The system is definitely broken. We're kind of entering a suddenly stage. They have to continue
to print money and grow the money supply at a fast enough rate to keep the credit structure
from collapsing. We are in an inflationary world. That means to me is at the margin right now,
I'm selling gold and buying Bitcoin. And Bitcoin will, on this next run, go to, you know, 150,
200, 250 sometime within the next year. So we've never really had a financial asset like that
before. So a higher price does not change the supply. Savers who are saving in the wrong
currency just get totally wiped out. You know, prices get incredibly high. You know, everyone
lives kind of hand to mouth. I mean, there's going to be an enormous, enormous wealth transfer here.
Five or 10 years, you know, you're going to know who owns sound money and who did not. So if we
think of fiat as being kind of a Titanic and it's sinking, do you want to own a seat or don't you?
What do you think could get in the way of Bitcoin succeeding?
Welcome back to Get A Bitcoin.
I'm your host, Sean.
Joining us today is my dear friend, Lawrence Lepard,
author of the amazing number one bestselling book, The Big Print.
Lawrence is a sound money advocate, investment manager,
anti-federalist, and just an all-round good guy.
Larry, welcome back to the show.
How are you?
It's great to be back.
with you. You're one of my favorite podcasters. And as you, we've really built up this friendship
from afar. I mean, you're on the other side of the world, but it's wonderful what this technology
allows. I'm not sure it's really a bestseller. You know, the sales have been great. We sold
40,000 plus books coming up on 45, but I don't think that makes it a bestseller. But it's,
in the Bitcoin community, it's been well-received. And hopefully it's the, you know, I designed it as
a tool to help people. And I've heard stories that it is doing that in some cases, and that's
very satisfying we're talking just before we hit record and this book's had such a special place
place in my life um i've said the the story on the channel a couple of times but my wife you know
i've been in bitcoin for six years and i'm a voracious reader and every book of bitcoin that
i've read i'd like answer i'm like sweetie darling you've got to read this and she'll like
open a little bit and she's like no i'm not interested or she'll just like blatantly like
I'm not reading that book.
Five years later, after getting in and trying to give her every book,
we're going on a road trip and I blackmailed her
into listening to the audio book read by Walker.
And I just said, blatantly, I'm not going if you don't listen to it.
And she's like, all right.
Like, eventually, yes.
And so we started going down there, listening to it on the trip down
to Bellagio, New South Wales, and we were coming back up.
And at the last, there's three hours remaining, like a couple of minutes.
And she just starts crying.
And I'm like, pull over, car and caravan, stop on the side of the road.
Sweetie, darling, what's wrong?
And she's like, I didn't get it.
I thought you were crazy.
I thought this was just like magic internet money.
And it was like some get rich quick or something.
Like, I thought you were a bit crazy.
She's like, you saved me.
You saved our family.
Like, thank you so much.
And I'm like, thanks to Larry so much.
And she's like, where was this book four years ago?
I'm like, I tried to give you every other book, but she's like, where was this book four years ago?
I'm like, you've read it now and you get it.
And then I was talking to her last night and she just said to say, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Hearing stories like that just really, that's very, very satisfying because that's why I wrote it.
You know, I just feel like a lot of people are going to get hurt in this monetary event.
And I felt like I was in a position to explain it in a way that people would understand.
And, you know, it's not a lot of original thought in there.
I leaned on safe and Lynn and a lot of other great, you know, Bitcoin people.
But maybe what I brought to it, I think, was a way of telling it in a sense that anyone could understand.
And I it's interesting you mentioned that about your wife.
I did the same thing with my wife.
In fact, she inspired one of the chapters, the chapter on skepticism.
And and I said, you know, you've got to read this because and I want to make sure you understand it because you're my target audience.
I want somebody who doesn't know anything about Austrian economics or monetary issues or anything to understand.
It was pretty funny. One of the first things she said, I didn't get very far into it.
She read a couple of chapters. She says, what's the Federal Reserve?
I was kind of like, you know, well, yeah, right.
I mean, you know, there are a lot of average citizens who don't know what the Federal Reserve even is.
And so I thought, well, I got to describe that. Right.
So so I tried to write it from a first principles, easy to understand basis.
but I also try to put enough information in there to really support the case.
I mean, it's not a lightweight book.
It's got the data to support it.
So, yeah, thank you.
Tell your wife I love her, and I really appreciate the support.
I've heard other stories like that.
It's very satisfying as an author to hear that kind of stuff.
Even if I don't sell a ton of books,
as long as it makes a difference for some people, that's great.
The book only came out at the start of the year,
and you're kind enough to send me the manuscript,
and I got it New Year's Eve here in Australia.
I started reading on New Year's Day and I couldn't put it down as I printed it like so tiny.
So I was like holding these papers like this for two and a half days.
But by the 3rd of January, I'd finished the book and I was just like, oh, wow, this is amazing.
And then it came out shortly after.
And since I've handed out more of this book, The Big Print, than any other Bitcoin book.
And I'm a reader and I like giving people books.
So it's just amazing.
But for everyone, it's literally the best book on Bitcoin's orange pill someone.
It's in the description by a heap of copies, hand them out.
And one thing I've been saying to people, I'm like, if you read it front to back cover, I'll shut up about Bitcoin.
If you're like, Bitcoin's not for me.
Once you've read it, that's cool.
At least you know enough to be able to say, no, I'm not interested or whatever.
And I've had quite a couple of people, not a lot of people be not interested.
but there was one guy, Jeff Wilson from Wilson Asset Management,
big asset management firm here in Australia.
And he read it or listened to it and he's like, I get it.
I understand and stuff.
He's like a little bit older.
It's just not for me.
I'm like, cool, that's okay.
I don't need to keep going over and over and rehashing the same thing.
But if someone's just like not interested in Bitcoin, I'm like, based on what?
Like, have you read any of the books?
and they're like, nah, I've watched TV or anything like that.
So flipping the conversation to Bitcoin
and why we're talking about Bitcoin
and why you wrote a book on Bitcoin,
we see gold at all-time highs, about $4,110 this morning.
Silver is at all-time highs.
Yeah, it looks like silver is just going crazy.
There's this huge big wick up.
So I'd like you to talk about that.
And Bitcoin, you know, it's just come down from the all-time highs,
but it's still at about $115,000 over the weekend
at time of recording, we saw the biggest liquidation in crypto Bitcoin history.
It feels like the system's broken, Lawrence, in every area.
What's going on?
Yeah, well, the system is definitely broken.
And I think what we're observing is the move from, you know, they say how you go bankrupt,
you know, gradually and then suddenly.
I mean, I think we've had the gradually stage for a number of years now.
I think we're kind of entering this suddenly stage.
and you know gold is more widely distributed more widely known bitcoin's still emerging and so
you know it tends to smell out monetary debasement first and move first you know the the gold move
this year has really been unprecedented you know up 70 80 percent and uh you know that's just there
are only a couple years in history where it's ever moved that much and they've indicated serious
monetary distress um and of course silver same story and and actually silver for some time was
dormant and now it's caught up and it's moving even more than gold percentage wise. And that's
the typical pattern in these bull markets for precious metals. Gold starts and then silver
follows even harder. And, you know, it's really just symptomatic, I think, as we were talking
about before we started recording, that more and more people are becoming aware of what the book
describes, which is that the fiscal situation for the U.S. government is very bad. They have to
continue to print money and grow the money supply at a fast enough rate to keep the credit
structure from collapsing and that that means implicitly that we are in an inflationary world.
And, you know, at the end of the day, when push comes to shove for the U.S. federal government,
you know, they will print in order to prevent a deflationary collapse. And, you know, I named it
the big print. Interestingly, there have been two big prints before this. The first one was 08
and the second one was COVID 2020.
And I think this one, I think the next one is coming.
We're kind of slightly easing into it.
Gold would indicate it's pretty close, pretty nearby.
And my sense is it'll be even bigger than the last two.
You know, I mean, and the recent indications of that,
I mean, a data point that just popped up that, you know,
I don't think anyone would have expected is that, you know,
Treasury Secretary Scott Pesant just agreed to bail out Argentina,
you know, with $20 billion, $20 billion that we don't really have.
But guess what? We can print it and give it to them on a swap line to try and stabilize their economy and hopefully get their currency to be stable. And we're doing that for geopolitical reasons because we'd rather have them be in our fold rather than let China, you know, be in China's fold.
So, you know, that's just one symptom or one example of how we're creeping toward that big print. Another example is that the Treasury has been selling short-term Treasury bills, short-term paper, but they've been turning around and using that to buy long-term paper, 10-year, 20-year, 30-year bonds. And that's to try and prevent those long rates from going higher, you know, because they know that if the rates go higher, you know, that's going to lead to higher interest expense, bigger deficit, and the debt doom loop that we've described many times.
you know, in podcasts and on Twitter. So I think it's just a recognition of the fact that there's
no way out of this that doesn't involve serious inflation. And I think that most of the world
knows that the best performing asset historically, the best performing asset in inflation has been
gold. And that's because we haven't really had a very serious bout of inflation since the 1970s.
But when 2008 occurred, that's when I got radicalized for sound money and realized that
the wealth I had earned was going to get debased severely because of what Bernanke was doing with
QE and expanding the Fed balance sheet. And so the first thing I did is, okay, well, if we're
going to have inflation, how does one protect what's on the side? I went and I looked at historically,
what are the best things to do in an inflationary environment? Well, the last real big inflationary
environment, I was a teenager, it was the seventies. And there was a lot of inflation during the seventies,
double digit for many, many years. And gold went from $35 to $800 and gold stocks did extremely
well. And the two best performing assets in that decade were gold stocks and oil and gas stocks,
both commodity related things that could not be printed. And so at that point in time, I realized
that I basically wanted to pivot and start investing my capital in things that would be
protected or would protect me from the inflation that I saw as inevitable now. That was 08. So that
was 15 years ago now. And there've been some ups and downs. It took some time and my general thesis
was right, but it didn't happen nearly as quickly as I thought it would. And so I was wrong on timing.
But it now appears that we're pretty deeply into it. And, you know, I mean, people who invest in my
fund always ask, well, what could go wrong, which is a very intelligent question. And I often think,
you know, what could go wrong? And, you know, what could go wrong with the theme of the book
and with the trade that I've made, and I have a lot of gold and a lot of silver and a lot of Bitcoin,
is if the government got fiscally responsible, incredibly fiscally responsible. And I say that,
And of course, most people laugh because we all know that given the way things are right now, that's not terribly likely.
But, you know, unterribly likely things do happen.
And eventually at some point that could happen.
And when that happens, you know, these won't be such a good investment.
When and if that happens, these won't be such a good investment.
But until I see signs that they're going to means test Social Security, cut Social Security, cut defense spending, et cetera, you know, I'm very confident we live in an inflationary world.
and therefore I want to own forms of money that can't be printed by the government because I think
the government's going to print a lot of money. So that's how we got to where we are in my view.
Do you think it's like even if they decided to be fiscally responsible, is it even mathematically
possible where we are now with the state of dead in the world? That's a really great question. I
mean there's an argument that it's not even mathematically possible because if they got
fiscally responsible, then all the money they're spending would not go into the economy. The
economy would collapse. The debt couldn't be repaid. It'd get incredibly deflationary. Then
they'd have to plant money. I mean, you make a very good point, which is that we may be so close
to the brink that they can't bring it back. And I don't dispute that. I mean, the book talks about
the solution to this problem. There are several possible endpoints here. One of them is hyper
inflation. That's not my base case. It's a tail case, but it's out there as a possibility.
I think a more likely event is that inflation will get worse for a number of years and people will be screaming about it.
And eventually we will elect sound money politicians who will do a one time deval reset, similar to what Roosevelt did in the 30s.
And so, you know, at that point in time, hopefully we return to a sound money standard.
I'd like to see it be a Bitcoin standard, but gold would be better than what we've got right now.
And maybe it could be some hybrid of gold and Bitcoin as the monetary standard.
And, you know, the inflation will stop.
I mean, just like that. And if you study hyperinflations in other countries in the world, they're incredibly painful events.
But interestingly enough, when they're over, if the country then returns to sound money, things get healed relatively quickly and the economy rebuilds.
I mean, people people want to work up every wake up every morning, go to work, support their families, live normal lives.
And, you know, if the money is broken, that's hard. The money is sound. You know, you can do it.
And so it's just as simple as realizing the problem here is that fiat money is a really broken thing, kind of reaching the end of its natural lifespan. And we need to move away from that. We need to move back to sound money if we want to enjoy the benefits that, you know, we enjoyed when we were on a sound money standard.
I mean, you know, throughout the early 1900s and all the way up until, you know, 71, things weren't perfect, but they were better than they are now inflation wise.
Yeah, that's that's kind of the, you know, the where I think we're going.
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Could not recommend them enough I used them personally before I ever partnered with them for the channel friends and family They asked me to help them out I like go to the world experts That is the Bitcoin way So reach out to the Bitcoin way today One thing on that like in my own life and I dare
say yours as well, from saving in Bitcoin like every two weeks for the last five and a half years,
I can see that my purchasing power is getting greater and stuff. And I just feel safer saving
and that infinite scarce hard money, which is Bitcoin.
You know, if there wasn't Bitcoin, I'd probably be saving gold.
And I say all this because I feel like I'm safe within my life
and I think you are as well.
And that's why a lot of Bitcoiners buy what we do,
just buy a stack and chill and just get as much in self-custody.
Do we really need the state to reset onto a sound money standard
or could we just all be on a sound money standard
for things to get better if it was to get really bad?
Everyone just opts out.
That's a great question.
I mean, in theory, we could do it,
but as long as they're telling us that fiat money is legal tender.
I mean, what you're describing is if we don't have a reset,
what eventually will happen is fiat money will trend towards its intrinsic value,
which is zero.
But that's also hyperinflation.
And that's, you know, if you look at historically when that occurs, I mean, that's not pretty.
Societally, that's a very, very difficult thing.
You know, savers who are saving in the wrong currency just get totally wiped out.
You know, prices get incredibly high.
You know, everyone lives kind of hand to mouth.
I mean, and it's interesting because, you know, Americans and to a degree Brits and Aussies aren't so familiar with this because we've generally speaking have had responsible monetary authorities last couple hundred years.
The people who get this the best, interestingly enough, are South Americans or Africans or people in the Middle East or, you know, Turkey.
I mean, countries that have crappy currencies and have had hyperinflations or very, very high inflation.
These people are much more aware of the risk, you know, that one day you can think you're worth a lot of money, but your money can get enormously devalued very quickly.
I mean, interestingly enough, even Argentina, which we're bailing out, you know, they just, I mean, the Argentinian peso just lost like 30 or 40% of its value in six months.
You know, yeah.
So, I mean, imagine that.
Of course, that's not that unusual.
That happened to us in COVID, right?
That's right.
Yeah, I mean.
Same here in Australia.
Yeah, I mean, you know, my grocery bill went up more than 40% after COVID, you know.
And it's interesting that that kind of tracks very nicely with the amount that the money supply grew.
You know, and so and that's, you know, that's for a fiat system.
That's not a bug.
That's a feature.
That's the way it works.
And, you know, just because Powell came in, put rates up, they stopped the money supply
growth briefly.
You know, M2 is now growing again.
It's now actually at a record high.
And, you know, there will be stresses in the system that will cause them to ramp up the
printing as we go forward.
The book talks about what those stresses are.
And, you know, we can see some of them.
I mean, let's talk a little bit of what's going on, you know, in the U.S. macro picture right now.
I mean, you know, President Trump gets elected and he intelligently realizes that the deficit's a problem.
Good call. He creates the Department of Government Efficiency. Good call.
He puts Vivek and Elon in charge of it. Arguably a good call.
You know, Elon says he can cut two trillion. Well, that was a little unrealistic.
And he said he could cut one trillion. Well, that's a little unrealistic, too.
they get in there and they find some really stupid programs and they do cut those okay and
so i don't know there are a lot of debates about how much doge and what the department of government
efficiency named doge has actually cut in terms of the u.s federal deficit and that's you know
arguably it's 50 billion to 150 billion on a deficit of 1.8 okay well that's a positive but
of course trump has a falling out with elon vivek goes to run for governor of ohio and you know doge
kind of more or less fails. It fails at balancing the budget anyway. Then he pushes through the
tariffs, which have created additional tariff income. And that's a positive thing, adding
probably $200 of revenue to the federal, you know, accounts. But then at the same point in time,
you know, they go out and they pass the big, beautiful bill, which is a spending bill
that arguably is going to increase spending between, you know, three and five billion,
or $3 and $5 trillion over 10 years.
So that's $300 to $500 billion per year.
So $200, you know, you save,
let's say you save $100 from Doge.
Let's say you save $200
because you've got higher tariff income.
Then you turn around
and your big, beautiful bill spent the $300.
So in reality,
you're just not making any progress on the deficit.
And the deficit this year just came in at $1.8 trillion.
It would have been higher than that,
but they actually had changed
some of the accounting rules.
And if they'd left them the way they had been,
it would have been $2.1.
But isn't it amazing?
they figured out a way to make it come in flat.
It's like inflation and CPI numbers.
Or the employment numbers.
I mean, right?
I mean, the government statistics are phony as the day is long, as we all know.
So they really have not been able to balance the budget.
And this is in a economy where the stock market has held up and employment's been okay,
although it seems to be a bit soft.
And as we know, if we have a downturn, your point is, if they really try to bring through
austerity, you know, well, that's going to lead to a big economic slowdown.
Last two slowdowns, but, you know, we're running a 7% of GDP budget deficit, which is high.
And in the last two slowdowns, it grew by, you know, that amount or more in one of them,
almost that amount in the other.
So, you know, the problem is when you're, you know, we're like this family that's got,
you know, a lot of credit card debt and we're taking out new cards to make the minimum payments
on the old cards.
And, you know, the really, I mean, the solution for that family generally would be to go bankrupt, you know, or to reach an agreement with their creditors and say, well, I can't pay all that.
I'll pay back 30 cents on the dollar and that's better than nothing.
And, but we can't do that or we haven't done that.
And so, you know, off we go further and further.
And this is why as more and more people come to see it, they're selecting things.
They know, they can see the trap the government has put itself in.
and they know that the apologists will not adopt the painful solution of austerity.
And so they understand that we will print somehow, somewhere.
And so they're front running.
That's what gold is doing.
And what's interesting to me is that we see a period right now
that really reminds me very much of 2019, 2018, 2019, 2020,
where, and I know some of the Bitcoiners are kind of frustrated.
They're like, hang on a second, gold's really doing great.
And silver is too.
Where's ours?
Well, first thing I would say is, remember,
Bitcoin is still up, you know, 80, 90 percent year over year, which is pretty damn good.
And two, gold typically moves first and Bitcoin follows.
You know, I fully expect that, you know, right now the gold Bitcoin ratio is kind of up against this lower trend line.
And what that means to me is that the margin right now I'm selling gold and buying Bitcoin because I think Bitcoin is about to move next and catch up quickly.
And historically, Bitcoin, as we know, has outperformed gold massively.
And so, you know, in my view, you know, Bitcoin will on this next run go to, you know, 150, 200, 250, you know, sometime within the next year.
And by the way, I think during that time frame, gold will probably go 4,500 or 5,000.
On a percentage basis, I mean, if Bitcoin goes to 250, you know, that's up 100% in the next year.
And I don't think gold is going to double in the next year.
I don't think it's going from four to eight.
I ultimately think both of these things will be much, much higher in fiat terms.
I mean, it's a funny problem, Sean.
I mean, you know, we talk about this and I say, you know, because I know, I believe Bitcoin's going to a million bucks and gold's probably going north of 10,000.
And that's, you know, that's the good news for those of us who invest in them.
But the thing I caution is that, yeah, OK, fine.
But that will be with a lot of inflation.
So, you know, what would, as I call it, gasoline, as you call it, petrol?
I mean, what will that cost?
You know, what will beef cost?
I mean, if you've got a million dollar Bitcoin, fine.
But remember, the cost of everything you have to purchase is going to be higher, too, because there's going to be a lot of inflation to get there.
So, you know, but all we can really do, and as you said, you know, you feel very comfortable.
I think one of the great things about being a Bitcoiner, about understanding this, and I watched my father retire with a fixed amount of money and watch it dwindle away as inflation ate at it and he got older, is that you actually kind of feel like you're, you know, you're not losing the rat race.
I mean, if you save in this money, you know that over time you will get richer and it will protect you.
And those are legitimate savings that you can rely on in your later years.
And just knowing that is an enormous sense of comfort to me.
Like most human beings, one of your great fears, particularly as you age and you have less ability to earn money, is that you're going to run out of money.
You know, it's a bummer.
100%.
You don't want to run out of money.
And if you've got a form of money that's keeping pace with inflation or even beating inflation, as Bitcoin really is.
I mean, I think gold is designed and has historically kept pace with inflation.
You put your money in gold, you're not going to lose money compared to inflation.
Bitcoin is going to outstrip inflation because you've still got the adoption curve going on.
You know, it's gold that everyone doesn't understand yet.
And, you know, I read this morning that still only about four and a half percent of the world owns some Bitcoin or gets it.
So we've got a long way to go.
I mean, this is the Jesse Myers chart where there's 900 trillion of assets out there.
And Bitcoin is worth 2 trillion or 2.1 trillion, something like that.
So that's two-tenths of 1%.
And yet it's, you know, the best performing financial asset of the last 16 years.
And it's the hardest financial asset on a stock to flow basis.
It's harder than gold.
And every four years it gets harder still.
So the combination of that and the fact that this adoption curve is going to keep going
and in 10 years, half the country is going to own Bitcoin.
You know, there's no place for this price to go except for up.
And that's another point that I would try to make is that Bitcoin was the invention.
It was an invention of digital scarcity.
I think the important thing to understand about that is that, and it's a commodity,
one Bitcoin is the same as another.
So the important thing to understand on this is that every other commodity in the world,
if the price goes up, we make more of it.
You know, if oil goes skyrocketing, we'll drill for more oil.
Wheat, we'll plant more wheat.
You know, anything out there, gold, we'll mine more gold.
It takes time, but we'll mine more gold.
Algorithmically, the amount, the supply of Bitcoin is fixed.
And so we've never really had a financial asset like that before.
So a higher price does not change the supply.
And I don't think most people have gotten their head around that.
Once you get your head around that, you realize that no matter what price you pay, it's not too high.
And I know you've handed out the book.
Yeah, yeah, at the time, right.
I mean, you've got to wait.
But, I mean, I've handed out the book to many people.
I've had many friends come to me and they say, hey, I get it.
I'm happy for you.
You bought it cheaper.
You've made some money.
That's all good.
I say, yeah, I'm not selling.
And they say, well, you know, I can't buy it now.
It's too expensive.
And I said, well, yeah, but in five years when it's a million, aren't you going to wish you bought it at, you know, 112?
And they're kind of like, well, yeah, but I don't know if it's going to a million.
I try to explain to them why I think it is.
And, you know, a model I've used, I've talked about a lot, I think it's a useful model is, you know, fiat in my book is failing.
And that failure is becoming more obvious, accelerating.
rating so if we think of fiat as being kind of the titanic and it's sinking and then we we think
of gold and silver as being lifeboats that you know that won't sink because they're sound you
know yeah i bought some lifeboat seats a lot cheaper three or four years ago and i'm sure
look i when i bought mine i wish i was max buying his at two dollars a coin right but
whatever but i bought them because i believed you know i understood what it was you know now that now
the seat to you is more expensive, but you're on the Titanic. Do you want to own a seat or don't
you? You know? And, and so I try to get all the people I talk to and say, look, I, you know,
okay. You think it's magic internet money. You're worried about security. You're worried about
hacking, you know, all the various things, quantum computing, all the fun. Fine. I'm not suggesting
you take a hundred percent of your net worth and put it in this, but to have zero, you're really
missing a very, very asymmetric bet because I'm, I'm highly confident. This thing will go up 10X
within a kind of a six-year window and another 10x after that in the next in the following 10 years so
you know that would make it you know that would make it 10 million dollars a coin so and and then
finally the last piece is i try to explain you don't have to buy a whole coin a lot of people
don't get that i have a lot of people say well i don't have 112 000 i know you don't that doesn't
matter you know i mean i have i have friends i know i know my kids i mean they dca 50 bucks a
week you know i mean you can buy it you know you buy any amount of it in small amounts and just do
it consistently and five years from now i think you'll be your future five year out self will thank
your current self that you did it so one thing that i've been saying to people like directly in
regard to that point i'm like the way that i'm thinking about it because i also believe that
one bitcoin will be about a million dollars in the next five years give or take whatever but
roughly in that time frame and then the five to ten years preceding that about ten million dollars
as well us and so i say like work out what your weekly expenses are maybe it's a thousand dollars
a week to be able to live maybe it's two thousand dollars a week to be able to live comfortably
i'm like for every hundred dollars you're saving now today that that's a thousand dollars in in
five years so if it's a thousand dollars for one week to be able to live it's costing you a hundred
dollars today to buy back a week of your life in five years time and they're like oh yeah i'm like
if you extrapolate that out to when Bitcoin's at $10 million,
that $100 is $10,000.
Obviously, the purchasing power and stuff like that,
maybe it's only half that amount or whatever,
but you can just buy a little bit.
There'll definitely bend some inflation,
but you will beat it by a lot, yeah.
For sure.
And then just getting them into that mindset,
you can just buy a little bit,
and it's just about buying like a week of your future back in time,
and that's really what I see money as.
Going back a little bit,
you said bitcoin adoptions are um for 4.5 that's actually a little bit surprising maybe a little
bit higher than what i think because four to five people out of every hundred that i talk to
don't hold bitcoin and i talk to a lot of people trying to get them to read the book
but i believe that's three and a half percent of um people in a movement is needed for a revolution
So it seems like we're over that tipping scale and then Bitcoin's also over a $2 trillion market cap as well.
I don't know if we've ever seen a $2 trillion anything really fail now.
And then even like with the biggest liquidations over the weekend, $19 billion or whatever, it's just starting to bounce back up.
What do you think could get in the way of Bitcoin succeeding?
Like lately over the last year, we don't need to go into the details, but there's been like the node wars, Notts vs. Core, etc.
But is there any like foreseeable risk you can see to Bitcoin as a money or a network?
No, I really don't.
I mean, yeah, Notts vs. Core is annoying.
I don't think it's an existential threat because it's really not a protocol change.
It's more something on the sides.
It's annoying, though, because it could balloon the size of the blockchain and it would be harder to run a node.
I mean, also, it's annoying because of the way that core developers have behaved.
I think some of them have behaved in a very immature fashion, which, you know, is not befitting of what Bitcoin really is.
But setting that aside, and that's, you know, when I asked Michael Saylor once, what's your major concern about this thing?
He said, well, I just hope core doesn't go rogue and do stupid shit.
But even if they do do stupid shit, everybody gets to vote on it.
And so, you know, if they do something really stupid, I don't think most people will go in that direction.
You know, I guess the thing I could see that I keep my eye on, I do think it's relevant, is as you recall, before Trump was elected, the blue administration here was not very friendly to Bitcoin or crypto in general.
That's probably not.
Right.
You know, politics are politics.
And so in 28, there'll be another election for president.
And Trump can't run, but J.D. Vance probably will.
I don't know what will be going on.
There might be very high inflation.
There'll be all kinds of trouble in the country.
And, you know, the Democrats might cook up some cock and bull story where it's like, OK, you know, we're going to give you all stimulus.
And you know this inflation is a factor of this existing you know administration And we can fix it even though they can And you know they going to tell a bunch of lies and people are going to be hurting you know with high inflation
And for all we know at the margin, they're going to win.
And I'm not saying that's going to happen.
I'm just saying it's a possibility.
And then, you know, if they get in there, they're going to, you know, they're going to probably take a much more hostile view towards this.
I think, you know, we had a pretty good Keynesian model here going and we liked the way things were.
And this gold and Bitcoin stuff, it's really messing us up.
We need to either tax it or confiscate it or, you know, regulate it or, you know, make, I mean, and I mean, they've already talked about trying to pass some rules where you make it illegal to self custody and stuff, which is just outrageous.
Crazy.
And so, so those, you know, I feel like we've got three years of real open running space where that kind of administration in the U.S. is not likely to occur.
But, you know, this is why people ask me about the ETS versus self custody.
I mean, I think by that time, we'll see.
We'll see who's going to win.
You know, for all we know, Trump will have done a reset by then.
I mean, Besant has talked about the need for a monetary reset
akin to what they did at Bretton Woods in 1944.
But if the reset has not happened and red team looks like they might lose
and blue team is coming in, and, you know,
blue team was talking about taxing unrealized capital gains.
I mean, unfortunately.
I want to talk about that because that's a big topic in Australia.
Is it?
Yeah, I mean, now fortunately, you know, the beautiful thing about self-custody Bitcoin is that, you know, I mean, if you view the law as being unfair and, you know, you're willing to break it, you know, you can tell the government to go pound sand.
I mean, how much Bitcoin do I have?
I'm not telling you.
You know, pay taxes on it?
I'm not telling you.
They can't get at it.
If you've got your words, you know, short of torturing those words out of you, they can't get you.
But, boy, they could make life really unpleasant for you, I would imagine.
And, you know, and I mean, there's even a scenario where I would imagine Bitcoiners, U.S. Bitcoiners might say, hey, you know what?
I don't need to live here anymore.
Bitcoin was designed for that.
You know, you move to El Salvador, you take your keys, you got your money, you live happily ever after.
So, you know, I think that's a I think that's a legitimate risk.
I mean, if you want to hear my model, I was just at a thing called Camp Nakamoto this week and we're all sitting around the campfire kind of talking about what might unfold.
I mean, my model is actually that we're going to have another good run here.
The next three years will be good for Bitcoin.
We'll have high inflation.
And that somehow the Democrats will figure out a way to win that next election.
And they will print like crazy.
And we will trend toward hyperinflation.
And they might do some of these bad things I've talked about.
And then at that point in time, the pain will be so large that everyone will scream, you know, we've got to fix this problem.
and I think at that point in time what will happen is Michael Saylor will run for president
and he will come in with a master plan, an engineer's view of what went wrong and how to fix it
and things will be bad enough that he'll win
and we will actually then migrate to a sound money standard
we'll have a Marshall Plan for nuclear power development
we'll denute the entire world, we'll have peace treaties with everybody
and, quote, unquote, this, quote, fourth turning will be over and we'll live in a new,
beautiful, abundant age. So that's my optimistic scenario of how we get out of that. And that would
be, let's see, he would be elected sometime in a 2032 election. So, you know, because the Democrats
would have four years and they'll just make it unbearably bad. And that will set it up for him
to win. But also by that time, he'll be the world's richest man. He's already said he's going
to give his keys away. So my suspicion is, you know, people say, well, he's not doing this for
the money. He's already rich. I mean, he's actually doing it because he's an American,
he's a patriot and he wants to save the world, which I think he does. I think he's a good guy.
So, so that's my optimistic case of where we go. But, you know, 2032 is quite a few years from now.
And so, you know, we've got to go through, sadly, we've got to go through the,
you know, the pain of, of the inflation that gets us there.
That's such an amazing rabbit hole to go down. We may come back to it.
Okay. I know that was out of the blue, right. But I just thought it was on my mind and I just
talked about it and i you know i'm an optimist i'm a i'm very much an optimist that this world
is going to get a whole lot better on the other side of it you know i agree um and i think like
one by one and people's own lives saving in bitcoin it can get better oh yeah quicker and
then as the um nation states move over so so a couple of things like we are seeing um it's like
the Luxembourg Sovereign Wealth Fund.
They had 1% of their 900 million portfolio
to the Bitcoin ETFs.
Like all around the world, obviously El Salvador,
what Michael Saylor is doing with MicroStrategy.
It's not like when you say things like that,
they're unfounded or they're baseless.
It feels like the world is starting to wake up
and start to hoard as much Bitcoin as possible.
Some people are far, far ahead.
obviously Michael Saylor with strategy and what he's done there he's like well ahead of the the
curve but it seems like all right like people with a little bit of common sense or that are
like really paying attention to the problem are starting to see that bitcoin is this amazing
solution even you know Trump ran on this promise of the strategic bitcoin reserve and stuff and
it sounded like he could understand it and he could see it and that this would be a good thing
But we're seeing sort of other nation states or private companies, individuals do this trade, but we haven't really seen it from the United States with the strategic Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Like they bought 20 billion in Argentine pesos before they bought a single Bitcoin.
So like, how do you think that plays out?
Well, yeah.
And I think we've all been frustrated by that.
I mean, Senator Loomis's bill, you know, laid out a plan to buy a bunch, you know.
and Basant talked about doing it in a revenue neutral way.
I mean, you know, sadly, they've probably got other priorities in front of it.
I mean, for starters, if they don't sell any of the 200,000 coins they have, that's a start.
You know, I would say that they will hopefully get to it.
They'll come to the point where they start to buy it.
I mean, and as Saylor has said, the first country that figures out a print, you know, fiat to buy Bitcoin kind of wins.
I think they're also aware they know the dollar is failing. They need the dollar to be devalued, but they don't want to do it too quickly. They need a transition period. They need time. Going straight to full hyper-Bitcoinization slash hyperinflation, that's dangerous and a mess in their mind, and they're probably right about that.
But they're trending in that direction. I mean, I think there's some interesting data points, too. So mostly, I don't know how many Aussies probably know this name. There's a guy named Stephen Moran, Stephen Moran, who is the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in the White House. He works for Trump or works for Trump. And he's young. He's a Bitcoiner. I mean, he tweeted. In fact, this is my upcoming quarterly report, which will be free and out probably by the time you publish this. So it's at my website for free.
he tweeted you know i'm talking about some problem and he tweeted bitcoin fixes this okay
now so this is a guy who's you know and we know lutnik is positive we know kennedy is positive
we even know besant's positive besant is a gold bug but he's admitted that that bitcoin is digital
gold so so we've got all these people around trump who are very positive on sound money
and and arguably you're talking about a reset you know how much trump himself understands a
little unclear but he's being advised by good people and this moran guy is very interesting
because, you know, Trump has attacked the Federal Reserve, as we haven't discussed this, but as most
people in Australia may have not seen it, but he's really attacked the Federal Reserve. I mean,
he's called Jerome Powell a moron. He said he's too late. I mean, it's unprecedented.
He wants to kick him out, doesn't he, next year? Yeah, well, he's going to get kicked out. In May
of next year, he's gone. His term ends, and he will appoint somebody else. But, and, you know,
he went after Lisa Cook, who's a woman who's on the Federal Reserve Board and claims she committed
mortgage fraud. You know, pretty arguably she did, but that's the point of the Supreme Court,
whether that justitudes cause for firing her. But he got lucky. This other Fed Reserve,
Fed governor quit. And so there was an open seat and he put Stephen, Stephen Moran, his
council economic advisor, he put him on the Fed board. And, you know, this is a guy, so there's
a Bitcoiner on the board of the Federal Reserve, right? And I did not know this. Yeah. Right. And
And so this guy is a Bitcoiner, full-fledged Bitcoiner.
In the most recent Fed meeting, you know, Powell said, let's cut rates 25 bips.
And Moran dissented and said, no, we should do it 50.
And both Trump and Moran have said interest rates need to come down between 200 and 300 basis points.
And, of course, they need to do this, Sean, because if they take those rates down that low,
that will lower the government's cost of borrowing, which will help with the deficit.
Okay, that's the good news.
The bad news is if they take rates down that low, you know, borrowing will increase.
M2 will increase very rapidly and it'll be highly inflationary.
I mean, they haven't really solved the last bout of inflation.
And yet they'd be cutting into the, you know, they'd be cutting, you know, in an inflationary environment.
And so like the 70s, we would have another big up wave in inflation.
But, you know, I think that's what they want.
I mean, they know that they have to grow faster than the debt grows.
They have to grow GDP faster than the debt grows.
and really the only way to do that is to have inflationary growth.
So that's kind of where they're going, and you can see it.
I mean, they're talking about it.
Vicente has said, when Doge failed, he kind of said,
well, yeah, we've done the best we could there,
but really the solution to this problem is we're going to grow our way out of it.
Okay, fine. How do you get growth? You lower interest rates.
And so Powell is there until May of next year, 26,
but with the markets, markets are forward-looking,
So it's October. May is not that far away, right? You know, seven months or something, eight months. And, you know, the market says, OK, you know, we get it. You know, when he's gone, you're going to put Moran in the Fed chair or some other guy in the Fed chair. He's going to direct him to cut rates a lot. And, you know, that's going to massively fuel inflation. And that's why, in my opinion, that's why gold and silver have the bid that they have.
You know, the market can read the tea leaves of what's coming and say, okay, well, fine.
You want to do that? That's fine.
You know, we understand that, you know, these metals are a protection and we're going to buy them.
It sounds scary.
I guess it'll be interesting for everyone holding Bitcoin or precious metals, hard assets.
They're going to feel like they're getting wealthier and wealthier.
But in that moment, for everyone not holding it, it's going to be a pretty hard transition.
It's going to spark.
Yeah, it's going to really suck.
It's going to be high inflation again.
And, you know, for those holding metals in Bitcoin, I mean, I've got a lot of people, a lot of my investors, others are calling.
They say, well, gosh, it's gone up so much.
Don't we sell now?
And I'm like, well, yes.
That's a lot.
Yeah.
And sell and buy what?
You know what I mean?
You're going to buy stocks?
They're not cheap.
You know, you want to hang out in the dollar or you want to buy T-bills and get 3% when, you know, you know inflation is going to be higher than that.
I mean, there's really nothing to sell in favor of today.
I mean, so I think, you know, the hardest thing to do is actually going to be to hang on to the positions you have, you know, because we're in kind of uncharted territory in this monetary reset.
Interesting times.
And I guess like on that note and to round out the pod is I'm such a big advocate of Bitcoin self-custody.
I believe not your keys, not your coins.
And I believe that after a while, everyone should be running their own node, becoming their own bank, doing it properly for many reasons.
But some people, they'll buy the ETF or they'll leave Bitcoin on the exchange or they'll go into like a collaborative custody model with someone like Unchained or something like that.
And I guess that's a bit better than leaving on the exchange or the ETF from my opinion.
then people go like even further out for what I consider the risk curve and be holding
Bitcoin treasury companies where they've got no access to the underlying asset full stop.
What are your thoughts in regards to how one should approach Bitcoin? Is it just like buy and
hold Bitcoin in self-custody or is it nuance for different people? Yeah, well, look, it's different
strokes for different folks and their flavors here. I mean, as you're aware on many of your
list probably. I mean, self-custody is not simple. It's not incredibly hard, but it's not simple.
But if you're, you know, 60 plus years old, not very technical, you know, you may not have the
ability, certainly you wouldn't have the ability without some handholding perhaps to figure out
how to conduct self-custody. You get a wallet, get a hard wallet and take your coins off the
exchange, et cetera. But it's doable. It's not impossible. It's just not simple. You know,
I've always told many older people and they want exposure to the price. They're not really worried
about the government grabbing their coins. And so they buy an ETF and that's perfectly suitable.
They'll get the price appreciation. I then say, okay, once you've got that, now you're started,
you know, now you need to learn about self-custody. I don't think, as I think I said earlier, you know,
I think with this administration, the risk of Bitcoin confiscation is very, very low.
So, you know, you probably got a few years to learn self-custody. And so, you know, I wouldn't
freak out if you haven't, I mean, I'm with you, not your keys, not your coins. And, you know,
I'm principally self custody, except for a few IRA accounts that I can't really move.
But the ETFs are kind of a gateway drug.
And, you know, you're going to get the price appreciation.
Your only risk there is that, you know, if the government and it's true with Unchained or any of the others,
if the government calls up and says, hey, you know, we are grabbing these things, paying everybody out in fiat.
Tell us who your customers are and send us the coins.
Well, they're going to do it. They're not going to break the law.
other, you know, men with guns would come and put them in jail. So that's certainly the risk.
I don't rate it as a high risk today. That could change, as I said, with the Blue Administration.
Regarding the Bitcoin treasury companies, let's talk about that. So the notion of a treasury
company is pretty straightforward. You know, the purpose is to buy and hold Bitcoin. It's like a
closed-end mutual fund in that respect, although they can issue new shares and use those new shares
to buy Bitcoin too.
In theory, all us being equal,
they should kind of trade at the value
of the underlying Bitcoin,
even though the shareholder can't go
and get the underlying Bitcoin.
And closed-end mutual funds,
sometimes they traded a premium
and sometimes they traded a discount.
Right now, a lot of them are ex,
the Bitcoin treasurer going to trade
and get a discount just because
they haven't been particularly well managed
and there was a frenzy
and everyone got overexcited.
But that's also leading to
some of the better managed ones
buying some of the poorly managed ones.
But the reason that a treasury company exists and the reason there's actually a business model there, and I believe there really is, I own strategy, I believe in Saylor, I believe in what he's doing, is that these companies can actually use the capital markets to arbitrage the difference between somebody who wants a 10% yield with no volatility and somebody who wants, you know, the volatility and growth of Bitcoin.
And what do I mean?
Well, I think Saylor with strategy just created a product, a stretch product, where he basically gives you a way to get a monthly dividend, you know, equal to somewhere between 10.
I've heard he's going to increase it to 11, 12, but whatever.
So let's call it 10% annually by buying his preferred.
And that preferred is covered by, you know, the underlying Bitcoin he holds by, you know, a great ratio.
and he will fund that dividend by either selling more equity or selling more preferred.
And the reason that it works for his shareholder is that he's paying 10%.
He's using the capital you give him when you buy the preferred.
He pays you 10% on that capital.
He invests that capital in Bitcoin.
He's giving you 10%.
Let's say Bitcoin goes up at 30% and that 20% spread is being captured by his shareholder.
Now, if that spread disappears, if Bitcoin only goes up 10% and he's paying you 10%, well, then there's no value getting added.
But if Bitcoin goes up more, he does better and vice versa.
And I think the bet he's making is that he's quite confident the annual rate of return on Bitcoin for the next 10 or 15 years is north of 30%.
And therefore he comfortable up until a point in selling his preferreds Now as the coverage gets lower and people get more worried about perhaps you know he won be able to sell more and he have to slow down But right now his leverage is not that high
You know, all things being considered, he's got a huge underlying base of Bitcoin.
And, you know, he's basically allowing a boomer who wants 10 percent.
It's very hard if you're a boomer and you're retired to get a 10 percent yield relatively safely.
And yet I think this is a pretty safe instrument and it'll give you a 10 percent yield.
And so what that's doing is he's kind of recycling a lot of capital kind of backdoor into Bitcoin.
And he's raking off the piece that that boomer, the boomer says, I'll give up the 20 percent in exchange for a guaranteed 10.
And he's saying, great, I'll guarantee you the 10 because my equity holders really like the volatility and they want the 20.
And so it's a model that works and it's not crazy.
Now, you know, the big question that everyone hasn't figured out yet, and I haven't either,
is what multiple of underlying Bitcoin, what MNAV should these things sell at?
And, you know, we've got them selling at 0.7 times MNAV.
And at the high of point, you know, MetaPlanet was selling at eight or nine times MNAV.
Well, I'm pretty sure eight or nine times.
I mean, there's value added, in my opinion, just like a bank.
A bank sells at higher than its book value because it has capital that it can deploy to earn a return.
And so you don't just buy into a bank at its book value.
But strategy is kind of like a bank.
It's just got assets and liabilities.
And you're willing to pay something more than the underlying assets because they can use the underlying assets to generate yield.
And so should that be a 1.2 multiple or 1.5 or 1.7 or 2.0?
It's somewhere in there.
It's somewhere between, in my opinion, between 1.6 and 2.1.
You know, when all the treasury companies came out, there was a little bit of a flurry and everybody got really excited.
and everyone thought, oh, this is great.
They're all going to grow like crazy.
You know, they're adding, they're selling new stock
and adding to the Bitcoin per share
and therefore they deserve these enormous premiums.
And I think that myth or thought pattern
has kind of gotten dispelled, right?
They don't deserve to sell it four or five times MNAP,
no matter how quickly they're growing.
But they do deserve to sell it more than MNAP
because of the model I described
where they can earn more than their cost of capital.
So it's just as simple as that.
And in my view, the simplest way, if anyone wants to participate in that, is to participate with strategy because of the first, the biggest.
I think Saylor is very bright.
I think they won't do stupid stuff.
And I think they're very well managed.
And the way I look at my strategy holding is I think it will outperform my Bitcoin holding over time, maybe by 50%.
And yet I still have a vast majority of my assets in Bitcoin.
That's what I was going to ask if someone was to go on to it.
I keep it super simple.
larry it's just bitcoin and self-casing absolutely that that that's me but say is it like a one percent
allocation of five or a ten percent like i guess it comes down to people's risk but what you're
looking for and how aggressive you want to be i mean i would recommend maybe five or ten i mean
i'll tell you i'll tell you a story that i kind of broke my heart because i just i know the guy's
got to be hurting now you know back a while back not that far back when meta planet was soaring and
as we recall, it was going straight up, you know, a young guy who, you know, looked at Bitcoin and
said, well, yeah, it's returning 40% a year, but I want to make more. Right. And he tweeted out and
he said, Hey, I'm selling all my Bitcoin to buy MetaPlanet. And I was like, you know, I did a
head. Oh my God. Yeah. Right. And I was like, you know, and if you look at what's happened to the
price of MetaPlanet, you know, he just, he just had a pretty rough ride. Now I think MetaPlanet
will come back. Don't get me wrong. But, but the point is, you know, you got to be careful with
these things so they are they are leveraged bitcoin so you know bitcoin's volatile well
guess what leverage bitcoin's even more volatile and one of the things one of the things that that
friday last friday taught us is that leverage is dangerous when i was reading the comments on last
friday where you know we had this big rinse and wash i couldn't believe it that you know some of
these brokers are still giving people 50 to 1 leverage i mean that's just yeah i mean anyone who
trades anything on anything greater than 10 to 11 that's insane i mean if you trade you know even
10 to 1 leverage you get a 10 move you're bankrupt i mean a 50 to 1 leverage you get a 2 move it's
just it's just insane i don't know i don't know who's doing this stuff and you know i think you
see this a lot where people come into bitcoin they think it's a great asset and then but but
it's boring you know it's going up 30 40 a year maybe some years more some years less and they're
like, well, yeah, okay, I want to get there faster.
You know, I'm going to add leverage to it.
Well, you know, it's a very unpredictable asset,
and it does have significant drawdowns.
I mean, one of the things I always caution people
when I give out my book or I talk to them about it
is I say, hang on a sec, before you put anything into this,
ask yourself, if this went down 50%,
would you be tempted to sell it?
Or would you be thinking, no, no, no, gosh,
this is on sale, I'm buying more.
Because if you're thinking it's on sale, I'm buying more,
well, then that's the right allocation.
If you're thinking, oh, my God, I got too much in this, I got to sell it, then you're overexposed.
So, you know, I think that's an important mindset that people have to have because, you know, it has gone down.
I mean, the last time it's gone down as much as 70%.
I mean, I was buying pre-Sand Bankman Freed at 60, and it went to 15.
I didn't feel great about that, but I knew I was right, so I just hung on and it's come back.
But the point is, and I don't think we're going to have any more 70% drawdowns, but gosh, we could easily have a 50% drawdown.
I mean, my model says we go from 1.20, 1.12 to 2.40, and then we go from 2.40 back down to 110, you know, that we, right, that, you know, and then, and then we go from 110 to 400, you know, I mean, it's, that's the nature of the beast.
If you look at the pattern historically, it has these big up moves, and then it retraces them, and then it has another big up move.
And, you know, it's higher highs and higher lows, so that if you can wait five years, you're always ahead.
But guess what? You know, that's you're not making these great returns. I mean, the price of that is volatility. And the good example of that is Amazon, the Amazon stock. I mean, it's up two hundred and twelve thousand percent from its IPO. And yet, you know, it's the leading online seller of goods and goods. And yet, you know, it had multiple fit. Well, one drawdown was 90 percent in the early days and had multiple 50 to 70 percent drawdowns.
So it always came back, but you didn't get that great return without having volatility.
And that's just true in investing in general.
Yeah, I love it.
I want to say maybe two statements to round it out.
But same with you.
Like when I hand the book or whatever, I'm like, the moment if you do decide to buy,
just expect that it's going to drop.
Just that's what's going to happen.
It's going to go up until you buy.
And then you're going to be like, oh, what have I done?
Pretty much guaranteed.
And then the second thing is just a mindset that I have on any given day for any reason, I expect a negative 36% drawdown.
Like we've had so many in Bitcoin's history.
So like over the weekend, 10% down, I'm like, cool.
Obviously, the numbers are bigger and stuff, but you're like, whatever, this is just another day.
This one was a little tough and a little bit of a gut check.
I mean, even for guys like me, I mean, as you recall, I think it was last week we hit a new all-time high of 126, didn't we?
Yeah, that's right.
It's not that often that you get a breakout to a new all-time high
and then, bam, a week later, kicked in the teeth.
Yeah, 20K down.
Yeah, I mean, it's like, whoa.
That's your God candle.
Yeah, exactly in the wrong direction.
But, you know, I mean, that is just the nature of this beast.
And those of us who've been in it since 2017, or I started in 2013, 14,
I didn't really get serious until 2017.
You know, I've just come to accept that.
I mean, I just, you know, I mean, I bet you find this hard to believe.
A lot of days I just don't even look at the price.
I'm just like, you know, whatever.
I mean, it's just not something I care about.
And I guess last thing, to your point where you're saying, like, self-custody, maybe for someone that's around your age, it can be a little bit harder or something unless you have somebody hold your hand.
I don't know if you know Tony Yazbek from the Bitcoin way, and they help people to be able to learn.
And there are a lot of people.
I mean, you do it.
Unchained does it.
I mean, BTC Sessions has great videos on it.
You know, I've done it with a lot of my clients.
I mean, I have a lot of GoldCover clients, right?
And they've gotten into Bitcoin.
They're like, well, how do I do self-custody?
And so, you know, I mean, I like Trezor.
I said, you go buy a Model T from Trezor.
And, you know, I'll do a Zoom call.
I don't like Trezor, but HCR, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, and I walk them through how to do it.
And I mean, and it's scary at first.
I mean, and, you know, it's not a simple process.
And, you know, I set it up, put $100 on it, wipe it out, you know, restore it.
I mean, you got to do that.
It's like when you send your first crypto transaction, you're kind of like, oh, my God, did I just lose that money?
Send a little bit.
You send a little bit and you test it.
And, you know, anyone can do it.
But you do have to, you know, go slowly, you know, start out with test small amounts and do it over and over again.
And eventually you'll realize, you know what, this is very achievable and doable and manageable and not that risky.
I was talking to somebody the other day and I said exactly that.
You just need to delete it, restore it, delete it, restore it.
He's like, how many times?
I'm like, until you get absolutely sick of it and then keep doing it until you just can do it in your sleep.
He's like, all right, that's a lot of times.
I'm like, yeah, you'll be thankful for it.
yeah and the other thing is you know do it every three to six months too because you might get the
process you know what i mean and so yeah do it every and and i by the way i you know my hard
wallets i mean i always erase my hard wallets i mean i never i never leave a treasure around with
all the stuff let loaded into it so that somebody could hold it hey transfer this money i mean i
you know whenever whenever i start to think about moving in a coin i go back and re re input the 12
words you know and start start at scratch yeah i think it's something that great power comes great
responsibility you need oh that is right yeah it is scary and it's you know it's not for everybody
i mean there's some people who'd say well i just don't want to take that risk and you know i'm
gonna i'm gonna send mine to fidelity or i'm gonna send it to unchained or whatever it might be and
that's fine i mean i think i could probably be fine no it's yeah yeah we hope so i mean it's i
I'll tell you what, if we get the wrong kind of government in place, there's going to be a wave of people swarming the folks that say, help me do self-custody now.
But I think we'll see, you know, if we're going, I mean, these things don't happen instantly without some warning.
So I think if things are going in a bad direction, I think we'll all see that.
I mean, I've got several clients who are very much aware of that risk, who have their money on, you know, in an ETF or on an exchange or with somebody like a river.
And, you know, they say their view is kind of like, well, you tell me if you think the risk is coming and I'll get into the self-custody thing.
But right now I don't want to mess with it.
I'm like, OK, fair enough.
At least they're exposed to Bitcoin.
And that's the first start.
Lawrence, I just want to hand the microphone over to you if there's a question that I didn't ask or a topic that you think is important to bring up and round out the show.
Yeah, no, not really. I'm trying to think what else have we been talking about of late that's important. Look, I think it's a difficult and tricky time. I think the one thing that most people, a lot of people are really missing is, quote unquote, the inflation risk.
COVID was not a one-off.
2008 was not a one-off.
They're coming more rapidly.
They're larger with each one.
There's another one coming.
I call it the big print, the name of the book.
And right.
And as a result of that, you know, one has to protect oneself from inflation.
I think there's going to be an enormous, enormous wealth transfer here, Sean.
And in five or 10 years, you're going to know who owns sound money and who did not.
And the people who own sound money, gold, silver, Bitcoin, are going to be incredibly advantaged financially versus those who do not, did not.
I mean, you know, go study some of these hyperinflations, how they happen.
And, you know, people who are rich and had all their money in bonds, they kind of get wiped out.
And people who were average and had their money in gold, you know, they became really rich in local currency terms.
And so I think that's going to happen.
I really, really think that's going to happen.
And I really high level of confidence in that. And that's and that's why I wrote the book, because I don't think, you know, if you just get that basic principle right, you don't have to be a financial genius.
You know, you don't have to pick stocks. You don't have to worry about this stuff all along.
You know, you just have to kind of understand the basics and focus on the basics and and save in sound money.
And, you know, you'll be benefited from that. I mean, there are great stories in America.
There's one story I really love of a guy who was a World War II veteran.
He fought in the Pacific, and he was from L.A., and he came back,
and he went to work in the machine tool shops of the aeronautics industry,
which is all around L.A. as they built all the airplanes.
And so he probably never made more than a highly skilled machinist salary,
which is a good salary, but not, you know, wealthy doing that.
But what he did, he understood the issue of sound money,
and so he saved in coins, gold coins.
So he was buying throughout all the 40s, 50s, and 60s.
He was buying gold coins at $35.
And he kept buying them in the 70s and the 80s rolled around.
The price got higher.
And then he passed somewhere in the mid-80s.
It was a great story.
And his kids never knew he was doing this.
He lived in a modest house.
And they went out in the garage and he had all these old ammo boxes out there.
And it turns out, and this was back when gold was at the time.
I think it was only $500 or $600.
It turns out the guy had $8 million worth of gold.
So here's a guy who basically spent his life saving in a sound currency.
And, you know, the sound currency got, you know, the other currencies got debased.
And it turns out he was quite a wealthy man.
And so that story is going to be repeated.
There are going to be people who had just a modest amount of Bitcoin or a modest amount of gold.
And they're going to, you know, be kind of surprised at how wealthy they become as a result of the failure of the fiat currencies.
And so, you know, I think, you know, we all have to do that and not in a greedy way, more in a just protect yourself way, you know, guarantee your family's future.
And I also think, you know, this is probably going to take 10 more years to play out or 2025.
You know, I think we probably see the failure of fiat in the early 2030s.
That's kind of that matches my fourth turning model.
I mean, the fourth turning this time, in my view, is about money, and it started at 2008.
And these things tend to last 20 to 30 years.
So that puts the end point at 2028 to 2038.
I don't think we'll make it to 2038.
I think it'll fail before then.
So my sense is in the early 2030s, we will have had currency failure and we will be on a sound money standard.
And like I say, I think it's just going to blow people's minds.
I mean, it'll be as if you were smart enough to buy Microsoft in the earlier days or buy Amazon in the earlier days or whatever it might be.
I mean, you'll make just huge multiples of your money.
It'd be like, how the hell did that happen?
Imagine Bitcoin at $2, $3, $4 million.
Imagine Bitcoin at $20 million a coin.
It's entirely possible.
Now, at that level, gasoline will be $100, but you'll still be way ahead of everyone who didn't have any Bitcoin.
I think on that note I literally ladies and gentlemen I cannot encourage you to read this
book enough it's um it's truly amazing you can get it off Amazon like I live in Australia the
shipping slow and it will still be shipped down like two to three days it's um it's really good
it's one book third and a half hours I promise you I guarantee it will change your life for the
person you I hope they read it I wrote it I wrote it to help average people and I hope it's so
accessible. Yeah, I hope they enjoy it. I try to keep the language simple. So
no, it's really amazing. From the bottom of my heart, Lawrence, thank you so much for
everything you do. I love being on your show. And I love what you're doing. And I really appreciate
all your support. It means a lot. It means a lot to me to fix the money, fix the world,
ladies and gentlemen. We will. We will. For everyone out there, if you haven't already hit
subscribe if we vibe and then please do something nice for yourself today for somebody else out
there. Be blessed. Peace.