but that's, you know, I've noticed as you get older, it gets harder. My performance has gone downhill, but I'm very consistent. I try and show up every day and that counts for a lot.

Really quick before. Yes, really, really quick before we jump into the ETF stuff and 6102 and what we were talking about off stage. What's the book that you always recommend everybody that changed your life just in the last?

Oh yeah, this book changed my life. It's called Younger Next Year and it's Crowley and somebody else, they're two authors, but one of them's last name is Crowley. You Google it, you'll find it. Yeah, so this, I think the federal government, or know, not the government should do anything, but everyone should buy this book when they turn 50. Because what it basically does is it explains to you the aging process and how one can delay the aging process by working very hard at their fitness level are 70 or 80 year olds who have the fitness level of 40 year old. And there are 60 year olds who have the fitness level of a 90 year old because they let themselves go. And, and this book does a really nice job of kind of laying out how you should change your mindset as you age. I mean, 20s, 30s, 40s, I mean, you know, you got a lot of free time and you're, you're naturally in pretty good shape. I mean, you know, your, your body, but it's 50, I noticed things really start to go in the wrong direction. And so you gotta, you gotta work out if you want to maintain, you know, the health that would be worth having when you're older so that you can play with your grandkids and stuff.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Cause I think that's like you said, it's incredibly important. Yes. It's, it's one of the things, one of the first things we conversed about obviously working out together is how kind of how we met. And then I'll never forget you saying that and just, you know, how important that is. So, um, so I appreciate that anyway, going into this, the ETF obviously is the big thing. Everything that's going on here. I have, let's, let's take it out further though, from even modern day, we can touch on that.

Yeah, it's a great book. I've sent it out to a ton of friends. I highly recommend it. Older people should read it. Yeah.

To me, it's inevitable the 6102 what you know, like everyone's like, is government gonna buy Bitcoin? Well, they have it's right there in front of us and a lot of people, you know, so

Right. Although I think they still hold some that they haven't sold off from some of the places where they confiscated. I don't know the exact numbers or call it's a hundred thousand plus. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, um, you know, there's what's government. There are a lot of buckets in government. And I was just told by my partner last night that he met Jason Lowry at a meetup in Boston last year. And Lowry told him kind of on the QT, but I think I can say it here that, that, you know, the CIA and the Pentagon actually realize how important it is. And so if they have anything to do with it,

they would want to own some and they get the strategic importance of it, which I thought was pretty interesting. But setting that aside in the 6102 risk, let's discuss that. I mean, so, you know, as Saylor says, and I think he's right, you know, the approval of the ETFs was an enormous thing because for traditional financial people, for traditional fund managers, it removed what in their mind, I think in many cases, with the largest risk associated with Bitcoin, which is to say,

The government hates it. Yeah, that's great. It's all cool. But the government hates it. They're going to shut this thing down. And we can't, you know, how can I buy something? I know the government's going to shut that. Well, guess what? They didn't. And I have to say, honestly, I was very pleasantly surprised. I thought the ETFs were going to get delayed, not approved, et cetera. And I think what it maybe shows you is the power of a BlackRock and all their money and all their lobbying. I mean, they realized they could make money on it and they pushed it through somehow. So here we are. We've got them. That's great. And that provides some regulatory clarity.

to a lot of fund managers, to a lot of people are kind of like, well, look, if the government hated it, why did they let the ETFs get created? And so to me, that's a real big, big change. And of course we've seen the response and the price and the flows. We'll talk about that in a minute.

short run there's really and the other thing is keep in mind that what it does is it allows them to also have it within their box or within their system and so there may have been you know they may have been game -throwing it and thinking okay you know all these people are buying it and self -custodying it which Elizabeth Warren hates and we can't see it when it's on somebody's treasure we don't know who the hell has what I mean we can KYC it and see where it came from but you know as you know it's kind of hard hard to keep track.

And if we approve the ETF, at least we'll be able to see it and tax it. You know, so better inside the fence than outside the fence. And so, so, you know, if you're being real conspiratorial, they think, well, let's get all these guys inside the fence. At least we can see them. Um, but, you know, I, I certainly don't think they're going to flip -flop anytime soon and, and, you know, go negative on Bitcoin. I Elizabeth Warren, you know, she wants to prevent all self custody. I don't think she'll succeed at that. She might succeed though, at causing all of us to have to report what we own. As you'll recall, we had.

check a box on our taxes that said we have been dealing in crypto. And it strikes me that this is very similar to when they made us report our Swiss bank accounts. That, you know, they don't want people dodging taxes. So if you own it, they want you to report it. So I could actually see them doing some law like that. But so let's talk longer term, though, about 6102. You know, I don't think today, you know,

I mean, it's going up, it's working, it's a good investment, et cetera, but it's not, it doesn't appear to most of them today to be an existential threat. I mean, you and I both know it is an existential threat and that eventually it's going to eat the entire fiat world and we're going to be denominating our lives in sats. Okay. We know that, but they don't know that yet, but they're going to learn that as they, as they watch the prices go up. And, and yeah, I mean, you know, they're guys like Joe Carlasare, who's active on Bitcoin Twitter, who trust the government, I think, and believes that they would never do a 6102, that that's something odd in the past, to which I just say absolute and utter bullshit. I mean, they changed the short selling rules in 2008. They changed the rules in March of 2023 for Silicon Valley. I mean, they changed the rules whenever it suits their purposes and they need to keep their system going and their systems broken. And when it becomes very, very clear that Bitcoin is...

eating their system and helping to cause their system to fail. I think entirely they will, you know, either 6102 it or 90 % tax it or, you whatever, whatever it is they do to it, you know, it'll be the save American currency act. And they'll, you know, they'll figure out a way to determine that we're all evil people who are ruining their currency. So, but I think that's a ways out because that's not obvious today.

I mean, it'll become more obvious over time. What are the odds in that? How do I rate the? I don't know. I really don't. It's probably 50 -50. But I do know that those who are on the inside and who control the system, they just have an enormous vested interest in not having us succeed. Because if we succeed, all fiat wealth goes to zero.

And so, you know, they, and they can't really stop us. I mean, and they can't really stop the system is to distribute it, et cetera. So, you know, they've got a problem on their hands. Now, the other tool I think they'll use to mess us up. And they use this in gold a bit too, is they will, um, I what's the only thing that's left wrong with Bitcoin. And I don't think it's something that's really wrong, but I think to an outsider or to a newbie or to a traditional finance person, it's wrong. It's volatile. Right. And it's, it's scary. I mean, people don't necessarily like buying assets that can go up and down really fast. They think that that equates to risk. And of course it does to a degree, but also equates to reward. That's why you can go down fast, but also go really up really fast too. And so I could see a scenario where, you know, they're actually on the bid side and you know, maybe they, you know, let's say we get to 200 and they think, okay, this thing's getting.

We got to really kill it. And so they go in and they actually start buying and they have shove it to 500. And then when it's at 500, very overextended, maybe in terms of kind of looking at the charts and everything else, they say, all right, well, let's start proposing some things that are very Bitcoin negative, you know, 80 % tax, you know, making your reports of coins, you know, all these kinds of negative things. And then at the exact same time, they also dump all the coins they bought. They just flood the market and dump the coins.

that they've been accumulating that helped shove it to half a million. Well, it could easily go from that half a million back down to 200 ,000 really quickly. And then then they've got the narrative that see, this thing's not a store of value. It's risky is all shit. You shouldn't be participating in it. You know, run away from Bitcoin. It's a bad thing. Now, those of us who've been in it a long time, we know that these 50 % plus drawdowns are common and we're not selling, you know, and they're not getting our fucking coins. But, you know, I mean, imagine you're a newbie.

And you don't really understand what you're buying here. And you know, you're, you know, you finally give in and capitulate. Oh, God, I got to buy some Bitcoin. You pay 400 grand for it, you know, and three months later, it's at half that and you're, you're feeling like an idiot. Um, and that's happened to all of us at various points in time. I mean, I bought it at 17 ,000 and Thanksgiving of 2017. I went to 10, then I went to four, you know, and, and, you know, I think I was, I knew I was right. So I didn't have any intention of selling it, but it was kind of bomber. I was like, shit, I kind of wish I'd held my fire and more did more dollar cost averaging. I doubled down on both of those decreases because I had more powder to do it with. But the point is, they will use the volatility to try and scare people away from it. I guess that's the point I'm making. But on the 6102, I think it's a very low probability in the next year or two because I think they've approved it and they're not going to, you know, they wouldn't they couldn't flip on a dime like that. I think it becomes a higher probability when

things are really falling apart. And this is the leading canary in the coal mine, right? I mean, gold, they'd managed to suppress that. So if this thing is going to the moon, that's gonna be scary for Fiat people. And when people are scared back to no corner, they do crazy stuff. So we'll have to see. And that's why, I mean, would argue, I don't argue against people who don't wanna take the time to self -custody. Well, I think everybody should self -custody, okay?

point one. But you know, I look at you know, 80 year olds who don't necessarily understand the technology, don't want to take the time to learn the technology, but they want to be exposed. Well, fine, if they want to buy the ETF, that's fine. I mean, I don't think, you know, I don't think the risk of a 6102 in the next year or two is that high. I think over time, everyone should start into the journey of getting into Bitcoin. And then once you begin to recognize these risks, you pretty quickly get to where I am, which is that you got to self custody. You don't want somebody else to hold it.

Because if it's, you as we all say, not your, not your keys, not your coins. And yeah, it's, it would be, if they did 6102, it would be simple. Call up Coinbase, call up Fidelity, call up every major ETF provider and say, you know, sorry guys, the laws have changed. We needed to defend the U S dollar. Our currency is failing. Um, everybody who's in Bitcoin, cash them out at this new price and send them the cash and, um, you know, send it, send those coins you own, just, you know, give them to us kind of thing. And.

That's a possibility. It's a very real possibility. And so if you've self custody, they can't get them. So that's kind of how I see it.

You know, being a student of history, I love Jim Rogers quote of, you the first lesson of history is that most people don't learn from history. And it's, you know, most people, you know, it's not even taught in school anymore. I saw some college, they don't even require a class of history to graduate with a history degree. And we have people, we have people that are, you know, to me, like, it's so obvious, like, we just went through four years of people getting denied life saving care from a hospital because they didn't have something injected inside them.

And then I've got you know, a brokerage, you know, accounts, or I've got, you know, pensions, or you've got insurance people saying, well, your stuff's safe with us, you can do it. Like, what do you mean it's safe with you? And you just mentioned Joel Carlos, Carlos, sorry, who I know you've argued, like I've argued with him the same thing. And like whether it's CBD sees two and like, well, there's rules in place. And this is that the government can change things on a dime whenever they want. And if no one stands up, the 3 % or the 1 % don't stand up and the good people and invoice their opinion.

Then they'll do whatever they want. And I think that's the thing that to me, I just, I don't know what else people are seeking and trying to grasp at to say, you know what, it is different this time. Things, you know, they'll just do what we want them to do. To me, that just blows my mind. Like how, let's do the 6102 thing.

Government changing the rules to benefit the people in power and the people with money. I mean, they got rid of Glass-Steagall, they banned short selling. I mean, it goes back to the Hunt Brothers. The Hunt Brothers had the silver market cornered, and they changed the rules, you know, and prevented them from selling. You know, a more recent example is what happened with GameStop, you know, and a great movie, that movie Dumb Money, and how basically Ken Griffin rigged the game in his favor.

I mean, this is what they do. They've got the levers of power of money.

that when it gets really critical they won't do some desperate things I just think that's naive because every piece of evidence historically suggests that that's what they'll do.

Why like where does this come from though? And again, maybe it's not knowing history and people been brainwashed for so long. And again, these are some of my own opinions. It feels obvious. I know a lot of Bitcoiners feel this way, but just seeing people accept government when.

As we know, the Declaration of Independence says it itself, the government works for the people, not the other way around. And I encounter so many people that are even conservative, like on the right in modern American politics who say, well, the government won't let us do that. Or like the government's not going to let us use Bitcoin. And it's like, we are the government. You realize that. Like if we just say, hey, change it, they need to change it. And people just can't seem to grasp that.

That's the theory. I mean, unfortunately, we're so far away from the Constitution and the Constitution Republic.

an aristocracy slash oligarchy with the people in government and the wealthy people who just kind of set all the rules and totally tipped the playing board in their favor.

see that, you know, shame on you. I mean, it's pretty obvious. And I think, you know, I think a lot of people see it. That's, but I think here's the sad part, Brandon. My view is that a lot of people see it. I mean, you see it in the, you know, see it in the voting, you see it just everywhere. People are kind of, people are pissed off. People know something's wrong. They know it's broken. What's disappointing to me about it is that they don't really see the underlying cause. You know, they think it's cause blue guys in power, red guys in power, but you know, they...

They're pointing fingers and they're arguing over stuff that doesn't matter. Or it matters a lot less than the fundamental base layer of money, which is really what allowed it all to happen and go in the wrong direction. And it's only getting worse. Which is why there's a silver lining here. And that is to say, as it only gets worse, we're going to get to a crescendo where it's going to break beyond repair. And we're going to then have to reset.

and that reset, you know, I mean, look, I don't know, there was some talk about, you I don't know if he has political ambitions, but there was something like a Michael Saylor running for president, right? I mean, I think there's an argument he'll end up one of the wealthiest guys in the world. He's a libertarian. He's actually a really great human being. He's very kind and fair and nice. And, you know, I'd much rather have him as president than anybody who's on the slate right now. And so I think that...

You know, as the Bitcoiners vision of the world unfolds, there's a very good chance that the politics will get solved too, in part because the people who don't have Bitcoin will be disadvantaged severely versus the people who do have Bitcoin. And it's pretty well shown throughout history that the people who end up at the top of the political structure generally have the most money. So, you know if bitcoiners have the most money we're going to elect a bitcoin president that's a good thing you know

Right? Yeah, it's fascinating. I, I the last year, year and a half, like just being at a conference, like there, I'll catch myself time to time, just like looking around and just like looking at everyone kind of like people watching and reading and thinking about that very fact of, wow, these people, all these people that we know are friends with or peers with or whatever it might be that you see that you're shaking a hand with or nodding to, they're going to be some of the wealthiest people in the world. Like a lot of the people that are at conferences right now. And that's what I think is very cool. Like you said, they're very,

Truly, not Sam Bankman freed altruistic, but actually altruistic, like actual people that are charitable, hopeful, you know, loving people that that's going to be the foundation of love world. Yes.

I think that's right. I I, yeah, I would, I would pick the average Bitcoin or over the average man on the street any day of the week to, you know, to be in a position of government responsibilities. So, um, yeah, I mean, and I do think they're going to be, you know, crazy rich. I mean, which, you know, I mean, imagine what that means for Max Kaiser, some of these OGS, you know, I've been going to a lot of these conferences and I've heard all these great stories. I've met a lot of people who are buying coins at a dollar or $2. And of course I'm massively jealous.

Absolutely.

I was at 300. I heard a really funny story. One guy was telling me a conversation with Kaiser and Kaiser was thinking there's a guy. Some people might know this guy's name. Others won't. Shit. I'm putting a blank on it. But Kaiser was bitching that he paid 30 cents for his coins when Trace Meyer Trace Meyer paid 10 cents for his coins. And Kaiser was thinking, oh, I'm too late. You know, Trace got twice, you know, three times as many coins as I did because.

He was only paying 10 cents a coin and I'm paying 30. And so, to say the point that it's going up forever, I mean, there will come a day when 20 ,000, 40 ,000, 60 ,000 will seem incredibly cheap. And there will be, in my view in the future, being a whole coin, I will be, we're independently wealthy. I mean, just massively independently wealthy. And so, as we all know, there are 54 million millionaires in the world but 21 million coins and not, you there really aren't 21 because you know how many were lost. I mean, it's got to be type 15%. So, but anyway, if you divide it, I mean, every millionaire in the world can only have half a coin. So, and of course, most have zero coins. And so, and you know, there are 8 billion people in the world. And I mean, the other piece of, you know, the other number that I just find fascinating to me, we should get into the multiplier a little bit because it's just, it's so stunning. This whole ETF thing has really,

really caused me, it's kind of blown my mind and caused me to think more bullish about this than I was before. I mean, I just, I was bullish, but not as bullish as I am now. Let me take you through the math. 700 trillion, say, you know, fiat denominated assets, cash stocks, bonds, and real estate. Maybe let's, and these are round numbers. Maybe, maybe 350 trillion of that is, um, uh,

You know, cash and stocks piece of it. The 350 is real estate. Okay. So Bitcoin's total market cap today is 1 .3 trillion. Of course, not all that's for sale, but that is so the 1 .3 or 350. I mean, what is that? Like a third of a percent, you know, the total money out there. And so some of that 350 is going to realize that they're being debased and the only way to protect themselves or the best way to protect themselves is Bitcoin. And they're going to start coming in and try and buy some proletto share of Bitcoin. And what they're going to find is it's hard to buy without shoving up the price, but they are going to shove up the price. And, you know, the, the, you know, I mean, even if you only took, say the bond market is a hundred to the bond market, it's a hundred trillion dollars. Okay. Worldwide bond market. Um, let's say even if only 10 % of the bond market comes and says, you know what, we need to hedge against this. We need to get some big, well, that's $10 trillion. That's 10 X where we are to almost 10 X where we are today. And by the way, all of that 1 .3 is not for sale.

I mean, so, you know, I mean that gets you from, you know, 60 ,000, 60 some odd thousand to 600 ,000. If it were just a straight one for one multiplier, but it's not, it's better than that because if you look at, and this is, I found this fascinating, Fred Krueger on Twitter has done some great work on this. Everyone recommend you follow him, it's at Doc Krueger. $8 billion has gone into Bitcoin since the ETF Scott form. These numbers are a few days old.

Bitcoin has gone up in value by $300 billion. It went from roughly a trillion to 1 .3 trillion. So that would imply that 8 trillion of new flows has shoved the overall value of the asset up by 300. So that's a 37x multiplier. Now, I'm not saying that the multiplier will always be there. And, you know, what do you mean by multiplier? What I mean is that, you know, as 8 billion tried to buy it, there just wasn't enough available supply.

you know, to convince people to sell it, it had to go up that amount. And so, so now think about this, you know, there's, there's a hundred billion of bonds and a hundred trillion of bonds and 10 trillion might come after this. Even if only one trillion came after this, you know, you would, you would, and let's say the multiple, let's say the multiplier is not 37. That's, that's exaggerated right now because, you know, we're just starting and you know, the ETFs are a new thing. Let's say it goes down to five or 10.

It would still represent just enormous growth. I if one trillion of bonds comes after this, that's 10 trillion, the thing needs to go up by, again, you kind of get to five or 600 ,000 a coin. So, I mean, I see a world where we're gonna go through 100, then we're gonna go through 200, then we're gonna go through 400, we're gonna go through a million, and eventually, we could go to 100 million, which is full hyperbitcoinization. I'm not sure if we'll get there, when we'll get there.

You know, they might do a monetary reset before that, but, um, you know, I could easily see two, three, four, you know, a million per coin, which is, you serious money. So, so the, you know, the, the ETF thing has, has really. It's, you know, it's and sailor predicted this. He did a great job of saying, you know, Hey folks, this is one of the few chances in history to, to front run wall street, you know, because they just don't understand it. And in my speech in Bitcoin Madeira. I said, you know, a similar thing occurred to me. Of course I blew it in 86. You know, Microsoft came public, you know, in 1986 and it was trading at 14 times trailing earnings and growing 40 % a year, which is pretty frigging cheap for a company growing that fast. I bought it, you know, with my bonus and my savings. And, you know, and I had had the experience of meeting Steve Palmer a few years earlier and he had said,

and he was roommates with my business school roommate. And he'd say, hey Larry, this Sam Estos thing is gonna be on every computer in every household all over the world. Hundreds and hundreds of millions if not billions of people are gonna use this. It's the base layer of these microcomputers and they're gonna be used to do all kinds of things. This was 40 years ago now. And I couldn't see it. I mean, I kinda got it. I knew he was semi -right, but I didn't fully understand it. And little did I know just how absolutely right he was, right? I mean, it's...

You know, Microsoft is a multi -billion dollar corporation. You know, it's MS -DOS has evolved into more Windows and all the other stuff that go, but his software really is the base layer of the whole PC world that Apple's come along to. And, you know, it's just, it's enormously valuable. And, you know, it's, you know, and by the way, back in 86, I also remember how, you know, if you were investing in technology, which I was doing, I was at a venture capital firm and my job was to pick technology companies. You know, everybody thought you would buy,

you know, hardwired disk drives and memory cards, graphic cards, because they were real and you could touch them and micro computers and mini computers. This was a little bit before the clones were just starting to come out. The IBM PC was introduced in 80 and the clones came out a few years later. Anyway, long story short, everyone was looking at software and they were having trouble with it. They were kind of like, hang on a second, this company sells software, what is it? You can't touch it. It's just ones and zeros.

You know, it's not tangible. You know, every business in the world, I mean, there were service companies in the world, everyone got that. You know, you pay somebody to provide a service. And there were people who sold goods, you know, and everyone got that. There were, you know, we've had companies selling goods forever, but there was no one who was really selling intellectual property, defensible intellectual property, which is what the Microsoft base layer was for the PC. And of course it ate the world. And so...

I tend to kind of think I use that analog as I look at the Bitcoin development, which was really an amazing technological development. And it's the base layer of money, the base layer of future money. It's just, it's incredibly obvious to me and compelling that someday this will be money. I mean, to everybody that our grandkids will transact in sats. You want a hamburger, that's two sats or whatever.

whatever the relative pricing will be, the dollar will be kind of gone. It'll just be something antique. And that's pretty extreme to say that and that people don't like me saying that. Even Saylor says, hey, look, let's not talk about that because that's going to freak the other side out. Keep that to yourself. But I think most of us who study it and understand how Gresham's law works eventually come to that conclusion that.

Once it becomes obvious to everybody that this is a better form of money, which it is, because it can't be debased.

expand at a asymptotically decreasing rate, then it's kind of game over for other currencies. And as Saylor also pointed out when he made a speech on stage in Madure, he said, the next 10 years are really going to be the great gold rush years for this. Because we're kind of at the 10 % adoption point. So we're now going to really, adoption is going to accelerate. And we're also, we've still got mining reward at 6.25 today, soon to be 3.125, etc. And until 2034, there will be decent mining reward. In 2034, 99 % of the Bitcoin that's ever going to be mined will have been mined. And there'll only be 1 % left and it takes another 100 years for the balance. So at that point, effectively, you've got a stock to flow that's there's almost no flow.

When you got 1 % coming in over the course of a year, a hundred years, that's not much flow. So it becomes incredibly hard.

today and I think even some of us who are in it are going to be shocked and I say that because it's a, you know, people would say well it sounds too good to be true, you know, they can't be possible, you know, what are you talking about, etc. And I say well, you know, let me draw an analogy. You know, you teleported down to somebody living in the United States in 1900 and you said to them, you know, there's going to be this thing called the airplane.

it's gonna be invented by the Wright brothers. And in 1960, 60 years from now, whatever, you're gonna be able to fly from New York to LA in four hours, instead of it being a 38 hour train ride. And the person looking at you, you're fucking nuts. I mean, there's no way that's not gonna happen. Man can't even fly. That's a pipe dream. And so,

But the airplane got invented and then it got slow in the beginning and it got perfected and better and better. And sure enough, in the 60s, people were flying across country in four hours. And so I kind of think it's similar here. I mean, this thing got invented. It only got invented 15 years ago. The first years were really rocky. I mean, I didn't go all in because I was afraid of the technology. I was afraid it might blow up. I wish I had been less afraid, like Max. I mean, Max kind of went all in. And um.

And it's, you know, we're now you're still people I've had friends I've tried to orange pill and they recently and I should have listened to 15. I should listen to it. I missed it too late. I can't pay 60 something for this. You know, I already know you can because if it's really going to go to half a million, a million, two million 60s cheap, you know, I mean, there will come a time when it won't be cheap. I mean, there'll come a time when it will kind of, you know, it's fully distributed and it's growth will, you kind of.

echo the growth and productivity and the improvements in society. But we're a long ways away from that. We're at least 10 years away from that. So to me, it's just obvious. And I hope more people wake up to it. And the reason I'm such a big advocate for it is that I know it'll make the world a better place. And I think it's important. I want to try and save people from dying in the legacy system, because the legacy system is going to die.

I mean, and there will be pain for people, which is sad, but it just is. And, you know, I mean, just like there was pain. I mean, if you were in the buggy whip business and the automobile got introduced, you were fucked. I mean, you know, if you're making, you know, buggy, you know, carriages, you make horse -drawn carriages, you're fucked. I mean, it just, it happens. It's sorry, but that's how it happens. And it's kind of a similar model here. So.

Yeah, people try recognizing patterns. Some, you know, some do and a lot of a lot don't. And it makes me think.

A lot don't. Yeah. And they're not willing to listen to it. And they think it's too good to be true. I mean, I, look, I get all this. I get all the FUD, you know, and, and I also get, I mean, I think it's, to me, it's tragic. I mean, it created a great opportunity for some really smart people to buy it 15 ,000, but I think it's tragic what Sam Bankman Fried and all the shitcoins did to the space. I mean, I think they really set us back quite a bit because, you know, I mean, I have a lot of smart friends who are like, I'm not getting involved with that. There's a bunch of frauds in that area. You know, and.

I get it. I mean, if you're just looking at it cursory, you know, I get it. You know, yeah, Sam back and free was a master fraud. I mean, we all we all knew it. We were telling him we were we were writing letters to the SEC said you're going to investigate this bad shit. But, you know, and as we all know, Bitcoin's not a shitcoin. You know, it's completely different than all those other coins. But, you know, to somebody who's lazy or just hasn't taken the time to do the work.

they could easily conclude that this is just another one of those. So I get it. I mean, that's, you yeah, you know, you know all that.

Yeah, no, and this makes me think of numerous things like, you know, there's no top on Bitcoin because there's no bottom to fiat. And again, some of these are novel ideas for the average person, the average normie or pre coiner is just starting to understand these things. And it makes me like deflation, like Bob Burnett has a great way of explaining deflation. Why do people in your opinion, why do people still have such a hard time that you get so many people the MMTers, the Stephanie Kelton's all these people are like, deflation can't work, you can't have deflationary money and all.

Correct.

Can you explain like once and for all why, what is so wrong with these people?

Yeah. Well, my view on all of that is what I think a lot of the problems and all that what you described, it's all really kind of driven by recency bias. I mean, first of all, we haven't had, well, we had to, well, the U .S. has been an incredibly stable currency for a reasonably long period of time. Okay. We had hyperinflation in when the country was formed, when the continental was overprinted. And by the way, that's why the constitution got written saying that only gold and silver could be money. And of course, we violated that, but that's a different story. The other thing we did is we had huge inflation in the Civil War when Lincoln printed greenbacks and effectively kind of inflated the money supply and so forth. But other than that, it's been a pretty stable place because it's interesting to me, I'm sure you've seen this too, when we go to these shows, people from other countries tend to get it more than Americans get it.

Yeah.

And that's because if you lived in Brazil or you lived in Argentina or you lived in Hungary or you lived in Israel or you lived in a lot of other countries that were not the reserve currency, you've had high inflation, sometimes hyperinflation, Venezuela. And you recognize that currencies die. They're not always sound. The US happens to be, until 71, a reasonably well -managed currency that didn't die. And since 71, it's been mismanaged. But...

because it was the world reserve currency and a lot of history behind it. We had all the guns and everything else. You know, it's the death process has taken some time, but it is dying. I mean, in terms of raw purchasing power, the dollars lost 97 % of its value since we went off the gold standard in 71. And that last 3 % is just, you know, we're, we're hanging on by a thread. That 3 % is going to go to zero. So, um, yeah, so I think it's, I think it's kind of a recency bias and, um, the MMT or is Keynes, I mean, they, they got sold on the notion, excuse me, that growth is good and the bigger numbers are good. And let's face it, it is an actual natural human, you know, psychology philosophy to want to see number go up. And so, I mean, you know, and if you're waiting, I mean, let's just take an example. If your wages are going up every year, it feels good. If the price is the value of the price of your house, the market price of your house is going up every year.

That feels good. You know, I mean, you like it. Okay. I paid this in my house. Now, if there's equal inflation to the wages, you didn't get ahead. You know, your, your, your wage went up and your costs went up. So you, but you know, all things being equal, you felt better that you're making higher wage. You felt better that your house is worth more. And so, you know, in Keynes, they, they, they came out of the depression, the prices of everything, it collapsed. It terrified people. It was a horrible experience. And Kate said, look, we've got to, we've got to stoke these animal spirits.

printing money, MMT, et cetera, to when the market delivers us a bust, it's the government's role to try and counter the bust and create growth, even if it's only nominal growth, not real growth. The reason I think MMTers and all these people don't, what they don't understand is that pre -formation of the Fed, fractional reserve banking, and so on and so forth, when we were really kind of more on a gold standard in the 1800s, prices were actually relatively fixed.

But what happened is productivity went up. So wages went up because productivity went up and costs went down. And so, you know, if you were making the same salary, you know, in five years that you're making today, but the cost of everything you bought was lower, you'd actually be gaining net wealth. But it might not feel like that because you say, well, I'm just making the same salary. Well, yeah, okay. But if, you know, if we lived in a world where productivity was actually flowing through to the consumer because it wasn't being.

raked off by the cattillionaires who get to borrow at zero. You know, it's Jeff Booth's point. We would all, the world would be abundant and getting more and more abundant with every year because every year technology and efficiencies allow us to do more with less. I you know, I look at what's happened since the seventies, say, just think of all the technical, I mean, look at us, we're talking here on, you know, this, we're talking on a zoom call, you know, that I pay $150 a year to be a zoom member, which is nothing. And, you know, 10 years ago, you had to have specialized equipment to do a video call. Do you know what I mean? And, you know, when I first, cell phones came out, you know, in Gordon Gekko days in the eighties, and I remember my boss got one and he was paying a dollar a minute, you know, to make a cell phone call, right? You know, and now you can have, you know, for, I don't know, 15, 30 bucks a month, you know, you can have unlimited calls. I mean, it's just, things are, things are constantly, the world is constantly getting better. The problem is that the monetary system is designed.

in a way that it's debt fueled and if things, if number doesn't go up, the debt drowns you. And so, you know, so what you've got is what Jeff Booth points out, which is you've got a monetary system that's fighting the natural forces of deflation. And, you know, deflation is good. Deflation implies efficiency. And Keynes was wrong in that he thought growth is what matters and numbers should go up in everything and so on and so forth. And

And what the classical economists, what the Austrians understood was no, no, no. Those numbers go up can be just a bubble. What we really need is we need more goods for the same price. We need more efficiency. That's productivity and efficiency. And we don't have a chance of getting that when you've got a Federal Reserve. I mean, Federal Reserve sets the price of money. The price of money is the base layer of the entire financial system of all of capitalism.

You know, what it costs you to borrow determines whether you borrow or not. If interest rates are 20%, you're not going to borrow unless you have one hell of a project. If interest rates are zero, you're going to borrow and speculate because, hey, what the hell, it doesn't cost me much to do it. And what that interest rates at zero has done is it's led to just huge misallocations of capital. The interest rate is something that should be set as a balance between those who have savings and those who need capital to pursue projects.

And so, you know, there will be debt, there will be borrowing, probably less of it on a Bitcoin standard, but there will be debt. And, you know, that interest rate will be set in a way, in a manner such that, you know, it will only, you'll only borrow if you think the project you're pursuing gives you, you know, enough return over and above the cost of borrowing and some error, you know, some margin of error. And by the way, interest rates might be pretty low because you'll be thinking, I mean, today interest rates get set sometimes highly on projects because...

Everyone knows you're getting paid back into base money. I mean, if you thought your money was going up in real terms, two or 3 % a year, which is kind of the growth of productivity in the world, you know, might be willing to lend at a pretty low interest rate, recognizing that you're going to get paid back in, in sats that we'll have appreciated. Right. So, um, it's just a different, it's just shifting your mindset and, um, and it's, you know, there's so many pieces of how we got here. I mean, you know, probably the guy I credit the most for screwing the whole thing up is Bernanke.

I mean, he claimed to be a scholar of the Great Depression and he just got it wrong. I know, I know. Yeah, right. I yeah, I want to play stupid games, win stupid prizes, right? I mean, the guy's a fraud in my opinion. I mean, he misinterpreted the Great Depression and rather than recognize that it was a bubble driven by low interest rates and fed largesse.

Larry, he's a Nobel Prize winner. Nobel Peace Prize winner. Come on, come on.

can’t make this up.

He thought that was all normal and that the crash was a function of the Fed not printing enough money. But at some birthday party for Milton Friedman, he said, yeah, we blew it in the 30s, but thanks to you, we'll never blow it again. And of course, in 2008, very soon after that, he got a chance to prove that as he took the Fed balance sheet from 800 billion to 3 .7 trillion. So yeah, I mean, to me, he's the intellectual.

you know, champion of this whole thing. He had a famous speech at Google at the 2002 helicopter speech. You should read it. Listen to it. I mean, we talked about how, you know, yeah, we can't, yeah, we can't have deflation here because we've got the technology called the printing press and we'll just print money. And I mean, what an irresponsible and stupid thing to say. You know, as if, I mean, as if what country in the history of the world has ever improved the wellbeing of its citizens.

Yeah, that's the deflation. It can't happen here. It's paper, right? Yeah.

by printing money. I mean, there's never show me an example where that has worked. I mean, I don't think you can find one. So, you know, I mean, this and this guy's our central banker, but, you know, he he was very well paid. I mean, that the whole system that they've got makes the people who play the game fabulously rich, including him. Excuse me. I mean, he's an advisor for Citadel now and he's rumored to get paid 20 million bucks a year.

It's remarkable. And I have a minute clip we could play here. It's the you know, the FDIC roundtable from the end of 2022 when they're admitting that people have more confidence in the banking system than they do. They're in that room. You've got the New Zealand you know, I know I think Nico, your show a couple weeks ago with Nico, you guys played the clip with the New Zealand Central Bankers saying it's a great game. We just print money and people believe it. And then you've got the euro I don't know if you saw recently the euro, it was a, it was an old prime minister. I don't know who it was. It was some, some former leader, I think in the euro zone. And he had said like, we got a bunch of just stagnant euros sitting in bank accounts doing nothing. Like we can just take those and bailings. I mean, just bailings everywhere. And people just think like this, this, these things aren't going to happen. Like they're, they're laying all the pipe down and people are going to be surprised one day when this happens. It's incredible.

Yeah, there's that fellow who wrote that book, The Great Taking. I mean, you know, it's very hard to know what will and what won't happen. But I, you know, I think to assume that some of these bad things won't happen is sadly not, you know, you're kind of missing.

I mean, I'm sure there were people in the 60s who thought, well, we'll never go off the gold standard. Do you know what I mean? And then, as you recall, Nixon's speech said we're going to temporarily go off the gold standard in 1971, right? Well, how's that temporary piece working out? I mean, back to the government breaking the rules, I let's go back to 6102. In 1933, Roosevelt realized they were in a depression. He realized that they needed a monetary reset.

Yeah. All relative, yeah.

They've had massive deflation going on. So he had to devalue the dollar in terms of gold. Well, what did he do? He, you know, he called in all the gold and said, you know, you don't come in, you don't give us your goal that today's dollar prize, you know, we're going to send you to jail and find you $10 ,000 and so on and so forth. I mean, literally confiscated, you know, people's gold wealth. And then, you know, six months later, he repriced gold and devalued it's, you know, devalued the dollar and gold terms 70%.

So everyone who just give them their gold, you know, these people holding gold were holding it to protect themselves against guys like him. And they just got devalued by 70%. And then of course, a lot of those gold holders went and they sued him and they, you know, they tried to, you know, this is illegal. You can't take this shit and not compensate us for it. And, you know, I went to the Supreme court and of course he'd packed the Supreme court and they lost. I mean, this is, you know, this is the government playing by the government's rules. I mean, I don't think there's anybody looking at that case today would say that was fair.

You know what I mean? But that's what happened. When you're the president and you're talking about the national interest, you can do these things. Those of us who were in the gold world, we've forensically looked at it very carefully. We've seen all the things they did to suppress the price of gold. There's no doubt in my mind. There's overwhelming evidence that they've done that.

You know, something as simple as Paul Volcker in his memoir said, yeah, one of the mistakes we made in the seventies is we didn't do enough to suppress the press. In other words, we were suppressing it, but we didn't do it. We didn't suppress it enough. So, okay. You know, is that really the role of the government to be suppressing gold?

You know, it's, you know, I mean, I, you know, I often view the government as the government is a criminal gang. Do you know what I mean? And it's, it's like a virus and it's their job is to keep themselves in power. The job is not to serve us. It's not to make the country better. It's not to do, I mean, you know, to the degree that they keep themselves in power by doing some of those things. Well, then they coincide and that'll happen. But, but in general, job number one is stay in power and, and do not, do not rock the boat. You know, I mean, and you know,

We see it everywhere. Like how does Elizabeth Warren who went to Congress, you know, as a law professor, you know, and consultant, you know, making hundreds of thousands a year. I mean, how she ended up with a $60 million net worth. I mean, huh? Yeah. What's that? I mean, that's, you know, I mean, she, you know, I mean, it's just, and she's not the only one, right? There's, I mean,

Do you learn Larry? Did you see I just thought a tweet the other day actually or like this week it was like Nancy Pelosi's up like 2 million on NVIDIA call options or something.

Oh, I know. It's crazy. Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. No, I think somebody actually created a fund like a Nancy Pelosi stock trader fund where they follow her. And I think it's up like 40 % this year. I mean, yeah, because she has to file everything she does. I mean, you know, it's stunning. It's absolutely stunning. I mean, this is, you know, I mean, or, or take, I mean, there's another example of corruption. I mean, take Janet Yellen, right? She was, you know, chairman of the Fed, now treasury secretary. I mean, you know, she got paid $7 million in speaking fees by a bunch of financial institutions. Now, you can't tell me that she really provided $7 million with the value. Just speak. No. All of these banks just viewed it as tribute. You know, we'll give her $200 ,000 to $300 ,000 to come give a speech because we know that when the shit hits the fan and we need to be able to make a phone call and get the help that we need to bail us out, that the fact that we've given her this bribe will make sure that she helps us. You know, I mean, I mean, that's why Bernanke is on the board of Citadel.

consultant to Citadel. I mean, in 2020, this is pretty funny too, because it was an HBS event I went to, and a lot of people were there, and we talked about the Citadel case. In 2020, in March of 2020, Citadel was bankrupt. They clearly were. The basis trade had completely blown up. And they called up Bernanke, I'm sure, because he's their advisor. And Bernanke called the guys at the Fed. And they got a swap line. They got kind of an unlimited swap line to ride it out.

And so Citadel didn't go bankrupt because they're paying Bernanke as a consultant and Bernanke is just powering government to get them a swap line. Now, you know, all that is denied, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that it's true. So that's what we're dealing with here. I mean, it's two sets of rules. There's a set of rules for the insiders and the rules for the rest of us.

And Fiat incentivizes that, right? I mean, that's incentivize. That's why.

Yeah, well, that's exactly right. Yeah, and incentivize that. And, you know, we're not playing a fair game. You know, we're playing a very unfair game, which is why, you know, I mean, you know, the average working stiff in this country, you know, has to pay 20 % on their credit card or something close to that. And yet, you know, Wall Street can grow, you know, at the Fed funds rate, which now is five and a quarter, but it used to be zero.

You know, and I mean, that's just an enormous advantage. I mean, you give me that deal and I'd become rich. I mean, it'd be simple. You can borrow at zero and buy 10 % yielding securities and just, and then do it again and lever it up. I mean, you know, no, no mystery. I mean, this is how, this is how you've got all these people who've made, you know, private equity people, Wall Street people, you know, financial players who do nothing but shuffle paper, who've managed to create millions and millions and millions of wealth of dollars of wealth for themselves.

at the expense of the rest of us. So it's really, it's quite problematic. But the beautiful thing is Satoshi saw it, solved this problem and it's going to make all of our lives a lot better. And all we have to do is really sit back and watch it unfold. I mean, to the degree that we want to participate and make it go faster.

You know, as Saylor said in his speech at Bitcoin Atlantis, I highly recommend people to listen to that speech. I think it's one of his best ones. You know, it's, it's incumbent, you know, asking how a Bitcoin can do for you, ask what you can do for Bitcoin. You know, it's, it's the job of those of us who understand it to communicate that to everybody who doesn't understand it for a number of reasons. One, because they save themselves and help them out, but two, because it'll just push this transition along more quickly. And it.

This transition is what will make the world a much better place on the other side. So how, so how do you, it's like I've got, you know, I've got, you know, all kinds of Bitcoin trading cards around here. You can see it back here, obviously. We're gonna, at some point, we're gonna have the general, general Lawrence Lappard in the cards, in the, in yeah. Yeah. So that's coming for everybody here in the, in the future here. But to this point of education, like you said, I mean, you, you shared a good book about JFK, I don't know, a year ago with me.

And I think I messaged you on Twitter, I did it publicly so that way other people could see it too, instead of DMing you. But I wanted it out there publicly just to like, hey, just continue getting education out there, whether it's trading cards or fun ways to orange pill people and accept truth like a Trojan horse like Bitcoin is, whether it's cards or fun things. What do you do to help educate people? Because obviously going to them and saying, hey, let's talk about JFK or hey, let's talk about the intelligence agencies or the Federal Reserve, like these things are

Yeah, it's a big deep rabbit hole. I probably the thing I do the most of is I bought a lot of, I give out a lot of copies of Safe's book because I just think it's the best primer to the whole area. I usually...

not easy to talk about, but it is the genesis that's a foundation of understanding a lot of what we're talking about now. Like, what are you what are you doing?

I don't start with the fact that the CIA killed Kennedy or the government's completely corrupt because a lot of people don't want to hear that and they think I'm on the fringe and it kind of disqualifies you. I generally just start with something that I know they basically understand, which is to say we've got a real inflation problem. I mean, hard to find anyone who would disagree with you on that, right? Because they know what the cost of living is. They know that food's got, you know, okay, so now I've got their attention.

And then I just kind of talk that through with them and try and explain that, you know, there's a reason for that. And it's not because corporations are greedy, you know, it's, it's because of the way, right. As, as, you know, Warren and Biden would say, you know, it has nothing to do with that. It's because, you know, the money's broken and, uh, and, you know, furthermore, it's, it's, it's sad, but that's, you know, it's going to get worse. Right. Um, and so, you know,

country that loves band-aids on bullet holes, Larry. I mean, it's like, you know, the, the corporations are greedy. The cookie monster doesn't have enough cookies in his bag. It's shrink flation. It's logistics problems, Putin price hike. These are all downstream.

Yeah, all that. All that, exactly. And so it, you know, it's, um, I just try and walk them through, you know, all of the monetary problems we've got and how clear it is. And then I try to explain to them that, you know, there's a solution and this is the solution. And then, you know, sometimes they want to go down all those other rabbit holes as well. And I'm happy to do that, but.

But I think that, you know, I mean, they don't have to believe that the CIA killed Kennedy to accept Bitcoin. I mean, you know, can, you can kind of get to, you can get to Bitcoin. Yeah, you can get to Bitcoin pretty simply, you know, and, and it's, it's interesting too, because, you know, you would think, I mean, I find the hardest people to orange pill are the people who were really deep in fiat and made all their money in fiat because it runs against their beliefs. They don't like it. Whereas, you know, just kind of a simple cab driver, blue collar worker, you know, they get it.

Right, thinking outside the box. Right.

I mean, they get it really quickly, right? You know, here's this thing that, you know, the reason, the reason price are going up because they're printing money. Okay. Most people can get that. All right. So imagine if we had a kind of money that the government couldn't print by definition, the algorithm prevents the government from printing it. And then, you know, okay. And then they usually have some questions about, well, is it real and is it going to work? And how do I, you it's complicated. I mean, they're, they're all the issues that we all encounter. And.

You know, you get all the various things. I can't touch it. You know, the gold guys say that or you get the, you know, and there, there, you know, there's FUD, right? There are lots of varieties of FUD, but you know, those of us who have been in Bitcoin for a while, we kind of know the answer to every type of FUD, you know, okay, it's MySpace versus Space, but well, yeah, and maybe it was in the beginning, but you know, this is so far out in front now, there's nobody's ever going to catch up with it. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah, for a quarter.

Facebook's not going to get replaced. Google's not going to get replaced. I mean, it's, you know, the network grows every, you know, Saylor says every addition to the network strengthens the network. And the network is growing very rapidly. I mean, I was at a meetup the other night. I'm not sure this guy had the right numbers, but I, you know, if it's true, it's really quite stunning. And he said that there's some site that tracks the number of wallet downloads. I don't know how to get that information, but, and, and, you know, worldwide wallet downloads is running something like a million a day.

Um, you know, right. And so, so 360, so we're down 300 million wallets are getting downloaded a year. I mean, you know, this is, this is growth and he, and he said he had the trend curve and it was, you know, a year ago was last and two years ago was last. And you know, it's just, that just kind of continues to grow every single year, every single day. And so, you know, as we all know, the hash rate grows, we all know the number of coins that aren't moving at 70%. That's growing. Yeah. I mean, it's.

And the fundamentals grow and grow. Yeah.

I mean, as long as all of these user metrics are growing, I really don't see, you know, it's like, and people say, what's going to crash? Why? You know, what, what am I missing here? Do you know what I mean? I mean, um, there's, I can't see what's, what's the catalyst for the crash? I mean, I can see though, the government throwing sand in our eyes. I mean, I can see high taxes. You got to report. I mean, there's, you know, the government's pretty good at using FUD and they will, you know, as

Yeah. How? Right. Right.

particularly as it gets to the point where they really realize what a threat it is. They might come out with some very serious FUD. For those of us who have been in it a while and are used to the drawdowns, we're going to be like, yeah, OK, so what? I ain't selling. Yeah, and it ain't dying. And in fact, gosh, this drawdown is really nice. I'm going to buy some more SADs.

Right. Cheaper stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So the logs that you mentioned a second ago, network effect. I know well we'll wrap here and then in a handful of minutes here. I know you're getting over an hour here. The log chart.

really was one of the things because I was I was similar to you. I mean, you have much more experience than I do. But after the oh, eight oh nine crash seeing I was very political and I got into Robert Kiyosaki and Mike Maloney, you know, the guy in the vest in gold and silver and I was like, you know, I could see there's a game being played both sides were in on that's what that was my window into that no way as a senior at Michigan State and leaving going to play professional hockey and I'm just I would spend all my time researching and studying and, and I realized, wow, and then you're getting into creature from Jekyll Island and

into the you know, and so learning what invisible crashes and measuring assets against each other and how to actually figure out real value of things and the long chart though. So fast forward five, six years to similar to your story, like 2017 in that, that's where Bitcoin really made sense to me over gold and silver, it was the network effects and bringing everyone together Metcalfe law and everything. That was that was huge for me. And really, instead of just seeing a linear chart of like, oh, it's just crashing up and down. It was no, there's a there's a growth to this. There's a network being built.

Yeah, well, the higher highs and higher lows, right? I mean, you could see the adoption.

That was huge to me. What was correct? Correct. Yeah. What was your, what was your like, you know, story really from transitioning from gold to Bitcoin and seeing that? Was it something similar to that? Or how did you kind of make that jump to, well, this one.

Yeah. Similar. I mean, I, you know, I kind of sensed it was a faster horse and the volatility obviously was a concern, but I, you know, I could get over that. The, um, like I said, I bought my first ones in 2013. I paid 300 and something. Um, the, my, my concern is, was always technology related. I, you know, I thought great programmatic money that can't be printed. Yeah. I'm all for that. Um, but.

You're probably not as familiar with this, but I've been a gold guy for years and years a sound money guy for 20 plus years People tried to do this before I mean there were a bunch of precursors to Bitcoin there was e gold and I'm trying to remember the names of them there were there four or five other attempts at creating Quote -unquote digital internet money and they all failed and they all failed because They couldn't prevent the double spending problem. You know the you know, the Byzantine generals problem didn't get

didn't get really solved. They had pieces of the puzzle, but not all of the pieces. And so, so I was disadvantaged that when Bitcoin came out in 2013, you know, in 2009, 1011, I thought, oh yeah, that's nice, but this is going to fail too. Right. Cause I'm just looking at, you know, people tried this, it doesn't work. Um, and so what it took for me to get more and more conviction was really spending enough time digging deep enough, meeting enough technologists.

who explained the halving and the SHA -256 and the blockchain and the elegance of it all. And it just continued to work. And if you talk to some of the core developers in 2013, even they would admit that they weren't sure that there were issues and they closed some back doors as late as 2017, 18, 19. You had the block wars. If they could have expanded the block size more, that would have potentially led to trouble. You had the forks.

You know, the hard forks and most of us all, you know, they went to zero, but I got them all and I sold what I could, what I sold. Um, you know, so, so I would say in my case, it wasn't really, and, and it was one thing to go from a couple of dollars, $10 to a hundred and a hundred to a thousand, but it was kind of bouncing around there. I think when in 17, that ripped to 17 ,000, that was like a wake up call. I was like, holy shit, this thing is explosive. You know what I mean? This, this is.

We're not kidding around here. And so now you'd had, I think at that point you'd had three or four down cycles where it'd come back. You know, whereas, and before I kind of like, well, each one of these could be the bursting of the bubble, but you know, it just kept coming back. And so I got very comfortable after the 2017 declines at 10 and then four that would buy more. And it just, my confidence in it kept growing. I mean, you know, I mean, it hasn't had.

any problems. I mean, it's worked, you know, 99 .9 % of the time. I mean, occasionally you'll have, you know, two chains that'll, you know, go alongside each other for a few, for a block or two, and then the longer one reconciles and the other one goes away. So, I mean, there've been, you know, you can't always know your, your transaction is confirmed in 10 minutes, but, but I mean, it's, it's worked, it's worked flawlessly. And so somewhere along there, and then of course seeing Sailor, who's a rocket scientist get involved in.

you know, obviously he's very technology savvy and for him to get comfortable with it, and it's, you know, you just, your confidence kind of continues to grow that the technology sounds. So for me, it was always a sound technology issue, but also, you know, adoption. I mean, you know, as adoption continued to increase, I, you know, I got more and more comfortable with it. And I think now, I mean, in some ways now, I mean, some people have said that,

It's actually a better bet now in the 60s with all the data we have behind us than it was at five or 10 when it was 2018 or something. And there were still issues that were unresolved. Or certainly versus the 13, 14, 15, I think there were a lot of unresolved issues. It was very hard for me at that time to think, I'm going to put a ton of money into this new experimental money. You know what I mean? It was hard. But some people did, and God bless them. I they did extraordinarily well.

What do you, last two things here, what the, there's, I mean, so many things that we'll do it, you know, maybe in a few months we'll do, we'll do another one. There's, I have a list of how long of things I want to get to you with, but I want to be cognizant of your time. What, so I just saw someone saying this, that the debt could hit, in their opinion, 40 trillion by the end of this year. And yeah, and I don't know who it was. I don't know if it was someone in the Bitcoin space, if it was Lavish or.

Yeah. Sure.

I don't know it's the end of this year. I think it might have been the end of next year. I think because we're adding a trillion every hundred days. So we're at 34. So that would imply that in a year we'll be at 37. Yeah, I know maybe it's not even the end of next year, but sometime next year we'll be at 40. We're running at a rate to hit 40 pretty quickly.

We so my big question to this, like a year ago, year and a half ago, maybe it's like being two years ago when I was making some content and I people really just like, oh, there's no way I was like, the dollar can lose 99 % value again from here. And we could be at 100 trillion by the end of the decade. And people are just like, Whoa, what are you talking about? And I was like, it's exponential, you know, like, how does this game play out to you at the end of the day? Like, where do we go? How does this transition off the Titanic onto the between life?

Yeah. Well, and by the way, that's the, you know, I've often said, I think this, you know, we get to hyper bitcoinization in the 2035 area, but, you know, it could come much sooner. It really could. I just don't want to predict that and be wrong. I mean, all along, I've been thinking to myself, well, I mean, look, when 2008 happened, I thought the dollar was going to die. Obviously, I was very wrong. So I don't want to over promise and under deliver. I'm pretty sure this whole thing plays out by the mid 2030s.

True. Yeah. You know, same, that's the minimums.

Probably a lot sooner because it is kind of the you know suddenly than all at once and you know I I think I don't do we talk about Silicon Valley Bank earlier. I mean, I like to use the Silicon Valley Yeah, I like to use the Silicon Valley Bank as a as a comparable. I mean Yeah, well, yeah that this morning. They just bailed that out, but I'm in the so good like in the Silicon Valley Bank case You know, they sold some bonds. It was they took a mark down some accountants did the math and said holy shit. This thing's worthless

You know what, that was one of the things that, yeah, we didn't even get to. Yeah, New York thing too, our community. Yeah. What's going on now? Yeah.

There's $20 million negative equity here, $20 billion negative equity. Six days later, the bank was gone. One of those six days, $45 billion worth of money went out the door. I mean, it was a digital bank run. This is not George Bailey and the savings alone. This was one day, 45%. So what does that mean? It means that everyone concluded, everyone who is a depositor, they are very quickly concluded, oh shit, this thing's no good. I got to get my money out of here or I'm going to...

Obviously anything you had on deposit there over and above $250 ,000 was at risk. Of course, it turns out it wasn't because they bailed it out. But so that that kind of contagion, that kind of awareness, that quickness that could apply to a reserve currency. Do you know what I mean? Now, you know, it's we're a long ways away from that, I think. But, you know, what happens? I mean, you know, here's the scenario. What happens when the U .S. 10 year?

trades at six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Okay. Because people aren't trusting it and they're dumping it. Okay. And, um, and the dollar is going down and people, um, you know, the, the fed says, well, this is a real problem because, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna have to pay more interest on all our bonds and deficits are gonna blow out. And so the fed says, okay, we're coming back in with QE and yield curve control, and the amount's going to be unlimited.

And, you know, in the first couple of months, it's a big number. You know, it's trillions and trillions. And the Fed balance sheet, you know, which is now in the sevens, I think it went to size nine, it's come back down. You know, the Fed balance sheet goes to 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18. You know, and suddenly, you know, what'll happen is, Brandon, what I think will happen is that awareness will be spreading of what's happening here. It's like, oh my God, they have lost control of this monetary system. They cannot.

There is a quote unquote, soft run on the dollar. People don't want to hold dollar denominated bonds. People don't want to hold dollars. People are buying things that are an alternative. By the way, when all this is going on, bitcoins call it from 200 to 600 quickly. And gold is at three or four thousand. So you've got those signals. So those of us who are in the know and people who are aware of monetary economics and how it all works are like, holy shit.

This currency is failing. You know, I've seen this movie before. I've seen it in Zimbabwe. I've seen it in Venezuela. I've seen it in Weimar, Germany. And then what happens is you get into a, you know, the panic, panicking first is the right thing to do. He who panics first panics best. And by panic, I mean, you sell the dollar and you buy something that can't be printed. Right. And of course that just makes it worse. And, you know, I'm very much like Silicon Valley. You know, everybody in the brothers says, get me the hell out of this thing right now.

Yes.

And so Bitcoin goes to a million, you know, and of course, a lot of people are afraid to buy it. Like, how the hell can I pay a million for it? Well, guess what? It's going to go to infinity in dollar terms because the dollar is going to go to zero. So, you know, I'm not predicting this. I'm not saying that's what will happen. I have no idea the timeframe and I'm not trying to be a doomsday. I'm just describing the pattern that has happened when other currencies fail. Now we've never had, well, other than

Rome, which, you know, the debates, the Daenerys over a couple hundred years to zero, but, you know, in general, reserve currencies don't fail. I mean, this is the U S dollar. We're talking about the world's reserve currency. I say that in general, but there's a first for everything. And, you know, it's, it's to my way of seeing it, it's not out of the realm of possibility. You know, it definitely falls into the, it could happen. Can't. And if it does happen,

You know, you're going to be really glad that you had saving. By the way, stocks will go up a lot too. Because on the other side, the stocks will be priced whatever the new currency is. The loser, the sucker at the table, as Luke Grimlin likes to say, is the bond market. Right? I mean, the bond market is just going to get wiped out. It's just totally wiped out. I mean, this is why, you know, this is what Saylor is doing. Saylor is doing the Hugo Stennis trade, right? Which is to say, you know, he's borrowing, you know, he's borrowing and he's using, you know, in dollars.

So he owes people back dollars and he's using those dollars to buy Bitcoin and the Bitcoin will go up in price and the dollars will go down in value. He'll pay them back in worthless dollars at some point in the future. And this is how, in my opinion, he'll end up being the richest man in the world in five or 10 years. So.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I know we got to run here in a minute. That to me is the bond thing. You just touched on something again, and we can we can touch on this more in the future. But the bond thing to me in general government, like federal bonds, not maybe municipal media, but the government bond market to me just seems immoral. You're guaranteeing yourself slavery into the future. I don't understand that at all. And I like you can't

Right.

me otherwise. I think you're guaranteeing you and your kids are in slavery in the future to pay taxes to the government. That's beyond me. It's be and I wanted to get your takeaway from Madeira also, by the way, before we run to what your thought was what you what your big takeaway from Madeira. So those two things.

Yeah. So, well, you're right about the government bond market and, you know, they've got a lot of people that, you know, are kind of brainwashed and a lot of large organizations have to buy bonds. The banks have to buy bonds and who knows for all we know, the Federal Reserve is covertly buying bonds. I mean, you know, they will do anything they can to keep the system alive. We know that we discussed that. My takeaway from Adira was it was fabulous. It was just a great conference. One of the best. It was pure Bitcoin. You know, no, I mean, the Bitcoin conference in Nashville.

You know, it used to be Miami. I always have trouble with that because it's, you know, it's in order to make money. They led a lot of the shit coiners there and come in and listen. I mean, to me, Bitcoin and the shit coins are two different things. They shouldn't be in the same conference. So it was pure Bitcoin. There were some great attendees. It was really, it was just an incredible vibe. And, you know, I don't see how, I mean, I think it's worth taking the time. There's certain speeches you really can listen to if you Google Bitcoin on YouTube, Bitcoin Atlantis.

Yeah, you never know. Yeah.

The first day, the sailor speech at two in the afternoon was good. There's a panel that I did that was at five. It's the eight hour mark on the video. You know, Jeff, Jeff Booth speeches on a speech on Saturday was incredibly good. You know, there were others with Lin Alden and so forth. So yeah, it was a, it was a great conference. And, you know, I think that, you know, it's, if you're into Bitcoin and you can afford to go to these conferences, I mean, they're really great.

Yes.

a very human scale and you can really, you can meet all these people. I you know, it's, I saw a sailor at one of the parties. He's just talking to plebes. You know what I mean? I mean, it's like for hours, you know what I mean? I mean, it's just, I mean, there's no, there's no ego. The, the, you know, all Bitcoiners treat other Bitcoiners with humbleness and respect. And so it's, it's really, it's a fun experience. I mean, the other one I speak very highly of is the Pacific Bitcoin out in Santa Monica. I think it's in October.

that's thrown by Swan and Corey. Same thing, you know, pure Bitcoin signal, great people that are there, very much worth taking the time to go to. And a lot of other good ones too. I mean, I'm going to be going to the halving party in El Salvador in about a month, which should be fun. I'm going to go to Bitcoin Canada in late May, and I might be going, I'm 100 % sure, but I might be going to BTC Prague in June. So.

But, and that's it. I mean, there are 10 other ones that, you I'd like to go to. You can't do them all. There's Bitblock Boom, there's Unconfiscated, and there are a gazillion of them. My partner's at one right now out in Jackson Hole. That's a, you know, kind of a big Bitcoin feature, you know, related to the mining business. But, you know, you can't do everything, right? And, but they're good. They're good for networking. They're good for getting information. And, you know, they're good because they give you a sense of what this community is about, who the people are. And it's really...

Yes. See you soon. Yep.

It's a great bunch of people. They really are great people.

really is. And community is the number one thing in our survival situation, right? Having community around you. So that's, that's where it's at. It is. Appreciate you, Larry. Thank you so much. Where can, where can everyone find you?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, no, it's wealth. So, yeah.

Oh, yeah. So I'm on Twitter under my name, Lawrence Labard. I make a lot of noise. I hate the central banks during the year. Right? We know that, but they've caused a lot of pain. I think they deserve to be hated. So I don't feel I don't apologize for it. Oh, I know what that I make a lot of noise. Yeah. EMA to Edward Mark Alpha letters EMA to .com is my website talks about the funds we manage.

There's a, we do a quarterly macro letter that's free. You can sign up for it. We will never spam you. And that's, I think some people find that interesting if they want to every quarter get an update on how we see the world and how we see the sound money thesis unfolding. You can find it there. There's a lot of gold stuff there too. As you know, I came from the gold war still in the gold world, but transitioning away from it as time goes by. You know, I think, and you know, I don't, in nominal terms, gold will never go down.

And gold is going to, it's going to protect you very well in this particular crash that I see coming. But having said that, I think Bitcoin is actually a better protection. So I, of the two, I mean, Bitcoin really is the fastest horse. And so I, you know, I tend to recommend that, you know, I mean, if you can't stand the volatility and gold is a great sound money choice, I recommend that everybody have some Bitcoin and you know, you, you weight it such that you can stand the volatility. I mean, think the worst thing that can happen in Bitcoin, I've seen it happen to.

People price chase it, they buy it at the top. I know some people bought it at 68 last time around. And then it went to 15 and they felt like shit. And some of them sold it, right? And those of us who were in it know that that was the wrong move. But if you don't really understand what you're buying and why you're buying it, that can happen to you. So, you know, I think anytime you buy Bitcoin, you have to mentally steal yourself and realize, you know, in terms of what percentage of your net worth it is, this could go down 50%. And I don't care, you know, because in five years it'll be much higher.

So, but it could in the interim, it could go down 50%. And that, you know, you gotta be prepared for that. And so as we orange pill people, I think it's important to point that out. Excuse me. So, yeah, thank you. It's always fun. Hopefully we'll see you soon at one of these shows. I'm thinking Canada, right? Possibly.

Thank you. Thank you, Larry. Thank you so much for your time. Always. Yes. Yeah, probably. Yeah. And a month or two in Canada. Yes. So looking forward to it, brother. You know, workout in we're going to work.

Sounds great. Keep doing the work. Keep doing the work. I love it. Keep doing the pods, all of it. Anytime you want me back, I'm happy to do it.

Same brother, same. Love it. Let's do it.

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