Bitcoin as the Ultimate Hedge Against Dollar Debasement and Market Turmoil

The dollar's value is crumbling at an ever accelerating rate. And that is exactly why Bitcoin exists. If you've

been confused by Bitcoin's recent price moves, it's time to refocus on the big picture. Lawrence Leard and James Lavish

join me to cut through the noise and remind us all of the clear urgent thesis behind Bitcoin. It wasn't created as a

bet for short-term gains, but as a fundamental escape from the unstoppable and inevitable debasement of the US

dollar. This thesis is more urgent than ever, and this conversation will reset your understanding and reveal what's

really at stake. And don't miss their insights on why the next liquidity crisis will prove this thesis beyond

doubt and why Bitcoin's moment is coming fast. All right, let's dive in. All right, Lawrence Leard and James

Lavish, welcome back to Bitcoin for Millennials. >> Nice to be with you,

>> for having us, Bram. Good to be here always. Well, good to see you guys. Like I just

told you, I felt like I had to call Uncle Larry and Uncle James to get some perspective on the on the market

because, you know, the price is going down less than all the other big draw downs before, by the way. And I feel the

sentiment is seriously cooked, which in my opinion is super strange as macro wise, the underlying thesis hasn't

really changed. I think if people follow YouTube, uh, it's actually accelerating. So, how can we kind of think through

Bitcoin lagging gold in this macro environment that you both believe is the prime context for the acceleration of

Bitcoin? Maybe James, you want to >> James, you go first. >> First.

>> Um, [laughter] there's a lot there's a much bigger context, broader context that we're talking about here. [gasps]

when you talk about the macro picture and what's going on with Bitcoin, you know, we've been um been trying to

figure out for for a few months now, a couple months now, just exactly what's going on. And it's it's become clear

that one of the drivers of of the uh price action in in Bitcoin recently has just been OG selling. You know, you've

had older coins coming out of dormcancy and uh and being dumped in the market. And you know, if you look back from from

what I have read, it's about a million coins have been sold so far this year from older wallets. And uh hundreds and

hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them in the last two months. And so what what is going on? What's happening?

Well, there's this long-term belief of four-year cycles. Uh we can talk about that. I I actually believe that we don't

have like we're we're no longer uh in a four-year cycle with Bitcoin. I think that that's broken. We'll talk about

that in a minute, though. >> [gasps] >> But there's this long-term belief of

that. And you've got these holders who've had these coins for many years, whether it's a decade and they, you

know, and they bought a,000 coins for $15,000 or whatever and they've been uh, you know, now they're they're worth a

billion. That's well well done. You know, I mean, um, I keep saying this. I don't blame them. Uh, you know, people

ask, well, what are they going to buy with? Are they going buy stocks? Are they going to go like they going to buy,

you know, bonds? What are they doing? And the answer is they're getting liquidity likely to shore up their, you

know, not just their their their own family wealth, but generational wealth. And I don't blame them. They're buying

whether they're buying houses or land or businesses or, you know, um or yachts, whatever they want to do. But they're,

you know, they're able to do that. and and uh and it's been you know the mark it surprised the market I think you know

the market didn't really expect it and uh and they didn't expect it because if you look back in in the in the history

of of Bitcoin again let's uh go to first principles here we have basically three three or four data points for for

Bitcoin and that's not enough that's not really a data set um it's uh it we do point back at these cycles and blowoff

tops and all that, [gasps] but people expected some sort of blowoff top this year in in 2025. Uh especially

after the euphoria of of Trump being elected and the new administration who's not antagonistic on Bitcoin and crypto

uh like the last administration. So all these things you have these massive positive factors, the Bitcoin ETFs, a

positive um um you know administration, positive legislation, the repeal of SAB 121, banks are now getting into it. Uh

you see uh institutions buying it. You know, you've got JP Morgan building collateral products around it. Harvard

is an, you know, one of their core uh holdings is IBIT. Like these are all massive positive developments, but the

reality is that >> the bank, the Luxembourg sovereign wealth fund,

>> yeah, all that stuff, but the reality is you have a lot of uncertainty in the market right now. Um, you know, the

uncertainty around liquidity and we can talk about, you know, what's going on in the repo market and and and bank uh

reserves and all that stuff, but you know, uh what the Fed is doing. I'll let Larry talk about the Fed. He's uh

probably a little bit more vicious about the Fed than I am, but you know, um you know, you've got a bunch of buffoons in

there and I'll let Larry kind of take the ball on that one. But there's a lot of uncertainty, Braum. And so you've had

I think mentally in their mind, you had these you had these OGs who are saying, you know what, 100,000 125,000 doesn't

matter. I'm getting out. I'm I'm selling a portion of of it at least, maybe a third of it, a quarter, a third, a half.

And some of them might have sold at all. I don't know. But there it's a mental level and it's clear because every

single time that Bitcoin hit 110 and started creeping up to 120, there was massive selling. Um, you know, and a lot

of selling from old wallets. So, we're still in that and and I think that that selling has begun selling and uh and now

you've got some of the um some of the large institutions that have been buying over the last year or two that are up

huge and they're like, you know what, I'm that's it. If this four-ear cycle is going to play out, then I'm out. I'm

going to I'm going to take my, you know, take my profits. I'm going to get this thing off my books. I'm going to dress

it up because we're in o October, November here and you got to be doing that for institutions. They've got to

they got to dress up there. It's, you know, they've got to window dress their portfolio for when they have the reviews

and that's all the stuff that's been going on in the background. But on top of that, you have the worries about the

Fed and and things that are going on there. But I'll let kind of Larry te you up in a number of different ways there.

I'll let you. >> Yeah. Thank you. Um so all these things are going on which which would you know

buttress our thesis and you know obviously the gold prices responded quite well to all those things and

that's because gold is more widely distributed and it's always very good at sniffing out monetary debasement and

back there's a very comparable period in 2018 to 2020 where gold moved first and then Bitcoin followed harder and I think

we're in one of those periods and to me remember Bitcoin is is kind of the the perfect liquidity fire alarm and it

tells you how much liquidity there is in system to an extent. It soaks it up. If there's too much, it soaks it up and it

goes up a lot. And by the way, when there's not enough, it's also more sensitive than gold. It goes down more.

And so to me, the fact that Bitcoin is drawing drawing drawing down >> is a very good indication that we're

getting closer to what I think is going to be a trigger event that's going to lead to the big print. And I think James

has written about this in his newsletters. And um you know we're whether it's tomorrow or 3 months 6

months I I can't imagine it's 12 months it could be but you know at some point in time here well I mean for instance I

mean let's just talk about the central bank right I mean they've already said they you know and they're trying to

normalize it too bram it's very interesting they've already said hey you know we're going to have to grow the

balance sheet I mean pow said it Lori Logan said it you know um you know the president of the New York Fed said it so

and they're trying to make it so like and it's no big deal. And by the way, it's not QE. It's not QE.

>> Yeah, exactly. >> Last time I checked, if your balance sheet's growing, that's QE. I mean,

>> well, they said the same thing in 2019 with the repo crisis. This is QE, not QE. But

>> yeah, >> the the balance sheet grew and it never shrank,

>> right? So, >> and and that's and that's the way it always is. It's kind of a oneway

ratchet. >> And I don't and we and we have battles about this on Twitter. And I don't care.

I I don't care if you call it whatever you want. semantics you whether you call it QE or what

>> it's adding liquidity into the market. Let's just say that it's all that matters

>> and not temporary, right? >> And not temporary. >> No. And not taking it out. And so so you

know they they're very very much trapped. And then you know I think the other thing that the market's doing the

gold market anyway and I think Bitcoin will follow is that they're front running what they know will be a change

of the guard of the Fed. I mean Powell gets out of there in May. I mean his last press conference he looked really

scared to me. He was very nervous in the first few minutes. He got his footing after a while. But I mean, he's got to

be thinking to himself, "God, just please get me out of here before this whole goddamn thing blows up."

>> And I agree, there was there was a lot of word salad, a lot of word salad in that press conference. And and the and

answer the question answer session. It was actually uh it was pretty frustrating. If you're if you're just a

regular run-of-the-mill new investor, good luck trying to keep up with what the heck he was talking about cuz he

talked in circles. >> Yeah. No, I completely agree. And so and and you know to his own to to give him

some credit. I mean he admits he's trapped. He kind of says look the risks on both sides of my mandate. Um and

they're just trying to skate down the middle. But you know I think eventually something will break because that's the

history of it all. There's um I just gave a presentation where I just showed the parabolic growth curves of of money

supply and how every time that they get off of that curve, you know, they have to come back and print and they they

hopped off it in '08 and they had to print. they hopped off it again right before CO and they had to print and

we're right back where we were at CO in terms of our the position of the money supply compared to that parabolic growth

curve. So, you know, I mean that doesn't mean it happens tomorrow. Um, as I say, I think a year out is is a very generous

estimate. I think it's likely to happen much short much sooner than that. But but we do know that when they do finally

admit um what we all believe and know um and what mathematically really is kind of a certainty then you know the markets

and the world will wake up and go oh yeah they can't really stop printing can they? Oh yeah what are some things they

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I know who are impatient and don't have a long time preference, but you know, a lot of people are acting like this draw

down is the end of the world. Um, and it's, you know, we've seen much worse, right? It went from 65 to 15. I mean,

>> it's just probably, it's just surprising happened at this point of the year. I think that's right. What's going on?

>> I think that's right. Well, let's but we need to talk about gold because look, you know, people are very frustrated

that Bitcoin is not digital gold yet and it's just not it. Does it have the characteristics of it? Yeah, it has not

been adopted as digital gold yet though. You can see or else it would have run with gold. Um the problem is that it's

still widely misunderstood even on Wall Street. you know, it's lumped in with a bunch of other garbage that people don't

understand how it's different and how it's fully decentralized and all of that. We're not going to b bore your um

knowledgeable listeners with that problem, but um gold has run because of a great amount of uncertainty in

markets, but primarily because of what Larry touched on before, which is the central bankers around the world

understand that the Fed is trapped. >> They're going to print. They're going to debase our currency. And you know, we've

talked about this before, but you we got to hit on this again. This cannot be overstated just how monumentally stupid

it was for the Biden administration to seize treasuries from Russia and kick them off the swift swift network when

they when they invaded Ukraine. We we can't overestimate how dumb that was and catastrophic it was for the US Treasury.

it and the and if you're wondering what that meant, look at gold and look at gold's price and look at who's been

buying it. It's been central bankers from across the world have been buying gold and buying a lot fewer US

treasuries, by the way. Why? Because they know damn well that two things are are are important here. Number one, if

if the US government doesn't like what you do and you're not a close ally of them, then they may just kick you off

the Swift network and take your treasuries. You know, that's number one. Number two, and even uh you know

[clears throat] back last earlier this year, Putin even said it. He said, "The US government is

going to keep printing money and they're going to keep debasing the dollar. Why would I want to own something that's

going to be worth less in the future?" >> Well, that's a good question. So they all know that they're trapped and they

understand that they're they they don't want to be holding treasuries in uh in you know an antagonistic environment or

a an uncertain geopolitical uh environment especially the BRICS nations and the

add-ons. So the bricks plus there's there's a lot of nations out there who are moving away from treasuries and Luke

Groman talks about this quite a bit and they're moving towards gold. Well, I think eventually they're going to move

towards Bitcoin, too, but that just hasn't solidified yet. We're getting there. We will get there. And I think

that Larry hit on it. >> But we've seen this pattern before. And this is exactly what happened in 2008. I

mean, >> you know, or I mean, and 18 and 19, and you know, there was the the repo blowout

in 19, then COVID in 2020, and gold was taken off like a rocket ship, and Bitcoin sat there flat as a rock,

slightly down, and then one day it woke up and it went from 10,000 to 60,000 in 5 months. [laughter]

>> Yeah. Yeah. >> And it was kind of like, oh, I get it. And that's what's going to happen.

That's what's going to happen here. I don't know if it's going to do a six bagger, but it's going to go up a lot. I

would also like to add, not supporting the gold side and just the overall macro picture that's positive is that our

trade now has a name. It's the monetary debasement trade. JP Morgan coined it that, you know, they and now Muhammad L.

Arian and all these other elites are out there talking as if they invented the idea. Of course, there's some of us

who've been saying this for decades. And um you know it's it's unusual. I mean things things that happened recently

that I have I would never thought I would see happen. How's this how's this for one? Morgan Stanley, one of the

biggest warehouses in the country, high-end, you know, with trillions of dollars in assets under management,

changed their model from 60% stocks, 40% bonds to 60% stock, 20% bonds, 20% gold. And I was like, what?

>> Wow. >> What are you talking about? [laughter] and one of the gold guys did um did the

math and said, "Well, if they if all of their clients actually followed that recommendation, gold would be at $12,000

tomorrow." Um because just given how big the Morgan Stanley asset base is. I I don't know if you did the calculation

right, but the point is, I mean, this is a very large change in sentiment. And so,

>> yeah, Drunken Miller says it, says it, you know, they're allocated [clears throat]

an allocation to gold. Yeah. Gold and Bitcoin, by the way. >> Yeah. What's not happening though is,

you know, Bitcoin is the most sensitive to the liquidity piece and liquidity is being drained. And so the other thing we

need to have happen, I know James agrees with me on this, is we just need to have all these other crypto shitcoins die. Um

because there's a certain amount of you know we're getting yanked around by them because there's some Bitcoin holders who

only holding Bitcoin as an interim between their their punts into Salana and you know now the new one the hot new

one now is Zcash and all these are just pump and dump but you know when those things go down you know some of

those guys have to sell and they have to sell their Bitcoin. So, you know, they're all it's all tied together in

the liquidity swamp. But, you know, throughout it all, Bitcoin just keeps ticking away a block every 10 minutes.

And, you know, I have no doubt that we'll be at much higher prices. I have to say I am surprised. I I thought

pretty highly we pretty likely we'd be at 140 by the end of this year. And I I'm with James. I think the four-year

cycle is over. Um I think the four-ear cycle was kind of driven by the having when when the rewards were bigger. Now

the rewards are so small compared to the EBIT IBIT buying and all the other I just don't think the four-year cycle

matters. I think there will be cycles just driven like there are cycles in every market just driven by fear and

greed and people will get levered up and get way too far out over their skis and then you know of course things will

correct and so my model is still that we go to 22 250 and then we have a 50% correction. But one thing that also

truncated the cycle in this particular thing was this whole notion and I'm angry at a few of the larger influencers

for pushing it that that these Bitcoin treasury companies were just free money machines and that you know you could

basically sell at a premium you know increase your Bitcoin per share and and wash rinse and repeat forever accounting

for the fact that the premium could disappear [laughter] and uh you know that hurt a lot of

people and um so you know and there was a lot of money that probably there were some OG bitcoiners. I know of a couple

actually who sold some of their their bitcoin and to dump it into treasury companies and uh you know it turns out

you bought if you bought those at big mnavs you're you're now coming to learn what you know why banks only trade at

one and a half to two times book value. >> You know >> that's that's the key right there. So

let's talk about that for a second because in the bit, you know, Larry is he's a advisory partner in the Bitcoin

opportunity fund that uh that David uh Foley and I run and we are invested in a number of these companies um and uh a

handful of them. I'm on the board of Strive and so there is a there is a um a case for these. Absolutely. And I

believe that there's a very there's a long-term runway for these that they'll do extremely well as Bitcoin does well.

But caveat there book value is really important and our book value on these is MNAV. It's

the Bitcoin MNAV. How much Bitcoin do they own? And if you fully dilute all of the shares, and this is where people get

this all tangled up and they're, you know, they rely on just looking at the the, you know, these Bitcoin treasury um

websites that that list the treasuries and their MNAVs. You got to do the work yourself. You got to get in there if

you're going to buy one of these stocks. You've got to get in there, read the 10Ks, read the 10 QS, understand how

many shares they have, how much debt they have, how much of that debt can be converted into shares, and what what are

the actual claims on that from the from the total enterprise value. And you've got to look at the total enterprise

value to get to what the real MNAV is. And so, if you don't understand that, please go and research it. use Grock or

use uh ChattBT something to go research these things because if you're buying some of these companies were trading at

absolutely insane MNAVs. Okay, so we let's talk through this really quickly. There are a few companies that we bought

that we put in for the private placement. These are pipes, okay? Private placements that we bought back

in in the spring, May, June, and we didn't get shares until August, September, October. Okay, so we sat on

these things and watched them trade all the way up in the in the public market. We didn't have our shares. We just

watched them trade all the way up to ridiculous MNAs. Five, six, 10, 12, you know, 18 MNAV. And it's like we we could

we didn't understand. We we're looking at them going, if I mean, if we had our shares, we would be selling here because

it just makes no sense. And of course, they all came back down to earth. And it goes back to the statement that uh that

Larry just made, which is there's a reason that we look at these things and attach somewhere around a one and a half

or two book value on them on banks or uh other companies, right? So why would we do that? Because long-term that's the,

you know, that's the that's the velocity of capital you're looking at in order to generate these these great long-term

returns for your for your shareholders. Can you do that with Bitcoin? You can. And I think that Michael Sailor unlocked

a really, you know, beautiful uh model in the preferred equity where especially with the stretch preferred where you can

you can move around the the uh the yield in order to make sure that you keep that that that security at somewhat of a

constant price in the market. And that gets you closer to a a money market uh vehicle which has a much much much

higher yield than your regular money market you're going to get over at Fidelity or Schwab. And so really

important though is that that's a that's a key component and that's why we did that same exact thing over at Strive.

And so but it's not open to everybody like not every company can do this. You have to

have a strong balance sheet. You have to have strong uh management and you have to have strong connections and

understanding and and uh and a path to the capital markets. Not any not everybody can just come out with a

Bitcoin treasury company, call the capital markets and say, "Hey, we want to float this pref." I mean, they have

to have serious relationships with very large institutions to float that pref. And that's really important to

understand. So, what this gets us down to the point of not all of these companies are going to survive,

>> right? >> Some of them will trade under one MNAV until they're acquired or they're

liquidated, right? You know, there's likely they'll be acquired or they just will start buying back shares because

you're buying basically Bitcoin at a discount at that point, but not every single one of them is going to survive.

There there are a handful that we believe in and I know Larry does too. We we are very um you know symbiotic on our

our beliefs on on which ones the strong ones and and we hold those long-term in our fund because we do believe in them

but we have we have a very tight discipline around where we will own them and where we will sell them on the MNAV

>> and it because that's the how our brains work long term and it's how the capital markets are going to work too. People

just need to understand that. >> Yeah. I mean this is why I wanted to invite you. I mean I asked one questions

and one question and this is straight rip. So thank you for an hour. Yeah. >> Maybe to give a little summary of of

this first part because it's actually something I wanted to ask a question about but you already answered but I saw

Larry or well first I saw Jack Mer calling Bitcoin a liquidity smoke alarm. I think that's what you guys just

touched upon. >> Yeah. And Larry reposted a tweet that said, "Gold hitting new highs is the

market admitting inflation never left. Bitcoin pulling back at the same time is a signal that liquidity stress is real

and the cracks are widening underneath the surface." That's the difference between the two. Gold reacts to what the

system already printed. Bitcoin reacts to what the system cannot print anymore. Once the liquidity boom comes, gold will

rise, but Bitcoin will repric the entire monetary order. >> I thought that was a great tweet. I

don't know who I borrowed that from, but whoever wrote that put it in very good elegant elegant terms.

>> Yeah. Yeah, that was really great. So, and and this is kind of like what surprises me, right? So, you both of you

have really helped me along the way to understand kind of like the bigger macro picture. Why does Bitcoin exist? You

know, what what is what is happening? And I kind of think and feel that a lot of people are very impatient or bored, I

don't know, and they're kind of forgetting what what Bitcoin is here to do, right? And and this is also the

reason why I invited you like I think we have to wake up everyone again and make them understand this big bigger battle

um that we're in and I think you um kind of went through it already. So my question now is what why do you think or

how do you argue that Bitcoin is uniquely primed to become this safe haven asset in a in a riskoff

environment? Uh and and I think to touch upon what you said, James, these are some of the conversations I've had too

from people that are into Bitcoin, think Bitcoin is a superior monetary asset over gold, but they tell me, "Hold your

horses because all the central banks are buying gold and not Bitcoin yet, right? So the majority of the people that

should know basically have have no clue. So you need to be patient." So we know the thesis, but why why Bitcoin? Well,

it's we know um it's it's digital capital. It's easier to move, easier to store, more verifiable, and harder than

gold on a stock toflow basis. And as Safe Fedine has said for years and years and has documented historically, the

hardest money always wins. I mean, look, the Chinese are betting on gold, okay? But the Chinese bet on silver in the

1800s, and it crushed them. The Indians did as well. And um you know this is a superior form of money because it's

auditable, visible, transferable, and probably most importantly scarce. And the reason why it's so hard to get your

head around is there's never been anything like this before. I mean, for for all of human existence really,

whatever form of money was used was dilutable. And here you've got something that's mathematically not dilutable. So

people are having a very hard time getting their head around that. And that's why it trades like the wild

animal that it trades like. But, you know, it's already started to place gold. I mean, you know, we can debate

how quickly it'll happen. Gold's not going away tomorrow. I fully expect gold to go to 10,000, but I also fully expect

Bitcoin to go to a million. So, you know, they're both they're both good numbers. Um, you know, I I I actually

the way I'll just say this quickly and then I'll let James add on. I actually kind of view gold as like owning a bond

and Bitcoin is like owning a growth equity. I mean it's just in terms of the investment characteristics. I mean and

growth equities are volatile but they give you more alpha and bonds are less volatile but they're you know they just

kind of tick away and you know they hold their value. I mean M2 grows 70 7% a year since the since forever really

since 71. And you know guess what gold's value has grown at about the same rate. It just hangs in there. So

>> yeah. So then that's a really good point. So um why would you say that it's a growth equity? Well, I think that the

the point that Larry's making is that because we have not had full adoption of Bitcoin yet. We've had full adoption of

gold. >> Everybody knows what gold is. Everybody knows what gold's use is. You know, they

understand that it's it's what you own when there's massive uncertainty in the world. Um, we got to touch on a few

things here. First of all, we've said this before, ad nauseium. If there's a market shock, gold will sell off, too.

>> Oh, yeah. >> Everything will sell off. Everything correlates to one. And the reason for

that is that when you're a hedge fund manager and you walk into an off you into uh the office to your desk in the

morning and there's some sort of market shock, you don't look at your your traders and say, "Hey, can you kind of

figure out what we can get out of like 10% or 20% of without really taking too much of a hit?" You don't say that. You

walk in and you say, "Sell 10% of everything. Sell 20%. Just get me out of everything." across the board. Everybody

at your stations go and they just go and just sell. They just sell. Everything correlates to one. And that's why you

have market shocks. And that's [clears throat] in that situation, Bitcoin's going to get hit really hard.

Okay, that's just reality. And gold get hit hard, too. everything will. >> But let's go back to Larry's point,

which is, you know, [gasps] Bitcoin is more like a growth equity because it has not been fully adopted

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>> If we go and look at uh you know, if we go look at that that chart that Jesse Meyers puts out, Crocius, that shows the

total investable assets uh in the in the universe. And it's uh it's about one quadrillion of assets, a little bit less

today, but it's about one quadrillion of assets in the world. [gasps] Well, Bitcoin's a a tiny fraction of that, you

know. Um, and it, you know, if you, Bitcoin is at $2 trillion is just a tiny fraction of that.

>> Two ten of a percent, >> two ten of a percent. But Bitcoin has only been around for 15 years, and it's

already about the tenth the size of gold, which is just mind-blowing. Okay. Now, it's got a lot of buckets it'll

draw from. It's been drawing from the equity bucket up until now. It's really been drawing from the you know risk on

bucket. It has not drawn from gold or it has not drawn from b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b bs. It's not really

drawn much from real estate. Maybe a little bit but not much. Um, Bitcoin is poised as broad adoption occurs. And

what I mean by that is when you get the the institutions like Harvard and some other very large in invest uh,

investors, uh, large institutions, I'm talking about pension funds, endowments that understand Bitcoin, how it's

different from all the other coins like Larry just said, all the shitcoins. and they do understand how it's different

from Ethereum and Salana and all the rest of them. Well, it'll be adopted in a different way and they'll start taking

money from different buckets to allocate to it. Why would they do that? They'll do that because of the premise of the

the start of the show which was the Fed is trapped, the Treasury is trapped. They have no choice. They have to keep

printing. They have to keep debasing the dollar. So, in the world of debasement, what do you want to own? Do you want to

own bonds? I don't. That's a negative real return. You're going to put your money in a dollar denominated security

that's going to give you a lower yield than the real inflation rate. That's not a good place to park your money. It's

not a good place to park your money in real estate sometimes because real estate as an investment, it's illquid.

You know, you got to pay taxes on it. You have maintenance. You have upkeep. You have to deal with uh you know, if

you're using it for cash flow, you have to deal with uh with renters and all that and being a landlord. Is it um is

it a good place to be if you want to run a business? It long term it could be a good place. I'm not saying that. But

just purely as just an investment to hide in with your capital. It's a better place to put your money in Bitcoin and

people will start to understand that and it'll draw from that bucket. But you know once it starts drawing from bonds

from real estate you're going to see a different rate of adoption which means that that's why you have this growth

equity uh component to it which means that as it's taking market share from gold as it's taking market share from

from real estate as it's taking market share from um from bonds it will grow in price at a faster rate because that

point that two 20 basis points of 1% right 20 point 2 of 1% % of total global investable assets will become 1 2 3%.

And that and then Bitcoin isn't that isn't that just a million dollars. It's far above that. And so that's the point.

>> Look at the same numbers for gold. I mean gold is 27 trillion out of that trillion thousand trillion or what is

that a quadrillion? Um so gold is 2.7% of total global assets. And you know here you are you've got these central

banks that are just completely out of control. You've got this monetary system that mathematically has to create more

debt and money or else it's going to implode. I mean, you know, it just doesn't take that much, Bram, for, you

know, the bonds, the equities, the, you know, the cash, the, you know, real estate for all these people to say, gee

whiz, I I I got to get out of these things that are getting I mean, real estate not as bad, but particularly

bonds and equities. I got to get out of these things that they can print and into stuff that just can't be printed.

And so, so that gold number is going to go up a lot too. I mean, that 2.7%, you know, if you go back to like in the

1980 time frame, it was five or six times that amount. I mean, depending on how you measured it, gold was, you know,

15 to 20% of of global financial assets at its peak in 80. You know, at that point in time, it actually covered the

US money supply. Um, and and and by the way, you know, we could be headed there again. And I guess that's the point I

would make. One of the things I want to say about what I said earlier, you know, I said this is a monetary debasement

trade. That's really wrong. It's not a trade. Okay. Not a trade. A trade implies, you know, oh yeah, I'm in this

for a while. And and you're seeing that now. You're seeing one. >> You're seeing some of these Wall Street

types. Oh, look, you know, I bought Bitcoin at 60. It's at 100. I feel good. I made 100%. I'm out. No. Wrong choice.

Where you going to go? You know, it's a monetary debasement trend. And what I think people are going to be shocked by

is how, you know, 2 years, four years, 6 years, 8 years from now, you know, I mean, gold's going to follow, you know,

the path upward towards, you know, 6 8 10 12. I mean, I could easily see $20,000 gold. And, you know, Bitcoin is

going to go 150, 200, 250, 300, 400. I mean, that power law projects that Bitcoin will be at a million dollars in

2032. And I think that's probably right. It might be conservative, you know, if we really have a big financial accident

and they print a ton of money. So, you know, it it to me these are just, you know, all you need to know is that both

of these things are going up and to the right for many, many years and we're probably in the second inning of at

least a nine inning game that might go into overtime. So, or extra innings. So, you know, I mean, another thing I'll

stat that I'll I'll cite because I cited it in this presentation I just gave. It just blows my mind. It tells you how

what James is talking about how we when we grab that sovereign debt from uh when we grab those bonds from Russia. So

since 2020 when COVID hit in bond terms Bitcoin is up 2,000% 20x and in gold terms bit um u gold is

up 277%. So almost 3x so just that's 20 years that's the past 5 years. So that to me,

those two charts are primmaascia evidence that we are in a sovereign debt crisis and it's being expressed by these

two alternative forms of money and how they're just kicking the ass on, you know, of government bonds because nobody

wants those bonds. >> Yeah, this is exactly why I wanted to talk to you guys because this is the

thesis, right? Like I I think this is what what people are are dismissing. There are multiple options to escape

this mathematically assured fiat money debasement. There is one road. It's a path dependent thing. But as James just

explained, you have to look at the characteristics of what you can escape to, right? And gold in that sense has

been money for 5,000 years. You could you could use it locally, right? You could go to the farmers market or maybe

the supermarket when the when >> it's pretty hard to use for transactions, but

>> Exactly. Well, that's my point, right? The characteristics of Bitcoin are superior, right? It's a digital

commodities, digital capital, however you want to define it, controlled by by no one. And we can use it all over the

world with instant final settlement, etc. So, this is the big picture of how people

need to think through it. Like you said, it's not a trade. I said it's the last trade, right? You you you trade once.

>> But here's Yeah, go ahead, Brahma. I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, I mean like this there aren't many more words

like this is the thesis. So you need to understand the characteristics of Bitcoin in order to understand that from

all the lifeboats that you could potentially choose this is the best one and then compared to any of the other

ones. >> Yeah, it's the best one if you can handle the volatility. And I mean well

and that's [laughter] >> that's important. No, that's an important point to make because you know

I mean I I put some people into Bitcoin at 65. It went to 15. They got mad at me and they sold it. Do you know what I

mean? And so I so I've altered my pitch when I'm, you know, and I have a my clients I run a golden gold and silver

stock mining fund. So my clients tend to be older, more conservative. And they ask, but they a lot of them understand

the Bitcoin thesis. And they ask me, "How should I get in? How much should I buy?" And I said, "Well, I think the way

you look at it is this. You you you know, we've had multiple draw downs that have been big. You know, some as large

as 70%. I don't think we're going to have any more of those, but we could easily see 50 or 60." I think what you

put into Bitcoin is a number where if if you if the got drawn down five 50%. You would say to yourself, "Oh, that's a

drag, but I'm going to buy more instead of saying to yourself, oh I made a mistake. I'm going to sell it because

>> yeah, this is, >> you know, you hold it for four years, you know, you're going to be money good

on it again, right?" But but you have to, you know, and so you're 80 years old, you're not going to take your net

worth and put into Bitcoin. You don't want that roller coaster ride. But you might want to put 5% of your net worth

into Bitcoin because if it goes down 50% and you lose two and a half, I mean, one, you're not going to lose it if you

keep waiting. And and two, that's a that's something you can absorb and it's not going to freak you out. Right.

>> Right. And I was about right before you uh said that, what I was going to say is look, that's the thesis, right? The

overarching thesis is what we've what we've defined on on uh the expansion of global liquidity. The the world the

financial world operates on on debt and liquidity. That's just that's just what it is. And so that's number one. Number

two, volatility is scary. >> Yeah, >> it's really scary. And so people are

sitting here going that have bought at 100, 105, 110, and now it's trading at $90,000. like what have I done? I This

is just insane. Oh my god, this thing moves around. It whips around. It is. It's unnerving. And I'll admit, you

know, like I Bro, I come from a an arbitrage background. Um before I did the uh micro cap and and and private

equity kind of world. I I before that I I was in my I was in arbitrage which was if something moved one or two% it was

catastrophic. It was like wow this is a massive move [laughter] you know this thing has moved one or

two% five times in this conversation you know so volat and you just have to kind of and and and sailor says embrace the

volatility and look in a way that that's that's right you volatility is it's necessary for an asset that's being

adopted it's just reality and it means that there there's larger and larger swaths of capital that are moving in and

out of it and it's looking for that those liquidity u prices you know prices the market is tril still trying to

figure out what it is and so one day it's going to the moon and there's not you never get enough of it and the next

day Bitcoin is dead and you know I remember this very clearly looking at Amazon as a comparable because you know

we all know what Amazon is today it's the leading seller of goods and services online but it wasn't always that way it

started off just selling books and expanded into other things and it had a draw down of 90% after 2008 and had

multiple draw of 70, 50, whatever. And yet, you know, if you're Bill Miller and you're smart enough to buy those dips or

at least hang on during those dips, you know, the stock has gone up 212,000% from from the time when it went public,

right? And and it's also a network business, which you know, you know, as you know, Bitcoin's built on the

network. It's a protocol that is the network protocol and protocols are winner take all phenomena. And so, you

know, we just we kind of I mean, to me, it's just I'm very comfortable knowing what's going to happen here. And

honestly, I mean, with a lot of people, I mean, I think they're watching the price too much. I mean, there are days

when I don't even look at the price. I'm just kind of like, whatever, you know? I mean, and my wife's like, "What did it

do today?" I'm like, "I don't know." You know? Oh, it's down. I'm like, "Yeah." So, you know, [laughter]

right? I mean, it's it's Yeah. So, I mean I mean I'm pretty sure next >> like you said it's it's volatile and

every single day that's ends with a Y. >> Yeah. [laughter] Y, right?

>> At least it's being used, right? Like it's being >> Well, there's I mean what's going on is

there's a very healthy debate about what it's worth, right? That's what's going on.

>> I mean, those of us who own it and believe in it, we know it's worth a lot more than the price right now in 5

years. And those people who are selling it, they don't believe that. They're taking the other side of that. Fine.

>> Yeah. >> By the way, some of those sellers are paper sellers. I mean, you know, in

spite of all these positive developments, there's probably a pretty good sized derivatives market. I haven't

looked at it recently. I've been meaning to do that. But, you know, you can there's a futures contract on Bitcoin.

And you can come in and sell Bitcoin you don't have in a contract to somebody who wants to buy the other side of that

contract. And you know, if you're stupid enough to do that, you know, um, too bad because you're going to get your face

ripped off cuz, you know, when it moves, it moves extremely quickly and you have a hard time covering it. But, you know,

there there a lot of there are a lot of games going on and I' the reason I can relate to that is cuz I've seen that in

the gold market for a number of years. I mean, they've, you know, there've been there's been a lot of paper gold created

and, you know, they're starting to create a little bit of paper Bitcoin. And

>> sadly, this is part of the process of, you know, when you get all the Wall Street firms involved, you get everybody

buying it, you get it, you know, get it to be widely accepted. This is what happens.

>> But I mean, I got to tell you, it's getting to be really widely accepted. I had some skeptical friends. I have a

skeptical friends who's close a friend who's close to being a billionaire. And um I was trying to get him to buy it at

5, 10, 20, not not a not a bite. And he just came to me and said, you know, how do I do this? I want to take a 5%

position. I was like, "Wow." >> Well, I think that's super interesting, right? Because like like you mentioned

before, people people are figuring out, you know, what what is this? And uh now that the price is going down, I see all

the Treadfi uh you know, mid uh how do you say that? Mid-range, right? Like the midcurve people coming out and being

like, I told you so. They never jumping. some some guy got on my Twitter feed and said, you know, how how are you going to

be able to live with yourself when you wrecked all those people that you recommended to go into Bitcoin? You

know, you should have been like Peter Schiff or something. And I felt like saying, how does Peter Schiff live with

himself knowing that for 16 years he's advised people to avoid something that would have made them fabulously rich? Do

you know what I mean? And and you know, and I mean this is and this guy is saying this on a correction from, you

know, 125 to 95, right? I mean, come on. This is a dip for ants. I mean, [laughter]

>> yeah. Well, what I wanted to ask is so so people are figuring it out. These guys are coming out of the woodworks,

right? It's so funny because I think like I never tweet about Microsoft or Netflix or whatever, right? Like stay

stay in your lane. Like I don't really care. But um I do think retail or just general plebs, let's go, are very far

from Bitcoin, especially after all the FTX, other crypto debacle, etc. But um like you said James in the beginning a

lot of wheels have been selling but the market has been absorbing right like just over 100k now also in this 93 95

range. >> Who's buying if it's not retail? >> I well I mean it's it's a there are a

lot of smaller institutions smaller um um there there is some retail buying. You know, it's it's hard to tell because

you've got Black Rockck, IBIT, and FBTC, and those are like those are just shell. They're they're rappers of Bitcoin for

people have who have IAS and who have their personal trading accounts. So, um you know, but you can see on the if you

pull up the if you pull up IBIT, you can see some of the largest >> Yeah. Some of the largest uh buyers as

of the end of 9:30 were, you know, Jane Street, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Black Rockck, you know, I mean, the the

the Abu Dhabi >> Harvard endowment is on there, aren't they, James? I think

>> Harvard's Harvard Endowment is on here. They're they're holder number 17. They they bought 5 million shares of IBIT

last uh over the last quarter, you know. I Yeah, I'll tell you who's buying it. Actually, you know what it is? It's um

It's the readers of my book. [laughter] >> They bought my book and they listened to me. The rich, they're in there chasing

it. [laughter] >> Yeah. Well, >> yeah, I think it's it's widening out

though. So the answer is if you have all these OGs selling and it's in it's really consolidated in in a number of

small hand like a small number of hands and then it's being widely distributed to many more hands that that is going to

dampen the volatility. I think that we had blowoff tops and crashes before because it was just concentrated. There

wasn't as much there wasn't as much volume. You can you pull up Bitcoin today and you know you're looking at

volumes on a daily now you've got candles that are like 13 35 you know >> well 30 29

35,000 coins in a day you know like billions and billions of dollars.

>> Yeah. And the way the way that the way the whole thing calms down is these big accounts, they don't go in and and jam

the price and just start to buy as much as they can as fast as they can. They're smart. They sit there and they just

layer in, you know, they have a whole stack of orders. I mean, I'm sure, >> you know, if you if you're a big

institutional investor and you want to express an interest in Bitcoin, you know, you just sit there and you just

you you do a ladder all the way down to 60 and you you know, you just you you basically say, "Okay, if it drops to

this, I'll buy this amount." And you know, maybe maybe wait it heavier at the bottom so that you know cuz you know

that your time frame is very long that you're not you're not trading it right. >> And they and they vi they VWAP it you

know they it's volume weighted average price where you just give your trade you're like

>> all right we want to put 1% of our portfolio into this. Well, if the portfolio is a hundred is $100 million,

it's a million dollars that you're going to go out and buy over the course of the day or the course of the week, you know,

>> and they're just like, well, just figure out the volume and just be a portion of volume and spread it out over the next

few days. And then the trader does that. And so they just go along. And what'll happen is you get, you know, five or 10

really big institutions that happen to be going along at the same time together. Price is going to go up. It's

going to be it's going to enter price discovery, >> which we expected to happen once we got

to new highs. But lo and behold, OG's had another uh they had another idea which was just get out, sell all my

coins, get me out. And so they did and they they pummeled the price. >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Um, I think the showing the book was a nice uh bridge, Larry, because I wanted to ask [laughter]

I'm also looking at the time. So, I'm always selling always. >> I'm I'm going to connect some questions

together, but I wanted to ask you mentioned, you know, that kind of like timeline for the big print or when it's

happening kind of like a year. This is what I wanted to ask like what timeline should be.

>> I'll be interested. I mean, >> um, just looking at patterns, charts,

tightness, etc. I can't imagine we make it a year without a big print. And and of course you get into the

>> Well, you you tweeted it was imminent, so that's why. >> Well, and I and it feels kind of

imminent, but I want to give myself some breathing room. I mean, let me say this. Printing is imminent. I mean, they're

almost doing that now. I mean, the Treasury is buying 10-year bonds with TGA money that they sell that they raise

by selling short bonds. So, that's kind of an operation twist, you know, QE back backdoor QE. So, they're already quote

unquote kind of printing because a a short-term bond is almost, you know, it's almost like cash. Um, but, you

know, the big print, I mean, the the size, order of magnitude, you know, growth, etc., It tends to historically

that's been triggered by some kind of an event, something getting discontinuous, you know, um, you know, the basis trade

blowing up, you know, like it did when they bailed out Ken Ken Griffin. Um, you know, and and what's going to trigger

that? I don't know. We don't know. There's there's leverage all over the place. You've got, you know, goes

bankrupt. You've got, you know, First Brands goes bankrupt. You discover there was fraud in both of those. You've got

this whole private credit market that is very opaque. You've got all these private equity deals that are marked to

to myth or market. I mean, if you marked them to real market, they might take big R. I mean, you know, at some point in

time, I mean, history shows that when you layer debt on debt on debt and you get, you know, you get an enormous

credit structure over too far out quote unquote over its skis, something breaks and it's like the tide goes out and

everyone says, "Who's naked?" And you know, and it's just a daisy chain. >> And you know, and that and the swap. I

mean, by the way, it just recently happened to Argentina. Okay. And you know, what do we do? Swap line. Oh, how

much? 20 bill. Oh, no, not 20 bill. A week later, it's 40 bill. [laughter] Because they're trying to defend the

Argentina peso because we don't want ar Argentina to fall under the influence of China. I mean, it it just, you know, we

don't know exactly what's going to break. We don't know exactly what is going to happen. I'd be curious how

James sees it. Yeah, maybe James to weave into that h will it be suddenly like how do how do

people know when this starts? What what should people for? [laughter] >> Well, so let's start with back in 2008

there were a lot of there was a lot of talk about the housing uh crisis and and the the obvious thing was that this

couldn't be sustained. It was unsustainable. The less obvious thing about it was well houses always go up

like then they never go down in price and so you know historically that was true but then it was different so this

time really was different then well I would characterize today as a little bit different in that and Larry's written

all about this in his book everything you know that that the so the what happened in 2008 was there was a massive

debt crisis there was a there was a you know that could not be absorbed without destroying the economy, which we we

basically did, but then we printed a trillion dollars and kicked that risk up to from the banks to the sovereigns and

some of the sovereigns are holding that debt. Basically, there are, you know, all that the the Fed has um you know,

they kicked up a trillion dollars there and then they kicked up another five trillion uh during, you know, the great

financial crisis. then in in they've kicked out another 5 trillion during co. So here's how I would say it. I would

agree wholeheartedly with Larry that um look we are we're we're skating on an edge now. Okay. So the reason that it's

scary is because there's so much leverage in the system and we won't we we will continue with liquidity. We're

going to we like Powell said the banks are getting to the point where we're going to have to add liquidity to the

reserves. That's not that's going to be QE not QE like we discussed earlier in the show. The bigger problem is that

just the sheer amount of of debt borrowing and leverage there is in the system. And so the way I would kind of

characterize it is that you know when you were a kid you played um that game in in uh in you know field day where you

were throw the egg back and forth to each other and everybody starts out you know there where they're right next to

each other then they're a foot apart then they're two feet apart then they're three feet apart and then they're 5t

apart then so we're tossing this egg back and forth and we're like 50 feet apart now. You could keep doing this for

a long time if you have skilled players and you know you've got some help in the system. You could just keep throwing

that egg back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, but eventually it's going to it's going to crack.

Something's going to break eventually. You just have so much leverage. Everybody has leverage in their on their

balance sheet ac from from and we're talking about not just the sovereigns. We're talking about We're talking about

corporations, talking about banks, talking about companies. You're talking about individuals. Everybody's got

leverage except the probably the 1%. If the their leverage is covered, but everybody's got leverage and the system

is teetering on that leverage. And at some point something does break. It will happen. But like I said, he can be

throwing this egg back and forth, back and forth for a long time, but eventually it's going to break it.

There's just a probability and the probability is that there's just too much leverage and it's going to and that

leverage is the distance between people and so eventually something's going to break. It's just a question of when. It

could be tomorrow. It could be 2027. >> Yeah. >> I think it's going to be somewhere in

between. >> Yeah. So, you don't think we make it to 20?

>> I think it's I think it's somewhere between I who knows. I mean, like we we've said, let's put it this way. We

just saw really tight liquidity um really tight liquidity conditions at the

end of October. Why is that? Bank reserves have fallen. They've gotten down to a point where

they're below that 10% threshold that the the that's right about 8 to 10% is where the Fed says, "Yeah, they're

ampleish, you [laughter] know, because they need they need they need the velocity of

capital." Okay. And 10 10% of GDP is what I'm talking about. And then there's also the 10 to 12% of of total bank

assets. That's another measure. But we're getting to that point where in 2019

they got down to 7% of of uh GDP, the the bank reserves, and the repo market blew up. It imploded. The whole the

whole system locked up and the Fed had to stop QT and turn around with QE literally in two days. And so

that could happen. Well, we saw at the end of October, well, what echoes 2019? Well, 2019 we had and I wrote all about

this. If anybody wants to read more about it, it it's in my information, but really quickly in 2019 we had uh a

confluence of of events where you had tax payments were due for corporations. You had the the Treasury came out with a

larger QR than uh than was expected, larger refunding announcement and then uh dollars were needed overseas. And so

you had a shortage of dollars basically and so the repo markets blew up where you were you were using your treasuries

to borrow dollars from other from other financial institutions. Then there just weren't enough to go around. So that

rate spiked from um just a a a few% to like 9% intraday. It was like it was it would be

like your your floating rate mortgage tripling overnight, you know. Then so it became a massive problem. Well, what we

saw just now in October was not the same, but it was and it was short-term just like just like it was last uh in in

in 2019. But it doesn't matter if it's short-term or not. There are some differences though. The first difference

is now we have a standing repo facility. the Fed learned its lesson that they've got to be the fireman standing at the

ready at any moment to make sure that they offer liquidity to uh institutions that need it, to financial institutions

that need it. So, they've got this they're sitting there, but that it's not open to everybody. And so, what you're