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A
And the Fed. There should be no Federal Reserve. We should have a sound money unit that we all transact in and the price of that money should be set by the free market. And that's called the interest rate period. Nothing else. There should be no bailouts. If you fail, you fail. The Chairman sets the tone and the dissents, even the dissents are somewhat planned. I mean, it's all, it's all kabuki theater to make it look like, oh, we've got these 12 wise people trying to figure out exactly what the monetary policy should be. And they're so thoughtful and deliberate and they're going to get it absolutely right. And since 1913 they've done nothing but fuck it up. What they're going to do, in my opinion, is this decade, and I've said this for a long time, this is going to be a decade of inflation. It started in 2020. We're six years into it, we're not anywhere close to the end of it. Before this is all over, we'll have double digit inflation. We almost had it last time. We got to nine. We're going to get double digit inflation. And the good news is, you know, the economy will probably be cooking and unemployment will be relatively low.
B
How are you doing any?
A
I'm doing great. No complaints. It's all good. Looking forward to a sound money future.
B
Well, me too. We were just saying before the show, the sentiment in bitcoin seems incredibly low right now. I'm hoping that's a bottom signal. I think even during sort of the FTX crash, it was a better sentiment than it is today.
A
Yeah, I'm trying to remember that. It was pretty bleak then too. But yeah, probably the most amazing thing about this one is you kind of got bitcoiners eating bitcoiners and that just drives me nuts because we're all on the same team, 100%.
B
It's funny then everyone banded together because that was kind of like, although obviously hugely impacted bitcoin, it was kind of a shitcoiny thing. That was fraud SBF doing its thing over there. It didn't really impact us. And it felt like everyone kind of all the bitcoiners are on the same side there. Whereas now there's so much infight fighting over sailor, fighting over bit, one turn
A
sleaze, ball trashed and blew up and so all crypto got thrown out, including us. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean we were all in it together and hey, it's 15, it's down hugely. But so what? Right? And yeah. Now it's. And I think, you know, I think a lot of people really kind of bought into the narrative. We hit 100, we hit 126. You know, we're on our way to 200, and then, you know, it didn't happen. And so you've got a recipe for disappointment and anger and so on and so forth, and. And nobody ever said this was going to be easy, but say. One of the things I really take comfort in, Danny, is, is that, you know, if you look at all the drawdowns, I mean, you look at any asset class, you look at the history of the asset class, right. If you look at the drawdowns in bitcoin, I mean, you know, what are we at? 90, 75, 80? I mean, they're all big. I mean, you know, over 60%. And as painful as this has been, you know, October, we had a high, what, 124, 126, you know, now I think the low on this one is 60, so just a tad over a 50% drawdown. I mean, hey, this is nothing. And to me, that speaks to kind of the institutional adoption. You know, there's a strong bid at the low end of the power. Law is kind of how I see it. So I. I'm. I'm just not worried. You know, I. It's like everybody else. I'm impatient. You know, I'd like to see it go to 200 tomorrow, but, you know, if that happens next year, so that's okay, you know?
B
Yeah. I mean, if you'd have told me five, six, seven years ago that we're only going to have 50% drawdowns, I'd have bit your hand up for it. So I guess we can't complain about this.
A
We're moving in the right direction. I mean, if 60 is the new 15, all right, I can live with that, because I know what that means when we do get into the upswing phase, that we're going to 180 or 200 or 240 or something, it's going to be much higher than it was the last time around. So here we are.
C
Yeah. Bitcoin will continue to win.
B
But I want to talk to you about everything that's just happened at the Fed, because Kevin Walsh just had his first meeting. There's loads of stuff I picked out a bit that I thought were interesting. I think it seems like he wants the Fed to kind of change course on some of the stuff that they're doing. But before I get into sort of my thoughts, I want to Hear your thoughts. You'll know this far better than I do. So what was your general take on it?
A
It'll be interesting to compare our perspective. So first of all, may I call for a confession? I actually thought he would say some dovish stuff. I mean I feel like they need to be dovish eventually. They, you know, they're, you know, they had to turn QE back on, although they call it reserve management in December. And they've been buying the long treasury bonds with, you know, the short term notes. And so, you know, I see strains in the monetary system in the, in the 10 year hit 470 and the Japanese, you know, 10 year went up and the yen is struggling to go, you know, looking like it's going to go through 160. So, so it seems to me like we, you know, financial conditions are kind of indicating that they're going to have to print here at some point. So I kind of thought they would do it. And in part also I thought that because pre being appointed he had kind of said hey, you know, we're going to use this trim medium PCI, which is a, you know, 100 points, 100 basis points lower, so 2.3, it's the Dallas version. And by the way, he said, I kind of see myself like Greenspan. I think all this AI is going to lead to productivity and therefore we can have lower rates and not have inflation. So, so I kind of thought he might surprise on the inflationary side. I was wrong. It was dead ass wrong. What he did was very interesting and this just shows how they're so good at always changing the game. I mean he basically came out and said nothing like zero guidance. I mean it was like Greenspan, you know, like if you understand what I'm trying to say, then I haven't done a good job of delivering my message. I mean he gave literally no message. You know, we are not giving forward guidance. We don't know where we're going. We're going to do a big overhaul of everything and like the bureau, the good bureaucrat that he is, you know, we're going to create these new committees. I, I, he had a name for them. I, the, the task force.
B
The AI task force. Yeah.
A
Mr. Task force. So we have a task force, five task force to deal with all these different. Okay, great. And so, you know, I guess the way he decided to play it was, and I, I, I take this because Trump, you know, reacted positively to what he did. I think the game, it's clear to me that what the game plan Is, is okay. He can't come in and immediately cut rates because he looks like he's bowing to Trump. He's got to establish that he's a, a mean, tough folker, like, you know, sound money guy. And he iterated that, you know, the 2%'s too high and I mean, the inflation's too high and we are going to get it back to Turk said that multiple times. I was a very. He emphasized that message, okay, that's important. You know, didn't say how. And then, and then he said, you know, we got these committees going to work on these problems. And I think what he's going to do is he's going to throw the inflation committee, you know, a bunch of gobbledygook and they're going to come back and tell him, no, you know, yes sir, we actually can cut rates because trim mean PCI is lower and you are getting the productivity gains you got, you thought you were going to get. And I think he is going to cut. He's going to have to eventually, whether it's the next meeting or the one after that. My guess is the next meeting because the midterms are coming up. And so, you know, I suspect at that point, but, but at that point he will be able to say, hey, look, I'm a hawkish guy, but I'm telling you the right thing to do here is to look through this data and cut. And that's what Bessant was saying too, that the data, the data is. I couldn't believe besent used the word. So he called it transitory. I was like, dude, that's not a very good word. I mean, that kind of got. It got run out of a rail. So I was wrong, but I don't think I'm entirely wrong longer term. I think he's ultimately going to have to crump and cut rates now, his whole balance sheet reduction thing and that he also, you know, calmed the bond market by saying he intended to do that. You know, I'm not sure. I don't think he can do that. You know, that's where I part ways with this whole Fed is that they, you know, they are a machine for creating money. If, you know, I've had a chart that I put up on Twitter a lot that shows the growth of debt and the growth of GDP and the two lines are separating because debt is growing faster than gdp. Well, that's a problem. Eventually you can't support the debt unless you create more m2 to make the nominal GDP higher. Maybe not real GDP, but at least nominal. So, So I think, you know, I still think my big print thesis is real. I don't whether it happens in a big print or a medium print or you know, the time, who knows. But I think it's real. But I, I guess I was kind of, I, you know, I thought to myself, I mean he also sounded kind of arrogant. I mean my partner said it was kind of like Ted Lasso does a Fed meeting. You know, like, you know, arrogant and folksy and we're going to get it right and it's all going to be okay and trust us. I'm like, really dude? I mean, come on. So, you know, we'll see what happens. Obviously, you know, if he had been more dovish, our stuff would have, you know, taken off. Gold, silver, bitcoin. But he wasn't and here we are. But you know, it's not like we got hit hard either. I mean he, remember he didn't say rate hike, he just said I'm not going to tell you what we're going to do. So you know, like Greenspan, he's kind of letting everybody read their own read it and say to themselves whatever they want. I mean I'm sure there are those people who think oh, he's going to slay inflation and be hawk us and then people like me who think no, he's going to ultimately cut. He's just not saying it yet. He's trying to establish his credibility. So, so I came over, I was disappointed because, you know, I want to get on with the show here. They're going to print. Why don't they just do it? But you know, I understand why he's doing it the way he's doing it. He had to establish that he's not a Trump butt boy and that he was willing to be, you know, firm on inflation. Give some credibility, you know, I mean to be honest with you Dan, the whole goddamn thing is a charade. I mean the 12 people, the voting, all the stuff they say, they make it sound like it's, it's so damn scientific and in fact it's just, you know, finger in the ear, wild ass guess, total gaslighting. And do you know what I mean? They are good mathematically. They are going to print money. They always have printed money. They will always have to print money. Unless, unless, I mean where I'm wrong, where we are wrong is if the government gets responsible and balance its budget. But I just.
B
Never going to happen.
A
Yeah, I just checked those numbers and we're running at 2 trillion or more, you know, and the war didn't help. So, you know, we're, we're just, we're waiting, we're waiting for Godot. And it's a little annoying. I'm annoyed, everyone's annoyed. But, you know, it is what it is. We're, I, I'm, I'm very comfortable that we're on the right side of this. So that, that's how I saw it. How, how did you see it?
B
I mean, probably quite similar. One of the things that I did think was really interesting, what he said was he's going to have, I think an, an inflation task force where they're going to go. He, I think he used the term back to first principles on what inflation is, which to me sounded like he was going to reinvent what inflation is. So it fits his narrative better. And then on the other part of that, he also said that he cares about the left part of the decimal place, not the right. So he's essentially in. That said, he doesn't mind if inflation's 2.9% as long as it's got a 2 at the start, he's okay. So it felt like they were moving the goalposts a lot with both, like what inflation is and how it's calculated and what the Fed are happy with, which to me it seemed like he was setting up to start cutting rates and being a bit looser, but I, but who knows, like what, what do you think they're going to do when they go and look at like the inflation data and what it is? Do you think they are going to reinvent the, the wheel on that?
A
They could, I mean, they could use the trim, mean pci, which throws out the outliers. You know, there's, there are lots of different ways to measure inflation and you know, I mean, and some, you know, I mean, I mean we, we interpret inflation as higher prices, but sometimes higher prices occur and it look, and it is, I mean, inflation is. When something costs more, we all call, but sometimes it's a supply issue. Right? I mean, you know, to a certain extent, some of the inflation we're feeling right now is the fact that we had a war and the Strait of Hormuz got closed and oil was $60 or $50 some dollars pre war and it squirted up into the a hundred range. And so that got passed into everything. So that was, you know, that's, that's not M2 growth directly. That's actually a supply issue, you know, a tightness of supply, you know, causing Prices to go up. Now, you know, we all interpret it as inflation, but it's not M2 inflation. So you know, there's just a lot of things, I mean, and there's this measure and I've been meaning to look into it. I haven't had the time to get on Claude and chat GPT and dig into a lot of some measure called truflation. Some of your listeners may know something about it. Apparently it's pretty low. And so, you know, I'm not sure exactly what they're doing or how they're calculating it. But you know, this is lying with statistics. I mean, you can, you know, I mean you can, you know, you can basically make anything true if you massage the numbers hard enough. So yes, I, I, I picked up on both those points that you said and that's my estimation of how we're going to go, how this is going to go down, but we'll just have to see. I also think it's interesting. He did say, you know, he said, look, I want to shrink the balance sheet. But I remember I read the statement where he said that very carefully, this was a week or two ago or maybe even longer. And he, you know, he also kind of said absent ex, you know, extraordinary conditions. And, and I thought, you know, I thought that, I don't know if he used those exact words, but he said all, you know, markets being calm or in normal conditions. I think I normal condition, I want to shrink the balance. She okay, well, that's leaving yourself the exception for what Hank Paulson recently talked about as the break glass moment. And you and I haven't spoken. I've spoken on other pods about this, but you know, I haven't spoken with this. I, I don't know if you saw it, but sometime in the last six weeks, Hank Paulson, he's the architect of 2008 and you know, the bailouts and all. And he comes and he's retired, he's rich and ex Goldman Sachs, ex Treasury Secretary. And he just decides to come out. He has, and he hasn't made any noise. I mean, he hasn't been active in anything for, you know, since then really. I guess he wrote a book but, and he comes, he decides to come out on Bloomberg and say, you know, this debt thing is really somewhat of a problem and we've got a lot of debt and it's building up, it's getting large relative to underlying economy, but you know, blah, blah, blah, and you know, there could be a real problem here at some point in the future. And it could even lead to what I would call a break the glass kind of moment in the debt markets. And we ought to be probably thinking about what our plan is if and when that occurs. Now that really, I was like, wow. Because that's, that's what we all think could occur, right? I mean, the debt will be too large relative to the gdp, and they'll have to print more money to address that discrepancy. And so here's the former Treasury Secretary coming out unprompted and saying it. But I don't think he was unprompted. I think somebody at fairly high levels said, hey, why don't you go float this trial balloon? And he did. And so to me, that was kind of a warning. And there have been others who've said it. I mean, hell, even Powell used to say, you know, this can't go on forever, this debt growing faster than gdp. So, you know, they kind of know it in the back of their minds. And you know, I mean, I, I think where we get the big print, where my book looks right, is if something really breaks and it kind of everything cascades into a correlation of one and there's just not enough money in the system. And you know, then, I mean, you know, the bottom and, and the warning signs for that that I watch are the 10 US tenure, the Japanese tenure, and the Japanese yen, because it's where all the carry trade is funneled through. And so, you know, right now they're all under control. And I'm sure that, you know, Treasury Department watches them very, very closely too. But my point is that if something were to very quickly, you know, if we were to have like a Liz Truss kind of moment, you know, like you guys had in Britain, you know, the, the, the, the monetary fire hoses would be brought to bear very, very quickly. And at, at that point in time, you know, our stuff just goes bananas. So. And we'll just have to see. I'm not guaranteeing that's the outcome, but I think it's in the realm of possible outcomes. Right.
C
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B
little bit tinfoil hat, but do you think the Fed sometimes will look at the situation, they'll realize that their sort of fiscal deficit's way too high and they're waiting for something to break, kind of hoping something breaks so they can do this, because just under normal market conditions, they don't. They can't, obviously.
A
Well, certainly something breaking gives them cover. No doubt. Um, I think they would prefer to not have things break, though. I mean, it's embarrassing when they break it, you know, hurts their credibility when they have to come in with fire hoses, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And, and we're all starting to depec. Detect a pattern. I mean, my book talked about that. You know, 2008, okay, that's big print one, Covid. That's big print two, you know, the next one. And each one kind of got kicked upstairs. I mean, you know, 2008 was housing and financial leverage in the Wall street banks. You know, 2020 was an economy shut down, but we kind of kicked it up at the sovereign debt level. And the next one's kind of the big one. I mean, if people start to lose faith in the currency, you know, we got to go to yield curve control. And that's what they did World War II. And, you know, I mean, as I've said in the past, I mean, if, if it really does break and it breaks hard, you know, the Fed might step in and say, okay, well, we stand ready to buy, you know, whatever treasury bills you folks want to sell, you know, at a, at a, you know, at a, at a fixed rate. And, you know, that rate will be low enough compared to inflation that the entire bond market is going to look at the Fed and say, sold to you. And, and, you know, the total Fed balance sheet goes from, you know, what, six something now it was nine at the peak, you know, to 18, because the bond market is 30, 30 trillion plus. So, you know, that's, that's one of those possibilities. And I, I actually think there's a decent chance of that happening. But, but they, you know, they don't want it to happen, and they're going to try to, you know, incrementally do it, you know, kind of keep everything together. I mean, and, you know, and they've done a pretty good job of that, right? I mean, when, when Silicon Valley bank failed in 2023, I thought, okay, this was, this is it. Here we go. They're going to, you know, it's going to be a huge. They patched it all back together. They created the btfp. They, Yellen came out and said she'd guarantee all the deposits even though she couldn't because there's 17 trillion and the FDIC only had a couple hundred billion. But it got everybody calmed down and there's a certain, you know, there's a certain bias in the United States that we're, you know, we're doing a good job and we're still the best country in the world and we've got, you know, the best currency in the world and all that other stuff. And to some degree those things are true, but we're also, you know, the boat is also leaking and some of the weaknesses are showing. And so, you know, I think there's a, you know, but, but do they want it to break? I don't think so. I think they want to incremental. I mean, they want to, they want to just keep the system. My guess is that every single Fed chair just wants to keep the system going as is status quo, you know, 7% inflation, but call it 2 and, you know, become a hero and end up like Bernanke on the COVID of magazine or Powell who got an award from Princeton as being, you know, the most noteworthy alumni the last, you know, 30 years or, you know, whatever it might be. And, and I'm sure that's what Warsh is aiming for as well. I mean, he doesn't want to have a fire breakout. And so, you know, that's why they're doing this reserve management program. They'll do other things too. They'll, you know, I know there's a point of this out. My partner, James Lavish has, you know, really dug into the fact that the supplemental leverage ratios of the banks are changing and that'll allow, I mean, they'll probably try and do QE via the banks. I mean, if they don't want to put them on their balance sheet, they'll try and get the banks to put them on their balance sheet. And who knows? I mean, they could probably create some new program, you know, some new acronym, a new program and give the banks an incentive to buy those Treasuries. I don't Know what that'll look like. But it wouldn't surprise me to see them do that. But those Treasuries got to get bought. And if they don't get bought and people think that the currency is failing because, you know, too much money is being printed and too much debt is being accumulated, well then, you know, then problems arise. I mean, you know, I mean I just saw that we had 1.3 trillion run rate last 12 months at 1.3 trillion of interest expense in the United States. And we've got, I mean total defense spending was 900 billion and Trump wants to take it 1.5. Of course that's not going to help the deficit. And you know, 1.3 trillion is a lot of money. And I've also seen that, you know, depending on what you look at, that we've got a role, we've shifted all the debt to the short term bonds or notes and we've got a roll 9/9 trillion of it in the next 12 months. And I mean the one thing that cutting rates would do is it would actually help their P and L, I mean if, you know they're paying, they're now paying on these shorter notes, you know, three, three something. And you know, if we took rates down to one and a half percent, I mean we have a hell of a lot of inflation, they'd run it hot. But it would also cut the government's interest bill because they could sell notes at that level and okay, great, they're not paying as much now again, eventually what all of these moves will trigger and what they're trying to prevent is Gresham's Law. Where I've studied hyperinflations, I wrote about them in my book. We all know how these monetary systems fail. Most of these other systems have failed. We're not the world's reserve currency in the most powerful country in the world. So we're not talking apples to apple, but a system, a monetary system fails when everyone knows they can't stop printing. When it becomes completely obvious to everyone that they can't stop printing the currency, they all abandon the currency and the currency becomes worthless. There is no longer any demand for it. And so, so the question is, how close are we to that point? And I would say we're not that close. But we're closer today than we were before 08 and before 2020. And you know, I think with the, with every piece of debt and every, you know, program that they put in, we get closer still. And so at some point in time, you know, it's like, this is. This is like a critical stage. There's a name for it, but this. It's like when something. When something changes form. Like, you know, water goes to ice or boils and goes to gas. I mean, it's like. Or an avalanche or a volcano. I mean, it can stay a certain way for a long point in time. And then you get the last snowflake that falls, and bang. You know, the avalanche releases and goes down. And then the same or the same would be true with, you know, a volcano. I mean, the magma can be bubbling around, nothing's going on. And suddenly enough pressure gets built up and wow, you know, you got, you know, on. Helen Montaigne. Helen. I mean, it's like. And. And I. I kind of feel like there's a little bit of a parallel there with this monetary system. You know, they can keep piling on this debt and keep patching it up. They can keep doing all these various things, but at some point, we could get to the point where, guess what? There just isn't enough money in the system. And if they don't cure it and cure it fast, we got a correlation of one event, and we've seen them. We saw one in.08. We saw one in 2020. Nothing about the system has changed, so why wouldn't we see another one? That's kind of how I see it.
B
Yeah. With you saying this will fail when everyone realizes they can't stop printing. You and I know they can't stop printing. Bitcoiners know. Gold bugs know enough people know right now. And if they do it again, that sort of pool of people, that, though,
C
is just going to increase with each event.
A
It gets larger. Right. 08 created a bunch of gold bugs. 2020 created a bunch of bitcoin bugs. The next one will. I mean, but, you know, I mean, I don't know what percentage of the. I mean, I think most of the population knows that inflation's a problem. I mean, that's because they go to the grocery store. We all know that.
B
But I also think most people in the population don't know what causes inflation.
A
And that's exactly right. That's the problem. I think there's probably 10, 10 to 15% that really understand that the, the fundamental issue is the printing money and the Fed and the government deficits and have really connected all the dots, you know, and. And that's why I wrote my book, was to try to help educate everybody else so that eventually, you know, as this continues, it keeps getting worse. Everyone keeps losing More and more money and, and, and having to live, you know, on less and less money on a relative purchasing power basis, you know, we start voting for or advocating for sound money politicians. I mean, you know, the two brightest things I've seen in the United States. I don't know how familiar you are with either of these guys, are guys named Thomas Massie and Warren Davidson.
B
I mean, Thomas Massey's awesome.
A
Yeah, these, these are sound money people. You know, I mean, Cynthia Loomis is too, but unfortunately she's retiring and they're. And, and so that's a start. You know, Ron, Ron Paul was a sound money person, but he aged out, sadly. You know, but, but there will be more because, you know, people will experience pain and realize that this is the cause of the pain. And, you know, eventually we'll, we'll get through the other side. I mean, one of the things that angers me the most, people call me a doomer, and I'm not a doomer. I'm very optimistic in the human condition. I'm very optimistic on technology. I mean, our lives are getting better in so many ways, but in an unfair, we have an unfair system where the lives of the people at the top are getting better, the lives of the people bottom are getting worse. That's just tragically unfair. And it's what creates a lot of dysfunction. And, you know, we've got to get back to the sound money system if we want to solve that problem. And so, you know, having blue scream at red or having red scream at blue, that's, that's just not doing anything. That's all just. That's unfortunate. That's a Hegelian. I mean, they want you to do that because it takes you, it takes your eyes off of them. Them being the Fed and the, and the people, the bankers and the system and the politicians that are laughing all the way to the back. Right?
B
A hundred percent. And it's funny, you know, that I, I'm no macro guy. I'm a macro tourist. And I feel like over the last. But over the last six months, I've been going down this path where I've been like, maybe the big print isn't coming. Maybe like reserve management, maybe they can find a new way out of this. And then I, if you imagine this is like the Bell Curve meme where on the left it's like big print, on the right, it's big print. I was somewhere in the middle, and the thing that's pushed me back to the left is I was reading one of Luke Grohman's pieces recently and he was Talking about this 8 trillion or 9 trillion in the next 12 months of debt that has to roll over and it's rolling over into very high rates. And you look at that, there's so much stuff that's unsustainable, but you look at that and it's like, that is completely unsustainable. Like that cannot continue without something breaking. And I just think now more than I have done in a little while, I just think a big print is inevitable. And I don't think we're that far away. I can't imagine it last 12 months at this rate.
A
Well, you're singing my song. But honestly, I wrote the book and I'm afraid I might end up looking wrong. I don't know. I mean, Lynn, Lynn, who I respect enormously, is much smarter than I am, I mean, thinks that they can gradually, you know, work their way through it and they may be able to and I just don't know. And I, I read Luke too, and he's brilliant and he's got, you know, he, I think he leans a little bit more my side. You know, just, there's going to be nuclear level of printing, but we just don't know. We don't know. There's so many moving pieces. There's politics, there's, you know, a ton of other things. I mean, I will say this in favor of the big print. My partner, David Foley and I have done a lot of work on it. There's just a lot of leverage, a lot of bubbly shit in the economy. And so one of the things that leads to a monetary problem is when you have pumped up valuations that deflate because somebody made economic decisions based on those valuations and therefore they got to change their life and cut back. I mean, and you know, there wasn't necessarily a big print around the dot com bubble in 2000, but I mean, to tell you, they're, you know, they, the only, they, they started the housing bubble after that as a reaction to that. When that burst, there were a lot of pumped up valuations of dot coms. And when that burst, the Nasdaq went down 82% and stocks went down 50%. That was no fun for anybody. And you know, they didn't print there. They, they took rates to 1% and blew a housing bubble. But, you know, we can't blow another bubble because the next bubble would be on Mars. I mean, we're at the sovereign debt levels, but there's no more bubble left to, to, to Blow. But I guess what I'm alluding to is when I look at a SpaceX or some of the, you know, the, the valuations of the chip stocks right now, I think to myself, okay, well, there, there's a lot of, you know, paper value in these things that at some point could deflate when, you know, if they don't come true the way people think they're going to come through. And I'm not anti AI. I love AI Used all the time. It's going to change the world. It's just like the Internet. It's going to be enormously important. I totally agree. I was in the Internet, I invested, I made money in it. I rode the bubble. I got hurt on the backside of it. Although I did short some things too. But, but one thing that was certainly true was that in 2000, 2001, we didn't know exactly what was going to happen. We didn't know, you know, I couldn't see that Amazon would become Amazon. I couldn't see Facebook, I couldn't see all the. They just didn't exist or they weren't fully developed. You know, we, we invested like crazy in a bunch of fiber, all which got used, but which got totally devalued. I mean, WorldCom and all these other companies, you know, went, went bankrupt or had to get restructured because they took on too much debt to build too much fiber. And, you know, and I, I just feel like that same, you know, that same story is being played out in AI, Right. That it will change the world, no doubt. But, you know, chasing the. It's. It's the new shiny thing. And by the way, actually, I think that's part of why bitcoin is kind of punk right now. I mean, I know people in bitcoin, bitcoiners and tech guys who are kind of like, yeah, bitcoin's old hat. I'm all in on AI. Okay, all right, good luck with that. What are you paying for? What are the cash flows? How does it, how does that all work? You know, So, I mean, and both
B
of those things can be true. Like, I, I'm with you. AI is clearly going to change everything, but the market can also be overvaluing them right now. Like those both can be true. And this and this.
A
Yeah, this is a pattern as old as time. It's happened with railroads, canals, I mean, you name it. The automobile radio, you know, rca. I mean, all of it.
B
So the thing that I think is interesting, though is like, when you talk about the US Economy doing Quite well. Like, I don't know if it is outside of AI stocks. Like AI stocks is the right now, it seems. And so like. Yeah, and do they let them fail if, do they let the bubble pop?
A
Well, the, the, you get into the strategic. Yeah, the, the whole strategy, we've got to win this versus China. And you know, you see the US investing in intel and so on and so forth. I mean, you're right. I mean, I, the US GDP would not be doing very well without, you know, what is it? I think it's this year it's 600 billion and it's trending towards a trillion of capex on AI, on data centers, chips, machines, et cetera. I mean, oh my God. I mean, I look, I, I hope they know what they're doing. And I, I see, you know, I see really good companies, you know, taking on a lot of leverage to do it. And the one that I kind of respect a little bit is Apple, because they're not doing it. I think, you know, my partner and I've talked about this. They might be just sitting around waiting to see how it all shakes out. But even Google is, you know, they're all, they're all making an enormous capex bet that winning this race is important. And they may be right. They may be completely right and I may be completely wrong. But I look at it and I also, I just get the feeling that it has that dot com, you know, we don't really know exactly how it's all going to work. And you know, and the other thing that I think is a threat there that I don't think enough people have focused on is that this deep sea thing in China, I mean, this stuff may not be as proprietary or as hard to replicate as everybody thinks. And everyone's like, well, it's a race and we got to win it. Well, is it. Or can somebody in China do it cheaper and easier and better and faster? I mean, we kind of saw a glimpse of that with deep seek. So, you know, I just don't know it. It's. Look, I'm excited by it because I do know, I look at my life and I look at how much my productivity goes up. You know, I mean, I want to understand something quickly. You know, I hop on Claude and chat and I, I can, I can get my arms around and accompany, you name it, it's just, it's stunning. And that's going to be replicated, you know, a thousand times over throughout the entire economy. So that's a really good thing. But you know, is the capital being allocated correctly today? Doesn't feel like it to me. I'm skeptical. I mean, I look at SpaceX, I mean I, you know, the, the, the satellite business, you know, the starlink business. That is a fabulous business. I want to own that business, but I don't want to own it at this price.
C
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B
And I think the point you raise on AI is actually really interesting because I agree, I think one of the things I've been watching is the price of compute for these AI companies has gone up over 100% in the last six months or something. It's a number like that. And the open source models that you can run on your own computer are getting very, very good. They're not quite as good as the frontier models, but they're very good for most things. And I just wonder when people stop paying for it and start using this open source ones you could run at home. That might be too techy, that might be unrealistic, but it's a trend that I'm definitely going to be watching.
A
Well, and also, I mean I'm paying for Claude, I'm paying for chat. I'm just at the $20 a month level. I'm not paying for the big, the big stuff but you know, but I, as I understand it, I haven't used them much. I mean, you know, Grok and Gemini. I mean I think with Grok you've got to be paying, you know, you've got to be a blue check mark on Twitter. But that's not terribly expensive. And I think isn't Gemini free, the Google product? I don't know, I think it's very low cost, I think.
B
Yeah, I actually don't know. I think if you have a Google account you get like some usage for free I think, but I don't exactly want.
A
Or it's like they try and upgrade you like. Yeah, like chat. Yeah, no, I started using Chat and I quickly hit my question limit and I was kind of like, all right, I'll pay you the 20 bucks. I mean so it's going to be
B
really interesting to see how it plays out though, because one of the things I was talking to Peter Dunworth on the show recently and he made a point that I Think was actually very interesting in that there's a lot of people in this AI trade right now. It's clearly taken the wind out the sails of bitcoin a little bit over the last 12 months or so. But when that trade does roll over, and at some point it will. It could be in five years time, who knows? But at some point that trade will roll over a little bit. Where do people put their money? Because the bond market is not looking attractive. Other equities outside of AI aren't looking particularly attractive. Does that start flowing back into things like gold and bitcoin? These are people who are sort of tech savvy, you'd imagine on the whole, the, the AI investors, like bitcoin looks pretty attractive then.
A
I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right. That bitcoin does look attractive. And you know, bitcoin is just, it's, you gotta be patient with this asset. You just, you really have to be patient. And I've got people that I put into it last year that, you know, probably have average costs of 100, 105, 110. And they're calling me and they're scared. And I'm just like, look, I told you when you did it, you know, you gotta be prepared for a 50% drawdown and think to yourself, if that happens, I'll buy more, not sell. And I don't think they're even close to the buy more. I'm trying to prevent them from selling. But those of us who've been around in a long time, you know, we just, we understand it and it's just kind of like, okay, you know, it is what it is. I mean, this is, this is the nature. I mean, I, you know, go back and study the growth of Amazon. I mean, Howard Marks, you know, made a fortune. I think it was Howard Marks. No, it was somebody else. I'm getting my name, the names wrong, but there was a fellow who was an investor in Amazon from the beginning, and you know, he suffered big drawdowns and he just kept, you know, he'd buy the dip and did extremely well with it. So, yeah, it's.
B
Bitcoin just looks more and more attractive. The thing that this kind of plays into. And one of the questions I had for you about the Fed meeting, I want you to try and clear this up for me, Larry, is the idea of getting rid of forward guidance. Because that has been a thing for the last, I don't know how long, but when Powell was talking about higher for longer and things like that, they have given foreign guidance and Walsh wants to get rid of that entirely. Why do you think that is? Because, is it the idea that they want to keep some optionality, keep some flexibility? They know that inflation's high, they know that the treasury market's not in great shape, and instead of telling the market what they're going to do, they want to kind of keep that flexibility, or is it that they, they think the market can't sort of is too fragile to have the forward guidance at this point?
A
Well, that's a great question. I, you know, I'm not quite sure. I think it, I think it just, in my mind, it just kind of falls into the. Let's change, let's continually change the rules of the game to keep the other side off balance. We're the other side, right? We're trying to figure out what the hell they're going to do. And so, you know, they'd gotten to the point where they had dot plots and projections and Nikki Leaks and all kinds of stuff. And I can see where they kind of said, you know what? We're, we're hamstrung by this. We've got our, you know, got our arms tied behind our back because we're giving, telling people shit, we got to warn them of shit, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And they, they thought they were being responsible in doing that. And now they, they, they, they've, they have decided they want to have optionality without any restraints and, you know, let it, let it just, you know, let's let it rip. And to me, this takes us back to Greenspan. I mean, Greenspan did the same thing. I mean, he talked in total gobbledygook. I mean, he, he gave forward guidance, but you couldn't figure out what it was. And, and, I mean, even joked about it how, you know, if you, if you, if you think you understood me, then obviously I didn't do my job very well. He said that once. And so, you know, the, the job, I mean, really, the job is the job of a con man. I mean, they're supposed to sit there and convince us they've got inflation under control, and yet they don't. And they're doing things to inflate. That's really the whole job. I mean, in a, in a nutshell, that describes what a Fed chairman has to do. He has to gaslight the public into thinking that the, the money is sound and the fed has got 12 people. I mean, you know, I find it hysterical, Danny, that people say, well, you know, wars can't get the votes to cut rates. I mean, give me a break. The way this works is that the chairman bullies everybody else. I mean, read, you know, read the books about, you know, what. What Bernanke did to Thomas Honig or what, you know, Greenspan. I mean, you know, or Yellen. I mean, the chairman sets the tone and, and the dissents, even the dissents are somewhat planned. I mean, it's all. It's all kabuki theater to make it look like, oh, we've got these 12 wise people trying to figure out exactly what the monetary policy should be. And they're so thoughtful and deliberate and they're going to get it absolutely right. And since 1913, they've done nothing but fuck it up. I mean, and it's kind of like, you know, jesus Christ, guys, just stop gaslighting. Stop with the fucking bullshit and admit that you're the Department of Inflation and your job is to inflate, you know, at a rate that we can all tolerate and, you know, basically keep this game going in favor of the bankers and the politicians. Why don't you just say that? I mean, obviously I'm being facetious. They can't say that. But that, you know, that. That's. To me, that's really what's going on here. It's just. They're just playing a game. And. And I'm just so annoyed by it and so fed up with it. And the sooner we can get rid of it and we get the entire world to realize that it's a sick joke on all of us, the better off we'll be. I mean, that's. That was the whole Ron Paul movement. Just end the Fed. There should be no Federal Reserve. We should have a sound money unit that we all transact in, and the price of that money should be set by the free market. And that's called the interest rate period. Nothing else. There should be no bailouts. If you fail, you fail, you know, and you want to take on a bunch of leverage and swing for the moon, great. But if you blow it, you know, you lose everything and you're out of business. You're not, you know, bailed out like Lloyd Blankfein was and, you know, when he was won in Goldman Sachs in 08, you know, and now he, you know, lives in a mansion on Long island and, you know, and holds forth on Twitter about all kinds of policy issues. Just makes me sick. It's like, you know, the guy shouldn't be bankrupt, right?
B
100%. I couldn't agree with that more. It's like what it says to me, the lack of full guidance is they just don't know what they're going to do. Like at least with Powell, like he was saying higher for longer and the market could kind of digest that. And I know it kind of sucks that the market trades on the words of this one person, but it just screams to me that they don't know, they don't know what they're going to do. They're stuck. I do think like the Fed looks trapped here. One of the things that I've been reading though is like Jeff Frost's substack is brilliant. I've been reading it a lot. And he, and he was, he was talking about like the Fed don't actually set the rate. The market sets the rate and it's the, like the two year bond and the overnight funding rate. And I was looking at that recently and that now is signaling that rates need to go higher or will go higher. Do you think that is probably likely in the next meeting? I know earlier you said do you think they're going to cut at some point?
A
Jeff Gundlach thinks rates need to go higher. Same thing. And we all know that the two year really is the fed funds rate kind of in disguise. And Groman has a great chart where he just shows the two year has been going higher, open, above the rate by, by a significant amount. Yeah, I think that would be a great way to run it. But as a practical matter, I don't think that's how they are going to run it because I think they're political and you know, I think, I think the scent is in on all of this and they've as much as said they expect to grow their way out of it. And how do you get growth? You drop interest rates so that you get more projects being taken on. I mean, you know, one of the problems that right now is all these people are frozen in their houses. There are people who have 3% mortgages that can't move because the new bigger house that they want would have a 7% mortgage. They can't afford it. And so you know, the house, if they can get rates down substantially, you know, the housing market will pick up. You know, I mean, I mean look, we, if what they're going to do in my opinion is this decade, and I've said this for a long time, this is going to be a decade of inflation. It started in 2020. We're six years into it. We're not anywhere close to the end of it before this is all over, we'll have double digit inflation. We almost had it last time. We got to nine. We're going to get double digit inflation. And the good news is, you know, the economy will probably be cooking and unemployment will be relatively low. Somebody's got to build those data centers, somebody's got to do all this work. But the bad news is that, you know, with, with, you know, and somebody's got to do those housing, you know, all of it. When we get interest rates low economic activity will pick up. So we won't have an unemployment problem. But what we will have is we'll have a red hot inflation problem because the money supply growth will start to pick up again. I mean it's already running at 4 or 5% and it'll run, it'll run significantly hotter and then that'll filter through to the economy and you know, heaven forbid that the stock or the bond market breaks because even, I mean, if either of those things break, that's what it will take to get the big print, right? The big print. If we just run it hot, we'll end up looking like, you know, Turkey or Argentina or you know, we'll be kind of an emerging market economy with good nominal growth and high inflation. I can see that's actually a scenario that I think is reasonably likely that, you know, that does not require a big print. But that leads to, you know, $10,000 gold and $400,000 bitcoin. I mean, I, you know, and, and you know, $10 gas or $15 gas and $25, you know, ground beef. I mean, I'm talking five years out or something. I mean, I think that's one of the possible paths. And you know, I would guess that would kind of be more of Lyn's, you know, medium print. You know, if something breaks, if this, if we get a leveraged unwind, whether it be AI or you know, private credit or who knows what. But if we get a leveraged unwind somewhere the stock market breaks, the bond market breaks, well then we're going to get a big print and then it's going to get really hairy really fast. And you know, 12% inflation is going to look like a good thing. I mean it's going to be 20%. And I, and I think in the next one, I mean that's the one that could lead to, you know, the reset and the monetary reform. I mean, if you use the fourth turning model I'm modeling we fix all this in the 2030-2033 time frame. Just, and that's just a guess, but it's based on fourth turnings lasting a certain amount of time. And this one started in 08, right? So it lasts 20 to 30 years. I mean, let's say it lasts 30 years. That would take 20, 38. Maybe it'll, maybe it will last that long, I don't know. But it's, it feels like the pace is picking up and certainly the size is picking up. I mean, Renaki printed 3 trillion. It took him four years to do it. Powell printed 5 trillion in 18 months. So, you know, the next guy could print 8 or 9 trillion in six months or something. I mean, I'm just, you know, I'm spitballing here, but you never know, right?
B
The scale of it is insane. I, honestly, without Bitcoin, I don't know how you'd look at this with any kind of hope because you were talking about people moving house at this point. I'm looking at buying a house at some point. And bitcoin gives you that low time preference where I'm like, Bitcoin's at 60k right now. If I wait a year or two, I'll probably get a house at half price. I can wait for rates to come down. It can also put you in a stasis where you don't do anything because you have the best performing asset. But like, it does give you time, which I just don't know what you'd be doing if you didn't have Bitcoin.
A
That's the thing. I mean, you want to own assets where time is on your side. And you know, impatience kills so many people. I mean, one of the, probably one of the biggest mistakes I see everybody, and particularly people in the younger categories make, and I've learned this lesson so many times the hard way is, you know, you just, you want to get there faster so you use leverage. Oh boy. You know, I mean, and that's, by the way, that's kind of what, you know, that's kind of what some of the treasury companies are doing. Do you know what I mean? And I'm, don't get me wrong, I'm a microstrategy holder and I believe, and I think what, you know, Sailor's doing is fine. But I'm just, you know, leverage, leverage in an asset like bitcoin can be, you know, it can be a life altering experience in a negative way. And you know, there's enough, there's enough upside here that you don't need to use leverage. I mean, if you want to Play around with, you know, 5 or 10% of your money in a levered way, fine. You know, if you blow up, you blow up, but, you know, you don't. This is, this is asymmetric enough that you don't need to use leverage 100%.
B
Can we talk a little bit about microstrategy? Because they saylor's been getting some heat over the last few days about stretch and I saw today the price of stretch went down to $83, which is pretty insane.
A
It really is. I was actually buying a little this morning.
B
I mean, it makes sense. If you think it's going back to par, this is a great time to buy it.
A
It will go back to par. I mean, it definitely will. I mean, I, Jesse Mayer, you probably saw it, had a good tweet on it, we talked about it. It felt like a leverage cascade. You know, somebody was getting liquidated. I mean, somebody would probably borrow cheap and gone in there and to get the 11% and levered themselves up and, you know, guess what? They just got a gut check. A big gut check. Yeah, I think it'll come back to par over time. I think, you know, the dividend is very well covered. I think all the strategy hate. I mean, it's, it's sad to see. I mean, I, There are a lot of bitcoiners that I, I know, like Respect, et cetera, who've gone negative on, on Saylor. And I, I think they're mistaken when people call him deceptive. I, I just don't think that's true. You know, I, I think he's been aggressive, but, you know, he wants to win. And you know, I think he's evolved the strategy, no pun intended. But I think he, he has evolved. And you know, that's okay in, in my way of seeing it. Conditions change. It's a war, you know, you change. I mean, he's, he's fighting the Fiat lords and he's, he's rarely running a speculative attack on the dollar. He won't say that, but he is. And so, you know, you do what you got to do. You know, my view is it's, it's a thousand dollar stock in a few years. You know, the, the only way it doesn't work. I mean, if, if bitcoin adoption stops and bitcoin ARR. Stops going up at a very nice rate, well, then strategies leverage. Bitcoin, it's going to fail before bitcoin fails, but I don't think bitcoin's going to fail. And I strongly believe that the ARR is going to continue it to be north of 20, I mean 30 or 40, very possibly. And so to pay a boomer 11% dividends on a preferred and strip out the volatility. Some of the volatility, not all of it because you can go down 20% if you don't have, if you're not patient, but strip out some of the volatility. You know, that's, that strikes me as not unintelligent, that strikes me as intelligent. Now he's gotta be careful not to get too far out over his skis. I mean, I think, you know, how far he pushes stretch is, is a question mark. And you know, because as we do know, there, there are these, there are these drawdowns. But I mean we, my partner and I, David Fuller, we've, we've battle tested this thing. We've done all kinds of scenarios. I mean, you can't break this company. I mean, he's going to be totally fine. And all this sailor hate, to me it's just a bear market phenomenon. And if I look at what he's done for the space overall, you know, this drawdown wouldn't have been just 50%, it would have been 70% if we hadn't had, you know, the strategy purchases that have taken place. And, and you know, his activities have encouraged others. And I mean it's, look, it's becoming institutional and for those who say, well, I'm a purist, I mean, I think you should just hodl and encourage others to hodl and it's money and all this other stuff is noise. That's just not realistic. I mean, the fact of the matter is we have an existing fiat financial system and we need to, you know, the transition from a fiat financial system to a purely bitcoin system, which I believe is taking place, but will probably, you know, take more than my remaining lifetime to complete. But you know, I think in, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 years it will complete. You know, it's, it's you, you've got to go through there. There have to be fiat related products that are, that are bitcoin backed like strategy. And, and to me that's okay, that's, that's a positive. So I'm not, I'm not in the hate Saylor camp. I'm, I, I respect Saylor and I think what he's doing is, is smart and correct and like the odds of him failing at it are quite low. So I'm, I'm a big strategy shareholder and, and comfortable being so Yeah, I
B
mean, I, I agree with the vast majority of that. I do think for most people you're better just owning the asset rather than owning, you know, exposure to the asset via something else.
A
I don't disagree. I mean, my actual cold storage Bitcoin holdings are much, much larger than my microstrategy holdings. But my microstrategy holdings are not trivial. I mean, it's, it's a meaningful, it's a meaningful number. And because I think it can and will outperform Bitcoin. And, and I, and by the way, I may trim it at some point in time. I mean, I think in an upcycle, you know, it may go back to an M Nav premium of, you know, I don't know, 1315-1718. And, you know, there may come a time where, okay, Bitcoin's up. You know, we're at the top of the power law. You know, microstrategy is way up. You know, we're trading at a big M nap and I might sell it because I know how these things work. I mean, it is cyclical. And I think one of the things that I think if people were afraid right now, I think one of the things they should do is they should go buy Fred Krueger's book on bitcoin, one million, and read it and understand how and get on X and look at Giovanni's work on the power law and just understand how powerful this power law thing is. You know, it's, it's, it's perfectly marked, all these bottoms. And if we're not at one right now, we're very, very close. And I, you know, could we wick down into the 50s? Maybe, you know, maybe, but we won't stay there long. And, you know, my sense is that, you know, once this bottom is in place, the next leg up takes us to kind of 180 minimum and maybe up into the twos and hard to say, but that's what the power law predicts.
B
So, yeah, I mean, with the, like, how strategy will perform in the next bull market, I could believe it goes to 1.5, 1.6, something around there. What I don't understand is people that think it's going to go back to like a 3xm nav. There's no way that those shares don't get diluted before it gets there like that. I don't see that ever happening.
A
Totally agree, totally agree. I mean, those early days were kind of unique and we won't ever see that again. But, you know, it should trade at an M and a premium to the degree that you can access credit markets and source, you know, at well below the bitcoin ARR. I mean, you know, I mean, I mean, Hugo Stinis did this in Weimar Germany, right? I mean, he borrowed money cheap and he used it to buy real stuff. And then when the currency hyperinflated, he paid back the debt with, you know, with paper, with hyperinflated currency. And that's all Saylor's doing. He's just, he's just doing a financial arbitrage where he can borrow money at, you know, in the stretch case, you know, 11, 11 and a half. I mean, probably be 12 soon, where you borrow money, you know, relatively cheap, put it in an asset that's growing at 30, you know, it was at 40 now probably trending towards 30 and the shareholders capture the difference. And so, you know, to me that works. So it's not, there's nothing more complicated about it than that. And you know, look, if bitcoin fails, he's screwed. You know, if bitcoin ARR. Goes down, he's screwed. I mean, how does that happen? I was on another pod this morning. I said there are only two ways that happens. One, if something technically occurs, that just proves that, you know, 16 years and 900 and some odd thousand blocks, you know, it's not going to work or adoption really slows and people stop buying it and there's just no, no growth in the underlying adoption of the asset. And I just don't see that. I, you know, I see, I see more and more groups, entities, ETFs, et cetera. I mean, it's just, it's getting more and more broadly distributed and, and, and it'll continue to do so.
B
So, so, yeah, I don't see that happening either. I, I do wonder whether this sort of 20% drawdown. I know, I know he's had drawdowns from the hundred dollar sort of par.
A
Yeah, there were a couple of others. If I look back, let me just look at my screen here, I'll tell
B
you, this is definitely the deepest one. Back in November it got down to like 90.
A
Yeah, November got to 90. Yep. And then he had another one in February. It got to 93. Yeah, no, this is the worst one. This is the worst one by far.
B
So you, you know, like the, the real institutional investors, far better than I, I probably ever will.
C
Do you think this will put people
B
off, like the big money looking at this off?
A
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Some of it'll put Some of them off for sure. I mean, it, you know, it, Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, heck, it, it, you know, it, it, it put, it put me off to an extent. I mean, I, you know, I own some, you know, and I, I, I didn't sell it. But then, you know, it wicked down to this. I was like, no, this is ridiculous. I mean, this is, you know, he's got this covered. And, and I mean, you mean to tell me you're going to pay me 11% plus I get to buy this in the 80s, you know, and it can return to par, so I could pick up another 15% there. That's just too good a deal, you know, so. But I, you know, I, I kind of, when I bought it originally, I always kind of knew that it was the sort of thing that if, if people got freaked out about bitcoin, it could do this. I mean, this is a, you know, it was kind of a correlation to one event with bitcoin. And, and it's, it's a little bit of a sentiment indicator on bitcoin. I don't think people fully understand it. And, you know, let's, let's face it, Danny. I mean, the sentiment right now in our space, it's really bleak. I mean, it's really, really bleak. Which historically, as a professional investor having been doing this for 40 years, that's a very, very good time to revive. But it also doesn't feel comfortable. I know that buying this morning, I was kind of like, shit, maybe it goes to 70, right? I don't know. But now I got to nibble at this, right?
B
I mean, in the 10 years I've been in bitcoin, I think the sentiment is the worst it's ever been. And I've said this before on the podcast, but I think it's because there's nothing to point at. Not necessarily as tangible, at least. Like when they crashed in 2024 or whenever it was 23 with FTX, there was huge fraud in that space. And you could point at why it was crashing and be like, it's Sam Bankman Fried's fault. It's Three Arrows Capital. It's luna. And it's not that anything's wrong with bitcoin. I think now people are questioning whether bitcoin is going to do what we think it's going to do. I'm not questioning that, but I think maybe the broader market is. And I think that's one of the reasons why sentiment's so bad. But on the stretch thing, I've got one more question on this. I assume you can short stretch, right?
A
I don't know. Yeah, I would imagine you could. Yeah. I mean, you've got to pay the dividend, right?
B
Yeah. So like, if you obviously, like, funding rates might be high, it might not make a lot of sense to short it all the time at 100. But like, are these drawbacks always going to happen? Because people can short at 100, they know it's not going to go above that. All they have to do is pay the funding on the contract.
A
Maybe, maybe. I mean, yeah, it's, you know, it's, you gotta, you gotta pay the dividend though, if you're short the stock. So it, you know, you've got a negative 100%. So, you know, it's very risky. Yeah, it's risky. I mean, but, but obviously if you, if you felt like you knew when, you know, we were gonna have one of these cascading events where everyone kind of freaked out on bitcoin, you know, or on strategy, well, fine. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's interesting. I mean, the, the big money has gotten into this space and you know, my sense is that they're testing sailor, you know, at a lot of different levels. They're testing them on stretch, they're testing on mstr. You know, I think he's going to pass the test with flying colors. And I, you know, I think there are going to be some people who are going to be on the wrong side of these trades, are going to get their faces ripped off. But, you know, there's a lot of capital out there that can, you know, play this game. And you know, it's, you know, it is what it is. I mean, it's, it's a very volatile asset. I mean, I, the way I look at it, we math it out. I mean, $120,000 Bitcoin, you know, $200,000 Bitcoin, it's an 800 stock. I mean, it's, you know, you buy it right now for 116, 112 to the down another four bucks. So, you know, to me, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a very, very leveraged play. And you know, do I think bitcoin's going to go up 8x in this next run? No, I think it'll probably go up 4x. But I think, you know, you take Bitcoin from 60 or 3x, take Bitcoin from 60 to 180 and you've got a three bagger. You know, you take Bitcoin from 60 to 180 and I think MicroStrategy is a five to eight bagger depending upon what happens to MNA. So that's what you're playing for. But in turn, you know, you got, you've got downside.
B
So yeah, I mean you could say bitcoin's going to go up 2x or Bitcoin's going to go up 100x. And I'll agree with you. I just. The time frame changes at some point.
A
Look, I think the cycles will continue. This will be, you know, I mean I. Look, I'd like to have it go up 8x on the next up run, but I, if you kind of look historically at the up runs, the multiple guts has gotten progressively smaller as it gets more widely distributed. And that makes sense just like the drawdowns have gotten smaller. So it's totally logical. Right.
B
I do think though, if this is a stress test for Saylor, that's got to be a good thing. Whether you love sailor, you hate Saylor, someone holding that much bitcoin, they need to be stress tested to the highest degree. And assuming he comes out of this well, which I think he probably will like that's good, that's a good thing.
A
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean it's, look, it's, it's amazing to me that more people don't see it. And it's amazing to me how much hate there is out there. And I just, I don't get it. You know, I just don't get it.
B
So I do think son of the hate comes from the position where maybe they don't necessarily hate Saylor, they don't necessarily hate what he's doing. But I think a lot of people don't like that retail's being dragged into buying microstrategy or stretch over just buying the underlying asset. And I think maybe some of the hate is to try and address that.
A
I'm sympathetic to that. I'm sympathetic to that. I mean, I think retail, retail. Look, if you really want to protect yourself financially, your absolute first move has got to be to buy the native bitcoin and cold store it full stop. Because they could 6102 you with an ETF and all the other stuff. I mean, you know, you gotta, as a bitcoiner, you gotta start off owning native bitcoin in your own self custody. That's, that's. I, I always believe and preach that. Now if you then decide you want to do some other stuff, you know, for the obvious reasons that I've just talked about, you know, with a smaller percentage and. Okay, fine. I mean I, you know, earlier I said don't use leverage and of course I'm here, I am advocating using leverage. But, but I want to point out that, you know, my microstrategy position is probably less than 10% of my Bitcoin position. So you know, I'm, I'm playing around at the margin, not, not betting the farm on microstrategy.
B
Yeah, exactly. It's all about how you position. But I mean, and who, who, who am I to tell anyone what they should do with their money? I just think there's nothing more powerful than owning self custody bitcoin. That's what people should be striving for.
A
Absolutely. I mean it's, it's, it's, it's what, you know, and we need to do it and more people need to do it. And you know, the ETFs are good, but they're not great. And you know, I mean, I get a little worried and we haven't talked about this at all, but I get a little worried about what happens if and when, you know, we get a blue team instead of a red team and you know, they start to, you know, tax the hell out of, I mean, just how Illinois put a tax in, start to tax it. They want to grab it, they want to, you know, outlaw. I mean, you know, they're not particularly, you know, friendly to this stuff. And, and so, you know, I mean, they could grab the ETFs like they did with gold, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I like knowing that, you know, 12 words, I can go to any country in the world and live and tell the US government to pound sand if they want all my money. So that, that's, that's still the original and best use case for bitcoin.
B
So I, I mean, obvious 100% agree. Why do you think SATA? SATA has done reasonably well while Stretch has been struggling?
A
That's a great question. You know, James Lavish, my partner at BoF, is on the board there and I haven't talked to him about it. I think, I think it might be they're not as big a target as, as a strategy. I think it also might be they're not as leveraged. I don't know, I haven't even looked at that. I could be wrong. Maybe they're more leveraged. But I think, you know, I think strategy, one of things that I think this might be informing Michael about too is he might be looking at us and saying okay, we probably push this just about as far as we can go for now. In other words, you know, I mean, well one, he doesn't want to sell it, you know, down this cheap. But, but I mean it, you know this, I mean the, the, the balance he's always trying to figure out is how leverage does he want to get right? I mean he can always add leverage, but in a very volatile asset there's a certain amount of danger to that. And you know, based on how stretch is, is performing right now, market might be saying, hey dude, you kind of gotten to the point where you got enough leverage and we don't want you to get any more. You know what I mean? I think strive, you know, their product, you know, they might not be quite as leveraged and that might be why it's holding out a little better. I don't know, it's just a, that's a hypothesis. I haven't checked that. I don't. For all I know they're more leveraged. I don't even know.
B
I think they do have very low leverage, but I could be wrong on that as well, to be honest. Larry, I always love talking to you man. What's the key takeaway from this? Is it that the Fed's trapped? They're going to print buy self destin? As easy as that?
A
I think, I think the key takeaway is, you know, let's go back to, you know, first principles 101. You know what Safedin taught us with a bitcoin standard, you're in this shit, you gotta have long time preference, full stop anybody who's complaining. And look, I mean I know the feeling of wanting more money faster. We all, that's human nature. I mean I manage a gold and silver fund. I mean the fund was up 175% last year, right. And this year we're kind of flat. I'm like, geez, I want that to happen again, you know, and, and, and it probably will, but not, not instantly. Do you know what I mean? And, and so you know, this, I mean this is a, this is a, this is a decade long trade, this monetary debasement trade. We, we will be proven wrong if the government becomes responsible. So that's what I'm watching for. I mean, you know, entitlement reform, cutting back on stuff, balancing the budget, all that kind of stuff. Hang on a second. We gotta, we gotta slow down here. But, but I don't see any of that. And so you know, my, my view is Just take a multi year view of this thing. You know, we're in the right place. And, and you know, I know there are a lot of people and I've got investors in my fund that I put into bitcoin, they're like, God damn, man, it's at 60, I can't even bear it. And I know, you know, that two years from now it'll be 180 and they'll be like, oh God, it's 180, I should buy more. And I'm like, well you could, but you know, you really should have been buying it back at 60, you know what I mean? And so it's just, it's very hard. I mean, so, you know, dollar cost averaging, you know, understanding the power law, I mean, compared in the power law model and compared to its 200 day moving average, Bitcoin has only been this cheap about 10% of the time. So with that, if somebody came to me, when somebody comes to me and says, should I buy some bitcoin? I generally say yes, but you can only put, buy what you're willing to have a 50% drawdown on and DCA the rest. But actually if somebody came to me and said, how much should I buy today? I'd say, you know, shoot your wad. Shoot a big piece of your wad today. Because we're in that band where it's cheap and that's what's hard for people to see. I think 60,000, that's not cheap. You bought it at 10,000, that would be cheap. Well, it's never going there again. Okay, so, so, you know, and I'll wait till it gets to 40. Well, you, then you won't buy it because it's not going to 40. You know, 60,000 using the models, the sophisticated model that's got a 95% R squared that Giovanni built and that Fred Krueger's elaborated on, you know, tells you that it's cheap right now, so buy it. So, you know, and then, I mean the rest of it is just like, like go live your life. I mean, I'm, I've dialed back a little bit on these shows. I've dialed back on, you know, making appearances and stuff. I mean, I'm, I do the pods with people I really like, like yourself. And you know, I mean, I'm focusing on, you know, my family and fitness and you know, because I, I just want to make sure, I want to be around to see the failure of the central bankers. Like, I live for that. Okay? I mean, you follow my X feed. You know, I hate central bankers, absolutely hate it. And, and I, I want to, I want to, I want to be around to see them with egg on their face and, and yeah, we need you
B
around for that, Larry. You don't keep up the CrossFit, keep it going.
A
I'm telling you, man, I'm, I'm aiming for, My mom's in her mid-90s. I'm, I'm turning 69 next week, you know, God damn it, you know, I'm aiming for a hundred and I think by then we'll see it. So, you know, let's hope, let's hope. I don't, you know, nothing happens that I can get there. But the point is that, you know, you gotta dial out here, guys. I mean, it's gonna be fine. This is all going to be fine. I mean, as early as December, we could be, you know, high fiving each other. I mean, you know, six weeks from now, the Fed's going to meet again. They're, you know, his task force is going to have some great report and he's going to blame it, he's going to, he's going to follow it maybe and say, you know, we, we actually need to reduce or be thinking about reducing rates. They'll have, they'll probably have a couple of good prints between now and then because housing is soft, you know, particularly in Florida and Texas, and energy will be soft. And so, you know, and right now, you know, the Fed, Fed watch site is saying there's like an 80% chance of a hike this year. Well, when the market wakes up and realizes they're not going to hike that, in fact they're going to cut, what do you think is going to happen to this ship? It's going to explode? You know, we're going to, I mean, you're going to see bitcoin@120 before you can blink your eye. You're going to see gold at 7,000 before you can blink your eyes. So, so, you know, am I willing to wait till December for that to happen? Sure, yeah. I don't care. What have I, what have I got? I got nothing but time. I mean, am I, am I impatient and frustrated? Sure, I am. You know, I, I, I, I blew the call. I really wish I thought he was going to be doggish and, and I was wrong, but they're pretty smart and they decided to change the game. Oh, let's go to this. No guidance and let's reiterate how serious we are about tackling inflation and, and, oh, and we're gonna. We're gonna a new strategy. We've got a committee, we have a task force that's gonna figure out how to solve this problem, and we're gonna rely on them. And you're gonna believe in me. Good God, what a bunch of crap. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. People see through this. It's just. It's just total horseshit, Danny. You know it, I know it. So, you know, like, let's all just chill and stop attacking each other because it's all going to work out great. We're all going to be rich. And eventually we'll have a sound money system and we won't have to deal with these jokers anymore. So that's.
B
Let's go. I look forward to that future.
A
That's where I am. You know what I mean?
B
They're hawkish now, dovish later. It's always the same. Tell everyone where they can go and buy your.
A
Oh, yeah, thanks for putting the book up. Yeah. So the book is available on Amazon, hardcover, paperback, audio, Kindle, all that stuff. And you know, I wrote it to try to help the average person understand how and why they're being screwed and how to solve it. And I've gotten feedback that it's worked. It works not for everybody, but for a lot of people it works. And so if you like it, please pass it on to your friends. I mean, we gotta develop. We need a sound money army in the world so that, you know, we. We vote for, push for, advocate for, make noise about, and eventually return to sound money. Because when we do, things will be so much better. I mean, so many of our problems will go away. That's. That's my strongly held belief.
B
So hopefully we'll do some first turning shit right there. And I can't wait for the first turning.
A
Let's go. You'll have. You'll be married, you'll have kids. It'll. It's just going to be great, Danny. It's all going to be great.
B
So let's get still married and more kids, hopefully.
A
Oh, still. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were married. Do you have a child?
B
Yeah, I've got a daughter, a little toddler.
A
I didn't realize that. Oh, I'm on a date. I'm sorry, I didn't realize. That's all good.
B
So more children. That's what I'm going for.
A
Yeah, exactly. There you go.
B
All right, Larry, I appreciate the time, man. You're one of my favorite people to speak to. And we'll do it again soon.
A
Anytime. I love it, Danny. Thank you.
B
Thank you.
In this episode, host Danny Knowles and money manager Lawrence Lepard dig deep into why the U.S. Federal Reserve is "trapped" and why double-digit inflation is almost certain in the coming years. They explore recent Fed actions, the mechanisms and psychology behind monetary policy, the compounding debt issue, and what this means for Bitcoiners, investors, and everyday Americans. The episode is animated, irreverent, and unfiltered—part economic macro theory, part practical investing guide, all delivered with characteristic Bitcoin skepticism toward the establishment.
"Since 1913 they've done nothing but fuck it up…just stop gaslighting, stop with the fucking bullshit and admit that you're the Department of Inflation."
— Lawrence Lepard (00:02, 43:35)
"This is going to be a decade of inflation. It started in 2020. We're six years into it. We're not anywhere close to the end."
— Lawrence Lepard (00:02, 45:50)
"It's all kabuki theater to make it look like, oh, we've got these 12 wise people...and they're going to get it absolutely right. And since 1913 they've done nothing but fuck it up."
— Lawrence Lepard (00:02, 41:15)
"Break-the-glass moment...the debt will be too large relative to the GDP, and they'll have to print more money to address that discrepancy."
— Lawrence Lepard (13:22)
"Your absolute first move has got to be to buy the native bitcoin and cold store it, full stop."
— Lawrence Lepard (65:19)
"08 created a bunch of gold bugs. 2020 created a bunch of bitcoin bugs. The next one will…"
— Lawrence Lepard (25:58)
| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:02 | The Fed: Kabuki theater, post-1913 critique, sound money advocacy | | 01:11 | State of Bitcoin sentiment—bearish, fractious, but maturing | | 04:09 | Initial analysis of Kevin Warsh’s Fed meeting—no guidance, bureaucratic moves | | 05:55 | Warsh’s real game plan: establish credibility before inevitable rate cuts | | 10:10 | Debt and deficits: why responsible government likely isn’t coming | | 11:25 | How the Fed can "redefine" inflation to fit policy needs | | 13:22 | "Break-glass" and systemic crises, historical parallels, Hank Paulson reference | | 19:01 | Incrementalism vs. letting things break, 2008/2020 analogies | | 25:55 | Knowledge of printing spreads with each Fed intervention | | 41:15 | "Kabuki theater" and how the Fed manipulates expectations | | 45:50 | Macro outlook: double-digit inflation "before this is all over" | | 52:40 | MicroStrategy, leverage, Saylor's impact, and bear market psychology | | 61:04 | Sentiment as a bottoming signal—“the worst it’s ever been” | | 65:19 | Self-custody bitcoin is crucial, ETFs are risky | | 68:51 | Key takeaway: long time preference, dollar cost averaging, patience |
“This is all going to be fine…eventually we’ll have a sound money system and we won’t have to deal with these jokers anymore.”
— Lawrence Lepard (74:20)