The Future Of Money Panel | Peter Schiff, Brent Johnson, Lawrence Lepard & Russ Gray
Summary
Gold vs. Bitcoin: Extensive debate on gold as enduring money versus Bitcoin as digital sound money, with arguments on intrinsic value, adoption, and store-of-value versus medium-of-exchange roles.
Stablecoins: Detailed discussion of dollar-pegged stablecoins as on/off-ramps, global payments rails beyond SWIFT, and potential regulatory frameworks that could expand use and control.
Tokenized Gold: Repeated focus on gold-backed tokens as the most credible stable asset on-chain, but with counterparty and custody trust tradeoffs versus Bitcoin’s bearer model.
US Dollar & Fiat: Consensus that fiat remains the dominant medium of exchange due to legal tender and tax regimes, while its purchasing power continues to erode over time.
De-dollarization & BRICS: Discussion of global “plumbing” to build alternatives led by China/Russia and BRICS efforts, catalyzed by dollar weaponization and sanctions, with prospects for a hard-asset-backed competitor.
Sound Money: Calls for legal tender treatment of gold, silver, and Bitcoin to compete fairly, reflecting a broader push toward sound money to curb inflationary theft.
Key Companies: Tether and Circle cited as dominant stablecoin issuers, Kraken as an on-ramp for cross-border commerce, and Mastercard referenced for fee comparisons versus Lightning payments.
Opportunities & Risks: Potential growth in tokenized gold and stablecoin adoption versus risks of crypto speculation, core developer governance, and long-term quantum computing; investors urged to watch adoption and be ready for “slowly, then suddenly.”
Transcript
[Music] Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Teagert. As you can see, I'm still on the road here for the Thanksgiving vacation, but I wanted to bring you this very special report. Every year, I'm asked to chair the panel on the future of money at the New Orleans Investment Conference. I chaired it this year. As usual, a fantastic faculty, highly enlightening, fiery debate. Um, and the faculty this year was was spectacular. It was Peter Schiff, it was Larry Leard, it was Brent Johnson of Dollar Milkshake fame and Russell Gray. And folks, I could tell you about how great it was, but probably just easier for me to show you. Enjoy. >> Now, it's time for our future of money panel, and I'd like to introduce our moderator, Adam Tagert. [Applause] for the future of money panel. I'd also like to give a big thanks to Brian and the team here for running their usual standard excellence show. Um if you have not attended a previous future of money panel, um just know that it's it's known as sort of the barely controlled chaos panel. um due to the fireworks that that we've seen in it over years past and you'll understand in a second when I introduce the uh the the panelists here. Um I kind of think of it like hockey, right? You tell yourself you're there watching it because you're hoping for a good game, but really you're just looking for the fights. I think I think today will be no different there. But let me let me introduce our panelists and we'll get it started. Uh starting off is Peter Schiff, chief economist of and global strategist of Europacific Asset Management. He's chairman of Shift Gold, founder of the Shift Sovereign Newsletter, and host of Shift Radio. Next is Brent Johnson, CEO and portfolio manager of Santiago Capital and developer of the dollar milkshake theory. Then we've got Lawrence Leard, founder and managing partner at Equity Management Associates and author of this year's must-read book on sound money titled The Big Print. And last but not least, we've got Russ Gray, founder of Main Street Media, the official media platform of the New Orleans Investment Conference this year. >> What's he got? Uh >> oh, he's got a mystery package. What did you bring? >> Well, you know, last year we had a little uh drama, >> so I thought that if it got nasty, you guys could have it out. >> Remember this? >> That rock when you were a kid? >> That's a great game. >> Rock, rockum robots. >> So, this is the bullion bruiser over here in the right corner, the bullion bruiser. And over here, the Bitcoin bruiser. So, if it starts to get heated, they're going to get after it. >> All right. >> All right, gentlemen. Well, look, lots to talk about this year. Um, it's been a record year for the precious metals. Uh, even despite uh, you know, the correction they've had recently, gold is still up over 50% for the year and silver's up uh, over 60% for the year. And and gentlemen, I I actually had inside knowledge that it was going to be a great year for the precious medals because leaving this conference after last year's fisticuffs. I was back at the airport uh in New Orleans flying back home and uh I was there in uh you know the baggage check line and I was standing next to this really delightful older couple and we got to chatting and um as they were moving their bag to check it in the the bag fell over and some of the presents they had brought with them uh spilled out and I was helping them put the gifts back in the bag and as I looked in the bag I realized this bag was like infinitely deep. It had infinite gifts in it. And as I looked at the couple and, you know, kind of clicked. The guy had a long white beard, kind of a big belly. And I said, "Are you Santa Claus?" And he said, "Yeah, yeah, I I am. You know, my wife and I like to come down and have a little bit of fun here, blow up some steam before things get real busy at the poll, uh, you know, during December, but you know, do me a solid, please. Don't let anybody else know. We're we're trying to keep it on the down low." And he said, "If you do, I'll grant you a Christmas wish. any wish you want. So I said, well uh I just uh came from this future of money panel. It was it was kind of crazy, but it would be really interesting if if silver hit a record price in 2025 and we could talk about that. And he said, "Oh man, buddy, I I can't do that for you. I'm sorry. Uh that's that's kind of like right at the edge of my abilities. And to be honest, we have so much silver and our our electronics and our sleigh bells and our tinsel. Like I mean, it would almost bankrupt me to do this. just please ask me for anything else. And I said, "Okay, well, you know, the panel's got some guys who are uh pretty passionate and can kind of get, you know, pretty wild sometimes going after each other. You I've got Peter Shift and Larry Leard on there." And he said, "Oh, I know those guys. I'm not going to tell you what list they're on, but but I know those guys." >> He said, "Well, what do you want me to do?" I said, "Well, look, if you could just encourage them to give concise answers and be respectful of one another, man, that would be great." And he scratched his chin and he thought for a second and he said, >> "Nah, >> $54 spot." Would that work for you? [Applause] >> That's a good line. >> That's a good >> That's a great intro. >> All right, gentlemen. Well, luckily, as I said, so we had a we've had uh a record year for the precious metals. Uh we've had a record year for Bitcoin, too. and it's gotten taken its lumps a little bit recently, but it's still up 10% for the year. And um we've got something really interesting going on with the new administration and stable coins. And if there's time, Brent Johnson's going to talk about the implications of that. Some of which may actually shock some of you here in the room. So to kick it off, I figured we'd just sort of end where we started last time. Peter, we'll start with you. A lot of people claim that gold is the money of the past and Bitcoin is the money of the future. Here we go. >> Do you have any thoughts on that? >> An interesting interesting question. >> Yeah. Well, you know, I I think that not only is gold the money of the past, but it will be the money of the future. It hasn't been money uh in the present although central banks still hold it as money and they've been buying a lot more of it as their you know reserve for their their their currencies. Uh but I think that the the people who are advocating for Bitcoin as you know some type of digital alternative to gold and that it's going to you know take on the role in the future that gold played in the past. I think that's based on a a flawed misunderstanding of of what money is and and and why gold became money and the conceit that just a artificial string of numbers uh can somehow replace the the real value uh of gold and and the reason that it's been money for for thousands of years. I mean, Bitcoin has uh certainly replicated some of the monetary properties that gold has, but not the intrinsic value of the metal without which it never would have became money. But I think it's ironic that I think to the extent that blockchain is relevant in in the future when it comes to money, it will be because of tokenized gold on the blockchain. And I know we're going to talk a lot about stable coins. Uh well, the best stable coin you can have is one that's backed by gold because there's actual stability in gold. There's no stability in the dollar. And if you're going to hold a non-interestbearing instrument, why would you want to hold non-interest bearing federal, you know, dollars when you can own gold and then you can transact with gold and receive payments in gold for your goods and services, your labor rather than a fiat currency that's losing value, you can receive real money uh that preserves its value and you can, you know, negotiate it as easy as anything else. And you know, if anybody wants to get in on the ground floor of this, go to told.com and open up an account. That's my my new venture. >> All right. I see the wheels turning in both Larry and Brent. Uh, which one of you wants to go first? >> I'll go. Um, look, Peter and I aren't that far apart in our view on Austrian economics and how fiat is doomed. Um, I think where we differ greatly is on what money is, what it can be. And I think if you study the Austrian economists including Manger, what they've said is that money is always what's accepted by mankind as the most liquid good. And historically, Peter's right, 5,000 years, the physical properties of gold made it the best money known to man. Um, but money is and always has been a ledger. Um, you know, you don't have dollars in your bank account. You just have digital entries on a computer. We live in a digital world and ever since the telegraph got invented, gold hasn't really been used in day-to-day transactions. You don't take a gold coin and purchase something although it preserves purchasing power. So this ledger nature to money I think it we live in a digital world. I think money is going to increasingly become more of a ledger. And I think that what Bitcoin did was it cracked the mathematical problem of imu making a ledger and something that's digital immutable and that when it did that now people are beginning to accept that it has monetary properties and you know Peter can argue that gold is better and in some ways gold is better but you know what I would say is the adoption continues to increase and unless that reverses itself I don't see how it doesn't increasingly quote unquote become money because it has money-like characteristics. Let me just add one other point. Peter thinks that digital gold or that gold attached, you know, a gold token is the future, a blockchain backed gold token. To me, that's tits on a bull. Um, you know, you have gold or you have a Bitcoin because there is no third party involved. It's a bearer asset. You don't have to worry about anybody else. The minute you say, I'm going to sell you a token backed by gold, well, who are you? And how do I know the gold is really there? And so, um, to me that's a non-starter. >> Yeah. Well, the same applies though to stable coins. You >> completely completely completely no disagreement at all, Peter. I I have issues with stable coins. >> But the issue is though, nobody's using Bitcoin as money. They use it to trade. They people aren't transacting in it. They're >> Nobody's using gold as money either, though. >> Nobody's using gold as money either. >> Well, they could, but they have in the past, but they're not. >> But let's There are two there two attributes of money, right? One is store of value and one is medium of exchange. I mean, let's face it, fiat has won the medium of exchange game, you know, overwhelmingly, right? And gold and Bitcoin are these two alternative things that kind of triumph or are trying to grab the store of value case because the fiat store of value case is a piece of right? >> Right. But to store value, you have to have value. You can't store what you don't have. Bitcoin doesn't have value. >> But but what is value, Peter? It's it's perception. It's what people perceive to have value. I mean gold's a shiny rock and people have perceived it to have value because of it because of it. >> It's a metal. It's a metal. >> Metal fine because because of its because of its qualities. It's the qualities that give it the value. And an immutable ledger has a different set of qualities that if people believe that it has value, then it has value. And you know a couple hundred million >> that's why fiat currency has value because people believe in it. >> No, fiat currency has value because the government tells you it has value and it's legal tender. One of the problems we have here with both of these assets is, and this should be changed, is that they should both be made legal tender. We should not be paying capital gains taxes on gold or silver or Bitcoin. And that's that's that's one of the that's one of the recommendations of my book is that that the government should make all of these forms of money legal tender and let the best one win. And maybe it'll be gold, maybe it'll be Bitcoin. We all have different opinions. So Brent, I'm sure you've got your thoughts on this, but real quick before you you chime in, um you have said many times that money really is just a it's it's a means of control, right? And at the end of the day, what determines money is whoever is in control states is what's money. So to to Larry and Peter's point or debate of hey you know what might be the best money in the future who who will determine that and what would actually dislodge the current dominant monetary system which the current control system embraces which is the dollar. >> Yeah. I mean I think if we're talking about the future of what's the best asset then you know Larry and and Peter are making good cases for both gold and and bitcoin. If we're talking about what the future of money is or what people use as money, not what we want money to be, but what it actually is used as in the real world, um, I think fiat is the future of money. Now, I don't like saying that. I don't prefer that, but I think that's what the future is. And I'll prove this by saying, how many people believe taxation is theft? Let's show of hands. Okay. How many people pay their taxes anyway? Until all of you stop paying your taxes, fiat is going to be money. >> Or I would add, until fiat completely and utterly fails and hyperinflates. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Well, yes, it's already failed. We just use it anyway. >> But it hasn't. It it it it's it perhaps fails. >> So, this is another thing. When you when you read the definition of money, it's a it's a store of value and a medium of exchange. Nowhere in there does it say it's a perfect store of value. Nowhere does it say it has to hold 100% of its value over an immeasurable amount of time. We want that to be the case. I would love that to be the case. >> Well, the dollar's lost over 99% of it >> as it is designed but that but it is designed to lose money. So when people say that the money is broken, the money is working exactly how the government wants it to work. >> Oh yeah. >> So they issue the money. It works exactly how they want it to. We don't like it, but until we push back, that's what it is. >> Yeah. Well, eventually they lose control and they destroy the value completely. So, I completely agree with that. >> There's no precedent in history for fiat currency surviving for that long a period of time. >> Totally. And that's why when the euro fails and the yen fails and the yuan fails, the dollar will rise. >> Why? >> Because all the it's it's a it's a zero- sum game. >> Right. But after all of those fail, then the dollar will ultimately fail. >> That's right. The dollar fails. >> That's down the road. That's down the road. You don't need to worry about that today. Guys, isn't part of the failure there being an alternative? Isn't that the point of failure? Right? You're going to keep using it as flaw as it is as flawed as it is until there's a viable alternative. And once there's a viable alternative and and viable means not just immutable, not just physical, but all of the infrastructure, all the plumbing, what Brent is always making the argument whether you know you have all the dollar denominated debt in the world, you got to pay your taxes in uh in in the currency, you got the petro dollar still hanging on. I mean, when all of that infrastructure is when an alternative is in place that has everything >> Yeah. >> or enough of everything that makes the dollar the dominant >> describing gold. Gold is the alternative to the dollar. >> So, Russ, why don't you elaborate on that a little bit because I think you're going sort of in the bricks direction of a competing alternative. >> Well, I'm just saying, yeah, I mean, you know, I 2013 I came here and I gave a talk and um it's no secret. I say this all the time because there's so many lessons in failure and I got wiped out in 2008 because I didn't understand any of this macro stuff. I'm a mainstreet guy and everything imploded on me. I'm like, I don't get it. You know, I work hard. I'm honest. I'm pretty smart. I don't understand it. Well, because I wasn't I didn't think the way these guys think. And we started encouraging everybody at the real estate guys, please come to this conference, learn this stuff. And um over the course of that period of time, I I I tried to understand what what makes this stuff happen. And then I'd listen and some people would talk about it in a bubble in like the United States. But there's globalization. And when I went back and I started looking at the history of when we came off the gold standard and the inflation and the gold price went way up and then we had the oil crisis and the existential climate crisis and the existential pandemic that happened back then, you know, and now I'm old enough. I'm like, "Oh, same playbook. I've seen this thing before." And then and then you realize that the the the European Union came along and tried to come up with an alternative. They it was really Europe recognizing the do the dollar had been mismanaged. And so that's all history. And if you study the history, like okay, I can see the history. And they say that history doesn't always repeat, but it rhymes. Well, I'm old enough now that I've seen some of the rhyming. And now I see some of the same things going on. Gold rising, right? The interest rates had to come up. The dramatic change in the interest rate that we just experienced as a percentage change was way worse than what happened in the early 80s. I mean Vulkar started at like I don't know 8 9% and went up to 18 2021. Uh this Fed Powell went from 0.25 to 5.25. It's like a 20x you know so in the real estate space that caused a lot of lot of drama. But in but after the financial crisis, China came over here and publicly scolded Barack Obama for mishandling the dollar. The Fed's balance sheet went from 800 billion to 4 and a half trillion or it was on its way to doing that during the crisis and they I mean to come over and publicly scold the US president and I've got the article. >> It that that was kind of a big deal. It was embarrassing for the United States, but we didn't do anything about it. We kept doing what we were doing. the balance sheet kept growing and I watched what China did and China went and made a bilateral trade agreement with Russia and that was the beginning of this long-term move to ddollarize which was exactly the same thing that the Europeans did right the we came off the gold standard because Charles de Gaulle did a meeting in 1965 go on YouTube look it up he says hey everybody the United States has printed too many dollars and so he sent a a boat over here to pick up their gold and everybody started picking up the gold gold reserves went from 20,000, which was money back then, drained down to eight. Nixon said, "Whoa, we're not going to do this anymore. We're going to go broke." And so they defaulted. And so they had to create a whole new money system. And you guys are, you know, most of you are familiar with all of this. You know, we created a whole new money system. We did a reset. We jacked the interest rates way up. We created the petro dollar. We opened up trade relationships with China so we could export our labor. We got in we we sold the uh United States citizens. It would be great for two the woman to need to work too and not stay home and take care of the kids, women's lib, you know, and I'm I'm pro-woman, but but that was propaganda to convince you that it was a good thing that you had to go to work, right? All of that was because of the inflation that was caused when the dollar collapsed. And so the world now is looking at this. Now, other triggers come along. And one of the triggers that came along was uh the weaponization of the dollar and the financial system against Russia with Ukraine. And that really woke the world up. So, I pay a lot of attention and when I saw Donald Trump when he got elected, not inaugurated, elected in November of 2024 threatening bricks with a 100% tariff. I said, "Okay, well, it's got to be serious, right? It's not like normal for, of course, he doesn't do anything that's normal, but it's not normal for a president to come out and threaten and almost make foreign policy before he's even been inaugurated, trade policy. But he did and he did it not once but he did it twice. So I think it's the height of foolishness as a nation and certainly as a main street investor speaking from experience to say oh what's happening over there doesn't matter to me. Oh that's not really going to happen. I've been watching this thing for 13 years now and it is a slow motion. And you can say a lot of things about the Chinese but one thing they're great at is copying technology. And I think that they looked at what it took for the United States to become the dominant economy and they are just copying it. They're stealing as much as they can and all the plumbing that is necessary to begin to upend the dollar system to create a viable alternative on the global stage. I think they're putting that infrastructure in place, but you don't do it overnight. Like I'm doing startups right now and during startups like you know I left the real estate guys a year and a half ago and it was like what's Russ doing? What's he doing? What's he doing? Well, I'm spending a year and a half getting all my infrastructure in place so I can finally launch. You know, you do real estate development, the land just sits there and you look at it like there's nothing happening. Well, yeah, there is. There's architecture drawings, there's permitting, there's there's bidding contractors and all of a sudden you break ground, it goes up. I feel like the world has been working to ddollarize and they're busy putting the plumbing in place. Main Street has been trying to figure it out and that's why you see gold at Costco. you see the next generation like something's going to change, something's broken. They've embraced Bitcoin. Last year I said the central theme is decentralization and that's I think that's what the main thing that's driving a lot of things that are going on in the world. I stand by that thesis. I think we do need to pay attention to bricks and I you know I I don't have any problem with either these guys might be on opposite sides but the one thing they have in common is they both believe in sound money and that really is the answer. Until we get to sound money, we will never ever be free. We'll always be talking about in the weeds. We really just need to get to a sound money system so the government can't steal from us through inflation. >> We may we may agree. We may like sound money, but we disagree as to what is what what is sound money. >> That's fair. Well, I mean, you look at Trump administration and there, you know, I hang on. >> This is my conspiracy theory hat. I brought it. So, I wear it whenever I do a, you know, a video and I'm I'm going to go down a rabbit trail a little bit. But, uh, you know, in Trump 1.0, he had a picture of Andrew Jackson in his office and Andrew Jackson was the last president paid off the debt and he took out the last central bank. I think that picture was on his wall for a reason. He nominated Judy Shelton, a gold bug, to uh the Fed. Couldn't get her in, but it showed something. He gets into office, he goes, "We're going to audit the gold." And then crickets. Well, there's a lot of people in the gold community that think maybe that gold's not there. Well, if you wanted to give the guys that took it time to put it back, what would you do? You tell them, "I'm going to come check." And then you'd give them time to put it back. Now, I'm not saying that's happening, but it wouldn't surprise me, right? And then you say, "Okay, we've got to get the sound money people on the same page. So, we're going to be pro Bitcoin and we're going to be pro gold. And I agree with Brent. We got a dollar infrastructure system that works globally and as long as it works, people are going to use the dollar. So if we don't change the dollar and we don't change the dollar system, but we we bring the dollar to some kind of backing to try to preempt perhaps the Chinese doing the same thing. >> I don't know. >> The current system though doesn't actually work. I mean, it works for the United States because we get to live beyond our means, but it doesn't work for the rest of the world that has to support us. And the global imbalances keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger because as long as the dollar is a reserve currency, America will abuse that privilege uh to live beyond its means and consume that without producing and and and borrow without savings. And these imbalances get worse and worse and we do all sorts of damage to the global economy. You know, as long as this system is maintained, >> all the more motivation for the rest of the players to join the cause to deolarize. >> Yes, it is inevitable. >> But it's not an easy task. Well, well, one thing I would point out is everything that the United States does to the rest of the world with regard to abusing the system, the rest of the world does to their own citizens using the exact same methods. And if they could do it to the rest of the world, they would. Uh, you know, the sins of the United States government are too long to list. The number of mistakes we have made would fill up this entire room. But that doesn't dispo intelligence and genius on the behalf of China and Russia and Afghanistan and Egypt and Turkey and Libya and all of these other countries. I think there's oftentimes a belief that, you know, our leaders are a bunch of idiots, which I'm not going to argue with you when you say that. But I don't think that the leadership on the other side of the planet is, you know, fair and treats their citizens better and, you know, is is a paragon of virtue. you know, most governments are in place because they want to control the situation, whether that be the resources, the people, um, you know, the region. Um, and the idea that, you know, the rest of the world is going to offer this new system that is more fair and more uh uh altruistic than the one that the United States is offering, I think is completely misplaced. Um, I agree that the the alternative already exists, gold. It's it's been around for thousands of years and it's been been used and it works, but that's not what the world has chosen. Um, the governments have chosen something else. And until the people push back hard enough and demand its use, we are going to use the money that the government tells us that we need to use. >> All right, folks. Let me let me chime in here. Um, so couple things and and the thing I'm wrapping having the most trouble wrapping my brain around is that Peter and Lawrence have given the most concise answers on this panel so far. That happen. Um, so I I want to build on what you just said there, Brent, but real quick, Larry, I want to toss it to you. >> Um, we haven't talked about Bitcoin all that much yet, so I want to ask you sort of two joined questions for you to react to. um where where do you think the Bitcoin critics um you know where do they have validity in their concerns and then secondly where do you think most people are missing the boat on Bitcoin right now? >> Great questions. Um so I think the validity the only concern that I have and and it's a concern that actually Michael Sailor has um because I asked him in a in a small group private conversation is that the Bitcoin software and code is controlled by um a group called the core developers and the code is open source everyone can see it. It's not very um you know so there's nothing secret about it and improvements and changes are proposed and voted on and and then accepted and if if somebody really wants to change it they'll try a hard fork and of course nobody will follow them. Um but you know upgrades and changes small things generally are made by this group of people over time and as with any group of people they don't always agree and um there's a debate going on right now over something called op return which is something to do with the space on each block and uh and what can be in it and you know there's a very strong argument on one side a strong argument on the other side I have a view on it I'm not going to state it here because it's just not it's not the point the point is that um you know Bitcoin the software will have to evolve over some period of time to deal with various threats. One of which is quantum computing which I think don't doesn't really become a threat for at least 10 years and maybe 20 based on the scientists and the things I've read and I read a lot about it. Um so I'm not terribly worried about but the point is that it could become a threat and quantum computing would allow people to hack the coins hack the passwords on the on the coins which is what makes the coins secure. So as Brett and I were talking about the whole notion it's completely immutable. you know, there's some very small percentage chance that someday it's not unless it's upgraded and that upgrade would have to take place as a result of the core developers. And so, you know, as sailor said to me, he said, "Look, Larry, you know, the the problem with human beings is they want to fix stuff. They want to tinker with stuff and this thing is working perfectly and beautifully, and the only thing that concerns me is that some group of rogue core developers would mess with it." Now, as I say, there are safeguards because it would have to be approved, voted on, accepted, forked, etc. So, I rate this as all extremely low stuff, but it's not zero. Um, the second criticism, I think, um, well, that's that's really the major one. That's that's really the only one I can think of. I I I've said to other people though, if for some reason adoption were to slow down and people were to just kind of organ, and this is why when I when I argue with Peter on this, Peter's like, "Well, okay, it's going to blow up here, Larry. It's eventually going to die." And I'm like, "Okay, fine. What's the proximal event that's going to cause it to blow up?" Because it's been 16 years and it hasn't blown up. It's it's retreated. It's had big draw downs. We all know that. But every time it comes back because the underlying properties are what they are. And as long as adoption continues, as long as more people I call it in my book, I call it dogs eating the food. This one of the great old venture capitalists at Sequoia said, you know, the when I'm looking at companies to invest in, I look at I want to see situations where the dogs are eating the food and uh and more dogs and more food over time. And so you know in in implying increased demand and so if you look at addresses if you look at hash rate if you look at usage if you look at anything transactions etc in Bitcoin land it's growing consistently >> but you know when when you talk about adoption I don't like people keep saying Bitcoin adoption what are they adopting it for? They're not adopting it as money. People aren't buying Bitcoin the vast majority for the reasons that we're discussing. They're not looking for a an alternative to the dollar. They're looking for Bitcoin as a way to amass more dollars. They're buying Bitcoin because they think the price is going to go up and they'll be able to sell it and get more dollars than they started. So, yes, it's succeeded for 15 or 16 years because we haven't run out of greater fools to buy Bitcoin at a higher price. And what's happened recently to kind of propel it higher is some of the early adopters, you know, the big OGs who bought Bitcoin a long time ago amassed so much money in this pyramid that they were able to, you know, entice Wall Street to get into it with with the with the prospects of making money, booking bets on bit on Bitcoin with ETFs and getting underwriting fees on Bitcoin uh treasury companies. And then they had so much money that they bought off politicians. Uh they bought off Trump and they put him in office. And now they're using the power of the government to try to extend this scheme and get more people >> into it. Not adopting it as a medium of exchange or a unit of account or any kind of money, but as a get-richqu scheme as they ride the Bitcoin rocket ship to the moon and it goes to a million or $10 million of Bitcoin. And that's what's going on. First of all, it's first of all, it it's it's not a scheme. It's it's a protocol. It's being adopted. Then you say, "What are they buying it for?" They're buying it as a form of money that stores value because it has a limited supply. Full stop. The medium of exchange, means of exchange. Sure, that's that's naent. There's something called the the uh the lightning network, which I have a lightning network wallet on my phone. When I go to any Bitcoin conference, I can buy everything I want with a QR code and immediately transact in Bitcoin. cost is about a penny or less, you know, as opposed to paying three or 4% for Mastercard. >> And what percent of Bitcoin transactions are that versus trades? >> Oh, it's it's trivial right now because we're just getting going. >> Yes. And it's been 16 or 17 years and it's still trivial. >> Well, but that but it takes time it takes time for the medium of exchange piece of it to come in. >> It's never going to be a medium. In fact, even the Bitcoin community admits it'll never be a medium of exchange. There are other there are other tokens. They claim it's digital gold. >> That it is digital gold. that that that that is not true at all. It will become a medium of exchange >> in the next couple of decades. It's it's >> when when will gold when will gold become a medium of exchange? >> Well, it's already been a medium. >> It has been, but when will it become that way again? I >> I don't know. It could be but it could be used as a medium of exchange right now. Better than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is too slow and too expensive to use for anything. Bitcoin trading better than Bitcoin. I can send a billion dollars from one end of the world to the other in 10 minutes and have it fully >> and I can send a billion dollars worth of gold. >> Yeah. On a on a 747. >> No, I with a token I can transfer the ownership. You don't have to >> and I have to trust you issuing the token. >> I'd rather you know. I don't trust you as far as I can throw you. >> I'd rather trust a reputable custodian with something than to trust the collective delusions of a bunch of people that nothing is something. All you're trusting is that the people that own Bitcoin don't wake up and realize they got nothing. >> I just I just want to >> There we go. >> Hey, >> I just want to point out that the reason that Peter's wearing a green tie rather than a gold tie is he knows the dollar's not dead yet. [Applause] >> I wore my gold tie on the first day. >> I don't I don't think the average Bitcoin owner believes that they've they've got something that is nothing. They know that they've got the most secure, sound form of money in the world. And they know that the stock toflow ratio is much higher than gold and going down every four years. And ultimately, Bitcoin is going to demonetize gold in the same way that gold demonetized silver. >> Well, then why if that's the case, why is Bitcoin lost a third of its value priced in gold since its peak? In fact, Bitcoin is worth less in terms of gold now than it was four years ago. Despite all this so-called adoption, the Bitcoin president, all the all the Bitcoin ETFs, all the Bitcoin strategy companies, Bitcoin has lost a third of its value relative to a rock. >> Yeah. I thought it was a metal. >> If you take a look at that chart, and the chart was in my presentation yesterday, the charts the number of ounces of gold against Bitcoin, it has been up and to the right since Bitcoin has been formed. Right now, it is on a draw down. It's roughly at 24. It's been as high as 40. It's going to 60. Then it's going to 80. Then it's going to 100. Then it's going to 120. I mean, Bitcoin's going to demonetize gold. It's just that simple. It's a better form of money. >> No, it's not. It's not. It's not any form of money. >> All right. So, I'm I'm going to rest it back here for a second. Um, so Brent, >> yes, sir. Uh what I'm what I'm summarizing from the three other gentlemen here is that uh over the foreseeable future uh the US dollar the fiat US dollar is going to continue to lose purchasing power. >> That's true. >> I think you would agree with that. Y >> they also seem to think that uh that trend will push the rest of the world to ddollarize and over time ddollarize in favor of sound money. It might be Bitcoin. Larry's arguing that might be gold. Peter's arguing that it might be some sort of hard assetbacked bricks currency. That's what Russ was just uh arguing there. I think that you might think differently and I think stable coins may play a role in your answer. Can you >> explain that as much as you can in the remaining 9 minutes we have? >> Define. So I'll give uh yeah so >> I'm my speech later today I think I'm on at noon or 12:30 or something. We'll go over this in detail. Uh but essentially what I think is happening is that the the technology that was developed in the private market by you know the Bitcoin and the digital assets and crypto I think woke the the United States and other countries up to the fact that they could no longer just rest on their laurels and you know use the fact that they could enforce legal tender laws to keep their money as the medium of exchange. And in many ways, I would argue that, you know, the whole roll out of digital assets and the rise of Bitcoin was maybe the greatest beta test in history to see whether it would be adopted, whether it would work, how fast it would work, how tough it would be to regulate. Uh, but I think they have now started to adopt that private technology um on a regular or on a regulated and official state uh sponsored basis. And you've heard Scott Bessant talk about it. You've heard some other uh you know government leaders talk about it. They passed a genius act uh earlier this year which is a way to regulate stable coins and it uh talks about you know what they can and can't do. And essentially a stable coin is a digital token um that can be you know passed around the world instantaneously settles instantly and then that token is tied to some other asset. So, you don't buy a stable coin thinking it's going to increase a lot in value like some of the it's not like a Dogecoin or a Bitcoin where you're expecting it to rise uh in value. Uh what it is is it's tied to some other asset and it should stay stable versus that asset. So, you could have a gold stable coin, which is I think what Peter was talking about, or a gold token, and it will that that token will stay stable versus the price of gold. It may not stay stable versus the dollar or Bitcoin or something else, but that token will track gold. Um 99% of the stable coins already in existence are already tied to the United States dollars. And uh the reason that's important is because that was the private market entrepreneurs meeting demand that people wanted to hold dollars. Um it's not 99% US dollars because the market wanted 99% gold and they said, "No, we're giving you dollars anyway." That was driven by the free market. And I think the United States now realizes that it can adopt that technology and use it as a way to not only help fund itself going forward. We know we all know about the challenges the United States has in funding itself, but more than that they can use it as a digital weapon, for lack of a better way of saying it, to dollarize the rest of the world rather than ddollarize the rest of the world. Because as much as we as Americans sit here and talk about how bad the dollar is, for many other citizens around the world, the dollar is much better than their local currency. And all you have to do is next time you travel, just talk to them. Ask them whether they would rather hold their local currency or a US dollar. Most times they will say a US dollar, especially if you're traveling to an emerging country or a developing country. Um, for them they look at the US dollar as stability. Now, we we in this room may think that's ridiculous. We may not like it, but the market says that is the case. That's not me saying it. That's the market telling me that's what they're saying. And so, I think the future is going to be some kind of a combination of governmentissued fiat as well as the digitized technology and innovation that's been developed over the last >> 101 15 years. >> Yeah. I think the main reason though that the majority of stable coins are denominated in in dollars is Bitcoin is generally expressed in dollars just the way gold is expressed in dollars. people around the world uh think of gold and a dollar price and so they thought that with Bitcoin. They, you know, promote Bitcoin that way. But the the the the demand, the vast majority of the demand for stable coins is for people who want to trade Bitcoin and they need something to trade in and out of. And so when they want to sell Bitcoin, they can move into a tether or a USD token and then they can go back and forth and and and so that's the main use case for stable coins is to facilitate trading in in in Bitcoin or other tokens. And uh and so it's it's kind of like an on andoff ramp in and out of crypto. But I don't see it being widely adopted by people who say they want dollars. Because why would you hold dollars in a non-interestbearing stable coin? If you have dollars that you want to hold, at least get interest on them. At least put them in a money market. Why buy a stable coin and let the stable coin issuer keep all your interest while the dollar depreciates? as as an American American >> Peter Peter's right that that part of the use case for stable coins is to is an on-ramp and offramp for for dollars. And just so I don't know if everyone here knows what stable coins are. Stable coins are coins that are they're like crypto that you can trade through a crypto account, but they Tether and Circle are the two biggest issuers. They're about $200 billion total in size. And they they buy treasury bills behind it. They take in your cash, buy a treasury bill, and then issue you a token that represents a dollar. But let me say Peter's right. The main one of the main use cases, not the only main use case for stable coins is is to an on-ramp and off-ramp for crypto trading. But what really drove stable coin adoption is I view the stable coins as an alternative to the Swift network. So what happened is when the US decided to sanction Russia and sanction Iran and say to all the business people there and I was in Prague recently, you know, earlier this year and I met with a lot of Russian business people. Suddenly they had no way to pay anybody or move money or receive money or whatever it might be. But they quickly, you know, smart entrepreneurial workaround. They get a Kraken account and the dollar is the universal unit of measure. So they just say, "Fine, pay me, you know, stablecoin dollars into my Kraken account." >> Doesn't the US government still have the ability to go after those tokens? They know who owns them. They, you know, they they not kraken's a Yeah, not yet. I mean, >> I mean, I'd say, look, if you really want to get out, then just go to gold. Why stay in the dollar, right? I mean, why not just take a dollar? >> But we're talking about we're talking about means of exchange, not I mean, this >> Well, but it's a different goldback stable coin is just as easy to exchange as a dollar back stable coin. You have the same thing where you have to trust a third party, but at least it's a third party that the US government can't intervene. If the gold is stored in a custodian that's not in the United States, unless we're going to invade that custodian, >> you don't store money, though. >> You can't get the gold. >> But you don't store money. You store assets. Investing and using money on >> you could store money. That's what banks were supposed to do. They store your money. At least we had money. >> Okay. So, you asked, why would somebody hold a coin that doesn't pay interest? get a money market fund at at a minimum. A as an American, you're totally right. That makes a lot of sense. But if you live in Argentina or you live in Egypt or you live in Turkey or you live in Bangladesh and you don't want to hold the local currency, what you end up doing is you end up holding US dollar physical cash. And that's why if you go to any bizaar or little market in anywhere in the world, you can exchange local currency for dollars because everywhere in the world uses dollars on the black market, >> right? This allows this allows citizens of those countries who don't have a bank account and even if they do have a bank account, their bank will not allow them to hold a US dollar balance. And even if they do have a bank that allows them to hold a US dollar balance, they won't let them take it out in times of crisis. This solves all those problems. >> But that's because it would be not as convenient for them to transact in gold coins. But once they're going to move onto a token and they're going to have it in their smartphone, in their wallet and they're going to exchange. Once you're choosing tokens, at that point, dollars lose their advantage over gold. Gold has a much has an advantage over the dollar in the form of a token because >> then why why hasn't all the money there is a digital gold token right now and there's digital US dollars. Why haven't it migrated from tether? >> The reason right now the demand for tokens is primary as a get-rich quick scheme. It's speculative money trying to get rich and therefore they're not interested in a gold token. >> We're not talking about gold mining companies when the demand let me finish. When the demand when the demand for tokens becomes to use them in the real world as a substitute for money as a medium of exchange as a unit of account that's when demand for gold tokens is going to grow. But right now it's just a speculative frenzy. And so people don't want to buy gold because they don't think there's enough upside. They want to buy what's going to go to the moon, right? That's what they want and that's where the demand is. There are a lot of gold back tokens, but it's interestingly interesting. You're talking about Tether. What has Tether been buying? They're buying gold. They're taking the money that they're getting and they're buying gold. They're buying gold royalty companies. What do you They must know something. They're buying all this gold with the with the dollars they got. >> So, I'm I'm going to chime in because I think we're almost done. Yeah. >> 17 seconds. >> All right. I want to bring it home for me. Here's the here's the thing. What I've learned is that you have to set your preferences aside to Brent's point and look at what's actually happening. And you can be blind and we that's why we do panels like this, differing opinions, right? And if you come away confused, just understand that this is all just technology. Gold was a technology. Financial systems are technology. Bitcoin's a technology. Tether state, they're all technologies. I was in Silicon Valley during the 1990s. the internet boom, every company had a dot. Not all of them were going to survive. You had to watch and see which ones were going to make it. There was a time when there was nobody was demanding cell phones because they all wanted phones with wires. But after a while, the infrastructure to support cell phones took over because you didn't get drop calls. So I I I'm I'm watching and I suggest watch what the players in the markets are doing from the central banks all the way down to Main Street. Look around the world at what the global economies are doing, not just the United States. And then watch as the technology and adoption evolves. And there's no reason why you have to pick one or the other, right? There's there's no law that says you can't hold some gold, you can't hold some Bitcoin >> and and then just just put yourself in a position where you're ready to move when it breaks because it's slowly >> then suddenly. >> Yeah. And I wanted to just throw one more point in as to why there aren't more gold backs. >> Real quick, Peter, real quick. >> There's no money in that. I was trying to get the last word where the way you make money is you create a token out of nothing, a memecoin, and you get some fool to buy it from you because it cost you nothing to create it. So all the money is flowing now into just tokeniz into just creating tokens out of thin air so that the issuers can get rich. There's not a lot of money tokenizing gold because you have to actually get the gold, right? And so there's a huge cost there. But when there is demand for a true demand for alternatives to fiat currencies to be used as a mean of exchange, you're going to see an explosion in demand uh for for goldback tokens. >> All right, and we're going to end it there, ladies and gentlemen. A big hand for our excellent panel. Thanks for a clean fight today, gentlemen. >> Yeah, all good. >> Thanks. >> All right. >> I like that hat. >> Well, that was a pretty phenomenal panel. 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The Future Of Money Panel | Peter Schiff, Brent Johnson, Lawrence Lepard & Russ Gray
Summary
Transcript
[Music] Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Teagert. As you can see, I'm still on the road here for the Thanksgiving vacation, but I wanted to bring you this very special report. Every year, I'm asked to chair the panel on the future of money at the New Orleans Investment Conference. I chaired it this year. As usual, a fantastic faculty, highly enlightening, fiery debate. Um, and the faculty this year was was spectacular. It was Peter Schiff, it was Larry Leard, it was Brent Johnson of Dollar Milkshake fame and Russell Gray. And folks, I could tell you about how great it was, but probably just easier for me to show you. Enjoy. >> Now, it's time for our future of money panel, and I'd like to introduce our moderator, Adam Tagert. [Applause] for the future of money panel. I'd also like to give a big thanks to Brian and the team here for running their usual standard excellence show. Um if you have not attended a previous future of money panel, um just know that it's it's known as sort of the barely controlled chaos panel. um due to the fireworks that that we've seen in it over years past and you'll understand in a second when I introduce the uh the the panelists here. Um I kind of think of it like hockey, right? You tell yourself you're there watching it because you're hoping for a good game, but really you're just looking for the fights. I think I think today will be no different there. But let me let me introduce our panelists and we'll get it started. Uh starting off is Peter Schiff, chief economist of and global strategist of Europacific Asset Management. He's chairman of Shift Gold, founder of the Shift Sovereign Newsletter, and host of Shift Radio. Next is Brent Johnson, CEO and portfolio manager of Santiago Capital and developer of the dollar milkshake theory. Then we've got Lawrence Leard, founder and managing partner at Equity Management Associates and author of this year's must-read book on sound money titled The Big Print. And last but not least, we've got Russ Gray, founder of Main Street Media, the official media platform of the New Orleans Investment Conference this year. >> What's he got? Uh >> oh, he's got a mystery package. What did you bring? >> Well, you know, last year we had a little uh drama, >> so I thought that if it got nasty, you guys could have it out. >> Remember this? >> That rock when you were a kid? >> That's a great game. >> Rock, rockum robots. >> So, this is the bullion bruiser over here in the right corner, the bullion bruiser. And over here, the Bitcoin bruiser. So, if it starts to get heated, they're going to get after it. >> All right. >> All right, gentlemen. Well, look, lots to talk about this year. Um, it's been a record year for the precious metals. Uh, even despite uh, you know, the correction they've had recently, gold is still up over 50% for the year and silver's up uh, over 60% for the year. And and gentlemen, I I actually had inside knowledge that it was going to be a great year for the precious medals because leaving this conference after last year's fisticuffs. I was back at the airport uh in New Orleans flying back home and uh I was there in uh you know the baggage check line and I was standing next to this really delightful older couple and we got to chatting and um as they were moving their bag to check it in the the bag fell over and some of the presents they had brought with them uh spilled out and I was helping them put the gifts back in the bag and as I looked in the bag I realized this bag was like infinitely deep. It had infinite gifts in it. And as I looked at the couple and, you know, kind of clicked. The guy had a long white beard, kind of a big belly. And I said, "Are you Santa Claus?" And he said, "Yeah, yeah, I I am. You know, my wife and I like to come down and have a little bit of fun here, blow up some steam before things get real busy at the poll, uh, you know, during December, but you know, do me a solid, please. Don't let anybody else know. We're we're trying to keep it on the down low." And he said, "If you do, I'll grant you a Christmas wish. any wish you want. So I said, well uh I just uh came from this future of money panel. It was it was kind of crazy, but it would be really interesting if if silver hit a record price in 2025 and we could talk about that. And he said, "Oh man, buddy, I I can't do that for you. I'm sorry. Uh that's that's kind of like right at the edge of my abilities. And to be honest, we have so much silver and our our electronics and our sleigh bells and our tinsel. Like I mean, it would almost bankrupt me to do this. just please ask me for anything else. And I said, "Okay, well, you know, the panel's got some guys who are uh pretty passionate and can kind of get, you know, pretty wild sometimes going after each other. You I've got Peter Shift and Larry Leard on there." And he said, "Oh, I know those guys. I'm not going to tell you what list they're on, but but I know those guys." >> He said, "Well, what do you want me to do?" I said, "Well, look, if you could just encourage them to give concise answers and be respectful of one another, man, that would be great." And he scratched his chin and he thought for a second and he said, >> "Nah, >> $54 spot." Would that work for you? [Applause] >> That's a good line. >> That's a good >> That's a great intro. >> All right, gentlemen. Well, luckily, as I said, so we had a we've had uh a record year for the precious metals. Uh we've had a record year for Bitcoin, too. and it's gotten taken its lumps a little bit recently, but it's still up 10% for the year. And um we've got something really interesting going on with the new administration and stable coins. And if there's time, Brent Johnson's going to talk about the implications of that. Some of which may actually shock some of you here in the room. So to kick it off, I figured we'd just sort of end where we started last time. Peter, we'll start with you. A lot of people claim that gold is the money of the past and Bitcoin is the money of the future. Here we go. >> Do you have any thoughts on that? >> An interesting interesting question. >> Yeah. Well, you know, I I think that not only is gold the money of the past, but it will be the money of the future. It hasn't been money uh in the present although central banks still hold it as money and they've been buying a lot more of it as their you know reserve for their their their currencies. Uh but I think that the the people who are advocating for Bitcoin as you know some type of digital alternative to gold and that it's going to you know take on the role in the future that gold played in the past. I think that's based on a a flawed misunderstanding of of what money is and and and why gold became money and the conceit that just a artificial string of numbers uh can somehow replace the the real value uh of gold and and the reason that it's been money for for thousands of years. I mean, Bitcoin has uh certainly replicated some of the monetary properties that gold has, but not the intrinsic value of the metal without which it never would have became money. But I think it's ironic that I think to the extent that blockchain is relevant in in the future when it comes to money, it will be because of tokenized gold on the blockchain. And I know we're going to talk a lot about stable coins. Uh well, the best stable coin you can have is one that's backed by gold because there's actual stability in gold. There's no stability in the dollar. And if you're going to hold a non-interestbearing instrument, why would you want to hold non-interest bearing federal, you know, dollars when you can own gold and then you can transact with gold and receive payments in gold for your goods and services, your labor rather than a fiat currency that's losing value, you can receive real money uh that preserves its value and you can, you know, negotiate it as easy as anything else. And you know, if anybody wants to get in on the ground floor of this, go to told.com and open up an account. That's my my new venture. >> All right. I see the wheels turning in both Larry and Brent. Uh, which one of you wants to go first? >> I'll go. Um, look, Peter and I aren't that far apart in our view on Austrian economics and how fiat is doomed. Um, I think where we differ greatly is on what money is, what it can be. And I think if you study the Austrian economists including Manger, what they've said is that money is always what's accepted by mankind as the most liquid good. And historically, Peter's right, 5,000 years, the physical properties of gold made it the best money known to man. Um, but money is and always has been a ledger. Um, you know, you don't have dollars in your bank account. You just have digital entries on a computer. We live in a digital world and ever since the telegraph got invented, gold hasn't really been used in day-to-day transactions. You don't take a gold coin and purchase something although it preserves purchasing power. So this ledger nature to money I think it we live in a digital world. I think money is going to increasingly become more of a ledger. And I think that what Bitcoin did was it cracked the mathematical problem of imu making a ledger and something that's digital immutable and that when it did that now people are beginning to accept that it has monetary properties and you know Peter can argue that gold is better and in some ways gold is better but you know what I would say is the adoption continues to increase and unless that reverses itself I don't see how it doesn't increasingly quote unquote become money because it has money-like characteristics. Let me just add one other point. Peter thinks that digital gold or that gold attached, you know, a gold token is the future, a blockchain backed gold token. To me, that's tits on a bull. Um, you know, you have gold or you have a Bitcoin because there is no third party involved. It's a bearer asset. You don't have to worry about anybody else. The minute you say, I'm going to sell you a token backed by gold, well, who are you? And how do I know the gold is really there? And so, um, to me that's a non-starter. >> Yeah. Well, the same applies though to stable coins. You >> completely completely completely no disagreement at all, Peter. I I have issues with stable coins. >> But the issue is though, nobody's using Bitcoin as money. They use it to trade. They people aren't transacting in it. They're >> Nobody's using gold as money either, though. >> Nobody's using gold as money either. >> Well, they could, but they have in the past, but they're not. >> But let's There are two there two attributes of money, right? One is store of value and one is medium of exchange. I mean, let's face it, fiat has won the medium of exchange game, you know, overwhelmingly, right? And gold and Bitcoin are these two alternative things that kind of triumph or are trying to grab the store of value case because the fiat store of value case is a piece of right? >> Right. But to store value, you have to have value. You can't store what you don't have. Bitcoin doesn't have value. >> But but what is value, Peter? It's it's perception. It's what people perceive to have value. I mean gold's a shiny rock and people have perceived it to have value because of it because of it. >> It's a metal. It's a metal. >> Metal fine because because of its because of its qualities. It's the qualities that give it the value. And an immutable ledger has a different set of qualities that if people believe that it has value, then it has value. And you know a couple hundred million >> that's why fiat currency has value because people believe in it. >> No, fiat currency has value because the government tells you it has value and it's legal tender. One of the problems we have here with both of these assets is, and this should be changed, is that they should both be made legal tender. We should not be paying capital gains taxes on gold or silver or Bitcoin. And that's that's that's one of the that's one of the recommendations of my book is that that the government should make all of these forms of money legal tender and let the best one win. And maybe it'll be gold, maybe it'll be Bitcoin. We all have different opinions. So Brent, I'm sure you've got your thoughts on this, but real quick before you you chime in, um you have said many times that money really is just a it's it's a means of control, right? And at the end of the day, what determines money is whoever is in control states is what's money. So to to Larry and Peter's point or debate of hey you know what might be the best money in the future who who will determine that and what would actually dislodge the current dominant monetary system which the current control system embraces which is the dollar. >> Yeah. I mean I think if we're talking about the future of what's the best asset then you know Larry and and Peter are making good cases for both gold and and bitcoin. If we're talking about what the future of money is or what people use as money, not what we want money to be, but what it actually is used as in the real world, um, I think fiat is the future of money. Now, I don't like saying that. I don't prefer that, but I think that's what the future is. And I'll prove this by saying, how many people believe taxation is theft? Let's show of hands. Okay. How many people pay their taxes anyway? Until all of you stop paying your taxes, fiat is going to be money. >> Or I would add, until fiat completely and utterly fails and hyperinflates. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Well, yes, it's already failed. We just use it anyway. >> But it hasn't. It it it it's it perhaps fails. >> So, this is another thing. When you when you read the definition of money, it's a it's a store of value and a medium of exchange. Nowhere in there does it say it's a perfect store of value. Nowhere does it say it has to hold 100% of its value over an immeasurable amount of time. We want that to be the case. I would love that to be the case. >> Well, the dollar's lost over 99% of it >> as it is designed but that but it is designed to lose money. So when people say that the money is broken, the money is working exactly how the government wants it to work. >> Oh yeah. >> So they issue the money. It works exactly how they want it to. We don't like it, but until we push back, that's what it is. >> Yeah. Well, eventually they lose control and they destroy the value completely. So, I completely agree with that. >> There's no precedent in history for fiat currency surviving for that long a period of time. >> Totally. And that's why when the euro fails and the yen fails and the yuan fails, the dollar will rise. >> Why? >> Because all the it's it's a it's a zero- sum game. >> Right. But after all of those fail, then the dollar will ultimately fail. >> That's right. The dollar fails. >> That's down the road. That's down the road. You don't need to worry about that today. Guys, isn't part of the failure there being an alternative? Isn't that the point of failure? Right? You're going to keep using it as flaw as it is as flawed as it is until there's a viable alternative. And once there's a viable alternative and and viable means not just immutable, not just physical, but all of the infrastructure, all the plumbing, what Brent is always making the argument whether you know you have all the dollar denominated debt in the world, you got to pay your taxes in uh in in the currency, you got the petro dollar still hanging on. I mean, when all of that infrastructure is when an alternative is in place that has everything >> Yeah. >> or enough of everything that makes the dollar the dominant >> describing gold. Gold is the alternative to the dollar. >> So, Russ, why don't you elaborate on that a little bit because I think you're going sort of in the bricks direction of a competing alternative. >> Well, I'm just saying, yeah, I mean, you know, I 2013 I came here and I gave a talk and um it's no secret. I say this all the time because there's so many lessons in failure and I got wiped out in 2008 because I didn't understand any of this macro stuff. I'm a mainstreet guy and everything imploded on me. I'm like, I don't get it. You know, I work hard. I'm honest. I'm pretty smart. I don't understand it. Well, because I wasn't I didn't think the way these guys think. And we started encouraging everybody at the real estate guys, please come to this conference, learn this stuff. And um over the course of that period of time, I I I tried to understand what what makes this stuff happen. And then I'd listen and some people would talk about it in a bubble in like the United States. But there's globalization. And when I went back and I started looking at the history of when we came off the gold standard and the inflation and the gold price went way up and then we had the oil crisis and the existential climate crisis and the existential pandemic that happened back then, you know, and now I'm old enough. I'm like, "Oh, same playbook. I've seen this thing before." And then and then you realize that the the the European Union came along and tried to come up with an alternative. They it was really Europe recognizing the do the dollar had been mismanaged. And so that's all history. And if you study the history, like okay, I can see the history. And they say that history doesn't always repeat, but it rhymes. Well, I'm old enough now that I've seen some of the rhyming. And now I see some of the same things going on. Gold rising, right? The interest rates had to come up. The dramatic change in the interest rate that we just experienced as a percentage change was way worse than what happened in the early 80s. I mean Vulkar started at like I don't know 8 9% and went up to 18 2021. Uh this Fed Powell went from 0.25 to 5.25. It's like a 20x you know so in the real estate space that caused a lot of lot of drama. But in but after the financial crisis, China came over here and publicly scolded Barack Obama for mishandling the dollar. The Fed's balance sheet went from 800 billion to 4 and a half trillion or it was on its way to doing that during the crisis and they I mean to come over and publicly scold the US president and I've got the article. >> It that that was kind of a big deal. It was embarrassing for the United States, but we didn't do anything about it. We kept doing what we were doing. the balance sheet kept growing and I watched what China did and China went and made a bilateral trade agreement with Russia and that was the beginning of this long-term move to ddollarize which was exactly the same thing that the Europeans did right the we came off the gold standard because Charles de Gaulle did a meeting in 1965 go on YouTube look it up he says hey everybody the United States has printed too many dollars and so he sent a a boat over here to pick up their gold and everybody started picking up the gold gold reserves went from 20,000, which was money back then, drained down to eight. Nixon said, "Whoa, we're not going to do this anymore. We're going to go broke." And so they defaulted. And so they had to create a whole new money system. And you guys are, you know, most of you are familiar with all of this. You know, we created a whole new money system. We did a reset. We jacked the interest rates way up. We created the petro dollar. We opened up trade relationships with China so we could export our labor. We got in we we sold the uh United States citizens. It would be great for two the woman to need to work too and not stay home and take care of the kids, women's lib, you know, and I'm I'm pro-woman, but but that was propaganda to convince you that it was a good thing that you had to go to work, right? All of that was because of the inflation that was caused when the dollar collapsed. And so the world now is looking at this. Now, other triggers come along. And one of the triggers that came along was uh the weaponization of the dollar and the financial system against Russia with Ukraine. And that really woke the world up. So, I pay a lot of attention and when I saw Donald Trump when he got elected, not inaugurated, elected in November of 2024 threatening bricks with a 100% tariff. I said, "Okay, well, it's got to be serious, right? It's not like normal for, of course, he doesn't do anything that's normal, but it's not normal for a president to come out and threaten and almost make foreign policy before he's even been inaugurated, trade policy. But he did and he did it not once but he did it twice. So I think it's the height of foolishness as a nation and certainly as a main street investor speaking from experience to say oh what's happening over there doesn't matter to me. Oh that's not really going to happen. I've been watching this thing for 13 years now and it is a slow motion. And you can say a lot of things about the Chinese but one thing they're great at is copying technology. And I think that they looked at what it took for the United States to become the dominant economy and they are just copying it. They're stealing as much as they can and all the plumbing that is necessary to begin to upend the dollar system to create a viable alternative on the global stage. I think they're putting that infrastructure in place, but you don't do it overnight. Like I'm doing startups right now and during startups like you know I left the real estate guys a year and a half ago and it was like what's Russ doing? What's he doing? What's he doing? Well, I'm spending a year and a half getting all my infrastructure in place so I can finally launch. You know, you do real estate development, the land just sits there and you look at it like there's nothing happening. Well, yeah, there is. There's architecture drawings, there's permitting, there's there's bidding contractors and all of a sudden you break ground, it goes up. I feel like the world has been working to ddollarize and they're busy putting the plumbing in place. Main Street has been trying to figure it out and that's why you see gold at Costco. you see the next generation like something's going to change, something's broken. They've embraced Bitcoin. Last year I said the central theme is decentralization and that's I think that's what the main thing that's driving a lot of things that are going on in the world. I stand by that thesis. I think we do need to pay attention to bricks and I you know I I don't have any problem with either these guys might be on opposite sides but the one thing they have in common is they both believe in sound money and that really is the answer. Until we get to sound money, we will never ever be free. We'll always be talking about in the weeds. We really just need to get to a sound money system so the government can't steal from us through inflation. >> We may we may agree. We may like sound money, but we disagree as to what is what what is sound money. >> That's fair. Well, I mean, you look at Trump administration and there, you know, I hang on. >> This is my conspiracy theory hat. I brought it. So, I wear it whenever I do a, you know, a video and I'm I'm going to go down a rabbit trail a little bit. But, uh, you know, in Trump 1.0, he had a picture of Andrew Jackson in his office and Andrew Jackson was the last president paid off the debt and he took out the last central bank. I think that picture was on his wall for a reason. He nominated Judy Shelton, a gold bug, to uh the Fed. Couldn't get her in, but it showed something. He gets into office, he goes, "We're going to audit the gold." And then crickets. Well, there's a lot of people in the gold community that think maybe that gold's not there. Well, if you wanted to give the guys that took it time to put it back, what would you do? You tell them, "I'm going to come check." And then you'd give them time to put it back. Now, I'm not saying that's happening, but it wouldn't surprise me, right? And then you say, "Okay, we've got to get the sound money people on the same page. So, we're going to be pro Bitcoin and we're going to be pro gold. And I agree with Brent. We got a dollar infrastructure system that works globally and as long as it works, people are going to use the dollar. So if we don't change the dollar and we don't change the dollar system, but we we bring the dollar to some kind of backing to try to preempt perhaps the Chinese doing the same thing. >> I don't know. >> The current system though doesn't actually work. I mean, it works for the United States because we get to live beyond our means, but it doesn't work for the rest of the world that has to support us. And the global imbalances keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger because as long as the dollar is a reserve currency, America will abuse that privilege uh to live beyond its means and consume that without producing and and and borrow without savings. And these imbalances get worse and worse and we do all sorts of damage to the global economy. You know, as long as this system is maintained, >> all the more motivation for the rest of the players to join the cause to deolarize. >> Yes, it is inevitable. >> But it's not an easy task. Well, well, one thing I would point out is everything that the United States does to the rest of the world with regard to abusing the system, the rest of the world does to their own citizens using the exact same methods. And if they could do it to the rest of the world, they would. Uh, you know, the sins of the United States government are too long to list. The number of mistakes we have made would fill up this entire room. But that doesn't dispo intelligence and genius on the behalf of China and Russia and Afghanistan and Egypt and Turkey and Libya and all of these other countries. I think there's oftentimes a belief that, you know, our leaders are a bunch of idiots, which I'm not going to argue with you when you say that. But I don't think that the leadership on the other side of the planet is, you know, fair and treats their citizens better and, you know, is is a paragon of virtue. you know, most governments are in place because they want to control the situation, whether that be the resources, the people, um, you know, the region. Um, and the idea that, you know, the rest of the world is going to offer this new system that is more fair and more uh uh altruistic than the one that the United States is offering, I think is completely misplaced. Um, I agree that the the alternative already exists, gold. It's it's been around for thousands of years and it's been been used and it works, but that's not what the world has chosen. Um, the governments have chosen something else. And until the people push back hard enough and demand its use, we are going to use the money that the government tells us that we need to use. >> All right, folks. Let me let me chime in here. Um, so couple things and and the thing I'm wrapping having the most trouble wrapping my brain around is that Peter and Lawrence have given the most concise answers on this panel so far. That happen. Um, so I I want to build on what you just said there, Brent, but real quick, Larry, I want to toss it to you. >> Um, we haven't talked about Bitcoin all that much yet, so I want to ask you sort of two joined questions for you to react to. um where where do you think the Bitcoin critics um you know where do they have validity in their concerns and then secondly where do you think most people are missing the boat on Bitcoin right now? >> Great questions. Um so I think the validity the only concern that I have and and it's a concern that actually Michael Sailor has um because I asked him in a in a small group private conversation is that the Bitcoin software and code is controlled by um a group called the core developers and the code is open source everyone can see it. It's not very um you know so there's nothing secret about it and improvements and changes are proposed and voted on and and then accepted and if if somebody really wants to change it they'll try a hard fork and of course nobody will follow them. Um but you know upgrades and changes small things generally are made by this group of people over time and as with any group of people they don't always agree and um there's a debate going on right now over something called op return which is something to do with the space on each block and uh and what can be in it and you know there's a very strong argument on one side a strong argument on the other side I have a view on it I'm not going to state it here because it's just not it's not the point the point is that um you know Bitcoin the software will have to evolve over some period of time to deal with various threats. One of which is quantum computing which I think don't doesn't really become a threat for at least 10 years and maybe 20 based on the scientists and the things I've read and I read a lot about it. Um so I'm not terribly worried about but the point is that it could become a threat and quantum computing would allow people to hack the coins hack the passwords on the on the coins which is what makes the coins secure. So as Brett and I were talking about the whole notion it's completely immutable. you know, there's some very small percentage chance that someday it's not unless it's upgraded and that upgrade would have to take place as a result of the core developers. And so, you know, as sailor said to me, he said, "Look, Larry, you know, the the problem with human beings is they want to fix stuff. They want to tinker with stuff and this thing is working perfectly and beautifully, and the only thing that concerns me is that some group of rogue core developers would mess with it." Now, as I say, there are safeguards because it would have to be approved, voted on, accepted, forked, etc. So, I rate this as all extremely low stuff, but it's not zero. Um, the second criticism, I think, um, well, that's that's really the major one. That's that's really the only one I can think of. I I I've said to other people though, if for some reason adoption were to slow down and people were to just kind of organ, and this is why when I when I argue with Peter on this, Peter's like, "Well, okay, it's going to blow up here, Larry. It's eventually going to die." And I'm like, "Okay, fine. What's the proximal event that's going to cause it to blow up?" Because it's been 16 years and it hasn't blown up. It's it's retreated. It's had big draw downs. We all know that. But every time it comes back because the underlying properties are what they are. And as long as adoption continues, as long as more people I call it in my book, I call it dogs eating the food. This one of the great old venture capitalists at Sequoia said, you know, the when I'm looking at companies to invest in, I look at I want to see situations where the dogs are eating the food and uh and more dogs and more food over time. And so you know in in implying increased demand and so if you look at addresses if you look at hash rate if you look at usage if you look at anything transactions etc in Bitcoin land it's growing consistently >> but you know when when you talk about adoption I don't like people keep saying Bitcoin adoption what are they adopting it for? They're not adopting it as money. People aren't buying Bitcoin the vast majority for the reasons that we're discussing. They're not looking for a an alternative to the dollar. They're looking for Bitcoin as a way to amass more dollars. They're buying Bitcoin because they think the price is going to go up and they'll be able to sell it and get more dollars than they started. So, yes, it's succeeded for 15 or 16 years because we haven't run out of greater fools to buy Bitcoin at a higher price. And what's happened recently to kind of propel it higher is some of the early adopters, you know, the big OGs who bought Bitcoin a long time ago amassed so much money in this pyramid that they were able to, you know, entice Wall Street to get into it with with the with the prospects of making money, booking bets on bit on Bitcoin with ETFs and getting underwriting fees on Bitcoin uh treasury companies. And then they had so much money that they bought off politicians. Uh they bought off Trump and they put him in office. And now they're using the power of the government to try to extend this scheme and get more people >> into it. Not adopting it as a medium of exchange or a unit of account or any kind of money, but as a get-richqu scheme as they ride the Bitcoin rocket ship to the moon and it goes to a million or $10 million of Bitcoin. And that's what's going on. First of all, it's first of all, it it's it's not a scheme. It's it's a protocol. It's being adopted. Then you say, "What are they buying it for?" They're buying it as a form of money that stores value because it has a limited supply. Full stop. The medium of exchange, means of exchange. Sure, that's that's naent. There's something called the the uh the lightning network, which I have a lightning network wallet on my phone. When I go to any Bitcoin conference, I can buy everything I want with a QR code and immediately transact in Bitcoin. cost is about a penny or less, you know, as opposed to paying three or 4% for Mastercard. >> And what percent of Bitcoin transactions are that versus trades? >> Oh, it's it's trivial right now because we're just getting going. >> Yes. And it's been 16 or 17 years and it's still trivial. >> Well, but that but it takes time it takes time for the medium of exchange piece of it to come in. >> It's never going to be a medium. In fact, even the Bitcoin community admits it'll never be a medium of exchange. There are other there are other tokens. They claim it's digital gold. >> That it is digital gold. that that that that is not true at all. It will become a medium of exchange >> in the next couple of decades. It's it's >> when when will gold when will gold become a medium of exchange? >> Well, it's already been a medium. >> It has been, but when will it become that way again? I >> I don't know. It could be but it could be used as a medium of exchange right now. Better than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is too slow and too expensive to use for anything. Bitcoin trading better than Bitcoin. I can send a billion dollars from one end of the world to the other in 10 minutes and have it fully >> and I can send a billion dollars worth of gold. >> Yeah. On a on a 747. >> No, I with a token I can transfer the ownership. You don't have to >> and I have to trust you issuing the token. >> I'd rather you know. I don't trust you as far as I can throw you. >> I'd rather trust a reputable custodian with something than to trust the collective delusions of a bunch of people that nothing is something. All you're trusting is that the people that own Bitcoin don't wake up and realize they got nothing. >> I just I just want to >> There we go. >> Hey, >> I just want to point out that the reason that Peter's wearing a green tie rather than a gold tie is he knows the dollar's not dead yet. [Applause] >> I wore my gold tie on the first day. >> I don't I don't think the average Bitcoin owner believes that they've they've got something that is nothing. They know that they've got the most secure, sound form of money in the world. And they know that the stock toflow ratio is much higher than gold and going down every four years. And ultimately, Bitcoin is going to demonetize gold in the same way that gold demonetized silver. >> Well, then why if that's the case, why is Bitcoin lost a third of its value priced in gold since its peak? In fact, Bitcoin is worth less in terms of gold now than it was four years ago. Despite all this so-called adoption, the Bitcoin president, all the all the Bitcoin ETFs, all the Bitcoin strategy companies, Bitcoin has lost a third of its value relative to a rock. >> Yeah. I thought it was a metal. >> If you take a look at that chart, and the chart was in my presentation yesterday, the charts the number of ounces of gold against Bitcoin, it has been up and to the right since Bitcoin has been formed. Right now, it is on a draw down. It's roughly at 24. It's been as high as 40. It's going to 60. Then it's going to 80. Then it's going to 100. Then it's going to 120. I mean, Bitcoin's going to demonetize gold. It's just that simple. It's a better form of money. >> No, it's not. It's not. It's not any form of money. >> All right. So, I'm I'm going to rest it back here for a second. Um, so Brent, >> yes, sir. Uh what I'm what I'm summarizing from the three other gentlemen here is that uh over the foreseeable future uh the US dollar the fiat US dollar is going to continue to lose purchasing power. >> That's true. >> I think you would agree with that. Y >> they also seem to think that uh that trend will push the rest of the world to ddollarize and over time ddollarize in favor of sound money. It might be Bitcoin. Larry's arguing that might be gold. Peter's arguing that it might be some sort of hard assetbacked bricks currency. That's what Russ was just uh arguing there. I think that you might think differently and I think stable coins may play a role in your answer. Can you >> explain that as much as you can in the remaining 9 minutes we have? >> Define. So I'll give uh yeah so >> I'm my speech later today I think I'm on at noon or 12:30 or something. We'll go over this in detail. Uh but essentially what I think is happening is that the the technology that was developed in the private market by you know the Bitcoin and the digital assets and crypto I think woke the the United States and other countries up to the fact that they could no longer just rest on their laurels and you know use the fact that they could enforce legal tender laws to keep their money as the medium of exchange. And in many ways, I would argue that, you know, the whole roll out of digital assets and the rise of Bitcoin was maybe the greatest beta test in history to see whether it would be adopted, whether it would work, how fast it would work, how tough it would be to regulate. Uh, but I think they have now started to adopt that private technology um on a regular or on a regulated and official state uh sponsored basis. And you've heard Scott Bessant talk about it. You've heard some other uh you know government leaders talk about it. They passed a genius act uh earlier this year which is a way to regulate stable coins and it uh talks about you know what they can and can't do. And essentially a stable coin is a digital token um that can be you know passed around the world instantaneously settles instantly and then that token is tied to some other asset. So, you don't buy a stable coin thinking it's going to increase a lot in value like some of the it's not like a Dogecoin or a Bitcoin where you're expecting it to rise uh in value. Uh what it is is it's tied to some other asset and it should stay stable versus that asset. So, you could have a gold stable coin, which is I think what Peter was talking about, or a gold token, and it will that that token will stay stable versus the price of gold. It may not stay stable versus the dollar or Bitcoin or something else, but that token will track gold. Um 99% of the stable coins already in existence are already tied to the United States dollars. And uh the reason that's important is because that was the private market entrepreneurs meeting demand that people wanted to hold dollars. Um it's not 99% US dollars because the market wanted 99% gold and they said, "No, we're giving you dollars anyway." That was driven by the free market. And I think the United States now realizes that it can adopt that technology and use it as a way to not only help fund itself going forward. We know we all know about the challenges the United States has in funding itself, but more than that they can use it as a digital weapon, for lack of a better way of saying it, to dollarize the rest of the world rather than ddollarize the rest of the world. Because as much as we as Americans sit here and talk about how bad the dollar is, for many other citizens around the world, the dollar is much better than their local currency. And all you have to do is next time you travel, just talk to them. Ask them whether they would rather hold their local currency or a US dollar. Most times they will say a US dollar, especially if you're traveling to an emerging country or a developing country. Um, for them they look at the US dollar as stability. Now, we we in this room may think that's ridiculous. We may not like it, but the market says that is the case. That's not me saying it. That's the market telling me that's what they're saying. And so, I think the future is going to be some kind of a combination of governmentissued fiat as well as the digitized technology and innovation that's been developed over the last >> 101 15 years. >> Yeah. I think the main reason though that the majority of stable coins are denominated in in dollars is Bitcoin is generally expressed in dollars just the way gold is expressed in dollars. people around the world uh think of gold and a dollar price and so they thought that with Bitcoin. They, you know, promote Bitcoin that way. But the the the the demand, the vast majority of the demand for stable coins is for people who want to trade Bitcoin and they need something to trade in and out of. And so when they want to sell Bitcoin, they can move into a tether or a USD token and then they can go back and forth and and and so that's the main use case for stable coins is to facilitate trading in in in Bitcoin or other tokens. And uh and so it's it's kind of like an on andoff ramp in and out of crypto. But I don't see it being widely adopted by people who say they want dollars. Because why would you hold dollars in a non-interestbearing stable coin? If you have dollars that you want to hold, at least get interest on them. At least put them in a money market. Why buy a stable coin and let the stable coin issuer keep all your interest while the dollar depreciates? as as an American American >> Peter Peter's right that that part of the use case for stable coins is to is an on-ramp and offramp for for dollars. And just so I don't know if everyone here knows what stable coins are. Stable coins are coins that are they're like crypto that you can trade through a crypto account, but they Tether and Circle are the two biggest issuers. They're about $200 billion total in size. And they they buy treasury bills behind it. They take in your cash, buy a treasury bill, and then issue you a token that represents a dollar. But let me say Peter's right. The main one of the main use cases, not the only main use case for stable coins is is to an on-ramp and off-ramp for crypto trading. But what really drove stable coin adoption is I view the stable coins as an alternative to the Swift network. So what happened is when the US decided to sanction Russia and sanction Iran and say to all the business people there and I was in Prague recently, you know, earlier this year and I met with a lot of Russian business people. Suddenly they had no way to pay anybody or move money or receive money or whatever it might be. But they quickly, you know, smart entrepreneurial workaround. They get a Kraken account and the dollar is the universal unit of measure. So they just say, "Fine, pay me, you know, stablecoin dollars into my Kraken account." >> Doesn't the US government still have the ability to go after those tokens? They know who owns them. They, you know, they they not kraken's a Yeah, not yet. I mean, >> I mean, I'd say, look, if you really want to get out, then just go to gold. Why stay in the dollar, right? I mean, why not just take a dollar? >> But we're talking about we're talking about means of exchange, not I mean, this >> Well, but it's a different goldback stable coin is just as easy to exchange as a dollar back stable coin. You have the same thing where you have to trust a third party, but at least it's a third party that the US government can't intervene. If the gold is stored in a custodian that's not in the United States, unless we're going to invade that custodian, >> you don't store money, though. >> You can't get the gold. >> But you don't store money. You store assets. Investing and using money on >> you could store money. That's what banks were supposed to do. They store your money. At least we had money. >> Okay. So, you asked, why would somebody hold a coin that doesn't pay interest? get a money market fund at at a minimum. A as an American, you're totally right. That makes a lot of sense. But if you live in Argentina or you live in Egypt or you live in Turkey or you live in Bangladesh and you don't want to hold the local currency, what you end up doing is you end up holding US dollar physical cash. And that's why if you go to any bizaar or little market in anywhere in the world, you can exchange local currency for dollars because everywhere in the world uses dollars on the black market, >> right? This allows this allows citizens of those countries who don't have a bank account and even if they do have a bank account, their bank will not allow them to hold a US dollar balance. And even if they do have a bank that allows them to hold a US dollar balance, they won't let them take it out in times of crisis. This solves all those problems. >> But that's because it would be not as convenient for them to transact in gold coins. But once they're going to move onto a token and they're going to have it in their smartphone, in their wallet and they're going to exchange. Once you're choosing tokens, at that point, dollars lose their advantage over gold. Gold has a much has an advantage over the dollar in the form of a token because >> then why why hasn't all the money there is a digital gold token right now and there's digital US dollars. Why haven't it migrated from tether? >> The reason right now the demand for tokens is primary as a get-rich quick scheme. It's speculative money trying to get rich and therefore they're not interested in a gold token. >> We're not talking about gold mining companies when the demand let me finish. When the demand when the demand for tokens becomes to use them in the real world as a substitute for money as a medium of exchange as a unit of account that's when demand for gold tokens is going to grow. But right now it's just a speculative frenzy. And so people don't want to buy gold because they don't think there's enough upside. They want to buy what's going to go to the moon, right? That's what they want and that's where the demand is. There are a lot of gold back tokens, but it's interestingly interesting. You're talking about Tether. What has Tether been buying? They're buying gold. They're taking the money that they're getting and they're buying gold. They're buying gold royalty companies. What do you They must know something. They're buying all this gold with the with the dollars they got. >> So, I'm I'm going to chime in because I think we're almost done. Yeah. >> 17 seconds. >> All right. I want to bring it home for me. Here's the here's the thing. What I've learned is that you have to set your preferences aside to Brent's point and look at what's actually happening. And you can be blind and we that's why we do panels like this, differing opinions, right? And if you come away confused, just understand that this is all just technology. Gold was a technology. Financial systems are technology. Bitcoin's a technology. Tether state, they're all technologies. I was in Silicon Valley during the 1990s. the internet boom, every company had a dot. Not all of them were going to survive. You had to watch and see which ones were going to make it. There was a time when there was nobody was demanding cell phones because they all wanted phones with wires. But after a while, the infrastructure to support cell phones took over because you didn't get drop calls. So I I I'm I'm watching and I suggest watch what the players in the markets are doing from the central banks all the way down to Main Street. Look around the world at what the global economies are doing, not just the United States. And then watch as the technology and adoption evolves. And there's no reason why you have to pick one or the other, right? There's there's no law that says you can't hold some gold, you can't hold some Bitcoin >> and and then just just put yourself in a position where you're ready to move when it breaks because it's slowly >> then suddenly. >> Yeah. And I wanted to just throw one more point in as to why there aren't more gold backs. >> Real quick, Peter, real quick. >> There's no money in that. I was trying to get the last word where the way you make money is you create a token out of nothing, a memecoin, and you get some fool to buy it from you because it cost you nothing to create it. So all the money is flowing now into just tokeniz into just creating tokens out of thin air so that the issuers can get rich. There's not a lot of money tokenizing gold because you have to actually get the gold, right? And so there's a huge cost there. But when there is demand for a true demand for alternatives to fiat currencies to be used as a mean of exchange, you're going to see an explosion in demand uh for for goldback tokens. >> All right, and we're going to end it there, ladies and gentlemen. A big hand for our excellent panel. Thanks for a clean fight today, gentlemen. >> Yeah, all good. >> Thanks. >> All right. >> I like that hat. >> Well, that was a pretty phenomenal panel. 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