System 'Collapses' Warns Fund Manager Unless 'They Print Money' Now | Lawrence Lepard
Summary
Sound Money Thesis: The guest argues fiat debasement is unavoidable and advocates sound money exposure, emphasizing gold and Bitcoin as core hedges.
Gold: Bullish long-term view with potential well beyond $4,000, framing recent gains as the dollar falling rather than gold rising, and citing ongoing monetary expansion.
Bitcoin: Prefers Bitcoin near term as it lags gold historically, sees a path to $200,000+ and even 10x over time, and recommends dollar-cost averaging due to volatility.
Gold Miners: Positions the group in the early innings of a bull market, noting improving cash flows, still-reasonable multiples, and potential for another doubling despite near-term pullback risk.
Macro Backdrop: Expects rate cuts, balance sheet growth, and renewed inflation pressures, arguing policymakers must continue easing to prevent system stress.
Market Outlook: Cautions that broad equities aren’t cheap but wouldn’t short; sees bond-market risk from fiscal dominance and higher long-term inflation.
Capital Flows: Notes AI enthusiasm has diverted some capital from Bitcoin, but views parts of AI as frothy while maintaining focus on sound money assets.
Portfolio Guidance: Personally holds roughly 60% Bitcoin and 40% gold/gold stocks; suggests smaller BTC weights (e.g., 5%) for risk-averse investors due to drawdown risk.
Transcript
A lot of people think the price of gold at 4,000 is high. I don't. I think it's low. Oh gosh, I've got a profit. Maybe I should take it. Um, you know, and and and I get that. And you know, I've selectively been selling some that went up too much in my opinion, but but I you know, if I had to put this in baseball terms, I would say we're in a gold stock bull market and I think we're probably in the second inning. The reality is they don't have a choice. If they don't print this money, the system is going to collapse. >> Why do you say that uh you don't like the other cryptos? Are they not sound money for you? >> They're really not. I'm very pleased to welcome back the show Lawrence the part. He is the um founder of Equity Management Associates. He's a sound money advocate and uh that extends to both gold and Bitcoin, both assets we'll be talking about. He's also the author of the big print, what happened to America and how sound money will fix it. People should check that book out, link down below. We'll put the link down below. It's been out for several months now. Lawrence, I've you know spoken to you many times in the back in in the past. It's always a pleasure to welcome you back on the show. And I like speaking to Lawrence because he follows both the gold and Bitcoin markets very closely. Um, his company manages a gold fund, but he also follows Bitcoin and invests himself. So, uh, good to have you back, Lawrence. It's a very timely, >> David. I I've always enjoyed our conversations. I think you do a great show. So, >> I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Lawrence, let's just I want to start by talking about the thing that's on my mind. The first thing that I would ask you if I were in a bar with you having a pint of beer, do you like gold or Bitcoin more right now? [laughter] >> Uh, well, right now actually I like Bitcoin more because it's behind gold. Um, look, first let's just get some things out of the way. I love them both. They both have great great characteristics and they're both going to go much higher and they're both ways of protecting yourself against inflation. Um, you know, one is is uh more stable and has a longer history that's gold. Uh the other is more volatile but can outperform gold and has kind of outperformed gold. Although recently it's kind of been lagging relative to gold and that's Bitcoin. And uh if you actually look at it um and I've been sharing this on Twitter, if you go to my Twitter feed, you'll see this. I've been sharing charts that show that that gold tends to move before Bitcoin. Um and if particularly if you go back to the CO example um you know in 2019 the repo market blew apart and you know the PAL pivoted and so gold started going up and then CO hit and then Pal really pivoted and started burning like crazy and gold really went up. It was pretty interesting because Bitcoin sat there flat for some period of time a fairly significant period of time and then of course Bitcoin woke up and went from 10,000 to 60,000 in a short period. So, um, you know, gold smells out the basement quicker and more, you know, easier in my opinion, that's because more broadly held. Um, but then Bitcoin once once everyone realizes the print is on, Bitcoin is pretty liquidity sensitive and it tends to run hard. And so, if you kind of look at gold has gone up quite nicely this year and gold stocks have gone up even more. Um, and Bitcoin's up, but not not relatively speaking, it hasn't outperformed gold. It's been kind of similar to slightly below. So, um, you know, my opinion is if you if you were kind of asking if you wanted to make a sound money bet today, which is on a relative basis cheaper, I would say Bitcoin because it hasn't moved yet. And and you know, a lot of Bitcoin people are like, "Hey, what's going on? Gold's going up and we're kind of flat." And my response to that is just wait, you know. Um, you you're you should be happy that gold's going up because it means Bitcoin's about to go up next. That's the pattern. >> Well, I I think maybe the Well, I'll let you comment on why gold's been outperforming Bitcoin. Maybe the user profile or the the the investor base of Bitcoin has changed. Maybe it was retail before in 2020, now it isn't. Uh what do you think? >> Oh, that's a part of it. I mean, certainly there's broader distribution. Um certainly there are some early, you know, investors who are selling. Um there's some people who believe in this four-year cycle and we're kind of at the top of that four-ear cycle and so they think maybe 100,000 is the top. I mean, Bitcoin's it trades funny. It trades like a wild animal. You never really know what it's going to do, but I think we're going to wake up and one day it's going to be a lot higher. It's interesting because if you look at it historically, if you miss the top days, you really miss a lot. Um, and so, you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't not hold Bitcoin here because I think when it does wake up, it'll move far and quickly. So, um, yeah, it it's to me they're both, you know, I've got charts um, actually, if you want me to, David, I could try and share them, but I've got charts that show the two mapped >> that mapped against one another. Um >> I I I I do wonder why Bitcoin hasn't fundamentally well just maybe fundamental reasons for why Bitcoin didn't exceed or even meet your expectations. You were more bullish uh on Bitcoin earlier in the year than you are now. I think you even call for potentially $200,000 upside target. A lot of people made those calls by the way. Um so you know Bitcoin had a great run last year. Why did it stall out this year? >> There you can see my screen. So this is a chart mapping. So, so first of all, let me just say I'm extremely bullish on Bitcoin longer term. Okay. Um I think it is going to 200,000. That that hasn't changed. I I think I last time I spoke to you, I thought it would be there by now and it's not. Uh it's at 100. But um you know, this chart here is is very interesting because what it does, it shows you so the yellow line is the price of gold and and the orange line is the price of Bitcoin. And if you see if you look at the lefth hand scale, that's the Bitcoin price. Okay? If you look at the right hand scale, that's the gold price. And so the scales are different. This is interesting to note. Notice how they generally have tracked together. But also notice how the scales are different. So while gold started this chart at 1500 and it's gone to 4,000, Bitcoin started this chart at 10,000 and it's gone to 100,000. So gold's gone up, you know, uh, 3x or a little over 2 and a half to 3x and Bitcoin's gone up 10x. But notice that here's what I was describing before in the earlier days in 2019. You see how there was the pile pivot right there and gold went up quite rapidly and Bitcoin flat as it can be. Then COVID comes along in the first quarter in March. Big shock, big print. Gold rips higher. Bitcoin still flat. Okay. Then one day, Bitcoin woke up and went from, you know, 10,000 a coin to 60,000 a coin quickly. Okay. Then liquidity got tighter. Sam Bankman freed. But but in real the real liquidity got tighter is in 22 Paul started upping rates and you know this was right around here and and gold kind of had a little left in it but then it came down. Bitcoin came down much much more. So what this chart shows you I believe is just how sensitive how much more volatile Bitcoin is but they both are moving in the same direction and how you know in general gold has been a leading indicator of Bitcoin. Now if I take this um thing up here and this sadly this is not updated. This chart's a little bit old, but the gold nut line, you can see it goes up to 3500 here. Well, of course, it should go right off the chart because it's been as high as 4,400. So, again, the gold line has moved and Bitcoin is kind of pinned at 100, 110, something like that. So, my sense is that Bitcoin is going to wake up and it's going to move hard. So, um I'm not I'm not really worried about it, but I you're right. I I did blow the call in the sense that uh I thought it would be there by now. So, >> and it's also interesting how Bitcoin underperformed the NASDAQ in a year where uh both assets are technically bullish. Typically, in a bull market, it it outperformed stocks. That's what it's done in the past. I I wonder if the institutional shift once more, the the the buyer base that has something to do with the fact that it's just been underperforming or or or or something else here. >> Um yeah, well, I think it you know, it's mapping it against the NASDAQ's tricky. I I think they're two different things, but but they both are driven by liquidity. I mean, one thing that is very true about Bitcoin is it's a liquidity driven thing and and it also has some portion of the Bitcoin demand is all the other altcoins and all the other cryptos which I think are nonsense to be frank. Um, and so, you know, I try to avoid those coins and I just focus on Bitcoin. Um, and I think that, you know, I do know that there there were people on Wall Street who were doing something along the lines of they were shorting Bitcoin um or they were there were um yeah, shorting Bitcoin and going long the NASDAQ, which I think is a colossal mistake, but because the two they were correlated, they thought that was a good pair trade. Um I I suppose people could, you know, could see that and believe it. Um I personally don't think it makes any sense at all, but um it is what it is. Um, so but let me um I'm going to pull up another chart that I think you find interesting. Um, so here here what we this is a chart. This is from a New Orleans investment presentation which I just give gave >> at the conference. So notice same chart as before. Bitcoin and gold uh gold in this case is is white and the Bitcoin is orange. And uh if you lag the two what you see is that you know again um they they match up better. they match up more closely when you do a 100 day lag. And so again, over here in 2025, what we've seen is, as we all know, in September, gold really broke out and went on a tear. It went up to 4,400. Bitcoin's just sitting right here. But that means it's pretty, in my book, it's pretty close to probably following through. So I just think it's another interesting data point about, you know, the trend on both the assets. I mean the the important thing David Dave and I know you understand it very well because it's the area you cover is that what's happened is the world has become very aware of this monetary debasement trade. You know you see JP Morgan talking about it. I mean I was shocked to see Morgan Stanley changing their allocation. They were 60% stocks 40% bonds. Now they're re 60 recommending 60% stocks, 20% bonds and 20% gold. I was like wow. I mean they manage trillions and trillions of dollars. And so you're seeing a a growing awareness of what those of us in the sound money community have been saying for, you know, decades, but most particularly last few years, which is they just can't stop printing money. And, you know, we're now seeing as we move into current events, and I'm sure we'll talk about this, we're now seeing all kinds of indications. I mean, Powell at the recent press conference said the money, you know, the balance sheet would have to grow. Um, you know, Lori Logan, one of the Fed governors, she said in indeed the, you know, the the balance sheet was going to have to grow. I mean, these are this is really QE. Now, they're not calling it QE. They're just saying, well, it's we're just expanding it to make the plumbing work. And, you know, okay, that's a nice excuse, but let's face it, it's money printing. So, um, you know, the the market has figured that out and that's why gold and silver and Bitcoin prices have been so strong. The US and China are battling over mineral supply chains and technology supremacy because globalization stepped out of equilibrium. And you can see just how when looking at the strategy behind both superpowers, they're taking shape and they're reshaping the entire world. Now Trump uses tariffs and deregulation to begin the process of realigning mining and securing resources on US soil while the Chinese government is using their near monopoly status, scale, and reserves to their advantage. Today I want to talk about and showcase a company that is actually trading at its 2025 lows right now, down nearly 70% from its highs in Q1. Giant Mining Corp. ticker symbol BFGFF is a sponsor of today's video and the owner of the Majuba Hill Copper Project. Since President Trump's inauguration in January 2025, his administration has aggressively pursued policies to secure US mineral independence with copper emerging as a flash point in escalating tensions between China and the US. Copper is vital for defenses and AI infrastructure and it underscores America's vulnerability to foreign dominance, particularly China's control over global copper refining. In February 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14220, initiating a section 232 investigation into US copper imports and classifying the nation's independence on foreign suppliers as a potential national security risk. Subsequently, the US imposed 50% tariffs on semi-furnished copper products, including wires and cables, effective August 1st, 2025. Now, on October 6, 2025, President Trump approved the Amler Road project in Alaska, unlocking access to rich copper and zinc deposits and facilitating the permitting of more than 1,700 mining claims. This is the start of the rebirth of the American copper mining business. Giant Mining owns a passing copper mine in Nevada, one of the most highly soughtafter mining jurisdictions in the US. Here's some more important information about the company's deposits. Historic underground mines at the Majuba Hill project produced copper, tin, and silver from the early 1900s to the 1950s, including 2.8 million pounds of copper, 184,000 ounces of silver, 5,800 ounces of gold, and 21,000 lb of tin. Importantly, the project is surrounded by developed infrastructure, including access to roads, power supply, transportation, water supply, and or stockpiles. Do your homework on giant mining, ticker BFGF, today. Like to address this, please. Uh just on that note, the BIS, Bank of International Sentiments, has put out some reports recently about the rising debt issues around the world. This is from a recent report that they uh published. They're warning that record global share prices appear increasingly disconnected from the rising concerns about government debt levels in the bond markets. 30-year uh debt uh premium investors demand to buy um the rise in the premium that investors demand in the 30-year debt um show mounting concerns about the fiscal outlook. Can you just comment on that? Are the stock markets disconnected from uh the rising uh fiscal um concerns that some people may have? Do they even have to be connected, Lawrence? >> Well, you know, it sure feels to me like what they're saying is correct. I mean, the So, I mean, what's I think happened here, I mean, and I don't know if you're familiar with the term crackup boom, but I think what's happening here, I think what's happening here is that, you know, the government and everybody has kind of come to realize that to keep the economy going, we have to keep all these numbers going up and to the right. And that means both the stock market, you know, and and and um it it impacts, you know, gold, silver, and Bitcoin. Um, you know, the bond market, meanwhile, is in my sense, in my belief, going to have a fit over this eventually because, you know, I mean, the bond market's been calm because there was a time, you know, they were reducing their balance sheet and they were trying to maintain discipline, you know, with higher interest rates. But what we're seeing, I mean, we know that Powell is out in May of 2020, uh, next year, 2026. And so, and we know that, you know, I mean, I it was it was amazing to me. I mean, you got the president of the United States calling him a you know, in an income poop and saying he's too late. And I mean, just kind of beating on him. And, um, you know, he's going to appoint somebody who's going to drop rates and that dropping of rates will lead to all kinds of refies and and another round of inflation. So, this is m mapping, I think in our last conversation, we did talk about this. This is really kind of mapping out against the 70s. It's very similar, right, where you have these waves of inflation and, you know, the Fed tries to fight them, but then you get the next wave. And so, um, you know, I think that's what's going on. As for the stock market, stock market's a very tough thing to call. I mean, it's it's not cheap by any measure, but there are those who argue that there new measures and new metrics are appropriate in this in this free money world that we kind of live in. And and, you know, they may be right. I mean, I've I've lost money trying to be short the stock market at various times over the past 10 years. you know, I regret doing that. I didn't understand what was going on. So, um, you know, I would not be shorting stocks here, but that doesn't mean I'd be buying them either. >> Well, do you think do you think uh the AI stocks have this year just stolen the investor base for Bitcoin? Is that one of the reasons? >> That's part of it. That's certainly part of it. And those those stocks are just it's crazy. I mean, look at Nvidia. It's a $5 trillion market cap. I mean, you know, and there a lot of people think AI is a bubble. I think AI is important. I think it will change the world. I think it's a fantastic technology. However, you know, like just like the internet got ahead of itself in 2000, I I feel like there's some of that going on in AI and uh yeah, I do think that's stolen a little bit of the thunder from other things. >> Why do you say that uh you don't like the other cryptos? Are they not sound money for you? >> They're really not. They're not they're constructed differently. And I I try not to be is sometimes I'm very mean. I call them shitcoins. I I get that other people are trying to do do projects that enhance, you know, functionality and e Ethern Ethereum has contracts, smart contracts, and people are trying to tokenize things and all those that's all great. I mean, there's to the to the degree that you can use cryptocurrencies to in, you know, to to do things to tokenize things, that's that's got value. I don't dispute that. But what I'm trying to point out is that there's really no cryptocurrency or none of any size. There a couple small projects that are similar. There's no cryptocurrency of any size that has the proof of work and the network scale and the immutability of Bitcoin. I mean, Ethereum's, you know, monetary policy has changed seven or eight times. I mean, all these other coins have somebody leading them who's kind of quote unquote the CEO. I mean, one of the beautiful things about Bitcoin is it's distributed and there is no CEO and it's all based on consensus and it's all based on, you know, nodes and and miners and people voting on what they're going to use. And so, you know, you could hard fork Bitcoin and try and say I'm going to go over in this direction and fine, but nobody would follow you because everyone's going to stay with the one that's a leader. So, so yeah, I just think the other a lot of the other projects, some of them are just outright scams, right? I mean, we had Samman Freed, we had, you know, Alex Mashinsky, um, you know, we had Monero. I mean, there were just a lot of very very bad actors who would spin up a coin, try and sell it, you know, run the price up, and then they would dump their their coins and and take money from people, and that was just criminal behavior. Um, the SEC's tried to crack down on that. But some of that's still going on. I mean, even guys like Eli Elon Musk support something called Dogecoin has no no, you know, notable use case and yet, you know, it's still got a multi-billion dollar market cap. It puzzles me. um you know but to me Bitcoin itself is actually a technology it's a it's an invention they solved a problem a computer science problem that had existed for a long time that other people tried to solve which is how do you trustlessly you know secure digital information so that you know it can't be cheat you can't cheat you can't double spend and it's called the um Byzantine general's problem and Satoshi or whoever the Satoshi's were they solved it and you know in the I was quite skeptical that oh no that's not possible because there were three or four other prior experiments where they tried it and it didn't work and so but but here we are we're 16 years into it they're 920,000 plus blocks that have been mined and you know and it's been adopted and you know more and more people are coming to the conclusion that you know what this is immutable and this is a scarce entity and it is a scarce ledger and it doesn't necessarily have to be physical the way gold guys think that if it's not physically sound it can't be money. So that's that's >> the way does the way the price chart move change how people perceive something as sound money or not? For example, let's take gold. It's skyrocketed parabolically in the last year and a half up about 120% or something depending on which day you're looking at. Does that change your perception of whether or not it's sound money just based on how volatile it's been even to the upside? >> Point some some people make the point about that same point about Bitcoin that it can't be quote unquote sound money. >> Yeah. I like to turn that actually on its head and say is it gold going up or is it the dollar going down and the and the same with Bitcoin and and I think that you know I think the reason I define sound money is money that is not issued by the government because we all know the government can print more and money that has a fair set of rules around it and you know gold is geologically constrained and you know you can't fake an ounce of gold although people have tried um and and Bitcoin is mathematically constrained those sound monies with limited supply outside of the government system, you know, in my opinion, those are the only sound monies that exist. Now, compared to fiat money, the government's money, they might vi, you know, you know, the prices might fluctuate a lot, but I actually think that's more of a commentary on the fiat than it is on the sound money. I mean, 1 ounce of gold is 1 ounce of gold, one bitcoin is one bitcoin. I think the reason the prices have been so volatile um in this transition period here is I think we're going through a period where fiat is really being questioned and you know you're now you know we got I mean I I like to liken it to like it's we're in a theater and there's a little bit of smoke and a few people are like whoa hang on a sec I want to get out of here and pretty soon everybody's going to could figure it out and you know I mean people a lot of people think the price of gold at 4,000 is high I don't I think it's low I think gold's going to 10,000 20,000 50,000 because that's how much fiat money has been printed in the same way that I think Bitcoin is going to much higher prices too. So to me the volatility is more a comment on the loss of faith in the fiat system. I mean, if you look at a chart of what happened in any great hyperinflation, you know, it it always starts out slowly and but then over time, you know, money is a confidence game and if it comes to the point where we all lose money or all lose confidence in the money, it's going to it's going to fail very quickly, you know, and so it could be it could be it'll be very volatile. I mean, I'm sure you've seen the Murmuracan Capital chart that shows the volatility, right, during during Weimar. So >> people talk about this lost in confidence of the fiat system, but it's not like we can do anything about it, Lawrence. We can't just move to another system. We can't just like like we're moving neighborhoods, right? So what do we do? >> No, we're kind of stuck in it. Most people you have to pay them in dollars, Canadian or American, but >> Sure. But but the marketplace is bigger in so what the bet that I'm making and the bet that those of us who are betting on these alternative currencies and that's really what they are because the dollar is the leading currency still despite the fact that it's you know slipped um is is that the market's bigger than the government and if if if people you know it's called Gresham's law right if people continually lose faith in the government's ability to control the printing of their paper then they're going to select these other forms of money and pretty soon nobody will want the dollars. And you know, we all seen the stories of Venezuela where the you know, the the boulevard was just laying around in the streets because they're worthless. And so, you know, we're not anywhere close to that. I don't think that's that's not even a tale, you know, it's a it's a remote tale case. But my point is that that great inflations have occurred when governments have misbehaved. And I think that what's going on now and this is reflected in the JP Morgan comments and others is is that more and more people are coming to realize that the government is really behaving responsibly or irresponsibly and that quote unquote irresponsibility is growing. Let me give you an example. So the you know Trump got in and they established Doge and it was a noble effort the department of government efficiency and you know VC and Elon we're going to go save and you know Elon said we're going to save $2 trillion. I mean it's ridiculous. They said, "We're going to save a trillion dollars." Now, it's still pretty aggressive and ridiculous. Well, now it looks like if you Google it or chat GPT, it looks like they're maybe saving a hundred, you know, billion dollars a year, which is still a lot of money, but in the context of a 1.8 trillion deficit, it's not that much. And then in turn, you know, the big beautiful bill which just the Trump, you know, Republicans just passed increased the spending by three or 400, you know, billion a month or I mean a year. And now the tariffs are bringing in some money, but it's now I read in the Wall Street Journal this morning, it's looking like he might, you know, he might lose the Supreme Court case on the tariffs. And I guess the point is that intelligent money managers are seeing that the government is just trapped and they just keep printing money. And it's actually kind of math, David. I mean, when you have a credit system that's based on debt and the debt is continually growing, if you don't grow the underlying supply of the money, the debt would default and you would have a big deflation like 1929. And so, so really they have to inflate. What they're hoping to do is inflate slowly enough that fast enough to keep the system together, but slowly enough that people don't revolt or don't complain or don't leave the dollar. and you know that that they're kind of zigzagging back and forth but you know and and I mean obviously they blew it co came along they grew the money supply 40% inflation shot up to 9% right and then you know Paul said holy this is a problem he slammed on the brakes took rates up very quickly and you know inflation's come from nine down to three but even the three is not their target their target's two but you know now they're kind of saying well three is good enough for government work you know and the you know the the financial system is is seizing up we got to cut rates again and And of course, we're going to get another wave of inflation. So, that's kind of how it works, right? >> Let's talk about your book, uh, The Big Print: What Happens to America and How Silent Money Will Fix It. It's been out since February now, and it's very timely that we're discussing this because this we're talking about this issue in November. We're on the cusp of the Fed ending quantitative tightening, which they've been doing ever since 2020. You, as you're aware, the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve uh went from $9 trillion down to 6.6 trillion. and now they're going to stop reducing their balance sheet size. Uh what happens then to the money supply? What how does this fit into your book the big print especially in conjunction with the Fed lowering rates like you talked about earlier and we've got fiscal dominance, right? A lot of you like you mentioned earlier a lot of spending. So there's just multiple forces going on at the same time that could point to higher levels of money supply. >> Yeah. So you're absolutely right. Um they they've announced they're stopping with they're stopping the um um the tightening. They're going to cut rates. Cutting rates will get the banks active and making more loans. Making more loans is how M2 grows. M2 growth is what leads to inflation. I mean there there are a lot of confusing pieces around it all. But at the end of the day, they have to inflate or else the system is going to die. And they're getting signals on that right now. I mean the you know the sofa rate is over the Fed funds rate. the um you know the standing repo facility has been drawn very heavily um you know and and both the Fed governors are talking about it. I mean, they, you know, there was a time when they were being tough, and they're now, they're not, it's not a choice for them. And they're trying to point paint paint it as this is all just normal. Nothing to see here, folks. You know, we're just going to kind of start to lubricate the system so it doesn't seize up. And and that's fine. They, you know, that that's that's their spin on it. But the reality is they don't have a choice. If they don't print this money, the system is going to collapse. And that's what the book talks about. I talked about first half is the the book is how the system is broken, how we got here, the history of America and the history of the monetary system. The second half of the book is how do you protect yourself which in really three ways buy gold, silver or bitcoin. And so um yeah, I mean it's this is I predicted this was going to happen. Um but the the path is uncertain, David. I mean they haven't done a big print yet. It's interesting. I mean let's just look at the history. You know they really they did a couple of big prints before this. I mean the first one was 2008 in the GFC when Bernaki took the Fed balance sheet from 800 billion to 3 plus trillion and then the second one was co and what I would submit is that they're trapped in a cycle of these and the third one's coming. Um and I don't you know does it happen tomorrow? Does it happen a year from tomorrow or two years? It could be it could be as long as two years. I I kind of don't think they'll make it that long or that make it that far. I tend to think that it's going to happen in the next six months. Maybe a year at the most. But, you know, they're going to have to loosen monetary conditions substantially. And the good news about that is it'll keep the economy humming. But the bad news about that is it'll bring inflation back. So, you know, there's there's a for every action there's a reaction. And, you know, making money easier is going to that's the problem, right? That's the inflation problem. >> I want to address this issue of sound money. Uh, at its core, we we like sound money because governments can't print more of sound money, right? But this this particular oped by uh an economist by the name of Barry Iiking Green, brilliant guy. I've hosted him before on my show. Um he was warning us about the Genius Act. I'm just going to read a few sentences from this oped here. Uh the Genius Act will bring economic chaos if Donald Trump and his allies have their way in Congress. America could soon see a resurgence of other features of that turbulent century. He's talking about the 19th century uh where you're ambushed by gold seekers, gun toing bandits, so on and so forth. Bank failures, personal bankruptcies, financial instability also occurred regularly. What would unleash this chaos is a piece of legislation known as the Genius Act. You and I haven't talked about this yet. It happened after we spoke last time. In its efforts to give crypto a patina of government authority and legitimacy, the Genius Act would give hundreds, perhaps even thousands of American companies the ability to issue their own currencies. Imagine Walmart issuing a Walmart coin. Amazon doing the same thing with Amazon coin enabling them to bypass the banking system altogether. Now, that's an interesting perspective that we don't talk about often. How do you >> is that even true? Can they do that? >> I hadn't read that before and I haven't thought very much about that. I I don't you know I don't think the Genius Act is going to bring economic chaos. I think the Genius Act was just a um a recognition of the fact that we live in a digital age and that digital currency is a part of our future. I think that bitcoin is really the only digital currency that should be or will be a part of our future. But and the genius act is just encoding that and and I think it was done by the states in the you know US and I think the reason Trump embraced it was that you know enough people that are involved with bitcoin and and all cryptocurrencies in general said hey sir you realize that you know China's betting on gold and yet the future is probably in digital things. um we're going to be better served to have, you know, clear legislation and rules about how to do these digital things. And so, in my view, that's what created the Genius Act. I think what Barry's doing there is he's extrapolating to assume that all kinds of bad things might come out of it. And look, it's entirely possible that Amazon or others. And there, you know, I mean, sadly, it does allow anybody to do anything they want, you know, with crypto currency or not anything they want, there rules and laws around it. But it but it makes it clear what the laws are for for crypto. And some would say, well, that's going to lead to a lot more bad crypto. And it might. I don't know. I mean, I don't think I don't think Amazon Coin is going to catch catch on. Um, my view is it just codified the rules surrounding the existing crypto system and it um and it's a net good thing because it it it allows people to know what the guardrails are. Um, I think at the end of the day, you know, Bitcoin is going to emerge as the one cryptocurrency that matters. I mean, you won't, you know, all these other currencies that I don't like, I don't think they'll be, I think a lot of them won't be around in five or 10 years. So, >> well, that leads to my question about how this would affect Bitcoin. How would the Genius Act impact Bitcoin? In theory, you've got a bunch of competing crypto digital assets possibly emerging. Stable coins are going to take front and center. One or two things could happen. People could realize, you're right, Lawrence, all these things are they're not sound money. Let's drive capital into sound money. or it's going to suck capital away from Bitcoin into some of these newer projects. >> It's a really good question, David, and I've thought about it and I I I don't disagree with you. That's a risk that that, you know, people go down the wrong trail. Um, but I think that, you know, those of us who are in Bitcoin and those people who study Bitcoin and those people who've been involved with crypto and had the had, you know, had the rug pulls. I mean, crypto really is generally speaking quite fraudulent and it's kind of gambling. And I know people like the one that took off recently was the Zcash thing. And you know, I mean, this is it. It's it's gambling. It's really the only way to say what it is. And um and so, you know, okay, there'll be more of that. But um you know, what I'm trying to do and what I tried to do with a book was point out that that's gambling, but that investing in a form of money that's digital gold, which is what I think Bitcoin is, um is not gambling. It's compounding, you know, your savings over a period of time and helping you stay ahead of inflation. I mean, you know, the the the problem for the average family is I I believe is is is trying to save for their retirement in a form that won't get taken away. And >> you know, because we know inflation is always there and persistent, you know, if you just save in fiat dollars and you get three or 4% interest on them or you you save in bonds, you get up maybe a little higher for more duration, you know, you're really you're really falling behind. Um, you know, and and gold has traditionally been the best protector of that. Um, and now Bitcoin, if you can handle the volatility, it is volatile, but it's been going up and to the right, you know, even compared to gold. And so, you know, I believe it's a very very asymmetric thing to hold that that it'll be much much higher in years ahead. >> When you said that uh sound money hedges against the debasement of fiat, are you talking about odd fiat or are there specific currencies that you're slightly more bullish on? For example, if you just take away take a look at the DXY chart that I have here, the DXY is a dollar versus a basket of other currencies against versus a basket of other fiat currencies. It has been strengthening on spending on a secular bull trend since 2008. >> Uh so what do you what do you think of the global fiat system? Is there anything you like? >> So this is you've touched on an area that's a friend of mine, Brent Johnson, you know, from Santiago Capital, you know, the dollar milkshake theory. Brent's right. I mean, you know, the dollar isn't a great currency compared to gold or bitcoin in my opinion because it's being debased, but it is better than all the other fiat currencies. What they call it the cleanest dirty shirt. And you know that that index just measures the dollar against the yen and the pound and the euro and the other major currencies. And and you know, as bad as the dollar is, those other currencies are probably worse. Um, you know, so it it I don't really think about things kind of one fiat against another. It's it's kind of like, you know, one crypto against another. I mean, I I think they're all not so good, right? And, you know, what I measure is just kind of, okay, if you know that system isn't a good system, that those are being, you know, watered down with new issuance all the time. How do you own something that can't be watered down? Well, you buy you buy things the government can't print, you know, and and gold, silver, and Bitcoin are the three currencies. You know, real estate's another sound asset that they can't print, but it's got a whole different set of issues in terms of management and taxes and hard to sell and hard to move it, but it but it does tend to protect you against inflation. So, >> what is your view on inflation? We talked about more money supply. How high can inflation get? >> That's a great question. I I personally believe that in this next cycle, we'll break double digits. The last cycle we went up to nine. I mean, for let's start at the beginning, though, because my book actually talks about this, right? you know, they they cheat on the inflation numbers, okay? You know, they're they're al alternative inflation measures that show that inflation is much higher than people talk about. Like right now, as an example, I think they're saying inflation is 3%. I I got to believe the average consumer going to the grocery store is not seeing just 3% inflation. I mean, I know, you know, when I I mean, and inflation measures a lot of different categories, and some of them have supply issues, like eggs went up for a while and it killed all the chickens. But the point is that, you know, inflation's running higher than what they're talking about in my opinion. You know, you see it in insurance particularly, but um so I I think we're going to go into the double digits. Um and I think the reason we're going to do that is that they they just have no choice, David. They have to print this money to keep things going. And you know, it it's I mean, one, let me just say this. Inflation is very very directly measurable by the money supply. I mean it's as simple as there's so many goods and services in the world and there's so much money in the world and the money is competing for the goods and services. So if you double the amount of money in the world and hold everything else equal the price of the goods and services going to double and so you know they printed about 40% of the money supply in CO and you know surprise grocery prices are up about 40%. Since the beginning of CO and over a long period of time since 71 that money supply has grown at about 8%. And I think that's the the real >> what happens to the average person. What happens to the average person who can't afford a big investment portfolio of Bitcoin and gold or whatever the other sound money that we're advocating? >> Yeah. Well, I I I really feel sorry for that person. I mean, I think they've got to do the best they can to live as cheaply as they can and to try and save in, you know, in their money in in a currency in in gold or Bitcoin. Um, you know, I mean, the other thing I would say is they want to be working in industries that are, you know, where they they have pricing power and and where the labor is valuable. Um, and they can, you know, they can demand more for their time. Um, because um, you know, if you're in a highly competitive industry and there's excessive labor, your your wages aren't going to go up. You're not going to be able to keep up with inflation. You know, people who are very skilled generally do keep up with inflation. I mean, you look at the airline pilots, you know, they when CO came along and I saw a lot of airline pilot deals, they were they were all negotiating, you know, 12, 13, 14% annual pay increases, you know, for multiple years to keep, you know, the the long shoreman did the same thing. But if you're some poor slob and you don't have any negotiating power, you know, what happens? The cost of your groceries go up and your minimum wage doesn't go up and you're you're losing ground. It's really sad. It's part of the reason why I wrote the book. >> Excuse me. So let's suppose I'm making an average salary. Uh what portion of my salary would be reasonable to allocate into something that is sound money? >> Well, if you read the the richest man in Babylon, which is a classic book on how to build wealth, um they make the argument that, you know, no matter what you're making or what you're living on, figure out a way to live on 80 or 90% of that and save 10 or 20% and then you're paying yourself with those savings. And then you take those savings and you know it's so I mean you know I don't know what that means. I mean if it means eating more ramen versus steak so be it. You do it. Um but you take those savings and you invest them in things that will compound over time. And then you let time do its thing and eventually those savings you know I mean you know everyone should have a financial calculator and play with compound interest. And what you see is that if you have an asset that's growing at 10 15 20 I mean right now the compound annual growth rate of Bitcoin you know the last five six years it's about 39% a year which is really quite stunning. So, you know, if you can save to say 10% of your salary, put it into Bitcoin and get 39% a year, >> you know, that 39 is coming down over time as Bitcoin gets adopted. But my point is, and keep doing that over a bunch of years, and you're relatively young, you know, I mean, this is this is the formula for wealth building is is saving and investing in things that beat inflation. I mean, this is one of the guys who's been a big supporter of my book is a really good guy named Robert Kiasaki. He wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad. He sold 50 million copies of that book. Isn't that amazing? It's really it's one of the all-time great wealthb buildinging books and and really what he he he you know read that book and it talks about the exact same formula that I'm talking about here. You have to save you have to pay yourself first. You have to save part of what you earn and you have to take that and you have to put it in things that get a return and then you just let compounding do its thing. And you know if you do that if you're in your 20s or 30s and you start doing that on a on a consistent basis you know it's very hard to end up being 50 or 60 and not have serious wealth built because of the compounding. So, and I'm not sure all young people know that. I mean, sadly, a lot of them don't understand that issue and and you know, this is why they vote for Mandami to, you know, to to give them things and and to run New York, right? >> Could that in theory work? Since we're just talking about that, there's just this huge discussion. I've seen every single social media post is about this. um giving away free stuff, taxing wealthier people and increasing I I guess the standard of living is the promise for the middle class and the lower class in theory. Could that work? If not, why? [laughter] >> Yeah. Well, extreme I mean it all depends on a matter of degree, but in general socialism doesn't work. I mean, socialism is taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive people, and it's relatively unfair. And what happens obviously is that, you know, the productive people respond accordingly. I mean, you and I were joking before we started recording that there's a there's a meme on Twitter that showed a picture of Mandami and called him the, you know, the Florida realtor of the year, right? [laughter] And so, you know, so you start taxing people like crazy. They're going to all the people who make money and paying the tax, they're going to leave New York, right? um you know and and look I mean I'm I'm very sympathetic to the problem he's tapped into and I'm very sympathetic to how people in the country from the middle you know the upper middle class from the middle class all the way down to the poorest are really really suffering David I'm I'm super sympathetic that it's absolutely horrible okay it's it's you know so I see these people suffering and I get it >> the problem is that what what's being talked about here is not the solution you know, the the taxing they can't tax their way into giving these people enough and they're going to drive the productive people out and you know, it's just it's not the correct solution. Um, >> what was that quote? The uh the problem with socialism is that eventually you'll run out of people to tax. >> Well, that's exactly right. And and and so the so but but back to the fact that as I said earlier, I'm very sympathetic to how badly some of these people are hurting. The the way to stop them from hurting is to return to sound money. if we returned to sound money, the minimum wage would be higher, you know, and um and we'd, you know, we' we'd have we just in every respect, I mean, you wouldn't have your grocery prices going up as much, etc., etc. It would all just be a much fairer world. I mean, you know, the government wouldn't be wasting money on wars. There be >> It'd be a lot, you know, it's it look, this is this is we could spend hours talking about that topic, okay? Well, let me just say that I I made a real effort in my book to explain how and why sound money will solve a lot of these problems. It's kind of like the old draining the swamp. You know, yeah, you can go try and kill an alligator here and alligate totally drain the swamp so they don't have any water to live in. They'll die. And and that's I think I think that's the case with sound money. If we return to sound money, some of these problems will will kind of solve themselves naturally. >> I just wanted to put this up. We were talking about [laughter] real estate. Greg Abbott. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, threatened to tariff people moving from New York. After the p after the polls close tomorrow night, I will impose a 100% tariff on anyone moving to Texas from New York City. >> I [laughter] love it. You I mean things are tough out there, but you have to you have to try and find humor where you can find it. I mean, when I saw that meme of of mommy as the Florida Realtor of the year, I thought, boy, that's spot on. >> [laughter] >> Um, I want to close off on gold stocks because I know you manage gold stocks. People have been taking >> people have been taking profits around $4,000 gold. Um, other stocks as well. Uh, have you been doing that? And if not, why not? >> Selectively. Selectively. Um, so let's talk about the gold stock market. So gold stocks were just criminally undervalued a year or two ago and and were, you know, and were undervalued when gold was 2,600. um gold at 4,000 or 4,500, you know, their profits have in in many cases doubled or more than that. Okay. And and so the stocks went up a lot this year. I mean, the averages are up about 100%. My fund was up 130 through Jan through through September. And um you know, they they they've gone up a lot and so the natural reaction is, oh gosh, I've got a profit. Maybe I should take it. Um you know, and and and I get that. And you know, I've selectively been selling some that went up too much in my opinion. But but I you know if I had to put this in baseball terms I would say we're in a gold stock bull market and I think we're probably in the second inning because they really even even though they've gone up they haven't fully adjusted for the new higher price of gold. And I don't believe we're stopping at $4,000 gold. I think we're going to gold 5 6 7 8 9 10,000. And and so you know let's say we did stop here for sake of argument. Let's say 4,000 is the peak in gold. I still think the stocks could double to get their cash flow multiples to more like market multiples. I mean, you know, and and then in turn, if we take the price of gold up even higher, well, then you're going to be applying it that new higher multiple to a higher profit piece. So, so I I you know, it's new people coming into my fund. I I they say, "What can I expect?" And I say, "I don't know. I don't know how high the price of gold will go and I don't how much these stocks will go." But I don't think you're too late. I guess to somebody who's looking at buying gold stocks, I don't think you're too late. I mean, you definitely missed the first inning or two and maybe even the third inning, but um you know, it's a nine- ining game at least. And and I I'm pretty confident that these stocks will at least double again from here in the next several years. And after that, it gets fuzzier. You know, do we get fiscally responsible? Does, you know, the gold price stop going up? You know, I mean, there there are a lot of different factors that'll come into play. But my point is that I don't think the gold bull market is over. And you know, but but having said that, could we correct 20% from here? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Tomorrow, you know, the gold stocks up 100%. Could they go down 20%, so they're only up 80? Absolutely. But but in my view, that would be a buying opportunity. Not not It's no reason to sell them right here. >> Okay. So, why aren't the mining companies right now doing as many deals as they were in 2011, the peak of the last gold bull cycle? >> I think they still don't believe it either. I think everybody's kind of, you know, I I don't know who you're I know a lot of you have a lot of gold listeners, gold stock listeners. >> There was an apocalypse in this industry from 2011 to 2015, right? >> And and so many people got so badly burned and that's 10 years ago now, but people remember that and everybody and that and that had all kinds of mergers and acquisitions and stupid stuff and overvaluations and people were paying 25 times cash flow. I mean, you know, before this whole thing started, I was paying four times cash flow for a lot of companies. And and now maybe, you know, now I'm paying kind of they've gone up 100%, so I'm paying eight times old cash flow, but because prices are higher, maybe I'm paying six times new cash flow or sometimes lower. It it all depends. There a lot of moving pieces, but the point is that they're not terribly overvalued here. They're just not. And in fact, they're still undervalued, not as deeply undervalued as they were a year ago. >> It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy when you think about it. If you don't believe it, you sell. and then it doesn't happen. >> Yeah. >> So, >> I don't know. No, it's it's but it's really driven driven by macro conditions. I mean, I think Sure. I think what you have to ask what you have to ask yourself and the risk to this thesis. Okay. And and I have new investors come in. I always It's what can go wrong? And I'm always thinking about what can go wrong. Um and people laugh when I say this, but I'll say it. What could go wrong with this thesis? The US federal government gets really responsible. You know, you'll laugh, I'll laugh. We don't we know that right now given what we can see the odds of that seem pretty damn low right but you know if the crisis develops and gets even worse if the boomers have less voting power you know and the the younger generation say hey we got to cut back these entitlements substantially you know if we make peace around the world and close down our military bases I mean these are all things that feel like a long shot today but at some point in time we might fix that stuff and if and when we do and they're not printing as much money well then there's not going to be as much need for this stuff but like I say I today I don't any evidence of any of that. So, you know, to me, I've got a green light, you know, to the for these things to go higher. And I think we're just, you know, I think I think we're at the stage, I mean, here's another interesting stat, David, you'll like this. It was in my quarterly report, which, by the way, is on my website, emma2.com. Um, 62% of the country owns less well 40% of the country owns zero gold. These are investment bank of America survey of US investor investor accounts. 40% gold allocation zero. Okay. 22% gold allocation less than 2%. [laughter] Okay. So 62% of the country effectively owns no gold. Okay. Um gold allocation over 7%. It's like you know 10% of of these accounts. So so you know this is not the way bull markets end. I mean bull markets end when you know everybody and their brother is talking about gold stocks and the price of gold going to 20,000 and you know there's I mean we're still at a stage where the world is just kind of waking up to this whole thing. So, you know, and what you want to do in investing is you want to you want to find a trend and get in front of it. And you know, and yes, these things have moved 100%. Okay, I get it. You you might think you've missed it, but my sense is that they're going to move 200, 300, 400, 500%. I mean, I can't guarantee any of those numbers. I feel pretty confident about the next 100, but after that it gets fuzzier. So, >> final question, then allocation between gold, Bitcoin, stocks, gold stocks, um, percentage- wise, and somebody's portfolio in your portfolio. How would you how would you >> Well, I'll tell you what I've done and everybody has to make their own decisions. So, >> sure. >> Personally, I'm about 60% Bitcoin and 40% gold and gold stocks, but frankly, that happened because my Bitcoin grew so much, right? I I started much lower in bit up five or 6x. Um, you know, so >> well that that's interesting itself. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but you you didn't think about maintaining a certain weight in your portfolio that's fixed and then taking some profits out of Bitcoin. No, no. I just bought it and and I mean I believe in both of them and so I and >> you know and and as I say at the margin today if I had excess cash I'd probably buy Bitcoin not gold because I think Bitcoin is a little relatively underpriced. But let me address that for most people. You know look Bitcoin's volatile no doubt about it. And so you know I've got clients and people in my fund who are 70 80 years old. They say I don't want to have something that could go down 50%. I say fine don't buy it. Or if you want that opt you know if you want the asymmetry put in 5%. And if you have 5% of Bitcoin in your portfolio, goes down 50%, you lost two and a half%, you're not going to your life's not going to change. Goes up 10x, that 5% becomes half your portfolio, right? And I think, by the way, I think it could go up 10x. I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but that's what I believe. So, the other thing I say to people when they're thinking about getting from gold to Bitcoin or getting into Bitcoin in general is I say to them, look, pick a number that you could put in there and you knew that if it went down 50%, you would you'd think, oh, it's cheap. I want to buy more. not, oh, I made a mistake and I'm going to sell it. Because >> the people I've seen who've gotten hurt buy it after it's done a big price run. They chase it. Then it, like everything, like all financial assets, it has a correction and then they think, "Oh, shoot. I made a mistake." And they sell it. And it is a fact that since its inception, you know, anyone who's bought it, even if they bought it at an absolute peak, if they waited four years, they had a profit. And that's kind of a continual running piece of math that's out there. So, >> so you know when people are getting into it, I often suggest to them that they dollar cost average. I mean, a month ago it was 126,000. You know, today, this morning, I think it was 100,000. So, you, you know, 20 26% off sale. And by the way, next month it could be 75,000. I think if that's the case, there's probably some gold stocks I'll sell to buy it, you know. >> So, it it's I mean, because I'm quite convinced that it's going to much much higher numbers over over a period of time. >> All right. Great. Well, thank you very much for your time today, Lawrence. Where can we follow you? >> Thank you, David. Well, as you know, I'm on XT Twitter as Lawrence Leard and I make a lot of noise on there and I criticize the investment banks because they deserve it. And I also I printed I wrote this book called The Big Print. It's available on Amazon. No publishers picked it up yet because it's pretty edgy. Um but you can get it in hardback, paper cover, paperback, uh Kindle, and and audio book. Um, and then I have a website called emma2.com and um, that's my firm's website and we have a quart we have a quarterly letter that we post. Maybe you can put that in the show notes, but we have a quarterly letter that we write on macro conditions and there's a way to sign up for that for free. Um, and we we'll never spam you and so every quarter you can read our thoughts about what's going on in the market. >> Very good. All right. Well, we look forward to reading your edgy book. Uh, so I'll put that in the link down below. So, make sure to check that out and check out uh Lawrence on Twitter X. He makes some very good tweets. Thank you, Lawrence. I enjoyed your talk. Uh let's follow up again.
System 'Collapses' Warns Fund Manager Unless 'They Print Money' Now | Lawrence Lepard
Summary
Transcript
A lot of people think the price of gold at 4,000 is high. I don't. I think it's low. Oh gosh, I've got a profit. Maybe I should take it. Um, you know, and and and I get that. And you know, I've selectively been selling some that went up too much in my opinion, but but I you know, if I had to put this in baseball terms, I would say we're in a gold stock bull market and I think we're probably in the second inning. The reality is they don't have a choice. If they don't print this money, the system is going to collapse. >> Why do you say that uh you don't like the other cryptos? Are they not sound money for you? >> They're really not. I'm very pleased to welcome back the show Lawrence the part. He is the um founder of Equity Management Associates. He's a sound money advocate and uh that extends to both gold and Bitcoin, both assets we'll be talking about. He's also the author of the big print, what happened to America and how sound money will fix it. People should check that book out, link down below. We'll put the link down below. It's been out for several months now. Lawrence, I've you know spoken to you many times in the back in in the past. It's always a pleasure to welcome you back on the show. And I like speaking to Lawrence because he follows both the gold and Bitcoin markets very closely. Um, his company manages a gold fund, but he also follows Bitcoin and invests himself. So, uh, good to have you back, Lawrence. It's a very timely, >> David. I I've always enjoyed our conversations. I think you do a great show. So, >> I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Lawrence, let's just I want to start by talking about the thing that's on my mind. The first thing that I would ask you if I were in a bar with you having a pint of beer, do you like gold or Bitcoin more right now? [laughter] >> Uh, well, right now actually I like Bitcoin more because it's behind gold. Um, look, first let's just get some things out of the way. I love them both. They both have great great characteristics and they're both going to go much higher and they're both ways of protecting yourself against inflation. Um, you know, one is is uh more stable and has a longer history that's gold. Uh the other is more volatile but can outperform gold and has kind of outperformed gold. Although recently it's kind of been lagging relative to gold and that's Bitcoin. And uh if you actually look at it um and I've been sharing this on Twitter, if you go to my Twitter feed, you'll see this. I've been sharing charts that show that that gold tends to move before Bitcoin. Um and if particularly if you go back to the CO example um you know in 2019 the repo market blew apart and you know the PAL pivoted and so gold started going up and then CO hit and then Pal really pivoted and started burning like crazy and gold really went up. It was pretty interesting because Bitcoin sat there flat for some period of time a fairly significant period of time and then of course Bitcoin woke up and went from 10,000 to 60,000 in a short period. So, um, you know, gold smells out the basement quicker and more, you know, easier in my opinion, that's because more broadly held. Um, but then Bitcoin once once everyone realizes the print is on, Bitcoin is pretty liquidity sensitive and it tends to run hard. And so, if you kind of look at gold has gone up quite nicely this year and gold stocks have gone up even more. Um, and Bitcoin's up, but not not relatively speaking, it hasn't outperformed gold. It's been kind of similar to slightly below. So, um, you know, my opinion is if you if you were kind of asking if you wanted to make a sound money bet today, which is on a relative basis cheaper, I would say Bitcoin because it hasn't moved yet. And and you know, a lot of Bitcoin people are like, "Hey, what's going on? Gold's going up and we're kind of flat." And my response to that is just wait, you know. Um, you you're you should be happy that gold's going up because it means Bitcoin's about to go up next. That's the pattern. >> Well, I I think maybe the Well, I'll let you comment on why gold's been outperforming Bitcoin. Maybe the user profile or the the the investor base of Bitcoin has changed. Maybe it was retail before in 2020, now it isn't. Uh what do you think? >> Oh, that's a part of it. I mean, certainly there's broader distribution. Um certainly there are some early, you know, investors who are selling. Um there's some people who believe in this four-year cycle and we're kind of at the top of that four-ear cycle and so they think maybe 100,000 is the top. I mean, Bitcoin's it trades funny. It trades like a wild animal. You never really know what it's going to do, but I think we're going to wake up and one day it's going to be a lot higher. It's interesting because if you look at it historically, if you miss the top days, you really miss a lot. Um, and so, you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't not hold Bitcoin here because I think when it does wake up, it'll move far and quickly. So, um, yeah, it it's to me they're both, you know, I've got charts um, actually, if you want me to, David, I could try and share them, but I've got charts that show the two mapped >> that mapped against one another. Um >> I I I I do wonder why Bitcoin hasn't fundamentally well just maybe fundamental reasons for why Bitcoin didn't exceed or even meet your expectations. You were more bullish uh on Bitcoin earlier in the year than you are now. I think you even call for potentially $200,000 upside target. A lot of people made those calls by the way. Um so you know Bitcoin had a great run last year. Why did it stall out this year? >> There you can see my screen. So this is a chart mapping. So, so first of all, let me just say I'm extremely bullish on Bitcoin longer term. Okay. Um I think it is going to 200,000. That that hasn't changed. I I think I last time I spoke to you, I thought it would be there by now and it's not. Uh it's at 100. But um you know, this chart here is is very interesting because what it does, it shows you so the yellow line is the price of gold and and the orange line is the price of Bitcoin. And if you see if you look at the lefth hand scale, that's the Bitcoin price. Okay? If you look at the right hand scale, that's the gold price. And so the scales are different. This is interesting to note. Notice how they generally have tracked together. But also notice how the scales are different. So while gold started this chart at 1500 and it's gone to 4,000, Bitcoin started this chart at 10,000 and it's gone to 100,000. So gold's gone up, you know, uh, 3x or a little over 2 and a half to 3x and Bitcoin's gone up 10x. But notice that here's what I was describing before in the earlier days in 2019. You see how there was the pile pivot right there and gold went up quite rapidly and Bitcoin flat as it can be. Then COVID comes along in the first quarter in March. Big shock, big print. Gold rips higher. Bitcoin still flat. Okay. Then one day, Bitcoin woke up and went from, you know, 10,000 a coin to 60,000 a coin quickly. Okay. Then liquidity got tighter. Sam Bankman freed. But but in real the real liquidity got tighter is in 22 Paul started upping rates and you know this was right around here and and gold kind of had a little left in it but then it came down. Bitcoin came down much much more. So what this chart shows you I believe is just how sensitive how much more volatile Bitcoin is but they both are moving in the same direction and how you know in general gold has been a leading indicator of Bitcoin. Now if I take this um thing up here and this sadly this is not updated. This chart's a little bit old, but the gold nut line, you can see it goes up to 3500 here. Well, of course, it should go right off the chart because it's been as high as 4,400. So, again, the gold line has moved and Bitcoin is kind of pinned at 100, 110, something like that. So, my sense is that Bitcoin is going to wake up and it's going to move hard. So, um I'm not I'm not really worried about it, but I you're right. I I did blow the call in the sense that uh I thought it would be there by now. So, >> and it's also interesting how Bitcoin underperformed the NASDAQ in a year where uh both assets are technically bullish. Typically, in a bull market, it it outperformed stocks. That's what it's done in the past. I I wonder if the institutional shift once more, the the the buyer base that has something to do with the fact that it's just been underperforming or or or or something else here. >> Um yeah, well, I think it you know, it's mapping it against the NASDAQ's tricky. I I think they're two different things, but but they both are driven by liquidity. I mean, one thing that is very true about Bitcoin is it's a liquidity driven thing and and it also has some portion of the Bitcoin demand is all the other altcoins and all the other cryptos which I think are nonsense to be frank. Um, and so, you know, I try to avoid those coins and I just focus on Bitcoin. Um, and I think that, you know, I do know that there there were people on Wall Street who were doing something along the lines of they were shorting Bitcoin um or they were there were um yeah, shorting Bitcoin and going long the NASDAQ, which I think is a colossal mistake, but because the two they were correlated, they thought that was a good pair trade. Um I I suppose people could, you know, could see that and believe it. Um I personally don't think it makes any sense at all, but um it is what it is. Um, so but let me um I'm going to pull up another chart that I think you find interesting. Um, so here here what we this is a chart. This is from a New Orleans investment presentation which I just give gave >> at the conference. So notice same chart as before. Bitcoin and gold uh gold in this case is is white and the Bitcoin is orange. And uh if you lag the two what you see is that you know again um they they match up better. they match up more closely when you do a 100 day lag. And so again, over here in 2025, what we've seen is, as we all know, in September, gold really broke out and went on a tear. It went up to 4,400. Bitcoin's just sitting right here. But that means it's pretty, in my book, it's pretty close to probably following through. So I just think it's another interesting data point about, you know, the trend on both the assets. I mean the the important thing David Dave and I know you understand it very well because it's the area you cover is that what's happened is the world has become very aware of this monetary debasement trade. You know you see JP Morgan talking about it. I mean I was shocked to see Morgan Stanley changing their allocation. They were 60% stocks 40% bonds. Now they're re 60 recommending 60% stocks, 20% bonds and 20% gold. I was like wow. I mean they manage trillions and trillions of dollars. And so you're seeing a a growing awareness of what those of us in the sound money community have been saying for, you know, decades, but most particularly last few years, which is they just can't stop printing money. And, you know, we're now seeing as we move into current events, and I'm sure we'll talk about this, we're now seeing all kinds of indications. I mean, Powell at the recent press conference said the money, you know, the balance sheet would have to grow. Um, you know, Lori Logan, one of the Fed governors, she said in indeed the, you know, the the balance sheet was going to have to grow. I mean, these are this is really QE. Now, they're not calling it QE. They're just saying, well, it's we're just expanding it to make the plumbing work. And, you know, okay, that's a nice excuse, but let's face it, it's money printing. So, um, you know, the the market has figured that out and that's why gold and silver and Bitcoin prices have been so strong. The US and China are battling over mineral supply chains and technology supremacy because globalization stepped out of equilibrium. And you can see just how when looking at the strategy behind both superpowers, they're taking shape and they're reshaping the entire world. Now Trump uses tariffs and deregulation to begin the process of realigning mining and securing resources on US soil while the Chinese government is using their near monopoly status, scale, and reserves to their advantage. Today I want to talk about and showcase a company that is actually trading at its 2025 lows right now, down nearly 70% from its highs in Q1. Giant Mining Corp. ticker symbol BFGFF is a sponsor of today's video and the owner of the Majuba Hill Copper Project. Since President Trump's inauguration in January 2025, his administration has aggressively pursued policies to secure US mineral independence with copper emerging as a flash point in escalating tensions between China and the US. Copper is vital for defenses and AI infrastructure and it underscores America's vulnerability to foreign dominance, particularly China's control over global copper refining. In February 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14220, initiating a section 232 investigation into US copper imports and classifying the nation's independence on foreign suppliers as a potential national security risk. Subsequently, the US imposed 50% tariffs on semi-furnished copper products, including wires and cables, effective August 1st, 2025. Now, on October 6, 2025, President Trump approved the Amler Road project in Alaska, unlocking access to rich copper and zinc deposits and facilitating the permitting of more than 1,700 mining claims. This is the start of the rebirth of the American copper mining business. Giant Mining owns a passing copper mine in Nevada, one of the most highly soughtafter mining jurisdictions in the US. Here's some more important information about the company's deposits. Historic underground mines at the Majuba Hill project produced copper, tin, and silver from the early 1900s to the 1950s, including 2.8 million pounds of copper, 184,000 ounces of silver, 5,800 ounces of gold, and 21,000 lb of tin. Importantly, the project is surrounded by developed infrastructure, including access to roads, power supply, transportation, water supply, and or stockpiles. Do your homework on giant mining, ticker BFGF, today. Like to address this, please. Uh just on that note, the BIS, Bank of International Sentiments, has put out some reports recently about the rising debt issues around the world. This is from a recent report that they uh published. They're warning that record global share prices appear increasingly disconnected from the rising concerns about government debt levels in the bond markets. 30-year uh debt uh premium investors demand to buy um the rise in the premium that investors demand in the 30-year debt um show mounting concerns about the fiscal outlook. Can you just comment on that? Are the stock markets disconnected from uh the rising uh fiscal um concerns that some people may have? Do they even have to be connected, Lawrence? >> Well, you know, it sure feels to me like what they're saying is correct. I mean, the So, I mean, what's I think happened here, I mean, and I don't know if you're familiar with the term crackup boom, but I think what's happening here, I think what's happening here is that, you know, the government and everybody has kind of come to realize that to keep the economy going, we have to keep all these numbers going up and to the right. And that means both the stock market, you know, and and and um it it impacts, you know, gold, silver, and Bitcoin. Um, you know, the bond market, meanwhile, is in my sense, in my belief, going to have a fit over this eventually because, you know, I mean, the bond market's been calm because there was a time, you know, they were reducing their balance sheet and they were trying to maintain discipline, you know, with higher interest rates. But what we're seeing, I mean, we know that Powell is out in May of 2020, uh, next year, 2026. And so, and we know that, you know, I mean, I it was it was amazing to me. I mean, you got the president of the United States calling him a you know, in an income poop and saying he's too late. And I mean, just kind of beating on him. And, um, you know, he's going to appoint somebody who's going to drop rates and that dropping of rates will lead to all kinds of refies and and another round of inflation. So, this is m mapping, I think in our last conversation, we did talk about this. This is really kind of mapping out against the 70s. It's very similar, right, where you have these waves of inflation and, you know, the Fed tries to fight them, but then you get the next wave. And so, um, you know, I think that's what's going on. As for the stock market, stock market's a very tough thing to call. I mean, it's it's not cheap by any measure, but there are those who argue that there new measures and new metrics are appropriate in this in this free money world that we kind of live in. And and, you know, they may be right. I mean, I've I've lost money trying to be short the stock market at various times over the past 10 years. you know, I regret doing that. I didn't understand what was going on. So, um, you know, I would not be shorting stocks here, but that doesn't mean I'd be buying them either. >> Well, do you think do you think uh the AI stocks have this year just stolen the investor base for Bitcoin? Is that one of the reasons? >> That's part of it. That's certainly part of it. And those those stocks are just it's crazy. I mean, look at Nvidia. It's a $5 trillion market cap. I mean, you know, and there a lot of people think AI is a bubble. I think AI is important. I think it will change the world. I think it's a fantastic technology. However, you know, like just like the internet got ahead of itself in 2000, I I feel like there's some of that going on in AI and uh yeah, I do think that's stolen a little bit of the thunder from other things. >> Why do you say that uh you don't like the other cryptos? Are they not sound money for you? >> They're really not. They're not they're constructed differently. And I I try not to be is sometimes I'm very mean. I call them shitcoins. I I get that other people are trying to do do projects that enhance, you know, functionality and e Ethern Ethereum has contracts, smart contracts, and people are trying to tokenize things and all those that's all great. I mean, there's to the to the degree that you can use cryptocurrencies to in, you know, to to do things to tokenize things, that's that's got value. I don't dispute that. But what I'm trying to point out is that there's really no cryptocurrency or none of any size. There a couple small projects that are similar. There's no cryptocurrency of any size that has the proof of work and the network scale and the immutability of Bitcoin. I mean, Ethereum's, you know, monetary policy has changed seven or eight times. I mean, all these other coins have somebody leading them who's kind of quote unquote the CEO. I mean, one of the beautiful things about Bitcoin is it's distributed and there is no CEO and it's all based on consensus and it's all based on, you know, nodes and and miners and people voting on what they're going to use. And so, you know, you could hard fork Bitcoin and try and say I'm going to go over in this direction and fine, but nobody would follow you because everyone's going to stay with the one that's a leader. So, so yeah, I just think the other a lot of the other projects, some of them are just outright scams, right? I mean, we had Samman Freed, we had, you know, Alex Mashinsky, um, you know, we had Monero. I mean, there were just a lot of very very bad actors who would spin up a coin, try and sell it, you know, run the price up, and then they would dump their their coins and and take money from people, and that was just criminal behavior. Um, the SEC's tried to crack down on that. But some of that's still going on. I mean, even guys like Eli Elon Musk support something called Dogecoin has no no, you know, notable use case and yet, you know, it's still got a multi-billion dollar market cap. It puzzles me. um you know but to me Bitcoin itself is actually a technology it's a it's an invention they solved a problem a computer science problem that had existed for a long time that other people tried to solve which is how do you trustlessly you know secure digital information so that you know it can't be cheat you can't cheat you can't double spend and it's called the um Byzantine general's problem and Satoshi or whoever the Satoshi's were they solved it and you know in the I was quite skeptical that oh no that's not possible because there were three or four other prior experiments where they tried it and it didn't work and so but but here we are we're 16 years into it they're 920,000 plus blocks that have been mined and you know and it's been adopted and you know more and more people are coming to the conclusion that you know what this is immutable and this is a scarce entity and it is a scarce ledger and it doesn't necessarily have to be physical the way gold guys think that if it's not physically sound it can't be money. So that's that's >> the way does the way the price chart move change how people perceive something as sound money or not? For example, let's take gold. It's skyrocketed parabolically in the last year and a half up about 120% or something depending on which day you're looking at. Does that change your perception of whether or not it's sound money just based on how volatile it's been even to the upside? >> Point some some people make the point about that same point about Bitcoin that it can't be quote unquote sound money. >> Yeah. I like to turn that actually on its head and say is it gold going up or is it the dollar going down and the and the same with Bitcoin and and I think that you know I think the reason I define sound money is money that is not issued by the government because we all know the government can print more and money that has a fair set of rules around it and you know gold is geologically constrained and you know you can't fake an ounce of gold although people have tried um and and Bitcoin is mathematically constrained those sound monies with limited supply outside of the government system, you know, in my opinion, those are the only sound monies that exist. Now, compared to fiat money, the government's money, they might vi, you know, you know, the prices might fluctuate a lot, but I actually think that's more of a commentary on the fiat than it is on the sound money. I mean, 1 ounce of gold is 1 ounce of gold, one bitcoin is one bitcoin. I think the reason the prices have been so volatile um in this transition period here is I think we're going through a period where fiat is really being questioned and you know you're now you know we got I mean I I like to liken it to like it's we're in a theater and there's a little bit of smoke and a few people are like whoa hang on a sec I want to get out of here and pretty soon everybody's going to could figure it out and you know I mean people a lot of people think the price of gold at 4,000 is high I don't I think it's low I think gold's going to 10,000 20,000 50,000 because that's how much fiat money has been printed in the same way that I think Bitcoin is going to much higher prices too. So to me the volatility is more a comment on the loss of faith in the fiat system. I mean, if you look at a chart of what happened in any great hyperinflation, you know, it it always starts out slowly and but then over time, you know, money is a confidence game and if it comes to the point where we all lose money or all lose confidence in the money, it's going to it's going to fail very quickly, you know, and so it could be it could be it'll be very volatile. I mean, I'm sure you've seen the Murmuracan Capital chart that shows the volatility, right, during during Weimar. So >> people talk about this lost in confidence of the fiat system, but it's not like we can do anything about it, Lawrence. We can't just move to another system. We can't just like like we're moving neighborhoods, right? So what do we do? >> No, we're kind of stuck in it. Most people you have to pay them in dollars, Canadian or American, but >> Sure. But but the marketplace is bigger in so what the bet that I'm making and the bet that those of us who are betting on these alternative currencies and that's really what they are because the dollar is the leading currency still despite the fact that it's you know slipped um is is that the market's bigger than the government and if if if people you know it's called Gresham's law right if people continually lose faith in the government's ability to control the printing of their paper then they're going to select these other forms of money and pretty soon nobody will want the dollars. And you know, we all seen the stories of Venezuela where the you know, the the boulevard was just laying around in the streets because they're worthless. And so, you know, we're not anywhere close to that. I don't think that's that's not even a tale, you know, it's a it's a remote tale case. But my point is that that great inflations have occurred when governments have misbehaved. And I think that what's going on now and this is reflected in the JP Morgan comments and others is is that more and more people are coming to realize that the government is really behaving responsibly or irresponsibly and that quote unquote irresponsibility is growing. Let me give you an example. So the you know Trump got in and they established Doge and it was a noble effort the department of government efficiency and you know VC and Elon we're going to go save and you know Elon said we're going to save $2 trillion. I mean it's ridiculous. They said, "We're going to save a trillion dollars." Now, it's still pretty aggressive and ridiculous. Well, now it looks like if you Google it or chat GPT, it looks like they're maybe saving a hundred, you know, billion dollars a year, which is still a lot of money, but in the context of a 1.8 trillion deficit, it's not that much. And then in turn, you know, the big beautiful bill which just the Trump, you know, Republicans just passed increased the spending by three or 400, you know, billion a month or I mean a year. And now the tariffs are bringing in some money, but it's now I read in the Wall Street Journal this morning, it's looking like he might, you know, he might lose the Supreme Court case on the tariffs. And I guess the point is that intelligent money managers are seeing that the government is just trapped and they just keep printing money. And it's actually kind of math, David. I mean, when you have a credit system that's based on debt and the debt is continually growing, if you don't grow the underlying supply of the money, the debt would default and you would have a big deflation like 1929. And so, so really they have to inflate. What they're hoping to do is inflate slowly enough that fast enough to keep the system together, but slowly enough that people don't revolt or don't complain or don't leave the dollar. and you know that that they're kind of zigzagging back and forth but you know and and I mean obviously they blew it co came along they grew the money supply 40% inflation shot up to 9% right and then you know Paul said holy this is a problem he slammed on the brakes took rates up very quickly and you know inflation's come from nine down to three but even the three is not their target their target's two but you know now they're kind of saying well three is good enough for government work you know and the you know the the financial system is is seizing up we got to cut rates again and And of course, we're going to get another wave of inflation. So, that's kind of how it works, right? >> Let's talk about your book, uh, The Big Print: What Happens to America and How Silent Money Will Fix It. It's been out since February now, and it's very timely that we're discussing this because this we're talking about this issue in November. We're on the cusp of the Fed ending quantitative tightening, which they've been doing ever since 2020. You, as you're aware, the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve uh went from $9 trillion down to 6.6 trillion. and now they're going to stop reducing their balance sheet size. Uh what happens then to the money supply? What how does this fit into your book the big print especially in conjunction with the Fed lowering rates like you talked about earlier and we've got fiscal dominance, right? A lot of you like you mentioned earlier a lot of spending. So there's just multiple forces going on at the same time that could point to higher levels of money supply. >> Yeah. So you're absolutely right. Um they they've announced they're stopping with they're stopping the um um the tightening. They're going to cut rates. Cutting rates will get the banks active and making more loans. Making more loans is how M2 grows. M2 growth is what leads to inflation. I mean there there are a lot of confusing pieces around it all. But at the end of the day, they have to inflate or else the system is going to die. And they're getting signals on that right now. I mean the you know the sofa rate is over the Fed funds rate. the um you know the standing repo facility has been drawn very heavily um you know and and both the Fed governors are talking about it. I mean, they, you know, there was a time when they were being tough, and they're now, they're not, it's not a choice for them. And they're trying to point paint paint it as this is all just normal. Nothing to see here, folks. You know, we're just going to kind of start to lubricate the system so it doesn't seize up. And and that's fine. They, you know, that that's that's their spin on it. But the reality is they don't have a choice. If they don't print this money, the system is going to collapse. And that's what the book talks about. I talked about first half is the the book is how the system is broken, how we got here, the history of America and the history of the monetary system. The second half of the book is how do you protect yourself which in really three ways buy gold, silver or bitcoin. And so um yeah, I mean it's this is I predicted this was going to happen. Um but the the path is uncertain, David. I mean they haven't done a big print yet. It's interesting. I mean let's just look at the history. You know they really they did a couple of big prints before this. I mean the first one was 2008 in the GFC when Bernaki took the Fed balance sheet from 800 billion to 3 plus trillion and then the second one was co and what I would submit is that they're trapped in a cycle of these and the third one's coming. Um and I don't you know does it happen tomorrow? Does it happen a year from tomorrow or two years? It could be it could be as long as two years. I I kind of don't think they'll make it that long or that make it that far. I tend to think that it's going to happen in the next six months. Maybe a year at the most. But, you know, they're going to have to loosen monetary conditions substantially. And the good news about that is it'll keep the economy humming. But the bad news about that is it'll bring inflation back. So, you know, there's there's a for every action there's a reaction. And, you know, making money easier is going to that's the problem, right? That's the inflation problem. >> I want to address this issue of sound money. Uh, at its core, we we like sound money because governments can't print more of sound money, right? But this this particular oped by uh an economist by the name of Barry Iiking Green, brilliant guy. I've hosted him before on my show. Um he was warning us about the Genius Act. I'm just going to read a few sentences from this oped here. Uh the Genius Act will bring economic chaos if Donald Trump and his allies have their way in Congress. America could soon see a resurgence of other features of that turbulent century. He's talking about the 19th century uh where you're ambushed by gold seekers, gun toing bandits, so on and so forth. Bank failures, personal bankruptcies, financial instability also occurred regularly. What would unleash this chaos is a piece of legislation known as the Genius Act. You and I haven't talked about this yet. It happened after we spoke last time. In its efforts to give crypto a patina of government authority and legitimacy, the Genius Act would give hundreds, perhaps even thousands of American companies the ability to issue their own currencies. Imagine Walmart issuing a Walmart coin. Amazon doing the same thing with Amazon coin enabling them to bypass the banking system altogether. Now, that's an interesting perspective that we don't talk about often. How do you >> is that even true? Can they do that? >> I hadn't read that before and I haven't thought very much about that. I I don't you know I don't think the Genius Act is going to bring economic chaos. I think the Genius Act was just a um a recognition of the fact that we live in a digital age and that digital currency is a part of our future. I think that bitcoin is really the only digital currency that should be or will be a part of our future. But and the genius act is just encoding that and and I think it was done by the states in the you know US and I think the reason Trump embraced it was that you know enough people that are involved with bitcoin and and all cryptocurrencies in general said hey sir you realize that you know China's betting on gold and yet the future is probably in digital things. um we're going to be better served to have, you know, clear legislation and rules about how to do these digital things. And so, in my view, that's what created the Genius Act. I think what Barry's doing there is he's extrapolating to assume that all kinds of bad things might come out of it. And look, it's entirely possible that Amazon or others. And there, you know, I mean, sadly, it does allow anybody to do anything they want, you know, with crypto currency or not anything they want, there rules and laws around it. But it but it makes it clear what the laws are for for crypto. And some would say, well, that's going to lead to a lot more bad crypto. And it might. I don't know. I mean, I don't think I don't think Amazon Coin is going to catch catch on. Um, my view is it just codified the rules surrounding the existing crypto system and it um and it's a net good thing because it it it allows people to know what the guardrails are. Um, I think at the end of the day, you know, Bitcoin is going to emerge as the one cryptocurrency that matters. I mean, you won't, you know, all these other currencies that I don't like, I don't think they'll be, I think a lot of them won't be around in five or 10 years. So, >> well, that leads to my question about how this would affect Bitcoin. How would the Genius Act impact Bitcoin? In theory, you've got a bunch of competing crypto digital assets possibly emerging. Stable coins are going to take front and center. One or two things could happen. People could realize, you're right, Lawrence, all these things are they're not sound money. Let's drive capital into sound money. or it's going to suck capital away from Bitcoin into some of these newer projects. >> It's a really good question, David, and I've thought about it and I I I don't disagree with you. That's a risk that that, you know, people go down the wrong trail. Um, but I think that, you know, those of us who are in Bitcoin and those people who study Bitcoin and those people who've been involved with crypto and had the had, you know, had the rug pulls. I mean, crypto really is generally speaking quite fraudulent and it's kind of gambling. And I know people like the one that took off recently was the Zcash thing. And you know, I mean, this is it. It's it's gambling. It's really the only way to say what it is. And um and so, you know, okay, there'll be more of that. But um you know, what I'm trying to do and what I tried to do with a book was point out that that's gambling, but that investing in a form of money that's digital gold, which is what I think Bitcoin is, um is not gambling. It's compounding, you know, your savings over a period of time and helping you stay ahead of inflation. I mean, you know, the the the problem for the average family is I I believe is is is trying to save for their retirement in a form that won't get taken away. And >> you know, because we know inflation is always there and persistent, you know, if you just save in fiat dollars and you get three or 4% interest on them or you you save in bonds, you get up maybe a little higher for more duration, you know, you're really you're really falling behind. Um, you know, and and gold has traditionally been the best protector of that. Um, and now Bitcoin, if you can handle the volatility, it is volatile, but it's been going up and to the right, you know, even compared to gold. And so, you know, I believe it's a very very asymmetric thing to hold that that it'll be much much higher in years ahead. >> When you said that uh sound money hedges against the debasement of fiat, are you talking about odd fiat or are there specific currencies that you're slightly more bullish on? For example, if you just take away take a look at the DXY chart that I have here, the DXY is a dollar versus a basket of other currencies against versus a basket of other fiat currencies. It has been strengthening on spending on a secular bull trend since 2008. >> Uh so what do you what do you think of the global fiat system? Is there anything you like? >> So this is you've touched on an area that's a friend of mine, Brent Johnson, you know, from Santiago Capital, you know, the dollar milkshake theory. Brent's right. I mean, you know, the dollar isn't a great currency compared to gold or bitcoin in my opinion because it's being debased, but it is better than all the other fiat currencies. What they call it the cleanest dirty shirt. And you know that that index just measures the dollar against the yen and the pound and the euro and the other major currencies. And and you know, as bad as the dollar is, those other currencies are probably worse. Um, you know, so it it I don't really think about things kind of one fiat against another. It's it's kind of like, you know, one crypto against another. I mean, I I think they're all not so good, right? And, you know, what I measure is just kind of, okay, if you know that system isn't a good system, that those are being, you know, watered down with new issuance all the time. How do you own something that can't be watered down? Well, you buy you buy things the government can't print, you know, and and gold, silver, and Bitcoin are the three currencies. You know, real estate's another sound asset that they can't print, but it's got a whole different set of issues in terms of management and taxes and hard to sell and hard to move it, but it but it does tend to protect you against inflation. So, >> what is your view on inflation? We talked about more money supply. How high can inflation get? >> That's a great question. I I personally believe that in this next cycle, we'll break double digits. The last cycle we went up to nine. I mean, for let's start at the beginning, though, because my book actually talks about this, right? you know, they they cheat on the inflation numbers, okay? You know, they're they're al alternative inflation measures that show that inflation is much higher than people talk about. Like right now, as an example, I think they're saying inflation is 3%. I I got to believe the average consumer going to the grocery store is not seeing just 3% inflation. I mean, I know, you know, when I I mean, and inflation measures a lot of different categories, and some of them have supply issues, like eggs went up for a while and it killed all the chickens. But the point is that, you know, inflation's running higher than what they're talking about in my opinion. You know, you see it in insurance particularly, but um so I I think we're going to go into the double digits. Um and I think the reason we're going to do that is that they they just have no choice, David. They have to print this money to keep things going. And you know, it it's I mean, one, let me just say this. Inflation is very very directly measurable by the money supply. I mean it's as simple as there's so many goods and services in the world and there's so much money in the world and the money is competing for the goods and services. So if you double the amount of money in the world and hold everything else equal the price of the goods and services going to double and so you know they printed about 40% of the money supply in CO and you know surprise grocery prices are up about 40%. Since the beginning of CO and over a long period of time since 71 that money supply has grown at about 8%. And I think that's the the real >> what happens to the average person. What happens to the average person who can't afford a big investment portfolio of Bitcoin and gold or whatever the other sound money that we're advocating? >> Yeah. Well, I I I really feel sorry for that person. I mean, I think they've got to do the best they can to live as cheaply as they can and to try and save in, you know, in their money in in a currency in in gold or Bitcoin. Um, you know, I mean, the other thing I would say is they want to be working in industries that are, you know, where they they have pricing power and and where the labor is valuable. Um, and they can, you know, they can demand more for their time. Um, because um, you know, if you're in a highly competitive industry and there's excessive labor, your your wages aren't going to go up. You're not going to be able to keep up with inflation. You know, people who are very skilled generally do keep up with inflation. I mean, you look at the airline pilots, you know, they when CO came along and I saw a lot of airline pilot deals, they were they were all negotiating, you know, 12, 13, 14% annual pay increases, you know, for multiple years to keep, you know, the the long shoreman did the same thing. But if you're some poor slob and you don't have any negotiating power, you know, what happens? The cost of your groceries go up and your minimum wage doesn't go up and you're you're losing ground. It's really sad. It's part of the reason why I wrote the book. >> Excuse me. So let's suppose I'm making an average salary. Uh what portion of my salary would be reasonable to allocate into something that is sound money? >> Well, if you read the the richest man in Babylon, which is a classic book on how to build wealth, um they make the argument that, you know, no matter what you're making or what you're living on, figure out a way to live on 80 or 90% of that and save 10 or 20% and then you're paying yourself with those savings. And then you take those savings and you know it's so I mean you know I don't know what that means. I mean if it means eating more ramen versus steak so be it. You do it. Um but you take those savings and you invest them in things that will compound over time. And then you let time do its thing and eventually those savings you know I mean you know everyone should have a financial calculator and play with compound interest. And what you see is that if you have an asset that's growing at 10 15 20 I mean right now the compound annual growth rate of Bitcoin you know the last five six years it's about 39% a year which is really quite stunning. So, you know, if you can save to say 10% of your salary, put it into Bitcoin and get 39% a year, >> you know, that 39 is coming down over time as Bitcoin gets adopted. But my point is, and keep doing that over a bunch of years, and you're relatively young, you know, I mean, this is this is the formula for wealth building is is saving and investing in things that beat inflation. I mean, this is one of the guys who's been a big supporter of my book is a really good guy named Robert Kiasaki. He wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad. He sold 50 million copies of that book. Isn't that amazing? It's really it's one of the all-time great wealthb buildinging books and and really what he he he you know read that book and it talks about the exact same formula that I'm talking about here. You have to save you have to pay yourself first. You have to save part of what you earn and you have to take that and you have to put it in things that get a return and then you just let compounding do its thing. And you know if you do that if you're in your 20s or 30s and you start doing that on a on a consistent basis you know it's very hard to end up being 50 or 60 and not have serious wealth built because of the compounding. So, and I'm not sure all young people know that. I mean, sadly, a lot of them don't understand that issue and and you know, this is why they vote for Mandami to, you know, to to give them things and and to run New York, right? >> Could that in theory work? Since we're just talking about that, there's just this huge discussion. I've seen every single social media post is about this. um giving away free stuff, taxing wealthier people and increasing I I guess the standard of living is the promise for the middle class and the lower class in theory. Could that work? If not, why? [laughter] >> Yeah. Well, extreme I mean it all depends on a matter of degree, but in general socialism doesn't work. I mean, socialism is taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive people, and it's relatively unfair. And what happens obviously is that, you know, the productive people respond accordingly. I mean, you and I were joking before we started recording that there's a there's a meme on Twitter that showed a picture of Mandami and called him the, you know, the Florida realtor of the year, right? [laughter] And so, you know, so you start taxing people like crazy. They're going to all the people who make money and paying the tax, they're going to leave New York, right? um you know and and look I mean I'm I'm very sympathetic to the problem he's tapped into and I'm very sympathetic to how people in the country from the middle you know the upper middle class from the middle class all the way down to the poorest are really really suffering David I'm I'm super sympathetic that it's absolutely horrible okay it's it's you know so I see these people suffering and I get it >> the problem is that what what's being talked about here is not the solution you know, the the taxing they can't tax their way into giving these people enough and they're going to drive the productive people out and you know, it's just it's not the correct solution. Um, >> what was that quote? The uh the problem with socialism is that eventually you'll run out of people to tax. >> Well, that's exactly right. And and and so the so but but back to the fact that as I said earlier, I'm very sympathetic to how badly some of these people are hurting. The the way to stop them from hurting is to return to sound money. if we returned to sound money, the minimum wage would be higher, you know, and um and we'd, you know, we' we'd have we just in every respect, I mean, you wouldn't have your grocery prices going up as much, etc., etc. It would all just be a much fairer world. I mean, you know, the government wouldn't be wasting money on wars. There be >> It'd be a lot, you know, it's it look, this is this is we could spend hours talking about that topic, okay? Well, let me just say that I I made a real effort in my book to explain how and why sound money will solve a lot of these problems. It's kind of like the old draining the swamp. You know, yeah, you can go try and kill an alligator here and alligate totally drain the swamp so they don't have any water to live in. They'll die. And and that's I think I think that's the case with sound money. If we return to sound money, some of these problems will will kind of solve themselves naturally. >> I just wanted to put this up. We were talking about [laughter] real estate. Greg Abbott. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, threatened to tariff people moving from New York. After the p after the polls close tomorrow night, I will impose a 100% tariff on anyone moving to Texas from New York City. >> I [laughter] love it. You I mean things are tough out there, but you have to you have to try and find humor where you can find it. I mean, when I saw that meme of of mommy as the Florida Realtor of the year, I thought, boy, that's spot on. >> [laughter] >> Um, I want to close off on gold stocks because I know you manage gold stocks. People have been taking >> people have been taking profits around $4,000 gold. Um, other stocks as well. Uh, have you been doing that? And if not, why not? >> Selectively. Selectively. Um, so let's talk about the gold stock market. So gold stocks were just criminally undervalued a year or two ago and and were, you know, and were undervalued when gold was 2,600. um gold at 4,000 or 4,500, you know, their profits have in in many cases doubled or more than that. Okay. And and so the stocks went up a lot this year. I mean, the averages are up about 100%. My fund was up 130 through Jan through through September. And um you know, they they they've gone up a lot and so the natural reaction is, oh gosh, I've got a profit. Maybe I should take it. Um you know, and and and I get that. And you know, I've selectively been selling some that went up too much in my opinion. But but I you know if I had to put this in baseball terms I would say we're in a gold stock bull market and I think we're probably in the second inning because they really even even though they've gone up they haven't fully adjusted for the new higher price of gold. And I don't believe we're stopping at $4,000 gold. I think we're going to gold 5 6 7 8 9 10,000. And and so you know let's say we did stop here for sake of argument. Let's say 4,000 is the peak in gold. I still think the stocks could double to get their cash flow multiples to more like market multiples. I mean, you know, and and then in turn, if we take the price of gold up even higher, well, then you're going to be applying it that new higher multiple to a higher profit piece. So, so I I you know, it's new people coming into my fund. I I they say, "What can I expect?" And I say, "I don't know. I don't know how high the price of gold will go and I don't how much these stocks will go." But I don't think you're too late. I guess to somebody who's looking at buying gold stocks, I don't think you're too late. I mean, you definitely missed the first inning or two and maybe even the third inning, but um you know, it's a nine- ining game at least. And and I I'm pretty confident that these stocks will at least double again from here in the next several years. And after that, it gets fuzzier. You know, do we get fiscally responsible? Does, you know, the gold price stop going up? You know, I mean, there there are a lot of different factors that'll come into play. But my point is that I don't think the gold bull market is over. And you know, but but having said that, could we correct 20% from here? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Tomorrow, you know, the gold stocks up 100%. Could they go down 20%, so they're only up 80? Absolutely. But but in my view, that would be a buying opportunity. Not not It's no reason to sell them right here. >> Okay. So, why aren't the mining companies right now doing as many deals as they were in 2011, the peak of the last gold bull cycle? >> I think they still don't believe it either. I think everybody's kind of, you know, I I don't know who you're I know a lot of you have a lot of gold listeners, gold stock listeners. >> There was an apocalypse in this industry from 2011 to 2015, right? >> And and so many people got so badly burned and that's 10 years ago now, but people remember that and everybody and that and that had all kinds of mergers and acquisitions and stupid stuff and overvaluations and people were paying 25 times cash flow. I mean, you know, before this whole thing started, I was paying four times cash flow for a lot of companies. And and now maybe, you know, now I'm paying kind of they've gone up 100%, so I'm paying eight times old cash flow, but because prices are higher, maybe I'm paying six times new cash flow or sometimes lower. It it all depends. There a lot of moving pieces, but the point is that they're not terribly overvalued here. They're just not. And in fact, they're still undervalued, not as deeply undervalued as they were a year ago. >> It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy when you think about it. If you don't believe it, you sell. and then it doesn't happen. >> Yeah. >> So, >> I don't know. No, it's it's but it's really driven driven by macro conditions. I mean, I think Sure. I think what you have to ask what you have to ask yourself and the risk to this thesis. Okay. And and I have new investors come in. I always It's what can go wrong? And I'm always thinking about what can go wrong. Um and people laugh when I say this, but I'll say it. What could go wrong with this thesis? The US federal government gets really responsible. You know, you'll laugh, I'll laugh. We don't we know that right now given what we can see the odds of that seem pretty damn low right but you know if the crisis develops and gets even worse if the boomers have less voting power you know and the the younger generation say hey we got to cut back these entitlements substantially you know if we make peace around the world and close down our military bases I mean these are all things that feel like a long shot today but at some point in time we might fix that stuff and if and when we do and they're not printing as much money well then there's not going to be as much need for this stuff but like I say I today I don't any evidence of any of that. So, you know, to me, I've got a green light, you know, to the for these things to go higher. And I think we're just, you know, I think I think we're at the stage, I mean, here's another interesting stat, David, you'll like this. It was in my quarterly report, which, by the way, is on my website, emma2.com. Um, 62% of the country owns less well 40% of the country owns zero gold. These are investment bank of America survey of US investor investor accounts. 40% gold allocation zero. Okay. 22% gold allocation less than 2%. [laughter] Okay. So 62% of the country effectively owns no gold. Okay. Um gold allocation over 7%. It's like you know 10% of of these accounts. So so you know this is not the way bull markets end. I mean bull markets end when you know everybody and their brother is talking about gold stocks and the price of gold going to 20,000 and you know there's I mean we're still at a stage where the world is just kind of waking up to this whole thing. So, you know, and what you want to do in investing is you want to you want to find a trend and get in front of it. And you know, and yes, these things have moved 100%. Okay, I get it. You you might think you've missed it, but my sense is that they're going to move 200, 300, 400, 500%. I mean, I can't guarantee any of those numbers. I feel pretty confident about the next 100, but after that it gets fuzzier. So, >> final question, then allocation between gold, Bitcoin, stocks, gold stocks, um, percentage- wise, and somebody's portfolio in your portfolio. How would you how would you >> Well, I'll tell you what I've done and everybody has to make their own decisions. So, >> sure. >> Personally, I'm about 60% Bitcoin and 40% gold and gold stocks, but frankly, that happened because my Bitcoin grew so much, right? I I started much lower in bit up five or 6x. Um, you know, so >> well that that's interesting itself. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but you you didn't think about maintaining a certain weight in your portfolio that's fixed and then taking some profits out of Bitcoin. No, no. I just bought it and and I mean I believe in both of them and so I and >> you know and and as I say at the margin today if I had excess cash I'd probably buy Bitcoin not gold because I think Bitcoin is a little relatively underpriced. But let me address that for most people. You know look Bitcoin's volatile no doubt about it. And so you know I've got clients and people in my fund who are 70 80 years old. They say I don't want to have something that could go down 50%. I say fine don't buy it. Or if you want that opt you know if you want the asymmetry put in 5%. And if you have 5% of Bitcoin in your portfolio, goes down 50%, you lost two and a half%, you're not going to your life's not going to change. Goes up 10x, that 5% becomes half your portfolio, right? And I think, by the way, I think it could go up 10x. I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but that's what I believe. So, the other thing I say to people when they're thinking about getting from gold to Bitcoin or getting into Bitcoin in general is I say to them, look, pick a number that you could put in there and you knew that if it went down 50%, you would you'd think, oh, it's cheap. I want to buy more. not, oh, I made a mistake and I'm going to sell it. Because >> the people I've seen who've gotten hurt buy it after it's done a big price run. They chase it. Then it, like everything, like all financial assets, it has a correction and then they think, "Oh, shoot. I made a mistake." And they sell it. And it is a fact that since its inception, you know, anyone who's bought it, even if they bought it at an absolute peak, if they waited four years, they had a profit. And that's kind of a continual running piece of math that's out there. So, >> so you know when people are getting into it, I often suggest to them that they dollar cost average. I mean, a month ago it was 126,000. You know, today, this morning, I think it was 100,000. So, you, you know, 20 26% off sale. And by the way, next month it could be 75,000. I think if that's the case, there's probably some gold stocks I'll sell to buy it, you know. >> So, it it's I mean, because I'm quite convinced that it's going to much much higher numbers over over a period of time. >> All right. Great. Well, thank you very much for your time today, Lawrence. Where can we follow you? >> Thank you, David. Well, as you know, I'm on XT Twitter as Lawrence Leard and I make a lot of noise on there and I criticize the investment banks because they deserve it. And I also I printed I wrote this book called The Big Print. It's available on Amazon. No publishers picked it up yet because it's pretty edgy. Um but you can get it in hardback, paper cover, paperback, uh Kindle, and and audio book. Um, and then I have a website called emma2.com and um, that's my firm's website and we have a quart we have a quarterly letter that we post. Maybe you can put that in the show notes, but we have a quarterly letter that we write on macro conditions and there's a way to sign up for that for free. Um, and we we'll never spam you and so every quarter you can read our thoughts about what's going on in the market. >> Very good. All right. Well, we look forward to reading your edgy book. Uh, so I'll put that in the link down below. So, make sure to check that out and check out uh Lawrence on Twitter X. He makes some very good tweets. Thank you, Lawrence. I enjoyed your talk. Uh let's follow up again.