Vince Lanci reveals how U.S. paper markets suppress Bitcoin and gold as China builds a gold-backed system, setting up a global reset in money and collateral.
Vince Lanci explains how the U.S. government is suppressing Bitcoin’s price through financialization, the same mechanism once used to control gold. By creating deep derivatives markets, institutions shift liquidity and price discovery from spot markets to futures, allowing them to suppress prices with “paper” supply. This mirrors the London Gold Pool strategy post-1971. Lanci argues the U.S. now controls Bitcoin’s liquidity through ETFs and custodial structures, effectively “co-opting” it rather than banning it. Meanwhile, China and the BRICS nations are building a parallel gold-backed system, transforming gold into a high-quality liquid asset (HQLA) for project financing and de-dollarization. Both blocs are repatriating gold as collateral in a global “cabal squabble,” while the U.S. weakens its own dollar through monetized debt and inflationary policy. Trump’s “accelerationism,” energy diplomacy, and tariff maneuvers are part of a race to re-industrialize before the next crisis. Lanci warns this cycle resembles the 1970s: inflationary headwinds, rate cuts into a bubble, and an inevitable recession that resets global collateral trust, where Bitcoin may eventually rise as digital sound money once fiat and gold systems clash.
“When the futures price becomes more important than the spot price, you can influence the market lower by just selling paper.”
“You don’t announce you’re going to create an SPR for Bitcoin. You just buy.”
“China’s building a network of vaults so every country can have its gold close enough to see, it’s about trust.”
“Gold will be carried on everyone’s balance sheet according to a moving average, not the daily price. That’s how they’re stabilizing it.”
“The U.S. is emptying London of its gold, it’s a crisis of collateral.”
“If you can’t kill Bitcoin, you co-opt it. ETFs pull all liquidity to U.S. custody.”
“The ETF is a China closet for Bitcoin, a store of value that doesn’t circulate.”
“The state does two things: it kills people, and it prints money. It won’t give up either.”
“Bitcoin will survive because it’s indestructible, it just needs time and opportunity.”
“Gold bugs and Bitcoiners are fighting the same battle. One raised the other.”
Lanci sees the coming years as a geopolitical and monetary collision between two systems: the U.S. dollar empire trying to maintain dominance through controlled liquidity, and the BRICS bloc using gold to rebase global credit. Bitcoin sits in the middle, suppressed but slowly integrating as a parallel network of trust and settlement. Its survival, like gold’s, depends on usage and decentralization beyond ETFs. Over time, the same inflation and debt that erode fiat systems will drive adoption of harder assets. Lanci’s warning is clear: the “everything bubble” will end not with a soft landing, but with a crisis of collateral, and Bitcoin, if allowed to circulate freely, may emerge as the digital resolution.
0:00 - Intro
1:04 - Luongo
11:49 - Shanghai warrants
24:25 - Chinese bonds
32:01 - Bitkey & SLNT
33:49 - Gold & tariffs
37:46 - Russian war
44:11 - Obscura & Unchained
45:33 - Bessent’s plans and FOMO
51:20 - Copper
53:56 - Vince’s neutral stance
1:00:53 - Real inflation
1:06:47 - Global inflation
1:16:18- Bitcoin
(00:00) the futures price becomes more important than the spot price. Then you can influence the market lower by just selling paper. We're kind of in a bubble right now. Are you telling me we're not going to have a recession for the next 15 years? We have to have a recession with inflationary headwinds.
(00:12) You can't lower rates without causing a bubble. We can't pay off our debt. So, we're printing money. We're weakening the dollar intentionally. I'll start to say crash if I see a day where every country can have their gold close enough to see to visit. The US is now emptying London of its gold. It's a crisis of collateral.
(00:28) You need to have the collateral there. You need to say this is my goal. Trump's an accelerationist. Whether he's good or bad, I don't care. We're going to get to where we have to get faster because of him. Trump and gold. That's your Scott Bessent thing. And that's where Bitcoin comes in.
(00:39) You don't announce you're going to create an SPR or for Bitcoin. You just buy. Japan used to go like this. All right. We're not buying enough stuff from the US. What are we going to buy? Cars? No. Let's buy some gold. It's a it's a money laundering operation. There are smart people like Scottas who know what's going on and know the endgame.
(00:51) This is best. We need cheap energy. We need a weak dollar and we need to build stuff. I see the energy getting cheaper. I know Trump's cutting deals with Saudis. Vince, I think this was the uh the most enlightening pre-record conversation I've had. We should record that [ __ ] for your for your premium people, right? We should have.
(01:16) We should have. I you know, I do that when I'm with Tom Lango. We hit the tape before we hit the tape. I hit the tape on my phone. I go, "Let's go." We argue about something like music or some booer [ __ ] you know. All right. Tom is Tom is one of my favorite crazy uncles, recurring crazy uncles on the show. He's totally He's totally Yeah. Yeah. We We definitely We definitely um riff off of each other from different angles.
(01:36) I look at it from finances and I try and explain the world. He tries to explain the world from ideology and together it's like we're both right or we're both just, you know, lying to each other. Who knows? All right. So, I'm with you. Do you do you pick up uh what he's putting down in terms that uh England still controls the world? the crowns of the world.
(02:00) The the the he needs a focal point and that focal point, this is not going to be a negative statement. He seems to focus on a focal point and then he sees the tentacles coming out. I don't see the focal point. It may not be the king of England or the crown. Remember, you know, two years ago it was Davos and WF and the Biden junza.
(02:21) That was his that was his expression. And now he's gravitated towards the crown. I'm like, you know what? I mean, when you look at things through the lens that I study and analyze things, which is like him. Um, and that is all you do is you find out who benefits and who suffers and you just keep and you just keep eliminating people until you find out the one guy who's there.
(02:43) And I don't know that it's the crown per se, but there's definitely a one thing that he said that's really true is that Europe in general is a plantation. Long time ago, he was talking about this way. Europe's a plantation. They've, you know, feudalism and the people that are in power want to stay in power and the Europeans are still colonizing.
(03:06) They're still trying to protect their colonies. And I guess if you want to put a focal point on it, you can call it the crown. You can call it the people that operate the crown. I I think I think I know from a friend of mine who's in uh who's a banking executive here that there's an ideological split and it's everywhere.
(03:26) And the ideological split is the the uh European old money. I mean, they don't have anything there. I mean, I'm not ne I'm not anti- Europe like he is. Uh but you know they're doubling down on s say ideology or wokeness and Germany's got no manufacturing anymore. No no I I I I agree with him like I it's it's probably not that in six months you and I will talk about this again and he will say well I know who's pulling the strings of the crown now.
(03:58) You know he just keeps going up the ladder right? He was like I hate but I mean I hate Biden because of this and I'm like yeah you're right. He goes, and then he then I will look at Europe and and and England in terms of trade. I'll say, 'Well, this is what's going on here. That doesn't make sense. Italy's getting screwed, yada yada yada. And then I'll say, well, that's because the ideology is driving all the policy.
(04:15) Like, I will say the ideology influences policy. Mhm. Cuz I still I still believe that people can at least be semi-rational. He, you know, he's kind of dragging me that way, but he's like, "No, no, ideology determines everything with these people." And it's it's sad, pathetic, but it's true. Like, I'm looking at things differently now.
(04:40) Like, for example, domestically, Camala Harris, right? I don't care about the politics. I'm not a political person. Well, I I I identify her as what you would call a third generation feminist. So there's there's there's, you know, real feminists, then there's the their children, and then there's a third generation. Why are you feminist? Because my mom was. Camala is third generation.
(04:59) I'm like, well, where did she get this training? And I found out yesterday. Camala Har I'm listening to like the D Kennedys, which is like um uh they have a song called Are you familiar with the band? Yep. All right. So, California Uber, right? It's about Jerry Brown, you know, the hippie who wanted to run for president when Reagan won.
(05:18) And uh and and and I'm reading the lyrics and I'm like, "Yeah, this is pretty funny. It's really cool." And then, you know, I'm Where's Jerry Brown now? Boom. I did one of those things on Chat GPT. And uh Camala Harris has came up and his name came up in his bio. She was attorney general for California for seven years under him. And I'm like, "Oh, that's where you got it." And they just gone off the deep end, those people. Anyway, all right, cool.
(05:42) Um so I agree with Tom on a lot of things. And when I disagree, I let him know. And it's usually minor stuff. Uh or when I don't agree or disagree, I just sit back and just watch him froth and we have fun. You know, he brings on to kind of give him a sounding board to do his thing. It's uh great. We we typically we for some reason we always record on like late Friday afternoon whenever we do record and that's like him after a week of screaming at people and dissecting things.
(06:12) And I don't know if I get him at his most tired point or when he's distilled his thoughts most clearly, but they're always incredible conversations. If if if they're not distilled clearly, I see the picture of the uh of the guy from um It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with the map. I'm like, whoa.
(06:28) Like I'll say, okay, time out. Could you pause this? What the [ __ ] are you talking about, Tom? And then other times I'm like I'm like that sounds stupid, but it's not wrong. That sounds It's not wrong. Oh [ __ ] he might be right. And I just I just walk away going, "All right, I guess I have to look at it that way now.
(06:47) " Yeah, I will say he he definitely dragged me towards his viewpoint um in terms of this, for lack of a better term, inter cabal squabble. Like changing the reference to Yeah, that's right. That's what it is. Inter cabal. It's That's a good phrase. You should get a com on that or something like inter cabal squabble. The only thing that I've identified that I think that that um uh and I'm saying it to you and I'll say it to him, but I haven't said it to him yet, but I'm saying it to you. He has become so patriotic.
(07:13) I'm very patriotic, but he has become so patriotic that everything Trump does is viewed as good for us. And I have said that as well. Meaning Trump's an accelerationist. Whether he's good or bad, I don't care. We're going to get to where we have to get faster because of him. Uh but I don't think he's the 3D chess people. Well, that's some pe person that people do. I think he's a people pleaser.
(07:38) He just wants to be liked, right? And Oh, yeah. He's a Would you say people pleaser? Yeah, that's right. He's got a personality disorder and that's and and I'm not saying that lightly. He's got he's a narcissistic personality disorder. I studied him in in uh when I was in New York City for years as as one of the things to look at.
(07:57) And uh yeah, and it becomes a people pleaser. He's constantly pulling and thank God because he doesn't get married to an idea and he can change gears if he's wrong. On the other hand, it really kind of makes it look like he's out of his mind. Yeah. Yeah. Is uh this I was watching uh Scott Adams. He did his daily show uh yesterday and he was highlighting like the Hamas Israel deal that was signed.
(08:22) who knows if it'll stick, but nobody thought he could do that. And right think he's catering to like the people pleasing nature of like just Oh, you're right. He and that's something that Tom actually point out. He goes like this like this is me and you versus Tom and his his part conversation.
(08:42) Tom, do you know what Trump does on Thursday? He dumps some ideas to get them distracted and he does something else on Monday. It's brilliant. And I'll say, Tom, Tom, he tries stuff. if it doesn't work, he moves on to something else cuz he wants to keep the press on him in positive light. He's like, "Oh, no. He's got a plan." I'm like, "No, he doesn't, Tom." You know, anyway, the point is the the result is the same. But I I I agree with you.
(09:00) That's uh that's that's true, right? People pleaser. Uh who like right now he's he's not like, you know, the economy he's talking about. The funny thing is is because he's screwing up on let's say he's being perceived as screwing up on tar. I mean, look, he's not making he's not getting more popular, right? He's losing popularity.
(09:25) So, what's he do? He goes, "Well, where can I pivot to next?" Oh, [ __ ] Let me work. He's working on things all the time. And, you know, and if Gaza works, his popularity goes up. I mean, look, after the midterms, he's done uh in terms of uh influencing. So, he he's he kind of recognizes that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean last point on this, but like he did have MSNBC, ABC, CBS sort of giving him flowers and Obama while not explicitly mentioning him in the tweet did say it was a good thing that this peace deal is coming.
(09:54) So seems like he is dragging people in his direction. But one thing that Trump is famous for is being a big fan of gold. Uh this is your expertise and why I wanted to bring you on obviously is gold. I think it's still trading over $4,000 right now. silver screaming like I told you we've had two people silver right now. I'm a [ __ ] idiot.
(10:17) Yeah, don't don't record that. Turn that mic off. Uh let me see where what I see here. Yeah, Trump and gold. That's your Scott Besset thing. And that's where Bitcoin comes in. Like that you don't announce you're going to create an SPR or for Bitcoin. You just buy. Yeah. Uh gold's 4019. Jesus Christ. Whenever I see gold up $40, I go, "All right, what did Trump do today?" You know, like the guys at deal just blow up or something. He uh he called out China.
(10:51) He said, "China's not uh not Oh, tariffs are back on the table. China's not cooperating with the rare earth metals deal that they want to do, right? That's right." He said, "Right, stocks are down, gold is up. What's the dollar doing?" And dollar's down. Yeah. Oh, but the market's acting recessionary.
(11:11) Yeah, he's he I think I just saw something come across a tape that he's uh he's threatening to do more tariffs. Yeah. Trump threatens China tariffs. There you go. Yeah. Doesn't take much to get gold going right now. And by the way, with with the context of Bitcoin, I do want to say something to your audience about that because having lived through the repression of gold price, all your people are smart enough.
(11:35) They know how it's happening, but I just want to confirm it and give them details of how it's being done because they're keeping the lid on it to accumulate it. That's what they're doing. They're wa They're trying to wash people out. That's what they're doing. And I'm not even paranoid. Anyway, all right. I'm ready for you. All right. We'll get to that later. Let's focus on gold first.
(11:55) Like I was saying, I've had two people on the last three months. Uh caught my eye actually probably last two months. Caught my eye two months ago. the chart of uh the Shanghai Warren. Uh oh yeah, going up. We'll cover that parabolically. Uh what is happening there? I'm sorry. What? What is happening there? Uh are we starting now? Yeah. Okay, we're we've been recording for 11 minutes. Oh, nice. Cool. All right.
(12:23) So, um Okay. Uh Shanghai WS. All right. So the fact is and and I know you know this and your people know this as well but the fact of the matter is the Shanghai Shanghai has been adding warrants which are claims on gold uh in the exchange. Now generally speaking the Shanghai warrant float is I'm going to make a number up but it's going to be give you an idea of the scale.
(12:46) If you have the chart for your people that'll that'll help them as well. about four, like four on a scale of 1 to 100 four, you know, uh 4,000 warrants or 400 warrants, but it's a small number and it's very regular and it goes like this. If you're looking at a chart, if you have chartists out there, it'll go sideways.
(13:05) And what that is is that those warrants in general are tied to people arbitrageing the physical to the futures in China. That's all it is, right? There's not a lot going on there. But couple months ago, it starts to ramp and and there you go. That's it. Yeah, it starts to ramp. So, it starts to ramp before 2025. It starts to ramp, frankly, when Trump started doing the tariff thing.
(13:36) And it's getting aggressive now. Now, I've been watching this for a couple months, uh, with interest, but no conclusion. And just to stay with the facts of that for a second there, what they're doing is they're locking up gold. That gold is being locked up. And China has been importing gold handover fist.
(14:02) And they advertise that now because they're broadcasting to their bricks partners, their junior partners that see we've got the gold, we've got the gold. We're telling you we've got the asset that allows us to get off of treasuries which allows us to get off of dollars. And they're doing that. But what are they using the gold for is really what I think there's probably only three people have a clue at least publicly that are talking about it. One of them I hope is me.
(14:27) Another is Eric Young. He and I are friends. we've come to the same conclusion from different points of view and there's someone else out there I'm not going to mention cuz I don't know um but here here's a situation and and it has to do with gold and the yuan the Chinese currency and it has to do with trust.
(14:50) So in the west we recently changed gold to a to a tier one asset per basel 3 and that means right so everyone knows that terminology here. All right good. So we changed it to tier one basel 3 and we did that uh because what it does is it allows the piggy bank of your gold to be recognized on your balance sheet.
(15:10) So my balance sheet now rec now recognizes the asset for at its full value. used to be tier three. Tier three only 50% of its value is recognized. So if I needed 100%, you sold it. It was the structure was made for you to sell gold. They make it tier one, you don't have to liquidate it.
(15:29) So you hold it and you get the full benefit on your balance sheet. And when you do that, uh if you're let's say you're a central bank, well I don't know if it applies to central banks yet, but it it offsets your losses. You have a bigger piggy bank. You have a bigger savings account, but you can't touch it. You can't monetize it. You can't loan it. You can't leverage it.
(15:47) It's just a pet rock, which is what they want because if you let the pet rock out, it becomes a potential replacement for the dollar and for treasuries. So that's Basel. That's Basel 3 and tier one. The next level above, this is where China comes in. The next level above Basel 3 and tier one is what's called HQLA. That's a high quality liquid asset.
(16:12) If you're not if they're not familiar with that, I'll explain it very very very quickly. HQLA means not only is it tier one, but it's so liquid and so robust and so continuous that we trust it to be used as collateral in financing HQLA. So essentially what is HQLA? Treasuries, the biggest bond market in the world, right? And the argument was made in Europe that gold is not HQLA for various reasons.
(16:47) And you know depending on how you slice and dice the technicals of it maybe it's not but if you slice and dice the technicals another way it is. The world gold council uh put out a report and I read that report and that report said gold is not HQLA and I went oh [ __ ] So it's just a pet rock still. It's just all pet rock. And I moved on.
(17:07) And then I went back to this chart that you showed and I went, "What the hell are they doing with that?" And then I talked to a couple friends and I said, "Oh shit." And I I did then I did some what I did then was I did some I did deep dive research on the bricks behavior at their summit this year in May. And that summit which did not get a lot of press this year.
(17:26) There wasn't a lot of hype for various reasons. But I wrote five articles on it and one of the articles was I identified from piecing together articles everywhere from talking to two sources in mainland China from talking to somebody in Hong Kong that China to assuage fears of the other bricks people had said look we want you to use the yuan for currency and you know let's say you're Saudi Arabian like okay I'll use it I'll use it but you know Not.
(17:59) I may not trust the US, but the US dollar is better than the yuan. What are you backing it with? Well, we're backing with our economy. We're not going to back it with gold, but we'll tell you what we will do. We'll do something the US doesn't do. We'll let you convert it into gold freely. No problem.
(18:19) And the Saudi Arabian said, everyone, I'm just for instance, they said, "That's great. Where will the gold stay?" This is like 5 years ago. Where will the gold stay? Well, it'll stay in China. They're like, "Nuh-uh. That's not going to work. We don't want, right? We're just, we just ended this problem with the US. Everyone's pulling their gold back. And so, China comes up with a plan.
(18:36) And the SGE, which is a Shanghai gold exchange. That's their physical exchange. They create an international division, SGE International, SGI. And the SGI starts partnering with vaults in various BRICS countries and they create a network. So, I'm Saudi Arabia. I give them my oil, they give me yuan and I say, "You know what? I want to convert this into gold. Will you make me a market?" And they do, China. And the one you want gets converted into gold.
(19:08) Where's the gold go? It goes into their vault. So in a sense in a crypto way they've decentralized the or in non-crypto you say they've diversified the geographic risk of ownership of the physical metal but they're still accounting for it uh in in in a in a you know it's it's like it's like old school blockchain. It's like, you know, Fred Flintstone chain.
(19:35) But um and so that made the Saudis and the other countries in the bricks more comfortable holding yuan. I could convert it to gold. I could have I could see the gold. I don't have to worry about it going anywhere. I don't have to worry about it, you know, I don't have to worry about an accountant going in and auditing them, you know, to an extent.
(19:56) Uh and and they gradually got more comfortable with it. At the same time, they got less comfortable with US treasuries. And so at the brick summit, the Chinese the Chinese had homework and their homework was to internationalize the yuan and to internationalize gold ownership. And this is what they announced.
(20:18) Hong Kong, uh, Singapore, the Golden Corridor. I'm not sure if I named that or they named that, but there's like a golden corridor, Singapore, Macau, all along this area. the the Shanghai uh uh cooperative uh organization and they're saying all these vaults are now connected which means you could arbitrage back and forth which means every country can have their gold close enough to see to visit and I went this is great I see what they're doing they're making sure people are trustworthy in gold and I said well what are they doing about the volatility in
(20:47) gold right well because the US can spoof it lower anyone can spoof it lower it's not that deep. Well, turns out they solved that too. Now, I don't know if it's going to work, but they solved that. And their solve was the gold will be carried on everyone's balance sheet according to a moving average, not according to the price at the end of the day. So, 200 day moving average.
(21:08) And let's face it, over the long run, gold holds value because it's gold, right? I mean, there's no synthetic gold yet. Uh, at least not not not in large size yet. Okay. So, so they create the network of vaults and I go, "All right, this is for the brick summit." They address the concept of price volatility.
(21:30) I go, "All right, that's good." And then I read something. I wrote on it and I went, "Oh [ __ ] this is what they're going to do next." And this is what they're going to do. They announced that they're going to be partnering with vaults in countries that need to build infrastructure. So you're thinking about the African bricks countries, right? Why? Well, I'm a country in Africa in Ghana and I've got a [ __ ] ton of gold and it's just sitting there and if I want to use it, I have to give it to the IMF and they give me treasuries and I borrow money and I build a road. Right.
(22:06) All right. But I want to do business with China. China is uh building roads and airports and cutting deals because they're just they're colonizing economically. We know that. China says you can use your gold. So I'm an African country that needs an airport built to simplify it and I've got gold.
(22:29) I put it in the vault which is in the system of the Shanghai exchange setup and then China loans me the money on the gold directly. Not through treasuries, not through some swap deal. The the gold is there. trying to trust them. And then I take the yuan and I go back to China and I say, "Build me an airport.
(22:52) " And so what they've done is they created project financing. Now, I had gotten that far with this. I'm like, "Okay, this is really good. They're unlocking the buying potential of gold. You know, you own stocks. I own stocks. Can you borrow money against it to do stuff?" Yeah. And you know, if you use your leverage smartly, you're fine. I went, "All right.
(23:11) " So, they're going to unlock gold, and that makes it a high quality collateral asset. I went high quality collateral asset, HQCA. And then I read this report, highquality liquid asset. Oh [ __ ] And then I went back to my bond days and I went, what is an HQLA used for? Now, I'll use a word that everyone knows, repo, right? If you want to get something done in the world, you pledge your treasuries into repo, which is theoretically you're selling them and you buy them back as collateral and they give you money. And that's what the repo market is. It's I
(23:41) have an asset that's high quality asset. It's a treasury. Here, loan me the money. I'm going to build the road and I'll pay you back on the back end. I mean, that's what we do with treasuries. And the the HQLA uh pool is I think it's more, but I'm going to throw you a lower number, $17 trillion, $20 trillion.
(24:04) And of that pool between, depending on how you measure it, between 50 and 70% is US treasuries. And none of it is gold. It's treasuries or sovereign bonds that we deem are high quality enough. Chinese bonds aren't high quality enough. The bricks won't even buy the Chinese bonds. But anyway, I'm going to pause for a second here because I'm talking a lot.
(24:27) Is there anything you wanted to, you know, I don't want to just keep going? Yeah, because this is uh we've been covering this, not this specifically, but this idea of this diversification away from the dollar treasury system and what are the mechanics? That's one thing I've been saying for years as a Bitcoiner is like all these countries should just skip to Bitcoin instead of some bricks back currency because they're not going to be able to trust each other, which is like what you're getting into now.
(24:50) Like who wants to buy Chinese bonds? Who wants to buy Russian bonds? Who wants to buy Saudi bonds? They're working around it, right? They're working around it. And I think China's endgame to that point is eventually they'll get everyone to buy Chinese bonds, whether it be whether it be stable coin Chinese bonds.
(25:07) But that's the point is they want everyone to own Chinese bonds. But uh they're doing they're just replicating what the US did uh probably a little bit better using it in a more decentralized way. Yeah. But I I agree that's that's that's um that's what they're doing. So So here I am going high quality collateral asset.
(25:26) I went oh yeah and I went oh [ __ ] now you're competing gold's going to compete with treasuries. Then I went back to my European analysis and I went, "Wait a minute, but it's not HQLA, so it can't be repo." Then I called a friend of mine on the mainland.
(25:44) I go, "Are you guys going to use this as a repo asset?" So you can unlock the financing of that poor country in Africa that wants to do this or wants to do that or so Saudi Arabians can loan money to the country in Africa in go, you know, using gold as collateral cuz they have a ton of money. And uh he basically said, "Yeah.
(26:02) " I said, 'Well, how do you do that? This is where I was a little bit not wonkish enough. He goes, 'Well, you get it, you turn it into a high quality liquid asset. We designate it for our half of the world as HQLA, and then we put it into repo. And then I went, oh, and I went back to the chart. And then I talked to a friend of mine, Eric, uh, Eric Young, and he's popular on on Twitter, King Kong.
(26:26) Uh, and I went, "Eric, HQLA, you need to be to become the repo." And I think they're doing that for all this mine stuff and this project stuff. I go, "Where's the gold?" He went, "That's what the warrants are for. They're locking the gold down." And at some point, at this, again, this is theory. We're not sure yet. It's conjecture.
(26:55) At some point, we believe they're either, reasonably speaking, they're either testing the system out, they've tested things before, and I've seen them test it. They're either testing the system out, stress testing it for warrants or whatever, or they're accumulating it to put it in the Hong Kong vault, which just opened.
(27:14) You put that in the Hong Kong vault, and what do you have? Hong Kong is the buffer zone between China and the rest of the world. and you have your Switzerland for gold and that's where your first repose will be. He and I concluded separately uh of coming from different points of view. So China is going to I believe has a very good chance or intensive they have to otherwise the gold just is still up that rock.
(27:41) they need to unlock its leverage and buying power now that everyone trusts it. Now that everyone's in the process of trusting Yuan uh in the process over there uh they want to say okay now you can borrow you want against your gold and you can see the gold and you can build an airport and it's like great let's do it and they they drop the neocenzian concepts and they do this which is a hard money concept and they're going to start doing it that's what I think is going to happen and I wrote a whole I wrote like almost like an a short academic style paper on it St. Jewish prep style paper, right? Um
(28:12) and uh um I had I had to drop that in since since we figured that out. Um like the Jesuits. Um so so I I look at all that I go, why the hell else would the warrants be going up? A lot of people are saying, oh, they're doing this, they want to do the 3D chest thing. No, the warrants are rarely used because they're about arbitrage.
(28:38) They're just like SHF, which is the futures exchange. It's kind of like ComX versus LBMA. Comx London, ComX London. It's going back and forth, but then it just starts ballooning and it's not going anywhere. I mean, ultimately, it just makes the price go up. But I think they're getting ready to do that. Now, I want to add one anecdotal piece.
(29:04) It started happening before the end of the year, right on that chart you have, and it's since ramped up even more. What else happened at the end of the year? The US started repatriating gold. US started repatri silver, right? Okay. US starts repatriating gold. Now, did we buy the gold or we just bringing gold back? That was ours. I don't know. I mean, I actually do know, but it's not important.
(29:29) What's important is that the US is now emptying London of its gold to get its collateral back. You have to like Zultar, it's a crisis of collateral. You need to have the collateral there. You need to say this is my gold. If you're going to borrow it, it needs to be there. If you're going to borrow against it, needs to be there. So the US starts calling the gold back.
(29:47) And I also noticed that that when US is calling the gold back, gold's not being bought by China. I have a chart. When the US buys, China doesn't. When China buys, the US doesn't. So there's there's your what's the word you use? Cabal. There's your Cabal squabble. It's your cabal squabble. That's exactly it. It's the war of the roses.
(30:04) But it's it's a it's a it's it's a it's a divorce. But again, I'll give you that chart. It's it's it's visually interesting. But I talked to someone in the political side and I I I think he's well connected. Uh but what he said to me is that makes sense. I said, "Why do we start bringing gold back?" And my theory was we started bringing gold back because we figured out we needed we needed for something.
(30:24) I didn't know what for, right? Uh you know, if you talk to uh one person, it's we're going to have gold bonds. We're going to have a gold standing. Talk to all the bugs, right? No, we're not going to have gold bonds. That's my opinion. I'd like it to happen. Judy Shelton, I respect her and I think she's right and at one time I agree with her, but I think gold bonds are are would undermine the regular treasury market. Oh, just the gold bond.
(30:43) You know, why would we sell people bonds with gold in when we could just sell them paper? The second one is gold standard. No, we can't go back to gold standard. It's it's the it's the end of the world if we do that. It's you can't do it. Um in my opinion, um a use for gold.
(31:04) Well, yeah, the commercial banks can start throwing into blockchain and stable coins and they they create a new ETF type of product, the new product. Like, all right, that's good. But there was more bought that than should have been bought or were delivered. Some of it was going on, some of it wasn't, you know, was going to the Treasury. And so I I talked to my friend. I said, "Do you think that's related?" He goes, "Oh, yeah.
(31:27) " He goes, "I think the US finally paid attention to what they were doing and said,"Well, if they're getting theirs, and there's a chance that gold becomes a competitor to the US, if I want to finance a project in Africa, I may need gold, too. So, let's get all our gold back." And so, we ramp the gold back. You saw Trump flip-flop.
(31:47) Uh, we're going to tariff gold and silver. We're not going to I mean, those are just, sorry, like them or don't. Those are idiotic things to do, but they work because when he does them, when he does them, the market tells him if he's right or wrong immediately. You know, he's instant feedback.
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(33:19) The card holder does the same thing. It's much sleeker. Fits in my pocket much easier. I also have the Faraday phone sleeve which you can put a hardware wallet in. We're actually using it for our keys at the house, too. There's been a lot of robberies. They have essential Faraday slings, Faraday backpacks. It's a Bitcoin company. They're running on a Bitcoin standard. They have a Bitcoin treasury.
(33:36) They accept Bitcoin via Strike. So, go to slt.com/tc to get 15% off anything or simply just use the code TFTC when shopping at sltnt.com. patented technology, special operations approved. It has free shipping as well, so go check it out. Well, that's what I was going to ask because I I mean, when it comes to repreciation of gold at the end, gold at the end of last year, like one of the main narratives is like people are flooding it into US vaults because of the pending tariffs and so were tariffs just used as a mechanism to flood it back or was it just some narrative
(34:07) control? Yeah. Excuse the the the tar I mean I knew let's just start with the tariffs on gold. Silver's a different story, but tariffs on gold. You cannot tariff gold because gold is the intent. Bitcoin is going to be as well. But gold is the intentional unintentional loophole to avoid sanctions. Everyone does it. So this is gold.
(34:32) Well, is it money? No, it's gold. It's a good. I'm buying a good from you, right? It's a good. It's it's it's barter. You're giving me a jet and I'm giving you gold. It's barter. And so that avoids the monetary that avoids the sanctions. But because gold is used for nothing and it's a brick, it's gold, so it's money. It may as well be money. It's not good for anything else. And so that's a loophole that exists in the world.
(34:57) Russia uses it. We use it. I'll give you an example. Here's a Martin Armstrong example. Uh when Japan looks at the US and says, this is not hypothetical. I did this. In the 90s when Japan has a, you know, there's supposed to be like a trade relationship. You have to buy this much from us. We have to buy that much from you.
(35:17) Well, what Japan does is Japan used to go like this. All right. Uh, we're not buying enough stuff from the US. What are we going to buy? Cars? No. Let's buy some gold. You buy American gold. It's a it's a money laundering operation. You know, you buy American gold. You take it. It counts as an import. It counts against your trade deficit.
(35:37) And then you take the gold and you put it back in London and you get out of it. It's a it's a laundromat. So gold is used that way. Gold is used to satisfy the legal fine print on trade deficits. And and uh that's that's where that went. So they're not going to tax or tariff gold. And to put it simply in a in a in a one of the words that I use a lot is mercantalist.
(36:03) But I don't want to I don't want it to be like a catchphrase. But the bottom line is if you if you look at the concept of mercantalism, you tax what you you tax imports of what you make and you don't tax imports of what you need. And we need gold. We need silver. We need lithium. You know, you don't threaten the tariff lithium.
(36:25) And so gold is that loophole item that allows us to circumvent tariffs and we don't close it because it's kind of like a uh honor among thieves. We all do it. So the tariffs being a reason to bring gold to home that's complete horseshit. It was complete horseshit then. I saw it then and it's complete horseshit now. In fact, like a month or two ago, didn't Trump do that? Didn't Trump say we might tax the gold and gold went crazy? I mean, I know he did that, right? He said, "We're going to tax bullion." And the bullion banks were like, "Whoa, you can't do
(36:56) that because all they do is take gold, put it in a safe, short it against it, and take the money and then go out and buy Aussie bonds or something, you know, buy, you know, Nvidia." So, uh, he changed that right away. That was rule 282. Changed that right away for gold.
(37:14) And, uh, there will be no tariffs on monetary gold. your gold chain, they might tariff that, but once it's melted down, they can't tariff it anymore and that's it. So, gold will not be tariffed. Gold's money for them anyway. Yeah. And I mean, and tying this all together too, I mean, before we hit record, so we got to touch on the Russian war because that really ties into this too.
(37:38) was at the catalyst for this big movement and sort of we've been prepping for this for over 3 years. But that was really the treasure treasury freezing in 22 was the last straw. It was it was it was and last straw is a good way to look at it because because our biggest trade partner China raised concerns with us after the financial crisis.
(38:00) They're like, "Okay, we own most we own a lot of treasuries and you're printing all this money." And they were convinced that everything will be all right. And during that time around 2014 with the whole Ukrainian thing, this is the geopolitics of it, right? Uh Russia said, "You know what? The US is meddling. We don't want to deal with this anymore. We don't want our treasures.
(38:20) " and they started dedizing and they tried to bring this is from someone who was involved in the conversations that they they Russia approached China and said and said we're dilizing are you going to deolize and China's like no way you out of your mind we can't do that we're not going to do that we we're still too tied closely together and then so China little by little is selling treasuries but nothing crazy and but they're buying gold and it's not public they're not really saying we're buying gold they're just buying it and then they get into the World Trade Organization. A little bit
(38:49) more time goes by. In 2022, the US uh uh sanctions them. Europe sanctions them uh for invading Ukraine. Now, for anyone who's not familiar, and I I know that you are, just briefly, uh Russia had most countries that use dollars, and every country does use dollars has dollars in this global network called Swift.
(39:16) And Swift is essentially a big network of ATMs and that money is in there and your assets are in there and it's basically all treasuries and you borrow against the treasuries and you do what you have to do. Uh throughout most I'm not a historian throughout most wars nobody seizes anybody's money. They don't do that.
(39:37) So Russia invades Ukraine and the US and and and Europe just decide to freeze all their assets essentially confiscating their assets. Now right or wrong, justified or not, every other country out there that has money in it says on the brick side is like, you know what, the guys these guys have been keeping the price of gold down. They've been keeping the price of oil down. We can't make any money.
(40:01) We live off of natural resources. We're poor. and they just took all the wealth from Russia, a nuclear power. They can do that to us anytime they want. And they started knocking on China's door and saying, "Okay, we're ready. Let's do it." And it started to accelerate. And China started buying gold very publicly to show them they meant business.
(40:27) And in 2022, the rest of the world outside the G7 said the only reason to own treasuries was because of the guarantee that the US would never take it from him as a counterparty and that made it more beneficial than gold with the interest rates. And after this, that's no longer worth it. How can we work another type of collateral like treasuries into our system to substitute for treasuries and you know everyone's awareness have been raised up because of crypto and bitcoin and all of a sudden we also have the inflation in the US people become aware of it and China starts selling bonds and buying
(41:04) gold and they all start doing it even just to bring it in present day the last time Brazil bought gold was in 2021 one and now uh Brazil just bought I forget how much 15 12 tons uh this month they haven't bought gold in uh five four years and so now they're buying so countries are dd dollararizing even more even the countries that are our friends are repatriating their gold from us Serbia whether they're friends or not it's hard to say but that's a yeah that's that's a great chart that's a great chart Yeah. Now I pulled this up
(41:42) because the inflection of 22. Yeah. Particularly on the gold part of the chart is pronounced. So let's see. Is is that share of reserves? Yeah, that's actually very that's actually an important point. Um so a lot of people will look at that. So that's what's that showing.
(42:02) Uh gold is is in the process of eclipsing uh US treasuries for as a share of the of the economic of the central bank reserves. Mhm. Right. Okay. I I have something to add to that. It's not it's not me. It's it's Bank of America did a study about 6 months ago and what they were trying to figure out is at least publicly they probably already knew like if central banks are buying gold to d the word they use is diversify out of the dollar how much gold should they buy to have an optimal diversification of their portfolio.
(42:32) Bank of America did the analysis and uh they said it's not efficient frontier but it's similar to it. They said the optimal amount of their reserves in uh in gold for all the central banks that report to the IMF is 30%. And it's currently at 20%. So as a percentage you should have 30% gold, maybe 50% dollars and 20% other currencies.
(43:01) And so they optimize and they're basically doing a trading weight. How much trade do I do that I need gold for? That's going to go up. And I I have that report and I broke it down. I share it with with subscribers. Then you go into chat GPT and you say, "How much money is that?" And it was like $1.9 trillion in gold. Now, are they going to buy it overnight? No, they're going to buy it over time. And it's pro.
(43:26) And then Goldman Sachs comes out with a report that says, "We're not going to say what we think the optimal amount is, what we think they're going to be buying from 3 to 5 years." And I went, "Okay, they're going to buy $2 trillion worth of gold over 3 to 5 years. What does that do to the market?" It drives the price to, you know, potentially $10,000. It just does if they do it, unless they're depending on how patient they are.
(43:44) And every time, to your point of before we started, every time uh uh Trump says, "I'm not putting up with China," what does gold do? It rallies because a central bank somewhere says, "Oh [ __ ] let's buy a little bit more." So, yeah. I mean, it's that's that's it.
(44:04) The dollarization started with the Russian war and uh and it accelerated something that was already on the table to happen and it's not going to it's not going to go away. We're talking about a decade of this probably freaks. This was brought to you by our good friends at Obscura. If you've been listening to the show long enough, you know we care deeply about privacy particularly as you peruse the web.
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(45:34) Two things I wonder. first like bringing back to geopol geopolitics with a US perspective like did Trump and Bent more specifically come in understanding this dynamic at play and really try to reorient things with this incoming administration rather quickly to sort of combat or rearrange their side of the chessboard to be in a better position or were they caught off foot? And then two, with the gold price running like it is, Bitcoin was at an all-time high last week. Like, do animal do animal spirits
(46:13) get engaged? Is there like a FOMO trade where a number of countries or individuals, institutions, whatever it may be, realize they're offside under exposed in in Russian to to to Bitcoin, gold, Bitcoin, I this anything part of this debasement trading. Okay. So So the first the fir what was the first question again because that was interesting. That was an interesting interest on the geopolitical side where Right. right offooted.
(46:42) Yeah. or the descent because obviously he had that famous Bent interview at the Manhattan Institute where he's talking about the global monetary reordering that he wants to be a part of. Um like in my mind it's like okay he seems to know that something's going on and wants to be in that position. Um but you look at the the uh volatility of Trump's positioning, throwing things out there, backing away, pivoting somewhere else, like do they actually know what's happening or are they flatfooted? Yeah, I I think we'd have to
(47:13) have like a, you know, sit down and have a beer or a pizza or something and say, "All right, what are they doing in the room together?" And and and you know, some people are like, you know, uh it's a master plan. And some people are like, he doesn't know what he's doing.
(47:30) And I personally think from the study that I've done of him, you know, over the years in the 90s and O's when I was in New York on Wall Street, uh I personally think that Trump will find someone that he likes to listen to that he will who knows how to not be alpha but be like a consiliary. And this time it's Bessent. And I think Bessent said, "This is where we're going. This is where they're going. We want to get there.
(47:53) Let's take care of this or that first." And so eventually Trump's like, I want to make America great again. I understand we need to do manufacturing. I'm going to do that. Tell me the plumbing of this. And so Besset does that. And he basically says eventually uh we're going to have to have more gold. We're going to have to have something. We're going to have to solidify the dollar.
(48:19) It's all about the debt that we have. We're going to have to monetize the debt. And and this is where I think it's a combination of prepared and flat-footed. I I this is like where I come at. It sounds like a compromise, but it's really not.
(48:38) Prepared in the sense that I think there are smart people like Scopa who know what's going on and know the endgame, right? Flatfooted in the sense that because we are the global reserve currency and because we've been able to screw up for decades and get away with it, that incumbency, you know, you're the champ, you always get the extra vote. I think that has made us complacent.
(48:56) And so even someone as sharp as Scott Besson, I would think he's I think he's sharp. Uh might say, "Yeah, this is going to be a problem, but we can come back to that. We can always buy time later on." And and and the reason I'm not just making that up is because I had a conversation with um uh uh the CEO of Scottsdale Mint. And so he's very heavily involved in the industrial side of metals, copper and silver.
(49:20) And uh we were talking back and forth and uh and we were talking like you and I are talking now and it's like you know what why do we not care about copper? For example, China has been taking scrap copper out of the US for years and we both concluded we don't care about it because we have copper or because we've just got bigger fish to fry right now.
(49:37) Right? Same thing with silver. China has been going into uh Latin America and buying silver in raw form before it gets to the exchange. So the supply never hits. So it's like premining silver, you know. And I go, "Why?" And he's like, "Yeah, they're doing that." I go, "It's called silver concentrate.
(49:56) " I go, "Why? Why do we not care?" We're like, "Well, because silver really isn't that important, you know? It's important to us. We're in a little bit of a bubble." Uh, and and so Josh, he goes, "But copper is important. Everyone's talking about copper, right? Even even if the price isn't doing the crazy stuff.
(50:13) " And sure enough, he comes back from an event right a month before they list silver as a critical mineral. And he says, "For some reason, the federal government has mobilized to protect our copper supply now is what he shared with me. What I can share that he told me, we have a big processing plant for scrap in in Atlanta. I forget the name." He goes, "They're locking it down.
(50:35) They're not letting any silver any He's talking about copper. They're not letting any copper leave anymore. They're making sure all the roads lead to this plant. They're centralizing. That's what the governments do, right? They centralize. He goes, "We're serious about copper now." And then the tariffs came out. I went, "Oh.
(50:55) " So, to my point, as half cop as it is, I think we are smart enough to know what's going on. I think we do know what's going on, and we think we have all the time in the world. And somebody sounds an alarm and they go, "Let's lock that plant down." So I I I think when that happened, you also saw us started repatriating gold and silver and therefore I believe that we're playing catch-up, but we always can play catch-up because of our positioning.
(51:19) Does that make sense? Yeah. No, as it pertains to copper, it makes a ton of sense considering the sort of expansion of the energy grid that's necessary. Yeah. Yeah. That has been deemed necessary. I think it's critically necessary, but um others may have another opinion, but it seems abundantly clear that even without even before the AI boom, the data center boom, it was clear to me. I've been talking about it since 2018.
(51:46) It was very anti-ESG. Energy is good. Cheap abundant energy equates to human flourishing. Like we should be expanding our grids. Our grids are unstable. And I think luckily for us, this administration recognizes that now and has um made it a point to really lean into the energy sector specifically and copper is a huge part of that. You need copper throughout that whole supply chain.
(52:12) That's right. You know, um the the the copper story is interesting because in there you could see how Trump screwed up but reaffirmed it. Um he initially said uh about right where right when he he remember copper had that spike. He made an announcement that we're going to tariff all copper imports. And I immediately called Josh.
(52:39) I go why the hell would we tariff copper imports? He goes, "Well, we don't really need to buy copper because we have our own raw copper. What we don't have is we don't have uh fabrication facilities. We don't have the manufacturing." I went, "Okay, fine." I go, "But it still doesn't make sense.
(52:57) " And sure enough, a couple days later, he said, "And now this is this is it probably didn't hit the press this way, but this is the fact. We tariffed finished goods in copper. So you and I, we go buy a copper weather vein over in, you know, Africa, we bring it back, it gets tariffed, right?" But then they made a carveout, and this is to your point about energy.
(53:19) The carveout was semifinished copper goods were not going to tariff. And so a semi-finished copper good is an electric cathode because we don't make them and we need them to your point about energy. So we were like, "Nope, you can't bring that weather vein in here. You can't bring in that copper kettle here." Cathodes, oh yeah, you can bring them all in.
(53:38) We want them all. And so copper is, you know, that important. And I think uh I think uh it's become obvious uh that we need to we need it. So that's like the point of the spear. Whatever copper does other things will do. And uh I agree with you. Yeah. It's very interesting times.
(54:01) Are you optimistic about our ability to navigate these this reshuffleling of the board politically on the monetary side? Um I I I'm I'm violently neutral and meaning I will wake up and say yes this can happen and then I'll wake up and say this doesn't make sense. And right now I'm on the this doesn't make sense side. So the yes this can happen side goes like this.
(54:25) It's pretty simple. It goes all right we need time. We're going to have 5% inflation for the next 5 years give or take. I'm just making a number up. And we're going to that inflation is going to be used to retool the economy. We'll build manufacturing and then we'll export our deficit by buying things because we can't get anyone to finance our deficit. We have to sell things. I'm with you. This is best.
(54:47) We need cheap energy. We need a weak dollar and we need to build stuff. I'm like, we can do that. That's me, right? That's me. And I see I see the energy getting cheaper. I know Trump's cutting deals with Saudis. He's saying, look, keep pumping the oil, you know, at at the right level. I'll keep the shale people out of your noses.
(55:06) I'll take care of Canada's, you know, sands oil. We'll keep that out of the market and you can just get all the market share at the lower price and you and Russia wink will be happy. All right. So, because we can do more to your point, we can do more with cheap energy most anyone else can. If you're a patriot and you believe in the American spirit, that's right.
(55:27) And then and then the data centers. And then I see the data centers and I go, "All right, we need to build data centers. We need to build data centers and I go I go, well, aren't we just building data centers? Where's the demand coming from?" And I'm not even getting into the fact that the energy grid's not going to be able to handle it. All the stuff that I think that that that you're that you're focusing on.
(55:55) I'm not even getting into that. I go, "Well, wait a minute. Didn't we just alienate everyone in the world? Well, they're not going to buy our treasuries. They don't want to use gold. Every good that's made these days is a commodity. What are we going to sell them? Like, you know, Uber Eats like we'll deliver our delivery system is is the premium and and so I get depressed.
(56:17) And then of course it's Zero Hedge, right? Zero Hedge posts something and it shows uh they posting something like this every other day for about a month. But the thing they post when they talk about fundamentals, they're right. And they say, "Okay, uh, this ties in with Nvidia, ties in with, you know, everyone's talking about the circle jerk now." And that's been going around for years, but now they're talking about it.
(56:41) But my my my concern is based on my pessimistic side and based on the data that, you know, that Zero Hedge is showing is that companies are now extrapolating. Now, we're not going to do 2027 earnings. We're going to do 2035 earnings. And you're seeing these lines for data centers going out projecting forever. And I go, and this is me positively going, that's crazy, but maybe it can happen.
(57:14) And then I read a line that makes me think it's not going to happen. And the line is, and the line is, this is why I'm worried about 10% inflation. And the line is, I'm not a doomer. The line is everything's coming along. We're creating an asset bubble by spending money to build data centers and our stocks are getting driven up because of the projected future potential earnings. And that's fine.
(57:40) And we can do that in a world where everyone's on our side, but they're not. So, are you telling me this is like the Tyler thing, the zero thing, the line's going up like that? are are you telling me we're not going to have a recession for the next 15 years? Because that's what you're projecting. And I went, oh [ __ ] we're going to have a recession.
(58:01) We have to have a recession because the rest of the world is going to have a recession at some point and it's going to affect us and we can't raise rates. We're going to lower rates. So my conclusion is we're not going to I mean this is like today, call me tomorrow. Maybe I'll be in a good mood, right? We're not going to get there.
(58:22) Even if Trump executed everything perfectly, there's no successor to Trump who's going to be like him. There's no, you know, I don't know, maybe maybe uh JD Vance is, I don't know, but the the the the bureaucratic deep state is still entrenched like a tick, you know, in a deer. They're not going to go anywhere. They're going to wait it out. And I think the first recession we get because we're running a 1970s style bubble, um, first recession we get, we can't afford to cut.
(58:53) We're going to have to, um, uh, we can't afford to, uh, raise. We're going to have to cut. We're cutting in a bubble right now, right? We're cutting in an economic borderline boom right now, depending on how you look at it. And the last time we did that materially was in 1973 1974. The US was on this mind. This is where we are now. 1973 1974 the US was monetizing its debt.
(59:18) We're doing that again right now. By the way, we're not doing that at the Fed, but we're monetizing our debt. It's really ugly what we're doing. Another conversation. But in the 70s, we were paying for all the uh Vietnam veterans coming home. We were trying to fend off communism, civil rights.
(59:36) A lot of a lot of social safety, net, and welfare money is being spent, spent, spent. We're financing Vietnam. We're still we're still paying for Korea. And so we're cutting rates in the 70s, 72, 73, 74, and 73 and 74. The stock market uh does very poorly, but the gold market is at the highs. But then they cut rates. In 75 and 76, the stock market explodes. Everything is great again.
(1:00:00) 76 was the bsentennial. I was like, you know, 8 years old and uh every there was everyone was so happy. The bsentennial, everyone was, you know, and then 77 all goes in the [ __ ] They stopped lowering rates to paint the turn as the expression goes. Inflation came back and between 77 and 79, 77 and 80, it was nothing but inflation.
(1:00:27) So that's where we are now. Either we're in 1974 and we're cutting rates to get the economy going or if Trump doesn't succeed, it's 1977 and we're going to have asset uh commodity prices high and data centers that no one's using. They'll become skateboard parks.
(1:00:49) So, right now pretty right now I'm pretty pessimistic, but thank you for letting me go off on that. That's like is it's important because I mean one thing I'd bring up is like have we been in a recession in real terms for a while because if you look at like inflation data you're using CPI it's not tracking real inflation right um and then like how bad does it get like I posted yesterday a passage from when money dies and the corlaries to like why more republic vibes are are very high right And it's that's behaviorally they they very they are very high behaviorally. Sure.
(1:01:25) And like everybody's on Robin Hood. Every every zoomer thinks they're the best stock, but not every zoomer, but and it's definitely a growing trend of Zoomer uh stock traders giving advice. We saw that with Wall Street Bets obviously. Yeah. But back then we tolerated because it was stimulus.
(1:01:43) There's no stimulus now. They're still doing it. No, our rates are too low. And to your point about like the debt like and the rates like I worry like lowering rates right now like when you just cut 25 bips the 10 year still above four and I I think that's one thing people had collective amnesia after the initial rate cuts from last year right where they just assume like oh the Fed funds rate goes down and bond yields will follow that doesn't seem to be really materializing at all. That That's right.
(1:02:19) Um I'd like to speak to that for a second if you don't mind. Yeah. Uh during the QE era, we all got addicted to um Fed lowers rates, bond yields drop, and therefore we have to buy stocks because nothing gives us any interest anymore. Money market rates down, bond yields down.
(1:02:36) Oh, I'll just help buy stocks, right? But we're not in the QE era anymore. At least not from the Fed side. And so when you're not in the QE era, you're what I call the anti- Goldilocks era. So the Goldilocks era was QE from the '9s. Well, QE started in the O's, but from the '9s through the mid O's, we had uh deflationary tailwinds, disinflationary tailwinds pushing us up.
(1:03:02) Goods were getting cheaper, technology was being implemented. You know, everything at Walmart was the prices are dropping at Walmart every day, like low prices every day. You don't hear that anymore because now we've gone from disinflationary tailwinds from technology from developing supply chains to inflationary headwinds.
(1:03:20) And when you have inflationary headwinds, meaning other people are buying commodities that we need or restricting our access to them like oil in the 70s or when you have that happen, you have inflationary headwinds hitting the economy. And with inflationary headwinds, you can't lower rates without causing a bubble. Actually, I just lost my train of thought on that.
(1:03:50) The the Fed can't Oh, the de the deficit and the debt. Yeah. Oh, this is a bond market, right? When you have an anti- Goldilock situation and you have the inflationary headwinds, when you lower the Fed funds rate, the bond market vigilantes and they're back. They say, "Wait a minute, you're not done fighting inflation.
(1:04:10) If you're lowering rates too soon, we're going to make the inflation come out the other end." And so that's really what's happening though. You're going about 4%. When you lower, there's two ways to again another statement. There are two ways to fight inflation at the monetary level. One is by raising short-term rates, which we've stopped doing, and two is by letting long-term rates rise.
(1:04:30) So, like you said, Pal cut September 17th last year, and the bond market dumped yields declines. The bond market did a a se I call it a seessaw. The bond market like did that. That's yields drop raise. I was like, that's bad. That means that inflation is not out of the market yet.
(1:04:56) And sure enough, he cut again and the bond market didn't do it as badly, but the bond market's not happy. And that's the rest of the world going, "Oh, look, another reason to not own American bonds, and they're selling them." And I think if he cuts again, we're going to have one of these. It's kind of like a mini version of what went on in in the UK.
(1:05:12) Uh people start selling dollars, bonds, and stocks and taking their money back. It's that's the real risk. If you want to watch anything as a reason to buy gold or as a reason to buy, you know, a crypto or Bitcoin, if you want to if you want to watch anything, you want to watch how the market reacts to when the Fed cuts. And it has not been approving of the Fed cuts.
(1:05:32) I don't think like I don't think he's going to I think I think it'll be a mistake if he cuts again. I do. But does he have the political uh will to not cut? That's the question, right? That's where you have Trump coming in as well being a bull in the China shop. But he's a short-timer, too. Maybe he can hide and wait it out for 6 months.
(1:05:51) Yeah. Right. I mean, what is it? He cuts 25 basis points recently, right? He talks extremely doubbish and then like two weeks later, you know, gold rallies $100. I'm like, "Oh, this is bad." Like, he's going to cut again and stocks are up and stocks start to tail off.
(1:06:10) Then he starts talking, "Oh, well, I was just readjusting the rates." He's doing that whole Fed speak Fed and I go you're cutting into a boom. Like we're creating a boom. And you know related to what we're trying to do here is China every step of the way now saying things like oh you're spending $500 billion on Stargate. Oh, we did it for 5 million. Now whether they're lying or not is not the point.
(1:06:36) The point is they're putting propaganda out saying that we're doing we're paying too much. They're saying our assets are overvalued. And that's petrifying to me. They never did that before. I think the bond market is telling us we should not be lowering rates. I agree. Yeah.
(1:06:54) Well, staying on this topic of government debt and inflation before we hit record, right? Inflation's not geopolitical. There are these inflationary headwinds across the world for different purposes. You said here in the US, manufacturing, Japan, defense, Europe, defense and social safety nets, China, right? Social safety nets. So the inflation trade is not isolated to the United States. No, it's not.
(1:07:22) It's and and it's actually like we're we're the last we're probably going to be the last to really debase or cut. But uh yeah, you're right. It's not license to the United States. And if you go around the world, Trump's policies, which would have happened anyway, right? Under Biden, we pulled out of Afghanistan.
(1:07:42) If if you look at Pax Americana of us being a cop on every corner of the world, we can't pay for that anymore. And then some places don't even want us. So we're kind of like the the tide of American military is receding. We're retrenching. Call it Monroe doctrine. Call it whatever you want to call it. Call it America first. Whatever the reasons are. So we pull out of Afghanistan, butchered by uh by Biden.
(1:08:06) And then war start, Gaza war starts. Ukraine war starts and I see us not doing what we normally do. Meaning in Gaza, we really let we let the uh Israelis off the leash. And that's I know it's another whole can of worms to talk about, but we really just said, you know what, we'll let them fight it out and we'll make it a hockey fight.
(1:08:30) And then we go let And then we say, what's Trump say? Uh we're not going to spend money on on NATO anymore. And the math is very simple. speaking as a Tom Luango person, but from my from my from my expertise or lack of a better word, one of the things that Europe is very proud of is over the last 50 years, they're proud of their social safety net. They're proud of their welfare state. They're proud of free college.
(1:08:59) They're proud of no homelessness. And to Trump's point, that's because they have a defense budget of zero or 1%. And we have a defense budget of 5%, probably more. And so we have been since communism even you know we have been the uh it's like a uh a few good men like the uh you need me on that wall type of thing you know and we have been there saying okay you can you can we're subsidizing their welfare state and so Trump says we're going to spend less and now you do the math and they're like everyone's gone from maybe it's 1 to 3% of GDP now it's 5 to 6% so
(1:09:42) call it five call it two to five. That's a lot of money. And you're doing it right after you just let millions of people in your country to be attached to your social safety net. What do you think? You're driving down labor. You're not driving down labor. You're driving up welfare. So Europe's got to spend more money.
(1:10:01) They can't even spend on their manufacturing. Germany's done. You know, Italy is probably going to be the next leading country in Europe, if you can call it that. Then you go over to Japan and we're they're like, "Hey, listen. Taiwan like like we don't have a good history with China. We don't want to have that blow up on our face." Well, and US say, "Well, we're we're we said we're pulling out.
(1:10:24) There's a there's a pack like a pack like a Asiana, I forget what it's called, but Japan's ramping up their their military spending. All the things that we didn't want Europe to do because we're worried about the Nazis coming back or worried about Imperial Japan coming back.
(1:10:42) Well, now we have to let them do it, right? So, Japan's spending on that, right? And everyone's got big debt from buying flat screen TVs with money they didn't have, right? So, Japan's spending on military. Europe spending on military and a safety net. And the US, we're not spending I mean, we are, but we're not spending on military. We're not spending on a safety net. Well, we are a little bit.
(1:10:59) We're spending to become a producer of goods again to compete with China. So, we're spending, you're spending, everyone's spending. It's a race to the bottom one way or another. And China, which has had to spend to begin with to get their economy out of their own kind of like recession. And this is this isn't me talking, but I I I've read the work. Um I forget his name. Eric Green, I think, uh TS TS Lombard analyst.
(1:11:24) I had a conversation with him about a report that he put out, and I'm like completely naive American, right? I'm like, they're communist. Even though they're not communist, they're communist. What do you mean they don't spend enough money helping people? He goes, oh no, oh no, no. When they went capitalist, they went full capitalist.
(1:11:42) They're like, you live in the country, we're not giving you a dime. You better move to the city and get a job. That was part of their urbanization plan. I go, so what does that mean? He goes, well, it's not working anymore. People aren't moving anymore. And there's there's a higher level of poverty, right? There's there's also they have like like 50% college graduates or students or young men are unemployed.
(1:12:06) It's it's it's bigger than ours for sure. And I said, "So, what does that mean?" He goes, "Well," he goes, "They're actually working up the plans to add welfare for the rural areas." He goes, "They're going to be spending a lot. They're creating a welfare program. They have no social safety net." And so I went, "So, China's going to spend on a social safety net?" He goes, "Yeah." go.
(1:12:30) So now every country is spending for different reasons and every country is going to monetize their debt and it's a race to the bottom. It's like Santa Claus, you know, you got a 16-year-old kid, he knows there's no Santa Claus, you know, there's no Santa Claus, but as long as you go to Knowledge, you keep giving him gifts. And that's where we are right now.
(1:12:47) And I think I I happen to know now that I've studied it u that we're monetizing our debt already, which means we can't pay off our debt. So we're printing money. We're printing it. Not at the Fed level, at the Treasury level. And in doing that, we're weakening the dollar intentionally. So that's it. Yeah. Everyone's spending.
(1:13:07) Everyone's spending. No one No one could be austere yet. That comes after the crash. Possibly. That's it. And when do you think the crash will be if there is one? Yeah. I I get asked stuff like that. I I I don't I don't know. I'm very I'm very I see the I see the fork in the road and it's like I don't know when it will be but I'll know what will cause it.
(1:13:31) So it'll be it'll be uh you'll see information like let's look at the current events right you'll see information accumulating that oh people are Goldman Sachs which has been AI stocks all the way is now saying circlejerk you know client finance and everyone say oh it's just like 2000 I said well it's not yet because people still believe I I'll start to say crash if I see a day where stocks are down and gold is not because gold's better, but because people are going to put their money into gold because stocks are down. They're not going to buy more stocks. So, when I see things like that, um I'll be uh I'll
(1:14:10) be concerned. I I'll tell you I'll tell you what the warning shot across the bell was uh that that I'm looking for to happen again to make me think there'll be a crash. the the warning shot across the bell was um I think it was I don't know in in April or May when when Europe to defend itself said the US is no longer American exceptionalism the US is uh weak and therefore because of its debt we're going to sell our stocks and instead of putting in bonds we're going to repatriate our currency and that's where your crash comes from. So, for
(1:14:47) example, Japan is a huge investor overseas. Huge. And they've got problems now. Now, they've always had problems, but the problems, the solution to their problems now is to repatriate currency. It's to sell your investments in Europe and bring your money back for yourself. That's what they need to do to shore up their currency.
(1:15:04) Imagine if they did that with US Treasury. I think they're the largest holder, maybe, maybe number two, but they finance the world. So, as countries, I'm Europe. I need to rebuild my infrastructure. You can't use dollars to build a road. You need euros. And so it's sell my US stocks. Don't put it in bonds this time.
(1:15:23) Don't put it in dollars. Put in euros. Bring it home. And so when the dollar, gold, so when the dollar, bonds, and stocks drop at the same time, I get petrified. And we had I think a shot across the bow in I think it was April or May. And when I see that happen, I pay attention. So when that happens, then I'll say, "Marty, we should get short.
(1:15:45) " And of course, we'll get our asses handed to us, but you get how it works. Yeah, that's it. No, it is uh in the last six months, I've described the period that we're living in as equally exhilarating and unnerving because it's just impossible to tell. Yeah. Yeah. But uh you uh the guy with one foot in a bucket of cold, the other foot in a bucket of ice, and you say, "How you doing?" He says, "On average, I'm okay." you know, that's where we are.
(1:16:15) That's where I feel like. Yeah. And uh so let's let's talk about Bitcoin. I mean, you you talked about it earlier about like a lot of the moves have been made the last couple years with ETFs. I think the options on the ETFs, um futures going 24/7 soon, I believe, if not already. uh you think these markets and particularly the derivatives are being used to hold the price down so the government can accumulate? Yeah, I do and I'm not a paranoid title hatwear. I'm a person who never believed that but I understand how it works now.
(1:16:48) Um there's only two things a nation does that it doesn't let its people do. One, kill you. You can't kill yourself. They can put you to death. And two, make money. uh nations and anyone who's a hardcore I'm not a hardcore Bitcoin person but a nation needs to have sovereign money and that's sovereign wealth and that's very like the the charterless concept you print the money you give it to them you take it back a tax you create that circle right and and and you skim off the top and you and you run it Bitcoin
(1:17:25) was becoming a threat whether it's made by someone or not I don't care it has a life of its own now it is a Trojan horse in many ways. And what the US does, not all governments, what the US does is it will, if it catches it early enough, it'll kill it, the threat to the dollar. If it doesn't catch it early enough, it'll just use rhetoric and propaganda and fund it.
(1:17:58) And if it survives that, then it will actively attack it. Maybe like a a CIA go CIA assassin goes out to kill Bitcoin. Who? I mean, you get my point. Like a regime change. Um, and then if it can't do that, and this is where the US is really smart, it co-ops it.
(1:18:18) So when you create the ETFs, I don't think I think I know that people do not value the liquidity network that the US has big enough. And so I'm going to exaggerate, but I'll make a point. 70% of all the Bitcoin transactions were outside of the US. The liquidity was not in the US. You create finally the spot Bitcoin ETF and without doing anything intentional, without FUD it, without manipulating it, you make the liquidity pull the US.
(1:18:48) And so the US may not own the Bitcoin, but the US controls the Bitcoin. you raise margins, you you you you change T2, all these things and and you create you control the liquidity pool. So if you can't kill it, you demonize it. If you can't demonize or vice versa, you can't you co-opt it. So what the US does is it takes everything it cannot control.
(1:19:13) Like you can you can write a paper on this. Everything it cannot control that's an outside force and it co-opts it. And that's what Bitcoin. Now I'm not even into the manipulation manipulation part. In 1974, there's a Wikileaks email out there that essentially says what I'm about to say. In 1974, after the US went off the gold standard and the price of gold started to move higher, the US and the UK, London were trying to keep the price of gold down. Why? Because they were cheating.
(1:19:46) They were printing more dollars than they had of the gold. And they had this thing called the London gold pool scheme, etc., etc. But then they came up with an idea, simple idea, and it's in the email. We're going to create a futures exchange for gold. Why? Because if you get, it's in the email. If you can if you can create a futures exchange, then you can reduce the demand for physical because over time people will take convenience over authenticity. Right? I'll take the knockoff.
(1:20:20) And when you get them with electronic bank accounts, it grows more and more. And a generation goes by and your grandparents are dead and you're like, uh, I don't need the gold. I'll just it's the next best thing as gold. And you do that and over time you set up the market structure because you don't want gold to go up.
(1:20:39) You make it a tier three asset. You make the margins higher. And then you have these banks called bullion banks. Those are the custodians of of Bitcoin. Now, the bullion banks say, "All right, the government wants gold to go down. They're happy when it goes down. They're lending us money at zero. We'll rehypothecate.
(1:21:08) " And so rehypothecation, which was invented for gold bulls, not for bears, is used by bears to sell five 10 times as much gold as out there. And the reason it works, Marty, the reason it works is because the US liquidity pool is so big that the trading you look at the US price, you trade on the US hours. You don't trade in the off hours. We become the market.
(1:21:36) And in becoming the market and the futures price becomes more important than the spot price, the derivative price becomes more important than the spot price. Then you can influence the market lower by just selling paper. You don't need you don't need the gold. You don't need the gold. Just get the paper. And that goes on for years. And then they come up with other schemes.
(1:21:54) And I don't mean this is these are just traders who want to make money. I would have done it if I was in that seat. It's like wait a minute. You want it to go down? Fine. I would approach the Fed in 1993 just like the Boing Banks did and said, "You guys have gold sitting in Fort Knox doing nothing. Give it to us. We'll give you 50 basis points for it. We'll take the money. We'll take the gold. We'll short it.
(1:22:13) we'll take the money and we'll go buy something else. Greenspan was like, "Great idea." It happened. Great idea. Clinton, who was the president at the time, was like, "Great idea. It'll keep the bond players from from freaking out cuz bond players would buy gold as a substance." And so they did it successfully for 30 years. And a generation goes by like an elephant tied to a stake with a thread, he doesn't know he can pull the steak out of the ground. And it goes on and on. And that's why Bitcoin is gold 2.0.
(1:22:43) They're doing the same thing. Are they doing it to buy it? Yeah, they're doing it to buy it. Are they doing it to make it the dollar? No, they're not going to do that. Then you lose sovereign money. And little by little, there's no liquidity in the world anywhere for Bitcoin except here now.
(1:23:01) I mean, you know, and other nations like China, although they should have it, and they probably do have it, they've shied away from it because the US has a monopoly on it now. And so the rehypothecation has gone from bullion banks selling futures and taking the money and borrowing to custodian banks like JP Morgan or Black Rockck or however they do it going like I have your Bitcoin. I'll give it to you in 5 days. You basically take five orders for Bitcoin and you sell.
(1:23:27) It's rehypothecation all over again. So every time someone buys a Bitcoin at the Black Rockck level, they're slamming a future. And you know why that works? It works for the same reason JP Morgan makes money when silver goes up. JP Morgan has all the silver in the world hypothetically in their vault.
(1:23:45) They have the Hunt brothers silver. It's been passed down to them, but they're not long silver. They're sure futures against it. And if the [ __ ] hits the fan, they just won't honor the contract. Isn't that what what uh what Bitcoin places are doing? That's what they did. we don't have the Bitcoin, so we're not going to honor the contract. So, it's happening all over again.
(1:24:09) And they've got Bitcoin under control, and it'll go up in price, but there's no one who's going to challenge the US on it right now. At least not yet. So, I hope that makes sense. Yeah. I will say like anecdotal observation and I haven't really didn't really think about this until you started um walking through that explanation is probably like probably been a few years but there was a point I've been in Bitcoin for 12 years and it was like a meme and something that you came to expect is that when Asia woke up the price would move um and my early days trading it I was like oh
(1:24:42) Asia's up. Yeah. Yeah. And uh that doesn't happen anymore. Um, right. It's it's not as prominent as a meme as it was 5, 7, 10 years ago. I used to trade the uh the the the Japanese US uh hours for gold and uh I used to trade the ARB and it was a very very low profit margin, high transaction thing.
(1:25:06) And you know I it did it it did okay. But during that time frame when China was stimulating when China was stimulating all the base metals would go up, iron, copper, aluminum, and then eventually silver and gold would go up and I would be able to like kind of frontr run it, right? So when China said we're going to print money and then Bitcoin comes on the scene, it's like iron, Bitcoin, alum.
(1:25:30) I'm like, why is Bitcoin going up? I called a buddy of mine. He goes, well that's because every time they print money, the banks want to make sure they don't have too many yuan in their pocket so they buy something that can go up. So, Bitcoin was a was a what do you call it? Like a safety valve for these guys and they're not doing it anymore. I mean, yeah.
(1:25:48) Well, to your point, not even push back, but like just a different perspective in terms of the ability to combat this manipulation, which I think whether you call I think you can define anything as manipulation. Buyers, sellers exist. Right. like uh it's just the the market dynamics the way they exist with the large custodians like Black Rockck which really they're custodying with Coinbase and you layer on futures and options on top of that and you can easily manipulate the price using those tools. But I think where Bitcoin has the opportunity, I think
(1:26:30) this week we have a great example of how to combat it is you it's so much easier to take delivery and actually use it and custody it. And I think if we see more things like Square announced this week where they're enabling 4 million merchants to shuffle to immediately sweep a percentage of their their cash flows into the Bitcoin that they can then withdraw from uh their Square terminals, their business portals.
(1:27:03) Um that's what needs to happen if you want to combat this manipulation. So that's why here at this show and I advise anybody getting into Bitcoin. I think ETFs are good if you want exposure. You don't have to self custody and you don't need to use the Bitcoin, right? But highly encourage people to take Bitcoin and self- custody, get it off the exchange.
(1:27:21) Yeah. To prevent this manipulation. So you're talking about Jack when you say Square, right? Yeah. Okay. He has been on a on a on a not a rant, but he has been on a a thread for about I don't know maybe three to six months. It's not enough that it's a store of value. It has to be a currency. Am I am I paraphrasing that right? Yes.
(1:27:46) And and and he's so right, Marty. Meaning what I just said to you about how the US co-op something, what they do is they ring fence liquidity. So the liquidity is all there and they don't let it out. And so you take I mean look, Bitcoin is about network, right? You take the network and you make it a walled garden. And if it's not a currency, if it's not out there, it doesn't build its network.
(1:28:14) And if it doesn't build its network, it becomes an asset. It becomes the pet rock. That's what it does. I'm not saying gold was ever something you can you couldn't do that. But you you know you could do it with silver at one time. But you take this thing that uh is indestructible, right? Unless there's no energy for like you know no power for like 50 years that's indestructible that's is easy to use and you know you about whether it's fast enough or not. I don't care. The point is if it doesn't proliferate
(1:28:48) it doesn't get used. It gets used as a store of value, but it doesn't get used. The analogy that I've used with with my people is the Joe Deaggio baseball card. Okay? So, so the Joe Deaggio baseball card, let's say there's only 10 of them in the world, right? And there's only 10 of them in the world and nobody cares about it.
(1:29:11) Well, it's a store of value, but you can't do anything with it because it's locked into the SEC. They they they securitized money. They made money a piece of art. They made money an asset. They made it a humble. I don't know if anyone's old enough in your group. You know what a humble is? Yeah.
(1:29:29) You know those little stupid glass figurines that your grandparents have in a china cabinet? Well, they all have serial numbers on the bottom. They're all one of a kind. They're all special and they're all worth money. And if you have to sell them, you'll get some decent money for them. But you can't go around with a Humble. They stay in the China closet. The ETF is a China closet for Bitcoin.
(1:29:47) and it's going to go there and it's going to fall out of existence. It's like, you know, the landline, the first landline was built, who needed it? But when the network gets built, you I would the last person in the world who doesn't have access to a phone would pay a million dollars to use it because he wants to be connected.
(1:30:05) The first person wouldn't pay anything. And I think Bitcoin, you know, if you want to make the case that the government's involved, it's like, you know what, how about this? the government's involved in Ethereum because they want to make sure that Bitcoin doesn't prolifer proliferate. I mean, I'm just taking the side of the of the uh of a maxi in that point of view.
(1:30:25) No, that the idea is to own it, lock it down. The idea is to instead of and I know the maxis are like, oh, but it's a Trojan horse. You know what it it maybe it's a Trojan horse, but it's going to take a hundred years for that Trojan horse. The state's not going to let it survive until the state itself is dead. The state does two things. It kills people and it prints money.
(1:30:44) And it will not give up either of those two things. And if it does give about those two things, that's because it's not a state anymore. That's interesting. I focusing on Dorsy and you think of like the uh prominent billionaire CEOs um or executives pushing Bitcoin. I think you have him and then Sailor juxtapose Sailor. It's digital capital.
(1:31:08) Why would you ever sell it? And you have Dorsy is like, "No, this is cippher punk digital cash that we need to be right in the economy." I respect the hell I'm friends with both of them and but I agree more with Jack in the sense that like this is supposed to be used as money was in the white paper. I'm not getting full Roger Murray here, but I think it is a better money at the end of the day.
(1:31:33) and this whole focus on treasury companies and using it as digital capital um is catering to those who like to co-opt it and it's like no we should look who who is is is brilliant in his own right he knows what he's doing he knows that the path is I want the price to go up and if I have to work with the government I'll do that provided you know I I play well in the sandbox whereas Jack in my opinion that's probably pretty obvious He's an idealist and so he wants to you know he's not an anarchist person. Maybe he is. I don't know. Uh but you know he he wants uh a
(1:32:11) more fair distribution based on merit and not based on incumbency. And so you know these are the this is the the bucket of cold and the hot and the ice, right? It's true. I mean that that really is true. And I think at the end of the day, at the end of the day, I've seen what they did with gold for 30 years. Can they do that with Bitcoin? I think they can.
(1:32:36) And the reason I think they can, unfortunately, is because maybe you can't destroy it, but our liquidity pool is so big and so important, even if it is on the way down, that all you have to do is critically limit the on-ramps and off-ramps or structure them so that you're controlling them.
(1:32:54) And then half the world's going to be like, "Nah, I'm not going to use it." I mean, I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist. Yeah. But do you would you agree with what I said earlier in terms that the ability to combat that suppression is much easier with Bitcoin due to the fact that it's digital? Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
(1:33:16) Absolutely. You know, there's I think I think this is like a a monetary philosophy co point here. I think the main difference in terms of uh gold and bitcoin I mean there's many differences but the main difference is that people look at gold as a store of value that's money because it's a thing and if you really understand bitcoin I'm not saying that I do but I understand monetary theory if you understand money from a chartless theory then you understand that that um money should be nothing it's basically just an accounting ledger and gold is nothing just that there is an obsession with it, you know, because because it
(1:33:52) it's it's it's I guess it's like a Marxist comment like capitalism itself uh makes it that but but like what's his name? Richard was it Richard Spencer. The guy talking about Richard Warner, right? He Spencer is completely different. He's probably like a rock and roll guy, right? Like an old state or something.
(1:34:16) He's like a white nationalist out of Oh, is he really? I think he even was some deep state SCOP white nationalists here in the US many years. Listen, I'm not Elon Musk. All right. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Elon, don't ban me. Um, yeah. So, Richard Werner talks about QE, talks about, you know, all these other things.
(1:34:33) And one of the things he said is that, you know, banks at the commercial level can create money. And, and I diged into some things after that. And what I diged into was there's a paper by the Bank of England out there. And the Bank of England was like written in uh I don't know 2014 I think maybe and that in that paper the Bank of England said yes because Warner was right like yes I was Spencer again yes um money is created from nothing and we don't want you to know that it's not just created from nothing from central banks it's created from nothing at the commercial bank level and what they have is they have essentially what's called the chartist asset the the chartist there
(1:35:08) was a big fight between the Keynesians and these other guys, maybe German guys, I don't know, but the Toronto stat was like, "No, no, money is just a ledger account of you owing owing me a favor and and so uh basically it's kind of like it dubtales into MMT as well." And then the other side, the Keynesian side, not Neoenzy, was like, "Well, money needs to be tethered to something real so that we can uh uh make sure we don't over print or debase.
(1:35:40) " And so these the Keynesian side one which became neocynian but the chartist side is what word is talking about. And you know what that's what Bitcoin is. That's really what it is. It's like Bitcoin is like you know what let's take the Bitcoin you know ledger Nano and let's let's put it in a gold casing like an iPhone and let's put it in an ETF and let's make everyone worship it. Let's make it shiny like No. No. It's a workhorse.
(1:36:07) get it out there because that's what money is. Money is a workhorse. Now, I'm not a proponent of MFTt, but I I am saying that, you know, there are aspects of Bitcoin that make it that make it I mean, I'm a gold book, okay? There are aspects of Bitcoin that when the world is ready for, it will whether it's Bitcoin or a successor, when the world is ready for it, it'll be ready for it.
(1:36:32) It's, you know, you can't get away from the physicality of it all yet. Yeah. I'm obviously I'm full on in it. Been in it for 12 years, completely incorporated into my business. But we have like I I I think it's going to be ultimately successful just cuz particularly for crossber payments like I have some contractors that work outside Yep.
(1:37:00) the United States and they demand to get paid in Bitcoin and like it was unprompted. Uh I think obviously they know uh we're a company focused on on Bitcoin specifically, but I was surprised a couple months ago this new contractor started and he I was like, "All right, send me the invoice." I was thinking it was going to be an international wire transfer. It was a Bitcoin invoice. I was like, "Oh, sweet. We can pay you.
(1:37:20) " Yeah. I I think, you know, we were talking about this before as well. I think I think um uh Bitcoin's going to find a niche that can't be crushed cross border Europe is scared to death of it, right? Um u black market. I'm not trying to demonize, but you know, things that you got to get around stuff like like you use with gold.
(1:37:45) And I think it's going to thrive in that niche and then there'll be an opportunity like a calamitous event or a nation and it'll become the surrogate currency and then it'll never go. There's your Trojan horse. You can't assuming that you can't kill it. If you can't kill this, it will survive. And it will survive like a in a in a good way a virus. It won't go away. It'll be there.
(1:38:12) And then a good product that's indestructible, all it needs is time and an opportunity and something will happen and they'll go from your contractors to a small country going, you know what, oh Jesus, we we trade with our partners across the border here all the time and they're sanctioned and I'm sanctioned. Let's create a zone between my country and your country on the border and let's just use Bitcoin. Just do that.
(1:38:37) And then after a while it organically spreads. I I you know that's that's the home run. The home run is time you know and time usually means one or two generations. I have to be dead and you have to be old. I think uh many Bitcoiners myself included recognize that as well. It's a it's a multigeneration thing.
(1:39:04) And that's that's a funny when I hear people deride and dismerge Bitcoin. And it's like ah it's not used as d day day-to-day currency where can I spend it? It's like what other monetary asset uh has launched and been completely ubiquitous within 17 years? Like it's survived. Surv I mean just that's that's the whole point of a network. If you can create a network even if it's not being used even if it's not being used but it exists all it needs is an opportunity.
(1:39:29) Look the using gold for an example. Shanghai has had gold for 15 years and it survived and then it saw an opportunity and boom it took market share. This is what it's all about surviving and taking market share. Yeah. And Bitcoin is a survivor and that's why it eventually wins. Yeah. I think the other thing we have in the Bitcoiner camp in our in our favor is we're very good at memeing.
(1:39:52) We're very good at uh getting messages. Would you admit would the gold bugs admit that uh we've helped the sound money cause materially in the last 15 years? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean look I I I I tried to reach out to you early on. Not you specifically but you know your group and I was I was like listen would you stop [ __ ] on gold? It's the same thing. I mean your yours might be gold 2.0.
(1:40:19) I would like create memes of like the old guy memes right uh black and white cookie you know a Seinfeld joke. look to the cookie type of [ __ ] Shut up you old man. And and then and this is where I started to hate sell cuz I knew that that [ __ ] excuse my French, was just um was just trying to say hate gold because he just wanted it to go up and he was going after the demographic.
(1:40:37) It was a smart move, but he was I'm like people like I'm I'm I'm Gen X, right? So Gen X up to Boomers are like Bitcoin. No way. I'm just lucky, you know? Um, but yeah, it's like it's like we're just not it's it's new tech. We're not familiar with it. Give us a give us a break. You know, I've been very consistent throughout the years on this show. I love our gold bugs. We're ideologically and philosophically aligned.
(1:41:02) We we need to work together. Right. Well, I mean, that's it. You know, it's like the uh Speaking of memes, it's like the uh what is it? The Splinter and Ninja Turtles meme. Mhm. You know, we raised you and now you're now you're going with Ron Paul a lot. It's like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's a rump pole beat. It's exactly a rump pole. That's exactly it. Yeah.
(1:41:20) Yeah. Yeah. Vince, this has been uh this has been great. Thank you for doing this. I can't believe it's taken us this long. I appreciate you having me. I appreciate you having me on. Uh uh this is fun. I know I I know you by reputation and I know you from We're Mutuals on on on X, but uh yeah, this was fun.
(1:41:40) I'm very pleasantly uh surprised. I wasn't negative, but I'm pleasantly surprised. I am as well. I hope you are as well. Yeah. The fact that we went to the same high school. If you're ever back uh in Philly, let me know. We'll have to get a beer and a pizza somewhere. Yeah. Yeah.
(1:41:58) Have you Have you Have you uh Have you been to the uh the Jio in a while? Have you been to the prep in a while? Not uh not in a few years. I need to get Looks fabulous. He looks fab. Unbelievable what they've done. Unbelievable. Anyway, all right. Memories. Yeah. Well, hopefully this is the first of many. Well, uh, I'm sure there'll be plenty to talk about as things evolve moving forward. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for having me on, Marty.
(1:42:24) And, um, oh, if if I just want to just drop, is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, I have a newsletter on on Substack and it's VBL Goldfix Victorboy Larry Goldfix at substack.com and it is as you would guess it's predominantly monetary and it's predominantly gold and silver because well that's what's been moving lately but when those markets are not in at the front of everyone's mind I I'll talk about geopolitics which I'm do I do all the time uh look if you understand gold you understand geopolitics you understand inflation and you understand economies and my background is in the bond market and fundamental analysis.
(1:42:59) And so therefore, uh I will talk about Bitcoin. I do get some good research on Bitcoin as well and and I cover it. I cover it as well, but that's not a sales pitch. I guess what I'm saying is I'm a gold guy who hedges his gold with Bitcoin, not a Bitcoin guy. So that's it. Uh you can find me on Twitter as well, just VBL Ghost. Like I said, we love our gold bugs here at TFTC.
(1:43:22) So, thank you uh for adding to the list of of golden bugs that have come on the show and uh we'll link to all that in the show notes. So, you guys are interested, check out the show notes. Go check out Substack and great follow on on X as well. Thanks, buddy. Thank you. It's all we got today, Freaks. Peace and love.
(1:43:39) Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there. Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, make sure you like and subscribe to the show. And if you can leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way.
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