“America Is Breaking!” The Largest Wealth Transfer In History Is Happening Right Now | Peter Schiff

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Trump has got it completely backwards. He says the world's been ripping us off. We've been ripping off the world.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  We will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  We rely on the rest of the world to save for us and lend us money. It's going to be a collapse of the dollar. It is inevitable. The only question is when.

• 0:19Graham Stephan?

  What do you think would signal the true start of a dollar crisis?

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's it's started already. I think gold at 5,000 is an indication that this is happening. Gold prices soar to a record high after US President Donald Trump criticized Federal Reserve. The world's central banks, they need something else to own in place of dollars. And gold is the obvious choice.

• 0:44Graham Stephan?

  In terms of Bitcoin.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  The only demand for Bitcoin is speculators betting that the price is going to go up. But all that's going to change. The air is coming out of this bubble.

• 0:55Graham Stephan?

  Gold price prediction for the end of 2026, just one word.

• 1:08Graham Stephan?

  Peter Schiff, two years ago, when we filmed with you, gold was $2,000 an ounce. Today it's 5,000. It's 150% move upwards. Bitcoin, when we filmed with you, was 60,000. Today it's $66,000, which is barely flat. At what point do people owe you an apology?

• 1:27Speaker 00

  Oh, on Bitcoin? Well, look, first of all, most of the people that got in, I don't know if it's most, but a lot of the people that got into Bitcoin early thanked me because I got them into it. Not because I told them to buy it, but because I told them about it. And a lot of people

• 1:48Speaker 00

  found out about economics. In fact, I just got one of the co-founders of.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Ethereum just reached out to me recently just to thank me and let me know what a big influence I was on his life. And he said that if it wasn't for me, he probably never would have bought Bitcoin. And he started buying it under $10. And then he started a big meetup group in Canada where he met Vitala, the other guy that, you know, that started Ethereum. And they ended up starting Ethereum. But he said, you know, if it wasn't for you, I don't think there would even be an Ethereum. So I think a lot of this crypto stuff, I didn't, I mean, I'm not Satoshi, but a lot of the early guys that got into it, a lot of the creators of these other tokens, they did it because of me. They found out about economics.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Because of me, I taught them about sound money, about the Fed, about inflation, all this stuff, Austrian economics, gold. And they ended up taking the knowledge that I gave them. And it, they ended up at Bitcoin or Ethereum, wherever they went. But I got a lot of these guys started. So a lot of these guys thanked me. And a lot of them got very rich as a result of this. But I never really believed in Bitcoin from the first time I heard about it. And yeah, it was a mistake in hindsight, not to have appreciated the fact that so many people could be dumb enough to buy it. But, but they were. And

• 3:21Speaker 00

  of course, a lot of them weren't necessarily dumb. They just kind of saw the potential of suckering other dummies into it, you know, with the story. And some of them might have not even really known the difference between gold and Bitcoin. I mean, since I understood gold so well, I knew from the start what the fatal flaw of Bitcoin was. But a lot of people overlooked it. And so Bitcoin, you know, went up from nothing to recently $126,000. And sure, you know, I never encouraged people to buy it. And maybe some people didn't buy it because of me and they might have, they may have made, you know, some money had they, had they bought it. But

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Bitcoin, for all practical purposes, peaked out about four or five years ago. The, the, the high in Bitcoin in 2021 in November was 69,000. It's lower than that today, four and a half years later, it's lower. But in terms of gold, it's more than 60% lower. So, most people who own Bitcoin today would be better off had they bought gold. Now, that's not the case for people who bought it 10, 15 years ago, but there's not that many of those. The majority of people who own Bitcoin bought it over the last few years and they would be better off had they not bought it. Had they listened to me and bought gold or silver instead of Bitcoin or anything else.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  I mean, they could have bought stocks, they could have bought whatever. They would have probably been better off than Bitcoin. And a perfect example of that is Michael Saylor, who is the most famous Bitcoin buyer of them all. He is the poster boy for Bitcoin buyers. He's bought or spent $55 billion buying Bitcoin for over five years. The average cost on all that Bitcoin that he bought is 76,000 and change. It's right now 66,000. So he's down, what is that, 13%, something like that? I mean, he'd have been better off just putting the money in a checking account. He's down.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  And, and so, obviously that was not a good thing to do. Now, MicroStrategy or Strategy stock went up a lot because there were a bunch of fools, even more foolish than the people buying Bitcoin, were the people buying Strategy, because they were paying a 50% premium to buy Strategy. And all he did is go out and buy Bitcoin with the money. So he did accumulate all this Bitcoin because people were dumb enough to overpay for his stock. But, you know, now the stock's down 70% and it's got a long way to fall. Do you talk to Michael Saylor much? No, you know, I, you know, I was in the same room with him one time. We were at a, we were at a party in, in Dubai.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  And I didn't really know what to say to the guy because I had just like posted on X that he was a fraud. He was saying something and I called him like a fraud or a scar. And so I didn't really know like, hey, how you doing, Michael? Because I had just like, you know, said this stuff about him. So I kind of like, didn't approach him and he just kind of never, he never approached me. So we were both in the same house, not to How recent was this? It was, uh, we were there for, um, the, it was a Bitcoin conference from, uh, uh, Binance.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  And I was there, I did the debate with CZ, Gold Bitcoin Debate. And how many people were in this house? Like, was it clear you were avoiding him? Were people coming up to you and saying? Well, I actually walked right by him to get a drink, you know, I did. Did you nod at him? I could hear him, you know, I could hear him talking from a while away. And all he was doing was pitching Bitcoin. I mean, he was like, he was, he's always on, like he was, you know, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, you know, telling people, buy it, you know, his, all his BS. Um, but no, I mean, I don't remember exactly how many people were at the party, 75, 100 people. I mean, you know, whatever. I mean, I mean, he knew I was there. But I, you know, but I had

• 7:31Speaker 00

  wanted to debate him. And I still, you know, want to debate the guy. But he won't agree to any debates, including, you know, at that conference. But I, I've been to several conferences where he was there. In fact, at the, the bigger Bitcoin conference that they had in Las Vegas last, last summer, he mentioned, you know, he had his keynote speech and he mentioned me twice, you know, so he talks about me, but he won't debate me. But is there anything that he could say to you that would change your mind on Bitcoin? Oh, no, there's, there's no way. I mean, I, I, I mean, I, I see right through this guy. I mean, everything he says is complete bullshit. I, I don't understand how people can listen to him. And not understand how it's all bullshit.

• 8:13Jack Selby?

  Do you think Michael Saylor is smart?

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think he's, I mean, I think he's probably got a higher IQ than I do. I'm not saying that he's dumb. I don't even know if he believes the nonsense that he says. He could just be a complete fraud.

• 8:25Jack Selby?

  We filmed a podcast with him and, I mean, he obviously was wearing his Bitcoin shirt and everything. And then we show up and then before and after the podcast, as he's touring us his estate, he's like, man, yeah, this Bitcoin is, it's the way. It is the language. It is like that.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Well, the thing is that you gotta prophesize it. It's like a cult, like, you know, he's a cult leader, right? He's got to get people into it. But, you know, I mean, he compares Bitcoin, right, to Manhattan real estate now. I mean, he used to compare it to gold. Now he's, he's, he's on Manhattan real estate. But what gives Manhattan real estate value is, A, yes, there's a scarce amount of it, right? But it rents for a lot of money. So if you own real estate in Manhattan, whether it's office buildings or residential or, you know, shops, you collect a lot of rent, right? That's what gives it the value, the fact that people will pay a lot of money to use your real estate.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  You don't get any money on your Bitcoin. He's not getting it, collecting any rent because he owns Bitcoin. He doesn't get anything. Bitcoin doesn't deliver any real value.

• 9:35Jack Selby?

  What do you say is the fatal flaw of Bitcoin?

• 9:38Speaker 00

  The fact that it has no fundamental value. The, you know, gold is a store of value because gold is a metal. It is a precious metal that doesn't decay. It doesn't, you know, lose its properties over time. Gold today is exactly the same as it was a thousand years ago. And the gold will be exactly the same a thousand years from now. Doesn't matter what I do with it. It can always be melted back down and, and, and go back to exactly the way it was. And gold is the most useful metal that we have. It's used for all sorts of things. And because of those unique properties that gold has, that other metals, other commodities don't have, that that's the value. But one of the things that gold does really, really well is serve as money.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Because it's, you know, it's divisible, it's portable, it's fungible. There are all these qualities that it has that other commodities don't really have to that degree. Now, those are the qualities that Bitcoin copied.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  And said, hey, we're divisible, we're portable, we're fungible, we're scarce, so we're the same as gold. You're not, because you can't do anything with Bitcoin. It doesn't matter that I can give it to somebody else, or that I can trade it. You could do that with any one of thousands of other digital currencies. You know, there are a lot of other ones that to me seem a lot more valuable than Bitcoin, in that at least they deliver some degree of privacy or anonymity, if that's what you want. If you want to transact in, you know, private, without anybody knowing what you're doing, there may be some value there, but Bitcoin doesn't even offer that. And now, you know, a lot of the things that people liked about Bitcoin, self custody, okay. Well, most people now are buying ETFs.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  They don't self custody, they don't like, there's no third party. Well, yes, there is a third party. MicroStrategy is a third party buying up all this Bitcoin. I mean, Bitcoin is now part of Wall Street. I mean, look at the president, the president, you know, that's all in on Bitcoin, his whole family. They're mining Bitcoin. He wants to make the United States the Bitcoin capital of the world. I mean, so it's no longer the type of, you know, in your face, stick it to the man, self sovereign, you know, ideal that a lot of the early, you know, adopters who, you know, who listened to my podcasts and my radio show got interested in Bitcoin. It's none of those things now.

• 12:01Jack Selby?

  You say it's just a speculative investment now, or a speculative gamble is what you would call it?

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, look, to me, people collect Bitcoin the way, you know, they collect, you know, cards, you know, whatever, they're collections. And the reason that they collect Bitcoin is because they think that their Bitcoin collections are going to be more valuable in the future.

• 12:21Jack Selby?

  What is the strongest pro Bitcoin argument you've ever heard?

• 12:24Speaker 00

  If Bitcoin was some kind of a unique thing in that it was the only one, there were no other tokens, there was no other way, there were no other blockchains, it was the, it really was scarce in a sense that it was the only one.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  You could kind of make an argument, maybe, that its lack of intrinsic value, it doesn't matter because it truly is scarce. But again, it would still depend on the confidence that people have in other people constantly believing that it has value.

• 13:05Jack Selby?

  That's not a strong argument, though.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  No, no, there is no strong argument.

• 13:08Jack Selby?

  What's the strongest you've ever heard?

• 13:11Speaker 00

  I mean, I can't remember. I mean, you've talked to CZ recently. I mean, you've talked to some big.

• 13:15Jack Selby?

  You've probably heard some pretty strong.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Look, you know, most of the people understand, even in this industry, that the real threat to Bitcoin now isn't all this shitcoins. It's tokenized gold. Because tokenized gold does everything that Bitcoin is supposed to do, but can't. And everything that Bitcoin can do, tokenized gold does better. And tokenized gold is much better than tokenized dollars, which is what, you know, a lot of the people in the stablecoin industry are focused on. But look at what the biggest stablecoin issuer, Tether, is doing.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  What is Tether doing? They have pivoted to gold. They're buying up gold. They're buying up gold royalty companies. They're buying into gold retailers. They are, you know, buying all this gold and they're storing it in a mountain in Switzerland because they recognize that that's the future of crypto. It's gold. It's tokenized gold where the token represents ownership of real gold. That's what, that's digital gold. I mean, I'm even participating to an extent, you know, I set up T-Gold, you know, as part of Shift Gold. You can go to TGold.com and open up an account. We're not offering tokens yet, but ultimately the gold that you own at T-Gold, you'll be able to withdraw it in the form of a token.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  But even before you can do that, I'm going to allow owners to transact with one another where you can, you know, send and receive gold as a medium of exchange. So you can be paid in gold. You can pay in gold, not just save.

• 15:02Jack Selby?

  And you just keep a ledger or a log of like who owns.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  That's an eternal, an account. But ultimately, you can withdraw. Uh, your gold in the form of a token and then put it in your wallet and you could trade it on an exchange. You could do a lot of things with it.

• 15:16Jack Selby?

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• 15:32Graham Stephan?

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• 16:26Graham Stephan?

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• 16:35Jack Selby?

  Once again, that is 50% off your first order. Just go to cookunity.com/ICH or click the link down below and use the code ICH50. So of all of the millions of supporters of Bitcoin, you don't think that there's any merit, any reason that one could have to, that makes any logical sense whatsoever to support Bitcoin?

• 16:56Graham Stephan?

  And is there anything that could happen to Bitcoin where you would say, "Hey, I'm wrong"?

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, look, I mean, it's obviously not a function of price, because it's gone up a lot since I first started criticizing it. Um, but no, I, the people who buy Bitcoin... Most of them, the vast majority, buy it because they think they're gonna get rich. They, they think the price is gonna go way up. And the only way the price of Bitcoin can go way up is if other people decide to pay more for it. But those people are buying it for the same reason that you're selling it. They think it's gonna go up. So they have to buy it with the expectation of they'll find somebody else who will pay even more than they did. And the name of that is called the greater fool, right?

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Everybody is hoping that there's a greater fool than, than they are, who will pay a higher price for what amounts to nothing.

• 17:49Graham Stephan?

  True for anything, from housing to some stocks, to even precious metals. That someone's hoping, I'm gonna buy gold at 5,000, it'll be worth 10,000 because you're gonna print all this money and I'll make money from it.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  No, no, well, but there you're just preserving your, your purchasing power. But yes, a lot of people buy a stock or a piece of real estate because they think the price will be higher. But it's not because some greater fool is gonna buy it. If I buy a stock in a company and the company expands its business and has more sales and has more income, the company is worth more than it was when I bought it. So the new buyer would naturally have to pay more because the company is more valuable. It's generating more profits, it's paying higher dividends.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Same thing if I buy a piece of real estate and while I own it, the rental income goes up. I can charge higher rates because now maybe more people have moved into the area. There's more demand, I was smart, I bought, you know, recognizing that there was gonna be people moving into the neighborhood, whatever. And so the property became more valuable between the time I bought it and the time I sold it. So I can sell a stock or a piece of real estate at a higher price because it's inherently more valuable. Bitcoin never becomes more valuable. It doesn't throw off any income, doesn't pay rent, it doesn't pay you dividends, it's just a token. And you know, the supply is what it is, right?

• 19:26Speaker 00

  It's not, you know, it's not becoming more scarce. It's pretty much almost all the Bitcoin that are ever going to be here are pretty much already here. And so it's just a function of somebody will, somebody being willing to pay more money than I did for the exact same thing that I bought. So it hasn't increased in value since I bought it. It's exactly the same. The only thing that's changing is the price. And if you're just buying something simply because you hope the price will go up, even though it hasn't become any more valuable, just become more expensive. That's the greater fool. Now, you can say, well, what about gold? Gold doesn't have any, any income. Right, but gold is a metal that's used.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  And you can think, well, what, what do jewelers need to pay to buy gold? What do computer manufacturers need to pay to buy gold? Who need gold, you know, in their chips? Or what do central bankers have to pay who need gold to back up their currencies? I mean, one of the things that's happening right now among central banks is they want to get rid of the dollar. They have too many dollars and we're creating too many. We have too much debt. So the world's central banks are now trying to divest of dollars because they recognize that even though they can earn interest on those dollars by buying treasuries, they're not going to keep pace with the rate at which the dollar is going to be depreciating. So they need something else to own in place of dollars and gold is the obvious choice.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  And so there's central bank demands. You have all this real demand. So when you're buying gold, you know that you're going to have that demand in the future, coming from industry, coming from central banks. You're not going to have that. The only demand for Bitcoin is speculators betting that the price is going to go up. There's no underlying user who needs Bitcoin. Anybody who wants Bitcoin, I hear people say, but you can, you know, you can use it to send money across borders. You could do the same thing with stablecoins. You could do the same thing with tokenized gold. What the hell do you need Bitcoin for? You know, and there's all kinds of other crap tokens that will do what Bitcoin does. So there's the, the only thing that's unique about Bitcoin is it's got a bigger cult. And, and, and it's got a higher market cap.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  But all that's going to change. Look, I, I think if you look at where Bitcoin is now, the air is coming out of this bubble.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  The only time I I went out on a limb and I thought Bitcoin had peaked because all all the time was going up. I kept conceding. Look, I don't know how high this thing can go. You can go to 5,000, you can go to 10,000, go to 5,000. I said, I don't know. It's not worth anything. So the fact that it's, you know, got a price, you know, obviously people could pay more. But after it it got to that 69,000 peak back in 2021, and it sold off to about, I don't know, 15,000, 16,000. And people were saying it's going to 100,000. I said, look, it's not going to go to 100,000. I thought it had kind of peaked out, or maybe it would double top. I didn't think it would get to 100,000 at that point. Donald Trump won, and it went to 100,000.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  Now, I think had Donald Trump not won, I don't think we ever would have seen 100,000 or Bitcoin. But I think all of the hype that accompanied that, and that's really what enabled Sailor to buy so much, all these other copycat crypto, you know, companies, treasury companies, all the ETFs that came out, you know, all the demand was that Trump is going to make us the Bitcoin capital. We're going to have a strategic reserve. You got to buy Bitcoin because the US government is behind Bitcoin. It's going to be pushing Bitcoin. And that hype enabled the price to rise. But I think a lot of the smarter holders took advantage

• 23:16Speaker 00

  of that to sell. I think a lot of the guys that helped bankroll Trump's campaign, donate a lot of money to get the Bitcoin president, knowing that this would happen, I think they sold into the the mania. And and now, you know, you've distributed the tokens much more broadly. You have a lot of people who own these Bitcoin ETFs. I think they're, I mean, they're not true believers. I think, I think they're gonna sell. You've also got a lot of people now that have borrowed against their Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the collateral now for a lot of loans. This is ridiculous. So I think now we've peaked. I, I, I think the high is in, in Bitcoin.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  Uh, it's headed lower now. I think that the next point of support on the way down is gonna be around 50,000. I think once it breaks 50, it's going below 20. That would be over an 80% drop from the peak. We might have a bounce from 20, maybe go from 20 to 30 or four people get excited again, and then it'll go down to 10. You know, I, I, I, I think it's, you know, it's now just about the air coming out of the bubble. And eventually I think strategy just goes out of business. I think they're gonna be forced to liquidate all their Bitcoin. I think, I think they're gonna ultimately have to stop paying the dividends on, on the preferreds. Uh, and they're just gonna crash. The, the, the, the whole thing is gonna implode.

• 24:41Graham Stephan?

  Speaking of Trump, I'm curious, Trump went on Truth Social in December, and he called you a Trump-hating loser and a jerk for saying that prices are still rising. And he told Fox to fire whoever booked you. You then challenged him to a public debate on the economy. I'm really curious, did Trump ever respond to you?

• 25:01Speaker 00

  No, but I didn't, look, I said Trump or his delegate. I mean, I knew it was a big ask to get the President of the United States to debate a lowly guy like me. But I was willing to debate anybody that he, you know, just, it's just an intern, anybody he had. Now, of course, I would also, I would love to debate, you know, like, uh, any of his top guys in his cabinet. I mean, I, I, I would go for a Commerce Secretary or the Treasury Secretary. I'm happy to debate those guys. I think I would mop the floor up with them. Uh, but no, nobody wanted to challenge me, but.

• 25:36Graham Stephan?

  What are you noticing now, though, in terms of rising prices? Because inflation did technically come back a little lower than expected recently.

• 25:44Speaker 00

  Now, you know, first of all, I don't put much stock into the way the government measures it with the CPI. I think if you understand what inflation is, which is the expansion of the money supply. Money supply is expanding. It's expanding quite briskly, unfortunately. The Fed is back to QE. They don't admit it's QE, but that's exactly what they're doing. So the balance sheet is growing again. Money supply. And the Fed has been cutting rates. It has been expanding credit. That's also inflation. The government is trying to shove more credit into the economy. They're using the GSEs to get more money into the economy by buying up mortgage-backed securities. So they're inflating. You can see prices rising.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  It's not just precious metals. Look at industrial metals. Look at copper hitting a record high. Look at, you know, other prices. Agriculture commodities are moving. Oil has finally started to move. Oil is now more than 20% above where it was at the low in December. We're at the highest in six months. So I think that's turning around. We're going to start to see higher gas prices, but food prices have continued to rise. I mean, sure, you can point to eggs or something. The president always likes to grab a couple of items that went down in price. But overall, if you go to the grocery store, your bill is higher than it was a year ago. I mean, even the government's CPI numbers will show 2.5%, 3% price increases.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  But remember, these are price increases on top of prices that were already very high. What consumers need is real relief. They don't need prices to keep rising only more slowly. They need prices to fall. We need to, because they went so, they went up so much, they should come back down. But no, they continue to go up. But Trump was wrong, but unfortunately, I think he scared the shit out of Fox and Friends because nobody will return my emails anymore. They act like I don't even exist. I guess they're afraid to put me on. But it just shows you that, you know, Trump can't handle any criticism.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, first of all, I did that interview from that same trip. I was in Dubai. I did it from my hotel room. It was like, I don't know, five o'clock in the evening. It was like five in the morning. The president, he's awake, watching Fox and Friends at five in the morning. Who the hell else was watching it? And he goes ballistic, right, on Truth Social, which they ought to rename it, I said, because it's not, there's nothing truthful on Truth Social. It's lies, right? Lie Social. But he hears me on Fox, and he goes ballistic. How dare Fox News have somebody on that criticizes me? Now, wait a minute, isn't it supposed to be Fox News? Right? I mean, is it just a propaganda arm of the Trump administration? That's what he wants.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  He doesn't want Fox News having objective economists on to render an opinion. And if you watch Fox News, there's one guy after another, just singing Trump's praises, kissing his ass, right? Talking about how great he is. Okay. They can't have one guy on there? One guy? And I actually endorsed him. I'm not like a typical, you know, never Trumper. I said, yeah, vote for the guy. I thought he was better than Harris. Now, sometimes I second guess that, but, but, you know. Do you still stand by that decision? Well, I mean, it's hard to say what Harris would have done, right? And she won. But look, there are some things that Trump have done that I like.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  But overall, he's doing a lot of bad stuff, unfortunately. What has he done that you've really liked? Well, you know, you know, he is, there are some regulations that have been eliminated. You know, he's toughened up on the borders, so it's not like a sieve.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  You know, he pushed back against the whole, you know, political correct, woke nonsense.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  Cancel culture, although he tried to cancel me. I mean, so he's a little bit hypocritical there. You know, when he, you know, he couldn't take any criticism. And he wants to have me fired, or have the Booker fired. Have you ever spoken to Trump? Yes. Personally? Yes. Where was that? In a concert. Imagine Dragons? No, not Imagine Dragons. So I was in New York. I think it was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It was like, like, they were like performing. This is like probably 20 years ago. And so I come into the concert. And in the row right in front of me is Trump and his daughter.

• 30:23Speaker 00

  And I was with a friend who knew him. And so he said, hello, this is my friend Peter Schiff. Oh, nice to meet you. This is Trump, whatever. So that was it. I mean, I doubt Trump remembers it because who the hell was I? I was nobody, right? Well, actually, I mean, I had a little bit of a reputation back. I mean, I was, I was still going on like CNBC. I was Dr. Doom. So I wasn't exactly nobody, but I, you know, I wasn't, I didn't have my own hit TV show, The Apprentice or whatever. So, you know, but I met him that, but that was the only time I met him. But you know, I just was at Mar-a-Lago last week. I went to a party there.

• 30:58Jack Selby?

  Who's, who invited you to a party? Did they not remember the feud that you had?

• 31:01Speaker 00

  No, but it was, it looked, I mean, it was Latino Wall Street.

• 31:05Jack Selby?

  What is that?

• 31:06Speaker 00

  It's just an organization.

• 31:08Jack Selby?

  And they had that at Mar-a-Lago?

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:10Jack Selby?

  And they invited you?

• 31:11Speaker 00

  They did. Yes, they honored me. Well, they gave me an award last, you know, last time I was there, they presented me with this award, which was nice.

• 31:19Jack Selby?

  Are you Latino?

• 31:20Speaker 00

  I'm Puerto Rican.

• 31:22Jack Selby?

  Really?

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Well, you're in Puerto Rico, aren't you?

• 31:26Jack Selby?

  I feel like I remember you telling us that and I just.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  I'm a Puerto Rican Jew, like Juan Epstein.

• 31:31Jack Selby?

  What percentage Puerto Rican are you?

• 31:33Speaker 00

  I'm 100% Puerto Rican. I live in Puerto Rico.

• 31:37Jack Selby?

  But like, like ethnicity?

• 31:39Speaker 00

  Well, what's, what does that mean? My ancestors weren't from Puerto Rico. I moved here nine years ago, but I've lived here for the last nine years of my life. My kids are growing up in Puerto Rico. Uh, so we're Puerto Rican.

• 31:53Jack Selby?

  What is the main reason you live in Puerto Rico?

• 31:56Speaker 00

  The weather.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  No, it's, I live here for, I, I live here for the parties and, you know, no, for the,

• 32:04Jack Selby?

  Lifestyle.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  For the lifestyle, for the community. I've got a lot of great neighbors. You met one of my neighbors. Earlier today.

• 32:10Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, you're fantastic neighbors.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it's a very close knit community and there is the added benefit of no taxes.

• 32:17Graham Stephan?

  Wait, they have that here?

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, not no taxes, but very low taxes.

• 32:21Graham Stephan?

  I didn't even realize I was Puerto Rican.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, 4% income tax and 0% capital gains tax. So pretty good deal.

• 32:28Jack Selby?

  This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. So Graham and I just got back from a trip to Austin and Puerto Rico. And in both places, we book stays on Airbnb. And literally every single time we travel these days, we stay at homes on Airbnb.

• 32:40Graham Stephan?

  And if you're big on traveling like us, anytime we're away, the home just ends up sitting unused, but it could actually be generating extra income by hosting on Airbnb.

• 32:49Jack Selby?

  So you guys may not know this, but at one point I actually hosted on Airbnb, a spare bedroom in my house and it ended up being far easier than I expected. The setup was straightforward, everything ran smoothly and it turned into a genuinely great experience overall. And guys, I am being so honest, it is genuinely a phenomenal way to make some extra cash. If you have spare bedrooms in your house, just put them on Airbnb. You'll make some money. It is so easy. It's quite enjoyable. I highly recommend it.

• 33:13Graham Stephan?

  Now, if you've ever thought about hosting, but weren't sure how to handle it if you're away, Airbnb now has the co-host network. With this, you could partner with a vetted local co-host with hosting experience who could take care of the important details for you.

• 33:25Jack Selby?

  So you see, a co-host can help manage reservations, guest communication, and even provide onsite support so everything goes smoothly while you're away.

• 33:32Graham Stephan?

  This makes hosting a lot more manageable when you travel.

• 33:34Jack Selby?

  It's also just a great way to earn some extra cash for future trips or just home projects.

• 33:38Graham Stephan?

  If you've considered hosting, but need some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com/host.

• 33:44Jack Selby?

  So what is one basic economic belief that people have that is completely wrong? Like one of the main, most pervasive economic beliefs?

• 33:54Speaker 00

  One of the, one of the most, biggest ones is we're already discussing, which is inflation. Because the vast majority of people think inflation is prices going up. That's what they think inflation is. That's not inflation. Inflation is the money supply expanding, the supply of credit expanding. That, that's what's being inflated. The word inflate literally means expand. That's the root of the word. But the government did a very good job in recent years. Of confusing the public as to what inflation means so that they can blame inflation on the people that raise prices. Government never accepts responsibility for creating inflation. They blame the greedy businessman who raised prices.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Or, you know, they're blaming Putin. Putin was, you know, raising prices. It's the government that expands the money supply. That's the inflation. As a result, people have to raise their prices. Workers have to, you know, get more wages because everything costs more. But the government gets the ball rolling. But, you know, so people don't understand. If people knew what inflation was, then they would know the cause. Because it's the government that's expanding our money supply.

• 35:07Graham Stephan?

  Do you think AI, though, could be deflationary? And this could bring the cost of a lot of things down?

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Well, again, AI doesn't contract the money supply. But is AI something that would result in lower prices? Of course, because AI, used properly, makes people and businesses more productive. And when you're more productive, your costs go down. And when your costs go down, you can charge less. Prices come down. I mean, capitalism is a force to lower prices. That's what capitalism does. It creates abundance out of scarcity. You have more stuff. And the more stuff there is, the less expensive the stuff becomes, right?

• 35:58Speaker 00

  So the natural tendency is for prices to go down. Now, government steps up and creates inflation and destroys the value of the money. And that makes prices go up. It's the inflation. But, you know, if it wasn't for capitalism, prices would be going up even more. But a lot of people don't realize that. Let's say prices go up by 2%.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  But if the government hadn't created inflation, they would have gone down by 2%. That's 4% really inflation because I got robbed of the 2% price cut. And now I have to pay 2% more. So I'm paying 4% more than I otherwise would have paid. Had the government not created the inflation because sometimes inflation doesn't just cause prices to rise, it prevents prices from falling. Now, the government will try to tell us, well, we have to do that because falling prices are bad. We can't have falling prices. Why not? What's wrong with falling prices? Everybody wants lower prices. Everybody wants stuff to be cheaper.

• 37:00Graham Stephan?

  The argument is falling prices create further falling prices because if even a small subset of people just wait, prices fall even further, which causes more people to slightly wait, even if it's just an extra month or two.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  But they're not going to wait. I mean, if you're hungry, are you going to eat now? Or if you think the hamburger is going to be cheaper next month, are you going to wait? Or are you just going to buy it?

• 37:21Graham Stephan?

  I think with stuff like food, not necessarily, but I think with stuff like cars or houses or major purchases.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  All right. You need a new car.

• 37:30Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Your other, the car you got now doesn't really work. You got to get to work. You got it. You got it. You know, you got to take your kids to school. Are you going to get the car when you need it? Or you say, you know, if I wait a month and maybe if we walk or ride our bikes for the next month, I could get that car for a hundred bucks cheaper? Are you going to wait?

• 37:48Graham Stephan?

  Even if even a few percent of people do, just a few percent.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  No, no, they, people, there's something, there's a time value, present value. Having something now is worth more than having it later.

• 38:02Graham Stephan?

  Uh huh.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Right? So if I thought something was going to be one or two or 3% cheaper a year from now, I'm not going to wait a year. I'm not going to go without food or gas or, you know, if my air conditioner breaks down, I'm not going to think, gee, if I wait a year and sweat it out, I might be able to get the air conditioning. No, I'm going to buy it. But you know what I'm going to hope? That if I ever need another air conditioning, I'm going to hope the price is lower.

• 38:29Graham Stephan?

  I'll give you an example that I see all the time and it's with the stock market. When stocks fall, people think, oh, I'm just going to wait because it'll be even cheaper.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Because that's, that's a different thing. You're trying to make an investment. So it doesn't, if I buy a stock next week. That's okay. I can wait. It's not a consumer good. Consumer goods, people buy it when they need it. Now, it is true that sometimes people don't buy something and they wait for a lower price. But that's because they can't afford it. And I, and I have all kinds of examples. I remember the first time that I went into a store. I think maybe it was like a, a, you know, Best Buy or something. And I saw a high def TV for the first time in my life. Now you, you're so young. Every TV you've ever seen is HD.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  But I went in and I saw the first HDTV and I was amazed that, at the picture, like I would, to me, I was like, this is like looking through a window. Right? And I obviously would have liked to have bought that TV. But it was like 10,000 bucks, which even went back then, like you could buy a car for $10,000. So as much as I liked it, I didn't want to buy it because it was too expensive. So I had to wait for them to be able to make these TVs cheap enough so that I could afford it. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if, if that TV, that was the cheapest, you know, HDTV and the price had gone up, right?

• 40:04Speaker 00

  Same thing, look, with cell phones, when cell phones first came out, I mean, you don't remember when that, but most people didn't buy cell phones when they first came out. They were way too expensive. Not only were they expensive to buy, they are expensive to use. In fact, when I first got my cellphone, I, I barely used it. And if somebody called me, I can't talk about myself, like, cause I would wait for the weekends or the nighttime when the rates went down. But the reason that everybody has cell phones now is because they got cheaper. Right? When prices go down, more people buy things, not less people, more. You know, and, and so prices falling are a good thing. And, you know, cellphone companies make more money now selling cheap cell phones than they did 20 years ago,

• 40:49Speaker 00

  selling expenses because they sell more of them. And they make it up on volume. So the whole idea that businesses need rising prices is wrong. Consumers don't need rising prices. Everybody wants, if I went to somebody, hey, do you want your kid's college tuition to go up or down? Do you want your gas bill to go up or down? You want your grocery bill to go up or down? Hey, you need to have to take a vacation. You want the airfare to be cheaper or more expensive? I mean, everybody wants stuff to be cheaper. This is such bullshit that the government needs to make sure that prices go up every year. Why do we need to make sure prices go up? I want prices to go down. That's how standards of living go.

• 41:27Jack Selby?

  Are they ever gonna let prices fall? Because it seems like they want interest rates now down to as close to zero as possible, which would just make prices keep going higher.

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Well, they want low interest rates because everybody's got so much debt, especially the government. The government's got more debt than anybody. So they need low interest rates. But the economy needs high interest rates. That is the fundamental problem. The biggest problem with the US economy underlying it is not enough savings, not enough capital investment, too much borrowing and consumption and speculation. And that has been a function of low interest rates. Interest rates have been kept artificially low for a long time, and that has screwed up this economy. What we need is higher interest rates that will discourage all this consumption and borrowing,

• 42:18Speaker 00

  reward people for saving so that we can rebuild our savings, and make the investments in the plant and equipment that we need to produce more stuff. But of course, this would also require massive cuts in spending. Not only would families have to spend less, but the government would have to spend a lot less. They have to start cutting back on social security, on Medicare, Medicaid, on national defense. Everybody would have to cut spending if interest rates went up. That's why they keep interest rates down. But the only way they can keep interest rates down is by creating inflation. And so inflation is the tax we pay in order to keep interest rates low and government spending high. We get all this inflation. But when they talk about there's an affordability crisis,

• 43:01Speaker 00

  the reason everything is so unaffordable is because government is so expensive. Every time you buy something, you're paying for government. The cost of government is embedded in every price.

• 43:11Jack Selby?

  Do you think that there's any malice involved with trying to keep inflation high? Because as people say, inflation really only helps the wealthy, the people that own assets instead of those who don't. Do you think there's any possible thing going on there?

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know that it's malice so much as self-preservation and these politicians.

• 43:31Jack Selby?

  But you think it's intentional for potentially that reason?

• 43:33Speaker 00

  No, they're just trying to kick the can down the road. I mean, they don't want to rain on the parade. You know, they don't, you know, Trump, even just recently, you know, even though he talks about housing affordability, he said he doesn't want home prices to come down. Well, isn't that how you make homes affordable? You let the prices go down? He said, no, he doesn't want prices to go down. In fact, he said he wants housing prices to keep going up because he wants the people who own houses to get richer. But what about the people who need to buy them? Right? So what does he want to do? Well, let's let them borrow more money. Let them go deeper into debt so they can overpay for homes, which is asinine. You know, we need to let home prices go down. They never should have gone up as much as they did.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  The only reason they did it because the Fed had interest rates at zero. The Fed inflated another housing bubble and Trump wants to make sure the air doesn't come out. But when you have a bubble, the sooner it deflates, the better. The longer it grows, the more damage gets done. Just like with the Bitcoin bubble, it would have been much better had this thing popped years ago. But because it's grown so big, so many more people are going to lose money in Bitcoin. And it's not just the people that lose money buying Bitcoin. Look at all these ridiculous companies that have been created that are going to go bankrupt. Look at all the money we've wasted on these companies, all the resources. I mean, we have really damaged our economy by focusing so much of our capital and our resources in crypto.

• 45:01Speaker 00

  And a lot of that now is because of the interference of the Trump administration, picking winners and losers, which the government shouldn't do because they pick losers. And that's exactly what Bitcoin is. It's a losing industry. It's not going to survive. All this crypto is a bunch of nonsense. But now you had the government misdirecting capital to it. So everything that we're doing now is all about kicking the can down the road. Makes the problems worse, but they hope that they don't blow up, you know, until after the election. So it's somebody else's problem.

• 45:34Jack Selby?

  What do you think would signal the true start of a dollar crisis?

• 45:38Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's started already. I think gold at 5,000 is an indication that.

• 45:46Speaker 00

  This is happening. Foreign central banks expressing a preference for gold over dollars and foregoing the interest that they would earn on those dollars. But I think what you're going to see is the crisis expanding, not just gold, but in foreign exchange. The dollar was down last year, but not that dramatically. You know, I mean, it was down, you know, maybe 5%, 5%, 10%. I think it'll be down more than that this year against other currencies. And I think this is going to snowball as the dollar really starts to fall. And that's going to put a lot of downward pressure on the bond market, which means upward pressure on interest rates.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  And that's going to cause the Fed to really panic, to try to stop interest rates from rising by creating even more inflation to buy up the bonds that are being dumped on the market. And that's when the crisis really could get out of hand. We get an all-out run on the dollar with very adverse consequences. I mean, much, much more severe than the 2008 financial crisis. And I think today, people are ignoring what's happening in gold, the way they ignored what happened in subprime. Because I remember when the subprime market blew up in 07, and, you know, we were short subprime, so we made some money on that trade.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  But I had been predicting this for years, that it would blow up. But I knew that it wasn't just a problem with subprime mortgages. I knew that the entire housing market was resting on a foundation of cheap credit. And, and just, subprime was just the weakest link of that chain, but that, you know, they were all going to go. And, and, but what did, you know, the Fed say, Ben Bernanke and everybody else, Wall Street, "Don't worry, it's contained to subprime." And I was saying, "No, it's a tip of an iceberg. You, you have no idea what's, what's beneath the surface here." And I was right. You know, we ended up with a financial crisis because it wasn't contained to subprime. Well, what's happening in gold is a similar warning.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  But not about the credit quality of mortgages, but the credit quality of treasuries. It's the US government that is in question, not just subprime or mortgage borrowers. And this is the warning that is being ignored. People just think, oh, don't worry about it. It's a bubble in gold.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  But the subprime warning, you know, predated the financial crisis by about a year. You know, you had about a year to realize that it was going to hit the fan.

• 48:31Graham Stephan?

  And what happens if the dollar breaks? Where do people go?

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, they're going to gold. They're going back to their own currencies. They're buying real assets. But the important thing is what happens to America? What happens to our economy? Because our economy is predicated on the dollar's reserve status. It doesn't work. If we can't run trillion-dollar-a-year trade deficits, it doesn't work. Because we don't have the factories anymore. We don't have the infrastructure, the supply chains, the trained workers. We rely on the rest of the world to produce what we can't. And because we don't really have any savings, we're all in debt, we rely on the rest of the world

• 49:20Speaker 00

  to save for us and lend us money. And so when the world doesn't do that anymore, when it's no longer willing to supply us with goods and lend us money, what do we got? How does this economy function?

• 49:37Speaker 00

  Because you look at, who are the biggest employers in America? FedEx, UPS, Walmart, Amazon? Like, what do those companies do? They transport and sell imported goods.

• 49:50Speaker 00

  But what happens when we can't afford to import the goods anymore? Well, there's nothing to drive around. There's nothing on the shelves are empty. So all those workers lose their jobs at the same time that consumers can't buy anything.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  You know, we're a service sector economy, but that only works so long as we can outsource the manufacturing. Well, we can't do that if the world doesn't want our dollars anymore. The only way the world's going to trade with us is if we have something to trade other than paper. We'd have to have products. See, the reason that countries export is to import. Your exports pay for your imports. But we're able to import without exporting because people want our dollars. Well, when they don't want our dollars anymore, then we gotta make stuff. But you can't just, you know, make stuff the way you print money. Making stuff requires real capital investment. It requires the factories and the infrastructure that we don't have anymore.

• 50:48Speaker 00

  We had it 100 years ago, 50 years ago. We don't have anymore. It's gone. And it's going to take a long time to rebuild it. Now, maybe AI and robots, maybe that'll help, you know? I don't know how, you know, what the timeline is there, but we've got a lot of work to do. But we're in for a rude awakening because Trump has got it completely backwards. He says the world's been ripping us off. We've been ripping off the world. We've been living off the world. We've been riding on a global gravy train. You know, they're the ones that have gotten the short end of the stick. And that's why I think that as the world dumps the dollar, there's going to be an economic boom outside the United States. Because I think that we have been a burden that the global economy has been forced to

• 51:31Speaker 00

  bear, especially a lot of the emerging markets, you know, the BRIC nations. They have borne a lion's share of that burden. And I think when the dollar collapses, this is going to let loose an economic boom. Because what's going to happen is all of our purchasing power is transferred to other people. So all the factories that produce all the goods, they keep pumping stuff out. The difference is Americans don't get it. People in other countries get it. Their lives are now better. They have more stuff. They have greater purchasing power. And when the world stops financing our debt.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  They're not going to stop saving. They're just going to use their savings in their own economies. They're going to invest in expanding their own productive capacity. So the world's going to have more goods and more investment capital. And we're going to have fewer goods and less investment capital. So what do Americans get? Much higher prices, much higher living, uh, interest rates and a much lower standard of living. The world gets lower prices, lower interest rates, you know, a higher standard of living. So that's why my whole investment strategy is, is investing abroad. I've been, I've been anticipating this for a long time. It finally started last year was the first year that international investing.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  You look at my, uh, my global dividend payer strategy did 62% return last year. This is not my gold strategy. This is dividend paying foreign stocks, 62%. I've got a mutual fund too, that people could buy, no load, any, any discount broker did the same thing. It's, it's, it's based on that separately managed account strategy. And already this year, I forget what we're up 13, 14% year to date. The S and P is basically flat.

• 53:15Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. This is something I've been telling Jack. I remember two years ago, I'm going to say it. For the longest time I've been 35%, 65% uh, international US. And I got made fun of so much because my international did nothing. It was flat. It would just pay its 3% dividend, nothing. This last year I'm up like 40% on my international. It's finally paid off.

• 53:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. And this is just the beginning. This is not the end. This is going to be going on for years. This is a major rotation that just started out of US assets, out of US stocks, out of US bonds, out of the US dollar. Uh, you know, our markets are still very expensive compared to the rest of the world. You get much better value, uh, by investing abroad. And now you, you know, you're going to ride this wave of, of money just getting sucked out of the US.

• 54:07Graham Stephan?

  Have you made most of your money just investing and buying and holding gold?

• 54:12Speaker 00

  Look, my net worth right now is significantly impacted by my, my precious metals holdings. My, not just physical, but mainly mining stocks.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  That was probably the biggest increase in my net worth last year was because mining stocks tripled and I had a lot of money in mining stocks. But the money that I got to buy those mining stocks came from my business, right? So if I didn't have an income, I wouldn't have had the money to buy those stocks. So for most of my life, I was generating more money, earning money. But last year was the first year really in a while. It was the first year. That I made more money on my investments than I, than I, than I really made on my Kearney. I mean, a lot more because I had, you know, it was such a big move. But, you know, I didn't sell anything. So all this is on paper, right? I mean, I mean, I, you know. Are you tempted to sell any of it and just?

• 55:09Speaker 00

  No, not, I still think, look, I, I've been buying the dips when they, so there's a big shakeout. I, I bought more last year, you know, I, but more recently, I was putting a lot of money into oil stocks, which are now making 52 week highs. I, I got great buys on oil stocks a few months ago. I put more money into emerging markets because I'm so overweight personally now in, in, in mining stocks because of the big, big increase. But for people that I, you know, talk to today, new clients, I absolutely think they need exposure to these stocks. I don't think they're expensive. In fact, even though these mining stocks have tripled, they're cheaper now than they were before they tripled because they're, they're much more valuable businesses when

• 55:54Speaker 00

  gold's at 5,000 than when gold was at 1,500. And it's not just that gold's at 5,000, it's that it's going to keep rising. You know, and, and so the, that's not factored into these stocks and this, the cheapest stocks are some of the smaller companies. My gold fund, the EuroPacific Gold Fund, EPGIX, you should be loading up on that because we have about a third of our portfolio in these really small companies that I think are just going to go ballistic. Cause I think what's going to happen with these small companies is the big companies are going to buy them because they need more resources and it's too expensive to go exploring and drilling. Why not?

• 56:34Speaker 00

  Not just buy out these little companies. They have so much money right now. They are literal gold mines, but they they have never had this kind of cash flow when, you know, the cost of mining gold, maybe it was 1500 an ounce and maybe now it's 1800. But you were getting, you know, two years ago, you were getting 2000. Now you're getting 5000 for the exact same thing. I mean, how many other businesses are able to double or triple their prices and keep selling?

• 57:00Graham Stephan?

  Is there a price though? If gold hits, you just say, hey, maybe it's a little overvalued right now. I'm going to sell it. Like if it were to hit 15,000 tomorrow, is there a level where you just say, all right?

• 57:10Speaker 00

  Well, it's not going to hit 15,000 tomorrow. But if it did, yeah, maybe I'd I'd sell some. I mean, but you know, I mean, gold doesn't.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  Well, I would definitely not buy any Bitcoin. I wouldn't buy any Bitcoin. But no, actually, if gold hit 15,000 tomorrow, it'd be because we were in an all out dollar crisis. And so the question is, if I sold my gold, what would I buy? I mean, I might not want dollars. I might sell it for Swiss francs. I might sell it for stocks, right? Because it could be like the dollar is just imploding, you know, and it's gonna, it's like a, you know, like a hot potato, like, you know, or musical, you you don't want to get caught with it. If that were to happen, I mean, something would have to be seriously going on.

• 57:50Jack Selby?

  Is the dollar crisis reversible? Like, could we change course?

• 57:56Speaker 00

  I think I think we've gone a gone past the point of no return. You know, I think that maybe the big, beautiful bill kind of cemented it. I mean, when when Trump was elected with a mandate to cut government spending, I mean, Elon Musk was almost going to be a co-president. He was going to be leading the Department of Government Efficiency, right? Almost an oxymoron because government can never be efficient by by definition. But there was a real mandate to cut government spending. And what happened to Elon Musk? They ran him out of town. And the first thing the Republicans did was increase government spending.

• 58:39Speaker 00

  You know, the national debt just hit 38.7 trillion, I think, yesterday, up 2.6 trillion since Trump took office, a little over a year, 2.6 trillion dollar increase in the national debt. And, and, and the message that this sends to the world is America will never do anything about this runaway deficits, because the only hope was Trump and the Republicans. And they, they didn't deliver. Yes, they were critical of Biden's spending, yet when they had an opportunity to cut that spending, they did not.

• 59:19Speaker 00

  In fact, they increased spending above the levels that Biden had, and they cut taxes. So they expanded the big deficits that they inherited, made them bigger. So creditors know, okay, the Democrats are never going to cut spending. I mean, the Democrats love government. They want to spend money. Why would they stop? But the Republicans, who are supposed to not like government, they, they won't cut spending either. So if the people that don't like government want to spend more, the people who love it will never spend more. So what hope do we have? None. And so this is, all, all we can have is a crisis. We're, we're going to keep on spending money until we can't do it anymore. And we're going to keep on borrowing money until we can't. And, and the crisis is what's going to stop it.

• 1:00:04Speaker 00

  It's going to be a collapse of the dollar. It is inevitable. It is unavoidable. The only question is when. It's not a question of if, but a question of when. And it's been a question of when for a while now. But I think that we are significantly closer. You know, I think that not only what Biden did with the sanctions against Russia, which created a political incentive to get out of the dollar, but Donald Trump took it up quite a few notches with all the tariffs, which of course, Americans pay the tariffs, but they are a nuisance. Because it interferes with free trade. I mean, let's say there's a company in Canada

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  that's was selling goods to America and now Trump puts these big tariffs on Americans who want to buy Canadian goods. This Canadian company is not going to sell as much stuff in America because the Americans can't afford to pay the tariffs on top of the goods. So it's harmful to Americans because now goods that they used to be able to buy are too expensive. But now this Canadian company is like, shit, what are we going to do? Our customers can't afford our products anymore, so they have to find new customers. So it's disruptive that they'll find it, they'll get, they'll, they'll figure out how to get along without us and they'll be better off. But it's a nuisance, but Trump is lecturing everybody, telling everybody, you know, they're screwing us over, they're ripping us off, you know, the world doesn't like to hear this nonsense, especially when it's the other way around.

• 1:01:29Speaker 00

  But I think maybe the straw that broke the camel's back was not, um, what happened in Venezuela, but the threat to invade Greenland. The fact that Donald Trump openly spoke out loud for weeks about the US invading Greenland, about us trying to buy it, but if we couldn't buy it, we were just going to take it. I think that was a real, you know, eye opener for the rest of the world.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  And up until then, I think the world viewed America as a benevolent force for world peace, for good, that yes, we had this big military, but that was good because it would be used to defend freedom, to defend the world. When Donald Trump raised the possibility of using our military to take Greenland by force.

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  A completely peaceful country that is no threat to the United States. But Trump said, we need it, we want it, and we've got the might and we're gonna take it. I think that was a real wake up that the world says, you know what? We gotta do something about America. They got too much power. We can't keep financing this because if it wasn't for the world, you know, holding the US dollar as a reserve currency and lending us all this money and supplying us with all these goods. We could not have this big military. We couldn't afford it. We can't pay for it. And so the world is like, you know what? We gotta stop subsidizing this. They're too big, they're too powerful.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  And if they move away from the dollar, they will collapse the economy. And we're gonna have to slash our military spending. We're gonna have to pull back a lot of troops because we won't be able to afford to pay them, to supply them. And we're gonna be dealing with, you know, riots in the streets. I mean, we're gonna have a lot of problems. We're not gonna be able to worry about what's happening in Greenland when they're rioting, you know, in the cities because they can't, people can't afford food and, you know, they can't afford electricity.

• 1:03:53Graham Stephan?

  And when Jack and I first started the Ice Coffee Hour, we had to learn everything on the fly. I'm talking figuring out the best cameras to use, the best lenses, the best editing equipment, how to get guests and sponsors. Every day was a brand new challenge. And that's why if you're starting or growing your own business, you know how valuable today's sponsor is? And that would be Shopify.

• 1:04:11Jack Selby?

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• 1:04:32Graham Stephan?

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• 1:04:48Jack Selby?

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• 1:05:05Graham Stephan?

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• 1:05:24Jack Selby?

  Thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. When your business starts growing and money's coming in, it can be extremely difficult to keep track of what's set aside for taxes, who you've paid, or where your expenses are even going, and that can get stressful very quickly.

• 1:05:37Graham Stephan?

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• 1:05:52Jack Selby?

  What I personally love about Relay is how it helps you set up a real structure. You can open up to 20 checking accounts, so it's super easy to keep your income, taxes, payroll, and savings separate instead of mixing them all together. It's just like having digital envelopes, but for your business.

• 1:06:06Graham Stephan?

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• 1:06:15Jack Selby?

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• 1:06:31Graham Stephan?

  For a lot of business owners, getting this sorted means you stop putting out fires and actually have room to grow. So if you want a system that supports your business, scan the QR code on the screen or click the link in the description to learn more about Relay. Thank you again to Relay for sponsoring this episode, and now let's get back to the podcast. In terms of having a reserve, though, with Fort Knox, what's been going on with conspiracies that there's no gold there, or that maybe the gold at some point had been removed or replaced?

• 1:06:59Speaker 00

  Well, you know, it's hard to believe there's no gold there, but what's very interesting about the whole thing is that

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  In the, in the early days of the Trump administration, there was a lot of talk about auditing Fort Knox, about going down there. Yeah. And all of a sudden, crickets. Like, no one talked about it. And so the question is, why? Why were they so gung ho about doing an audit? And then all of a sudden, it's like the forbidden topic. Nobody will even mention it. It never comes up. That's a little curious because it makes you think that maybe somebody said something to the president, like, we probably shouldn't do the audit because, you know, it's not there or it's all not there. And that's going to be a big problem if the world knows it's not there. And it would be a big problem.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  So the fact that the whole thing just got buried under a big rug makes you think that there's something going on.

• 1:08:07Graham Stephan?

  This is one of the positives about Bitcoin is that you can verify it though on chain.

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  Yes, you can verify how much nothing everybody has. Yes, that's, you know, and gold is easy to verify too. If, if you allow it, right? Yeah, you need an audit, but yes, I understand that if I have gold, if I have Bitcoin in my wallet, you can verify it. Now, if you have tokenized gold, you can verify that too. But again, to verify that the gold is actually behind the token, somebody does need to go in there and like count it. And, you know, somebody reputable. So yeah, that is one of the things that is good about Bitcoin and interesting about it is that you could verify it. But I said, look, you're very, you're verifying how much nothing I have.

• 1:08:55Speaker 00

  So what, you know, when people say, oh, look how easy it is to transport Bitcoin. Yeah, because you're transporting nothing. It's not, it's not hard to trans. In fact, Bitcoin doesn't actually get transported. Bitcoin doesn't go anywhere. You know, it just, one wallet has it and now another. It's not like the Bitcoin goes from my wallet to your. The Bitcoin doesn't go anywhere. It's just, we just changed the wallet address that's assigned to that Bitcoin. But if you're dealing in nothing, then yes, it's easy to transport it. Gold is real, it has substance. And so, yes, you do have to transport it. But the beauty of tokenized gold is there, I don't have to move the gold.

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  See, most people, when you're using gold as money, as opposed to using gold, you know, in industry, you don't actually need the gold. You just need to own the gold and you need to be able to transfer that ownership to whoever you're doing business with. And so, when you tokenize gold, that improves gold as a medium of exchange. It makes it even better than it was in the past because I don't have to give you my gold. I just have to give you the proof that I own the gold. And the minute I give it to you, now you own that gold. You know, now, if you actually need the gold for some reason, you could get it. If you decide to become a jeweler and you want, you know, you want some gold, you could actually go get your gold.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  But if you don't need the gold, you can use the gold to buy something that you do need. And the person who's selling you that will take your gold.

• 1:10:25Graham Stephan?

  But what do you think about your son buying Bitcoin though?

• 1:10:28Speaker 00

  But he's not buying it anymore. I mean, he bought some years ago, but he's completely lost interest in Bitcoin.

• 1:10:34Graham Stephan?

  How did that affect your relationship with him? Because I saw you called him brainwashed for buying Bitcoin.

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  He was brainwashed, you know. I mean, look, all the young kids, you know, I get into these debates. I had another one just yesterday, I think with Anthony Scaramucci. And, you know, they always like to say, look, it's the young kids, you know. Yes, all the old people in our generation, we're buying gold. But, you know, it's the young generation, the kids who are buying Bitcoin. And I'm like, yeah, exactly. But I'm not going to take my investment advice from a bunch of kids. You know, kids make mistakes. They're new, they're young, they don't have the experience, they don't have the wisdom. And they're making a lot of mistakes buying Bitcoin. Now, when a lot of the 20-somethings, you know, grow up and they're my age,

• 1:11:25Speaker 00

  they'll know better. And one of the reasons they'll know better is they'll remember how much money they lost with Bitcoin. You know, and the best time to lose money is when you're young. Did your son make or lose money on Bitcoin? He made money, but he's pretty much sold the Bitcoin that he had. But he did make money in it, yeah.

• 1:11:43Jack Selby?

  Would you rather have one Bitcoin right now or one ounce of gold? But 100% you had to hold on to both for five years?

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  Oh, well, obviously, if I had to hold on to them both for five years, I would, I think the ounce of gold will be worth more. But obviously, if I could sell right now, I would, I would take the Bitcoin. I would immediately sell it. Uh, but I, you know, maybe if you gave me that Bitcoin, I could find a way to hedge it somehow. I could, I could, I could short something or get some kind of derivative instrument. Because yes, there is a high market price. Right now Bitcoin is 60, what, 6,000? And gold's only 5,000. But Bitcoin is going to continue to lose value relative to gold. Eventually it won't have any value whatsoever.

• 1:12:32Speaker 00

  But you know, I, I, I no longer think Bitcoin is going to zero anytime soon. I, I get that there's enough people in the cult now

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  that will buy it and will ascribe some value to it. But let's say Bitcoin, this falls to a thousand dollars, which I think is still a lot of money for nothing. But if Bitcoin falls to a thousand dollars, it's certainly a long way from zero. But if you bought it at a hundred thousand dollars, that's not going to be much of a consolation. Well, it's not zero. Okay, but you lost 99% of your money. I mean, even if you lost the last 1% at that point, it wouldn't be that big a deal. So I think for all practical purposes.

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  For most people who own Bitcoin, it may, you know, it may as well be going to zero. They're going to lose almost all of their money. What is your son investing in now? I heard he's getting big into AI. That's it, right? He's not investing in anything. I guess he's just investing in his career or trying to, you know, trying to work. But yeah, he's very much into AI. And, you know, he was into gold. He was into gold and silver before he got into Bitcoin. And so he lost interest in gold and silver when he discovered Bitcoin. And then he lost interest in Bitcoin when he got into AI. Cause he kind of thinks that, look, AI is going to lead to such massive efficiencies and production that prices are going to collapse because everything is going to be virtually free.

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  So he doesn't think there's any reason to have an inflation hedge because everything's going to be so cheap in the future. Do you agree with him or what do you think? Well, I do agree that in the future, things will be a lot cheaper and a lot more abundant. He just thinks the future is years away, like one, two, three years away. I don't think that it's going to happen that quickly. Even though what's happening with AI and the technology is certainly evolving very quickly. And it's getting a lot better, very fast. I don't see that it's able to translate into that kind of productivity in that short a period of time.

• 1:14:49Speaker 00

  You know, I think, I think, I think it's just going to take more like decades, not years. And, um, you know, but I think there will be some benefits in the near term, just not to the degree that, that he seems to believe.

• 1:15:02Jack Selby?

  Are you still as motivated now as you were maybe 30 or so years ago to grow your net worth? Or do you think that your growth motivation has dwindled a little bit?

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, my net worth is high enough that I can pretty much do most of what I want. Or maybe all of what I want. Just I don't, I don't, my needs are not that, that great.

• 1:15:27Jack Selby?

  So what motivates you to continue?

• 1:15:29Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I want the business to grow because I do ultimately, I'm gonna sell, cash out and kind of retire. So obviously want to get as big an exit as I can from the business.

• 1:15:44Speaker 00

  But in the meantime, I think I'm doing a lot of good just educating people about capitalism, about economics, about money, about gold, about Bitcoin. I think I'm doing a big service letting people know because, you know, when Bitcoin collapses, there's gonna be a lot of people in government that are gonna try to blame capitalism. And they're gonna be saying we need a lot more regulation to protect people from scams like Bitcoin. And I'm gonna remind everybody that the government was a big part of the scam. And that it's not about capitalism. It's not a failure of capitalism. And yeah, I mean, people in a free market, people can do foolish things with their money. That's, that's, you know, that's freedom. You're free to make

• 1:16:25Speaker 00

  mistakes. And now I've never wanted to prevent people from buying Bitcoin. I just thought it was unfortunate that so many people were. But people have a have a right to buy it and they need to, you know, bear the consequences. Now, what I don't like is the fraud that I think I believe that exists in Bitcoin. I think a lot of people have been defrauded into buying it. I think, you know, the media has kind of conspired with a lot of the companies in the space that, you know, they buy these ads and then the media comes out and endorses their stuff. I think there's a lot of stuff going on. A lot of things have been misrepresented that ultimately I think

• 1:17:08Speaker 00

  will be settled in the courts. I think there's gonna be a lot of lawsuits after Bitcoin collapses because the people that lost money are gonna be suing the people who made money. Because, look, a lot of people will have made money in Bitcoin. But the way people made money in Bitcoin is because other people lost it. It's a transfer. The people are not creating any actual value. They're just taking the money from the people who bought it and who are gonna be stuck holding the bag. So the people who made a lot of money. Are going to get sued by the people who lost a lot of money. Do you think capitalism is becoming less popular? It is, and that's because we have less capitalism.

• 1:17:49Speaker 00

  I mean, capitalism gets a bad rap when it's infected with socialism. That's what the government does. They, you know, they, they, they, they come into an economy and they screw it up with regulations and subsidies that distort capitalism, that create problems. And then they blame those problems on capitalism. And the solution is, well, we just need more government. And that just makes the problems even bigger, which is great for government because now they have something else to blame on capitalism. And so it always ends up that government gets bigger and bigger and we have less and less capitalism. But, you know, when you have maximum capitals and maximum freedom, uh, you have the highest

• 1:18:33Speaker 00

  possible standard of living for the greatest number of people. And that, that's what we need, you know? We need, you know, free market capitalism. We need to limit the size of government, uh, to the greatest degree possible. Like, you know, Donald Trump likes to talk about, you know, the heyday of America. He's right. When he talks about the, what they call the gilded age, 1880s, 1890s. He says, America was never as rich on a relative basis as we were back then. And that's a true statement. And we had more economic growth back then. But the government only spent about 2% of our GDP. Now it spends, you know, more than 10 times that. So we were rich because government was tiny.

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  Now Trump says we were rich because we, we had tariffs. No, we were rich because the government was so tiny. All we needed was tariffs. We didn't need an income tax. We didn't need a payroll tax. We didn't have any of this stuff. So we were rich when government was small. What do you think about a wealth tax? Yeah. And why is that? Why is it gaining so much popularity? Well, because most people won't have to pay it. I mean, that's the problem with democracy, right? People are in favor of the taxes that they don't pay. So if you go to the public and say, hey, let's tax the billionaires. Well, how many billionaires are there? Thousand, right? Almost everyone's going to say, yeah, let's tax them. But, you know, that's the reason we have an income tax. People don't realize that.

• 1:20:00Speaker 00

  So, you know, we didn't always have an income tax, right? We passed an amendment, the 16th amendment. And, um, 1913, we got an income tax. The reason we have an income tax is because the government said, hey, let's tax the rich. Right? And, and before we had an income tax, the main source of revenue was tariffs. And the government said, the tariffs are paid by the middle class and the poor. If we have an income tax that the rich will pay, we can get rid of these tariffs. So the reason that the income tax was so widely supported was because nobody was going to pay it, except Carnegie and Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. I mean, and it was a tiny tax.

• 1:20:45Speaker 00

  Two, three percent on the top, not even 1%, a smaller percentage. But of course, as soon as the government got the income tax, they kept lowering the, increasing the rate, applying it to more people. By the time we got to the Second World War, everybody was paying the income tax. All the middle class, the middle class by the Second World War, the, the middle class was paying much more, a much higher tax rate than Rockefeller and Carnegie were originally paying. So the government screwed you over. So the same thing would happen on a wealth tax. They get, they get the tax in by saying, we're just going to tax the billionaires. But before you know it, they're taxing everybody. That, because that's how it went with the income tax.

• 1:21:28Speaker 00

  But they had to amend the constitution to allow for an income tax. They'd have to do the same thing to allow for a wealth tax. Because an income tax was a direct tax and they need to apportion it. They didn't want to apportion it, so they amended the constitution. Taxing wealth is not the same thing as taxing income. And taxing wealth is also a direct tax. You want to tax wealth? Well, you better amend the constitution because you can't just levy a tax on wealth.

• 1:21:54Graham Stephan?

  Is there a ideal tax rate to pay?

• 1:21:58Speaker 00

  Well, for income taxes, I'd say the ideal rate is zero. I don't think there should, I think that's a horrible way to tax.

• 1:22:04Graham Stephan?

  But who funds, let's just say, schools, police, roads, infrastructure?

• 1:22:09Speaker 00

  The federal government doesn't, doesn't even get involved, shouldn't even get involved in any of that stuff. That stuff is for local governments. So.

• 1:22:17Graham Stephan?

  Military would be another one.

• 1:22:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, but we don't, we don't, yeah, but we don't need as big a military as we have. I think, I think we spend too much on the military. But yeah, the military is pretty much what the federal government is supposed to be spending money on. But just about everything else is supposed to be handled by state and local governments. And you know, that's where the schools should be paid for. Although I prefer private schools. I think private schools do a much better job of educating kids than government schools. They do it for a lot less money and the quality is a lot better. You know, anything that the government does is going to be expensive and, and low quality. So that's why you want the government to do as little as possible. You know, I don't know if you ever ride on private roads, but they're always nicer. They're in better shape than the government roads.

• 1:23:03Speaker 00

  Because we have to, you know, there's nothing that's for free. See, people like it when government provides stuff because they don't think it costs anything. They think they're getting something for free. They're not. It's more expensive. Anything that you get from government is going to end up being more expensive than what you would get in a free market. Because when you're, you're buying something in a free market, you're buying something from a guy who's trying to make a profit and who faces competition. And so he is motivated to give you a good deal. He's working his ass off to earn your business, to provide you with what you need in its highest quality and at the lowest possible cost. But when government provides you with something, they couldn't care less whether you like it or not.

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  You're stuck with it. There's no profit motive. They don't give a damn. They're not going to be efficient. And so you never get good stuff when you get it from government. People just haven't learned that lesson. So you, you know, whatever it is, food or clothing or shelter, education, healthcare, all of this will be better, more readily available and less expensive if we allow the free market to provide it. Anytime we assign a function to government, we are going to settle for lower quality and higher cost.

• 1:24:22Graham Stephan?

  Would you ever want to run for office of some sort to try to make a positive impact? Or is it just a lost cause?

• 1:24:31Speaker 00

  Well, I tried once. I ran for senate in Connecticut.

• 1:24:34Graham Stephan?

  But um. Would you ever do that again?

• 1:24:36Speaker 00

  Not, probably not. I mean, it, you know, it was a waste of money. I wasted my own money.

• 1:24:41Graham Stephan?

  How much did you spend?

• 1:24:43Speaker 00

  Well, myself, a little over a million. But I raised a couple of million from donors.

• 1:24:47Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:48Speaker 00

  So that was a waste, right?

• 1:24:49Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:50Speaker 00

  But um.

• 1:24:50Jack Selby?

  What was the main thing you campaigned on?

• 1:24:53Speaker 00

  Uh, my main issue was gonna be, I wanted to, uh, you know, be the filibuster to stop the debt. I, I, I wanted to, I didn't want the debt ceiling to go up. I wanted to stop raising the debt ceiling to force the government to cut spending. So it was more about, I was, you know, I wanted to stop the spending, get the budget balanced. Uh, it was like, you know, a main thing, you know?

• 1:25:15Jack Selby?

  You would have been the filibuster guy.

• 1:25:17Speaker 00

  I would have been the guy, yeah, I would not, they would have had to drag me out of that senate. Uh, but I, you know, and I would have, you know, gotten the camera. I would have, you know, really laid into everybody else. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, you know, I, it would have been interesting if I could have won. I didn't even win the primary. So, you know, I didn't.

• 1:25:36Jack Selby?

  I think you'd have a better shot now.

• 1:25:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know, better, maybe, but not necessarily like an actual chance. Um, I, I mean, cause there's so, I have so much of a record of the things that I said that would just be used against me in, um, in 30 second sound bites that Peter wants to take away your social security, your Medicare, all this stuff. I mean, so it's difficult to, to win an election when you're telling the truth and, you know, you're not giving away free stuff. You're, you know, you're, you're just promising freedom, right? People, people don't want freedom. They want, they want free stuff, even though they don't realize how expensive their free stuff is. So it would be very difficult

• 1:26:23Speaker 00

  for me to win an election.

• 1:26:26Speaker 00

  In the environment that we have now, but obviously, look Javier Malay became president of Argentina, running on a similar type of message that that I would be running on. And it took a lot for Argentina to elect Malay. I mean, years and years of of empty government promises that had made the situation worse and worse and worse. So, I mean, if things got bad enough in America, and they're gonna get pretty bad. But if they got bad enough, then there may be a situation where I could win. But things would have to be really, really bad before people would give up on all these government promises and solutions and say, you know, we need to try something different.

• 1:27:10Speaker 00

  And, you know, and I I do a good job of explaining capitalism and why it works and why it's the only way out of the mess that the government creates. What are you optimistic about for the future? Well, look, I'm optimistic that capitalism over time will prevail against government and freedom will ultimately. You know, we've had throughout history, look, we have a lot of stuff today that nobody had 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago. Despite all these big governments and all these crises and all these collapses, humankind has improved.

• 1:27:52Speaker 00

  You know, average Americans today have things that wealthy people in the past couldn't even imagine. You know, I mean, you know, when people didn't have running water, they didn't, they didn't have electricity, that, you know, they, they, you know, they couldn't take a hot shower, you know, they didn't have air conditioner, they, you know, they, they didn't have music, you know, the stuff that we have, yeah, you had that music, you had to go find a concert, you know, you know, people didn't have, you know, you know, stereos that we have or high fidelity, you know. So we have all this stuff. We have cars, you know, we don't have, you know, the streets aren't, you know, we have sewage. I mean, you know, we have all these advances.

• 1:28:36Speaker 00

  I mean, and then, you know, now we're gonna get robots and all kinds of, we have cell phones and all kinds of things. So humans are gonna keep creating stuff. They are going to overcome whatever barriers governments put in their place.

• 1:28:54Speaker 00

  The key is to remove as many of those barriers as we can minimize them so that we can accomplish even more. We can accomplish it sooner rather than later. And it's a big world. I mean, even if things get really bad in America for a while, they could get really good in other places. You know, I mean, you know, there's capitalism is far more pervasive today around the world than it's been. You know, even though not many places have pure capitalism like America was. And even America wasn't completely pure, but we were, we were very close in the time period that the president speaks about. Which country has the most capitalism right now?

• 1:29:38Speaker 00

  Oh, you got, probably look like a Singapore, even though they have, you know, even in Hong Kong, which is part of China.

• 1:29:46Speaker 00

  But you know, I mean, there's even a lot of capitalism in mainland China in certain, in certain areas of the economy. There's a lot of freedom. There's a lot of entrepreneurship going on, more so than there is, than there is here.

• 1:30:05Speaker 00

  But you know, I think, you know, even the countries that had a lot of socialism, like, you know, Norway, Sweden. You know, the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. They've been lowering their taxes, getting rid of capital gains, getting rid of the estate tax. You know, they've been moving in the, in the other direction because they saw the harm that they were creating with the welfare states that they had built up. But the reason countries like Sweden were rich enough to afford a welfare state was because they were capitalist first. If you, if you're socialist first, you never go anywhere. You're just, you know, you're trapped in poverty. But you know, people, you know, people are always envious and resentful. I mean, one of the things about capitalism is it doesn't produce equal results.

• 1:30:48Speaker 00

  There are some people that are going to be a lot richer than other people and they deserve to be richer. They, they did more, they produced more, they contributed more and so they made more. But there are always people that resent that and politicians feed off of that envy. Hey, this guy is rich. That's not fair. You know, let's take some of his money. You need all his stuff. Why should this guy? And they end up killing the goose that lays the golden egg like, you know, you know, people are always, I don't want somebody to get rich. Uh, you know, like, uh, you know, they talk about like healthcare. Why should somebody get rich off of people being sick? Well, you know what? I'm totally happy. I mean, I want the guy that cures cancer to get really, really rich. Because then I won't have to die of cancer.

• 1:31:33Speaker 00

  I mean, don't we want somebody to think, hey, if I can cure cancer, I'm gonna be rich. I want a lot of people thinking. I can get rich if I can cure cancer because that's the best way to get it cured. Have smart people trying to get rich. And you can't resent the fact that the guy that cured it got rich because if he couldn't get rich, he wouldn't have cured it. Right? People have are motivated by by self-interest. But there's nothing wrong with that. Because if you pursue your self-interest, then you're pursuing everybody's self-interest. Because everybody benefits from what you create, from what you invent. That's what that's the reason you can get rich. You can only get rich if you come up with something that a lot of people want. And that they're willing to buy.

• 1:32:19Speaker 00

  So you're rewarded in proportion to how much you've helped people. Now, yes, you can, you can also get risked. You can be a criminal. You can steal money, but that that's different. Right? But if you're gonna get rich in business, honestly.

• 1:32:34Speaker 00

  Then you're you're being you're being rewarded for the contributions that you make. And there are a lot of people that don't make a lot of contributions. They don't start businesses. They don't invent anything. They don't do anything. So why should they be rich? Right? But the politicians pander to those people. Oh, you know, you should have this. You're entitled to this. You're entitled to that. Nobody is entitled to anything.

• 1:32:55Speaker 00

  You know, you're entitled to freedom. You're entitled to be left alone, but you're not entitled to take things from other people. And you're not entitled to elect people who will steal for you, right? If it's wrong to steal, if it's wrong for me to steal your money, it's also wrong for me to vote for somebody to steal your money and give it to me. It's the same dynamic. It's just as morally wrong.

• 1:33:17Jack Selby?

  When you're saying that, I could just imagine like an American flag flapping behind you.

• 1:33:23Graham Stephan?

  Some eagle.

• 1:33:24Jack Selby?

  And so, yeah, an eagle like soars over.

• 1:33:26Speaker 00

  Well, that's what built America.

• 1:33:27Jack Selby?

  Pro-American music playing and swelling.

• 1:33:30Speaker 00

  And that was a powerful message because all four of my grandparents came to this country to be free. They didn't come because they wanted welfare or food stamps or housing supports because none of that stuff existed. They came because America was where they could be left alone, where the government was not in their way, right? The government didn't give them anything other than freedom. They knew that if they came here and they worked hard, that they could succeed. That was the American dream. The American dream was not owning a home. Some realtors made that crap up. The American dream was that anybody, no matter how, you know,

• 1:34:14Speaker 00

  meager they're, they're, they're, they started, no matter where they came from, no matter who their parents were, anybody could be rich. Anybody can make it in America. You didn't have to have connections. You didn't have to know the right people. You didn't have to be born to nobility or with a silver spoon in your mouth. You could go from the mailroom to the boardroom in America. You could go as high as your own ambition and hard work could take you. Right? That's the kind of country that I want to live in. Not a country where everybody's trying to get free stuff from the government. Everybody's looking for, you know, handouts and, you know, even Kennedy. Kennedy, I mean, he didn't, you know, he wasn't the greatest example, but he said, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you could do for your country.

• 1:34:57Speaker 00

  But today, everybody's asking, everybody, what can my country do? I mean, look at Mandami. How does he get mayor of New York? Free groceries, free car, you know, free buses, free housing, right? All, all about what is the government going to give me? Well, the government doesn't have anything. People don't understand. Government has nothing that they don't take. So when you're asking the government to give you something, you're asking the government to take it away from somebody else.

• 1:35:21Graham Stephan?

  Are you ever afraid that maybe you might be wrong in that the dollar stays strong, Bitcoin goes to 500,000, AI fixes the economy and gold stagnates?

• 1:35:33Speaker 00

  Well,

• 1:35:33Graham Stephan?

  And what would that mean?

• 1:35:35Speaker 00

  Of all those things, I say the only thing that possibly could happen is AI. If we can somehow, like my, my son thinks, get a get out of jail free card from AI. I, I just don't expect that to happen. But that's more likely than, than Bitcoin outperforming gold. But um,

• 1:35:59Graham Stephan?

  Like, do you think Elon Musk's saying that in the next 10 years, that money is going to be meaningless? Because anything we could ever want is just going to appear. We could make anything happen. There's no use for money anymore.

• 1:36:09Speaker 00

  I think at some point in the future, that may be the case. Um, but 10 years seems a little bit optimistic that it could happen that quickly. But you know, the interesting thing about it, the government would oppose stuff like that. Because they say, oh, it's going to create all this unemployment. Well, yes, but that's a good thing. People don't want jobs. They want jobs so they can get things. If they can have the things without the jobs, then screw the job. I'll just take the stuff.

• 1:36:42Graham Stephan?

  What do you think most people would be doing all day? If they didn't have a job?

• 1:36:47Speaker 00

  Well, if they didn't have a job and everything came from, you know, so I, I guess like, you know, we all, we all carry around our cell phones right now. All right. So let's say a world where I have my cell phone and I just, you know, push a button and I ask for, you know, a car. And I tell it what kind of car I want. I push the button and there's the car. It's all at, it's created in, out of the atoms in the atmosphere. And, you know, I want, oh, I'd like a new house. I'd like a boat. I'd like my own jet. I like everything I want. I just push like I have, you know, like from I Dream a Genie and Major Nelson. Whatever we want, we just ask our genie and it magically appears. You know, if we could live in a world like that,

• 1:37:29Speaker 00

  where everybody can have everything that they want instantly for free. I, I, you know, I guess people would be enjoying themselves. I don't know. I mean, I think just, you know, they, they would just, what would you do if you could have whatever you want? I mean,

• 1:37:43Graham Stephan?

  I don't know. I think, I think in the beginning it would be really interesting, a lot of fun. But I think after a few months of that, maybe six months to a year, you get antsy.

• 1:37:50Speaker 00

  I, I don't know. Well, we have to, I don't know. I, I guess, I mean, I mean, there are some people that are wealthy enough that they really can do that. They just can't push the button, but they can buy anything they want. So I guess you'd have to talk to some of these billionaires and say, hey, what's, you know, what's your life like? Because in theory, that's what everybody's life would be like because, you know, nobody would be limited by their resources. If you, if you've got a hundred billion dollars, right? You, you pretty much can get whatever you want, you know, in, you know, um, and so, you know, I don't know. I mean, so what are they doing all day? You know, because in theory they could do that, but.

• 1:38:25Graham Stephan?

  They're motivated beyond that though. They want to change the world. They want to do.

• 1:38:29Speaker 00

  But I guess, but I guess once everybody can have everything they want, I don't know if there's anything left to change. Assuming that you, everybody now lives forever and nobody gets old, you know, I, I don't know. I mean, but you know, but all this stuff, you know, I mean, if humanity is around in a million years, if we haven't blown ourselves up, I'm pretty sure that life will be something like that. If, maybe we won't even be in physical bodies anymore. So maybe none of it will even matter if we're just living in, in, in just thought where we're, you know, we could just do whatever we want because it's all energy and there's no actual matter or space. We're all living in, in, in, in like the, in like a computer.

• 1:39:11Graham Stephan?

  That could be it right now though.

• 1:39:13Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, but if I, I'm, I'm, I'm bound by gravity and all kinds of things. I can't do whatever I want in this simulation. It's kind of a lame simulation.

• 1:39:21Graham Stephan?

  You have to wait for the next simulation, the upgrade.

• 1:39:24Speaker 00

  But, um, no, I don't know. But I mean, I, I'm in, in basically your question. I, I don't think that I'm wrong about, about the dollar. I'm, I think the dollar's going down.

• 1:39:36Speaker 00

  I don't think that Bitcoin is going to deliver the type of dollar hedge that people believe. I think that's unfortunate because I think a lot of people bought Bitcoin for the same reason that I bought gold. And I think they made a mistake. I think they're on the wrong horse. For a while, that horse was running fast, but I think it's pretty much going to the glue factory. I think it's it's out of the race. And, you know, we'll see what happens after this crisis. I think the crisis is inevitable. What's not inevitable is what happens next. You know, how how America reacts to the crisis, what we do.

• 1:40:12Jack Selby?

  So what's your investing philosophy for 2026, 2027? And what would you recommend for the average viewer out there?

• 1:40:21Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, it's the same strategy that I've been recommending for years and years, because I've been preparing for something that still hasn't completely happened. But

• 1:40:34Speaker 00

  what caused me to have the concerns that drove that strategy? All of those problems are even bigger now than when I first started preparing. So that has just reinforced the idea that I'm that I'm right in what people need to own. And, you know, I have my strategies, I have five mutual funds that that I manage. And they are specifically designed to thrive in the global economy that I believe is in the process of unfolding. So you want to have foreign stocks, emerging markets, you want to have investments that are tied to

• 1:41:15Speaker 00

  a lot of commodities and will do well with inflation and it with a dollar, you know, devaluation, de-dollarization. So you want to own physical precious metals, you want to own foreign stocks. Yeah, I mean, pretty much my entire investment strategy, it's all laid out. So people can go to my website at europac.com. Look at my, look at my funds. You can go to Schiff Gold and get some gold and silver and be prepared. And a lot of the investments that worked well when the bubble was inflating are not going to do well as the air comes out.

• 1:41:50Jack Selby?

  What percent of your portfolio is gold?

• 1:41:53Speaker 00

  Well, my, my portfolio right now, it's, it's pretty big, mainly the miners. And a lot of it is because of the appreciation. I was about 50% mining stocks a couple of years ago. And now they've gone up so much, I'm more like 70 to 80%. So I'm trying to bring that down by building up the rest of my portfolio, not by selling my gold stocks so much as adding new money into the, the other, the other stocks that I have, you know, and as I said, I've added energy, more into energy and more into emerging markets recently. But I made a big bet on these gold and silver stocks and I didn't even really think I would have so much, but thing is it took so long.

• 1:42:38Speaker 00

  I had so many opportunities to buy the dips, you know, they kept crushing these stocks. The most recent one was after Trump was elected. We had a big drop in gold stocks. So, you know, I bought, I bought more.

• 1:42:52Speaker 00

  But, you know, I think people should have probably five to 10% at a minimum in like physical gold. And then they should have maybe another 10, 20, 25%. I think still in mining stocks because I think they're that still that cheap. I think there's so much potential there. And then the rest should be more diversified dividend paying stocks. You know, you can have a little bit in some foreign bonds. Shorter duration, but I, I have very little invested in the United States personally. I have, I have some energy stocks in the US. Couple of other stocks, tobacco. I, I, I, my personal portfolio is very, very light on US. And the only tech stocks I have are outside of the US.

• 1:43:31Jack Selby?

  What is that term called? It's like Pascal's wager. Is it, is that what they call it?

• 1:43:37Speaker 00

  I don't know. Never heard of it.

• 1:43:38Jack Selby?

  In terms of religion where it's like, you don't know if you should believe in Christianity or not, or Judaism or not. But if. You don't believe in it and you're wrong. The consequence is extremely bad. Whereas if you do believe in it and you happen to be right. And it's like, great job, you did it right. And if, if you do believe in it and you were wrong, where it's not a thing. It's like, it's not like you risked much.

• 1:44:01Speaker 00

  Well, there you're just, well, I think the only religion, I mean, that that would apply to is like Christianity.

• 1:44:07Jack Selby?

  Exactly.

• 1:44:08Speaker 00

  But Christianity is, you know, it's like all or nothing. Like either you accept Jesus and go to heaven, or you don't and go to hell.

• 1:44:18Jack Selby?

  Yes.

• 1:44:18Speaker 00

  And, and, and that kind of, uh, you know, ultimatum is, you know? I mean, people could say, hey, all I have to do is accept him and I'm, I'm, you know, what do I got to lose?

• 1:44:30Jack Selby?

  I'm not bringing that up in terms of religion.

• 1:44:32Speaker 00

  Judaism doesn't even have that. We don't have that ultimatum. It's like, you know, you believe in God, you don't believe in God. It's not like God's vindictive. I mean, if there's a heaven, everybody goes. It's not like he's like, oh shit, you didn't believe in me. I'm, you're going to, you're going to hell. That's, that's, that to me, that, that, that, you know, but I get what you're saying.

• 1:44:48Jack Selby?

  I'm bringing it up in terms of Bitcoin. It's like in the offhand chance that you were wrong, wouldn't it make more sense just to write off a small percentage of your portfolio to say, hey, look, if I'm right, so be it. It's just a couple percent. But if I am wrong, then Pascal's wager as it pertains to Bitcoin could end up making sense.

• 1:45:10Speaker 00

  That, that logic would have worked in the beginning when Bitcoin was a dollar, right? When I first learned about it, it could have been, look, take a chance. Maybe this thing really catches on, right? What do you got to lose? Throw 10 grand at it, big deal, right? You know? So, yes, I mean, I could have done that back then. But today, the idea that. I should throw some money in it just in case. It's already huge. Everybody already knows about Bitcoin. I mean, who doesn't know about it? It's all people talk about. You know, you watch the financial news and that's all they discuss.

• 1:45:52Speaker 00

  The biggest advertisers are Bitcoin crypto companies. I mean, we have a Bitcoin president. We have a Bitcoin cabinet. I mean, we have a crypto czar. I mean, so it's not like this small little thing where I'm going to get in on the ground floor. I'm going to take a shot. It's already huge. But so, no, I don't buy the idea that I should just throw some money at it just in case. Because I think the odds of Bitcoin going up dramatically from here are just so remote that it's not even worth the gamble. I'd rather take that money and gamble on something else. Because even, like, even if Bitcoin goes to a million,

• 1:46:36Speaker 00

  which I don't really think it's going to do. I mean, it's a little over 10x.

• 1:46:41Jack Selby?

  It's not so much that, though. I think it's if everything else goes down a lot.

• 1:46:45Speaker 00

  But I don't think the stuff that I own, I don't think, I don't think the investments that I own. Look, most of the investments that I've owned, in fact, almost all of them have outperformed Bitcoin over the last four or five years. Some by a lot. So why do I want Bitcoin? I mean, Bitcoin, you know, it's like, what have you done for me lately, Bitcoin? You know, Bitcoin made a lot of money before anybody owned it, right? When, when, when there were barely any people who owned Bitcoin, people were making a lot of money. But over the last several years, when lots of people own it, they're losing money. And they always have to go back. Oh, Bitcoin is the best performing asset. It's beating the S and P. Yes, if you go back to the beginning, but it's not the best performing asset this year,

• 1:47:27Speaker 00

  last two years, last three years, last four years, not even close. So I think it's changed. I don't think Bitcoin is going to be the best performing asset. I just think it's going to keep falling as money is trying to get out. I think all, the money that wants in is already in. The people that haven't bought Bitcoin didn't buy it because they don't want it. And now it's about getting out and preserving what's, you know, what they got. Some people still have a profit now. They can get out and keep their profit. Other people have a loss, they can get out before they have a bigger loss. But a lot of people are just gonna be stuck. They're just gonna watch it, just collapse. I mean, you guys own Bitcoin, is that the deal?

• 1:48:06Graham Stephan?

  I'm 7% Bitcoin. I'm like 3% Bitcoin.

• 1:48:10Speaker 00

  What, what prices did you, what's your average cost of all your Bitcoin?

• 1:48:12Graham Stephan?

  Probably about this. I, I, I.

• 1:48:15Speaker 00

  So you're about even on your Bitcoin?

• 1:48:17Graham Stephan?

  I was him about, I might be up slightly, but I, I've been dollar cost averaging since 2017.

• 1:48:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, if you were dollar cost averaging into gold or silver, you'd be way up. Dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin has been a bad deal for you.

• 1:48:33Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I'm still positive a little bit, but I was quite up when it was 126.

• 1:48:38Speaker 00

  Well, yeah.

• 1:48:39Graham Stephan?

  A few months ago, but it, but.

• 1:48:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, a lot of times you go to a casino and you're up.

• 1:48:43Graham Stephan?

  Goes down, it could go back up and back down again.

• 1:48:45Speaker 00

  Or it can go down even faster.

• 1:48:47Graham Stephan?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:48:48Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, and it's not just that, you know, you didn't lose too much on Bitcoin if it's you're about even. What you lost is the opportunity to have made a lot of money had you bought something else. So let's say you threw, I don't know how much money you have, let's say you threw a hundred grand into Bitcoin. And you still have about a hundred grand. But maybe had you put that into gold and silver and average, and you'd have 200 grand. So you're out a hundred grand because you would have had 200.

• 1:49:14Graham Stephan?

  Those are in hindsight.

• 1:49:16Speaker 00

  Well, no, I was telling people, no, I was telling people in real time, don't buy Bitcoin, buy this.

• 1:49:22Graham Stephan?

  But you could have been telling people, buy Bitcoin at 30,000 and then sell Bitcoin at 120.

• 1:49:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, well.

• 1:49:29Graham Stephan?

  You know, and they would have made.

• 1:49:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, look, woulda, coulda, shoulda. But what if now you have your Bitcoin? And what if a year from now it's lower still? And gold is 7,000.

• 1:49:40Graham Stephan?

  Then I could tax loss harvest.

• 1:49:42Speaker 00

  Well, I'd rather have gains than tax losses.

• 1:49:45Graham Stephan?

  Of course, but for me, it's an amount that I've invested where I'm okay writing it off to zero. I would like not to do that.

• 1:49:52Speaker 00

  Well, that's the one thing, at least I've told people, look, look at Bitcoin as a crap shoot. Maybe you'll, you know, win, maybe you'll lose. But don't put money in that you can't afford to lose all of. In contrast to Michael Saylor, who tells you to put all of your life savings into Bitcoin, and then go into debt and buy Bitcoin. Oh, if you have some extra organs, sell those and buy even more Bitcoin. Right? What? That's his advice.

• 1:50:22Graham Stephan?

  You know, I got some rapid fire questions for you. In one word, gold or silver, if you could only own one forever?

• 1:50:32Speaker 00

  Oh, well, I mean, silver will generally outperform gold in bull markets, but over time, you're probably safer with gold.

• 1:50:40Graham Stephan?

  Best investment you've ever made?

• 1:50:43Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 1:50:45Speaker 00

  Um, there's a few stocks that I've, that I've, that I've done really, really well with, that have gone up, you know, 20, 20, 20 times or more. Sorry. 50. I think I did one that was 50x. But I, the problem is I didn't have enough money in it. I didn't have that much money.

• 1:51:00Graham Stephan?

  Do you know what stocks they were?

• 1:51:02Speaker 00

  The one that I had a stock that went from, um, like 25 cents to 50 bucks.

• 1:51:07Graham Stephan?

  What stock was it?

• 1:51:08Speaker 00

  It was called Hurricane Hydrocarbons, and then it became Petro Kazakhstan, and it got bought out. But I think my biggest gainer right now that I still own unrealized, I just didn't put enough money in it, is a company called Delta Electronics. I think I invested 29,000 and it's worth almost 2 million.

• 1:51:25Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 1:51:26Speaker 00

  But that's just one, I didn't put much money. I never bought any more of it. I bought it years ago. But I, you know, I have a number of stocks.

• 1:51:35Speaker 00

  I had one that I put 250 in that's worth about 4 million. So I had put more, it wasn't as good. It was a nice get from that little, and that was only five years ago. So there are stocks that go up. Uh, so I think the best investments I've had were stocks, but some of the worst investments I've had were stocks. I bought stocks that went bankrupt. I lost everything. So, you know, it, but you know, it all comes out in the wash. The key is that my, my winners have to outnumber my losers and the, what I, what I win has to beat what I've lost. But you know, on my overall stock portfolio, I've collected a lot of dividends over the years. So a lot of the stocks that I own were bought with dividends from other stocks. In fact, there were stocks that I own that I've owned for like,

• 1:52:20Speaker 00

  You know, 20 years where I've collected dividends that are three, four, five times what I paid for the stocks. Right? I've been paid a lot more over the course of time than I actually put into the stocks. So that that's the beauty of owning real companies that are businesses that pay dividends. Because you earn from dividends and then what I do with those dividends, because as I invest them in in other things. So I get to compound my dividends by buying more stocks that now pay more dividends.

• 1:52:48Jack Selby?

  Well, I I didn't hear anything that is 150x or higher.

• 1:52:53Speaker 00

  No, I've never.

• 1:52:54Jack Selby?

  Because I I did actually get 150x, put a hundred dollars in a Dogecoin.

• 1:52:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:52:59Jack Selby?

  Got out 15,000.

• 1:53:00Speaker 00

  I've never, I've never been involved.

• 1:53:02Graham Stephan?

  Bought the watch, actually.

• 1:53:03Jack Selby?

  The Doge Lex is what you call it.

• 1:53:05Speaker 00

  I've never been involved in crypto, so I I I never had.

• 1:53:10Graham Stephan?

  You've never experienced what it's like to make 150x.

• 1:53:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've never, I've never done that. I know people that have done that, right? But, you know, I know I.

• 1:53:20Jack Selby?

  And that's, that's not an endorsement of Dogecoin. Let's just make it 100% clear. I do not endorse Doge.

• 1:53:26Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, well, I mean, you made money in Dogecoin. A few other people obviously made money in Dogecoin, but that's because other people lost money in Dogecoin. That's, you know, the thing about the companies that I invested in, the fact that I made money doesn't mean that somebody else had to lose money. They didn't. The companies are more valuable now than when I first bought them. The dividends that I got didn't come out of anybody's pocket. They came out of the earnings of the company. People bought the products and the services of these companies and that gave them income. And I earned that income. Nobody lost anything. But in crypto, all that happens is the money is transferred from the buyer to the seller. So some people win because other people lose, right?

• 1:54:11Speaker 00

  That's not how you create wealth by just moving money around, right? It's just all gambling, right? That's how a casino works. Some people win money because other people lose money, but the house always wins. And ultimately, there is a house, all these exchanges, the miners, there's a rate there, right? So it's actually a negative sum game because there is a cost to play.

• 1:54:34Graham Stephan?

  Gold price prediction for the end of 2026, just one word.

• 1:54:39Speaker 00

  Higher.

• 1:54:41Graham Stephan?

  Give a price.

• 1:54:42Speaker 00

  You said one word, higher.

• 1:54:44Graham Stephan?

  One price.

• 1:54:45Jack Selby?

  One number.

• 1:54:45Graham Stephan?

  One number.

• 1:54:46Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't know. I think gold will top 6,000 this year. I, you know, it said 5,000 now. I, I don't know. You know, it could be a lot higher. It, it depends on a lot of factors that are beyond my control. But I think gold's going a lot higher. Uh, and it could go a lot higher this year, but maybe it goes a lot higher next year.

• 1:55:03Graham Stephan?

  What about S and P 500?

• 1:55:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I think it's going to go down in terms of gold. What it does in terms of dollars. You know, it's probably more likely to rise than fall.

• 1:55:16Speaker 00

  The NASDAQ might be more likely to fall than rise. I think there's a lot of expensive stocks there. But I've been saying the same thing about the S and P for the last 25 years. I think the price will go up in dollars, but down in gold, and that's exactly what's happened. The S and P, like I know the Dow, because I know the numbers. The Dow is down 75% over 25 years pricing gold, even though it's gone from 10,000 to 50,000. It's, it's less valuable. You have less gold now if you sell your stocks than you did in, in 1999.

• 1:55:47Speaker 00

  And, and, and I've been saying the same thing since then, that stocks would go down priced in real money.

• 1:55:52Graham Stephan?

  Who's a bigger threat to the economy? The Fed, politicians, or the American consumer?

• 1:55:58Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, probably the Fed. The Fed has probably done more damage. I mean, the consumer is just, you know, what, you know, he's just buying stuff. But the Fed, the Fed is, the Fed is, I mean, the institutions that I think that have done the, the most damage are the Fed and the Supreme Court. Uh, I mean, I, I think Congress has done a lot of damage too. But had the Fed done its job and the Supreme Court done its job, Congress and the president would have done a lot less damage.

• 1:56:27Graham Stephan?

  If your son called you and said, Dad, I'm going all in on Bitcoin. I got a good feeling about this. What do you say?

• 1:56:34Speaker 00

  Well, he doesn't have much to go all in with, so he really.

• 1:56:36Graham Stephan?

  Let's just say it's go all in.

• 1:56:38Jack Selby?

  So you're going to flex on him, basically.

• 1:56:39Graham Stephan?

  Just to say, bar mitzvah, I just want Bitcoin.

• 1:56:43Speaker 00

  Well, I, I don't know. I mean, I, I, obviously I would try to talk him out of it. Like if my son said, hey, I'm thinking about jumping off a bridge. You know, I'm tired of life and I, you know, I, I, you know, I, I'm just going to end it all. I would try to, I would try to talk him out of it. So if he tried to commit financial suicide.

• 1:57:00Jack Selby?

  He would no longer be your son.

• 1:57:01Speaker 00

  No, he'd still be my son. He would just be broke. But he's already broke. I mean, he doesn't have much. I mean, he's trying to work in San Francisco and trying to, you know, try, you know, he just got out of college, so he doesn't really have much. I mean. Yeah. Does he not just like ask you for money? Yes, of course he asks me for money. And what do you say? I know, but no, I do. I do provide money. I help, I pay rent and I help, you know, I do provide, I still support him mostly. He should be, when I was his age, I was already supporting myself. Do you think, so do you think he'll just kind of be like waiting until like you end up just be, all right, here's a bunch of money or something? Or do you think, like, is he wondering when will his?

• 1:57:43Speaker 00

  I hope, I want him to earn his own money. I want all my kids to earn their own money. I mean, they're gonna get money from me eventually, but they need to earn money. They need to learn to be responsible. They need, you know, I mean, the problem is you can't, you know, you just can't give your kids a bunch of money. Um, and they'll, you know, you, you, you, you know, there's an old saying, you get, give, give your kids enough money to do something, but not enough money to do nothing. And it's important. I mean, you know, I mean, I don't know what I would have been like. I inherited nothing. My, my, my God, I didn't get a nickel from my, my dad. Did that make you more motivated though, to not have any sort of backstop, that you just had to do it yourself?

• 1:58:28Speaker 00

  Like more grit? Maybe, I don't know. But I mean, I mean, I knew I had to, because if I didn't make it, I wasn't gonna get it. I mean, I wasn't gonna, I, you know, I've never inherited anything. I didn't have a rich uncle or an aunt. Nobody's ever given me a nickel. So whatever I have, you know, I certainly didn't marry into money. You know, I married out of money. Will you take a hundred million dollars right now to never publicly talk about the economy ever again? I don't know. I mean, decent amount of money. What about a hundred million to never talk about gold again? Again, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's, these are weird questions. Because it's a lot. I mean, I have more than that. So, but I mean, but it is a lot of money even for, you know, I mean, I'm not a billionaire yet. So, I mean,

• 1:59:12Jack Selby?

  Yet?

• 1:59:13Speaker 00

  I could. Yeah, I will be. I'm getting close.

• 1:59:15Jack Selby?

  Do you have a specific, I mean, Google, we Googled it. Google says you're at like 900 million.

• 1:59:20Speaker 00

  Now, Google, Google doesn't have a Google. The only thing that I've ever seen, if you Google my net worth, Peter, because if you go Peter Schiff and Google it, just say Peter Schiff, one of the top things is net worth. So a lot of people are, you know, are curious about what my net worth is. And the only thing that I ever see is like 70 or 80 million.

• 1:59:40Jack Selby?

  Oh, I saw like a 900.

• 1:59:42Speaker 00

  And yeah.

• 1:59:43Jack Selby?

  I see higher.

• 1:59:44Speaker 00

  Well, but that figure came from my Senate disclosure in 2010, which was about my net worth in 2010. I've made a little money since then. So, but, but I don't, you know, obviously I don't publish it because I'm not, I don't have it, you know, I don't own stock in publicly traded companies. So whatever it is, it is.

• 2:00:06Jack Selby?

  What difference is it if people know that you have $500 million or a billion dollars?

• 2:00:11Speaker 00

  I don't know. It's just none of anybody's business exactly how my kids don't even know how much I have. But I mean, but all I said is I'm not a billionaire, but I think I will be. But, you know, it, it just all depends on if I'm right on the markets, right? If, if, if the market's completely reversed right now, then I probably won't be. But if the markets do what I think they're going to do, if the dollar continues to fall for the next few years, if foreign stocks continue to outperform US stocks, the way they did last year, mining stocks, then I think in a few years I'll, I'll get there, you know?

• 2:00:49Jack Selby?

  What's a one sentence tip that every single viewer watching right now should follow to become rich?

• 2:00:55Speaker 00

  Work hard, you know, believe in yourself, you know, you just, you know, don't let people tell you, you can't do something. Stick to things, you know, you gotta, you know, you, you gotta be all in. I mean, I mean, I, I used to work,

• 2:01:10Speaker 00

  you know, from the minute I got up till I went to sleep and there was no weekend. I mean, a weekend was just a more opportunity to work. When you're just getting started, if you're trying to run a business and, and people, you know, don't appreciate how hard entrepreneurs work. You know, people just take for granted, oh, they've always been rich. They've had, no, people, they work their ass off, you know, in the beginning.

• 2:01:31Jack Selby?

  Do you ever wish you took it easier?

• 2:01:34Speaker 00

  I mean, not really. Um, I mean, I, I can take it easier now.

• 2:01:42Speaker 00

  You know, people say, hey, you gotta stop and smell the roses. And I think I smelled a few along the way.

• 2:01:49Speaker 00

  But I think I made a lot of difference. I mean, I know I hear from people every day.

• 2:01:55Speaker 00

  How much I've influenced them over the years. How many people would be socialist but for me, you know, and I got them young and I got them to understand capitalism and, um, you know, I mean, I mean, so I've made a big difference in the lives of a lot of people, much more so than, you know, your typical stockbroker, right? Who's, you know, so, uh, and that's, that's satisfying. That I, and that's one of the reasons that I, that I, that I keep doing what I'm doing because I know that I continue to impact people.

• 2:02:28Speaker 00

  And I know that, you know, I go to these events, like I go to the, um, the crypto events. Nobody poses for more selfies than me. And people, even though I'm the one guy there that doesn't like Bitcoin, all those Bitcoiners want to get their photo taken with me because I influence them. Uh, because, you know, they respect me, even though I don't like, like, you know, they're, they're shit going.

• 2:02:53Speaker 00

  But all the Bitcoin promoters, I'm there, you know, they're not, you know, people, they're walking right by them to, to come, to come up to me. Uh, because, you know, I, I, I've meant something in their lives. And, um, so that, I mean, you know, it's hard to, you know, put a, put a value on that. Cause a lot of that, I mean, I just, just, you know, I don't get paid for that. I just do that.

• 2:03:16Speaker 00

  But,

• 2:03:18Speaker 00

  yeah, but it did get back to your question. People just, you know, just have to be motivated and, and, and work and, and don't be lazy. And, you know, a, an important thing though, is if you're going to go into business, you're going to do something. Try to enjoy what you're doing because it'll be a lot easier to work hard if, if you enjoy it.

• 2:03:42Speaker 00

  You know, and so, you know, you got to figure out what you're good at and what you like. And if, if they're the same things, then, then you're lucky.

• 2:03:51Graham Stephan?

  That's what Logan said.

• 2:03:52Speaker 00

  But

• 2:03:53Graham Stephan?

  The exact same thing.

• 2:03:55Jack Selby?

  So you're the exact same as Logan Paul. Guys, you heard it here first.

• 2:03:59Speaker 00

  Well, I'm sure.

• 2:04:00Jack Selby?

  Peter Schiff is the exact same thing as Logan Paul.

• 2:04:02Speaker 00

  Maybe I said that.

• 2:04:03Jack Selby?

  Coincidentally, neither of you guys own Bitcoin.

• 2:04:05Speaker 00

  Maybe I said that.

• 2:04:06Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, this is true.

• 2:04:07Speaker 00

  Maybe I said that on impulsive and then he repeated it. But.

• 2:04:10Graham Stephan?

  Very well.

• 2:04:11Speaker 00

  That could have been it, so. But I definitely can tell that Logan enjoys what he does. And he makes a lot of money doing it, you know, and he like, he's made a lot more money at his age than I did. I mean, when I was Logan's age, or I mean, and his brother now, Jake has made more money than Logan. But I mean, I mean, I didn't, I didn't even make my first million until I was 30, over 30 to get a million. I mean, so I mean, these guys have made a ton of money. I don't even know if any of them are 30. I don't think they are. They're.

• 2:04:43Jack Selby?

  Logan just turned 30.

• 2:04:44Speaker 00

  He just turned 30?

• 2:04:45Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So these guys have had incredible success at a very young age. And I think it's great. I mean, I think they're great kids, you know, I mean, and they earn their money because people are entertained by what they do. People give them money. People voluntarily buy shit that they're selling, right? They didn't, they didn't, they're not stealing the money. People out, you know, but they, they get a lot of people that enjoy what they're doing and they're willing to pay a little bit of money. And you make a little money from a lot of people. Turns into, turns into quite a bit of money.

• 2:05:21Jack Selby?

  Yeah. Well, Peter, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour. What a timely episode, too.

• 2:05:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:05:28Jack Selby?

  Thank you guys so, so much for watching. We're out here in Puerto Rico, flew all the way over here, Las Vegas to Austin, Austin for a few episodes, Austin to Atlanta, Atlanta to Puerto Rico, and tomorrow we're flying all the way back.

• 2:05:41Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:05:41Jack Selby?

  And we're doing this for you guys. And we are so endlessly grateful that you guys tune in every Sunday and sometimes on a Wednesday for a midweek episode to listen to us. Yep.

• 2:05:49Graham Stephan?

  That's why you gotta subscribe, hit the like button, and we'll link to all your information down below in the description, including your Twitter, by the way, which I really appreciate. I get your tweets all the time.

• 2:05:58Speaker 00

  And I write my, I compose those myself.

• 2:06:01Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:01Speaker 00

  It's not an AI bot.

• 2:06:02Jack Selby?

  I really like it. As we walked in here, I kind of like screamed.

• 2:06:05Speaker 00

  You had maximum, also maximum, what do you call that? Lookage? You were zoomed in like 700%. So all you could see was your text box. Well, you know, I mean, my, I'm 60, almost 63, right? I can't, I can't read it if it's really small. I wonder if that's how Trump tweets, like he's maximum like font size.

• 2:06:25Jack Selby?

  One word at a time.

• 2:06:27Speaker 00

  Guys, thank you so much for watching. He does that fast, but how, how long are you guys staying in Puerto Rico? We're leaving tomorrow morning. Oh, okay. Well, all right. Well, thanks for stopping by. Thank you. Yeah. Hopefully your audience will check out my podcast. I'm doing one later today. Hopefully I have the voice. I'm doing my own podcast. Really? It's 8pm. Right, right, right. Oh, well, I'm gonna do it at 9. So I have to eat and then I have to do my own podcast. You're busy. And I gotta figure out what I'm gonna say, although I usually don't know what I'm gonna say until I start saying it. It kinda like talk until, you know, talk for now. So that's Peter Schiff Show, so. Awesome. Thank you guys. Check out Peter Schiff Show. Thank you guys for watching so much.

• 2:07:03Jack Selby?

  Till next time.

• 2:07:04Graham Stephan?

  By the way, if you enjoyed this episode, we just posted our next one early for members. So if you click the join button, you could literally begin watching our next episode right now. Really hope you enjoy it.