The Road To $7 Million Bitcoin & $10k Gold (Uncut) 02-12-2025

Larry Lepard: The Road To $7 Million Bitcoin & $10k Gold

If Bitcoin goes to as high as I think, gold is going to go multiples of today’s price as well. I mean, they both, you know, they’re both sound money. I mean, I think I’ve used this in the past.

I’ll do it here. It’s just, you know, gold is analog sound money. It’s great.

8,000 years, huge Lindy effect. And, you know, Bitcoin is digital sound money, much newer, riskier, harder to understand. A lot of people aren’t in it yet, but they’re coming.

Greetings and welcome to our show. My name is Trey Reich, and I’m here today with Larry Lippard, a managing partner of Equity Management Associates in Wellesley, Massachusetts, at least part of the year. Hey, Larry.

Thanks for being here. Hey, Trey, nice to see you again and great to be on a pod with you. We haven’t talked in a while.

Excellent. Good to see you. So as one of the world’s most articulate and outspoken advocates for the benefits of hard money, I think the Wealthion audience is pretty familiar with your work.

You and your message. But we’re getting together today for a more special occasion. And the big occasion is that after four decades in the business, Larry the legend, as you are sometimes called, decided it was time to publish his first full length book, which was published last week and is available, obviously, at Amazon.

Name is The Big Print, which I think will lead people in the right direction. So, Larry, congratulations on your first book. Oh, thank you, Trey.

You know, it was really it was not simple. I think you’ve done a lot of great writing and communicating yourself. So you know how hard it is to do things well.

And I did this quickly. I did it in six months or a little over six months. And so it was quite a challenge.

So myself, being an old school reader, as we were just discussing, I read with a yellow pen and a red pen. So I bought my hard copy last Friday and I jumped into it this weekend. And my greatest observation is that I am really amazed how much information and analysis and history on both a personal and academic level you packed into this book without it ever really becoming too heavy or dense.

So I was never bogged down or overwhelmed. The whole thing flowed with great pace. And I congratulate your editor.

Well, thank you. I was worried about that. And I think I tested it on a lot of people.

Some people did bog down a little bit. I think, you know, you didn’t bog down because you love monetary stuff. I think the average reader, chapters 11 and 12, they may be a little too heavy for the average reader.

But, you know, you can read the other parts of the book and get the gist of it pretty easily. No, I really, really enjoyed it. Great job.

So I thought we would start by asking you why, after four decades and sort of two decades in hard assets, why is now the right time? Why was now the right time to write this book? And what are you trying to accomplish with its publication? Great questions. So, you know, as you know, because we’ve both been fighting this battle for four decades, it’s been a very frustrating battle. And I think my frustration boiled over in the spring of last year when I saw a couple of political debates or things on TV, and it was blue team versus red team.

And they were talking about all kinds of things, but I was just so frustrated that nobody was talking about the core issue. I mean, as you remember in the debates last fall, the one debate last fall, there was no talk of the deficit or the debt, which to me are probably the biggest issue facing the country right now. And so when I saw this, I just thought to myself, somebody’s got to write this down.

And then maybe more importantly, somebody’s got to try and write it down in a way so that the average guy gets it because you and I get it because we’re in this world and this is what we do professionally. But the average person isn’t even aware that this is an issue and they’re watching, you know, they think that inflation is caused by greedy corporations because that’s what some politicians tell them, you know, and I got to try and straighten that out. And so I just figured, hey, I’m going to do my best and write a book to try and straighten that out.

I also happen to think, though, and I think you probably would agree that it’s kind of timely because things are really coming to a head. I mean, we’re in a very big fiscal mess with a debt doom loop that we’re in and the spending and the deficits. And, you know, we’ve already had a bunch of big prints.

I mean, the book is called The Big Print, but, you know, these big prints started a while ago. There was a big one in 2008 and there was another big one in 2020 and I think more are coming. And so, you know, the pattern now is pretty well established.

And I just thought, gosh, you know, the average American’s not necessarily thinking about this or aware of this. And I’d like to see people protect themselves because as you and I both know, you know, a lot of we’re boomers, a lot of our boomer cohorts and crowd, they’re all crowded into stocks, thinking the stocks are going to continue to make them rich. And sadly, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

And so I wanted to try and issue a warning. And so, I mean, the book’s kind of a warning to try and address that issue. Right.

And I don’t mean to oversimplify because there’s a lot of history of financialization, you know, classical economics, all of which, believe it or not, I enjoyed. And then what I refer to as the advent of the modern era of unconventional central banking and, of course, the demise of hard money in the modern financial system. But I think it’s fair to say that the message of the book, and not to oversimplify again, it’s basically a way to get the common man introduced, I think, to the wonders of Bitcoin.

Is that a fair? I think that’s right. I think that’s right. And gold too.

I don’t, you know, I’m still a gold bug, Trey. At my core, I still got a lot of gold. I believe in gold.

I run a gold fund. So, you know, I think they both have a lot of merit. They’re different.

They have different risks and opportunities in each one. But yes, I mean, I think the idea was I want to get the common man to understand, a woman to understand that we are in a fiscal mess, that that’s going to impact their lives in terms of inflation and the stock market, which is very overvalued in the future. And that if they don’t have some allocation to gold and or Bitcoin, they’re likely to, I think, experience regret in the next 10 or 15 years.

And so, yes, I’m arguing for those two things. Now, obviously, as you know, I’ve gone full crazy orange pill. And I think Bitcoin is a more asymmetric bet than gold, and therefore I own more Bitcoin than I own gold.

I didn’t start out that way, though. By the way, what’s happened is Bitcoin’s gone up a lot. But so, yeah, it’s a call to try to help people to understand that monetary debasement is going to hurt them and that they really, the two right choices to solve that problem are gold if you’re more conservative and you don’t want volatility or Bitcoin if you want to be aggressive and you want more price performance.

But the price performance isn’t free, as you know. We’ve got some huge drawdowns in Bitcoin and people have to be aware of that when they get involved in it. So that leads to my next question, which is when you use a phrase like once in a humanity to describe Bitcoin’s perfection, I seem to remember that your day job, you spend an awful lot of time working with emerging gold miners.

I do. And I wonder sometimes how you reconcile the once in humanity perfection of birth of Bitcoin with scratching your surface for an ancient metal that appears in the earth’s surface at four parts per billion. So it seems the two are almost diametrically opposite.

Well, they are. You’re right. I do have a legacy gold fund and I do still believe very much in gold.

And I don’t think, a lot of people think that Bitcoin is going to instantly flip gold. And I don’t think that’s going to happen because there are 8 billion people on the planet that understand that gold is money. And it is until Bitcoin came along, it’s the soundest form of money.

But I do, the once in a humanity, I know it sounds hyperbolic, but it really, I say that because until Bitcoin came along, everything that, and we all know that money is somewhat of a collective illusion. It’s what we all agree as exchange value. I mean, this is Karl Menger’s Austrian term.

I mean, it’s all a matter of perception. And when we perceive the dollar has value because we can go buy things with it. And there was a time when that was shells and salt and there’ve been tobacco and lots of things have been used for money, but the dollar is what we use today.

And, but every, until Bitcoin came along, here’s the important point. So Bitcoin came along, every form of money, every single one before had dilution, which is to say that its supply grew over time. So the number of monetary units grew.

Now gold was the best. It grew the smallest at 1.7% a year, but it still grew. And in 50 years, we’ll have twice as much gold on the planet.

It’s still much better than fiat, obviously. So here comes Bitcoin. And a lot of people say a deflationary currency can’t work.

We can talk about that, but here comes Bitcoin with a scheduled fixed supply of 21 million, that’s it. And so that’s different. That’s really different.

And I, you know, I don’t think, again, I don’t think hyperbolically, I kind of compare it to like, it’s like, you know, there was a, there was an era pre-air flight and then there was air flight, you know, or there was an era pre the telegraph and then there was the telegraph or there, you know, it’s an invention. It’s a, it’s a type of money without any dilution. And that I submit that that’s an invention.

That’s, that is a, it’s a meaningful invention because we’ve had thousands of years of monetary dilution in history. And now we don’t have it in this new form of money. So that’s why, that’s why I make the statement.

I know it, you know, to some people, I know it’s hard to get your arms around it and it sounds extreme, but it, but it is, it’s factual. I mean, it’s a, it’s a form of money based on math. So how do you advise, and I know everybody’s investment horizons and goals are different, but how do you advise people to sort of reconcile Metcalfe’s law and the great power of exponential, you know, opportunity that Bitcoin has with gold miners that you still have such a passion for? Is there a place for both in people’s portfolios I think there absolutely is, Troy.

I really do. I think that, you know, look, we’re all old enough and smart enough to know that there’s nothing in life is certain, you know, even, even the success of Bitcoin is not certain. There’s technological risks, there are other risks.

And so, you know, I think when you’re, when you’re investing, you want to construct a portfolio. And what I try to argue, I have a lot of clients who are on the older side and I never suggest to any of them that they go heavily into Bitcoin, but I do suggest very strongly that they don’t have zero Bitcoin because the upside optionality, the asymmetry, and that’s basically, I mean, look, why do you and I invest in gold miners? Because we know that they have an asset, which generally speaking, the prices and the valuations are so low compared to the underlying value of the asset. And if they’re able to pull that asset out of the ground on some kind of reasonable terms, they’re going to generate cash flows that are, you know, multiples of what we’re paying, you know, even total market cap right now.

And so that’s, that asymmetry, you know, in a gold bull market and a gold miner bull market, you know, gold stocks go up 10, 20, 50, 100 X. And so that’s the kind of, and now don’t get me wrong, some gold stocks also go to zero. I’ve owned them. And so, but you, you know, if you select them carefully and you get a balance, you know, and you get more that work than not work, that’s the beauty of the asymmetry there.

So, you know, look, I think that there’s, you know, in life, I think there’s room for, there are room for lots of kinds of investments. About the only thing I do not recommend investing in now, I mean, even owning stocks as overvalued as they are, there are some good stocks, particularly in the commodity space, particularly international stocks, Brazil is very cheap right now. But, you know, the only thing I really think people just are silly or foolish to own is any kind of debt with duration.

You know, I mean, I, you know, treasury bills, three months, six months, a year, fine. When I get your three or 4%, 5%, that’s great. But, you know, 10 year at 4%, no.

A 30 year, you know, 4%, no. I think that the owners of those are going to really see substantial diminish. You know, their wealth is going to go down.

Thanks so much for watching our discussion here on Wealthion. If you would like help with your wealth efforts, please head over to wealthion.com slash free for a free portfolio review. So you mentioned in the book, you think Bitcoin and I, you’re not predicting this, but you mentioned that with certain patterns in 20 years, Bitcoin could conceivably hit $7 million a coin.

I dress the only time. That’s crazy. I know it sounds crazy.

My question is, if you’re even 100th right, how do you still stay motivated about everything else? I mean, in other words, we both have a common friend who I circled the paragraph you mentioned in 2018 when 100% Bitcoin. And, you know, how do you keep yourself from doing that? I just, I try to be a balanced guy, Trey. I mean, I just try to recognize that nobody knows nothing.

Do you know what I mean? And therefore, you know, I look at all sides of the issue. And, you know, like I said earlier, it’s become a bigger part of my portfolio. It didn’t start there.

It went up a lot. And, you know, that seven is not guaranteed. But I think if you read it and you read and understand the Metcalfe’s law piece of it, the thing that I don’t know, I mean, I’ll disclose this about the book.

And I wonder what your reaction to it was. But I mean, when I was writing the book, when I went and I looked at the math of how much these network businesses have increased since the IPO. Yeah, you have that paragraph on Google, Amazon, it said 227,000%.

That just, that kind of just blew my mind. I mean, I’ll tell you what Trey’s talking about. It was very great.

Since its IPO, Amazon is up 218,000%. Since its IPO, Google’s up 9,000%. Since its IPO, Facebook’s up, I don’t know, a thousand or whatever.

They’re big numbers. General Motors, you know, from 1916 to present is up like 400X. I mean, so I was taught investing in a world of linear growth and PEs and peg ratios and sharp ratios and all the traditional metrics that any investor learns, you know, Graham and Dodd kind of stuff.

That’s what I was taught. And then along come these network businesses. I mean, in 20 years, big, powerful, almost monopolistic networks have gone up thousands and thousands of percent.

I mean, we’ve never seen this before, Trey. And it’s interesting, I confess in the book, I missed it. I mean, I remember looking at Google and saying, gosh, this thing’s growing like a weed, but it’s not making any money and it’s really expensive.

Nah, I don’t want that. Same thing with Amazon. Same thing with Facebook.

Do you know what I mean? And so I just missed it. I mean, networking businesses accrue value in a different way. You know, they really do because they kind of play, it’s kind of winner take all.

And so, you know, those are the businesses. I mean, as you know, Bitcoin is a monetary network with a fixed supply. So it’s accruing value in kind of that same way, right? So therefore, like I say, again, I think the important takeaway from anybody watching this and skeptical of Bitcoin is to learn more about it and accept the possibility that you don’t have to buy a lot of it, but because of this network, you know, growth and valuation growth, you might be really experienced regret if you don’t have some of it.

Right. So you bring up in the book that the four sort of risks you’ve identified with Bitcoin are technical, you know, regulatory, adoption and protocol. And I have to ask the devil’s advocate question because, you know, you understand it much more than I do.

I think it’s pretty obvious from the tone of my questioning, but, you know, Satoshi invented this thing or someone claiming to be Satoshi. So what is to prevent someone from just inventing something better? I think it’s a great, great question. And it’s, yeah, the MySpace Facebook argument.

I think it’s a great question. So primarily because the invention is actually in the proof of work and in the way the network got developed. And they could have killed this thing in the early years.

In other words, I don’t know if you’re familiar. There’s something called a 51% attack. But if, you know, the thing that the network provides is the ability to prevent double spending, right? That we know that each coin is real and therefore it can’t and you can’t cheat.

However, and it’s based on computing power that, you know, that runs the algorithm. And now that computing power is enormous, right? There’s billions of dollars spent on computers that run this. So it’d be, but in the early days, you know, you could do this on your own Apple PC, you know, or IBM PC.

And it wasn’t a lot of computing power. And so if you gained up and you got 51% of the computing power, you could put in fake transactions and game the network, okay? That was, so that’s the risk technologically. Now, so if somebody comes along and they try and build another one that’s the similar, it’s gonna have a similar design.

It’s gonna have that similar feature. And in the early days, people will, and I’ve heard it’s happened. I’m not familiar with the cases, but I’ve heard people will attack it.

And so, in other words, the fact that it kind of grew up and this actually goes also to the government risk. I mean, if 14 years ago, every government in the world said, oh my, this is a real threat to our fiat currencies. We need to make this illegal, tax the hell out of it and threaten to send people to jail if they use Bitcoin, they could have killed it very easily back then.

It was just too small. And, you know, I mean, everyone said, why do we want to mess with that? Governments hate it, blah, blah, blah, but they didn’t. And so now we’re here and it’s kind of like, in my view, it’s kind of unstoppable.

Do you know what I mean? It’s very hard to roll back all of that history. And if somebody tried to start another one, it would be vulnerable to that 51% attack issue. So, you know, I’m not saying something better can’t come along.

And I always have my eyes open for that. But boy, if you look at the number of users and the size and the compute power, there’s nothing even close. And so it would take something really substantial to bring something else along.

And even if that happened, you’d have time to make the change. I mean, you know, I mean, silver has kind of been demonetized by gold and yet it’s not worthless. I mean, what we’re talking about would be another coin demonetizing Bitcoin.

And so there would be a transition period. You know, it wouldn’t happen in two days. So Bitcoin’s really been helped along by Trump.

I think it’s up 50% or so since he was elected, if I’m not mistaken. And, you know, obviously we had the BlackRock entry with its $57 billion ETF, et cetera. So again, devil’s advocate, you know, if Trump creates a strategic reserve, you know, say a Bitcoin and it gets adopted by more governments and we have more BlackRock ETFs, just help me out with this.

Doesn’t that mean that we’re getting the centralization? In other words, Bitcoin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, it does.

We root for this, but doesn’t that mean… Yeah, no, it plays against the… Yeah, you’re dead ass right. It plays against the ethos of Bitcoin. I mean, and that’s why the hardcore in the Bitcoin world say not your coins, not your keys.

And we’re not big fans of the ETFs because the issue with the ETF, I mean, and you’re right, Trump is favorable to it. But let’s talk about a risk there, OK? Let’s say, you know, the next four years don’t go well. And in four years, the voters are fed up with this and they go hardcore blue, you know, and it goes the other side.

And Stephanie Kelton is now the Treasury Secretary, OK? And, you know, Andrew Yang is VP and they do universal basic income and they’re going to print money like crazy. And they look at it and they say, you know, gold and Bitcoin are the two things that are telling everybody that the dollar is failing. We can’t have that.

We’re going to tax them at 90% and we’re going to do what Roosevelt did. We’re going to seize the gold and we’re going to seize the Bitcoin. We’re going to go to those… We’re going to go to those ETFs and say, hey, ETF company, you know, Fidelity or BlackRock, send us all those Bitcoin and cash your people out for dollars.

That’s entirely possible. I mean, and it’s certainly one of the risks. Now, if you were a hardcore Bitcoiner, you wouldn’t have your money in the ETF.

You’d have it on your own wallet in cold storage. You’d have your 12 words and you might make a decision at that point in time that you didn’t want to comply with the order to turn yours in. And you might decide you want to, you know, change your citizenship somewhere else.

But all of those things are certainly risks, right? I mean, that’s… And again, that’s why I say, you know, there’s a sensibility here to having balance among all these assets. Right? You just don’t know what’s going to happen. Now, you’ve spent obviously well over a decade studying Bitcoin and given it a lot of thought.

And so I can’t resist asking this one last question and we’ll move on from Bitcoin. Who the hell do you think Satoshi was? I mean, is it the government? Is it his thing? No, no, no. Let’s go into that.

Okay. So, first of all, there are those who said… I have to remind the viewers that in 22,000 wallets, Satoshi has 1.1 million Bitcoins, which right now I believe is $107 billion. And whoever the person or entity is has never cashed in one, correct? That’s correct.

Yeah, they track because you can see all the transactions on the chain. So let’s swat away the idea that it’s the CIA or the government or the NSA. Okay.

I don’t believe that to be the case because there’s a lot of data and there’s some good books on it. And all of the early cyberpunk, I don’t know which come the forums where they were interacting with each other on email. Those have all been preserved.

And so we know a lot of the early people who were part of the process, including Hal Finney, who is now deceased, including a guy named Alan Back, who a lot of people think is Satoshi. And I think he’s close to being Satoshi, but I’m not sure he is. And I honestly personally believe that there were probably a couple of Satoshis.

And Alan is one of the candidates. Kind of the black horse. I mean, there could be Jameson Lopp could be in there.

There are probably seven or eight names, all of whom are candidates. And I think they probably got together and worked on it together. And then they recognized the danger and they wanted it to be pure.

So they decided, let’s not anybody take credit for this. Let’s just release it and call the inventor Satoshi Nakamoto. The dark horse is a guy named Len Sassamon.

And if you Google him and do some research on him, you’ll see he had all and he’s dead too. Sadly, he died. I’m not exactly sure why there’s some who say he died from illness and others who say it was a suicide.

But in any case, he had all of the pieces and was seen as operating in this area. And so I kind of think it was between two and five computer sci guys, I mean, who were working on the problem. I mean, the one thing you remember, and one of the reasons I didn’t get into it earlier, Trey, one of the things that I was very scared about in the front, in the beginning, I mean, arguably, David Chum had a role in it.

As you recall, because there were so many guys, there were five or six other attempts to do this. They all failed, right? There was E-Cash, there was DigiCash, there was E-Gold, there was HashCash, there was B-Money. I mean, E-Gold was the one the government shut down because they viewed it as a threat.

So there were attempts to do this. And when it first came out, I was aware of it. And I thought, you know, that’s not going to work.

They’ve tried it before and it never worked. And yet, basically, eventually, they kind of all the pieces, all the technical pieces fell in place. And obviously it’s working.

I just still think whoever it is to have $107 billion. Yeah, I don’t think those coins will ever move. And not trade one.

I just don’t understand. I mean, I’ll never understand that. I don’t think those coins will ever move.

How can a billion not trade? Yeah, and or whoever it is could also have some other wallets that we’re not aware of. And they’ve traded a few. I mean, it is what it is.

All right. So switching topics to the Fed, one of our favorite mutual topics, you mentioned in the book, this concept of the fourth turning. And I think most people are familiar with that concept in 80 year cycles and the 20 at the end of the fourth turning.

But you sort of get specific and you mentioned, you think 2008 was the beginning of a current fourth turning and that if it lasts an average of 20 years, you’re sort of looking at 2023 to 2033. All, you know, rough. And I’ve heard you personally use the, you’ve sort of narrowed it down to you pick 2030.

You think this is going to be resolved or start to be resolved by 2030. So my question is, what evidence do you see that we’re making progress? Well, you’re seeing, you’re seeing, you know, talking about maybe some kind of a Bretton Woods sort of event. I mean, I think you’re seeing guys like Ray Dalio saying, we’ve got a sovereign debt crisis.

We’ve got to address it. I mean, it’s coming into the mainstream conversation, admittedly slowly. I think the probably the biggest driving thing, Trey, the reason why I think it’s going to happen is just the relentless math and some of the charts in the book that show, you know, look at the US federal interest expense.

You know, it’s gone from 300 billion to 1.4 trillion run rate. You know, look at the debt. I mean, we added as much debt in the last 11 years as we added in the first 200 and something of the Republic.

You know what I mean? I mean, it’s kind of anyone who’s mathematically inclined and sits with a calculator and does compounding recognizes that if you keep compounding something at a fast enough rate, eventually the line goes vertical. And we’re kind of in that phase right now. And so people say to me, well, come on, Larry.

You know, they’ve kicked the can this far. They’re going to be able to kick it for another 30 or 40 years. And I’m kind of like, well, yeah, I’m sympathetic to that.

I hear that argument, but I think the math has caught up with them. I mean, I, you know, I think and we’re seeing, you know, I mean, witness the way that Powell had to create, you know, twice as much money in half the time in 2020 versus 08. You know what I mean? So it’s, you think of it as kind of like a childbirth birth, like the contractions are getting quicker and they’re getting more painful for the woman.

So, so it just kind of feels to me. That’s just, it’s just a gut feeling trait. I could be dead ass wrong.

I mean, as you know, in 2008, I was absolutely convinced that was it and I was dead ass wrong. So, you know, there’s no way to know and predict this, but just think of it in terms of the way it’s coming into the conversation though. I mean, I talk about in the book.

I mean, I hope you enjoyed the part about, you know, Chris Leonard’s book, you know, hurting the Fed. I mean, here’s a guy who’s a New York Times reporter and he was extremely critical of the Federal Reserve. I mean, it was, he was saying some of the stuff Ron Paul’s been saying for years.

So, I mean, I think people are kind of starting to realize that something’s wrong with the Federal Reserve and the monetary system. I mean, you know, when you print 40% of the money in two years, and I mean, the one that just blows my mind, I do a lot of my grocery shop or grocery shopping because my wife doesn’t like to do it as much. And I just can’t believe how expensive stuff is, like the grocery.

I just, I cannot believe it. You know? So looking for progress in 2024, we had unemployment at 4.1. We had, you know, GDP at 3.1. We had CPI at 2.4. And yet the Fed initiated a rate cut cycle in September with a 50 basis point cut and cut rates 100 basis points in three months. Since that time, through mid-January, the 10-year Treasury yield rose 120 basis points.

According to Goldman Sachs, that’s the steepest increase in history of long rates after an initial Fed rate cut. They’ve come down a little bit to 450. But what does that tell you? What it tells me is that the bond market is awake and waking up to the underlying problem.

And, you know, I mean, we look at, I know you agree with me. At a larger level, we were in a sovereign debt crisis. And there are three indicators that are screaming it loud and clear.

Bitcoin is at or near record high. Gold just made some more record highs right at 2900. And the U.S. bond market is not healthy, although recently it’s backed off of that high that you just described.

You know, and I think that’s because people think there might be economic weakness. But those three things tell me that, you know, the market for money, you know, underlying what is money, the dollar, is it’s a question mark and becoming more of a question mark in everybody’s mind. Right.

And I think, you know, as you and I both know, I mean, we think, I mean, gold’s not stopping at 3000. Gold’s going to 10,000. That was going to be another question.

What’s your 7 million for gold? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean, look, if Bitcoin goes to as high as I think, gold is going to go multiples of today’s price as well.

I mean, they both, you know, they’re both sound money. I mean, I think I’ve used this in the past. I’ll do it here.

It’s just, you know, gold is analog sound money. It’s great. 8000 years, huge Lindy effect.

And, you know, Bitcoin is digital sound money, much newer, riskier, harder to understand. A lot of people aren’t in it yet, but they’re coming, you know? So in a corollary to that last year, the S&P was up 25%. It was one of my favorite aspects of last year is in December of 23, Bloomberg’s annual strategist survey.

The average prediction for the S&P in 24 was an increase of 1.4%, which was the most bearish in the 25 years of the survey. But now that we’re up 25%, the December 24 survey was predicting 11.6%, which was the most bullish forecast. Right.

Well, and as your brilliant letter, which I subscribe to and others should subscribe to wrote, you know, look at how the earnings projections are going down, too. I mean, earnings growth is clearly slowing, right? But even with that, with the record 58% in two years on stocks, we had an 18% increase in the 10 year yield last year from, you know, over to 360 to 480. And and and the dollar index at two year highs, we still gold outperformed all of them being 27%.

So doesn’t that mean, you know, doesn’t that mean we’re getting close? I think it does. I mean, the part we can go, we may go here next, but the part that blew my mind, I’m sure it did yours as well. Gold was I mean, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this trade.

You would know better because you look at history more. Gold was up 27% last year. The GDX was up nine.

Well, that’s backwards. Yeah. Right.

That was going to be my last question, which is. Yeah, right. It’s like, what’s wrong with these gold stocks? You go back to mid-October, that was going to be my question.

In mid-October, the GDX was up 44%. And the GDXJ was up like 46%. This was in mid-October.

And one of the things that I think I’ve decided in the last year or two, I think gold stocks have gotten incredibly sensitive to rising real rates. So when Trump was elected, you know, gold did its knee jerk reaction down, but the stocks really took it. And I think, you know, from the middle of October to the end of the year, the GDX went from being up 44% to being up 10.

So now we’ve made up a lot of that in the first quarter. You know, the GDX is up 20% or so. Yeah, we got a couple of months here.

Yeah, three on the S&P. But don’t you think that presents, I was, that was going to be sort of my last question. Don’t you think that presents an incredible opportunity Absolutely.

I mean, I just, absolutely. I actually think that in the next six months, my gold stock fund is going to vastly outperform Bitcoin. I mean, because it’s just so damn cheap right now.

And, you know, the reason, as you and I have discussed this in the past, the reason why the gold stocks are so beaten up, it was simple. You go to Bloomberg and you’d look at the projections that, you know, the consensus projections for the price of gold. And as you know, gold broke out of 2070 in kind of March of last year.

And it squirted up to 2500, 2600. And but the consensus was that that was an anomaly and it was going to come back down. And as you also know, the average sustaining, all in sustaining cost of pulling it out of the ground has gone up with inflation, of course.

And so people were thinking, well, yeah, you’re getting bigger margins now, but they won’t last. And that’s why the stocks didn’t move. And I think that what’s going to happen is there’s going to be a reawakening and people are going to realize, oh, you know what? This 2600 is not going down to 2070.

We’re actually going to 29. And then we’re going to 32. And then we’re going to 36.

And yeah, the ASICs are going up. But boy, that, you know, I mean, right now, as I’m sure you’re aware, I’ve got companies in my portfolio that they’re, you know, they’re printing 50 and 60 percent gross profit margins. I mean, on the price of the gold they sell versus the cost of taking an ounce out of the ground.

Now they got to pay for the capex and capital costs. But but that’s a huge margin. I mean, there’s almost no other industry that makes that much money on a per unit basis.

So your what’s your outlook for 2025 with respect to sort of Bitcoin, gold and gold shares? Yeah, sure. So I think I think Bitcoin is going to continue to trend up. I think it could be easily be as high as 150, maybe even higher in kind of a blow off.

And then I think we’re going to get a correction like we’ve had in the past. And so that’s why I say people have to understand the volatility. I expect gold to go easily touch 3000.

Hell, we’re almost there. Maybe thirty five hundred or four thousand. And I expect the gold stocks to go up 100 percent.

I mean, my my fund is an interesting fund. It’s heavily into the gold stocks and I’m very aggressive in the names I pick. So when I get it right, like 2019, the fund went up 99 percent one year.

And in 2020, the fund went up 122 percent one year. So in two years, I’ve given people 4x their money. Then I proceeded to turn around and lose the money for four years because, you know, the stuff I’m in is aggressive and Powell started tightening rates and liquidity got tighter and M2 shrank and all that other stuff.

So, you know, I think I look at my portfolio right now and I sincerely believe that everything in there could double or triple and it still wouldn’t be expensive. So I think gold stocks are going to be a very good place to be for the next year. Finally, it’s been I got to tell you, Trey, it’s been a really tough slog.

And even I, whom a big huge believer in this whole category have been discouraged. And so anyone who’s in the gold stocks has been discouraged. I totally get it.

But I would just say don’t don’t sell now because, you know, the light is just starting, you know, the sun is just starting to rise and stuff starting to work. Yeah, so the other wild card here, we haven’t talked much about it, but I want to make people aware of it is this potential gold reset. I mean, people need to read go to my Twitter feed, read the Mermican letter on the percent and Mernan letter talking about basically how there’s there’s discussion.

Look, the Trump administration realizes the monetary system’s a mess and they’re trying to figure out a way to solve it. And one of the ways to solve it is to reset gold at a higher price. So that’s being discussed.

And if that occurs, think of the implications on these gold stocks. I mean, they’re finally, Trey, going to see some love. So in your fund, by the way, just as a as a follow up, are you pretty much 100% gold or do you? No, no, I was able.

It’s funny way back when when Bitcoin emerged, I thought it was attractive and I went to my investors. I said, you know, guys, I’m a sound money fund. You bought into it because you’re gold guys.

And I think this Bitcoin thing has merit to, you know, I’m going to buy one or two percent into Bitcoin. And about five people said, you know, that’s not what I pay you. I’m out.

I want my money back. All right, fine. But I did it.

And this was, you know, the difference, $5,000 at the time. Right. So, you know, that one or two percent has obviously grown quite a bit from those days.

So now it’s, you know, closer to 15% or something. And so there’s that piece in there. And I have not sold any Bitcoin.

So but the rest of it is gold and gold stocks, because that’s what I sold myself on. And that’s what the fund has always been. And, you know, and by the way, you know, I may not, you know, the fund may not run for another 10 or 20 years.

I mean, I, you know, to your earlier question of with the Bitcoin thing going on, how do you mess around with these stocks? I mean, you know, I believe in them and it’s going to continue to work. But, you know, I’m also at the stage of my career, my life where, you know, I think when we get the next big run here, you know, maybe maybe it’ll be time to move away from it. And I just don’t want to actively manage other people’s money because one of the things that has happened, it’s been a hard ride.

And a lot of my, you know, and the fund is actually I’m actually gated right now because I had one very big, unbelieving investor who wanted his money back. And and I had to gate the fund. And so that’s been tough.

It’s been really tough. And I don’t want to have to go through that again. Well, Larry, this has been very instructive.

Good to see you. And I want to look forward to the next couple of weeks. Let’s get caught up again and focus.

I’m happy to do it. Yeah, happy to do it. We can talk names if you like.

We can do another one of these. But it’s always good to see a train. I like I said, I really appreciate your letters, really appreciate your friendship through the years, all the support.

I hope I don’t know if I succeeded in convincing you to buy a little Bitcoin. I hope I have not enough, but we’re getting there. There you go.

All it takes is a little bit. I was listening to you yesterday, point out you can’t be influenced by prior prices. No, that’s right.

Yeah, and that’s painful. Yeah, you’ve got to, you know, the way and let me just reprise that if I may. A lot of people come to me and say, I can’t pay 100,000 for something you bought for 10.

And I say, I get it. I totally get it. Try and use a different model.

If the financial system is the Titanic and Bitcoin and gold are, you know, two of the lifeboats, you know, and I bought a seat on the lifeboat. I bought gold at $400. It’s now, you know, almost 3000.

I bought Bitcoin much cheaper. It’s now 100. How much are you going to pay for the lifeboat? You know, you want the lifeboat.

You got to pay today’s market price. And it sucks. But you got, you know, I got to tell you, everyone feels like they paid too much for Bitcoin.

Everyone, everyone, when you’re buying it, you feel like, goddammit, I’m paying too much. But you know what? Just let five or 10 years go by. And I think you’ll, you know, not regret the decision.

That’s my belief. And congratulations on the book. I really enjoyed it.

Well, thanks. Like I said, the mission, this book will succeed if I’m able to get people that aren’t you and me to understand and believe in sound money. Because as I know, we believe so strongly that it’s the thing that’s made our society so toxic, you know, and if we could get back to a sound money system, this would be more like the world we grew up in where, you know, you were on Hyannis and, you know, playing with the Kennedy kids on their compound kind of thing.

Terrific. Well, Larry, good to see you. And we’ll talk to you soon.

Same, same, Trey. Thank you. Take care.

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