WBD654 Audio Transcription
Gold, Bitcoin & Inflation with Lawrence Lepard
Release date: Friday 5th May
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Lawrence Lepard. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
Lawrence Lepard is an Investment Manager and Austrian Economist. In this interview, we discuss gold and Bitcoin, comparing their relative benefits as assets over short and long time scales. We also discuss inflation, the potential threats to Bitcoin, inequality in society, and the challenges of finding credible leaders in politics.
“We need to live in a deflationary world. Therefore, we need a currency which matches that world. So we’re trying to push an inflationary currency story (based on Keynes’s wrong premises), against a deflationary world that needs more efficiency, not more growth.”
— Lawrence Lepard
Interview Transcription
Danny Knowles: Let me bring it up.
Peter McCormack: Look, you know what I'm like.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: I'm a rocker, metalhead.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, absolutely.
Peter McCormack: So, we're trying to make this part of the identity of the club.
Lawrence Lepard: So they've got to walk though that hallway?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. This is the music that plays as they're coming in; there's a whole playlist. Wait a second.
Lawrence Lepard: That's awesome.
Peter McCormack: Like full-on death metal.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, it's awesome, man.
Peter McCormack: Well, what you notice is, when they turn up, they're like that with their Snapchat or Instagram.
Lawrence Lepard: I love it.
Danny Knowles: It's very cool.
Lawrence Lepard: I love it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: It's really cool.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so we tried to get Greg over as well.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, he couldn't do it, yeah.
Peter McCormack: He couldn't do it. We wanted you, we wanted Greg, we wanted Jeff, we thought that would be --
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, that would have been fun. Yeah, too bad Natalie couldn't make it too, she'd be great, but James is great.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: So, it's all good.
Peter McCormack: We'll get Greg over next year.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Me and Danny were saying that, as we said to you before, you're both such nice people but get you online and you're fucking savages!
Lawrence Lepard: I know, I've got to dial that back; my wife is all over me, man.
Peter McCormack: Is she?
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Is Jeff not?
Lawrence Lepard: Jeff's not; Jeff's a nice guy.
Peter McCormack: Jeff had word with me about it, he was like, "Pete, you need to just let this go, man, just let it go".
Lawrence Lepard: What, just all the fighting and stuff?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, because I was like, "Fuck you, fuck this!"
Lawrence Lepard: Jeff's zen, and that's great, I can be zen too, but I think we're pushing a movement here, we're trying to change the world, and you've got to have a carrot and you've got to have a stick; Foss and I are the stick, Jeff's the carrot.
Peter McCormack: That's a good shout.
Lawrence Lepard: "We've got this great, lovely world we're going to, it's all going to be good", "Okay, fine, first we're going beat the fucking central bankers to death, right? I want to be standing over Jay Powell with a golfclub just pounding on him!"
Danny Knowles: There's the quote!
Lawrence Lepard: Are we taping this?
Danny Knowles: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: Oh great, I'm going to jail!
Peter McCormack: Are you listening, Powell, are you listening? Well, listen, so we were chatting on the way over and -- do you prefer Larry?
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, go with Larry, you're my friend; Lawrence is fine too.
Peter McCormack: So, Larry was telling me, because he's just been to this gold conference, he's come straight from a gold conference to a Bitcoin mini conference.
Lawrence Lepard: Which I know is sacrilege for you guys.
Peter McCormack: Well, no, actually it's not exactly. I've got some questions about gold because I'm thinking of buying some at the moment.
Lawrence Lepard: There you go.
Peter McCormack: I'll tell you reason why; we made a show this week with Luke Gromen --
Lawrence Lepard: He's great, isn't he?
Peter McCormack: Brilliant.
Lawrence Lepard: I have so much respect for him.
Peter McCormack: He's so good.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: But he very casually just dropped in that, "Yeah, at some point soon, we're probably going to see high double-digit, maybe triple-digit inflation in Europe and the US", and I was like, "No, that's what happens in Lebanon and Turkey and Argentina". He's like, "No, it has to happen".
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, he's right.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: I agree.
Peter McCormack: Well, the way he explained it, he said, "Well, we can do 10% to 20% for ten years or we can do 100% for three years and just short, sharp shock and get through it", and I was like, "What?!" So, we did an interview with a guy a while back and he said, "Diversify your portfolio"; I'm way overcooked on Bitcoin, but I've got cash reserves. The problem is my cash in the bank's melting so I was thinking, "Why don't I just hold my cash in gold?"
Lawrence Lepard: Yes.
Peter McCormack: I don't want to hold it in Bitcoin because Bitcoin's volatile and Choke Point, so I'll hold my cash in gold with a small amount of cash in pounds, and then my savings in Bitcoin, and I was going to ask you is that a sensible thing?
Lawrence Lepard: I think it's a very sensible thing. The negatives on gold are well-known, it's very manipulated, we all know that, and holding your cash in gold, it's not necessarily an easy in or easy out for the physical. So, there are two forms of gold, there's physical gold and there's paper gold, and some of the paper gold is actually legitimate, and what do I mean by that? I mean that you can buy gold in an ETF form where I know and believe the ETF is good; Sprott is the one, and they have something called PHYS and they have something called PSLV. They actually have the underlying metal that they say they have, and I believe that because I know Eric Sprott, I know he's an honest man. So, I would advise you to use that because you can buy it with no spread or no premium.
If you say, "Okay, Larry, I want to buy some gold or some silver coins", and there's a use case for those, the use case for those is the internet's down and you're going to the border and you want to bribe the guards and you've got these coins, or the world goes into Matt Odell mandibles kind of world and nobody's trading in Bitcoin, well, everyone knows what a coin is. The problem with the coins is the premiums are big; you go to buy a gold coin and you're going pay 5% to 8% over melt value. You could sell it at usually face at melt value, but if you're thinking of trading in and out of something and your spread is a 5% to 8% spread, that's going to eat you up pretty quickly. So, to me, the coins you want to hold for the, you know, it's an apocalyptic world.
The other nice thing about the coins, they're off the radar screen, nobody can see them, you're not going to get a report. I mean, if you buy PHYS in your brokerage account and it goes up, you're going to get a report, and you sell it, you're going to get a report, you owe taxes. You buy the coins, I own a lot of coins, I imagine what will happen one day if I have a taxable state is I go to my three kids and go, "Okay, this is your pile, this your pile, and this is your pile", and the government won't know that any of that has taken place, so buying gold as a proxy…
Another interesting thing is that people say, "Well, there's going to be deflation, there could be", and there could be massive deflation, we've got this enormous debt structure which in the process of collapsing, what's the best thing to have in deflation, go back to the 1920s? The best thing to have in deflation is cash because the price of everything falls relative to cash. So, in the 1920s and the 1930s, if you had cash and housing prices went down 90%, you could buy a house for 10 cents on the dollar. What is gold? Gold is cash that can't be printed, and that's the beauty of it; it's literally a liquid form of cash that cannot be debased the way all fiat currencies can and will be debased.
So, the advantage really, as I compare and contrast gold to Bitcoin, gold has a couple of advantages, one is there's no ongoing energy cost to holding coins; coins are mined, the energy's spent, you've got the coins, that's it, no more. Bitcoin, you buy the Bitcoin, if you just hold it and hodl it in an address, you're not paying anything, but there will be an energy cost, somebody's got to pay for that transaction when you choose to sell it, in the sense that there'll be some kind of a sats fee, so to speak.
More recently, when the blockchain got rather backed up after Silicon Valley Bank blew apart, I saw some transactions going through at $500, $700 a transaction, so that's worth keeping in mind. But in all other respects, I think Bitcoin is so far superior that I recommend everybody have a shitload of Bitcoin, and I recommend older people in particular have some gold because generally speaking, older people don't like to see enormous volatility. I have clients who are 70 or 80 years old and if I told them, "Hey, your account's down 80% but don't worry, it's going to come back", they'd shoot me.
Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, they might not have a whole cycle left in them!
Lawrence Lepard: Well, that's right, that's exactly right; you've got to have a longer timeframe. But to be completely fair, if I were 30 years old, I'd probably be 90% Bitcoin, 10% gold. I'll just, for the listeners to have a sense, I'm 65 years old and I'm about half and half.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay. So, I'm about 90% Bitcoin, 10% cash, and the cash is what I'm thinking of putting in gold.
Lawrence Lepard: I personally, and this isn't investment advice, all the normal disclaimers, it wouldn't be crazy, in my view, for you to take half that cash and put it in gold.
Peter McCormack: That's some great investment advice.
Lawrence Lepard: Right.
Peter McCormack: So, what I'm thinking is then, if I do put that 5%, 10% into gold, of that 5%, 10% in, I might put 10% of that into physical.
Lawrence Lepard: Maybe, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Hide that away.
Lawrence Lepard: Right, have some coins.
Peter McCormack: Ready for the apocalypse.
Lawrence Lepard: Ready for the apocalypse, bribe the guards, yeah, you can always trade it; everyone knows what a coin is. And stick to the well-known coins and don't mess around with the blocks, I mean the tungsten-coated gold blocks; there's been a lot of that recently.
Peter McCormack: Oh, really?
Lawrence Lepard: Oh yeah, you don't want to buy kilobars, no, no; you want to buy sovereigns, you want to buy American Eagles, American Buffalos, Canadian Maple Leaves, they're all good choices in my view.
Peter McCormack: What about the Bank of England ones; are they trusted?
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, that's a sovereign, the British sovereign, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Lawrence Lepard: You've going to pay a 5% to 8% over melt value. Ultimately, at the end of the day, gold is gold, it's a commodity and it's worth what you could melt it down for. But the fact that somebody's turned it into a coin that's easily recognisable, it's hard to fake those coins. The Chinese have tried to make fake gold coins, Silver Eagles and Gold Eagles, they're terrible. If you actually have seen one, held one, played with one, it's really hard to make it and so you don't have to worry about counterfeits, is the point I'm trying to make.
Peter McCormack: Right, and there is still a case for silver?
Lawrence Lepard: Absolutely, in fact there's a bigger case for silver in you can handle the volatility. The beautiful thing about silver versus gold is it's got a commodity use value, and all the gold that's ever been mined is still above ground and it's either in a vault or around a lady's neck or in a museum.
Silver gets used every year; we don't have a big stockpile of silver. Silver's kind of seed to table, it gets mined and it gets used, and there are silver tea sets that get melted down, that's about 18% of the supply every year, but the point is that silver has a growing use case in two major areas: solar and electronics. And so, as a result of that, if there ever gets to be a tightness in the silver market, the silver's going to go up much more quickly than gold; I personally think silver's going to $50 or $100 an ounce and right now it's at $26.
Peter McCormack: I was once told all the gold in the world would fit under the Eiffel Tower.
Lawrence Lepard: That's true.
Danny Knowles: I didn't know that.
Lawrence Lepard: It's true, it's a couple of Olympic-sized swimming pools is what I've been told.
Peter McCormack: It doesn't seem right, does it?
Danny Knowles: No.
Lawrence Lepard: No, there's not much of it, it's a very rare substance and it's indestructible and that's why, until Bitcoin came along, it was the best form of money we had. And 5,000 years of human history, everybody has adopted that and recognised that, and that's not going away any time soon. There are lot of people who don't even know what Bitcoin is, sadly, but they know what a gold coin is, generally speaking, almost any place in the world.
Peter McCormack: Talk to me about the conference you've just been to and tell me and Danny what you just told me.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, it's interesting. So, I was at the European Gold Forum, this is run by the Denver Gold Group, probably the biggest gold organisation in the world; they have two conferences a year, they have one in Denver, they have one in Zurich. This the first conference they've had post-COVID; they shut it down for all the COVID stuff. Typically, this conference runs between 600 and 800 people per year, attendees. In this particular year, they told me they had 240 people sign up and probably only 180 showed up.
Danny Knowles: Wow!
Lawrence Lepard: And 90 of those were from the industry itself, so that means just gold companies who go there trying to get people interested in their company, so they had 90 attendees. Now, one might say, "Okay, well, that's really bad, nobody's interested in gold".
As a contrarian and as an investor, my view is that's incredibly good; here we are, gold is almost at an all-time high, gold's at $2,040 right now, it's peaked at $2,063 and $2,070-ish right after the war broke out, and when we go through those two numbers with authority, it'll be an all-time high. And as most of us who operate in financial markets know, when something goes through an all-time high, it starts off a lot of algorithms, like, "Holy shit, this is a breakout!"
So, in my opinion, when we go through $2,100 with authority, probably we'll go to $2,200 or $2,300, we'll correct back to $2,000, maybe a little below it, everyone will say, "It was a fake breakout". But then we'll start going up again, very much the way Bitcoin kind of came out of the $16,000, went up, eventually it hit $30,000 but it came back to $20,000, but now it's back up and going again. It'll become obvious that it's kind of game on in the sound money land, and that's what I'm here to tell your listeners and tell you, we talked about it in the car, I'm just incredibly bullish right now, what's happening. It's sad, of course, in a lot of ways of what's going on in the world, but in terms of the sound money theme and the assets that bitcoiners and gold owners hold, I couldn't be more bulldog; I think we are going to see an outstanding next two years, I really do.
Peter McCormack: Wow!
Danny Knowles: What do those people at the gold conference think of Bitcoin?
Lawrence Lepard: That's a great question. So, it runs from complete antagonism, and I got into it on the web with one of those guys about that; you guys probably saw it.
Peter McCormack: Did you block him?
Lawrence Lepard: I did, but then I met at the conference and we actually had a nice conversation and we had misunderstood each other and I decided forgive and forget, I'm a Christian and all that, and I kind of felt bad that I had blocked him; he was so obnoxious and he disrespected somebody who I have enormous respect for, Bitcoin Ollie, and she's such just a sweetheart, and I thought, "God damn it, Peter, I'm done with you", and so, yeah, I blocked him and we got into it. Anyway, we kissed and made up, it's all good; he doesn't like Bitcoin, fine.
To answer your question though, Danny, at several of these conferences, and I go to the New Orleans Gold Show every year, I generally give a speech there, and I always quiz the audience, and I talk a lot about gold, obviously, but we talk about Bitcoin too. I view my role in this whole event, this revolution, I'm the guy who's trying to lead the gold bugs into Bitcoin, I think Bitcoin is a superior choice, and rather than getting mad at the gold bugs or call them the enemy or do some of the things that other people in the industry have done, my view is, no, they're your easiest convert. They get the thesis, they just don't understand, they're afraid of Bitcoin, a lot of times it's because of the FTXs and the Bankman-Frieds and it's all fraudulent shit.
Anyway, to answer your question, I go to the New Orleans Gold Conference and I ask, I say, "How many of you guys own Bitcoin?" half the hands got up, half; I had the same experience in Switzerland. A couple of the older guys, a guy I really respect, Egon von Greyerz, who I think totally understands the monetary situation, he's against Bitcoin but we're friends, it's all good. But I'd say, in general, it tends to correlate fairly much with age; the younger people tend to get it better.
Peter McCormack: I wonder if there was a corelation also with your position within the gold world, in that if you're a very well-known highly respected gold bug, is there risk, is there reputational risk of starting to diversify to what is complementary but also a competitor?
Lawrence Lepard: I get it, there can only be one, and it is complementary and they are competitive and it's like, "Gold's number one and so Bitcoin wants to overthrow number one", I get all of that. So, to me, that's people who are looking at investing as a religion, and to a degree it is. Look, Bitcoin's a lot more than Number Go Up and making money; to me, it actually is a religion. But I think, as you look at it as an investor, as a probability-weighted investor, you have to entertain both and you have to admit that Bitcoin has crushed gold and you have to see that Bitcoin is becoming digital gold, it's not fully there yet and it's going to take time, but yes, you're right.
We were talking about something similar last night, does Peter Schiff really believe his bullshit? I don't know that he does, I think his whole shtick might be just a marketing shtick to get clicks and everything else; hell, his son is a bitcoiner, he's got to be smarter than that, but perhaps not. I think Egon, I don't think he's going it because of his position and he can't disrespect gold, I think he actually sincerely hasn't taken the time to deeply understand how it works. I think if you haven't done the work and you haven't taken the time, and you look around, remember there's been a lot of crypto bullshit, I mean a lot of crypto bullshit, we all know that, and if you don't do the work and just look at that and you go, "Fuck this shit, why should I be messing around with this fraudulent crap?"
Peter McCormack: Well, most of us are dismissive first time, I dismissed it first time.
Lawrence Lepard: I did too.
Peter McCormack: You did?
Danny Knowles: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: We all do.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: And sometimes it's two, three, four, it takes those multiple touchpoints.
Lawrence Lepard: Well, even after I hadn't dismissed it, I started in 2013, I kept thinking to myself, "This thing's going to blow up; it's a computer, how can a computer possibly deliver immutable sound money?"
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: But then you meet Odell and you hear people explain it and you get through the hashing and you get 14 years, you go through the Block Wars, you have all the forks and all the other ones die off and eventually the signal just kind of comes through, like, "Holy shit, this really is immutable digital scarcity, it's going to live forever and there are 21 million of these suckers and there are 8 billion people, these things are going to $10 million a coin".
Peter McCormack: Fingers crossed.
Lawrence Lepard: Not fingers crossed, it's just happening, it's maths, man. Now, the problem is what will $10 million buy you? It might be $1,000 gasoline at that point, right! But no, it's going to happen, I just don't have any doubt about it.
Peter McCormack: I think it takes a few touchpoints, I also think a lot of people don't get gold.
Lawrence Lepard: Well, that's right.
Peter McCormack: I'd never bought gold before Bitcoin, so I'd gone my whole life, all the way up until 2013, before I bought digital gold.
Lawrence Lepard: Right, well most people just don't get the monetary system.
Peter McCormack: Exactly.
Lawrence Lepard: And particularly Americans, because America has, generally speaking, had a stable monetary system. One of the things I find fascinating, I interact with these people, I have some of them as investors, I met with a couple yesterday. I met with a guy from Lebanon yesterday, he was an investor in my fund, and Lebanon's experiencing 70% or 80% inflation, annualised inflation; Turkey, same story, and he'd been in Turkey; Argentina, same story. There are lots of places in the world that have had really high inflation, they get it. Ironically, they save in the dollar, but the dollar's more stable than their local currency, or they save in gold, or they save in Bitcoin because they understand how badly a currency can be abused.
The Americans, the last time we had hyperinflation was 1789 with The Continental. I mean, to a degree we had it in the Civil War, but America's never really experienced hyperinflation. I find it interesting too in speaking to the Germans at the Zurich Gold Show. All Americans are just terrified of the next Great Depression, because I know in my case I heard from my grandparents about how bad it was, how they were eating biscuits and they had no money and things were horrific, and that's the great American fear, is deflation. You are in Zurich and you're meeting with Germans who are gold investors --
Peter McCormack: It's the opposite.
Lawrence Lepard: The exact opposite. All their grandparents experienced hyperinflation and they're just terrified of inflation because of what it did to their country and then drove them into being led by a madman and all the other stuff. So, it's very interesting the way these fears get passed down through generations, and frankly we've enjoyed this really sweet period post-World War II where monetary conditions were relatively stable and the US behaved somewhat acceptably back in those days right after World War II, I mean it never has behaved totally acceptably.
In fact, it was interesting, I was talking with Egon and he said, "Well, when human beings are involved everything will always go to shit eventually". "That's kind of cynical", I said. He said, "Yeah, there are no good human beings". I said, "Well, Egon, the guys who were the Founding Fathers of this country, they were really great human beings; the documents they wrote were just brilliant, they moved the world and society forward, etc", and he says, "Yes, Larry, but remember, they also committed genocide, they wiped out the entire American Native population", and it's like, "You've got a point".
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and they had slaves.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, and they had slaves, right. The history of human progress is full of good guys and bad guys and some people who are mixed, and we keep going in the right direction, I hope, but there are bad guys out there.
Peter McCormack: Well, it all smacks of needing to educate more about money, what it is, what is its value, how it operates.
Lawrence Lepard: That's right.
Peter McCormack: Because it bypasses everyone.
Lawrence Lepard: Exactly.
Peter McCormack: I've said relentlessly on this podcast, the amount of times I go on Facebook and try and tell people about what's wrong, what's going on in the financial system, what's happening with the banks, and it just bypasses people. I think people have been privileged to live through a fairly stable 20, 30, 40 years, fairly.
Lawrence Lepard: Fairly, correct.
Peter McCormack: And now it might come and hit them like a train wreck.
Lawrence Lepard: I think that's absolutely right, and that's where, again, I think Saife's book has changed the world. I've been carrying this flag for 20 years, I've been a gold bug forever, and I've been a sound money guy all-in since 2008. 2008, the Global Financial Crisis radicalised me for sound money, I became a jihadist, a sound money jihadist, but I was fighting it alone. So, Saife comes out, he writes his book, all 20- and 30-year-olds read it, and now I've got 20-year-old people coming up to me and saying, "Hey, I've seen you on Twitter quoting von Mises", and it's like I've got reinforcements, finally.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: I've got some guys with sharp spears charging the hill ready to go kill these central bankers, and by the way, they deserve to be killed, and I don't hesitate in saying that. Look, I wish I could channel my inner Jeff Booth and be zen and positive all the time, but on the other hand, the revolutions also need some stone-throwers and some torch-carriers, and so I'm going to carry a torch and throw stones at these guys because they've really screwed up our world incredibly. When you look at what's going on in this system, I'm just blown away every day with the events and how badly they've messed it all up.
Peter McCormack: All right, well listen, tell it through me, I've got my son here, but tell it through me, explain what a central bank is and how they fucked the world up.
Lawrence Lepard: Sure. Well, the central bank is the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, it's a country's authority which controls their monetary system. The US Federal Reserve was established in 1913, they snuck it through around Christmas time when nobody was there to vote on it, and it's really a money trust. And what it allows is for cantillionaires to take advantage of everybody else by printing the money to bail themselves out. They basically control when the money is issued and at what price, and they determine it based on bank runs.
In the 1800s, the US experienced the largest growth in productivity and living standards ever measured in the history of mankind. From 1800 to 1900, the quality of living for the average person went up immeasurably, as a result of a lot of things, but one part of that was we were on the gold standard. We did experience some financial panics and banks would occasionally get overleveraged and get in trouble, and so what the politicians and the people who controlled the central reserve, or built the central reserve, determined is, "We're going to use that to scare people into telling the people we need to have a monetary system that we can control", and so that's what they did. They set up a monetary system that they control and they had the backstop on all of the money that was issued.
Peter McCormack: Do you think that was ignorance or malice?
Lawrence Lepard: Oh, malice.
Peter McCormack: Absolute malice?
Lawrence Lepard: Absolutely malice.
Peter McCormack: You don't think any part of them thought, "This is the best way to operate the banking system"?
Lawrence Lepard: Well, okay, to be fair, I'm sure there were people who voted for it who thought that. And to be fair, there was a cover story, and that was the cover story, "We have these bank runs, they're horrible and therefore we need to have a centralised system to control them". But there were also people at the table, Warberg and Aldrich and others who really knew that, "If we get control of this, man, are we going to be able to make money; this is going to be a thing of beauty, it's going to give us a lot of power", and the people in government knew that as well. The central government recognised that, "If we can have control of this, that will centralise power and politicians will be able to go from zero to $60 million in net worth", the way Elizabeth Warren has, just by holding a political office. So, yes, some of it was ignorance and well-intended to stop bank runs, etc, but I think a lot of it was malice.
So, anyway, they set this whole thing up and they immediately violated the Charter, immediately. They were supposed to only lend in extreme circumstances against good collateral at high rates for short periods of time and pay it back; that's not what happened. World War I broke out, we needed a lot of money, they printed it, and so that was just the beginning. Then, you think that was bad, then they went up and they had a depression in 1920, they printed some more and then they really printed in the 1920s and created the largest bubble every known in the history of mankind, which burst in 1929 and created enormous pain for millions of people, including my grandparents who I heard about it from in the form of the Great Depression as a result of, as we know, Austrian Economics and bubbles that burst.
So, the notion that a central bank should be in control of the money supply, it goes back to the Rothschild fellow who stated, "Give me control of the money and I care not who makes the laws", it really is that. So, the people who were at the money spigot and can control it -- if you know when things are going to be inflationary and you know when things are going to be deflationary, you can become filthy rich because you basically are controlling the market and you can front run the market, and that's what's happened.
It's amazing to me how much these fiat cantillionaires have benefited. I've got people I went to Harvard Business School with who basically were at the bottom of my class and not particularly bright guys but got into the right place at the right time, and they're worth hundreds of millions of dollars today, and it's because they were in a system where their particular business really benefited, mostly private equity, their particular business really benefited from free money. They were able to borrow at extremely low rates, lend it out at extremely high rates, or invest it at high rates of return, so the cost of capital was low, their returns were high.
Look, you give me money at 0% and you show me opportunities where I can make 6%, 8%, 10% and I can lever it up, I'm going to get rich too, it's not that hard, you can do it, especially if you know that when it goes tits up on you, when the trade goes bad on you, they're going to come bail you out. Look at Ken Griffin, he runs Citadel, he should have been bankrupt.
Peter McCormack: He should have been bankrupt.
Lawrence Lepard: He should have been bankrupt, but I've been told by a good source, could be wrong but it's a good source, as you know, Ben Bernanke on his Board of Advisors, Ben Bernanke is paid $20 million a year by Citadel, that's what I've been told. I don't know if it's true, it's a rumour, but it would make sense because when things flipped in March 2020, he was --
Peter McCormack: Is this GameStop?
Lawrence Lepard: No, he may have been involved there too, I don't know his role in that.
Peter McCormack: There was another firm that were backed up after GameStop because they were --
Lawrence Lepard: Possibly, yeah, I'm not as familiar with that one, but going back to when we went into a crash in March 2020, there were swap lines given to these guys, the risk parity trade was protected, very much like what happened over here when all your LTI stuff blew up, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, or is this what happened with Silicon Valley Bank?
Lawrence Lepard: Well, that's a whole other story, yeah, to a degree that is what happened with Silicon Valley Bank. I find a couple of things about that story amazing; first, in one day, $42 billion went out the door, in one day.
Peter McCormack: I know, unreal, APIs.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, right, we're talking point and click, move money; think of how fast that is for that amount of money. If and when a monetary collapse comes, it could happen really, really quickly; that blew my mind.
The second thing about that story that blew my mind is that black-letter Law from Dodd-Frank, which was hammered out over a couple of years with a lot of involvement by all kinds of senators, was, "We are not going to bail out the banks anymore; the depositors are going to have to take the hit", that's a fact, and that was the black-letter Law of Dodd-Frank, and they just violated it. Silicon Valley Bank gets upside down, there are a bunch of wealthy people who have their money in Silicon Valley Bank, Bill Ackman's crying like a baby on Twitter, he's just disgusting, and a lot of people are lobbying in Washington DC, there was a fear of bank runs, there was a fear of bank failure, "We're going to change black-letter law", "No, we're not, we're going to make the depositors whole".
Even on the day it happened, and this was in my quarterly letter which will be out next week, on the day it happened, Janet Yellen was on CBS Face the Nation and said, "No, we're not going to bail out the bank because Dodd-Frank prevents that, etc, we're not going to do a bailout", okay, fine, that's what she said. That evening, six hours later, that evening, they bailed out the bank, they came in with the BTFP programme which we all jokingly call Buy the Fucking Paper.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, Buy the Fucking Paper!
Lawrence Lepard: The Buy the Fucking Paper programme, and they bailed out the bank. They said it wasn't a bailout, of course it was a bailout.
Peter McCormack: Of course it was a bailout.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Because these banks would have failed.
Lawrence Lepard: They all would have failed and there would have been contagion.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: And by the way, to me that's just the first crack in the dyke.
Peter McCormack: But hold on, so do you think they bailed out the banks because they were bailing out their buddies, or do you think they bailed out the banks because there was a fear of contagion, because it's definitely different scenarios?
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, you're right. I think everyone had different motivations, well some of both, and probably greater fear of contagion, that they stand ready to backstop the system. And this is what happens when you build a fragile system on an unsound premise. The premise that Keynes started off with is fundamentally unsound, "Growth is good, unlimited growth in a finite resources planet"; that just doesn't fucking make sense, it does not work. If we grow in an unlimited sense with limited resources, it's not going to work.
So, an economy, the right way to run an economy should be based entirely upon efficiency, it's all about how can we get more for less input; that's what it's all about. This is deflation, this is Jeff's brilliant thesis; we need to live in a deflationary world, therefore we need a currency which matches that world. So, we're trying to push an inflationary currency story based on Keynes's wrong premises against a deflationary world that needs more efficiency, not more growth, and that's where the collision is.
Peter McCormack: But it's such a huge flip for people.
Lawrence Lepard: Oh yeah, nobody gets it.
Peter McCormack: It's not like we're saying we need to reduce interest rates by 1%, it's not like we're saying we need to make these little tweaks, it is a complete fundamental rethink understanding of the entire economy.
Lawrence Lepard: That's exactly right, and that's why it's a fourth turning, and it's stunning to me that this mass delusion has gone on for so long. A perfect comparable to this is the physics around the planets revolving around the Sun. Everyone believed, until Galileo came along, the planets and the Sun had a certain relationship to one another, and they were just fundamentally wrong. And it's the same kind of a paradigm shift; people are just fundamentally wrong, they've been trained to think in a way that doesn't make any sense, and they also have recency bias.
I've got this in my letter as well, Herbert Stein was an economist in the Nixon administration, had a great line he said, what did he call it, Stein's Law, "If something cannot go on forever, it will end", it's pretty simple, right, but this delusion has gone on for quite a period of time.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: And I know a lot of people on Twitter and otherwise who tell me it's going to go on for another 20 or 30 years, but I would submit too that the mathematics prevent that, and that's where Foss has it right.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Lawrence Lepard: It's just simple maths, it can't, because the lines, they're going parabolic, straight up.
Peter McCormack: But a soft default allows them to restart the party.
Lawrence Lepard: Well, possibly, correct, that is correct. There are lots of ways that they could maybe extend their time and extend the system at a macro level, but that would take a very severe default or reset of the monetary system because the maths right now is bearing down on them. We've all seen the chart of the US Federal -- I mean, we all know what a debt doom loop is, we all know how that's worked out; James Lavish has done a great job of laying that out.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: And as a result of that, they're trapped, they have to continue printing money which will drive more inflation which will drive interest rates higher which will then drive the federal deficient higher, and for the first time in my lifetime, the United States Government is starting to look like a Third-World country. We're basically going to have to print the money to cover our interest cost and to cover our debt repayment.
Peter McCormack: And to cover other countries around the world.
Lawrence Lepard: Well, and that too, not to mention that. That's the other thing that's stunning to me, is just how much behind-the-door money goes out there. There's a great site called Wall Street on Parade, and Pam Martens runs it. They've done a lot of forensic work into how much money we throw into the system, they throw into the system to keep it going; it's mindboggling, it's absolutely mindboggling, and Preston talks about this as well.
The Fed balance sheet went from $800 billion to $3 trillion, and then went from $3 trillion to $8 trillion, almost $9 trillion, and it's coming back a touch. The next time it's going to go from $8 trillion to $15 trillion, and then it's going to go from $15 trillion to $50 trillion, and one of these could be the big one, I don't know which one will be, and I've been wrong about this by the way, I thought it was all over in 2008, I thought that was the blow up. And they restarted it at the sovereign and the currency level, but there's no higher level than the currency level. So, if you go to your Austrian textbooks, you realise that there's no way out, either the currency's going to fail or we're going to have massive inflation which will ultimately kind of be a soft currency to failure, and I that's what you might have been alluding to.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well I think it's goes on for as long as they can get away it with a docile public, how long they can get away with it.
Lawrence Lepard: Yes.
Peter McCormack: If you look at something like Lebanon, they got away with it until there were people burning down the banks, smashing the bank windows because they couldn't get to their money.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: I think in the US, this inflation's crap but they're getting away with it. I think if you suddenly have people not able to get their money from the bank or people start to experience 100% inflation and you start to see revolution on the streets, that's when they can't get away with it for much longer.
Lawrence Lepard: I think that's right, and I think what that naturally leads into, and is probably where you were going, is what's their plan? And we know their plan because they've head-lighted it.
Peter McCormack: CBDCs.
Lawrence Lepard: They're going to go CBDCs, and the way they're going to get us to accept that is they're going to go Universal Basic Income. And so no bitcoiner, not true bitcoiner is going to want to hold any CBDC; it's just digital fiat. But if you're starving and you've got no other choice and they're willing to give you some UBI and you've got to take it in CBDC form, well guess what, you probably will do it because you want to feed your family. So, yeah, it's pretty clear that's kind of what they're aiming for next and the timing and actions around that it's hard to tell.
The other threat that I see that concerns me greatly, and we haven't seen this narrative a lot, I've seen a little of it, is that eventually it's probably going to develop a narrative around the lines of, "You gold and Bitcoin people are messing up our legitimate currency system".
Peter McCormack: Of course.
Lawrence Lepard: "And you're evil, and therefore just as in World War II, you needed to buy government bonds to support the war effort, boy, if you're playing in gold and playing Bitcoin, you're being anti-American. In fact you're being so anti-American that we're going to tax the living shit out of you or we're going to do Choke Point, and guess what, you're not going to have any way to get your money into and out of that shit", so we're seeing all this, right.
We have the New York Times write completely fictional articles about the impact of the mining operations, and so we can see where they're going with this and it's not good. Having said all of that, we hodl on and they can say they're going to tax me but (1) they don't what I have, and (2) with 12 words, I can live somewhere else.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I think a lot more now about how do you fight back against this? And for me, it's just about education and communication.
Lawrence Lepard: Well that's right.
Peter McCormack: I'm walking a fine line between education and sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I've talked about this loads, always on my mind. If you try and explain this to them, you say, "Yeah, look, the government needs to wipe away the debt because there's going to be massive inflation, but they want you to still stay docile so they can offer you Universal Basic Income, but they're going to do this through a central bank digital currency which they can use for mass surveillance and stop you from spending", you sound like a nutter.
Lawrence Lepard: Well, yeah, you're coming from normieland.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: You're coming from Paul Krugman. I mean, Paul Krugman had tweeted this morning something about monetary conspiracy theories. Yeah, look, we all sound like nutters, but the fact of the matter is we're right.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: So, these conspiracy theories have become conspiracy facts, and let's talk about a development that I think is extremely interesting, I'm very excited about it; I haven't done all the work so I can't endorse him fully, but I don't know if anyone's paid attention to the fact that Robert Kennedy Jr -- have you followed what he's been saying recently?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I have.
Lawrence Lepard: I mean, (1) he's going to run for president --
Danny Knowles: I've not followed any of this.
Lawrence Lepard: Well, you'll find this interesting; I'll just give you the highlights. He's come out and said basically the CIA killed his uncle.
Danny Knowles: Okay.
Lawrence Lepard: So, he's called bullshit on the Warren Commission story on the JFK assassination. He's hinted that he thinks they were involved in killing his father as well, and they were, from what I've read. He's come out and he's said that the cantillionaires have basically printed all this money and made themselves rich and they're trying to block the exits, basically Bitcoin being the best exit, with Operation Choke Point. Then, there was one other point he had made, I'm trying to recall what it was, but those were the major ones.
Peter McCormack: Is he already in Congress?
Lawrence Lepard: No, he's a private individual who lives in Los Angeles, but next week actually, he's going to declare his bid for the presidency as a Democratic candidate.
Peter McCormack: He is viable.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, this guy gets it. Oh, the other one that he's been very strong on, he thinks COVID was bullshit and he thinks the vaccine mandates were bullshit. So, here we have a real brave, freedom-fighting guy, who kind of gets our point of view, who has a real national name and platform and some money; this is like whoa!
Peter McCormack: But he's also saying things that will bring Republicans across, he's appealing to Republicans there.
Lawrence Lepard: I used to be a Republican, I'm a nothing now because I hate all these parties, but the point is this is a message that would attract all disaffected "conspiracy theory types".
Peter McCormack: Have you found him?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, I found him.
Peter McCormack: And Bitcoin, did you see him mention Bitcoin?
Lawrence Lepard: Oh yeah.
Danny Knowles: This is like a complete other rabbit hole but I'm just too curious. So, what's the theory about why the CIA killed his uncle, because I know the story but I don't know it very detailed?
Lawrence Lepard: This is accepted fact to those of us who have a brain and can do the analysis; I encourage you to read a book by Douglass called JFK and the Unthinkable, it's probably the best introduction to the murder of JFK. In brief, the theory is that because JFK was trying to end the Vietnam War, because he had said he wanted to break the CIA into a 1,000 pieces for setting him up with the Bay of Pigs, because he was having an affair with a Russian agent, because he had back-channelled to Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the CIA didn't like that, the CIA and Johnson came to the conclusion that he was a threat to US national security, and they murdered him using a combination of perhaps the Mob, individual contractors and CIA agents, and that Oswald truly was a patsy, he was a CIA guy and was set up in the whole thing.
To me, this is indisputable. I'm an analyst, I read things, this is indisputable fact that our government murdered our President and that that was the beginning of the downfall in the United States in post-World War II.
Peter McCormack: And his father as well?
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, and his father as well; that one's a little more complicated.
Peter McCormack: Was he the one who died in the plane crash?
Lawrence Lepard: No, Sirhan Sirhan shot him at a hotel in Los Angeles, but that one's a little more controversial because Sirhan Sirhan was brainwashed into doing it, and I actually don't think he delivered the kill shot; I think the girl in the polka dot dress delivered the kill shot.
Danny Knowles: Is this the guy that can't remember doing it?
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, Sirhan Sirhan.
Danny Knowles: Have you heard that story?
Peter McCormack: No.
Lawrence Lepard: And get this, Sirhan Sirhan came up for parole and Robert Kennedy Jr supported it, said, "We should let this guy out".
Danny Knowles: Wow!
Lawrence Lepard: And Gavin Newsom said, "No, we're throwing him back in jail".
Peter McCormack: I saw an interview with Gavin Newsom the other day; I do not trust that guy.
Lawrence Lepard: He's a bad guy.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: He's a very bad guy.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: But what would you expect? There are lots of bad guys out there.
Peter McCormack: Do you think he beats Gavin Newsom?
Lawrence Lepard: Well, yeah, in the primary, I don't know, I don't honestly know. But there's one of the wags on Twitter said, "I hope he stays away from Dealey Plaza". This is an incredibly brave move on the part of this guy, it really is.
Peter McCormack: Because he'll have a big target on his back?
Lawrence Lepard: Fuck, yeah, this is an incredibly brave move.
Peter McCormack: That's a lot of tragedy that has befallen that family.
Lawrence Lepard: Oh yeah, absolutely, and look, they're not clean as the driven snow, the father was a bootlegger and stock manipulator and a lot of other things, but…
Peter McCormack: Have you found anything about him and Bitcoin?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, he posted this; I'll put it up there, I'll make it a bit bigger.
Peter McCormack: So, this is on his Twitter.
Danny Knowles: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: If you zoom in, okay, "The claim that FedNow is not the first step toward a CBDC would be more easily digestible were we not aware of the Biden Administration's steady barrage of hostile broadsides against cryptocurrencies".
Lawrence Lepard: I love this; read the next one.
Peter McCormack: "Between 2008 and 2022, the Fed partnered with a handful of big banks to print $10 trillion, 10 centuries of wealth in 15 years, a bonanza for the banksters. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin give the public an escape route from the splatter zone when this bubble invariably bursts. So the White House is colluding with the banksters to keep us all trapped in the bubble of profiteering and control. In his 8 February post on Pirate Wires, Nic Carter", fucking tagged Nic Carter; go on, Nic, "describes how the White House has organised banksters to participate in a sophisticated, widespread crackdown to destroy the crypto industry. Carter describes 15 incidents where the Biden Administration weaponised the FDIC, OCC and DOJ to force crypto-friendly banks to close their doors to crypto firms since 3 December. The recent crackdown on crypto blocks exit ramps, removes alternative rails and strengthens the government's control over both the financial and political systems.
"We should be wary since CBDCs are the ultimate mechanisms for social surveillance and control. As Balaji Srinivasan says, 'The distinction between the FedNow and a CBDC is important from a technical standpoint, but not from a civil liberties standpoint'. Balaji compares FedNow to a virus that has evolved to evade recognition by changing its sequence without relying on changing its functions". Fuck me!
Lawrence Lepard: Right!
Peter McCormack: That's a presidential candidate!
Lawrence Lepard: Is this guy one of us or what?!
Peter McCormack: They're going to fucking kill him!
Lawrence Lepard: Right?!
Peter McCormack: They're going to kill him!
Lawrence Lepard: Well, right, but here's my point, I want to do a little more work on it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: I've been so disappointed by so many politicians, I'm not 100% ready to say it, but I think there's a chance, and all bitcoiners should really get behind this guy.
Peter McCormack: We should try and interview this guy.
Danny Knowles: We should, we should definitely try.
Lawrence Lepard: My guess is he'd take it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: My guess is he would definitely take it.
Peter McCormack: Where is he?
Lawrence Lepard: Los Angeles.
Danny Knowles: California.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, no doubt.
Peter McCormack: We should reach out.
Lawrence Lepard: Yes, you should reach out to him, absolutely.
Peter McCormack: Who would know him?
Lawrence Lepard: Absolutely, there's got to be a way.
Danny Knowles: We'll find a connection somewhere.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I can think of two.
Lawrence Lepard: We can figure out a way to --
Peter McCormack: I think Nic Carter's probably talking to him.
Danny Knowles: Probably.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: I wonder if he follows Nic.
Lawrence Lepard: Well, he must.
Peter McCormack: I will go out to LA, immediately.
Lawrence Lepard: Peter, if you get in an interview with this guy, what a fucking homerun, seriously.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: He's also quoted this guy named Chris Hedges, who I went to college with; he's one of us, he's not a bitcoiner per se but he understands how broken everything is, and he quotes Hedges a lot. The thing I love about him is he understands how broken this country is.
Peter McCormack: What pisses me off is, you talked earlier about the Forefathers, let's forget their transgressions for now, they still fundamentally wanted to build a republic that was fair and couldn't be corrupted.
Lawrence Lepard: The written documents of the founding of this country, they're fucking stunning.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, yet right now, within Congress, how many people within that group do you say, "You're a credible person?" I like Cynthia Lummis, I think she's great, and there are a few others I like, but how many of them do you think actually right now are saying, "Hold on, what we're doing is wrong here, this is terrible; we're elected by the people for the people", but how many of them actually give a shit like he clearly does?
Lawrence Lepard: Very few.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and that's terrifying.
Lawrence Lepard: Absolutely, but it's, "Show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcome".
Peter McCormack: Sorry, did you find anything with him talking about presidential, or anyone writing about him making a presidential bid?
Danny Knowles: He's wearing a good T-shirt in his --
Lawrence Lepard: No, go to Wikipedia, google him in Wikipedia.
Danny Knowles: I think this is probably enough.
Peter McCormack: What's that? "Kennedy for President", yeah, I mean that's a bit of a giveaway!
Lawrence Lepard: No, he's doing it, there's no doubt about that, he's announcing in April in Boston.
Peter McCormack: Wow!
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, but google him in Wikipedia and look at the description. So, we know how they're going to counter this, Peter; I think the first line is, "He's a well-known conspiracy theorist".
Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course.
Danny Knowles: Wait, I'm on his…
Peter McCormack: Right, "Robert Francis Kennedy Jr is an American environmental lawyer and author known for promoting anti-vaccine propaganda and conspiracy theories".
Lawrence Lepard: Right.
Peter McCormack: When did they change that?
Lawrence Lepard: I don't know.
Danny Knowles: I'm not sure where you see that actually.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think there's a history; is it towards the bottom, you can see a history of a page?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, I'm not sure.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but you can definitely find it.
Lawrence Lepard: They're going to paint him as being a whack job.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: Or, as you would say, a nutter.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but they're going to struggle to get away with it because of --
Lawrence Lepard: The name and who he is.
Peter McCormack: Well that, but also everything that's come out regarding vaccines and lockdowns since.
Lawrence Lepard: Well, that's the thing, is it a conspiracy if you're right? The CIA coined that term, "conspiracy theory", as a way of trying to degrade anybody who didn't believe in the narrative on JFK.
Peter McCormack: Wow, that's fascinating.
Lawrence Lepard: Isn't it?
Peter McCormack: We don't have anyone like that here in the UK at all, we have a very weak political class at the moment. At least, within the US, whether I agree with it or not, there's a strong political class.
Lawrence Lepard: When I saw this, again, I saw "Bitcoin" and I thought, "Boy, there's real hope", because I had a sense that if we all kind of said this message -- look, he was quoting Nic Carter.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know.
Lawrence Lepard: I had a sense, if we spread this message and spread it wide and kept trying to spread it that eventually the politicians, somebody would hear it, and I saw this and I was like, "Holy shit! Here's a name-brand guy who's listening", right? And this was fucking Kennedy, yeah.
Peter McCormack: It's just like trying to comprehend it, it's like you always need a hero in these situations.
Lawrence Lepard: Well, that's right, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he's our Batman.
Lawrence Lepard: It's going to take leadership. Now he's got to stay out of Dealey Plaza!
Peter McCormack: They're going to go after him hard.
Lawrence Lepard: Oh yeah, just like they went after Ron Paul; Ron Paul was a later version of this, but he had it right.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: And I'll never forget Ron, and Rudy Giuliani up on stage just totally trying to hammer Ron Paul in a debate; he treated him so poorly, it was unbelievable how disrespectful they were, and yet Ron was right.
Peter McCormack: So, how do you think this is all going to play out? And I'll add a question to that so you can have the context for it; most people listening are going to be like, "Okay, I get it, what the fuck do I do, like what the fuck do I do?" That's what most people are thinking, "What the fuck do I do?" How are you preparing?
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, so this is an easy one. I think any individual, you look at the world, you look at how broken it is and you say to yourself, "Why do I care; what can I do; how can I make a difference?" And I think we all make a difference, I really do believe that; it's kind of our God-given right and we're all here for some reason.
So, my belief is probably the number one job is spreading the word, that it's important to tell family, to tell friends, to buy Saife's book and give it away, to educate, because what's going to change the world is a quorum of people understanding that it's broken and demanding the change; that's what's always done it in the past. And the American Revolution is a good example; there were a lot of people who were loyalists but there was a small group who were really pissed off and ready to fight about it, and that's us. So, I think education and spreading the word is job number one. That's why I do this, that's why I travel and that's why I volunteer for all this stuff because I want to spread the word. I don't need the money of Bitcoin going up, I'm fine.
By the way, it's working; I'm sitting in Zurich at this show and I walk out into the lobby and some guy about my age walks up and goes, "Are you Lawrence?" "Yeah, who are you?" He says, "I've seen on Twitter. Oh my god, man, it's so nice to meet you", like, "Okay, yeah, give me your background". He says, "I'm a captain for United Airlines; I flew the 767 from Chicago last night. I'm just on a layover, but me and all my buddies, we're all bitcoiners, we're all sound money people, we watch you guys on Twitter, etc", and I'm like, "Holy shit, here's an airline captain who fucking gets it!" So, it's making a difference.
Then, the alternative of that of how you prepare is you get your life in order and you work, as Jeff says, I love Jeff, I think his message is so beautiful; you work to make the world a better place, you work on what you can work on to make the world a better place in terms of spreading the word on Bitcoin, building Bitcoin-related things. Whatever your role is, you try to advocate, you look at this thing and you say, "This is better than what we've got", and I'm an optimistic person and I want to see a better world. I don't want to focus on that old broken world, accept insofar as I'm going punch them in the face, which I do, and I want to see a better world and that's where I'm going to go and I'm going to try and spread the word on that.
Obviously, personally at a micro level, I think everybody needs to own some Bitcoin; the only wrong allocation is zero. Even old people need to have 1% to 5% of their assets in Bitcoin. They can afford to lose 1% to 5% of their assets, right, and so everybody chooses their level based upon the risk tolerance that they have. And you got to recognise that if you have 5% and it goes down 50%, that's not great but it will come back because it's a system that's built to endure.
So, obviously, I advocate for gold too, and I advocate for kind of preparedness because I think we will be going through some societal tumult. If you read the history of general fourth turnings, some bad shit could happen.
Peter McCormack: There's a guy who's just written a book that's just come out that I think he says we're in a fourth turning; I saw that on Twitter this morning.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, so Neil Howe, Howe and Strauss wrote it. Strauss passed way, Howe is still around, he's a consultant; he's writing a follow up to the book.
Danny Knowles: Oh, cool.
Lawrence Lepard: And it's supposed to come out this summer, yeah; I think the new title is like This is the Fourth Turning.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: And I'm hoping he has some predictions about where it goes. The difficult part of fourth turnings is they're very unpredictable, you just don't know, is China going to attack Taiwan; are we going to get into a shooting war? There are so many gotchas and black swans we don't know how it's going to unfold, but I think the issue of this fourth turning is Keynesianism and sound money at its core level.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: I find it amazing to me that people in Washington fight over pronouns and vaccines and all the other crazy shit they fight over and they're just missing the very obvious, obvious problem which is the money problem; we broke the money.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but isn't it because it's a distraction from that problem which they're the beneficiaries?
Lawrence Lepard: That's correct. To address that problem would address their -- they benefit from the problem.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, "Look over here".
Lawrence Lepard: Right, yeah, exactly, "Look at these guys, come over here and why don't you and he fight?"
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and, "I'm going to steal your fucking money".
Lawrence Lepard: "Meanwhile, I'm going to steal your fucking money". The one that really blows my mind recently, it's really got a bee in my bonnet because she's my Senator from Massachusetts, is Warren.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: Elizabeth Warren has a $60 million net worth.
Peter McCormack: I know.
Lawrence Lepard: How the fuck did that happen, really?!
Peter McCormack: And also, like historically, she was great; the way she grilled Mnuchin was brilliant.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, she actually was anti-bank for a while.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and now she's one of them.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, she's flipped.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I don't get it.
Lawrence Lepard: I don't either.
Peter McCormack: I mean, I don't get it.
Lawrence Lepard: I don't either.
Peter McCormack: I liked her, I used to like her.
Lawrence Lepard: Yeah, I agree. There are some liberals that actually have part of the piece right. If you look at a guy like Bernie Sanders who's a socialist and arguably a communist, but he does understand how broken it is.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: And actually, he's a guy who I think is less bought than some of the others, in fact I was talking to a guy last night at your event, there's common cause between some liberals and bitcoiners. It's not as though all conservative people are bitcoiners. The world is broken at many, many levels, and I believe that sound money is the solution.
Peter McCormack: Well, I think we have this growing base of liberal bitcoiners coming in the space.
Lawrence Lepard: Right.
Peter McCormack: And we had a great conversation yesterday with Bradley Rettler, he said, "There was a period of time where if you were liberal in Bitcoin, you thought you were the first", and then when Trey Walsh come along, he knew he wasn't the first.
Lawrence Lepard: Right.
Peter McCormack: But there are a number of them, and they've got their own Telegram groups.
Lawrence Lepard: Oh, really?
Peter McCormack: And they've got Twitter groups.
Lawrence Lepard: Interesting.
Peter McCormack: And they might have their conferences soon, and what it is is that they recognise something's broken but they also recognise the lie that's being told to the poorest in society. The liberals tend to talk about that they care about most, "The wealth gap is unfair, we should have free education, free welfare", but they now, because they understand the money, they understand, "Look, I want to live in a progressive, accepting, tolerant society, but the money part, we have fucked that bit up"; they get that now, and so that's great because what we now have is an army of people who can actually talk to the people who they align with.
Lawrence Lepard: Yes.
Peter McCormack: You don't want a guy in a cowboy hat from Texas, an oil man --
Lawrence Lepard: He isn't going to sell a liberal.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he's not going to sell a liberal from San Francisco.
Lawrence Lepard: No.
Peter McCormack: But a liberal from San Francisco can sell a liberal from San Francisco.
Lawrence Lepard: Well, that's his point, and that's me and gold.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: I can actually take a gold guy because I am a gold guy and orange pill him more easily than Michael Saylor who calls gold the enemy.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well Michael Saylor has his own incentives.
Lawrence Lepard: Fair enough, and I think he's backed off that a little bit, and he's brilliant and I love him.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Lawrence Lepard: He's done a lot for the cause, and ultimately there can only be one, there's no doubt. But in the interim, I think the big enemy is the fiat masters, and that's really what's broken society, and I want to see society get fixed. I want this country to be like it was when I was growing up; it wasn't perfect, we were fighting the Vietnam War, but it was a lot better country than it is today. The Chairman of Ford lived down the street from us and he made six times what the guy on the line made; the Chairman of Ford today makes $20 million a year. There was some sense of equality and fairness throughout the income spectrum.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. Well, listen, I don't want to take up all your time because I've got some questions for you tonight.
Lawrence Lepard: Oh, okay.
Peter McCormack: We want to save a little bit for tonight and we also want to record a little bit separately; we've got a question for you from Jeff, but we're going to do that for our Patreon.
Lawrence Lepard: Okay.
Peter McCormack: I want to say thank you, firstly.
Lawrence Lepard: Oh, thank you.
Peter McCormack: Coming all the way to Bedford here for doing this.
Lawrence Lepard: It's an honour. I told you, I was delighted to come.
Peter McCormack: I think you're going to love tomorrow.
Lawrence Lepard: It was really nice that you invited me and I'm really looking forward to it. I think what you've done with this team is so exciting; it's great stuff.
Peter McCormack: Well, you wait until tomorrow.
Lawrence Lepard: Oh, really?
Peter McCormack: It's going to wild, it's going to be such a great experience, but I do want to thank you.
Lawrence Lepard: You're most welcome.
Peter McCormack: We've got a big night tonight, and yeah, hopefully we'll get you back here next year when hopefully we've won another league.
Danny Knowles: Fingers crossed.
Lawrence Lepard: We'll also be down in Miami so I will see you down there.
Peter McCormack: We will definitely see you there. Thank you.
Lawrence Lepard: Okay, thanks a lot.
