Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Mark Moa
Speaker 1: Show where we are talking about bitcoin. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the decentralized revolution that's happening right now before our very eyes.
Speaker 1: What an exciting time to be alive. It is literally
Speaker 1: changing the course of humanity. It's that big um. But
Speaker 1: to understand just how big it is, and to understand
Speaker 1: how big of an impact it can make on the humanity,
Speaker 1: you kind of have to understand the past as well.
Speaker 1: I'm joining the studio today with Lawrence Lepard. You can
Speaker 1: find him on Twitter at Lawrence Lepard l E P
Speaker 1: A R D. And Uh. Lawrence is uh, he's still
Speaker 1: kind of part way in the old way and a
Speaker 1: little bit in the new way, but he's he's got
Speaker 1: a very interesting take on some of this monetary history.
Speaker 1: So Lawrence, thanks so much for jumping in. Oh, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me on Market Lover's show. Nice to join you.
Speaker 1: Thanks man. Thanks. Uh you know, uh, my, my my
Speaker 1: story not that I'm going here to tell my story,
Speaker 1: but my story is that I made a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: I was really good at business. I had sold a
Speaker 1: couple of businesses I invested through the dot com boom.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and one, I started e commerce business
Speaker 1: at the at the bottom of the crash. People laughed
Speaker 1: at me, told me that nobody would buy stuff online. Um,
Speaker 1: had some exits, did really good, invested in real estate.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and eight got wiped out and I had
Speaker 1: to dig out of I had to dig out of
Speaker 1: a hole. And so I was like, dang, like, what
Speaker 1: the heck. I'm good at making money, but um, what
Speaker 1: the heck is this whole financial casino thing going on
Speaker 1: that I don't know anything about. And so I started
Speaker 1: I started digging in, and uh, I learned about you know,
Speaker 1: via currency. And let's just say that I became a
Speaker 1: gold bug. So you know, Mike Maloney and Peter Schiff
Speaker 1: and those guys, and I jumped in that it became
Speaker 1: a gold bug. Was like, well, the problem is that
Speaker 1: you have money system and we need to sound money,
Speaker 1: like like gold that you know, keeps the government on
Speaker 1: a budget and so forth. And so I kind of
Speaker 1: became this gold bug. Um. Where I realized today is
Speaker 1: that I'm just a sound money advocate, Right, That's really
Speaker 1: what I'm for. I'm for sound money. Um, but I
Speaker 1: think you're still kind of uh, you're a sound money advocate.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing right, and I'm definitely sound money advocate for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so tell me about that. Yeah, well so, I you know, look,
Speaker 1: I'm dragging around some gold baggage, some some boomer bars.
Speaker 1: They say a lot of something that guys are going bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and I can certainly have appreciate that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: you know, I think bitcoin will become a better form
Speaker 1: of sound money than golder already is in some respects,
Speaker 1: but they're slightly different. I mean, I I view, you know,
Speaker 1: gold is analog sound money. Bitcoin is digital sound money,
Speaker 1: and with positive and negatives to both. Um and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been in the sound money came for a while.
Speaker 1: My story is similar to yours. I participated in the
Speaker 1: dot com boom did great. I was a venture of
Speaker 1: capitals before that, all the technology stuff, and it all
Speaker 1: worked out great. And I was like you I was
Speaker 1: kind of in a uh GF done okay, and I'm
Speaker 1: kind of with semi retiring or just investing my money
Speaker 1: and coaching my kids sports teams. And then two thousand
Speaker 1: eight hit. I didn't get wiped out, but I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, this is a big deal. You know,
Speaker 1: they're gonna print until the cows come home. And I've
Speaker 1: got all these savings that I thought would keep me,
Speaker 1: you know, in good shape for the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: and they may not because if they if they inflated enough,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the money I have won't be enough.
Speaker 1: And so I did a deep I was a gold
Speaker 1: bud before that, but I really went deep into it,
Speaker 1: and oh it started picking up the miners and the
Speaker 1: gold and silver miners because my view was it was
Speaker 1: the way to protect oneself again monetary debasement, which was
Speaker 1: really you know, a huge, huge issue and manifest post
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. And so I've I've run this fund
Speaker 1: that I've got that's gold, gold and silver mining company
Speaker 1: since I wait. Um, I believe very strongly in sound money.
Speaker 1: UM I saw a bitcoin coming along. I never bought it.
Speaker 1: Before coin Base got opened up. I was and the
Speaker 1: process opening monk Ox account when they failed. Think goodness,
Speaker 1: that didn't happen. And uh and uh, I've slowly but
Speaker 1: surely come to see all the benefits of bitcoin. And
Speaker 1: now it's a big part of my personal account and
Speaker 1: it's a big part of what we do with the fund.
Speaker 1: But I haven't a band of the gold. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the sailors of the world are like, well, gold is
Speaker 1: just dead, you know, get out of it, sell it now.
Speaker 1: It's going down. And I don't think that's true. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's Um, it's older, it's it's probably not
Speaker 1: as dynamic as bitcoin because it doesn't have an adoption
Speaker 1: curve going on, but it's not going away anytime soon.
Speaker 1: And uh, if you want sound money, you know, they
Speaker 1: both serve a purpose. Gold is less volatible. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: gold is off the grid. Um. You know, there is
Speaker 1: a bitcoin record of what you've done in bitcoin, and um,
Speaker 1: gold doesn't recur, doesn't require recurring electrical energy to keep
Speaker 1: it going. It's just is what it is. The money
Speaker 1: was spent up front. So um, which is not to
Speaker 1: say that, you know, bitcoin is not a better choice
Speaker 1: if you want optionality and if you want asymmetry, which
Speaker 1: I think it is. So so I got a foot
Speaker 1: in both camps. You're right, yeah, Um, so we have
Speaker 1: in the bitcoin space. One of the biggest gold gold
Speaker 1: bulls will call it that Peter shift. He's he seemed
Speaker 1: to make and and and it's it's a shame because
Speaker 1: like I think I said, you know, Peter Schiff was
Speaker 1: very instrumental in my kind of development becoming a sound
Speaker 1: money advocate. Um. And I mean he's he's a he's
Speaker 1: a great Austrian economist. I mean, he gets the markets. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, he's he's going to be the broken clock
Speaker 1: that's going to be eventually right one day. I guess
Speaker 1: you know, he's been pounding the same table for a
Speaker 1: for a decade. Um. But he's almost I think he's
Speaker 1: kind of made this career out of just banging on
Speaker 1: bitcoin now and that's kind of like his possible but
Speaker 1: it's a marketing ploy mark from how I see it.
Speaker 1: I think the other possibility that's going on is he
Speaker 1: just making And I have friends who are gold bugs
Speaker 1: that that are making the same error. They really have
Speaker 1: a hard time getting around the physicality of it all.
Speaker 1: You know. They're like, if you can't touch it, it's
Speaker 1: not real, you know. Um. And you know, money throughout
Speaker 1: history has typically been most moneys have been physically touchable,
Speaker 1: you know, gold, silver, you know when it was cattle
Speaker 1: or grain. Um. But you know, if you go up
Speaker 1: one layer, what I think you see is that money
Speaker 1: is really a ledger. The money is just keeping score.
Speaker 1: And so even before we had gold or beads or
Speaker 1: whatever they used for money. You know, guys who were
Speaker 1: living in groups, you know, would say, okay, look I
Speaker 1: killed two bites in this week. You killed one, you
Speaker 1: owe me one. You know, we all eight of them together,
Speaker 1: and it's just money is a way to keep score.
Speaker 1: Who's got what, who knows what, who knows who what?
Speaker 1: And so it's a ledger. And the problem with the
Speaker 1: reason there was no you know, sound money ledger before
Speaker 1: bitcoin is nobody had solved the you know the problem
Speaker 1: of double spending and you know, making it immutable, and
Speaker 1: so you know, the cetoce and I think Setocia is
Speaker 1: a bunch of people. The guy's opining and those guys
Speaker 1: who came along and developed it. It makes all the
Speaker 1: problem and it's a huge innovation in my opinion. That's
Speaker 1: a good point that I hadn't really thought of specifically
Speaker 1: the way that you laid that out, which is, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we've always had physical money, which of course because
Speaker 1: we've always lived in a physical world. I mean, the
Speaker 1: digital world is is something new obviously, right, Um, And
Speaker 1: so obviously before the digital world everything was physical. We
Speaker 1: had to listen to music, and there was a there
Speaker 1: was a there was a vinyl LB or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then it was a cassette and etcetera. But today money
Speaker 1: is digital. I'm sorry, music is digital, and so of
Speaker 1: course everything was physical. But I like that that point
Speaker 1: that you had said right there, which is though even
Speaker 1: in a physical world, it wasn't physical because it was
Speaker 1: on ledgers. And that was exactly right. So even at
Speaker 1: that point, people were still trading invisible digital money credits.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, your bank account is uh is a ledger?
Speaker 1: You know, they don't. You're back to essentially have the dollars.
Speaker 1: But you open up your bank account online, you can
Speaker 1: see how many dollars are there, and that just represents
Speaker 1: the underlying dollars behind it, you know, And so it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not that far a leap, but some people
Speaker 1: just can't make it. They don't they don't quite get it,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I mean, look, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of other noise that's hurt Bitcoin. I think all
Speaker 1: the coins and the you know, the promotion or you know,
Speaker 1: around them. I mean, you know, how I have friends
Speaker 1: who said, how can I take this seriously? When dose
Speaker 1: coin comes out and goes up a million percent. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean, it's a joke. These things are
Speaker 1: a joke. They're complete fraud. And I understand that. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are frauds around the area, but that's not to say,
Speaker 1: you know, that's all the noise. The signal is bitcoin,
Speaker 1: which is an immutable ledger, right, yeah, And and and
Speaker 1: the same is true in any industry. So obviously there's
Speaker 1: an entire sector of penny stocks, which are there's an
Speaker 1: entire sector of penny stocks that are companies that will
Speaker 1: probably never amount to anything, and they're all pump on
Speaker 1: dumps as well. Um, you know, in the in the
Speaker 1: gold mining space, for example, a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of those junior those explorers there there, they have good
Speaker 1: promoters and they'll probably never be anything. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: take away from the big you know, uh legit miners either, right,
Speaker 1: And so I think there's always going to be that. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, I get that as well. I think,
Speaker 1: um one thing that he said was he said that
Speaker 1: actually we'll come back to that in a minute, but
Speaker 1: I think I think that's a good point. And a
Speaker 1: lot of people think that you have this ever expanding
Speaker 1: market and then there's fraud or their scams in there,
Speaker 1: and that somehow takes away from it. Almost like if
Speaker 1: you have all these counterfeit Mona Lisa's and that somehow
Speaker 1: takes away from the legit Mona Lisa. I guess, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: which doesn't make any sense. Um, you're listening to the
Speaker 1: Mark Mos Show. We're talking about bitcoin. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the Decentralized Revolution, cryptocurrencies. I'm in the studio with Lawrence Lapard.
Speaker 1: You can find him on Twitter at Lawrence Lapard L E.
Speaker 1: P A R D. Of course I'm one Mark Moss
Speaker 1: on Twitter. If you if you're on there, give us
Speaker 1: a question, to give us shout out and say you
Speaker 1: heard us on the radio. We'd love to hear that.
Speaker 1: We're talking about bitcoin and we're comparing it to really
Speaker 1: sound money, and um, how both of us have been
Speaker 1: kind of been in the sound money camp, which was
Speaker 1: originally um bitcoin I'm sorry, was originally gold, but now
Speaker 1: bitcoin is kind of filling that. Um. But I think
Speaker 1: if you can understand a little bit of monetary history
Speaker 1: and understand the reason why we need sound money in
Speaker 1: the first place, I think that can open it up
Speaker 1: for you. So a lot of times people don't understand
Speaker 1: bitcoin because they don't understand the need for sound money.
Speaker 1: So I want to dig into that some of this
Speaker 1: monetary history with Lawrence. When we come back, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about some of these comments that Peter Schiff made
Speaker 1: about UM maybe bitcoin kind of being this ponzi and
Speaker 1: why we need sound money. So don't go away when
Speaker 1: we are back. All right, welcome back. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the Mark Moa Show. We're talking about bitcoin, We're talking
Speaker 1: about the decentralized Revolution, and right now we are talking
Speaker 1: about sound money. One of the things that I like
Speaker 1: talking about with bitcoin is why why do we need bitcoin?
Speaker 1: And the reason why we need bitcoin is because we
Speaker 1: need sound money. And we're in the studio today with
Speaker 1: Lawrence Lepard he is talking about that with us UM. So,
Speaker 1: Lawrence UM going back to UM the need for sound
Speaker 1: money kind of give us a little bit of this
Speaker 1: overall kind of monetary history you talked about UM in
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight. You realize that they're going to
Speaker 1: debase or devalue the currency by printing more that you
Speaker 1: were you had concern or cause or scare because of
Speaker 1: the money that you had saved up um, and it
Speaker 1: was being debased. Explain how that works and kind of
Speaker 1: what your challenge was there, Sure, Mark, I mean it's
Speaker 1: you know, so I don't think a lot of people
Speaker 1: know the monetary history of the world, of the monitory
Speaker 1: history of the FED in the United States. I mean,
Speaker 1: the United States was found in seventeen eighty nine, and
Speaker 1: it was written into the Constitution that olden gold and
Speaker 1: silver could be sound money. Um. And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is that the Continental which they had used to
Speaker 1: finance the war failed and they had we had hyper
Speaker 1: inflation here in this country before we had the Constitution passed,
Speaker 1: and that pretty much you know, cemented gold and silver
Speaker 1: is really the only forms of money that we're used
Speaker 1: in this country from seventeen eighty nine into the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, um. And and you know, the banking was
Speaker 1: unregulated as well. Um. And then we kind of began
Speaker 1: to drift away from that in nineteen thirteen when the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve got created, and um, the a reserve. You know,
Speaker 1: we stayed on the gold standard, but the Federal Reserve
Speaker 1: had the ability to create additional claims against the money
Speaker 1: in the form of leverage. I mean, they became a
Speaker 1: bank of last resort. And you know, there are two
Speaker 1: forms of sound money. There's gold, but there's also credit
Speaker 1: and paper money issued against the gold. And the Fed
Speaker 1: had the power, got the power to be the banker
Speaker 1: of less resort to prevent panics and crashes. And so
Speaker 1: that began the monetary expansion in the United States, and
Speaker 1: of course it started at a modest level. They were
Speaker 1: only supposed to lend money against good credit for short
Speaker 1: periods of time at high interest rates to kind of
Speaker 1: prevent bank collapses, because they've had a few of those
Speaker 1: in and of course they immediately broke the charter right
Speaker 1: and they went out in finance World War One and
Speaker 1: then and then after that it kind of slowly devolved
Speaker 1: from there where you know, Roosevelt confiscated the gold in
Speaker 1: thirty three, and then he repriced it in thirty four,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we slowly but surely, but but
Speaker 1: Breton Woods came along. We reset the dollar to be
Speaker 1: kind of the standard, but the dollar was based upon
Speaker 1: a fixed rate of goal. So so we more or
Speaker 1: less had semi sound money, albeit with a big credit
Speaker 1: overlay from the Federal Reserve. Up until nine nine seventy
Speaker 1: one was just a cataclysmic event, you know, Nixon temporarily
Speaker 1: interesting that you should use that word. Of course, it
Speaker 1: has never changed. In nineteen seventy one took the United
Speaker 1: States off the gold standard, as we all know, in
Speaker 1: August fifteen, and and that was really the beginning of
Speaker 1: the money printing error. So at that point in time,
Speaker 1: gold was valued at thirty five thou dollars nouns thirty
Speaker 1: five dollars mounts. Yeah, that was a Freudian slip. It
Speaker 1: should be at thirty five to that um. And so
Speaker 1: they gained the ability to print money when we went
Speaker 1: off the gold standard because dollars could be created that
Speaker 1: we're not backed by gold. And that ability has only
Speaker 1: increased as time has gone by. And you can see
Speaker 1: this in the growth of the Federals are balance Sheetcause
Speaker 1: the Federals are balance sheet. The liabilities reflect the money
Speaker 1: that's in circulation. And you see the Federals are balance
Speaker 1: sheet has grown from you know, pre uh you know,
Speaker 1: pre the crisis, it was huddered billion dollars, you know,
Speaker 1: and now it's approaching what eight nine trillion dollars, so
Speaker 1: it's eight trilling to assume be nine. Uh So the
Speaker 1: point is that they have printed enormous amounts of money.
Speaker 1: And you know, the go to solution of politicians is
Speaker 1: to say, when they've got a crisis, they've got a hold,
Speaker 1: they've got to fill some financial institution is failing, or
Speaker 1: the economy is not doing well. They print money. They
Speaker 1: literally print money. And you know this is not a
Speaker 1: hidden fact. I mean, Bernakey tried to hide it, but
Speaker 1: were recently J Paul in a sixty minutes every said, yes,
Speaker 1: we print the money. We do what is necessary to
Speaker 1: add to the money supply. And of course the notion
Speaker 1: they've been able to get away with it because you know,
Speaker 1: we've been in a deflationary period, interest rates haven't gone high,
Speaker 1: and the economy has been growing. But they're now at
Speaker 1: the point where they've really, in our opinion, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: they were kind of reached the endgame, and people see
Speaker 1: what they're doing. The amount they have to print is
Speaker 1: getting so large and so excessive that you know, as
Speaker 1: anyone would know that. You know, like when you're playing monopoly,
Speaker 1: if you create a lot of money, you know, sure
Speaker 1: the value of all the properties goes up, but no
Speaker 1: real value has been created in that printing and that's
Speaker 1: what I mean when I talk about monetary debasement. And
Speaker 1: so it's been a hundred years of monetary debasement, but
Speaker 1: with a real acceleration since oh eight. Yeah. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: listening to the Mark Moa show. We're talking about bitcoin
Speaker 1: and the decentralized revolution. In the studio with Lawrence Lepard.
Speaker 1: We're talking about um, the FED and creating all this
Speaker 1: money in this monetary debasement. I think one key piece
Speaker 1: that you said there. I mean a lot of good
Speaker 1: stuff obviously, but the piece that people are starting to
Speaker 1: pay attention. And so a couple of years ago, nobody
Speaker 1: used the word fiat, nobody knew it right, and today
Speaker 1: it's just like being thrown around everywhere. Right now we're seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, um Tucker Carlson, you know, the most watching
Speaker 1: show on TV now talking about these issues, right, and
Speaker 1: so people are waking up to it. And actually he
Speaker 1: was Meets has talked about in the in the Crack
Speaker 1: Up Boom. He said, whenever you have a credit montery
Speaker 1: expansion that leads to an expansion of the economy, um,
Speaker 1: it's gonna start to lead to all types of distortion
Speaker 1: in the market, labor, etcetera. And he said, suddenly the
Speaker 1: people wake up, they realize that inflation is both persistent
Speaker 1: and intentional. And that's exactly what happening. People are waking
Speaker 1: up to it. They realize it. Well, you know the yeah,
Speaker 1: they just have to mark. I mean, you know, look
Speaker 1: at the cost of healthcare, look at the cost of
Speaker 1: college education, look at the cost of gasoline, look at
Speaker 1: the cost of everything. It's just going up so rapidly.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got people who have zero interest in
Speaker 1: monetary things asking me questions now because they know that's
Speaker 1: my area that you know, why are the prices going
Speaker 1: up so quickly? And everything? It just becomes very obvious.
Speaker 1: It's very painful. I mean, imagine living on a fixed
Speaker 1: income and suddenly you can't buy as much. Your money
Speaker 1: just doesn't go as far. And so, yes, you're right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the awareness is there. And this is
Speaker 1: the beginning of what we call Gresham's law, which says
Speaker 1: that once people begin to realize that the money is
Speaker 1: losing value their savings, they try to put their savings
Speaker 1: into things which will maintain their value. And the traditional one,
Speaker 1: of course, would be golden or silver, but the earlier
Speaker 1: one is bitcoin and One of the things I think
Speaker 1: is beautiful about bitcoin is that you Know, Safety in book,
Speaker 1: which I think is one of the best books written
Speaker 1: in the last fifteen years. You know, the Bitcoin Standard
Speaker 1: has basically educated an entire generational millennials in Austrian economics. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean I used to say Austrian economics ten fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago. People look at me like, what the hell
Speaker 1: are you talking about? You know, and I mean here
Speaker 1: you are quoting about mesas, right, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: just it's it's just a c change for us in
Speaker 1: the sound money world, right, things are really changing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great book. Thanks for bringing that up. So everybody,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, you should check out that book, The
Speaker 1: Bitcoin Standard by Safety. Um. What I love about that
Speaker 1: book is that it really takes you all the way
Speaker 1: through all of monetary history. So you go through monetary
Speaker 1: history to understand what money is, the history of money,
Speaker 1: then you understand the gold standard. Um, so it catches
Speaker 1: you up on all that history, which you're a big
Speaker 1: fan of. I'm a big fan of as well. I
Speaker 1: think it's important to know that. And then they transition
Speaker 1: into Okay, now that you have that educational foundation, now
Speaker 1: it's transition into bitcoin. Um, and so it's a it's
Speaker 1: an amazing book. Uh. I think it's it's definitely a
Speaker 1: must read. Uh to the point, to the point the world.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, Yes, it's changed the world. And it's like,
Speaker 1: on one hand, I'm like encouraged by the amount of
Speaker 1: people that are waking up and reading it. To your point,
Speaker 1: all these millials that I've read it, and and the
Speaker 1: the overwhelming demand for podcasts and YouTube and videos and
Speaker 1: stuff where people are waking up, and then and then
Speaker 1: it's half the world seems to still be sleepwalking. So
Speaker 1: it's like, uh, we're kind of getting divided there. Um,
Speaker 1: you're listening to the Mark Moa show. We're talking about bitcoin.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the decentralized revolution that is happening right now.
Speaker 1: We're talking about specifically in the studio today with Lawrence Lepard,
Speaker 1: we're talking about why why bitcoin? I like to I
Speaker 1: like to focus on that, not what the price of
Speaker 1: bitcoin is. The price is the least important part in
Speaker 1: my opinion, But why why do we need it? Why
Speaker 1: is it important? Why can it fix things? Why can
Speaker 1: it change things? And that's what we're talking about. We're
Speaker 1: talking about um gold, we're talking about sound money, UM,
Speaker 1: and we're talking a little bit about history. If you
Speaker 1: haven't read the Bitcoin Standard, go get that book right now.
Speaker 1: Make put it on your reading list for sure. And
Speaker 1: then of course he's just going with the Fiat Standard,
Speaker 1: which I haven't read yet, but I know it's gonna
Speaker 1: be amazing as well. We are going to come back
Speaker 1: and talk about more about sound money and gold and
Speaker 1: bitcoin where it's going. Don't go away, all right, welcome back.
Speaker 1: You are listening to the Mark Mo Show. We're talking
Speaker 1: about bitcoin. We're talking about the decentralized revolution that's happening
Speaker 1: right now. I'm in the studio today with Lawrence Lepard
Speaker 1: and we are talking about why bitcoin. We're talking about
Speaker 1: sound money, we're talking about the need for that now. Um, Lawrence,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to pull up something that
Speaker 1: I saw today, UM, and it was it was going
Speaker 1: back to Peter Shift. We we talked about that earlier
Speaker 1: and he made a comment on because Michael Sailor micro Strategy,
Speaker 1: they've been buying up all the bitcoin. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, I saw a stat that said, um, since
Speaker 1: he started buying, since Michael Strategy started buying they've taken
Speaker 1: twenty five cent of all bitcoin that's been created through
Speaker 1: mining since then, which is amazing. And today he posted
Speaker 1: that they did another big acquisition of the big the
Speaker 1: big purchase, which I tell people. People ask me all
Speaker 1: the time, should I buy an hour? Should I wait?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, if you think you're smarter than
Speaker 1: Michael Sailor, then I guess you can figure that out. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: just follow his lead. But Peter Shift commented on that,
Speaker 1: and he said that he said, quote, imagine how much
Speaker 1: lower the price of bitcoin would be without your buying
Speaker 1: so many And so he's he's he's setting it up
Speaker 1: like it's a Ponzi scheme. But wouldn't the same be
Speaker 1: true about gold? Absolutely? I mean, that's or any asset, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an asset. That's an unfair comment. I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, I don't think Sailors purchases as a percentage
Speaker 1: of total volume, you know, I mean Bitcoin's trading five
Speaker 1: thousand coins a day, you know, I don't do you
Speaker 1: know the balance that Sailor's company owns. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's that large. Well, it's like a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand, know what I'm saying is he's taking taking
Speaker 1: of the new supply, but apply a small compared to
Speaker 1: the base, and it's only growing up one point sent
Speaker 1: a year, and when the next halving comes, that will
Speaker 1: be cut in half. I mean yeah, no. And you
Speaker 1: can say the same thing about gold. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: that's the gold mining supplies about one seven. They're they're
Speaker 1: actually at a stock to flow ratio. They're about the
Speaker 1: same right now. Um, but that's gonna change. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it's that's kind of a specious criticism in
Speaker 1: my view. I mean, the you know, the price of
Speaker 1: it going goes up and down. It to me, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter. I'm like you, I mean, I'm in
Speaker 1: this because it's changing the world. Um, I do believe
Speaker 1: the price will be multiples higher than it is today,
Speaker 1: you know in five years. I mean I think you know, people,
Speaker 1: a lot of people I talk to a loot get
Speaker 1: today and say sixty old, I can't pay that you
Speaker 1: paid five or six. I mean, you know, I'm paying
Speaker 1: too much. And I think people are missing a bigger picture,
Speaker 1: which is in five or ten years will be six
Speaker 1: hundred thousand or six million. I mean, who knows, But um,
Speaker 1: you know, there'll people saying you bought one at sixty
Speaker 1: thousand and be like us the way you and I
Speaker 1: talk about people who bought them at you know, twelve
Speaker 1: or or forty or fifty. You know, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's going to you know, we're at that stage
Speaker 1: of rapid adoption. We've we've hit that ten percent tipping point.
Speaker 1: In my view, about ten percent of the world knows
Speaker 1: and knows about bitclan owns it. And if you look
Speaker 1: at history, you know, adoption of any new technology, that's
Speaker 1: where it really starts to get interesting. I mean, I
Speaker 1: figured this is like a couple of years after Netscape
Speaker 1: came out with the Internet browser, and we're about to
Speaker 1: really catch a wave here in terms of this thing
Speaker 1: being widely adopted in the next five years in my view,
Speaker 1: and in ten years it will be almost universally adopted
Speaker 1: in if you look at like es curve, so they
Speaker 1: have this kind of the diffusion of innovation, right and
Speaker 1: so you have this this Bell curve um and I
Speaker 1: think we're just kind of crossing the chasm right now.
Speaker 1: I think the E T F and L. Salvador is
Speaker 1: helping to cross that chasm and then if you overlay
Speaker 1: an S curve chart to that ES curve tells us
Speaker 1: that the time it takes to go from zero to
Speaker 1: ten percent adoption is this time I should take to
Speaker 1: go from ten tooption. And so we're we're in we're
Speaker 1: just past that ten percent, as you just kind of
Speaker 1: said globally, I think we're about in the US, and
Speaker 1: so we're really going to start going into this this
Speaker 1: parabolic run. And if S curve, you know, oscar works
Speaker 1: pretty well. Um, and and that says that we should
Speaker 1: be at about eighty to adoption by the end of
Speaker 1: the decade. I think that's right. I think that's a
Speaker 1: definitely right. I mean it's it's been around for thirteen years, right,
Speaker 1: and so add another thirteen hundred almost in the end
Speaker 1: of the decade, is you know nine away or something
Speaker 1: like that. So yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, Um, one thing, um,
Speaker 1: you know, as I kind of started the first section
Speaker 1: with kind of giving my real quick story of in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight getting wiped out. You know, I
Speaker 1: had sold my business as I sold my rentals, and
Speaker 1: I was all in and developing real estate in south
Speaker 1: of California and got wiped out. And so because of that,
Speaker 1: I learned don't ever go all in. And so I've
Speaker 1: been you know, I'm I'm I'm as bullish on bitcoin
Speaker 1: as anybody here. Um. But even even that, uh, I
Speaker 1: still don't put a hundred percent of every penny I
Speaker 1: have into bitcoin. I know a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: you see on Twitter, a lot of these people are like,
Speaker 1: you know, selling their selling everything to buy it. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess because I've been burned, I don't do that. Um.
Speaker 1: And and so I think there's still a need to
Speaker 1: have other people hold other assets. UM. And you said
Speaker 1: you still hold gold as well. UM. Jumping back to
Speaker 1: golden I'm curious. Um, you said you have a fund
Speaker 1: that manages like gold miners, so you're kind of more
Speaker 1: focused on the gold miners because they have more of
Speaker 1: a kind of asymmetric return versus just the physical gold itself. Well,
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean, the typical role of thumb is
Speaker 1: if gold goes up ten percent, the mining stocks I mean,
Speaker 1: gold miners really are kind of private central banks. I
Speaker 1: mean they can create what I think is the best
Speaker 1: form of money, you know, pre bitcoin, um, by pulling
Speaker 1: it out of the ground. And some of the minds
Speaker 1: I'm involved with have twenty thirty year lives, so they're
Speaker 1: gonna be pulling this metal out of the ground for
Speaker 1: the next thirty years. And that's you know, that's a stream.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, you know Buffett's knock on gold is
Speaker 1: it's a goose that doesn't lay eggs. It's just a vault.
Speaker 1: You know, at least the companies are able to produce
Speaker 1: the underlying you know entity. You know. So that's why
Speaker 1: which he did he did by Barrick or you know,
Speaker 1: it's actually lieutenants did. I don't think he did it,
Speaker 1: Berkshire did or whatever. Right, So, um, I'm serious then
Speaker 1: on what you think the outlook is for gold, because
Speaker 1: it seems like gold has been this inflation hedge and
Speaker 1: if there was and maybe a time you know, chaos
Speaker 1: hedge as well, right, and if there was ever a
Speaker 1: time that there was chaos, and there was every time
Speaker 1: that was inflation. I mean the last two years have
Speaker 1: been that, and we we saw a little bump from
Speaker 1: like fifteen to eighteen, but for the most part, gold
Speaker 1: just hasn't responded. I mean, what do you talk about that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, so this is a you know, we're all
Speaker 1: all the gold world is kind of sitting and we're frustrated. Right, So,
Speaker 1: you know, literally every commodity in the world is up
Speaker 1: enormously in the last twelve months, and gold has been
Speaker 1: flatted slightly down. So keeping my gold gold as a
Speaker 1: leading indicator, it's out there in front of all these
Speaker 1: other commodities. Gold smelled it and people forget that two
Speaker 1: years ago too and a half years ago goals at hundred.
Speaker 1: So gold took a tear from thirteen hundred up to
Speaker 1: which is pretty damn good for a market that's you know,
Speaker 1: a five trillion dollar traded market um in the period
Speaker 1: from you to the top in August. And now we're
Speaker 1: consolid dating, right. We came off the we came down
Speaker 1: to um. You know, we're at the level right now.
Speaker 1: And I think that's you know, what it's done, is
Speaker 1: that that reflects kind of the pullback in the printing,
Speaker 1: you know, the Joe Mansion trying to shut down the spending,
Speaker 1: you know, the pretend taper and the pretend interest rate increase,
Speaker 1: which none of which I think will occur. And so
Speaker 1: gold has kind of gotten a little bit wheasy and
Speaker 1: it's it's corrected a bit. But but markets breathe, and
Speaker 1: my senses when it becomes clear that their only choice
Speaker 1: is to continue printing, that they're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to raise interest rates, that they are trapped and
Speaker 1: can't get out of it, that we're gonna catch the
Speaker 1: next wind up, and gold's gonna smell the next level
Speaker 1: of monetary debasement. It actually started running long before the
Speaker 1: COVID thing. It was running, you know, on the monetary
Speaker 1: debasement that was occurring pre COVID. And so as the
Speaker 1: next chapter in monetary debasement starts to unfold, and I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it will quite soon, Gold's gonna go up.
Speaker 1: It's gonna go through, and it's not gonna look back.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a d before people know it. I mean,
Speaker 1: people have to remember that gold tends to stall at
Speaker 1: these peaks. Mean, the old peak was eight hundred, eight
Speaker 1: hundred from two thousand seven two thousand eight, installed at
Speaker 1: eight hundred. Then it broke through it, it it went to
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred without looking back. Then it came from nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred down to a thousand. Then it went from a
Speaker 1: thousand all the way up to fifty. It's correct a
Speaker 1: little off of that. When we take out nineteen hundred
Speaker 1: or two thousand again, and it's not a double top lookout.
Speaker 1: It'll be at three thousand within the next two years
Speaker 1: in my view, two or three thousand in the next year,
Speaker 1: the next two years, next two year, thousand probably next year,
Speaker 1: two thousand definitely next year, and three thousand probably within
Speaker 1: two years. That's my opinion, okay. And then if that happens,
Speaker 1: then I mean, then then gold miners can go up,
Speaker 1: you know, multiple, multiple gold miners will be up to
Speaker 1: three four x where they are today. And by the way,
Speaker 1: bitcoin will probably be a two hundred fifty three hund thousand.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think bitcoin will outperform gold. But the
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind up between the two is
Speaker 1: that they're not competing with each other, as Sailor says.
Speaker 1: I think he's wrong about that. What they're competing with
Speaker 1: his Fiat. And I always like to cite the big
Speaker 1: picture numbers. They're four hundred fifty trillion dollars of Fiat
Speaker 1: assets in the world. That's stocks, bonds, in cash, all
Speaker 1: spread around the world. There's five trillion of tradeable gold,
Speaker 1: not the stuff that's in museums and banks, and there's
Speaker 1: one trillion of tradable gold stocks and there's one trillion
Speaker 1: of bitcoin. So that's seven trillion dollars of sound money
Speaker 1: stuff financial assets, four hundred and fifty trillion dollars of stocks,
Speaker 1: bonds in cash. So so when the four fifty says, hey,
Speaker 1: we got inflation, where are they going to go? They're
Speaker 1: going after the seven Yeah, good point. Um. You listen
Speaker 1: to the Mark Ma Show. We're talking about bitcoin, We're
Speaker 1: talking about the decentralized revolution. I'm in the studio with
Speaker 1: Lawrence Lepard. We're talking about gold. Now, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about what happens to gold or bitcoin in the
Speaker 1: event of the next market crash. Looking back in the
Speaker 1: lens of history at the last two crashes that we've had,
Speaker 1: I want to get your take on it. I put
Speaker 1: mine out there before. We'll be right back with that.
Speaker 1: Don't go away. Hey, everyone, welcome back. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the Markma Show. We're talking about bitcoin. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the decentralized revolution um and today we're in the studio
Speaker 1: with Lawrence Leppard. We're talking about bitcoin, we're talking about
Speaker 1: sound money, and we're talking about gold. Has been you know,
Speaker 1: sound money for five thousand years. Now, Lawrence, UM, one
Speaker 1: thing that I'd like to ask you about. UM. I
Speaker 1: have my opinions on this, but UM, seeing as you know,
Speaker 1: gold is that inflation hedge, that cast hedge, et cetera. UM,
Speaker 1: and now Bitcoin is kind of assuming that role. A
Speaker 1: lot of people want to know what would happen to
Speaker 1: Bitcoin in the event of a market crash. Now, of
Speaker 1: course we don't have you know, bitcoin hasn't been around
Speaker 1: long enough to have survived some of these ones previously. UM.
Speaker 1: But what I noticed is, UM, we we obviously we
Speaker 1: did have marches, we have that. But if we go
Speaker 1: back to UM two thousand eight, which obviously bitcoin wasn't around,
Speaker 1: But we look at the way gold responded in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, UM, and then it behaved similarly I think
Speaker 1: in March, and also Bitcoin sort of behaved very similar
Speaker 1: in a sense where UM gold dropped about half in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, Gold dropped about half of what the
Speaker 1: stock market did and then recovered in seven months. It
Speaker 1: took stock seven years to recover. UM. In in March,
Speaker 1: we saw the stock market drop with gold dropped right
Speaker 1: and then went on to take take new eyes UM
Speaker 1: and bitcoin kind of did the same. It dropped as well,
Speaker 1: but then rebounded really quickly, but in two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: So anyway, what do you say about that? What do
Speaker 1: you think do you think bitcoin and gold are kind
Speaker 1: of working the same in those types of environments? Um does?
Speaker 1: Does is gold somewhat invalidated because it seems to drop
Speaker 1: with the overall market as well? No, I don't think
Speaker 1: golds invalided. I mean, I think what what you're describing
Speaker 1: in all these events is is um You know, we
Speaker 1: have credit and liquidity unwines, and of course correlation. Everything
Speaker 1: goes to correlation of one and so you know, margin
Speaker 1: calls hit, people need to sell, they sell what they
Speaker 1: can sell, not what they want to sell, and so
Speaker 1: it's not at all uncommon you know, in any of
Speaker 1: these assets that they're going to plunge immediately, but they
Speaker 1: also recover first, and then they recover strongly because the response,
Speaker 1: we know, the coming policy response. I mean, I remember
Speaker 1: March very clearly in gold, and it was brutal. I
Speaker 1: mean it was you know, there was a crisis, it
Speaker 1: was COVID, everything got shut down, the market plunge, everything plunged,
Speaker 1: and then j Pyle came out and said, you know,
Speaker 1: he pulled a Merrio drug. He said, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: whatever it takes to solve this, to solve this problem,
Speaker 1: to print money. We've got all these programs, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Gold went up a hundred dollars a day, two days
Speaker 1: back to back. It's never done that before. And bitcoin
Speaker 1: actually was a little slower responding. It hadn't gone down
Speaker 1: quite as far either, I think, as I recall, but
Speaker 1: and it responded robustly as well. And so people understand that.
Speaker 1: You know, the government's number one job is to keep
Speaker 1: these markets functioning and to keep things functioning. And they
Speaker 1: may not want to print the money, but when push
Speaker 1: comes to shove and the economy is cratering for lack
Speaker 1: of money in the system, they have to print the money.
Speaker 1: They will print the money, and they promised to print
Speaker 1: the money, and that creates a rush into assets which
Speaker 1: protect you from the printing of the money, which is
Speaker 1: bitcoin and gold. So so people need to be slightly
Speaker 1: aware and concerned about a draw down, a sharp drawn
Speaker 1: down on a market crunch. And this is why one
Speaker 1: of the things I make a point to all my clients,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to be active on it. On Twitter
Speaker 1: leverage kills. Leverage is a very bad thing, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of bitcoin players have gotten pretty heavily leveraged,
Speaker 1: thinking this is inevitable, It's gonna be worth a ton
Speaker 1: of money, you know, So what if I borrow some
Speaker 1: money to buy it, Well, that's fine, as long as
Speaker 1: you can handle the drawdown. And so, like everybody needs
Speaker 1: to kind of game theory out and math out how
Speaker 1: much draw down can you handle so that you don't
Speaker 1: get blown out. You don't want to get blown out
Speaker 1: of your position if there's a short term bump in
Speaker 1: the price or drop in the price. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean going back to you know, my my tragic
Speaker 1: story of two thousand eight in real estate, that was
Speaker 1: exactly what did me in was the leverage on that right.
Speaker 1: So one of one of the one of the big
Speaker 1: projects that was scrubbed, the final dagger. I was doing
Speaker 1: this at twelve million dollar mixed use building and UH,
Speaker 1: I had an offer at eleven million, and I turned
Speaker 1: it down, and uh within less than twelve months that
Speaker 1: building the bank. I went back to the bank to
Speaker 1: sold it for four million. I had an offer at
Speaker 1: eleven I turned down the bank end up selling it
Speaker 1: for four Now today that building is probably worth twenty right,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't carry it. I couldn't carry that. I
Speaker 1: think that. I think the pain was like five thousand
Speaker 1: at the time or per month or something like that,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't do it right. So I had all
Speaker 1: this leverage, um and I couldn't afford to carry. So
Speaker 1: that's that's the number one thing I pay attended to
Speaker 1: do these days. I mean, look, what we're watching here
Speaker 1: is really historic, Mark, I mean, we're watching a monetary
Speaker 1: system fail, in my opinion, and this is for the
Speaker 1: history books. Our kids will read about this, you know,
Speaker 1: and and it's gonna be It's amazing what's going on.
Speaker 1: It is historic, as you pointed out, and bitcoin is
Speaker 1: it's just a wonderful invention. And but there's a price
Speaker 1: to watching a monetary system fail, and that is volatility.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a great chart if you get on
Speaker 1: Twitter and you go through you get on Twitter, look
Speaker 1: at my feed and goo Google merma can M y
Speaker 1: R I M I K and you'll see them and
Speaker 1: everyone you've seen this mark the chart, the Memrmican gold
Speaker 1: volatility chart. And Weimar I posted at the other day
Speaker 1: what was going to happen. The y Mar Warker was
Speaker 1: going to become worth zero, but in the interim there
Speaker 1: were some wild, wild price wings, and I think people
Speaker 1: should be very aware of that. And that's why with
Speaker 1: respect to bitcoin, I really strongly believe the right way
Speaker 1: to approach this is the dollar crossed average. You know,
Speaker 1: to buy some and then buy more, and then buy more,
Speaker 1: and then buy more, and if it goes down, to
Speaker 1: buy more. And I think the right you know, they
Speaker 1: have the right habit on bitcoin is buying the dip
Speaker 1: and and and not carrying leverage so that you have
Speaker 1: capital with which to buy the dip, not getting pushed
Speaker 1: out of your position. Now, in two thousand eight, when
Speaker 1: the stock market dropped, it dropped like six As I said,
Speaker 1: gold dropped about half of that, and then stock market
Speaker 1: took seven years, or coover gold took seven months. But
Speaker 1: gold went on to go up about from its previous
Speaker 1: high the floor the market it crashed um and today
Speaker 1: it's only gone up by six percent, whereas bit whereas
Speaker 1: bitcoin from the previous high before the is up, whereas
Speaker 1: gold only up six So it seemed like gold really
Speaker 1: responded well after two eight. This time is not responding
Speaker 1: is good. Do you think some of that is because bitcoin,
Speaker 1: that the retail market has really stolen a lot of
Speaker 1: its thundering. There's absolutely no doubt about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: bitcoin is a it's Bitcoin is gonna outperform gold. There's
Speaker 1: just no doubt about that. And and well there's some doubt.
Speaker 1: There's some doubt. Otherwise you wouldn't know any gold. Well, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's not true. They serve they serve a different
Speaker 1: they serve a different purpose. Really, I mean it's um
Speaker 1: because I you know, it's it's not all just about performance, right,
Speaker 1: it's about it's about volatility adjusted performance. When you're managing
Speaker 1: professional money. Yeah, of course draw if your money manager
Speaker 1: and you're only managing bitcoin and you have I mean,
Speaker 1: try being a money manager having draw down and going
Speaker 1: to your clients and saying, hey, client, I know we're down,
Speaker 1: but hang on, we're gonna be right. It's just not
Speaker 1: gonna happen, right, it's a problem. But what was the
Speaker 1: question again, I Mean the question was, well, if if
Speaker 1: the recovery of gold hasn't been a strong two eight,
Speaker 1: and if you think bitcoin has stole some of that,
Speaker 1: it is also somewhat suppressed I mean, we don't have
Speaker 1: to go into that, but it trust me, it is
Speaker 1: and and I think that you know, look, golds owned
Speaker 1: by central banks. Part of the reason your own gold
Speaker 1: we haven't talked about this. Part of the reason your
Speaker 1: old gold is because eventually there could be a serious
Speaker 1: reset would expect to gold if we're there's a number
Speaker 1: that I think everyone should be aware of. If we
Speaker 1: were on the gold standard today, if we were on
Speaker 1: the gold and you did the math the way you
Speaker 1: did it back when we were on the gold standard,
Speaker 1: gold would be atty owns. Okay. So let's say Russia, China,
Speaker 1: and the United States decide our financial system is broken,
Speaker 1: we need to go back to the gold standard. They
Speaker 1: would need to reprice gold at thirty dollars ounces. It's
Speaker 1: an The reason, my opinion is one of the reasons
Speaker 1: you hold gold today is the optionality of the paper
Speaker 1: gold market breaking and that repricing occurring. Right, It's still
Speaker 1: it always there, Yeah, it's always there. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it's you can't guarantee it, you can't count on it,
Speaker 1: but you know it's it's a it's a hell mary
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. But but to your point, I mean,
Speaker 1: China and Russia are still major, majorly accumulating gold, and
Speaker 1: so the reason why they're doing that is because they
Speaker 1: must also think the same thing. Well, and the other thing.
Speaker 1: The other thing is, you know, all of us know
Speaker 1: that the right thing to do would be to go
Speaker 1: to a bitcoin standard, but there aren't any central banks
Speaker 1: that own bitcoin, and so as long as the central
Speaker 1: banks exist, there's a very high, in my opinion, there's
Speaker 1: a pretty high probability they're going to try a gold
Speaker 1: standard before they figure out that the right thing is
Speaker 1: the bitcoin standard. When that happens, gold is gonna perform
Speaker 1: extremely well during that period. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: to the point that you you have been making before,
Speaker 1: you know, back to the two thousand eight example, is
Speaker 1: that we know that they're going to have to print.
Speaker 1: They have no choice. We know it's going to be
Speaker 1: extreme debasement eventually, and and probably sooner than later at
Speaker 1: the point we're app it's going to as you said,
Speaker 1: the history books were written about this, we're watching this
Speaker 1: implode on them right now. So the only choice they
Speaker 1: would have if they want to try to say things,
Speaker 1: that's a big if, If they want to try to
Speaker 1: save things, then the only chance they may have is
Speaker 1: to try to get confidence back by backing it with gold. Um,
Speaker 1: that's why China and Russia are accumulating so much. And
Speaker 1: if that happens, then it gets revalued and could be
Speaker 1: exactly And that's why you know they say gold may
Speaker 1: only reset once in your lifetime, but once might be enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you listen to the Mark Moa Show in the
Speaker 1: Studio with Lawrence Laparde. Thank you so much for listening.