Everybody is just scrambling for every last dollar and people
can't retire because they don't know if their savings are going,
how long their savings will last because they're going to be
debased. What should be the appropriate
Bitcoin allocation? The Bitcoin price is roughly at
100K. I think a lot of people were
anticipating it for it to be a lot higher by now.
People are talking about diminishing returns.
They're saying the cycles. What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah. So look, it's doing just what it
should be doing. The next stop is at 140.
People ask me, what do you think the best thing about Bitcoin is?
I'd say the best thing about Bitcoin is that it might end
wars. That's very powerful.
What do you could you elaborate a little bit on that?
Hello. We're here in Miami Beach with
the one the only legendary Larry Leopard's Larry congratulations
on her new book the big print. Thank you.
What happened to America and how sound money will fix it.
What I said last time we were speaking about this is what
impressed me is how fast you wrote this book.
We ran into each other Nashville conference and we were just
having a conversation. So Nico, I'm thinking about
writing a book and three or four months later, here we go.
What inspired you? What motivated you to do?
A little more than that. So the, the, the genesis of this
was looking at a TV program with my wife in the spring and
watching the blue team argue with the red team and getting
incredibly mad and frustrated that nobody was talking about
the core issue. Right.
And I hate all politicians except a few libertarians like
Ron Paul. And, and what I thought was, you
know, they're just not talking about how to really drain the
swamp. And the problems the country
faces, in my opinion, are all driven by the unsound money, not
all the other stuff. The other stuff is their
problems for sure. But that's not the core issue.
And I thought, you know, nobody's really explained it
well. And then I thought, well, no,
people have. I mean, book is fantastic, Lynn
book is fantastic. Just books.
But you know what? I give those to people and
people bog down. They seem to be a little
textbookie and unless you're really deep into Bitcoin and
this stuff, you can get lost in them.
And so I thought somebody ought to try and write a book that's
really easily understandable by any person with no financial
background, you know, just a common American And they know
one thing for sure. They know they're getting
screwed by inflation. Everyone in the world
understands that today. They go to the grocery store and
they say what's wrong, but they don't really understand why.
And a lot of times they're being gas lit by these people who are
saying, well, it's a greedy corporations and it's not the
greedy corporations, it's the Fed.
And so I thought, you know, I've been in this area a long time
pre Bitcoin was a sound money guy with gold.
And I'm probably kind of uniquely suited to maybe tell
the whole story from the beginning.
And so I wrote a book that I hope, I mean, my my fondest wish
for this book, Nico, is I want to orange build the world.
So I just decided I'm going to try and write a book that's easy
to understand, but lays it out so that a common person will go,
Oh my goodness, I now understand why I'm getting screwed.
And that's the bad news. The good news is I now
understand what I can do about it.
And so, as you know from the book, it's in two parts.
Part 1 is the problem, Part 2 is the solution.
Absolutely. And one of the things to layer
that that really, really impacted me is most of society
is still asleep, Yes, to the idea or to the problem that
they, they don't understand that money can exist without
inflation. Yes.
And they continue to seek a political solution.
Yes, where the solution is not a political one, it's fixing the
money itself. It's and it's related to
politics because the Fed controls the money and we've got
to end the Fed. But you're correct.
I mean, and I noticed that in a lot of younger people, you know,
they people just think, well, inflation, we always have had
inflation. We'll always have inflation.
It's a bad thing. We've just got to learn to live
with it. And I'm here to say, no, you
don't. I was around in the Sixties, 70s
and 80s. We had a lot of inflation, 70s.
But but I remember what the country was like before we got
as financialized and as broken as we are today.
And so again, you asked me what motivated me.
Part of what motivated me was somebody's got to explain to
everybody who's young now that it wasn't always this messed up,
you know, that there was actually a time when America had
other problems, but this wasn't one of them.
If you think about the America that existed post World War 2,
we were a great country. We had won the war.
We were, you know, widely admired.
You know, we didn't enter into any new wars for a while or mess
around in Korea. And then Vietnam came later, but
for quite so. And inflation wasn't a problem
in the 50s and 60s and 70s, early 70s.
And then, of course, the big event that started the whole
downhill roll in terms of this problem was Nixon going off the
gold standard in 71. One of my favorite charts in the
book is on page 22, where I show the history of inflation since
the founding of the country and then what happened in 71.
And of course, it's just a hockey stick, right?
I mean, we went off the gold standard and inflation suddenly
became a serious problem, and we really haven't solved it since
that time. Absolutely.
One of the things too in the book that that that really stuck
out to me. You sent me APDF version early
on, said that the founders themselves, the founders of the
US, they saw it as a form of counterfeiting.
Is that? Correct.
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, in fact, there was even
a law, and it's in the book, it talks about this.
There was a law that said anybody who debased and
counterfeited the currency would be punishable by death.
And Edwin Griffin, in his book The Creature from Jugger Hinde,
said, well, if we apply that law today, the Senate, the Congress,
the Treasury Department and the president would all have to be
executed. And I just thought that was a
great quote. But yes, I mean, they, they,
they put it in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, where they
said only gold and silver sound money can be currency.
And of course, you know, that's based on, they did that based on
what happened when the first monetary default occurred, when
we fought the Revolutionary War, they printed something called
the Continental. And of course the Continental
hyperinflated. So they were very much aware of
this problem. And the book talks about that
entire history. And it's interesting our
forefathers understood this. And to be frank with you, you
know, the authors of the Bible understood this.
I mean, they talk about honest weights and measures, and
dishonest weights and measures are an abomination to God.
I mean, monetary tomfoolery, It's been going on for a long
time. And the people who can control
the monetary system, they can make themselves fabulously rich,
and that's what's happened. And I think that mechanism is
poorly misunderstood. Yes, totally.
There was a there was a quote you were you're quoting a
Rothschild, I believe it says give me control of the nation's
money supply and I care not who makes the law exactly.
Could you explain, Larry? And let's make this an
educational thing, right? And people are, I'm assuming a
lot of people are going to watch this one.
What is the Federal Reserve? Yeah, sure.
So the Federal Reserve got created in 1913, and it is the
body in the United States that controls the supply of money.
It's our Monetary Authority. It's a private corporation.
It's actually owned by the member banks.
But it's it's a funny beast. It's kind of private and public
because it was created by Congress and Congress
theoretically overseas it. I mean, if Congress decided
tomorrow to vote to end the Federal Reserve, they could.
But of course, you know, the Congress has wined and dined by
the Fed and the, and the Fed has convinced Congress that they're
absolutely essential to the well-being of the country, which
I would argue they're not. But the Federal Reserve controls
the money supply through the issuance of currency.
And they were theoretically formed in order to balance out,
you know, swings in in inflation and deflation and so on and so
forth. And those were occurring pre
Federal Reserve, but frankly, they weren't as severe or as big
as what happened after the Fed got created.
So the Fed got created in 1913. We immediately went into World
War One. They immediately violated their
charter and they started printing money to finance World
War One. And between 1916 and 1920, the
price level in the country doubled.
OK, so huge inflation based on paying for the war.
And, you know, that created a lot of societal problems.
We had, you know, the Ku Klux Klan came back big time.
We had all kinds of race riots in a number of major cities.
We had enormous labor strikes, etcetera.
I mean, imagine, you know, you're a worker in 1916 and
you're making a certain wage. And then, you know, basically
six years later, everything cost twice as much and your wages
haven't kept up with it, which is kind of what's going on now,
right? And so, so the Fed is this body
that controls the issuance of the money supply.
And as Milton Friedman said, money is always a monetary
phenomenon. So a society, you know, produces
goods and services. You know, doctors provide a
service. People make widgets.
Those are goods and the dollars that we have are those they are
claims against the goods and services and the price we pay
for them balances the claims against what's provided.
If you suddenly decide you're going to double the amount of
dollars in existence, which is what happened in World War 2,
the price of everything double S because the same number of
people, same number. You didn't double the number of
goods and services, you just double the number of dollars.
And so the price goes up. And this has been the continual
and recurring pattern, Nico, that basically the federal
government has caused American, average American people to
suffer because anytime the banks get in trouble, and the Fed was
created to backstop the banks. It was a cartel of the banks,
really. Anytime the banks got in
trouble, the Fed prints the money to bail them out.
And it looks like, you know, that's what they should do and
what they must do. Although I talk about the
alternatives and, and in fact, what it does is it increases the
cost of gasoline and it increases the cost of food.
So more or less we all pay for the Fed's mistakes and for the
bank's mistakes. And it's just, it's terribly
inefficient and it's terribly unfair because the bankers and
the, the wealthy people, there are wealthy people in this
country and you know, who are smart and they actually know how
to make inflation work for them. We call them quintillionaires.
And that's another whole other thing we could define.
But the bottom line is smart people know how to borrow money
cheap and buy assets that pay more.
And so they, and with inflation, they actually get richer,
whereas people who are working for a fixed wage, their wages
don't go up as fast and they actually get poorer.
And, and it's very, very unfair. And America was built on the, on
the concept and the promise of fairness.
And, and it's being violated. And it's, it's been violated for
a long time. And, and I think what's coming,
what we're coming to a head is it's now getting to be so bad
and so obvious that I think the book is timely, that you know
what I mean, that I think a lot of people are going to read it
and go, Oh my God, you're right. We got to fix this.
And that's the goal. And we're on the verge of what I
would call the great awakening. I think we're on the verge of
people really waking up. And I think, you know, some
signs of that. Was this recent election with
Trump what just happened? Can you hear me now?
Yeah. Exactly the complete rebuttal of
the legacy media. And then now we're finding out
that it was USAID that was funding that whole apparatus.
It's unbelievable. We've been gas lit and lied to
consistently. And the book talks about what a
beautiful thing the Internet is because the Internet, it's what
has allowed you and me to speak like this and communicate with
thousands and millions of people around the world.
It's what's allowed Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan to become
more important than CNN and people that the scales are
falling away from their eyes and they're coming to realize, hey,
you know what? I've been lied to and I've been
screwed. And the good news is we
outnumber, you know, the people who control this system, the
elites in the media, the elites in the government, you know, all
the people who run the system the way they run it.
That takes advantage of the average man.
We outnumber them vastly where they they've had the advantage
of having all the information and control of all these
systems, But guess what? We're taking that advantage
away. 100% you know the the systems are are falling apart.
I call it the great disintermediation.
Exactly. And the Internet really allowed
mass scale, mass scale peer to. Peer communication saved by
technology. Yes, as Jeff Booth says, it's
wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful.
My view is it'll happen without Larry or without Nico.
But I've got a limited window here.
You know, at age 67, I want it to happen faster, right?
I want to see it happen. Therefore, I wrote the book.
Yeah. I mean we, I mean it's.
Like let's accelerate this, right?
We all contribute and what I saw this narrative trench warfare on
the battlegrounds and the Internet.
That's exactly right. I want to ask you something,
Larry, because this goes down a deeper rabbit hole.
Sure, the Federal Reserve was established in 1913.
Yes, the income tax was also established in 1913.
Is that a coincidence? I don't think so.
I mean, and the federal
government exists to protect itself.
And there's some great charts and I'm it's fabulous to see
Trump and Bescent saying 18, 70 to 1913 was a really prosperous
period. And they're right because we
were on a sound money standard. The sound is money at that time,
which was gold. And if you go back and you look
at the revenues, this country didn't have an income tax pre
1930. This wasn't a bad country from
1789 to 1913. It was a pretty good country.
Where did all the revenue come from the federal government
from, from tariffs. So, you know, people say, hey,
you know, Trump is tariff man. Well, it might actually make a
lot of sense. Let me ask you something, Larry,
and you were alluding this to to this earlier.
Did the establishment of the Federal Reserve in the United
States enable World War One and World War 2?
I think so. I think so.
I mean, I look, World War 2 is a different case, a little more
existential, you know, some bad stuff going on.
But yes, I think that these printing money has been used and
the book shows this printing money has been used to pay for
war since the War of 1812. I mean, this suspended species
redemption in 1812 to pay for that war.
The bottom line is war is incredibly expensive.
Nobody wants to pay for it. So what are you going to do?
If you're a government, you're going to come to your citizens,
say, hey, we're going to tax 100% to pay for this war.
Citizens are going to go, yeah, like, like hell you are.
We're going to revolt. So they know they can't do that.
But if they have a sneaky mechanism to tax you indirectly,
which is basically what inflation is, well, then they
can pay for the war, right? And that's what they've done.
And that, in my view, that's actually one of the most
positive things. People ask me, what do you think
the best thing about Bitcoin is? I'd say the best thing about
Bitcoin is that it might end wars.
I mean, yeah. And that's really, that would be
wonderful, right? The reason I answered that
question is it's such a powerful statement.
And I believe it was Ron Paul who originally said, you know,
it's not a coincidence. It's simple century.
Of course it is. Yeah.
It's not a coincidence of the century of central banking.
Is the century the the bloodiest century in human history?
That's it's in the book. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Yeah. So let me ask you something.
What is your take on because I, I think from a historical
context, right? Initially you had Trump going
in, in, in 2016 and he was the outsider candidate.
And then they did everything in their power to stop this guy.
You know, the law fair, the assassination, the the some that
election was quite interesting in 2020 to put it nicely.
Where are we in a historical perspective?
Because I know that you are a big fan in the fourth turning
theory us. So where are we?
Well, I think we're deep into it now.
I mean, if you if the 4th turning theory, for those who
don't know, is the theory that every 80 years you have a crisis
that gets resolved with a change of the rules.
The last one before this was the Depression, World War 2.
Before that it was 1865. The Civil War before that was
1776. Those were all 4th turnings.
We're in another one. It's 80 years, 80 plus years
from World War 2 right now. And I think what's going to get
resolved here is what Robert Breedlove says, which is we're
going to determine what money is.
If you, if you look at these 4th earnings, they tend to last
between 10 and 30 years. And if you look at this one, I
mark the start of this one as 2008.
So we're more than 10 years into it.
We're coming up on at 2028. We'll be 20 years into it.
So we're going to resolve this money issue, in my opinion, in
the next 10 or 15 years, maybe sooner.
And where do you think Trump fits in all this?
Oh, he's, you know, he's a godsend in terms of being a
disruptor, right? I mean, he's had the courage.
I mean, thank God he wasn't killed.
I mean, it was almost divine. That bullet didn't hit his head.
He turned his head at the right time.
And he's a disruptor of the system.
And honestly, he's not perfect, but he's learning and growing.
I mean, I sure like Trump two more than I like Trump 10.
He's getting more intelligent people around him.
I mean, some of the people on his team I love, I love Tulsi
Gabbard. I love RFK junior.
You know, he threw out Pompeo, who was a neo con.
You know, I, I think Trump, Trump won O he didn't really
fully understand what he was up against.
And, you know, although he might have won the 2020 election, in a
certain sense, it's it's poetic that he didn't the other side
did. They totally misplayed their
hand and made things much, much worse.
And as a result, he was able to regroup his forces and get a
better team around him. And I'm extremely hopeful for
what he can do here. Now, you know, having said that,
nobody's perfect, right? I mean, when I saw, and I just
have to say this because for the wreck, when I saw Melania coin
and Trump Coin, I was like, oh man, come on, dude, you're not
selling steak knives with the Trump with the Trump name on
them. Are you you?
Know the the timing of it could have been better three days
before the inauguration, but I think.
A lot of look, I forgive him that, but it just wasn't great
in my view. No, it definitely wasn't.
And I think a lot of Bitcoiners are getting their first taste in
politics. Yeah, which is like politics is
the definition of the organization of power.
And there's a lot of. Concessions and there's
compromise. I mean, look, we've dragged
along all these crypto guys, right?
I mean, we've got some crypto guys hanging out in the
strategic reserve. It should be a strategic Bitcoin
reserve, but the crypto guys want a seat at the table.
And I'm not wild about that. But hey, they provided a lot of
votes and a lot of support and they helped get him elected.
And so, OK, you know, if they're going to get a seat at the
table, fine. I mean, I think most of the
other crypto is going to fail and go away.
So it doesn't really matter what what I think is most important
here is that Bitcoin is in the game.
They understand what it is. We got the Loomis bill that
might have a chance of passing. They're clearly going to hang on
to the 200,000 coins they have and hopefully they're going to
stack more. Absolutely.
And one of the things also that that stuck out to me through
this whole very historical occurrence is that if they just,
and you were saying it earlier, if they just let Trump take a
second term, right, I don't think that would have created
this mobilization of our industry to throw our hat in the
ring into politics. That might be true.
Bit pointers didn't want to get into this.
We were forced into this because of Operation Choke Point 2.0.
Yeah. And all the hostility because of
the bite administration. I think Trump and the Republican
Party saw that as an opportunity to get votes, and they jumped on
it. And it was great.
It worked. Hey, you know, I will.
Look, we'll ride that. It's good.
It works. Yeah.
But it's almost as if it was divine, the whole thing.
Well, it really is. You're looking at this and then
and then the way he moved his head, like you said, like.
You know, yeah, yeah, No, I mean, I'm a little spiritual and
I, I mean, I gotta tell you, when I, when I thought about
writing this book, I feel like I got tapped on the shoulder and
it was kinda like, hey, you know what, you should write this.
Look, this is probably gonna be my 15 minutes of fame, right?
I think, cuz I think this book might go viral.
And if it does, you know, I'm gonna thank my lucky stars and,
and more importantly, thank you know what it'll do what I think
it could do for the country. And I, you know, I was just very
well positioned. I mean, I've been suffering with
the sound money thing for a long damn time.
I think you and I've had this conversation before where, you
know, being a gold bug was no fun for the last 30 years.
Yeah. And then all you guys came along
and it's like, holy shit, the reinforcements right here.
I'm fired up. This this movement is alive and
well. Alive and well.
I mean, when I had 30 year olds quoting von Mises to me and they
read the Bitcoin stand and I was like, all right, this is good.
I mean, we, you know, we might actually end up winning here,
right? You know, I got Marty telling me
we're going to win, and I'm like, oh, we're going to win,
right? Yeah, exactly.
I mean, it's obvious we are gonna win, right?
Yeah. So it's good.
It's good stuff. What do you think about the
strategic Bitcoin Reserve and the implications of?
It, it's huge. I mean it's nation state cuz it
could lead to nation state FOMO. I mean, as an example, I was at
Nina, I saw Eric speak, I saw Manafort speak and I heard from,
you know, the Bitcoin Policy Institute guys that basically
other states are watching what we're doing that sought the
Saudis, Oman and the UAE are all stacking.
And they were literally saying, are you guys OK with us
announcing this and response from the Trump administration is
sure after we do, we just, we just want to go 1st.
And so if the US is stacking coins, that becomes a strategic
imperative for all the countries to consider.
I mean, you now know that China has to think about it for sure.
Russia has to think about it. China's pretty averse to it.
I think Russia's smart enough. I mean, I think Putin gets it.
I think they're probably stacking coins.
It is the most as it's what Sailor says is the most pristine
form of capital in the world. And it's destined to become the
base layer of money in my opinion, because that it's
technical superiority. And as a result of that, it's a
complete first mover game. I mean, you, you know, you get
it at the price you deserve. And so the sooner you figure it
out and get it, the better off you are.
And Max is better off than I am because he figured it out at a
dollar. Trace is better off than he is
because Trace figured it out at $0.50.
Like take a guy like Larry Fink, right?
I mean a Fiat guy, but smart enough to study it and realize,
you know what, I either got to get on board this and figure out
a way to make money doing it, you know, sponsoring an ETF, or
I'm going to end up like the Vanguard guy and lose my job.
Yep. And so, and that's kind of how
it is for everybody. A lot of people I deal with now
kind of come back and they say, well, yeah, that's great, Larry,
but you bought a lot cheaper and how can I pay something?
How can I pay this amount of money, 100,000 a coin for
something you bought for 400 or 10,000?
You know, I bought a lot of 50. But my response is.
Here's the paradigm. It's a critical state problem.
The monetary system is the Titanic and I got a lifeboat.
I'm on the I paid 405,010 thousand, 50,000 for my lifeboat
seats. Here it is to you.
You got to pay 100,000. You want to see it or not?
And you know, if I'm right, and if the system does fail, which I
think it might, you're going to be damn glad you bought a seat,
even if you have to pay 100,000 for it.
Of course I mean. It's, I remember Jack Mahler's
the way that he said it's, it's like, it's like basically saying
the year is 2025 and you refuse to use the Internet, right?
It's it's it's the the. Or or Manhattan real estate you
know as as sailor uses and. The whole, the whole concept of,
you know, I'm not going to buy because this person bought
earlier than me. That's more so that's an ego
test more than anything. Correct, Correct.
Well, and also, as I say, the critical state thing is
important because once there's some good charts in here that
show adoption curves and cell phones, all kinds of things.
So this is a new technology, it's being adopted.
We're entering a steep part of the curve.
And so do you want to be an early adopter or do you want to
wait? Because the difference is going
to cost you a lot in terms of price.
It's a critical state issue because, you know, another
analogy I like to use is the avalanche analogy.
You know, at some point Fiat currency is going to fail in my
belief, in my opinion. So which snowflake is going to
cause the avalanche to break loose and have it fail?
I don't know. But there's no, there's no do
over, you know what I mean? You don't get to say, oh, you
know, I'm sorry. I kind of wish I'd, you know, I
wish I'd gotten out of the way before that avalanche, you know,
broke loose and came down and smothered me.
What does that look like, Larry? Like when Fiat fails?
Cuz I feel like that that is ugly.
It is ugly. It is ugly.
I'm assuming you've you've heard of of the book Mandibles.
It's it's in the book, right? There we go.
Yeah. What does that look?
Like, I hope so. It it looks a lot of different
ways, Nico and it. Doesn't.
And what makes you so confident is going to happen?
Well, I'm confident it's going to happen because of the math
and because this is a superior technology and because more and
more humans are adopting it and people always gravitate towards
the best solution. And we've now got 15 years of
evidence that it's the best, 16 years of evidence that it's the
best solution. But but in terms of the how it
happens, it doesn't have to be mandibles.
I don't think it will be. It can, one, it'll take a bit
longer. It can be more gradual, which
isn't a funny way. We want it to go up faster, but
in a funny way, it's a good thing if we get more people on
board, get more people time to adapt.
The second thing is, as I talk about in the book, this doesn't
have to be a brutal total collapse.
We can do a currency reset. OK?
This has been done before. Roosevelt did it in 33.
I mean, we can basically transition back to a sound money
currency. The problem with America today
is that the money is unsound and the money is broken.
You know, title of Lynn's book. And therefore the solution is to
just go back to a sound money system.
And there have been lots and lots of societies throughout the
world that have had broken money.
And what happens, what you see when you study them and read
about them is when they go back to sound money, they get better.
Everything gets fixed, especially if you don't have a
major war, You know, if we can avoid having a major war.
I mean, all that's broken here is the money.
And so, you know, now now, don't get me wrong it when when I'm
describing a curse, there will be winners and losers.
The people who don't have sound money will lose on a relative
basis. The people have a lot of unsound
money stored in bonds. They're going to get creamed,
but that's unavoidable. I mean, that's just the way that
because, you know, the bonds and the the commitments that have
been made, they're not money good.
They're not it's, you know, the values are fake.
I mean, just like in real estate right now, I think some of these
very high end real estate price, they're just fake.
Yeah. I mean, people are hiding in
real estate thinking that'll protect them from inflation.
But, you know, do you really need a $20 million house or a
$10 million or a $5,000,000 house?
It's, it's ridiculous shelter, it's ridiculous and it's and
it's really stolen my generation's ability to.
Well, that's right. It's, it's been just complete
flat out theft. Yes.
And the frustration. I have friends who are extremely
successful and they're renting. Right.
My kids are all in their 20s and they're like, Dad, how am I ever
gonna buy a house? Yeah.
And it's absurd. And then that leads me to the
premise of your book, which is money printing breaks
everything. Yes.
How does it? Well, it, it, it creates
inflation and creation and inflation creates winners and
losers and it makes wealth inequality really large.
One of the early charts in the book shows how just out of
balance the wealth inequality has gotten.
And again, when I wrote the book, I thought to myself, I, I
got to write this because I remember America in the Sixties,
70s and 80s when I was growing up.
And it had, we had problems. I mean, the Vietnam War was a
big one, but, but it was a better America.
There was a vibrant middle class.
I mean, and one guy could work his, his, his wife could be a
housewife, he could have a car, they could take vacations.
I mean, it was just, it was just better.
And, and now, you know, everybody is just scrambling for
every last dollar And people can't retire because they don't
know if their savings are going to how long their savings will
last because they're going to be debased.
You know, I mean, think of all the people who work their entire
life up until 2020, saved up all their money.
And then in two years, 40% of the money supply got printed.
We just took away 40% of their labor that they'd saved for
their whole life. You know, it's criminal.
I mean, you think of all the people who worked for companies
who had pensions, you know, and, and now and the pensions got
taken over by PE firms. And then the PE firms, you know,
paid out big dividends or the companies got taken over PE
firms. I talk about this in the book.
PE firms paid out big dividends and the people's pensions got
cut. I mean, America has become an
enormous criminal money grab by the people who were at the top,
the rich, and the laws are written to favor them and
protect them. And so when anything goes wrong,
they get bailed out. Silicon Valley Bank, I mean,
Bill Ackman cries like a baby. You know, that the banking
system will fail because he probably had deposits at Silicon
Valley Bank. And so we bail it out, which is
in direct contravention of the Dodd Frank law.
And that happens over and over and over again.
And I document the cases in the book.
I mean, it's just unfair. I mean, we used to have usury
laws when I was young. My parents would get credit
cards. The maximum interest rate on a
credit card was 10 or 20%. The average interest rate on a
credit card is 25%. I mean, the mob would blush.
So if you're rich, you can borrow money at the Fed funds
rate or sometimes below, but close to the Fed funds rate.
If you're average. If you're a normal American,
you've got to pay 25% to borrow money from the credit cards.
I'm like, come on. No, it's just, you know, come
on. I mean, it's just right.
No, I mean no, I mean of course I mean I I feel my generation
feels it. We feel it.
We all feel it. My question though, is like, why
don't people see the problem? Because you see a lot of
politicians and I, I don't want to name which side and I think
it's obvious, but a lot of politicians are saying it's the
corporation, corporation, they're, they're price gouging.
You know, they're taking advantage of the situation, this
and this and that. Why isn't the average Joe aware
of this? And I know writing this book and
what we do every single day on on Bitcoin X.
And I think they kind of are, I mean, I think they're getting
closer and they're more average Joes that are becoming like us.
So, you know, the Overton window is moving and it's absolutely
it's shifting. And there are more average Joes
in our camp. But, you know, it's
sophisticated, right? I mean, it's and, and a lot of
people, they think, well, Gee, maybe I'm doing something wrong.
Maybe it's my fault. You know, This is why you have
all these deaths of despair, why you have drug overdoses and
alcoholism and suicides. I mean, because the game is
unfair. People know it's unfair and they
just, they give up. You're poor and you're working
three jobs just to kind of stay, keep your head above water and,
you know, keep food on the table and, you know, right.
Do you have time to read books like this or to go live?
You know, and, and, and even if you read it, you know, what's
the problem? And do you really have time to
write your congressman or go lobby the Fed?
No, I mean, you're just, you're just trying to stay alive,
right? But you know, you vote and you
know, we get more politicians that understand this is the
issue. You know, we get a Bitcoin or
politician running for president.
I mean, we kind of had one. I mean, Trump got pretty close
to being full Bitcoiner, a libertarian, but we get it.
So that there's a lot more of that fighting against the people
who want to see it the other way.
And guess what we're going to, we're going to gravitate and
move towards a sound money standard and hopefully do it in
a controlled and intelligent way so that people don't suffer, so
that we don't have a mandibles kind of outcome.
Yeah, and. I love how you brought up the
Overton window. The Overton window has shifted
in the last six months more than it has in the last decade.
Right. It's amazing, isn't it?
Yeah. I mean, pre January in the ETFs,
I had everybody in the brother telling me, oh, yeah, that's a
great dream, Larry. And I understand it.
And you're, you know, you may be right about all this, but the
government's never going to allow that.
Well, then they allow the ETFI was blown away.
I didn't think the ETF was going to get through.
Yeah. Right.
Larry Fink has a lot of influence.
Well, that's the point, right? See, some people with money got
involved and, you know, I mean, this is what's going on in the
gold market right now. I mean, I think the smart people
are buying gold now. They know, look, anybody with a
brain that analyzes the macroeconomics of the federal
government and realizes what a debt doom loop we're in must
come to the conclusion that you have to have sound money or real
assets or you're going to get hurt.
I mean, Ray Dalio, one of the great investors of our time,
runs Bridgewater. You know, he understands it.
He's been talking about gold for years and he's finally becoming
a bitcoiner. He's it's kind of coming to get
it and everybody will come to get it eventually because it's
obvious, obvious and it's compelling.
I noticed that about Ray I saw I saw the I saw the news on next
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I do want to ask you about the debt doom loop.
I want to, I want to double back to that.
But before I get to that, I want to get your thoughts on the
recent news of Elon supposedly tapping on Ron Paul to audit the
federal. Reserve.
God, I love that. I love.
Yeah, I mean, Elon's nuts, but I but I like some of what he's
doing. And wouldn't that be great?
But here's the problem, you know, Elon doesn't control the
Congress and the Congress. Only the Congress can audit the
Federal Reserve. And I'd love to have Ron Paul
look at the Federal Reserve. You can.
You can bet your bottom dollar, Nico, that there is no way in
hell the Fed is going to let them look at anything without a
congressional act forcing it to occur.
I mean, you know, you can say, hey, Ron, come on in and look at
the Fed. The feds going to say F you.
Did he see Jay Powell's response when when Trump was when they
asked him, like, do you think Trump's going to fire you?
And he says he can't fire me. Did he see his?
Response. I didn't see that, but I heard
that. Yeah, I heard about it.
Arrogance. What?
What blatant? Is this not a government agency?
It is. Well, what he's what he's
relying as the law, and the law says that only the Congress can
fire him. And yeah, it is that is the law.
That's technically the law. So so, you know, and and I mean,
here's the thing, it's going to be really hard to get a Congress
to vote to fire him. I mean, you know, Loomis and
some, you know, there are people in Congress who would fire him,
but there aren't enough of them. You know, when?
I mean, just to give you an example, a good anecdote from
the book, Judy Shelton is a gold person.
And she's been around for a long time.
She's got a pH D, She's very well known, and she advocates
for going back to a gold standard.
Ron Paul knows, we all know her. She's a lovely lady.
And in the first Trump administration, Trump
recommended that she become a member of the Federal Reserve.
You should have seen the reaction.
Oh my God. There was a letter with like 130
signatories from the Congress, the Senate and major economists
saying, you know, that her views were I'll timed, dangerous and
I'll. Consider to democracy is my
favorite. Yes, right.
Exactly. And I mean, this is a woman who
just said nothing more than I want the money to be sound.
I want savers not to get ripped off, and she's dangerous.
So we got a ways to go before Congress is going to let anyone
audit the Federal Reserve. I believe it was a Breitbart
quote, but it was basically along the lines of politics is
downstream from culture. So the way that we really shift
the Overton window, the really the way that we really get
Congress on our side is to win over the culture.
And how do we do that? One book at a time, right?
1X post at a time, one video at a time, really winning over the
hearts and minds of individuals. Exactly.
But one of the things to Larry that I found in your book that I
found quite interesting that perhaps people are not aware of.
I I, I would say that money printing in this Fiat system
that we have today gives capitalism a bad name.
Oh, absolutely. And what you describe is that we
don't live in a free market society.
We don't live in a capitalistic society.
We live in a Keynesian state capitalistic society, also known
as crony capitalism. Could you describe what that is?
Yeah, sure. So the insiders in the system
have an enormous advantage in two respects. 1, we get, we
grant them cheap access to capital from the Fed.
And two, we backstop their mistakes.
It's just that simple. So that a Ken Griffin, you know,
can put on the the basis trade on the S&P 500.
And when his trade is tits up in March of 2020, which it probably
was Ben Bernanke, who is corrupt and is an advisor to Ken
Griffin, The rumor is he gets paid $20 million a year, can
make a call to Jay Powell and say you got to give a swap line
to Citadel or else Citadel's going to go BK.
And if Citadel goes BK, the whole system will come down.
And that's always been their defense.
OK, I mean, Silicon Valley Bank. Too big to fail, Too big to
fail. Therefore we have to print the
money. And printing the money bails out
the bad actors. So the banks, the backstopping
the banks, which is what we originally did in 1913,
basically said you guys don't have to play by the rules.
You can have tails, you know, heads, heads you win, tails,
tails we lose. And and so in whatever event
they they do, they're going to get bailed out.
And so that's crony capitalism. I mean, you know, Warren Buffett
backed Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs in the GFC when he
knew it was bankrupt. Everybody knew it was bankrupt,
but he put in preferred stock with, you know, great conversion
terms and everything else at the same time, knowing the
government would bail it out. And then it got bailed out.
And of course, he made a killing on it.
You know, there's a story in the book that's one of my favorite
stories. And people are amazed when they
read this. And that's, again, something I
bring because I've been around for a long time and I watched
all this go down. The chairman of Morgan Stanley's
wife was able to borrow during the GFC.
And this is and Matt Taibbi. It's not just me saying this.
Google Matt Taibbi, Real Housewives of Wall Street.
OK Rolling Stone. It used to be under a behind a
firewall or a paywall. It's not.
You can get it for free now. It's amazing story.
John Mack's wife borrowed $220 million from the Fed non
recourse, non recourse at 0% interest rates to buy troubled
assets. So what does that mean?
That means they gave her $220 million of purchasing power
where she could buy distressed assets in early 2009.
And if they went up in value, she would get to keep the
profits. And if they went down in value
and the loan defaulted, the Fed would eat it.
So, I mean, that's crony capitalism.
It's nice to be John Mack's wife, OK?
It's nice to be the chairman of Morgan Stanley and get that kind
of a deal. You can't get that deal.
I can't get that deal. But the people at the top can
get that deal. I mean, this is incredibly,
incredibly broken. It's financial criminal
behavior. And it makes sense why it may
you're telling me this and just having all these stocks going
ahead. Right, it's.
No, it would be. It makes sense why they resisted
Trump as much as they did OF. Course they did.
He's a he's a threat to their system.
He knows all this. He knows all this and he wants
to shut it down. I know all this.
Lots of people. Ron Paul knows this.
So, so lots of people know this and and what they've what
they've done to date. And I'll let you finish ask a
question. What they've done to date is
they've thrown us into the conspiracy nut basket.
You know it's not. Working so much anymore.
Oh, no, it's not. Yeah, 'cause the conspiracy
shit's coming true. But you know, they've, I mean,
I've been called a tinfoil Hatter, all that stuff, you
know? But guess what?
It's turning out that we're right.
Yeah, absolutely. Larry, I just want everyone to
understand what is the unintended consequences of
specific people getting specific deals like you just mentioned?
Like what is the unintended consequence of her essentially
receiving free money? Because that's the way I'm
interpreting. It right it is well that that
free money one adds to inflation 2 makes her rich versus
everybody else and and and that inflation is why we all pay more
for food and gasoline. OK, that's that's really, but
it's subtle because it's, you know, it's spread out over
1,000,000 of people. Yeah.
So it's hard to say. Well, you know, Jilly Mac's deal
cost Nico this amount of dollars.
Yeah, but, but, but the pattern is there.
And this is the, you know, the book lays that pattern out.
It's. Insidious because the the, the
number on that $100 bill does not change, right?
The and you're looking at your account, the the count, the
number is not changing. No, it's the.
What it'll buy, Yes, it's, I mean very.
Sinister. That's why eggs are 11 bucks.
You know, it doesn't now or something.
I mean, there are other issues with that with Berkeley, but it
is very sinister. And it's gotten worse.
Yeah. I mean, there's a great chart in
the book that shows the wealth inequality.
I mean, 1% of the country owns 92% of the wealth, right?
That's crazy, 1%. So it's nice to be the rich in
this country. And they, you know, they live
like kings. But guess what?
They've done that at the expense of everybody else.
So, you know, sadly, I mean, I understand the complaints of a
Bernie Sanders. I understand them there.
It is an unfair system. He's right.
His solution is just wrong. The solution is not to tax these
people. The solution is to make the
playing field level. Yeah, right.
And let's talk about that, right?
So it's massive wealth redistribution.
Yeah, via currency debasement, Yeah.
So lower middle classes get impacted the most.
Yeah, because they don't have the means to save in assets,
right. And the wealth?
Or borrow cheaply. Or borrow cheaply and the wealth
is redistributed back to the government and back to the very
wealthy that do have the means to save an asset.
Correct. And that's what's causing the
wealth inequality now. From a historical standpoint,
every time that wealth inequality reaches a certain
point, something breaks. I think it's 1789.
I mean, so we have two, we have to.
Bring out the guillotine. Well, we had the French
Revolution, which is, I believe a little bit more of a left wing
revolution and then we had the American Revolution, which is a
little bit more of a right wing revolution.
Now the question is which way do we go?
Yeah. Well, that's a lot of questions
there. But but yeah, the fact, the fact
is that, yeah. And yeah, the Russian Revolution
as well, same, similar thing. I mean, the fact is that, yeah,
when a society gets this broken, you know, bad things can happen
and it could go the wrong way. Look, I mean, the left would
love to, you know, just tax the hell out of everybody and issue
universal basic income and make us all live at the same level.
And that's not right either, because it doesn't provide the
right incentives for people to work hard and to reward, you
know, good behavior. The thing that I find so sad is
that capitalism is a system for bestowing great prosperity on
mankind. And if you study capitalism from
1789 to 1913, you look at my grandparents life from 1913 even
to 1970, look at how much living standards and health.
And I mean, it was just so fantastic in a solid capitalist
system. I mean, you know, and and I talk
about everyone says, well, deflation is a bad thing.
I mean, we had deflation all throughout the 19th century.
And yet people got richer and people got wealthier, lives got
better and the average man could afford a much better life.
And and now it's the other way around.
I mean, we're seeing, you know, for the first time in a long
time, you know, lifespans in America are starting to short.
Yep, you know, which is a sign that the size something's not
right. Yeah.
And that's also something that you mentioned in the book as
well. There is that you mentioned that
it summarizes itself. Money printing breaks
everything, everything. And one of the things that you
mentioned was health. Absolutely.
Did you explain why that is? Well, yeah, I mean, because
because poor people can't buy good food and because poor
people are working three jobs, you know, and not getting a good
night's sleep to try and put money on the table.
And because, you know, we've got big Agra and big you know.
I mean, you know, why do we have Roundup here?
I mean, Roundup is a is a herbicide that makes all our
bread somewhat poisoned. You know, Roundup is banned in
Europe, but Monsanto's got so much power in the United States
that Roundup has not been banned here.
I mean This is why I have so much help for.
For RFK Junior and his ability to, I mean, we were
propagandized. I mean, we were told we should
eat margarine, not butter. That's wrong.
I mean, Ansel Keys was a person at Harvard that basically was
paid by the food companies to lie.
We had this whole food pyramid. Just eat a bunch of carbs.
No, you're not supposed to eat a bunch of meat.
I mean, read anything about the Read the Carnivore Code, which I
just read. I mean, humankinds, we evolved
to be who we are because millions of years ago, one of
our ancestors started figuring out how to cook and eat meat,
and our brains got a lot bigger than chimpanzee brains.
Yeah. And so we became humans and the
human machine was meant to be fed meat, period.
Absolutely. And but, you know, most people
don't know that. And it's just been a lot of a
lot of bad, bad behavior and bad thought patterns.
I mean, you know, the healthcare system is just horribly broken.
And when Obamacare tripled everyone's, you know, just
everything in America has become, you know, a money grab
and grift. Everything I had, my dog was
sick recently. I took him to a vet clinic.
The vet clinic was owned by a PE firm, you know, the PE firm.
They, they convinced me that by doing a bunch of expensive shit,
they could save the dog. The dog was toast.
I mean, it was sad, but the dog was dead.
He was going to die no matter what.
I found that out later. But you know what, they managed
to extract thousands and thousands of dollars out of me
trying to keep the dog alive because we love the dog, right?
I mean, I, you know, Susie Buddz is a big bitcoiner.
She was in the medical or in the dental business.
She said these dental practices are, they're getting bought up
by PE firms and the PE firms are saying, hey, it's pretty easy to
just nick that cavity a little bit and suddenly a cavity
becomes a root canal and you make 3 times as much money.
Why don't you guys do that? So, you know, advice to
everybody listening, make sure your dentist is an independent,
honest practitioner, not part of APE firm owned dental practice
where they have an incentive to actually make you sicker so they
can charge you more money. I mean, that's the kind of sick
shit that's happening. Yeah, it's horrible.
Yeah, it's absolutely horrible. It it, you know, and it reminds
me of the, the whole architecture of Fiat.
And something that I really appreciate about Bitcoin is
Bitcoin is an aligned incentive structure system.
So yes, you're holding Bitcoin. Michael Saylor's holding
Bitcoin, I'm holding Bitcoin and we're all talking about, but
we're all benefiting from Bitcoin going up.
We're all. On the same team.
And the pleb that's holding .01 BTC from a percentage basis?
He's benefiting just as much as all.
Of, you know, you're working for me, Michael Saylor's working for
me, Jeff Booth and Lynn, they're all everybody, everybody in
Bitcoin is working for everybody else in Bitcoin and there's and
nobody has an unfair advantage because it's a mathematical
protocol and it's fair. That's important.
It's fair. Nobody has an unfair advantage,
and it took a mathematical protocol and technology to
create a monetary system that was fair, and that's why it's
such a revolution. And that's why it's sound money,
exactly because it's. Fair.
Because it's fair, yes. And it doesn't matter if you're
the king, president ever. You cannot create more of it.
If you want to create more of it, you have to get in line.
Pay for the cost, mine it like everybody.
Else or provide a good or service that costs to somebody
else to sell you their Bitcoin for that good or service.
Yes. Gotcha.
OK. I have a bit of a rabbit hole
question for you, but I've I've spent a lot of time thinking
about this and a lot of modern day politics are based on this
idea of equality. Yes, I think in Mother Nature,
equality is just people are not equal, right?
There's things, there's things that you're good at.
There's things that I'm good at, right?
And. Well, we all have God-given
gifts and and and limitations, yes, correct.
Right, Some people could play basketball, some people can't
play basketball. But the A lot of modern politics
is based on this idea of equality and the the way that
they reach equality is via wealth redistribution, right?
There's two mechanisms. There's direct taxation, there's
only so much you could do there. And then there is taxation via
currency debasement. Right now the rabbit hole
question that I have for you is does the modern left need the
money printer to be a viable political philosophy?
I think they do. I think they absolutely do
because they buy votes effectively, they buy votes and
and I think it's very important that that there are people who
strive for economic equality and there will never be total
economic equality. As you point out, some people
are more gifted. They they earn, they, they
contribute more, they earn more. But what you can, what you can
get in my belief in an economic system is you can get economic
fairness where the, the playing field is level.
The referee is fair. The referee is not saying, Oh
yeah, you're Bill Ackman. When your bank fails, we'll bail
you out and cover your ass. Oh yeah, you're, you know,
you're Joe, you know, lunch bucket, you know, working,
working, average American. Sorry, tough shit for you.
You know, you get over leveraged in the housing bubble that we
blew. You can't make the payments.
We're taking your house. You know we're going to
Blackrock's going to own it, right.
So, you know, it's a fair system that we're going after.
Not an equal system. Not an equal system.
But I think I think most people understand that because they
they recognize it. Give me a fair game.
I'll play. I'll play as hard as I can.
If somebody wants, if somebody wants something for nothing,
that's like saying they want to steal.
Yeah, they want somebody else's labor.
And that's not fair. Yeah, by definition.
And, and I think also when you say fairness, that includes
social mobility, what they think.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
All the way across. Yeah.
There's no, there's no. I mean, that was that was what
the American Revolution was thought about.
That there is no royalty. Yeah.
You know that we're all, you know, we are created equal,
endowed with, you know, unable rights, a life, liberty and our
pursuit of happiness. I mean, that's some of the
greatest words ever written. And that's the that's the
premise of Americans. What made America great.
And America still is great. But we've slipped from that.
Yeah. We've let this, we've let this
disease get into our monetary system.
And man, oh, man. I mean, it's really, it's like
cancer. I mean, as as Ron Paul says, you
know, what do you. I mean, if we if we end the Fed,
what are you going to replace it with?
And he says, well, if you cut on a cancer, what do you replace it
with? The answer is nothing.
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Check out leaden dot IO today. Larry, you're a very successful
guy. You've I've got ups and downs.
You've, you have very impressive, you know,
credentials. Well, I went to you.
I went to good school. She went.
To Harvard, I believe. Yeah, Harvard.
Good school. What motivates you to write this
book? At 67 years old?
You know you've you've succeeded in life.
You've travelled the world. You're going to the biggest
Bitcoin conferences, you're going to Michael Saylor's 100K
party. You know you're talking to the
brightest minds in the world. What motivates you?
My grandmother's voice in the back of my head.
That's very powerful. What do you could you elaborate
a little bit on that? Just say and do what's right.
OK. You know, just the, the just
saying give back and do what's right.
You know, she was deeply religious.
And, you know, I've been given these gifts, you know, the
education, the intelligence, growing up in a middle class,
upper middle class family. And, you know, I've seen how
broken this is, and I've seen people hurting from it.
And I thought, you know, someday I'll be dead.
I want my kids and my grandkids to say, hey, that guy did it
right. That's very powerful.
Wow. Take a moment here.
Sorry about that. Generally get emotional, but you
kind of you kind of hit a hot button.
For me, yeah, it's wow. So let's let's talk a little bit
about the middle class upbringing because I think
that's something that has completely been gutted because
of of this of essentially the Fiat system.
How will Bitcoin bring that back?
Well, you know, it provides, it'll create fairness across the
board. People won't have to worry about
money. People will be able to retire
again. People, it's just going to be a
fair world. It's going to be a better world.
We're all going to benefit from this technology.
There's so many great things happening in the world, Nico.
I mean, think about what technology has done.
I mean, imagine, think about all the benefits we've had.
Think about how TV's and you know, I was saying earlier
today, I remember being in college as a freshman and long
distance calls were expensive. So I got to talk to my parents
once every week for 5 minutes because, you know, that was all
I wanted to spend on long distance phone calls.
Local phone calls are effectively free anywhere in the
world, right? This is the benefit of
technology that's coming to all of us.
So all of our lives are going to get much better as a result of
the technical innovations that we're seeing right now.
OK, but to make sure they're fairly distributed, we got to
have a fair system or else the guys at the top are going to
keep raking off. Yeah, you know, all, all all of
their peace and benefiting at the expense of the rest of us.
And that's what's going on. Absolutely.
So I mean, I know, and I think you feel this way too.
And if we talk, if you talk to Bitcoiners, I mean, I'm so
hopeful and so optimistic and and so positive.
I mean, I, you know, like I watched my dad retire with some
money, not a lot, some money. By the time he passed, he was
down, you know, in a little, it's purchasing power was gone.
I mean, I have 80 year old friends, 70 and 80, three-year
old friends who are still doing work.
They have money. They have their houses paid for
and they have savings. And they're like, well, I don't
know how long I'm going to live and I might run out of money
given how, you know, inflation is eating me up, right.
So you can't really retire in this system safely, you know
what I mean? Yeah.
I mean, just having that, just knowing that your purchasing
power was going to be preserved, it's a very powerful thing.
Do you think, Larry, did you think that because you've
identified one of the things that I appreciate about the gold
bugs, right and the whole gold movement is that you guys really
started this the whole. Idea sound pretty?
Yeah. And you guys really identified
the problems very accurately. Where do you think gold came up
short? So politically, they figured out
how to neuter it, I mean. How did they do that exactly?
Well, paper gold going off the gold standard fractional reserve
banking. I mean, it's, it's a long litany
of tales. A lot of it's laid out in the
book, though, so you'll get a picture of how they did it, but
gold failed. I mean, it was, it's hard to
verify, it's hard to transfer. It's heavy.
You can, you know, you can, you can cover tungsten and gold.
I mean, they've been fake out, fake gold bars.
It just, it just didn't work. And we moved to a system of
ledgers and credits and we moved to a, you know, a fractional
reserve banking system that basically allowed the banks to
create money at will. And So what happened is they got
way ahead of the gold supply, and the money effectively became
unsound. Now, Lynn would argue that had
to happen at an engineering level no matter what, and she
may be right. I would argue that there were
places where politics intervened and shoved it ahead, the biggest
one being 71. I mean, Nixon had it.
I mean, a lot of people say, well, Nixon had to do what he
did, and that's not true. Nixon could have let the gold
price float. We would have had gold as a
neutral reserve currency and we would not have had the inflation
that we've now had. We would not, you know, things
we could have maintained glass Steagall as an example.
And the and the banks wouldn't have been able to pull off 2008
the way they did. Yeah.
I mean, so there were there was there were two pieces to it.
There was politics and then there was some of this, the tech
development of technology that kind of left gold in the dust.
I mean, you know, once the Telegraph got developed, I mean,
before that gold was shipped overseas.
I mean, the the Pony Express originally, you know, I mean,
you know, watch Porch Cassidy. I mean, they were blowing up the
trains that carried the gold with the payroll, you know what
I mean? I mean, gold was money and you
had to move it around to make for final settlement.
Well, you had a Telegraph and suddenly you could start keeping
a Ledger. So a lot of reasons gold failed,
but but it did fail and it the failure accelerated a lot with
the futures and with actually with Bill Clinton and Ruben and
and Larry Summers. There was an article called
paper that Summers Povis called something's paradox, Gibson's
paradox. So in order to get reelected,
Clinton figured out that if they could mask the price of gold
going up, they could create inflation and not have it look
inflationary. The bond vigilantes wouldn't
know what was going on. And so Ruben, who was an gold
trader at Goldman Sachs, figured out how to create a lot of paper
gold. And so, you know, right now and
what's going on as we speak is that the LBMA is having trouble
making deliveries, which would maybe argue that we're close to
the point at which the LBMA blows up.
And and that's because those of us in the gold camp know this
there we believe there are as many as 100 claims, paper claims
for an ounce of gold for every oz that will exist, right?
So think about that. That's a game of musical chairs
where if everyone with a paper claim came and said, hey, I'll,
I'll take it. Give me the I'll take.
Take the oz, please. Thank you very much.
The Oz wouldn't be there. It's not a division but a bank
run. It's a gold.
Run. It's a gold run.
Yeah. And, and, and, and just to give
you a sense of how much Fiat we've created, there's another
good chart in the book done by my friend Brent Santiago.
Really great chart. So there's a time in the 70s
when you could actually take the US money supply and you could
divide it by the 261 million ounces of gold that we
theoretically own. And you came up with a $35
reference price. That was true back then.
If you did that same calculation, I've said this many
times, you did that same calculation today, took all of
the the money supply outstanding that they divide it by those
200, it would need to be at $89,000 an ounce.
OK, gold's at 2900 right now. So it's a long ways away.
The point there is we've created a lot of paper gold.
Absolutely. And it's also it's physical
characteristics make it very difficult for you to withdraw.
It's hard. I mean, yeah, you and I don't
trade in gold anymore. I mean, it's, you know, it's
pretty and it'll I do, I do. I have to.
I have to admit though, and I'm a millennial, I do own gold
bars. Good for you.
And they feel really good in your way.
Attavoy, you know, I got a bunch of coins and I got a bunch of
silver coins. Silver has a lot of utility.
It's, it's, it's stock to flow sucks and it hasn't gone up as
much as gold and it's being demonetized.
But I tell you, we're silver in a, in a mandible scenario,
silver would be very valuable because most people know what a
wild silver coin is worth. It's 30 bucks.
And so, you know, there's a couple of chickens or some eggs
or maybe a, maybe a tank of gasoline or whatever.
I mean, if the credit cards aren't working, I'm guessing
they'll be people who, you know, farmers and others who will say,
yeah, you can pay me in silver. Absolutely, 100%.
Does Bitcoin replace gold? Do you see it reaching the
market cap of gold? Do you see it reaching the
market cap of gold? Very, very quickly.
Yeah, I do. I mean, it's, it's actually
arguably a lot closer than people think.
So the market cap of gold right now is about $18 billion.
The market cap of bitcoins about two, I'm sorry, trillion
dollars. My my market cap.
Bitcoin, as we know is about 2 trillion round numbers.
But if you think about 18 trillion of gold, really only
about 1/4 to 1/3 of it is in bars and coins that you and I
can buy. So about 1/4 of it's in antiques
and in museums and antiquities. So you know, we're not going to
go meltdown the gold in the British Museum, right?
It's staying there, about 1/4 of it sitting in central bank.
Thanks. Actually a little less than 1/4.
And then the balance is around women's necks in really well in
India and China. And here it's jewelry.
And by the way, if it gets high enough, I mean, you're going to
see women, you know, turning, selling their gold jewelry, I
mean, $89,000 an ounce. So I'm guessing there's some
bracelets that will get turned in.
Absolutely. But but so my point is that to
flip gold, you know, let's say the investable gold is 4 to 6
trillion and the investable Bitcoin right now is, you know,
2 trillion, maybe 3X from here. And Bitcoin is kind of flipping
the investable gold, right? Interesting numbers.
Absolutely. At the time of recording, the
Bitcoin price is roughly 100. Ki think a lot of people were
anticipating it for it to be a lot higher by now.
People are talking about diminishing returns, they're
saying the cycles. What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, so look, it's doing just what it should be doing.
It's just marching up relentlessly.
The the drawbacks are slow. You know, we were at the 58 K
club for a while. We went to 100.
It's a nice move of, you know, 42 grand.
We're now building up what in technical, technical investing
analysis, they call a flag between kind of 90 and 106, you
know, OK, let's add another 42 to that.
I think the next stop is at 140. I mean, to me, these these, you
know, these flags with moves, this is very good, healthy
constructive development. When we go from, let's call it
1:40 to 2:50 really fast, which might happen.
My sense is it's going to be ahead of itself.
And that's when you might you know, I mean, I and I look, I
don't know what the top of the cycle is.
I mean, I look at a a lot of things, including the power law
and historical cycles and how far it comes off the base feels
to me like the top of the cycles between 2 and 300 and then we'll
have a pullback. But I think the pullbacks are
getting smaller. And I think at some point this
power law models going to break to the upside.
And we're just going to, we're not going to have pullbacks
because at that point, this is Parker Lewis's, you know, the
gradually and then suddenly, I mean, the suddenly phase sailor
made this point when I was on stage with him in Madeira and he
said, look, I can see what's going to happen.
You know, we're going to go to 300.
A lot of people think, holy shit, this has been amazing.
I'm selling now, I'm getting that's going to be a mistake.
You know, it's going to go to 700 and a million.
They're going to be and they're not going to get back, be able
to get back in. Yeah.
So they're not going to be. Able to get the same amount of
coins. No, I mean, I think in general,
generally speaking, my view is you sell coins, don't count on
getting them back. Yeah, this cycle hasn't really
start. The bull part of this cycle has
started, but the euphoria phase of this cycle hasn't started
yet. I.
Completely agree. I completely agree.
And I think it comes, frankly, I think it comes in the next year.
I think between what are we talking now, it's February.
I think between now and February, March and next, next
year, they're gonna be fireworks.
Yeah, real fireworks. I completely agree.
Now I have a question from you and I'm gonna pose as a Henzian
economist. If there isn't inflation, won't
people just hoard money? Yeah, that's bullshit and I deal
with it in the book. I mean, I mean, do you not eat?
Because there's. I mean, if you think steak's
gonna be future cheaper in the future, you can stop eating
waiting for, you know. OK, We all know your TV.
Five years when I'll be cheaper than TV today you're gonna stop
buying TV's. No, You wanna watch football
today you're gonna buy one. It's all just horse shit.
I mean, you might stop buying frivolous shit, you might stop
wasting your money on gambling and doing other things to try
and beat inflation, but humans have needs and you're going to
pay good value for things you need.
And so the notion, you know, this, this idea of a savings
glut and this is all just Keynes, this is all just to
support. There's just, it's a lie.
It's just a total lie. Deflation is good.
Deflation means that you can buy more with less dollars.
I mean, look at the people from 1870 to 1913.
Their lives improved in incredibly, incredibly.
I mean, they went from, you know outhouses to indoor plumbing.
They had no electricity. A lot of them by, you know, the
20s and 30s, they had electricity.
You know, they were eating better food.
They, you know, Sears Roebuck came out with a catalogue.
They could buy high quality goods.
I mean all of it. And during that time frame,
prices were falling and, and, but GDP and output, I mean, the
whole idea of measuring output by GDP growth and then, you
know, and then having that somehow we've got to get to a
measure of output that's based on units, not on dollars.
Because you know, if you're understating inflation and you
say you got three 3% GDP growth, but you've got 5%, you really
have 5% inflation. Well, in fact, you're actually
in a recession. It's not like the, the dollar
value of cars that we're selling.
It's how many cars are we selling?
You know, it's the number of units.
So unit growth is what suggests that an economy is is
benefiting, not not dollar value growth.
Do you think, do you? And then my next question which
you partly answered, which is can money exist without
inflation? Of course it can.
Of course, of course, again, it has.
I mean to a degree, I mean gold always had a certain amount of
inflation, but absolutely abso frigging lutely.
Anyone who says it can't is just is wrong.
How will how will people deal with wages, for example?
Well, I mean, wages will get set in the marketplace.
The fact that your wage doesn't go up will be OK because you'll
have the same wage, but it'll buy more in the future and, and
you'll look forward to that. And it will, it will, it will
shift everyone's time preference.
You know you will. You will start thinking about
how do I buy things that last and how do I save for the
future, and how you know you'll know that you have an
alternative and a reward for being patient and for not for
not wasting money on stupid shit.
Yeah, I mean, you know what I mean.
It's. A total mind.
Shift. It's a total mind shift.
I mean, I mean, Kane has a nice quote in the book where he says,
you know, somewhere we shifted from valuing honesty and hard
work to valuing consumption and consumerism.
You know, I mean, I can see if I can foresee a time where owning
a really snazzy car would just become, you know, viewed as
being. It's just like a person's
stupid. Why would they ever do that?
You don't need that. It doesn't benefit them.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think, I think you know, and you'll want to buy
things that last. You know, I mean, you see this
in Bitcoin culture. Yeah, we all live below our
means exactly. We spend.
We try to spend this. Little it affects everything.
It affects art. I mean look at the buildings
that were built pre war in America.
Yeah, it's still standing and they're beautiful.
Some of the architecture is beautiful.
Look at the buildings we're building today.
Yeah, they're deep, they're sloppy, they fall down.
They don't last. Yeah.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean it's just it just
change it'll change everything. It'll change the mindset to one
of thinking about the long term. I mean, one of the one of the
terrible things that Cain said was in the long term we're all
dead, which is kind of like a party on Garth.
What's you know Yeah, screw screw the seed corn, screw your
relatives. Yeah.
And, and in fact, you know, the right way society should work is
for parents and and families to want their relatives to be
better off them to want to save, to invest in their education, to
invest in giving them a legacy, to invest in giving them a
future. That's what's good, not not
partying and leaving them nothing but debt.
And you know what? We've left people now.
Of course, fast times, right? Yeah.
Let me ask you something. Another part where another part
of your book, right where you brought up America's moral
decline. Yes.
What came first? Was it the money experiment that
led to the moral? Because if you look at history
and you look at the I'm an Empire, there's a lot of
similarity. Track, they act really
perfectly, don't they? Yeah, so.
What came? 1st that's a chicken and egg
question what I'm saying. Was it the degradation of of the
money? Because I think like, what a lot
of people forget to understand is that money plays such an
integral part in the human. Absolutely everyone touches it.
What happens when that money is broken?
When that money is corrupt, you can make a very good argument
that it breaks something spiritually about you as a.
That's what I believe. But I think the money breaks and
then the spirit breaks. But that that leads to, you
know, there's each incremental step and the steps just got
worse and worse and worse. And, you know, like as an
example, when we're on the gold standard, I mean, they, they,
they, you know, suspended the specie payment in 1812.
The money broke, but they fixed it and they got back on the gold
standard and, you know, things were OK again.
And so, and we had a lot of experiences like that, including
the Civil War where they printed greenbacks.
But, you know, we kept going back to what we knew, which was
sound money. And, and, you know, in the the
bimetalism wars were fought over that.
All the free silver guys wanted less sound money.
All the gold guys wanted sound money.
And we stayed with sound money. But then, you know, the Fed came
along and it backs up the banks. And then, you know, and it just,
you know, the the snowball got really, really rolling, You
know, later on. I mean, if you look at the
history of America, I mean, the monetary system was never
perfect, but it was better than it is now by definition.
Yeah. Yeah.
No, it's, it's a, it's a very kind of interesting phenomenon.
Like yeah you can. They go, they go hand in.
Hand they go hand in hand. Yeah, I mean, it is, it is
chicken and egg. I mean, is it good?
And and it's kind of like each one of them is a top this.
Do you know what I mean? I mean, you know, derivatives,
right? For example, I mean, Phil Graham
lobbied to change all the derivatives law, which allowed
Enron to vaporize $78 billion worth of assets.
Do you know what I mean? And and she was getting, she was
on the Enron board and she was getting paid, you know,
1,000,000 bucks a year to sit on that board.
I mean, you know, it's just, again, insiders changing the
rules, doing stuff to benefit themselves, breaking the money,
right? Yeah.
So Larry, early on in the conversation, I want to double
back to this. You, you talked about the dead
Doom loot. What is that?
Yeah. OK, so let's talk about the
federal government's finances, right?
The federal government collects taxes and the federal government
has expenses. And some of those expenses are
very much locked in. You know, Social Security and
Medicare are kind of set on autopilot and they adjust upward
with CPI. Some of the are are more
discretionary, like defense, but frankly, it's pretty locked in
as well because all the defense contractors have the Washington
by the throat. Basically, these things are, are
costs that we endure. And by the way, one of the
biggest wastes of, of federal spending, in my opinion, in the
last, you know, 20 years was all the were all the wars post 911.
I mean, we spent away 8. We wasted $8 trillion in the
Middle East fighting, securing oil, you know, for other people
and ourselves and, you know, grabbing Afghanistan and giving
it back. I mean, we just wasted $8
trillion. It's terrible.
But Dick Cheney's rich. I mean, he's, you know, he made
$100 million, you know, in Halliburton.
So set all that aside. The federal government balances
these two. And when COVID came along, the
expenses went up a great deal and revenue didn't.
And so the deficits really widened out.
And one would have thought the crisis was over.
They've cut back the expenses, but they didn't.
And so we started running bigger deficits.
Well, as you know, when you run a deficit, it has to be
financed. The government has to figure out
a way to pay for the deficit. So what do they do?
They issue debt in order to have the cash to to make the expense
payments that they're making. So that debt gets added on to
the national debt, which has been growing incredibly quickly,
as we all know. And that debt needs to be
serviced. There's an interest cost to that
debt. And so the bond market, which
buys that debt, pays that interest.
And there's only in the bond market is comprised of savers
who want to buy debt to get an interest rate.
You know, they're trying to conservatively save money and
get interest on it. And So what happens is as the
debt gets bigger and interest rates go up, the interest cost
of the government goes up a lot. So the interest cost of the
government five years ago was 3, $400 billion a year.
Right now we're running at $1.4 trillion a year.
Well, last year the deficit was $1.8 trillion.
So a big part of the deficit is the interest cost on the debt.
If the deficit gets bigger, what do you do?
You sell more debt, OK, You sell the debt into a fixed size
market. What happens?
There are only so many buyers, they need a higher price
interest cost in order to buy. Want to buy it.
So the interest rate goes higher.
So now you got 36 billion. That's not just paying $1.4
trillion that maybe they're paying 1.8.
Well, that's going to get added to the deficit.
Well, how are you going to finance the deficit?
You're going to issue more debt. Well, the issue, the more debt
gets you see, and it becomes a doom loop, right?
Bigger deficit, more debt issuance, more debt issuance,
higher interest rates, higher interest rates, bigger deficit.
Can't stop this train. Nothing stops this train.
And I got permission from Lynn to use that as a chapter.
I mean, there's a chapter called Nothing Stops This train, which
a brilliant meme, you know, by Lynn Alden that that describes
that process. And, and, and so Doge comes
along and, you know, rightly so. And, and I applaud all of their
efforts. They are going to try and they
found some really stupid expenses.
They're going to try and they will, they will cut expenses.
But here's the thing, Nico, they've got a really, really
hard task, Okay, The deficit is 1/8 last year and it's now
running closer to like 2-4. If you annualized the last
couple of months, what we're seeing is that's going to be
really, really hard to cut because 80%, if you take Social
Security, Medicare, defense and interest, you've accounted for
80% of the budget. So even if you caught cut, you
know, if you cut the less, you know, 20% to 0, which you can't,
you wouldn't balance it. So you've got to go after and,
and you try and cut Social Security, Medicare, that's the
third rail. No politicians going to go for
that defense guys, they're pretty powerful and the interest
rates are really high. Now what they could do is they
could do financial repression and I think that's what they're
going to force to do. They're going to be forced to do
yield curve control. They're going to the Fed in
spite of inflation not coming back to 2%.
You've seen them already calling for the some people saying,
well, that's in the book as well.
Well, maybe we should have an inflation target of 3 or 4%.
They're going to be forced to keep issuing the debt and hold
the interest rate below the net, the neutral rate.
And that that interest rate will at least bring that 1.4 of
interest expense down. And that'll help a little bit.
But the point is yield curve control, How do they do that?
That means they are buying the debt themselves, which then
means their balance sheet is getting bigger, which then means
the supply of money in the system is getting bigger.
And what's that? That's inflation, OK.
As inflation gets bigger, the bond market, you know, the bond
market is devised to give a return over and above inflation,
higher inflation. The bond market says, I'm sorry,
you know, I'm not buying that unless you give me this rate.
Eventually the Fed could be sitting there with with their
their balance sheet saying, well, we're going to cap the
yields at 4%. The entire bond market could
look at it and go 4%. I don't like that.
Sold to you, Right. And $36 trillion.
Yeah, they could sell to the Fed, which has got a $7 trillion
balance sheet, right? So suddenly you've just grown
the money supply by that amount. That's hyperinflation.
But something's got to give, Something's got to give.
Something's got to give, Something's got to.
But you just can't put a timeline.
On No, you can't. You don't know how it's going to
give. You don't know form it's going
to take. But what we do know, Nico, is
it's leading to the big print. There's no other way out.
And that's why I wrote the book, because I want to get up on a
soapbox and scream at the entire goddamn world.
Wake up, guys. Wake up.
This is going to happen. Yeah.
Protect yourself now. Yeah, because there's not going
to be a dual over. Yeah, right, if you're in.
Bitcoin, the big print is gonna make.
Gold to 1,000,000 bucks a coin. Yeah.
Gold's going to 10,000. Yeah, right.
Yeah. I mean, it's it's nuts.
Yeah, it's absolutely nuts. What do you think about Lummis?
I was talking to her, yeah. She's talking to Senator Lummis
about two weeks ago in DC. What do you think about her plan
in the Bitcoin Act? The the bill?
And I love the way that Senator Lummis approached it.
She's like, look, my generation kind of really screwed you guys
though. I.
Fucked it up. Oh, there's no doubt.
I agree with that totally. And I'm not saying her
specifically. But she didn't do it.
I didn't do it either. But but yeah, she was like.
I want it like this Bill is a way to rectify that and she was
making. This book is my way, right?
Very well, perfect. Right.
And it's like, I want to, you know?
And the, the case that she was making is that if the Bitcoin
Act gets passed in the United States, it's going to be kind of
hard because the the Republicans don't have a filibuster majority
proof in the Senate. They have 53 votes, right?
Right. She's making the case that by
the United States buying I think up to 1,000,000 Bitcoin, you're
like 5%. Yeah, it was. 200,000 a year for
five years as I remember. She can use, or better said the
US government could use that to pay off some of the debt.
You think that's feasible? Yes, I do.
It's, it's it's complicated, but I do think it's feasible.
I mean, I think we need a monetary reset, full stop, OK?
We are in a sovereign debt crisis.
There's too much debt, there's not enough GDP.
We need a we need a monetary reset, OK, How that takes form.
This is brain surgery. This is complicated, OK?
And we don't, I don't have the answer and I don't think anybody
has the answer. But what it does mean is it
means you've got to go back to some form of sound money as the
base layer. Bitcoin is the right choice.
Gold is inferior, but it's a better choice than Fiat, OK.
And yes, if we start buying Bitcoin, that's going to shove
the dollar down, OK, which we need.
That would create more exports for us and it would make our
imports more expensive. It would harm China, but that's
a good thing. China's taking advantage of our
industrial Midwest. And yes, I mean, what she's
talking about is brilliant. I think Trump and Bescent kind
of understand this. OK, Now in the paths, there are
1,000,000 paths as to how we get there.
OK. And I don't know.
And I can't foresee, but I when I invest, I don't, I don't
invest. I'm not a trader.
I don't invest month by month. I invest year by year.
And I really invest, you know, five years by five years and
decade by decade. And so I'm looking to protect my
savings, you know, for when I'm 80 or 90 or, you know, or for my
kids and stuff. And I just know that all roads
lead to inflation. Yeah, they just, they all leave
and. So they have to print.
Nothing stops this train. Right.
And so, so you know in what, in what form or manner I don't
know. And by the way, by the way, it's
going to be volatile. I mean, there's a chart in here.
There's there's Dan Oliver's brilliant, you know, Weimar
chart that shows the price of gold monthly during the Weimar
hyperinflation. I mean, example, we could have
an enormous stock market crash. OK, Let's, I mean, there's some
people think that they're going to engineer that to hurt Trump,
OK? We could have an enormous stock
market crash. And you know, in 2020 when the
stock market crash, Bitcoin got hit hard, gold got hit hard,
right? Powell came in on a Monday
morning, said we're going to print until our eyes bleed,
basically. And gold took off like a rocket.
Bitcoin took off like a rocket. But you know, if you panicked on
that downturn, you know, you got blown out.
So one needs, and I try in the book to explain that one needs
to understand the nature of these assets and understand
that, you know, and you've been in this long enough, you know,
I've been in a long enough. I'm, I know this stuff can go
against you. Yeah.
You know, I mean, I, I own a bunch of these things.
I bought them at 17,000 in 2017. And I watch them go to 10 and I
watch them go to four. Yep and I and I bought 1 and I
bought one at 69 K at 21 and 21. I did too.
And it was terrible.
I did too. I did too.
But but you know what? I bought more at 15.
You know in 22 when after SPF, so you got to take a long term
perspective. I mean, the changing of a
monetary system, which is what we're in, it's going to be a
volatile event. Yeah, absolutely.
But I do want to give massive kudos to Senator Lum is
absolutely. She is like absolutely.
She gave me hope. Absolutely gave me hope.
And you know, running is incredible.
Yeah, and Thomas Massie, I mean, these are forerunners and there
will be more, you know. There will be more, I love that.
There will be. It's like we're coming.
I love that they're going to be more right.
You know you're talking about investing testing earlier,
Larry, and I think, you know the world is waking up to Bitcoin
Strat Fi's here, right? You know that just the world is
woken up to this nation states are here.
If you were to give advice to your client in terms of what
should be the appropriate Bitcoin allocation, the
percentage terms. Depends on your age and depends
on your risk tolerance. I said in the book, I thought if
you didn't have at least 25% of your assets and sound money, you
were going to experience regret. I obviously have a lot more than
that and I think a lot of people should have more than that.
If you're older and and you can't handle a drawdown, you
might need the money within a five year window.
Having 100% in Bitcoin, that doesn't make any sense.
You could have a big drawdown and you'd have to pull it out at
a low value. You want to do that.
So it kind of depends on when you're going to need the money,
right? So I think everybody has to
figure that out for themselves. But let me make another point
about the whole thing. And I think it's a very
important point to make and the book makes it, but I want to
make it here because I think it's very important people
understand. It was funny.
You know, when you write one of these books, you do research and
you learn things and things pop into your head that you hadn't
thought of before investing, you know, and, and so there are a
lot of rules investing. They're tried and true.
They've been around a long time. A lot of great books written in
Graham and Dodd, you know, they're brilliant.
There are thousands of brilliant investors.
Millions of brilliant investors have done well over the years.
And it's very seldom that the rules change.
But the rules have changed. And let me describe that the
rules have changed in the following way, Nico.
We now have investments dominated by Metcalf's Law.
Metcalf's Law says that the network grows in value at the
square of the underlying number of users.
So I was trained, you know, at Business School to invest in
things based on multiples of cash flow and growth and PEG
ratios and all the standard stuff, sharp ratios, all that
stuff. And therefore, when, you know,
when the Internet came along and I invested in the Internet and
I, I benefited from the growth of that, But like, I was looking
at Amazon and I was looking at Facebook and I was looking at
Google and I could never get her past the valuations.
I, I put valuation tests on these network businesses.
I said they're too expensive for what they are.
They don't have any profits to justify this valuation.
I missed it. OK, here's what happened.
Amazon, since its IPO, is up 218,000%.
Yeah. Google, since its IPO, is up
9000%. Facebook, since its IPO is up
like 2000%. General Motors, since its IPO in
1916, is up like 400 times. OK, It's great.
It was a great investment. OK.
If you held GM through all those years, you did fine.
My point is, it's only 20 years. The Internet's really been
active since, right in in 20 years from because I consider
broad Internet usage was 2000, started in 95 broadly it was
2000. So we're 24 years into the
Internet and you've got network businesses that have gone up
thousands of percent. Yeah, this is different.
Yeah. This is AI mean.
This is a really different set of rules.
OK. That trend isn't going to stop.
No, Yeah. So what does that tell me?
I want to invest in network businesses.
Well, what you know, or network things, right?
What's the biggest network thing right now?
Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah.
It's just so obvious, right? I mean, it really, I think it's
very important for people to get out of that traditional
investing mindset and think in those terms.
Absolutely. Final question for you.
Yeah, Yeah. What's that?
What are you the most excited about for the next five years in
terms of Bitcoin? Well, I'm really excited to see
all of us winning and I'm excited to see Bitcoiners
winning and I'm excited to see new people coming into the fold.
And, you know, I, I told, told some stories.
I mean, I was in a Whole Foods in Framingham, Mass in December.
I was walking around. There was a guy in, in
northeastern Massachusetts, there's a office supply store
called WB Mason. They deliver and they have
trucks. There's a guy in there walking
around with WB Mason uniform on. So he's a delivery man, walks up
to me. He says, are you Larry?
And I'm like, yeah. He says, dude, I've been
watching your videos for five years.
I started stacking five years ago.
I got a pretty good stack. He gives me a big hug.
Because you changed my life. You saved my.
It's a guy who drives a truck. Yeah.
And I'm kind of like, oh, man, we need more stories than yeah,
right. I want, I want that story
repeated 1000 times. I love that.
You know what I mean? That's that's what I'm held for.
The other thing I would say that my biggest and longer term, my
biggest hope for Bitcoin is that it ends the wars.
Yes. It's just people, and innocent
people in faraway countries have gotten killed for no good
reason. Fix the money, fix the world the
world guys, go get larry's book, the big print what happened to
America and how sound money will fix it Larry there's been an
actual. Honor.
Well, no, thank you so much. Sit with you.
I really enjoyed it. Great questions.