Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Lawrence Lepard | Simply Bitcoin IRL

Transcript

Lawrence Lepard | Simply Bitcoin IRL · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  People at the top, you know, know the game, they understand
• 0:03
  what's coming, they understand how to play it and they can make
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  inflation work for them. I mean, they actually can get,
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  you know, inflation. You know, the, the working
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  person or the average citizen has has trouble with inflation.
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  Their, their salary is fixed and things cost more.
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  Their lifestyle gets worse, you know, people at the top, they
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  can actually root for inflation because they can borrow cheap
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  and the inflation pushes up the value of their assets.
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  And that's why the wealth inequality is is as it is.
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  I mean, that's the whole contillion effect.
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  So it's, it's a bad, bad scene. And I hate to sit here and
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  complain about it, though, because again, I mean, I think
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  this is going to come out on Christmas.
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  I want to be, I want to be positive.
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  I mean, the good, good scene is that man, they're losing and
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  we're winning and, and everyone's figuring this out.
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  And that's the point of this book.
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  I mean, I want an orange pill. We got 330 million Americans out
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  there. You know, how many people are in
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  the Federal Reserve, like 50 that make the decisions?
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  Well, you know, we, I mean, we outnumber these folks and, and
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  if we make enough noise, we can fix this stuff.
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  And, and, and even if we don't make enough noise, you know,
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  intrinsically, even in the marketplace, it's, it's arguable
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  that Bitcoin alone is going to fix this stuff because, you
• 1:10
  know, Bitcoin continues to go up in value.
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  It's just going to suck all the value out of the Fiat.
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  The Fiat people aren't going to have power anymore.
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  The Bitcoiners are going to have a lot of power.
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  And I got to tell you, I would much rather have Bitcoiners
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  running this country than have all the Fiat Lords running this
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  country. I know that from the bitcoins
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  that I've met. We'll do a lot better under that
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  regime. Hey, Larry, last time we spoke
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  about you writing the book was in Nashville.
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  We were we were speaking on the floor and I think it was right
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  before the Trump speech and you were you were you were telling
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  me you were working on something and you're very passionate about
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  it. You did that very quickly.
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  Or was this something that you've been working on for
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  months now? Well, let's see, Nashville was
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  July. I started this in May, June.
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  It just and I'll tell, I'll tell you what kind of triggered it.
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  I, I think I was dragged forced into sitting with my wife to
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  watch something on one of the news channels that was
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  politically oriented and it was just so horrible, you know, and
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  I, I was, I had such disdain for both sides of the aisle.
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  And I thought to myself, God, this is just, is this what our
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  country has come become because all these people are arguing
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  about all these issues that just don't matter.
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  And the, the, the biggest, glaring, most fundamental
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  underlying issue that you understand and probably a lot of
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  the listeners understand is that the money's broken.
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  And I thought, you know, somebody's got to do something
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  about this. And, and to, to a degree, people
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  have, I mean, Safe wrote a great book and and Lynn wrote a
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  fabulous book, but they're, they tend to be a little bit more on
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  the textbooky side. And so I thought to myself,
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  well, you know, you've been in the financial world, you've seen
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  a lot, you know, where the bones are buried in terms of the, you
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  know, misdeeds of the Fed. I bet, you know, I was talking
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  to myself Now, I bet you could write a book that would be
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  unique and that might help people to understand what's
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  broken and how it got broken and how obviously broken it is with
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  a few of the anecdotes, which are pretty outrageous.
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  And then as a result of that, you know, what we got to do to
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  fix it. And of course, that leads you
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  right to Bitcoin. So.
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  So yeah. And then once I started into it,
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  I became, I became kind of possessed.
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  And I've, I've really been possessed.
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  And I don't know how long it takes the most people to write
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  books, but I probably, like I said, I think I started in May
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  or June and I'm done. So it's.
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  That is crazy. It's 250.
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  Well, I don't know. It's yeah, but it's, it just
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  flowed very easily. I felt like I was getting it
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  from a higher power. It's kind of ironic, but but
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  yeah, it it, it flowed easily. And you know, I just, I got, I
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  mean, once you're in it, just get into it.
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  I just wanted to finish it and it is finished now.
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  It's being kind of edited and cleaned up and I'm actually
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  dealing with what's a little bit of a high quality problem, but
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  it is a problem. I mean, I thought it 100 pages
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  and then it kind of got to 200 pages and now it's slightly over
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  200 in the text. But there's some, you know, a
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  lot of charts and other things. And I don't know, there's some
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  sections I got to decide if I'm going to leave them in or out.
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  But anyway, it could go into almost close to 300 pages.
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  And you know, I want to, again, I, I want to make them very
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  accessible. What I'm hoping for is
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  ultimately I'll get out of just Amazon publishing.
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  I'll get to a bigger publisher. I want it to be on the, you
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  know, on the countertop of a, of an airport, you know, bookstore.
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  And somebody just walking through says, huh, what's that
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  all about? Picks it up, gets on a flight
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  and can read it in five hours. And, you know, and then and kind
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  of gets orange peeled in the process.
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  So that's that's kind of the goal.
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  Absolutely. I mean, you know, Larry, like,
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  first of all, it's impressive that you wrote it so, so quickly
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  because the when you, when you, when you, when you may.
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  Not be any good, *** When you when you told me about it, it
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  was just like, I think I'm going to write a book and I'm like,
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  you should go for it, Larry. You shouldn't go for it.
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  So and you know now it's ready now.
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  But what you just said was very powerful.
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  And the reason that that I believe it's very powerful is
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  because I think we live in this world where people inherently
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  know the system is broken, but they continue to seek a
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  political solution to it where that's not the solution to the
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  problem. The solution to the problem is
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  the fact that there is a group of people that get to create
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  money for free that everyone else has to work for.
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  And that completely effects every facet of society.
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  And I think this is something that you dive into in your book.
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  You talk about the healthcare system, you talk about the
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  wealth inequality. You talk about, you know, all
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  these secondary effects that is caused by this broken system,
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  this broken money, you know, and, and and you and you let you
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  map it out. He's in the 1960s.
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  This is where, you know, the majority of the American people
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  believed in the in government. They believed in what the
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  government was saying. And then that has just
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  collapsed, right? A coincidentally around 19.
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  Why 1971, right. Yeah.
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  So what? Happened.
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  Isn't it so? You know what, what, what, and,
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  and to me, you know, the reason that's so powerful that that
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  mental image in my head. And I've been traveling so much
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  this year. So you go, you, you walk past
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  those airport, you know, bookstores is because the answer
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  is right there. The answer is right in front of
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  you. All you have to do is you pick
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  up the book. It's not voting for the blue
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  party or the red party. It's really opting out and
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  voting with your wallet for the orange party if that makes.
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  Sense correct. And, and I think I think the
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  other reason why I was suited to write it is, you know, I've been
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  in the financial world. I've been doing this my whole
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  career. I've been a sound money advocate
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  my whole career. And I remember, you know, I
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  mean, I have the benefit that you and some of the younger
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  Bitcoiners don't. I remember what this country
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  used to be like and it was better.
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  It was much, much better growing up in the 70s and even the early
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  80s. And it's, it's kind of
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  continually devolved in, in a bad direction to the point now
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  where, you know, things are really broken.
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  I mean, when you've got, you know, vigilantes shooting CEOs
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  and, you know, in Manhattan, you know, there's, I mean, and, and
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  that's just a tip of the iceberg.
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  There are all kinds of problems everywhere.
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  It's just, it's very obvious to any, any observer who does any
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  work that there's a real problem here.
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  So. And could, could you, could you
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  walk us through that, Larry? Like, you know, some experiences
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  in your life that you know, you, you say you, the, the analogy
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  that you says like, you know, where the, the, and this is an
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  analogy, right? You say you just know where the
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  bodies are buried, right? Your, your, your, your financial
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  background. What did you see?
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  What What has changed since the 1970s and the 1980s until now?
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  Well, probably the biggest one, Nico, was, was the wealth
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  inequality. I mean, when I was growing up,
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  you know, there were the guy who ran Ford Motor, you know, looked
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  in the same neighborhood as us and he probably made four times
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  what my dad made, you know, I mean, today, you know, he'd be
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  making $20 million. And, you know, my dad was just
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  a, a retailer who did fine. But, you know, so the, the
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  wealth inequality is a big part of it, the financialization and
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  the, the, the rewards to people who knew how to game the system.
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  I mean, I think, you know, the book is called the Big Print.
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  And it, it actually, by the time this comes out, it might be for
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  sale on on Amazon in Kindle book format pre-order.
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  They don't allow you to pre-order hardcover and and
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  paperback. But, and just so everyone knows,
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  the book will probably be out in February.
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  That's the goal. It's written when I'm in that
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  process of kind of getting it laid out and put together.
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  And I want it to be high quality.
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  So I'm not sure how long it could take.
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  It could take a couple weeks, could take a month.
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  But anyway, so, but back to the, the fundamental premise of the
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  book, it goes that that inflation is really what's
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  ruined this country, that, you know, that, that when we, you
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  know, at, at the end of World War 2, we were, we were at the
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  peak, we'd won a war, we were leading country, we had all the
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  gold. We were on the gold standard.
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  You know, it was truth, justice, the American way.
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  And, and we really believed it. And we weren't perfect.
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  Don't get me wrong, we did a lot of bad things, but but boy, we
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  were a lot better than we are today.
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  And, and what happened is, you know, we let some of that go to
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  our head and started making mistakes, the biggest of which I
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  think, well, Vietnam was an enormous mistake, which then led
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  to big deficits, which then led to a gold drain, which then led
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  to abandoning the gold standard. And the gold standard wasn't
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  perfect. And that's all Bitcoiners know.
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  It's, it's centralized and, you know, hard to verify and hard
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  to, you know, hard to transact in.
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  But having said that, the problem got measurably worse
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  when we abandoned the gold standard in 1971.
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  And, and that started the trend towards financialization.
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  And, you know, we've now kind of hit peak financialization.
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  I mean, when you have 0% interest rates for seven years
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  in a row and you know, when you have quantitative easing, which
• 9:56
  is massive money printing, when you, you know, when, when your
• 9:59
  money supply grows 42% in two years like it did in COVID, you
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  know, your financial system broken.
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  And you know, the really the notion that we can just kind of
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  put a Band-Aid on and fix it. That's just not right.
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  I mean, it's like, you know, we've got an alcohol, we got a
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  drinking problem and we got to go cold Turkey.
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  And so, and that means we got to stop creating debt.
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  We've got to return to sound money and and the book talks
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  about how to do that. Now we've got policy
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  recommendations and you know, and, and that, you know, some
• 10:28
  people say, well, hang on a second, this, you know, you're
• 10:30
  saying the system is broken, Larry, that's all doom and
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  gloom. I I don't want to read doom and
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  gloom, but but it's really not because I also talk about how
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  all the positive things that are happening and the counter
• 10:39
  revolution that's taking place. I mean, you know, we did this
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  big centralization thing up until World War 2, figure out
• 10:45
  how to kill a lot of people quickly.
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  But the microprocessor has saved us and it's going to completely
• 10:50
  save us, in my opinion, because we've got the Internet and we've
• 10:53
  got podcasts and the, you know, all these huge sclerotic,
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  corrupt institutions, you know, like the the mainstream media
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  and the federal government, these big centralized things,
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  they're all failing horribly. And everyone knows it and can
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  see it. And they're going to get
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  they're, they're going to fail. And, you know, I mean, Joe Rogan
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  and Tucker Carlson outdraw the major networks.
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  And so people realize these big broken systems are screwing them
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  and, you know, we're free people and somewhat and lost some of
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  it, but we're still basically a free people.
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  And, you know, we're going to vote with our feet and, and push
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  things in the right direction. So as decentralization
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  continues, it's going to be, it's a very positive thing.
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  And, and networks are are, you know, really making the world a
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  much better place. And of course, we, you know, we
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  had the Internet and that network, we had all the
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  information networks, and now we've got a decentralized
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  monetary network, which is just going to completely, you know,
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  rewire the world in a very positive way.
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  And what I try to do in the book is to take, you know, a newbie
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  because I, I literally, you know, there's a chapter just
• 11:58
  describing what Bitcoin is, which probably everyone
• 12:00
  listening to this podcast knows. But I want to sell this book to
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  somebody who, you know, knows nothing about it, who's just a
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  regular American wandering around trying to pay their bills
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  and wonders why the hell they feel like they're getting
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  screwed. You know, And so the book is,
• 12:13
  you know, here's why you're getting screwed.
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  Here's what you can do about it. So, Larry, why, why don't people
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  see it? You know, because this is
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  something that has, you know, like I, I spent a third of my
• 12:24
  life in this industry. I've built my career on this, in
• 12:26
  this industry. And to me, it's, it's incredibly
• 12:30
  obvious, right, that inflation is the problem, Like inflation
• 12:35
  is the issue. Why can't you know?
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  And, and you know, what's funny to me is when you hear the
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  politicians that go on TV and they talk about inflation as if
• 12:46
  it's like a law of nature. It is gravity, you know, And
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  then, oh. It's greedy corporations.
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  Right, yeah. And that that's another one.
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  That's another one. They they essentially blame
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  everything and anyone but themselves, even though it's
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  government spending which is the sole cause of inflation, right.
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  So has the world been psyopped because they controlled the
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  media for so long now that they've lost control of the
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  media with the rise of X and Elon acquiring it, and you
• 13:15
  really see the truth seeping through and you and you see them
• 13:19
  seize. Well, I think so it it was a
• 13:23
  multifaceted answer to that question, in my opinion.
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  I mean, one, they've been gasoline a lot. 2 a lot of
• 13:29
  people aren't critical thinkers. Three, you know, the level of
• 13:32
  pain wasn't as large, you know, let, let's go back to pre 2008,
• 13:38
  you know, I mean, the, the 80s and 90s, I mean, all these
• 13:40
  things were bubbling and happening, but in general, you
• 13:43
  know, the world was a pretty good place.
• 13:45
  The economy was doing pretty well.
• 13:46
  I, I, I kind of marked the beginning of the end as, as kind
• 13:49
  of 9/11. Well, the the.com bubble and
• 13:52
  then the bursting of that and 9:11, which sent us on a spree
• 13:56
  to spend $8 trillion in the Middle East on stupid stuff, you
• 13:59
  know, and, and so that I think is where the lies really
• 14:05
  intensified. I mean, there were lies in the
• 14:07
  Nixon administration, obviously, but, but they, but it got
• 14:11
  progressively worse. And, you know, I just, with
• 14:14
  every step, you know, people have been hurting.
• 14:16
  I mean, you know, Obamacare was supposed to make our healthcare
• 14:19
  system better. It's made it worse and more
• 14:21
  expensive. I mean, you know, there's just
• 14:23
  absolutely nothing the government touches works because
• 14:26
  the people who are in there are corrupt and they're doing things
• 14:29
  in their own best interests or in the interests of the big
• 14:32
  corporations that they're in, in, you know, in Hock to.
• 14:35
  And so, you know, the rest of us suffer as a result of that.
• 14:39
  And so, you know, and, and, and like I say, if, I mean, if you
• 14:42
  weren't hurting too badly and you're, you know, raising your
• 14:44
  family and, you know, focusing on putting money on the OR
• 14:48
  putting food on the table and watching the football game,
• 14:50
  people weren't paying attention. But I think one thing that's
• 14:52
  happening that's pushed in our favor, Nico, is that the
• 14:55
  problems have gotten worse and people, you know, when people
• 14:58
  start to hurt, they start to say, well, OK, damn it, what am
• 15:01
  I going to do about this? I mean, I, I, you know, let's
• 15:02
  solve this. And so again, that, that that's
• 15:05
  the point of the book. I'm trying to, I'm trying to
• 15:07
  educate and trying to, you know, I mean, you know, yes, you
• 15:11
  understand it 'cause you've been in this industry.
• 15:13
  But imagine, you know, imagine you have a job that's not at all
• 15:16
  related to this industry. I mean, imagine, you know, I
• 15:18
  don't know what, what job you might have, but if you're a
• 15:20
  secretary or, and wherever you work and, but you're not deep
• 15:24
  into this business, you wouldn't really understand it.
• 15:26
  You and you would, you know, you, you turn on the TV and you
• 15:29
  listen to what people tell you and they lie to you, but you
• 15:30
  wouldn't know they were lying to you.
• 15:31
  So, you know, so that's, that's been the problem.
• 15:34
  But but you know, like, you know, the, the trend is good,
• 15:37
  right? I mean, more and more people are
• 15:38
  waking up. I mean, you know, that chart
• 15:41
  that's in the book that you referred to, which shows how the
• 15:44
  trust in government, I mean, in the 60s, post World War 2, I
• 15:46
  mean, the trust of the government was like 70 or 80% of
• 15:49
  the people trusted the government most of all the time.
• 15:51
  Right now it's less than 20%. So you know that that obviously
• 15:55
  shows you that they're not doing the government's failing.
• 15:57
  And and that's because it was built for a different time.
• 16:00
  You know, it was built for a growing nation and, you know,
• 16:03
  when the economies of scale mattered.
• 16:05
  And so it was, it made sense to have big government.
• 16:08
  But, you know, we don't need that anymore.
• 16:10
  And so it's going to go away. And that's the very positive
• 16:13
  part of the book. You know, it's the things I see
• 16:15
  coming are really fantastic. But, but the other thing is
• 16:20
  it's, it's, it's a little bit of just a of a how to instruction
• 16:22
  manual because, you know, the average person buying a book in
• 16:25
  an airport, you know, I mean, I, I on the back of the book, which
• 16:28
  I think maybe by the time the show comes out, you can put the,
• 16:32
  you'll have the book cover in the book back that you can put
• 16:34
  in the show notes. But the back of the book
• 16:36
  basically says bluntly, you know, they're going to be
• 16:38
  winners and losers, you know, and, and you know, and
• 16:42
  everyone's responsible for their own situation.
• 16:44
  So, hey, read the book and, you know, you got a better chance of
• 16:47
  being a winner and and you know, that's something you should want
• 16:50
  to do. And, you know, so hopefully,
• 16:53
  hopefully people will read the book.
• 16:54
  I mean, I, you know, I want to sell a lot of them, not not to
• 16:56
  make money, but because I want to, I want to see the world get
• 16:58
  changed sooner rather than later.
• 17:00
  Because, you know, I want my kids to have a better world, my
• 17:03
  grandkids someday, to have a better world than than what
• 17:06
  we're in right now, you know? Absolutely.
• 17:08
  And, and I think, you know, in the, the the what the, what I've
• 17:12
  coined it is like we're it's, it's information narrative,
• 17:15
  trench warfare. And it's really about winning
• 17:17
  over that's. Right.
• 17:18
  That's a good way to put it, yeah.
• 17:20
  Winning over the hearts and minds of individuals and really
• 17:23
  getting them to wake up about the it's not left versus right,
• 17:26
  the divide and conquer method to distract you from what's
• 17:29
  actually going on. But one of the chapters names
• 17:33
  really, really when I, when I saw it really impacted me, which
• 17:37
  is, you know, let's talk about the solution to this.
• 17:39
  So inflation is the problem. Inflation is causing all these
• 17:45
  consequences, some of them unintended consequences and it's
• 17:48
  severely affecting society. But one of the things that you
• 17:52
  mentioned is that the solution to that is sound money.
• 17:55
  But the thing, that thing that really stuck out to me is that
• 17:58
  you make the case that sound money is a moral issue.
• 18:01
  Could you elaborate a little bit on that?
• 18:03
  Yeah, sure. Happy to.
• 18:05
  I mean, look, I mean, if, if you know, if if I said I was going
• 18:09
  to give you 10 gallons of beer and I gave you 9 gallons of
• 18:12
  beer, you know, and you gave me some money for that.
• 18:14
  I mean, you would say, hey, you cheated me, you know, you
• 18:17
  promised me 10 and gave me 9. And so, you know, money is, is a
• 18:23
  representation of time, work, value, energy, whatever you want
• 18:26
  to call it. But it's what we all use to make
• 18:28
  our economy work. And when it's continually being
• 18:31
  diluted by a system that requires it to be diluted,
• 18:34
  that's built in to be, you know, credit based system, then that's
• 18:38
  effectively the government's stealing money from everybody
• 18:41
  who works. And it's stealing your time and
• 18:43
  stealing your labor and it at least all kinds of perverse
• 18:47
  incentives. And so, you know, it's this is a
• 18:51
  man. This is not new the the book.
• 18:53
  I don't go in deeply into this 'cause you know, the book's
• 18:56
  about a lot of things, but I talk about how, you know, this
• 18:58
  goes back, it's in the Bible, right?
• 19:00
  I mean, you know, the Lord says you will use honest weights and
• 19:03
  measures. I mean, so, you know, obviously
• 19:05
  way back when somebody, when they were doing exchange and
• 19:08
  they were, they were weighing things and, you know, say, OK,
• 19:10
  I'll, I'll give you X amount of this for Y, I'm out of that.
• 19:13
  And some people were saying, Oh yeah, look at this.
• 19:15
  They, they were using dishonest weights.
• 19:16
  You know, I'm saying, I gave you the full weight, but they really
• 19:18
  didn't. And so, you know, this cheating
• 19:20
  concept has been around for a long time.
• 19:22
  It's as old as the hills. And it's just something that
• 19:26
  government does. And, you know, we shouldn't
• 19:28
  permit it. But sadly, we, you know, we
• 19:31
  haven't had a collective group of people.
• 19:34
  You know, there's just been a few lonely voices who understand
• 19:37
  this issue. I mean, Ron Paul has always been
• 19:38
  one of them, or recently Judy Shelton has been another one.
• 19:43
  And there, you know, there are many others.
• 19:44
  But my point is that, you know, we are very much in the, you
• 19:47
  know, I've, I've made a lot of noise over the years, but we,
• 19:49
  you know, we are very much in the minority of, of economic
• 19:53
  thought because the Keynesian model, which empowers
• 19:57
  governments is, is really been, you know, been dominant.
• 20:01
  And, you know, it also empowers economists and makes them very
• 20:05
  rich. You know, empowers.
• 20:08
  I mean, you know, there's, I mean, there's a lot of data in
• 20:10
  there. Most, most people listening will
• 20:11
  know this. But I mean, you know, it's
• 20:13
  bothersome to me that Janet Yellen got paid $7,000,000 in
• 20:16
  speaking fees from the financial industry, right?
• 20:19
  I mean. Including 800,000 plus from
• 20:22
  Citadel. Well, you know, I got to tell
• 20:24
  you, there's no, there's no free market that would suggest to me
• 20:27
  that Janet Yellen's wisdom for A1 or A2 hour speech is worth a
• 20:32
  couple $100,000. I mean, that's to me just a, a
• 20:35
  covert, a covert bribe where, you know, a big bank is paying
• 20:39
  her to come speak, knowing that she's in a position of power to
• 20:42
  regulate them or will be in the future or is influencing policy.
• 20:46
  And they want her to influence policy in a way that will
• 20:48
  benefit them at the expense of everybody else.
• 20:51
  That's exactly the way the system works.
• 20:53
  And so, so there's a lot of immorality and corruption that
• 20:56
  comes out of having this broken money.
• 20:59
  And, you know, the people who control the money.
• 21:01
  I mean, it's just it's patently absurd that we have 12 people
• 21:05
  that can set the price of money. I mean, the price of money is
• 21:07
  the most important price in any economy because it drives
• 21:12
  capital allocation decisions, which then drive the correct
• 21:15
  productivity, you know, and outputs as a result of, you
• 21:19
  know, you want to invest in the right things.
• 21:21
  And so if you distort the price of money, you make
• 21:24
  malinvestments and you're wasting money on things that
• 21:27
  don't make any sense and and that that's a cost to society.
• 21:32
  If we had not had all of the distortions that we've had, we
• 21:35
  would all be living so much better.
• 21:37
  If you look at if you look at all the technological innovation
• 21:40
  that's taken place in my lifetime and in your lifetime, I
• 21:43
  mean, we all should be working 20 hours a week.
• 21:45
  I mean, it's, it's unbelievable how, how much technology has
• 21:49
  improved everyone's. And yet, because the money's
• 21:52
  broken, we're all still working like slaves because, you know,
• 21:55
  we're trying to keep, we're on this hamster mill, you know,
• 21:58
  hamster track of trying to stay ahead of inflation, which is
• 22:01
  always eating us, eating us up. It's a real problem.
• 22:05
  And, and everyone feels it, you know, from the top to the bottom
• 22:07
  that the one difference though, that I'll point out and you and
• 22:10
  I discussed before the show is the people at the top, you know,
• 22:14
  know the game, they understand what's coming.
• 22:16
  They understand how to play it and they can make inflation work
• 22:19
  for them. I mean, they actually can get,
• 22:20
  you know, inflation, you know, the, the working person or the
• 22:23
  average citizen has, has trouble with inflation.
• 22:26
  Their, their salary is fixed and things cost more.
• 22:29
  Their lifestyle gets worse, you know, people at the top, they
• 22:32
  can actually root for inflation because they can borrow cheap
• 22:35
  and, and the inflation pushes up the value of their assets.
• 22:38
  And that's why the wealth inequality is, is as it is.
• 22:41
  I mean, that's the whole contillion effect.
• 22:43
  So it's, it's a bad, bad scene and, and you know it, it, but
• 22:47
  the, I mean, you know, so I hate to sit here and complain about
• 22:51
  it though, because again, I mean, I think this is going to
• 22:52
  come out on Christmas. I want to be, I want to be
• 22:54
  positive. I mean, the good, good scene is
• 22:57
  that man, they're losing and we're winning and, and
• 22:59
  everyone's figuring this out. And that's the point of this
• 23:02
  book. I mean, I want an orange pill.
• 23:04
  We got 330 million Americans out there.
• 23:07
  You know, how many people are there in the Federal Reserve,
• 23:09
  like 50 that make the decisions? Well, you know, we, I mean, we,
• 23:12
  we outnumber these folks. And, and if we make enough
• 23:14
  noise, we can fix this stuff. And, and, and even, and even if
• 23:17
  we don't make enough noise, you know, intrinsically, even in the
• 23:20
  marketplace, it's, it's arguable that Bitcoin alone is going to
• 23:23
  fix this stuff. Because, you know, if Bitcoin
• 23:25
  continues to go up in value, it's just going to stack all the
• 23:28
  value out of the Fiat. The Fiat people aren't going to
• 23:31
  have power anymore and the Bitcoin is going to have a lot
• 23:32
  of power. And I got to tell you, I would
• 23:34
  much rather have Bitcoiners running this country than have
• 23:36
  all the Fiat Lords running this country, you know?
• 23:38
  One of the one of the things and I and I completely agree, Larry,
• 23:42
  and it's interesting. One of the things about Bitcoin
• 23:44
  is that like the, it's even if you live within the United
• 23:48
  States and you, you know, you have the traditional like, you
• 23:51
  know, the, the, it's protect, it's like this orange force
• 23:54
  field that's protecting you against all these things that
• 23:57
  are happening on in in the sidelines.
• 24:00
  But there's this very powerful thing that you said in the book.
• 24:03
  I'm not gonna directly quote it. I'm gonna put it in my own word
• 24:05
  so that everyone's surprised when they initially read it.
• 24:08
  But you basically make the case that, you know, America's broken
• 24:12
  and that there, but there is an honest and integral group of
• 24:19
  people within the country that you expect are going to say, you
• 24:24
  know, enough is enough and they're going to make things
• 24:28
  right. So I, I, I read that and it, it
• 24:30
  reminded me of something that you told me that many years ago
• 24:34
  when, you know, I was still in my, I was in my, my late 20s.
• 24:38
  I don't know how you agreed to come on my podcast, but you
• 24:41
  know, you told me and you said, you know, Nico, your generation
• 24:44
  is is is is the is the hero generation, which comes from the
• 24:49
  4th turning kind of theory and and stuff like that.
• 24:53
  And you know, the way that I see Larry, and you were talking
• 24:56
  about it like earlier on in on the in the show, which was, you
• 25:00
  know, we're the millennials and the Gen.
• 25:04
  Z ers. This is like the first
• 25:07
  generations with all the productivity increases, all the
• 25:11
  technological increases, where our quality of life is lower
• 25:15
  than our parents. You know, the well, the, the,
• 25:18
  the world has gotten wealthier. The world has got it.
• 25:21
  And you know you have the same phone as a billionaire, right?
• 25:24
  Yeah, no, that's the Boomers have been incredibly greedy, you
• 25:27
  know, and incredibly irresponsible with respect to
• 25:29
  your generation. I see it, I see it in my own
• 25:32
  kids. I have 3 kids, all in their
• 25:33
  20's. The oldest is 29, the youngest
• 25:35
  is 23. And yeah, they, you know,
• 25:38
  they're, and they're all doing fine.
• 25:39
  They all have good jobs, they're smart, they're going to be very
• 25:42
  successful. And yet they come to me and they
• 25:44
  say, Dad, I, you have to be out to me buying a house, you know,
• 25:46
  given what I make and what I can save and what houses cost.
• 25:50
  I mean, it's like it's like 0, you know, and, and they just,
• 25:54
  they, they have no idea how they're ever going to quote, UN
• 25:56
  quote, get ahead in the world because of the way the system is
• 25:59
  set up. And but you know, what needs to
• 26:03
  happen is Fiat needs to get Mark to market.
• 26:06
  I mean, all the boomers grabbed all the Fiat.
• 26:08
  Well, the fiat's worthless. The boomers don't know that yet,
• 26:12
  but we're going to find out. So, So what what?
• 26:15
  So who do you mean by who? Who?
• 26:17
  What is this group of people that is going to rise up, Larry?
• 26:21
  Is this is this going to be very similar to what happened with
• 26:24
  social media and the legacy media where, you know, we saw
• 26:27
  this slow transition from we all believed what they're I mean,
• 26:31
  some of us, not all of us believed what they were saying,
• 26:34
  you know, really like since the election of Trump in 2016.
• 26:38
  And then slowly but surely you're at you, you start saying
• 26:42
  things and you're like, wait a second, like, is that guy on TV
• 26:47
  really telling me like, you know, like it is?
• 26:49
  And then slowly but surely people start to wake up and the
• 26:51
  pandemic exacerbated things, right?
• 26:54
  I think they really got a lot of things wrong, right?
• 26:57
  And a lot of people woke up and then eventually, before you know
• 27:00
  it, and I think it happened this year, there was a, there was the
• 27:05
  majority of people are actually critically thinking because
• 27:08
  they're doing their own research by following the people they
• 27:11
  want to follow on X. And I think it's a combination
• 27:14
  of people are sick and tired of being lied to, so they seek
• 27:18
  alternative information sources, whether that's Joe Rogan,
• 27:22
  Russell Brand, Tucker Carlson, or following your favorite
• 27:26
  accounts on. On X.
• 27:29
  Simply a coin. Exactly right.
• 27:30
  Sorry I go for my information so.
• 27:35
  The Who? Who is this group of people?
• 27:37
  Like who is this group of people that's going to rise up and say
• 27:39
  enough is enough? Well, I think it's your
• 27:42
  generation and I think it's anybody who is been mistreated
• 27:46
  by the system. And that's where you know,
• 27:49
  hopefully you know that. And that's where we've got to
• 27:50
  open up their eyes to it and, and offer them hope and, you
• 27:54
  know, offer them the positivity. I mean, you said something
• 27:56
  earlier that really resonated with me, which is, you know,
• 27:59
  when you're in Bitcoin, it's like you have this orange force
• 28:01
  field around you. I mean, I can't tell you how
• 28:03
  peaceful and happy I've been since I've gotten fully into
• 28:05
  Bitcoin because, you know, I was kind of fighting this battle on
• 28:09
  this. I've been fighting the battle on
• 28:10
  sound money for quite some time. And I was fighting it with a
• 28:12
  golden shield, which didn't really work.
• 28:15
  And because they figured out how to manipulate gold and
• 28:18
  centralized all the things we know are wrong with it.
• 28:20
  And suddenly all along, you know, here comes safe and he
• 28:23
  writes his book. And then I got a bunch of guys
• 28:24
  like you quoting Von Mises and, you know, it's like, holy crap,
• 28:28
  you know, we got an army now that's that's going to that's
• 28:31
  going to come out here and, and fight to make this world a
• 28:33
  better place. And look, you guys have the most
• 28:36
  at stake. I mean, I'm at the other end of,
• 28:38
  you know, the generational spectrum where, you know, I can
• 28:40
  see the end point. You got a whole life in front of
• 28:42
  you. So you want to get it right and
• 28:44
  you want the world to be a good place.
• 28:45
  And and you know, The thing is good ideas spread naturally.
• 28:49
  I mean, people, you know, a lot of people do the wrong things
• 28:52
  and there are a lot of things that are bad and there are a lot
• 28:54
  of times that are bad. But, you know, if you study
• 28:57
  history carefully, you read it carefully, I mean, there's been,
• 29:00
  you know, the history we the human race marches forward.
• 29:03
  We really do. You know, we get more, I think
• 29:06
  we get more ethical. I think we get more intelligent.
• 29:09
  I think we've got more technology, we get more tools,
• 29:12
  we get more efficient. I mean, you know, and, and
• 29:15
  things that, you know, I mean, even even today, you know, there
• 29:19
  are things that we enjoy that our grandparents are great
• 29:21
  grandparents couldn't have even imagined.
• 29:22
  I mean, I can hop on an airplane and be halfway around the world
• 29:25
  in 12 hours. I mean, you know, that that's,
• 29:28
  that was just unimaginable to my grandparents, right?
• 29:30
  I mean, and, and so, and certainly to their parents, it
• 29:33
  was completely unimaginable. They would have to take a
• 29:35
  steamship for three weeks. So you know, the, the, the
• 29:39
  trends are in the right direction and, and you know,
• 29:44
  really all, you know, all we have to do.
• 29:45
  And I think the reason you do the podcast, the reason I'm
• 29:47
  writing the book, the reason the Bitcoiners that do it make a lot
• 29:50
  of noise, is we just want to accelerate the trend.
• 29:54
  And in my view, I want to have a legacy of having fought for what
• 29:57
  I think was the right side of things.
• 29:59
  I mean, I, you know, like as an example, when America separated
• 30:03
  from Britain, a fourth turning 2, fourth turnings ago because
• 30:07
  like, yeah, three 4th turnings ago because there was actually
• 30:09
  4th turning World War 2. Then there was a civil war.
• 30:11
  The third one was, you know, there were a third of the
• 30:14
  country. They were actually loyalists.
• 30:15
  They were like, no, no, no, we want to stick with the crown.
• 30:18
  You know, a third were like, no, no, that's bullshit.
• 30:20
  I mean, these people would tell us what to do.
• 30:22
  They're taxing us. They're living in their houses,
• 30:23
  you know, they make us Garrison these soldiers, you know, F
• 30:26
  that, you know, tell them to to pound sand, you know, you know,
• 30:31
  you have to decide you're if you and then a third didn't really
• 30:33
  know what they wanted to do. They were just kind of living on
• 30:35
  their farms, not paying attention, from what I
• 30:37
  understand. And you know, it's kind of like
• 30:39
  you had to stand up and decide, well, what am I going to fight
• 30:41
  for? Do I want to, you know, do I
• 30:42
  want to fight for, you know, self government or do I want to
• 30:44
  live under this crowd? And, you know, I mean, I, there
• 30:48
  are people who believe in the state, believe in the federal
• 30:51
  government, believe in, you know, Fiat money and, and
• 30:53
  benefit from that system. And that's fine.
• 30:55
  They're entitled to do that. But, you know, the outcomes that
• 30:59
  they're producing aren't very good, are they, for most people.
• 31:02
  And in fact, they're they're quite bad.
• 31:05
  You know, if you, and if you dig down a little bit below the
• 31:08
  level of those of us who are doing OK, you know, my sister
• 31:11
  lives in a rural community in Utah.
• 31:14
  You know, she tells me some stories that are just
• 31:16
  heartbreaking in terms of how hard it is for the average
• 31:18
  person. So, you know that, that to me
• 31:22
  means that, you know, it's, it's incumbent upon those of us who
• 31:26
  are aware to try and push for a better, a better world, you
• 31:31
  know, better system, fairer system.
• 31:34
  And, and, and then to help those that we, we know and care about,
• 31:37
  you know, in terms of telling the story of Bitcoin and telling
• 31:40
  why, you know, helping them to protect themselves.
• 31:42
  I mean, you know, I, I, I have stories of investors that I've
• 31:46
  orange peeled who, you know, are now very thankful that, you
• 31:49
  know, they bought it at 10,000 when I was pounding the table,
• 31:51
  you know what I mean? So, and that's satisfying.
• 31:55
  And, and by the way, that's not, it's, that's not over yet.
• 31:58
  I mean, it's, you know, when it's $1,000,000, people are
• 32:00
  going to say, holy crap, you're buying it at, at 100,000.
• 32:03
  Oh my God, you're, so you have a whole coin.
• 32:05
  Oh my God, nobody I know has a whole coin, you know, so, so
• 32:09
  right. I mean, it's just it, it's all,
• 32:11
  you know, it it, I really do believe Sailor's right.
• 32:13
  It is going up forever, Laura. So absolutely.
• 32:17
  Well, you just kind of got to get you just kind of got to get
• 32:19
  in there. I mean, I was counselling one of
• 32:21
  my investors the other day. It's like, well, you know, I, I
• 32:23
  put an X amount, it has a big number.
• 32:25
  He said maybe I hold the rest back and tell us it goes down.
• 32:27
  I said, you know, I wouldn't do that.
• 32:28
  I would just buy it, you know, because I you may not go back
• 32:32
  down and if you're time unless you need it in the next six
• 32:35
  months or year or even you know, or two years really, you know,
• 32:38
  you know, it'll be higher in 10 years.
• 32:39
  So just buy it. You know, that's kind of how I
• 32:43
  see it. It's, it's the, it's the final
• 32:46
  trade. One of the, one of the things
• 32:49
  Larry, that you talked about in your book is a kind of Keynesian
• 32:54
  economics, right? And of course, as Bitcoiners,
• 32:57
  you know, we were big fans of the Austrian School.
• 33:00
  And, you know, for the first time in world history, we what
• 33:04
  we saw in Argentina was we saw, you know, an Austrian economist
• 33:08
  elected, He won, he won the election.
• 33:11
  And within less than a year, you know, inflation was under
• 33:15
  control. You know, he's talking about
• 33:18
  lowering the tax rate to 10%. Like everything that they, that
• 33:22
  the, the, the, the mainstream economist said was impossible
• 33:27
  happened in a very short period of time.
• 33:29
  And it actually reminded me it, it, this part, this phrase in
• 33:33
  your book. I'm not going to read the entire
• 33:34
  thing 'cause you guys have to go out and buy the book.
• 33:36
  But it reminded me of this phrase where you said the
• 33:40
  Austrian school isn't ignored because it's wrong, is It's
• 33:44
  ignored because it's dangerous. It's dangerous to the Fed's
• 33:48
  power. I'm gonna end it there.
• 33:49
  You guys are gonna have to buy the book to read the rest.
• 33:52
  But what do you mean by that? Could you elaborate?
• 33:55
  So the, so the, so the really the, the Keynesian economics
• 33:58
  school and the Federal Reserve and the federal government, I
• 34:01
  mean, they're all, they're all thick as thieves.
• 34:04
  I mean, they're all, they're all in the same, you know, in the
• 34:06
  same camp. And so, you know, if, if you're
• 34:09
  a Fed economist, you get paid, you know, you get paid by the
• 34:11
  Fed, you get big consulting contracts and gigs.
• 34:15
  You know, you're, you're part of quote UN quote, the system and
• 34:18
  you know, you, you get rich appointments afterwards.
• 34:21
  You can, you know, you sit on board seats, etcetera, etcetera.
• 34:24
  I mean, Larry Summers, who was the president of Harvard
• 34:26
  University as a economics professor there, you know, he
• 34:29
  made $20 million in consulting fees consulting to Wall Street,
• 34:33
  you know, when he was secretary of the Treasury, I mean, before
• 34:36
  he was or after he was secretary of the Treasury.
• 34:38
  So I mean, the, the point is that there's a, there's a kind
• 34:42
  of a, a system of bribes and corruption, you know, I mean,
• 34:45
  how do these people go to Congress making 200 grand a year
• 34:48
  and end up worth millions? You know, I mean, it's, it's
• 34:50
  because they get things from other parties that are self
• 34:54
  interested and pay them to bend the policies and the rules in
• 34:58
  their favor. And so, you know, the Fed has
• 35:01
  just totally dominated the economics discussion and they've
• 35:05
  tried to make anyone, I mean, the Austrian model perfectly
• 35:08
  explains and predicts what's happened to our economy since
• 35:10
  the founding of this country. And the book takes you through
• 35:13
  that. If you're willing to wade
• 35:14
  through, there are two chapters that I've, some people have told
• 35:16
  me they're kind of they're rough sledding because I really dig
• 35:19
  into the history. I started 1789.
• 35:21
  I take you through all the financial developments up to the
• 35:23
  present day. And if you look at it, you know,
• 35:26
  the, the, the, the Austrian model could have predicted it
• 35:29
  and explains all of it. And the Keynesian model is wrong
• 35:32
  and doesn't predict any of it and doesn't explain all of it or
• 35:36
  any of it. And, and it's, it's kind of,
• 35:38
  it's almost laughable how bad they are.
• 35:40
  And I've got tons and tons of examples in the book.
• 35:42
  And, and yet they, they, you know, they continue in power.
• 35:47
  And the reason they do is because the government supports
• 35:49
  them, because that Keynesian model allows the government to
• 35:52
  overspend and, and, and have the goodies to hand out so that when
• 35:56
  you go in as a representative making couple 100 grand a year,
• 35:59
  you end up worth millions. And so it's just a big corrupt.
• 36:02
  It's like, it's like we're dealing with the mob, you know,
• 36:05
  except it's called the government.
• 36:07
  And, and, and you know what? We, we, you know, we don't have
• 36:10
  to put up with it. We just don't have to put up
• 36:12
  with it. But we can't be stupid about
• 36:15
  this because, you know, I mean, the mob promises certain people
• 36:18
  certain things and that buys a vote.
• 36:20
  And the vote might be, you know, that, that, you know, it's
• 36:24
  amazing how little people can get bought off with, right?
• 36:26
  I mean, it's OK, send me a $2000 STEMI check and I'll vote for
• 36:29
  you. Meanwhile, you know, out the
• 36:31
  back door they're robbing you. But you know, many, many times
• 36:34
  that $2000 in terms of inflation and other stuff, and yet you'll
• 36:38
  be bought off by that check. It's ridiculous, right?
• 36:41
  Absolutely. People need to understand what's
• 36:44
  really happening. That's the problem.
• 36:47
  I think that that the average person, I mean, you know, I
• 36:50
  mean, just, I don't know, take an average.
• 36:51
  I mean, I, I have my teeth cleaned.
• 36:52
  Take, take my dental hygienist, right?
• 36:55
  I mean, she, you know, she does fine.
• 36:57
  She's really good at cleaning teeth, right?
• 36:59
  She doesn't, I mean she does. She was bitching about how every
• 37:02
  everything is very, very expensive.
• 37:03
  I get it. I could completely relate.
• 37:05
  I tried the orange pillar. But the point is, you know, she,
• 37:08
  she her view was she didn't, she just she doesn't think about
• 37:12
  these things. I mean, this just isn't, it's
• 37:14
  not her area of expertise. She's not interested in it.
• 37:16
  She's interested in her kids and her family and, you know, she,
• 37:19
  she goes to work and she does her job and she comes home, but
• 37:22
  she knows her groceries cost more and she doesn't know why.
• 37:24
  And, and so maybe she turns on the TV and somebody, you know,
• 37:27
  Bernie Sanders says it's greed corporations.
• 37:29
  Well, no, I mean, that's not really what it is.
• 37:32
  There's a there's a bigger issue And and it's a little complex
• 37:35
  because these people who've done this to us, they're
• 37:37
  sophisticated. You know, they wear nice
• 37:39
  clothes. They I was just watching Jay
• 37:41
  Paul this afternoon, you know, and you know, I mean, if if you
• 37:44
  didn't know better, he would think, gosh, look at this
• 37:47
  thoughtful, intelligent man describing to me what he's doing
• 37:49
  with monetary policy. That makes a ton of sense.
• 37:51
  OK, That's what if if I were a dental Igenis looking at it, I
• 37:54
  that's the image that he would be projecting, right?
• 37:57
  If you're Larry looking at that, you're going you're a fucking
• 38:00
  idiot. You know, you don't know what
• 38:02
  you're doing. I mean, you've lied to us here
• 38:05
  and you've lied to us for years and we know it.
• 38:08
  So you know it. It's but but I know that because
• 38:11
  I understand where the bones are buried and because I've been
• 38:14
  watching the system and studying it for years.
• 38:16
  And so I'm trying to give that knowledge to that dental
• 38:20
  hygienist so that she will say the next time some sound money
• 38:24
  candidate comes around and says, you know, we need to cut, we
• 38:27
  need to shut down the Federal Reserve because we do.
• 38:30
  I'm going to vote for that person because I think the
• 38:33
  Federal Reserve is causing a lot of my problems, you know, and,
• 38:36
  and I, I think the odds, I mean, the number of people in the
• 38:38
  United States who understand that today, it's very low,
• 38:40
  sadly. But if they, if they, if they
• 38:43
  read my book, if they, if they just critically read my book and
• 38:46
  think about it, I think they're going to come to the conclusion
• 38:48
  which I've come to, which is, Oh my God, this thing is horrible.
• 38:52
  I mean, this, this is causing enormous pain for, for millions
• 38:56
  of people and has for years. And we're ignoring it.
• 38:59
  You know, we got to fix this, right?
• 39:01
  Absolutely. I mean, Ron Paul tried to do it
• 39:04
  and he got, he got a little bit of momentum.
• 39:05
  But but I, I'm, I'm talking about real momentum.
• 39:08
  I mean, I'm talking about a national organization to end the
• 39:11
  Fed, you know, which, which by the way, I'd be happy to be
• 39:14
  president of, you know, I'm seriously, I mean, I'm, I'm
• 39:18
  talking about a real movement to return to sound money.
• 39:22
  I mean, you know, a crusade, so to speak.
• 39:25
  I, I think we're, I think we'll get there, Larry.
• 39:27
  And, and you know, as, as bitcoiners become more
• 39:30
  influential this year, we became part of the donor class, right?
• 39:34
  As, as we know, Washington is run by the donors, right?
• 39:38
  We became part of the donor class.
• 39:39
  As we get wealthier, I think we're gonna have more and more
• 39:43
  influence on American politics. And I and I tweaked this out
• 39:47
  semi jokingly, but semi serious. And I said, look, the job's not
• 39:51
  over until the Bitcoin flag is on top of the Federal Reserve,
• 39:55
  right? And we turn it into a museum for
• 39:58
  crimes against humanity. But you know, we're, we're
• 40:01
  talking about, you know, we're talking about like these issues
• 40:05
  and whatever. But there's also opportunity.
• 40:08
  You know, and of course that opportunity is because the
• 40:11
  beauty of Bitcoin is, you know, just by you opting out of the
• 40:15
  system, you're defunding their system and you're now joining
• 40:19
  the sound money team, right? And it's and it's so
• 40:23
  simultaneously while you fight it, you can also benefit from
• 40:28
  switching over to the system. And it actually reminds me of,
• 40:32
  you know, a page in your book where you say something very
• 40:35
  powerful that's also resonated with me.
• 40:37
  You say having a form of money that is fixed in supply is, is
• 40:42
  literally a once in a inhumanity type of a vet, which in my mind
• 40:48
  I'm thinking that's a once in a lifetime, once in a humanity
• 40:52
  type of opportunity. So could you elaborate a little
• 40:56
  bit? Yeah.
• 40:56
  So it really this is Saylor has said this recently and then Luke
• 40:59
  Roman said it the other day on on Twitter.
• 41:04
  You know, this is the most inelastic commodity in the
• 41:07
  world. And let me explain what I mean
• 41:08
  by that. Some people don't know the term
• 41:10
  inelastic means when when the price of any commodity goes up,
• 41:17
  the suppliers of that commodity will change their behavior and
• 41:20
  make more of it in order to bring the price down and balance
• 41:23
  supply and demand. And so, as an example, if the
• 41:26
  price of gold doubled tomorrow, we would drill for find and
• 41:29
  produce more gold. If the price of oil goes up,
• 41:32
  then it makes marginal oil fields profitable.
• 41:34
  And so oil, oil drillers will drill them and produce more oil.
• 41:38
  So think about that. The supply, price goes up,
• 41:40
  supply goes up. That's the law of most
• 41:42
  commodities, OK. With Bitcoin, because you have
• 41:45
  21 million fixed supply, it's very unique commodity.
• 41:49
  Doesn't matter what the price does, the supply can't go up.
• 41:53
  The supply just is the supply period.
• 41:55
  It's fixed. It's algorithmic.
• 41:57
  You know, it's decreasing every four years in terms of its new
• 42:00
  issuance. So we've never seen something
• 42:03
  like this before ever. There's never been any form of
• 42:06
  money that could not be diluted. I mean, even gold, which we used
• 42:10
  to be the form, soundest form of money grows, the supply grows at
• 42:13
  1.7% a year. Multiply that times 55 years and
• 42:18
  you've doubled the amount of gold on the Earth's surface.
• 42:20
  OK, so but Bitcoin, there'll only be 21 million.
• 42:25
  So as a result of that, this is just, it is, it's a, it's a,
• 42:29
  it's a once in humanity. It's a paradigm shift.
• 42:32
  I mean it, I don't know how you know, I mean, you know, sailors
• 42:35
  says it's like fire with Prometheus.
• 42:36
  I don't know, it's like air flight.
• 42:38
  I mean, you know, there I mean people couldn't fly and then
• 42:41
  suddenly people could fly. Do you know what I mean?
• 42:43
  Or, I mean, or people rode horses and then suddenly there
• 42:46
  were cars and, you know, top speed on a horse was maybe 1520
• 42:50
  miles an hour for a few few minutes.
• 42:51
  And you know, cars are going 150 miles an hour now.
• 42:54
  So you know, it it it's just, it's that kind of a shift.
• 42:58
  And I think that what people are missing and, and I talk about
• 43:01
  this in the book too, all the crypto noise, sadly, it's just,
• 43:05
  I hate it. It's just, I mean, Dogecoin,
• 43:07
  SBFI mean all that crap. It's just so annoying and
• 43:11
  distracting because it's just total horseshit.
• 43:14
  And it detracts from the one pure signal technological
• 43:19
  innovation here that these guys figured out or this person, I
• 43:23
  think, I tend to think it's guys.
• 43:24
  I think Adam's one of them, by the way.
• 43:26
  But but you probably do too. It, it, it, they, they created
• 43:31
  immutable digital scarcity. And guess what?
• 43:34
  You know, it at first blast, you know, I said, oh, So what?
• 43:36
  Who cares? Well, when it comes to money,
• 43:39
  that's a big deal. That's a really, really big
• 43:42
  deal. And you know, I don't know.
• 43:44
  I mean, you know, I mean, before Google existed, did anyone even
• 43:47
  know what the concept of a search engine was?
• 43:50
  I mean that, you know, the Internet didn't exist.
• 43:52
  Google didn't exist, but now, you know, it's, it's, it's a,
• 43:56
  it's part of everybody's daily life.
• 43:57
  Everybody uses it. Everybody needs to use it.
• 43:59
  It's a network, you know, same idea.
• 44:02
  I mean, it's just, it's, it's, it's a new innovation that, you
• 44:06
  know, is, is going to completely change the world.
• 44:08
  And you know, I mean, my, my advice to people is ignore it at
• 44:12
  your own, at your own peril. I mean, I've been interacting
• 44:15
  with some people on Twitter, you know, people I respect, very
• 44:17
  smart investors, macro people and I and you know, they think
• 44:21
  it's a bubble and I just say, you know, guys, you know, you're
• 44:24
  not looking at the don't let the crypto noise distract you.
• 44:27
  Think about what this technology really is and then ask yourself,
• 44:31
  you know, OK, you're now aware of it.
• 44:33
  So you don't have an excuse. I mean, there'll be people who
• 44:35
  aren't aware of it today when it's worth $1,000,000 a coin,
• 44:38
  they'll say, oh shit, I didn't know about that.
• 44:40
  I'm really sorry I didn't. OK, fine.
• 44:42
  But these are true legitimate, professional investors who are
• 44:44
  aware of it. And I said, you know, how are
• 44:47
  you going to feel when it's a million a coin because it's
• 44:48
  going there. And then again, how are you
• 44:50
  going to feel when it's $10 million a coin because it's
• 44:52
  going there too, you know, not over longer time frames because
• 44:57
  you're aware of it. And, you know, it's amazing to
• 45:00
  me. I was, I was not at the New
• 45:01
  Orleans Investment Conference. I met a guy named Jim Grant.
• 45:03
  Some of the older listeners will know who he is.
• 45:05
  And he's written a number of great books.
• 45:07
  He's a monetary economist. He's he's really a brilliant,
• 45:10
  charming guy. And and yet he really shout all
• 45:15
  over Bitcoin. He said, well, you know, it'll
• 45:17
  be money. Give me 1000 years of history
• 45:20
  and then maybe I'll consider it money.
• 45:21
  And I said, Jim, when people were wandering around and trying
• 45:25
  to jump up in the air and then somebody invented a machine that
• 45:29
  allowed him to fly, did you have to wait 1000 years to believe
• 45:31
  that the flight made sense? I mean, it was kind, you know,
• 45:35
  and, and, and he kind of just scoffed at me.
• 45:37
  And I was just like, how can somebody who was supposed to be
• 45:40
  a monetary expert miss the biggest development in the
• 45:44
  monetary field in 1000 years? I mean, like the change from,
• 45:48
  you know, from coins to, to ledgers or, or, or banks.
• 45:51
  I mean, it just, it blew my mind.
• 45:53
  I mean, I went to Harvard Business School.
• 45:55
  I go down there and I, there's a guy there who's going to go to
• 45:57
  work for sale, a really nice kid, but he's, he runs the, the
• 46:01
  Bitcoin Club. He says, oh, they're about 10
• 46:03
  members. And he says, most of my
• 46:05
  classmates think I'm absolutely, you know, an idiot.
• 46:08
  And I'm like, this is Harvard Business School.
• 46:09
  This is the West Point of capitalism.
• 46:11
  I went there. OK, yeah.
• 46:13
  And there. And I've written to the Dean,
• 46:14
  I'm like you and you guys aren't thinking about this, talking
• 46:17
  about this, understanding this. I mean, you know, I found this
• 46:20
  thing and I understand this thing and I grok this thing.
• 46:23
  And I started buying it at 400. And, you know, here I am.
• 46:26
  I mean, it's it's like, OK, well, whatever I mean, it, it,
• 46:29
  it, it doesn't seem that hard to me.
• 46:30
  But I, you know, I had an advantage in that I had a
• 46:34
  venture background. And so I and I and I invested in
• 46:37
  and watched the Internet develop.
• 46:39
  So I've kind of seen this movie once before and it's the, and I,
• 46:43
  and I, by the way, I kind of blew it a little bit in that
• 46:45
  movie. And I talk about this in the
• 46:47
  book. You know, I, I looked at Amazon
• 46:50
  and Facebook and Google and I, you know, I was using
• 46:53
  traditional investment metrics, the kind of things that they
• 46:55
  were taught to me at Business School.
• 46:57
  I couldn't get there. I was like, how can you pay this
• 47:00
  much money for this business, especially in Amazon?
• 47:01
  I wasn't making any money in the early days.
• 47:03
  I just like, no, I'm not, I'm not buying that, right?
• 47:06
  But I didn't understand Metcalf's law and how networks
• 47:10
  grow in value and how, you know, you, you, I mean, they grow at
• 47:14
  a, they grow exponentially in, in value, a square of the
• 47:18
  underlying, you know, users that are added.
• 47:20
  And so, you know, and they're so defensible.
• 47:22
  I mean, there won't be another Google, right?
• 47:24
  It, it just won't because everybody's there.
• 47:26
  Why would anyone change? And so, you know, that's kind of
• 47:31
  what's going on here. And, you know, I mean, Google,
• 47:34
  like, I just checked it this morning because I was putting it
• 47:36
  in the book. Google's up like 9000% since its
• 47:38
  IPO, right? Yeah, right.
• 47:41
  How many investments in the world, in the history of the
• 47:43
  world have ever performed that well?
• 47:44
  Not many. OK, on a broad scale, I mean,
• 47:47
  and and, and so, you know, and I miss Google, right?
• 47:50
  I didn't invest in it I because I thought it was too expensive.
• 47:53
  OK, well, guess what? You know, here's another chance.
• 47:57
  It's the same model. In fact, argument's even better
• 47:59
  than Google because it it touches everything.
• 48:01
  And Google touches one specific commerce related search
• 48:05
  information piece of the economy, you know, money touches
• 48:09
  damn near every piece of the economy.
• 48:11
  So it's bigger than Google. So I, I, I really do think that
• 48:14
  people are going to be shocked what happens here.
• 48:17
  And, and as you know, as we've all seen, I mean, some people, I
• 48:20
  mean, just the fact that it's over 100,000 has gotten a lot of
• 48:22
  people really salty 'cause, you know, they, they just can't get
• 48:25
  their heads around it. But I would just advise them to
• 48:28
  get rid of their ego and, and bend the knee and understand.
• 48:31
  I mean, you know, look, I don't have a lot of love for Larry
• 48:34
  Fink 'cause I think he's a kind of a creepy guy and a Fiat
• 48:37
  master. But I'll give him credit.
• 48:39
  I mean, everyone knows what I'm talking about.
• 48:41
  He's the guy who runs BlackRock. He's $11 trillion largest asset
• 48:45
  manager in the United States. I'll give him credit.
• 48:48
  You know, he looked at it, thought about it, studied it,
• 48:51
  obviously had some people teach him about it and said, you know
• 48:53
  what, this thing's going to work.
• 48:56
  I either got to get on board or I'm going to get left behind
• 48:59
  and, and he got on board. And I think that thought pattern
• 49:04
  is going to have to literally occur all throughout the world
• 49:07
  over and over and over again. And, you know, we're, we're so
• 49:11
  early. I mean, we're still considered
• 49:13
  fringe, you know, we're still considered psychopaths and all
• 49:17
  the other things. There's still a lot of negative
• 49:19
  fun, but, but it, but it's starting to shift.
• 49:22
  I mean, it's, I remember the early days of the Internet and a
• 49:24
  lot of people thought it was just a joke.
• 49:26
  But in the, you know, by 7879, when, I mean, I'm sorry, 909798,
• 49:33
  you could see, you know, the, the, the connections were
• 49:36
  getting faster. You know, the, the Windows
• 49:39
  browser was there. It was point and click instead
• 49:41
  of green screen. And you could kind of, we're
• 49:44
  kind of at that stage, you know, when the ETFs went through, that
• 49:47
  was a hugely positive event. Huge, huge.
• 49:51
  I mean, I had a lot of people who actually aren't filled right
• 49:53
  after that because the rejection prior to that had been well, the
• 49:56
  government's going to just kill this thing.
• 49:58
  Yeah, you're right. I get it sound money.
• 49:59
  I'm I'm all for that. But there's no way the
• 50:02
  government's going to let you do that.
• 50:03
  And but the ETF got to prove it really, you know, now, now look,
• 50:09
  we may have a counter reformation.
• 50:11
  I mean, you know, this is it's very favorable to the Trump
• 50:13
  administration is going to be positive for Bitcoin.
• 50:16
  But if in four years we have a blue wave, you know, they may
• 50:20
  come back and try and 61O2 us or do a lot of other things, which
• 50:23
  is why, you know, self custody and so forth is important.
• 50:26
  But, you know, it's it, to me, it's just, it's obvious.
• 50:31
  I mean, the dogs are eating the food and, and there are more
• 50:34
  dogs coming every year and you know, so then the food's going,
• 50:37
  the food's going up in price, which is what dogs like, you
• 50:40
  know, And so it, you know, it's a positive feedback loop that I,
• 50:45
  I just can't see ending anytime soon.
• 50:48
  Absolutely. And, you know, and, and, and
• 50:50
  just to kind of add to it some of your points, right?
• 50:53
  Like realistically they have two years.
• 50:57
  Historically, what tends to happen is the incumbent party
• 51:00
  loses the House. So they got two years of, of the
• 51:03
  trifecta of the House, the Senate, the executive branch,
• 51:06
  and they have the judicial branch of the Supreme Court.
• 51:08
  So let's see, The thing is, you know, the UNI party is strong,
• 51:12
  right? So let's see, you know, I, I, I
• 51:15
  have confidence with Elon and Vivek in there 'cause they're
• 51:19
  very competent and capable entrepreneurs.
• 51:21
  But again, how many times have we put faith in, you know,
• 51:26
  administration, whatever, just to be let down, right?
• 51:29
  It's like we, we've seen this story so many times again.
• 51:32
  But I, I want to focus on the positives 'cause we are getting
• 51:34
  to the top of the hour. And I do want to be respectful
• 51:36
  of your time, Larry. And one of the, the charts that
• 51:40
  I'm looking at here, like towards the end of the book and
• 51:43
  something that you were just talking about, which is Malcolm
• 51:49
  Gladwell's S Curve. And you make the case that
• 51:53
  there's the innovator stage, there's the early adopter stage,
• 51:57
  there's the early majority stage, there's the late majority
• 52:00
  stage, and there's the laggard stage.
• 52:01
  Now, I think what most people would think by listening to this
• 52:05
  podcast and Bitcoin's currently sitting at $100,000 roughly,
• 52:10
  give or take. You'd be like Nico, like I'm,
• 52:13
  I'm, it's late, but you actually make the case that we are on the
• 52:17
  cusp of, we're still in the early adopter phase and we're on
• 52:21
  the cusp of entering the early majority phase.
• 52:24
  So what do you mean by that? Well, I think that's exactly
• 52:27
  right. It's, it's the point in time.
• 52:28
  I mean, Saylor says this, he says he said he thinks the next
• 52:31
  10 years are going to be a digital gold rush for Bitcoin.
• 52:34
  I think he's right. I mean, we've, we've broken
• 52:37
  through. I mean, I remember 17, I, I got
• 52:39
  involved in 14. I bought a few of them, not
• 52:41
  many. I bought more in 17.
• 52:43
  I, I bought on the dip and after that twice doubled down twice.
• 52:47
  But you know, 1819 it was still pretty fringe and, and you know,
• 52:51
  we'd just come through the block size wars and there'd been forks
• 52:54
  earlier and so on and so forth, you know, and, and then 20 it,
• 52:57
  it worked, you know, we, we took off with all the money printing
• 53:00
  because it responded to that and, and as a, as a sound form
• 53:03
  of money. But then, you know, the
• 53:05
  tightening brought it all back down and SPF blew us up.
• 53:09
  But, you know, it's, it's now there's, there's now almost
• 53:12
  nobody that's not aware of its, its existence.
• 53:15
  I mean, I, you know, here's a perfect example.
• 53:17
  This morning I was reading the Wall Street Journal, Nick
• 53:19
  Timiraos was speaking about Fed policy and he talked about how,
• 53:22
  you know, whether it was tight or loose was in part determined
• 53:26
  by things like this, you know, the screaming price of Bitcoin.
• 53:29
  I don't think those were his words, but, you know, I mean,
• 53:31
  and for Bitcoin to be mentioned in an article about Fed policy,
• 53:34
  I mean, that's kind of an Overton window shift, right?
• 53:37
  So, so everyone's becoming aware of this thing.
• 53:40
  And so, yeah, I mean, the Gladwell model says as long as
• 53:44
  it takes you to go from zero to 15 or 10%, it'll take the same
• 53:48
  amount of time to go from 10 to 90.
• 53:50
  And so we're 16 years in and, and, and these adoption curves,
• 53:55
  they do get steep. And I've seen the same curve for
• 53:58
  mobile phones, computers, PC, I mean, you know, almost every
• 54:01
  development, I mean, washing machines that, you know,
• 54:03
  automobiles, any new invention and, and you know, it, it tends
• 54:07
  to get started and, and people start using it, the early
• 54:10
  adopters. But then when it becomes pretty
• 54:12
  obvious that, oh, this is a good thing and we want this.
• 54:15
  And I think that's what's happening now.
• 54:16
  I mean, most people now, well, there's nobody in Bitcoin now
• 54:19
  that's bought it in the last, you know, 15 years.
• 54:21
  It's not in a profit condition. So it's working.
• 54:24
  Even if you bought at the peak, you know, pre SPF, you paid 60
• 54:27
  or 70 and we're we were as recently as 107.
• 54:30
  So you know, it's starting to work and that's just going to
• 54:34
  attract more people. So and, and I think, you know,
• 54:37
  the, the, the word is spreading and people coming to understand
• 54:41
  what it is. The flood around energy and the
• 54:44
  flood around Sam Beckman freed. Those are getting explained
• 54:47
  away. And I try and deal with those in
• 54:50
  the book. I mean, if you look at what this
• 54:52
  book is, I want this book to be the perfect book for orange
• 54:57
  killing anybody. You know, I mean, Lynn's book is
• 55:01
  better, Safe's book is better, Jeff Booth's book is better.
• 55:05
  But what this is, and in fact this is I didn't really even
• 55:07
  write this book. I just pulled together the
• 55:10
  brilliant ideas of a lot of other people and put them into.
• 55:13
  And I think what I'm pretty good at doing is kind of explaining
• 55:16
  complicated things in a simple way.
• 55:18
  And so I just pulled all these different ideas together and put
• 55:21
  them into a narrative and then told my own personal story to
• 55:24
  make it somewhat funny and interesting such that, you know,
• 55:27
  somebody could pick this thing up and go, Oh, I get it.
• 55:31
  I think. I think this guy's right.
• 55:33
  And, and maybe I should pay attention to this me because I,
• 55:37
  you know, I everybody and, you know, most human beings, you
• 55:40
  know, they care about their future.
• 55:42
  They care about their children's future.
• 55:44
  And, you know, they, if they have savings, they know that,
• 55:46
  you know, what they do with those savings will determine the
• 55:48
  quality of that future. And so this is, this is a book
• 55:52
  aimed to write squarely at that subject, you know, and, and
• 55:56
  showing how the system is set up to, to rob them of their
• 56:00
  savings. And yet they've got a really
• 56:03
  great tool that they can fight back with what that will then
• 56:06
  allow them to actually conquer and beat the system.
• 56:09
  And by the way, as we all conquer and beat it, we can fix
• 56:13
  it so that all that theft stops. So it's, it's a good thing.
• 56:17
  It's a very good, positive thing.
• 56:19
  Well, I'm, I'm, you know, I am super excited for this to to
• 56:24
  drop. Well, me, me too.
• 56:26
  I got to tell you, I'll tell you, I'll just tell everybody's
• 56:29
  listening. Getting getting this thing
• 56:31
  formatted and processed and through Amazon.
• 56:32
  It's a nightmare. I mean, I mean, you know, the
• 56:35
  big book publishers are just, they were, they were going to
• 56:38
  take six months to publish it, a year to publish it.
• 56:40
  I was like, no, that's not going to work.
• 56:42
  I want this thing to get out now.
• 56:43
  So as a result of that choice, I had to go to Amazon.
• 56:46
  We go to Amazon and it's, you know, it's, it's clunky, but you
• 56:51
  know, I'm doing the best I can and it'll hopefully it'll be
• 56:53
  graphically appealing. And if it's not, I'll the second
• 56:55
  version will be a little, I'll do addition too quickly and give
• 56:58
  people a refund if they don't like the first edition.
• 57:00
  But I'm I'm trying to get it laid out well and introduced and
• 57:03
  and I really have AI have a hard goal of having it out in
• 57:06
  February. So.
• 57:07
  Love it. Well guys, the name of the book
• 57:09
  is the Big print. What happened to America and How
• 57:13
  sound money Can fix it, of course, written by Larry
• 57:16
  Leppard. The preface is is great.
• 57:21
  He has a quote of from one of my favorite movies and I'm I'm not
• 57:25
  going to say it because you guys are going to have to buy the
• 57:26
  book. Yeah, there you go.
• 57:27
  Thanks. You go tease him.
• 57:29
  But but yeah, it's it's a great stuff.
• 57:33
  And you know, Larry, always an honor to have you on the show.
• 57:36
  Always. I'm always loved the.
• 57:37
  You're one, you're one of the original podcasts that I got
• 57:40
  involved with and I've I've really enjoyed it.
• 57:42
  And so, you know, we we share bus rides in El Salvador and,
• 57:46
  and you've been a good friend so.
• 57:48
  Absolutely, Larry. Well, an honor like always.
• 57:51
  I think the best is yet to come. And you know, I'm I'm positive
• 57:54
  we're going to cross paths and the many Bitcoin conferences in
• 57:58
  2025 and congratulations, you completed this super, super
• 58:02
  quick. And of course, guys, this is
• 58:03
  going to be dropping our Christmas.
• 58:05
  Merry Christmas, everyone. It's a perfect gift to give to
• 58:08
  somebody you know that the the uncle or aunt that still doesn't
• 58:12
  understand Bitcoin, get him Larry's book.
• 58:15
  So thank you guys for watching, Appreciate it, and thank you so
• 58:19
  much for coming on, Larry. Yeah.
• 58:20
  Thanks, Nico. Good to see you.