Central Banks Panic, Gold Soars—How to Protect Your Future in 2026 | Impact Theory W Tom Bilyeu & Jaspreet Singh

Welcome back to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. In this episode, Tom Bilyeu sits down with renowned finance educator Jaspreet Singh for a timely and hard-hitting conversation about the global economy, the future of the US dollar, and how power is swiftly shifting in the world of finance. As central banks stockpile gold and questions swirl about the stability of the dollar, Jaspreet Singh breaks down what this means for investors at every level—and why the measures and announcements coming out of Washington could redefine financial security for millions. Together, they explore the profound impact of Federal Reserve leadership under a new administration, President Trump’s aggressive economic moves, and how gold, crypto, and alternative investments have become critical hedges in uncertain times. You'll hear about the real drivers behind tariffs, the intense economic rivalry between the US and China, and why traditional portfolios and retirement strategies may not hold up in this new financial landscape. This is a can't-miss conversation for anyone who wants to understand not just where the money is moving, but how you can position yourself to thrive in an era of volatility and rapid change. Buckle up for an episode packed with actionable insights on investing, government policies, and the future of wealth creation. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show: https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call: https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/: https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Huel: High-Protein Starter Kit 20% off for new customers at https://huel.com/impact code impact https://huel.com/impactKetone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription orderQuince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpodShopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impactPique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impact Cape: 33% off your first 6 months with code IMPACT at https://cape.co/impact Plaud: Get 10% off with code TOM10 at https://plaud.ai/tomDuck. Ai: Protect your privacy at https://duck.ai/impactRaycon: 15% off at https://buyraycon.com/impacttheorybc Summ: code TOMVIP20 for 20% off your first year at https://summ.com?via=tombilyeu&coupon=TOMVIP20 https://summ.com?via=tombilyeu&coupon=TOMVIP20 Register For Jaspreet’s Live Investor Workshop: https://briefs.finance/3ss Market Briefs Newsletter: https://briefs.finance/xvr Briefs Finance Website: https://www.briefs.co https://www.briefs.co/ Jaspreet’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MinorityMindset Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. Jaspreet Singh, welcome back.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Thank you, Tom, for having me.

• 1:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Dude, I'm honored. You are in a lane of finance that I now spend an inordinate amount of time in. And so getting to sit down with you, I think, is going to be a lot of fun. And where I want to start is, right now, you've got central banks all over the world that are hoarding gold. When you have the people that control the monetary system, actually shorting essentially their own currency and our currency, quite frankly, what is it that the average investor needs to understand? And fast, that those guys already understand?

• 1:45Speaker 01

  When you invest your money, the question is, what money are you investing? If you're in the United States, you're investing dollars. And so when you invest dollars into the stock market and you get the news that the stock market has grown by 10%, you feel good.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  But that's only relative to the dollar. And the reason why that's so important is because we assume that if the stock market is growing, my investments are growing and becoming more wealthy. But the question is, what is the measuring stick that you're using to see is this a 10% return actually good or not? Because if I got a 10% return in the stock market, but my cost of living has grown by 20%, now all of a sudden that 10% doesn't look so good. If the stock market grows by 10%, but a different currency, say, gold grows by 20%, now all of a sudden, that return doesn't look as good because compared to an other currency, and I'm going to call gold a currency because it has been the historical currency, now that 10% return doesn't look so good either.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  And what we're seeing happening today is that gold prices have been growing faster than the stock market. And that's not normal because gold doesn't produce real economic value the way that, say, Amazon stock does or Chipotle stock. Now, you might say, well, just breathe, I can use gold to build a table, I can use gold to build jewelry, I can use gold in electronics, sure. But gold, when you purchase gold as an investor, it sits there in a drawer and it looks back at you, it doesn't really do anything. You buy gold as a hedge against inflation, meaning I buy gold because I'm worried that my dollar is going to lose value.

• 3:27Tom Bilyeu?

  So you think that the central banks are worried the dollar is going to lose value?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  I don't think, I know.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  In fact, in 2025, it was one of the worst years for the United States dollar in the last century, sorry, in the last decade. But it's not just the United States. You mentioned there's countries around the world. China has been buying up gold, Poland has been buying gold, Turkey has been buying gold. And there's a reason why. Number one is they're concerned about what is going to happen to the value of the United States dollar because the dollar is known as the world's reserve currency. We can talk about what that means in a second. But the second issue is... They want to now strengthen their currencies. That way, if the dollar does lose value, that they're not the ones that are picking up the tab for the dollar collapsing.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  And they want to protect themselves by having more assets, having more collateral, having more wealth. And that wealth now is not a fiat currency like the dollar. It is gold. Because gold has been money for longer than we've been alive.

• 4:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, walk me through what exactly is happening that's made everybody have almost a universal consensus that the dollar's in trouble?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Let's start with, why is the United States dollar the world's reserve currency? To know how we built our strength, that way you can see how we're losing the value. Because the United States dollar wasn't always the world's reserve currency. We became the world's reserve currency in the mid 1990s, around 1944. We became known as the world's reserve currency because now we were a growing economy. We were a growing superpower. And this dollar was very powerful because we, as a country, did not have a lot of debt, while we had a very strong economy at the same time. So now the world started to look at the United States dollar as the world's reserve currency,

• 5:25Speaker 01

  which means a lot of global trade was now happening in the dollar, which includes things like oil. So if you wanted to buy oil, doesn't matter if in the United States or not, you were buying it in dollars. And then things started to change over time. Because back in the mid 1900s, that dollar that we had was backed by physical gold, which meant that if I spent a hundred dollars, I was spending gold. It was just a dollar representation, a paper representation of physical gold. But then things changed on August 15, 1971, because then-President Richard Nixon was facing economic troubles. We had a lot of debts.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Countries around the world were saying, "Pay us back, because we lent money to you." We didn't have enough money, and remember, money was gold, to pay back all these countries. So we had two options. We could declare default, meaning bankruptcy, and have a huge economic crisis.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Or do something unique. And President Richard Nixon decided to do something unique. And what the unique thing was is he took the dollar off of the gold standard. Which meant now, we said, okay, we owe you, let's just say hypothetically, a billion dollars. Right now, we don't have a billion dollars' worth of gold. So how about we just take the dollar off of the gold standard? We can print a billion dollars with the push of a button. Here's your billion dollars, we get to keep all of our gold. And in the beginning, it felt great, we could pay off all of our debts. We could stimulate our economy because now the government could spend money like crazy. Because all of a sudden, we have a money printer that doesn't need more wealth, which is gold. And we could just keep printing money, or what we thought was money.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  And now we can spend it in the economy, we can create jobs, the economy starts to boom, the markets are booming. But then, there was a consequence. Because the most expensive kind of money is free money, and that consequence is inflation. So in the late nineteen seventies now, we went through what was called a stagflation era. This was the highest reported inflation rates that we've seen in the last century, even higher than the pandemic. Because we were spending so much money we didn't have. And now, the cost of living has gone up so much while the economy is slowing. Which means wages are falling, people don't have jobs, but prices keep going up. That's what stagflation is. And then we had to fix this problem.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  And by we, I mean our central bank here in the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank, had to fix the problem. And what they did was then Chairman Paul Volcker raised interest rates significantly, close to twenty percent. So we talk about during the pandemic era, we raised interest rates to three, four, five percent. We're talking about near twenty percent during the early nineteen eighties. Which meant when you go to get a thirty year mortgage, you weren't paying five, six, or seven percent. You're paying fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen percent on that mortgage. But they had to do that to save the dollar. Because there was concerns about the dollar collapsing, hyperinflation, about the dollar not being a reserve currency anymore.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  And so we had to raise interest rates to, to save the value of the dollar. And that was when we went through a very deep recession. But then our money printing problems did not grow away. Because we continued to spend money we didn't have, and that accelerated during the 2008 crash. When the great financial crisis happened in 2008. The economy was in freefall. Wall Street was collapsing. We had firms just going bankrupt everywhere. And now to save this, we had the Federal Reserve Bank start doing what's called quantitative easing, which is money printing. They started printing money and lowering interest rates.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Lowering interest rates make it cheaper for people to borrow money, so you can get a mortgage cheaper. You can borrow money for a car cheaper. Institutions can borrow money and invest in the stock market cheaper. While the Federal Reserve Bank is printing money. And then they're injecting it into the economy as a way to stimulate the economy. Now, the concern when that happened during the 2008 crisis was we're printing so much money. Because we printed over a trillion dollars, which was unheard of during the 2008 crisis. That was unheard of. And so the concern was, we're going to destroy the value of the dollar. We're going to have hyperinflation. So during the 2008 crash time, we saw the stock market go down. We saw real estate prices go down. Gold prices were shooting up.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Because people said, if the dollar collapses, I want to own real money. What's real money? Gold. So investors are buying up gold like crazy. And then 2012 came, and remember 2012 was when real estate prices bottomed and they started to go back up. The stock market started hitting new highs. The economy finally started feeling like it was recovering. So 2012 came. And now investors said, oh, we're not going to have hyperinflation. It looks like we survived this crisis. We don't need gold. We need real assets. So in 2012, gold prices crashed. Stocks started to go up. Real estate started to go up. And gold prices stayed low, 2013, 2014, 2015, until 2020. 2020 hit.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  The pandemic happened, the economy gets shut down, and now all of a sudden, we started quantitative easing again, but not one trillion dollars, we're talking about multi-trillion dollars. And what happened to gold? Gold prices started shooting up because now the same concerns happened. We are printing money like crazy. We are diluting the value of the dollar. It's dollar devaluation. And if this happens, if the dollar loses value, we need a real money to save. And so people started buying up gold again. And so in 2020, yes, we saw markets collapse and then markets started to go up again because we were pumping money into the markets at a rate we've never seen before, but gold prices also started to go up.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  And that happened in 2021 through 2020, the early part of 2026, all because of concerns about the dollar. And then a lot of things happened in 2026, which completely shifted the dollar again because President Trump made, just made, one of the, I shouldn't say one of, the biggest economic decision of his presidency yet. And that change is going to impact the dollar, gold, silver, stocks, and the value of your 401K as well.

• 12:09Tom Bilyeu?

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• 12:54Tom Bilyeu?

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• 13:37Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:19Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  And this is that concept that now a lot of people need to understand, which is what is the Federal Reserve Bank? Because President Trump just appointed a new chairman at the Federal Reserve Bank. And how is that going to impact your investments? So let's break that down.

• 14:56Tom Bilyeu?

  So you think the Fed chair is the most consequential decision he's made so far?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Because that is going to directly impact every single person. And the reason why it's so consequential is because the Federal Reserve Bank, although they're called the Federal Reserve Bank, they're not a bank because you and I can't go to deposit money. They're not a reserve because they're not sitting on any cash reserves. And they're not federal. They're not a part of the United States government. And so, over the last, since Trump entered the White House in 2025, President Trump has been very critical of the Federal Reserve Bank. You may have heard him say, "We need lower interest rates, too late Powell is not cutting interest rates." Well, he couldn't do anything about it, meaning President Trump. He couldn't tell Jerome Powell, who was the chairman at the Federal Reserve Bank, the head of it, to lower interest rates. He can't tell them what to do.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  He couldn't even fire Jerome Powell. Because they are separate from the United States government. And the central bank has such a big influence, not just on our economy, but the global economy, because the dollar is the world's observed currency. So when the Federal Reserve Bank makes any decision, whether it's cutting or raising interest rates or money printing, the entire world watches and the entire global economy reacts to that, not just the United States. So now, when President Trump has the ability to appoint a new chairman, because Jerome Powell's term is expiring on May 15th, 2026, which means, because he's expiring, President Trump has the ability to appoint a new chairman.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  That's the only reason why. And so because that time is happening today, President Trump gets to appoint a new chairman, and he has said time and time again, in 2025, he said, "I'm going to appoint somebody who will do what I say." And what does President Trump want? He wants the lowest interest rates of any developed nation in the world. Number two, he does not want Federal Reserve Bank independence. He wants the Federal Reserve Bank to do what the White House wants. He wants the Federal Reserve Bank to come into the White House and to be there for meetings on what decisions need to be made about the economy. The reason why that's so significant is because if President Trump wants more money printing, he wants more stimulus, he wants lower interest rates,

• 17:13Speaker 01

  that could influence now the entire global economy.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  But there's a few nuances that really need to be made aware of. So in the early part of 2026, gold prices were booming, silver prices were booming because of exactly this. We did not know who President Trump was going to pick. And President Trump said again and again and again, I want somebody who is going to aggressively cut interest rates, who is going to aggressively print money because President Trump says he wants a weaker dollar, which might sound weird, but the reason why he wants a weaker dollar is because a weaker dollar means a stronger stock market. It means foreign countries can buy more stuff in the United States. And so while it's not good if I'm trying to buy groceries, if I have a weaker dollar, it's good for the wealthy, the investors, because now my assets keep going up.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  And so President Trump says, I want a weaker dollar, I want more stimulus and I want more cutting of interest rates because that means asset prices are going to rise. So as we kept getting closer to President Trump announcing who we want to lead the Federal Reserve Bank, gold prices, silver prices were skyrocketing, Bitcoin prices were skyrocketing because we didn't know who he was going to pick, but if he picks somebody like he says, that person who's going to lead the Federal Reserve Bank is going to lead to a weaker dollar. It could lead to a dollar collapse, it could lead to more inflation, it could lead to all these problems. The hedge is clearly gold, maybe Bitcoin, maybe silver.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  And then President Trump came out and he announced a guy by the name of Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve Bank. And that, many investors did not expect. The reason why I say that is because as soon as he was nominated by President Trump, gold prices fell, Bitcoin prices fell, silver prices fell. In fact, it was one of the worst days for Bitcoin in years, it was one of the worst days for gold in the history of time. Why? Because Kevin Warsh, and again, we don't know what he's going to do yet. This is just based off of his previous experience. Kevin Warsh used to work at the Federal Reserve Bank during the 2008 crash. And during that time, under Ben Bernanke, who was the chairman of the Fed, Kevin Warsh said, "Stop quantitative easing, it's going to destroy the dollar."

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Kevin Warsh said, "Stop cutting interest rates, we need higher interest rates to save the dollar." So when you look at that, if that person comes in with any of that type of mentality of I want a stronger dollar, now you're gonna say, wait, does he want to save the dollar? Because if he wants to save the dollar, maybe I don't need gold as much, maybe I need more stocks or real estate or other assets, because maybe the dollar's gonna be okay. Then Kevin Worsch addressed this whole idea of the Federal Reserve Bank independence. Because the reason why, and we'll get into more of this in a little bit, but the the reason why the Federal Reserve Bank wants to be independent is because no president is going to want a recession on their hands.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  If I'm a president, I get to control economic policy, I'm gonna say, cut interest rates and sprint money, because under my presidency, the economy's gonna boom. The next president will deal with the inflation problem, but at least under my presidency, it's going to boom. That's why the Federal Reserve Bank wants to be independent from the Federal Reserve Bank. So now, when you get the news that this Kevin Worsch is gonna come in and he addresses this independence by saying, I want to maintain Fed independency, although we can get general advice from the White House. That was a very different tone from what President Trump said. Because President Trump said, I want the Fed to do what I say, I want them in my meetings and I want them to do as I tell them. Kevin Worsch said, eh, maybe not. Do you have a sense of why Trump went with Worsch?

• 20:56Speaker 01

  I don't know. I really don't know, because the funny part is, you know, Peter Schiff has talked about this too, that, hey, when President Trump elected Kevin Worsch, do you not know that this guy's a hawk? Hawks are people that want higher interest rates. That's not what you've been saying. Maybe President Trump wants somebody that he can blame if he doesn't get the things he wants his way, because remember, Jerome Powell was also appointed by President Trump during his first term in 2017. So President Trump picked him in 2017, and 2018, President Trump started criticizing Jerome Powell. Could there be something to do with it? Maybe. But what Kevin Worsch is saying up until now, and again, this is contingent upon what actually happens in May.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Is he says, we can do two things simultaneously. We can do lower interest rates without causing inflation if we tighten the balance sheet. Tightening the balance sheet means removing money from our economy. So when the Federal Reserve Bank says we want a looser balance sheet, it's fancy Wall Street jargon for saying we want to print more money. When they say we want to tighten the balance sheet, it means we want to pull money out of the economy. So what Kevin Warsh has said up until today is we want to pull money out of the economy, but we also want to cut interest rates. Because if we cut interest rates, getting a mortgage will be cheaper. People can buy more houses. Wall Street institutions can refinance their debt at a lower interest rate.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  And they'll be able to borrow more money and inject it into the stock market. But if we also make the balance sheet lower, we pull money out of the economy, we should be able to manage inflation. We'll see how true that is.

• 22:39Tom Bilyeu?

  What mechanism is he going to use to lower the balance sheet?

• 22:43Speaker 01

  So let's start by understanding how you expand the balance sheet. And that way you can easily understand what it means to tighten the balance sheet. Because expanding the balance sheet, it's what started on December 1st, 2025. So between 2020 to 2022, we went through quantitative easing. Quantitative easing is money printing. So the Federal Reserve Bank in 2020 turned on the money printer and they started injecting money, trillions of dollars into the economy to boost markets. Then in 2022, it became clear that inflation was not going away. So then they started what was called quantitative tightening. And if quantitative easing is injecting money into the markets, meaning buying assets, buying securities,

• 23:26Speaker 01

  more specifically lending money to the United States government. Quantitative tightening is the opposite. It is selling these treasuries. So let's back up and explain.

• 23:38Tom Bilyeu?

  How's he going to get? So I definitely understand that mechanism. I think most of my audience will as well. But how's he going to make sure that there's an appetite for the treasuries? Like if you're trying to sell into the market, typically you would raise interest rates. So people are like, hey, risk-free rate of returns going up. Yep, I'll take some of that. So has he signaled how exactly he plans to both lower the interest rate and create demand for what he wants to sell into the market?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  That's the problem that we have right now. Is the demand for United States treasuries is already falling.

• 24:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  That's why in 2026, the Federal Reserve Bank has begun buying more United States treasuries. Because we're losing those buyers. And now with everything going on in Japan, we might have even less United States buyers. So that's going to be a big.

• 24:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Dramatically. So Warsh hasn't signaled anything about how he actually plans to do that. He's just said, yeah, you can, like, if we can lower the interest rates and get people to buy cool, all good. But he's not dumb. Like, I've seen him. He is very shrewd on the economy. So either he has a plan that he's not indicating, or, and by the way, I can't imagine what that is. Doesn't mean it's not there. Or he is, Trump is getting a one-two punch of Besen saying, you don't understand, you've got to get this guy. He's the most, he's not going to be political. So he's not going to be like Powell. But at the same time, he understands that this is a very dynamic situation.

• 25:08Tom Bilyeu?

  And to both protect the overall economy and the dollar, he's going to have to walk a fine line. And so there may be times where he tightens and you don't want him to, but trust that he's going to have the whole economy in mind. I can't see anything other than him getting the Warsh saying, listen, I'm going to be reasonable. I understand what you're trying to get to. I want that as well. And then Besen saying, Trump, you can't always have the thing that you want right now in this moment. We have to protect the overall thing. Can you imagine, like, even if it's a thought exercise, like, what else he might be saying?

• 25:41Speaker 01

  I think there's two things. Number one, people talk, actions speak very differently than what people do. So let's see what he actually does.

• 25:49Tom Bilyeu?

  But Trump actually nominated him. So you think that there's the, behind the scenes, he's like, listen, bro, I'm going to lower rates. Don't worry about it.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  There's, there's a very high possibility, but I think the second part of that is economic policy. Because President Trump has been very involved with foreign countries and foreign investors to get them to invest money in the United States. So maybe there is some idea that President Trump is going to be working with these countries, investors around the world, to get them to invest money into treasuries. Maybe there is some.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Ideas, or we can call them games, that will be played there. Because we've already seen a number of other ideas slash games that are being played by the United States government to boost assets in other places. Let's start with crypto. In 2025, the President, the United States government launched a new executive order relating to crypto, which is when we now seize Bitcoin, we're no longer going to sell it. We're going to start holding this Bitcoin. The idea being that number one, if we hold this Bitcoin instead of selling it, we as the United States can increase the number of assets that we have so we can borrow more money. And number two, if we own more of these Bitcoin assets, we might be able to revalue this Bitcoin

• 27:05Speaker 01

  at some point in the future, which will allow us to borrow more money. Now, you might say, well, what does revaluing Bitcoin mean? Let me explain that with gold, because the second thing that we're seeing that could happen is the revaluation of gold. In 2025, the Federal Reserve Bank announced that they are considering revaluing our gold reserves in the United States. What that means is right now, it is reported, not confirmed, but reported that we own around 261 million ounces of gold. This gold is valued at around $42 per ounce, which means on our assets, our balance sheet, we own approximately 11 or so billion dollars worth of gold as the United States government.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Well, when gold is at 3, 4, 5,000 dollars an ounce, there's a big delta between what our gold is currently valued at and what is actually valued at. So now we have the Federal Reserve Bank saying, what if we revalue our gold instead of $42 an ounce at 3,000 or 3,300 dollars an ounce? Now, all of a sudden, we can increase the amount of assets that we own on our balance sheet by over 800 billion dollars without actually buying another penny of gold, just by changing our accounting, which allows us now to borrow more money and show other investors, hey, our collateral is worth more. Because the whole idea of people not investing money into the United States, not lending

• 28:30Speaker 01

  money, not buying treasuries, is because people are concerned about the United States dollar's ability to pay it back. Well, if we can show, hey, We are actually much wealthier than you might think. We own way more assets than you might think. And because we own all these more assets, you're getting a bargain rate. And that can then incentivize more people to lend money or invest money in the United States, because now all of a sudden it's a much more credit-worthy investment. And that's going to be part of the economic policy that we need to show that we have more assets in order to justify more people to invest money here.

• 29:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Interesting. Okay, so an international play, Waresh is a part of that. He has a good reputation. He's somebody that people trust. And so there's, and I'm putting words in your mouth, but this at least makes sense to me, that in some ways, we're using, we being, I think this is a play largely of Besen. I, again, could be making that up, but if I'm looking from the outside in, I'm going, all right, Besen, communicating to the world, listen, I understand how you guys perceive Trump. He's radical, he's erratic. We've got Waresh, steady hand, hawk, he gets it. He's going to be far more communicative with the government. We're going to be working in lockstep to grow the economy. And so he's going to make sure that we don't get eaten alive by our debt. He's going to make sure

• 29:49Tom Bilyeu?

  that he's deft with the value of the dollar. I'll leave that vague. And we're going to structure some interesting deals where as you guys invest some of that, we're going to put into treasuries to make sure that we have global appetite. So instead of the treasury having to buy it, you guys making all these investments for chip manufacturing, whatever, we give you breaks, tax incentives, yada, yada. You funnel some of that money into the treasury. And then I know they have big plans for crypto in terms of forcing them to back things one-to-one with US treasuries. So you open up that appetite. And voila, we've got a steady hand in the Fed who's playing ball but is not reckless with the

• 30:28Tom Bilyeu?

  dollar or the interest rates. And now we look better to an international investor who feels, okay, cool, I don't need to hedge everything in gold, you guys are making sense.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  That's

• 30:41Tom Bilyeu?

  It's very interesting. I had not extrapolated that far. We'll see. Obviously, any of that could break down. There's a lot of assumptions. And as you said, paying attention to what they do versus what they say is very wise, but there's internal logic to what you're saying. Okay, I want to put another thing on the table when it comes to the the central banks buying up gold. I think that China is unquestionably trying to march towards backing the yuan with gold. Now, this is maybe giving Xi way too much credit, but I think what he's doing is going, okay, listen, I understand my international reputation is that I'm a dictator, which I am. And so at any time, I could seize your assets. So what I'm going to do is build the gold

• 31:23Tom Bilyeu?

  corridor. I'm going to partner with some country as yet to be named that will hold the gold. And we're going to say, listen, I Xi do not control the gold. So at any time, if you guys want to reclaim your gold, you can. I can't pull a Nixon, because I'm not the one holding the gold. I can't break my tether to gold. And now, the yuan, which he literally just made the call, he didn't mention gold, but he did make the call for the world to start using the yuan as the world's reserve currency. And so you put those together with them being, I think, the largest buyer of gold at the central bank level. And it's like, okay, I get it. This is rising China, declining US, Xi making

• 32:05Tom Bilyeu?

  a play to be the world's reserve currency to replace the US. But he understands the reality that he's got to prove to people that he's a safe place for capital. You didn't mention that in the breakdown, other than that China is one of the people buying. Do you feel that that's a part of this, a small part, a big part?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  No, it's a it's a it's a big part, but it goes beyond just gold. The United States and China are fighting very close to a war. But it's not with tanks and guns, it's with the economy. And the reason why is exactly what you're saying. Right now, the United States economy is significantly larger than China's economy. But the Chinese economy is growing faster than the United States economy. And so now we have a lot of reports saying that we're not too far away. If this continues, that the Chinese economy is going to be larger than the United States economy, which poses a threat, not just to our economy, but now to the United States dollar and reserve status of our currency. And that would have a

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Huge colossal effect, not just on the dollar, but our entire economy here. Because our entire economy is is supported through money printing and stimulus. Because the government is spending trillions of dollars every year. And our economy is addicted to the government's money printing. But the only reason why we can do that is because people have faith in the dollar. And the reason why they have faith in the dollar is because of the reserve status. So now we have China that's saying, hmm, let's strengthen our currency. How? Let's keep buying gold. Let's keep trying to grow our economy. Now China's economy is facing issues, but their economy has been growing faster than the United States' economy. And now you have to wonder, well, what is going to happen next?

• 33:48Speaker 01

  And now we we can see what's happening in economic policy, which is, what's the real reason behind tariffs? Because you might say, what do you mean? It's to generate tariff revenue. No, it's not. Because why is it that not every country is tariffed equally? Not just that. Why is it that tariffs are being used to get people to not do business with specific countries? So when we start to look at what's happening with China and Russia, let's put our focus on China. A big reason why the United States government is putting tariffs on China rather than just generating tariff revenue is to get US businesses out of China as a way to hurt China.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Why is it that the United States government went into Venezuela and captured the president of Venezuela? Because China was one of the, not one of, was the biggest buyer of Venezuelan oil. We want to weaken China's ability to get that oil, to be able to get access into Latin America. But by getting US businesses out of China, that hurts their economy, makes them grow slower. Because if they continue growing, if their currency continues growing, while the United States and the United States dollar is not, that puts us in a very tough situation. Because if we ever lose our status as the world's reserve currency,

• 35:11Speaker 01

  we're going to go through a very deep recession that will make the 2008 crisis feel almost like a walk in the park. Because it won't just be a recession, it'll also be a dollar crisis. And that's something that we really, we've never seen. And that's the type of problem that now we want to start being proactive to to think about how do we how do we protect ourselves from that.

• 35:36Tom Bilyeu?

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• 36:14Tom Bilyeu?

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• 36:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. Yeah, so for me, there are two things that are gonna really play out over the next 10 years. You've got USV China, you've got AI. I'll set aside the AI thing for a minute because what we're about to talk about, I think AI could invalidate, but I want to explore it as a thought exercise. Okay, so as the US and China are doing battle economically, how do you see this playing out? So Trump is claiming that we've got all these investments flooding into the US, trillions and trillions of dollars. It's all gonna start manifesting. We're deregulating. That's gonna unlock all this growth.

• 37:23Tom Bilyeu?

  And China has its own sort of 2008, maybe on steroids crisis with what happened to their housing market.

• 37:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Demographic question marks, depending on if you're in the Peter Zeihan camp, or the Peter Zeihan is a moron camp. There's a lot of battle there in terms of what their economic outlook looks like going forward. Do you see the US doing things, what I'll call pressing their late-stage advantage? So Trump is being ultra-aggressive, trying to hurt China, showing the world we have the most powerful military, playing the hand of being the world's reserve currency to continue to print money and do things. We're printing $40 billion a month right now. So we're still playing that age-old game.

• 38:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Is that going to make us stronger? Or is that going to weaken us in the face of a China that's being more conciliatory, reaching out to the world, trying to establish its dominance in its own hemisphere, which it does not look like the US is going to offer a serious challenge, maybe via Japan. But how do you see that playing out?

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Well, money printing never makes you stronger. It makes you weaker. But what I think is going to happen, and I think the more important thing that the average person needs to understand, is that it's going to create new opportunities to put your money.

• 38:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Investment opportunities.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Investment opportunities.

• 38:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Walk me through that, because this feels like I look at the economy and it's skittish, because it doesn't even understand the world order anymore.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So every financially savvy investor wants to invest where the money is moving, not where it was. So anytime you see money move, that can create opportunity. The biggest spender in our economy, it's not you or me or Amazon or Nvidia, it's the United States government, because they're spending our tax dollars and then some with all the borrowing and money printing that they're spending.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  So now, when you hear the news that the United States is trying to distance themselves from China, that changes a lot of things in our economy because we've been so heavily reliant on China. I'll give you one specific example. We start putting tariffs on China. China then responds, obviously, with tariffs, and then they say something about rare earth minerals. We say, no more rare earth minerals for you. And prior to the year 2025, the average person has no idea what the heck a rare earth mineral was.

• 39:55Tom Bilyeu?

  True.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  But what are these rare earth minerals? It's a group of these metals that we use in pretty much everything. We use them in our electronics, we use them in defense, we use them in pretty much every part of our economy. And the reason why we never thought about them is because China is the world's leading refiner and producer of these rare earth minerals. They're not the only one that can mine them, but they're the ones that are actually refining them. And so for forever, essentially, we've been getting these rare earths from China, and we in the United States don't have any supply chain for these rare earths, but we need them. We need them to produce iPhones. We need them for a lot of our economy. And so when China says, no more rare earths for you, now, all of a sudden, the US says, oh crap, how are we going to operate if we don't have

• 40:42Speaker 01

  access to these rare earths? And this is where now we start to see shifting in money and opportunities. Because now what's happening is we have the United States government trying to combat this by building new rare earth supply chains, passing new government policies, investing money, tax dollars, into private companies, into private stocks, which is not a normal thing to do.

• 41:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you love or hate that?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Well, I don't like it.

• 41:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  I mean, well, let me, let me put it this way. It makes me money, but I hate the idea of it because it screws over the average person. And that's why my goal is to say, here's what's happening, learn how to use it. But they're investing money into private companies that are trading on the stock market.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  And they're trying to now build this whole new system, the supply chain for rare earths, which has never happened before. Why does that matter? Because the investors that understand these types of things, these shifts, we call them, that creates opportunity. And the people that understand that now are seeing the ability to grow their investments in ways that were never possible before because there's so many shifts happening. And that's where there are so many opportunities.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Now, here's where it gets tricky. There's a difference between investing based off of what's on the news and investing based off of research. So this is what my firm specializes in. It's the research side because there's a lot of things that happen on the news and a lot of emotion that happens on the news. You'll hear the news about the United States buying shares of a stock. You'll hear about these rare earth stocks benefiting. But by the time it's on the news, a lot of the real money has been made. Now, when it comes to research, and anybody can do this, you just have to know where and how to research. This is now where you're digging one layer deeper to understand what is the United States government doing? What are Wall Street institutions doing? Where are they putting their money?

• 42:51Speaker 01

  That way you can identify where is money moving before it hits the headlines. Now, this takes more legwork and more time.

• 42:57Tom Bilyeu?

  So but talk to me about what you guys are looking at and seeing. So what I think I'm hearing you say is decoupling from China is long-term, don't know. I don't know how it's going to play out. But I do know it's causing money to move. And what it's doing is it's pulling money into the US economy so that we can start refining and handling our own supply chain for rare earths. And if you understand what rare earths are going to win, then there's a huge investable opportunity.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that's just one shift. So you said, what are we doing? Let me let me give a clear example of what a shift is, and I'll kind of show you how we do that research. So you can kind of see the progression. When the pandemic hit, what did many Americans do? Well, they got locked in their houses and people started buying cats and dogs. When people start buying cats and dogs, why does that matter for an investor? Because when people have more cats and dogs, they need more veterinary care. They need more pet toys. They need more pet food. This is a shift because now as more and more money goes into this animal pet industry, those companies, those stocks can benefit. That is a shift of spending money. So now, if you can identify where money is moving,

• 44:08Speaker 01

  that can create an investment opportunity, not trading, but an investment opportunity because now you can identify where money is starting to go towards. So we're talking about rare earths. Well, when this whole rare earth thing was happening, this was very strange because the entire rare earth industry was essentially nonexistent in the United States because there was no need for it. It wasn't profitable because you could just buy it from China for a fraction of the price. And so now, all of a sudden, when China says no more rare earths for you, the United States government now starts passing executive orders, putting many billions of dollars into this industry. And most people have no idea what is happening.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  So what we started doing, my analysts were, number one, started to research, well, what's happening? And then we were invited into a congressional summit where there was a announcement of what the White House is going to do with critical minerals and how they're planning on building the infrastructure and different things that they want to do. So my analysts were there and we identified, okay, based off of what the government's doing, these companies, these stocks, we believe could benefit. And so we published reports on that and that was one of our top reports in 2025 because, well, we can see there are certain stocks that are primed to benefit from the United States government shifting money into this rare earth supply chain.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  And if you know that the government is paving the way for this industry, the leading companies that really haven't seen any stock movement in the last number of years, they have no way to go but up because there's so much money going into this and it is essential for our economy. So that's one type of shift that we were identifying. Another one, when the tariffs were happening in, you know, the early part of 2025.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  We knew in our firm, now all of a sudden, the global supply chain is going to change. So where do we now invest our money? Where do we identify where money is moving? And what we saw was Wall Street, investment firms on Wall Street, so you know, the Black Rocks, the the big institutions, started shifting where they were investing their money. Because they were now looking for ways to own pieces of the global supply chain through areas around the Panama Canal. And so we were starting to see them quietly put money into these new companies, these new shipping companies, these new supply chain industries, where it wasn't on the news. And so we started, because they have to report this information. And so we were reading their filings, we're identifying this, and now we publish that

• 46:49Speaker 01

  research that, hey, we're seeing more and more of these institutions put a lot of money quietly into these new supply chains, because now that we're seeing companies buy not from China, but from other countries, and to ship it in a different route, that can create an investment opportunity. So that's the type of research that we're doing, and we publish in our market briefs pro reports, because it's all about now understanding where's the money moving. Again, I'm not trying to trade, because that to me is gambling. But as an investor, it's all gambling.

• 47:19Tom Bilyeu?

  It's much like going to the casino. Higher volatility, short term. But yeah, I think even the long term stuff is gambling. You're just saying, listen, I have reason to believe that five years, 10 years, whatever, from now, this is going to be worth more. Still gamble, whatever. I don't want to get sidetracked on that. But what I do want to understand is, okay, I think, it sounds like we're agreeing that the old world order is breaking apart. I think Trump is a symptom, not a cause, but he is certainly a catalyst in terms of making it maybe happen a little bit faster than it otherwise would have happened.

• 47:54Tom Bilyeu?

  If we agree on that, and we agree on a rising China, what are going to be the big moves? And I suppose now we have to put AI on the table. What are going to be the big moves in like the the shifts, the big shifts, to use your word, in the next five years?

• 48:07Speaker 01

  So the way I like to explain it is in the form of an onion. So let's talk about AI, because it's probably the easiest to understand. Because when we think about investing in AI, what the average person thinks about is, I want to invest in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or maybe Nvidia.

• 48:22Tom Bilyeu?

  I really hope that's not true, but you're probably right.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  But that's, I think the average person thinks AI, and that's what they think.

• 48:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  But now that's the outer layer of the onion. That's what everybody knows. And as an investor now, you want to be thinking two, three, four, five layers deeper in this onion. Because now when we think about, okay, what does AI actually mean? AI is this idea of new technologies, more data, more stuff that's going to be stored in the cloud. Okay, so now we can start to peel back this onion. So what do we need in order for AI to happen? Well, we need more semiconductors. So as we start to think about AI, we know that semiconductors are a necessary part of AI. And that now becomes the second layer of the onion you can think about is, okay, if AI grows,

• 49:11Speaker 01

  semiconductors could also benefit. And then you start to research that a little bit more. You see that the government is investing directly into semiconductor companies. They're passing executive orders into semiconductors. So maybe this layer of the onion is already kind of exposed. It's already been on the news, so now we can start to dig a little bit deeper. Now we think, okay, so semiconductors, yes, but what else does AI actually need? Whether or not ChatGPT wins or Claude wins. We need data centers. Data centers are a requirement for AI to work because anytime you go and you enter a prompt, that information is going to be stored somewhere.

• 49:50Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think, though? So on this specifically, when I hear this kind of thing, I'm like, the reason I was nervous that your description of how people think about AI is troubling is because if you're not betting on the sector and you think you're picking a winning horse, you're putting yourself in a weak position. That's my stance. My sense also when I hear this is, well, what about, there's like a whole hypothesis now about on-prem. So you've got what's going on with Open Claw. Think that was the name they finally went with. Where what they're doing is trying to answer the call of like, okay, listen, I know there's a lot of companies. You're terrified of people accessing your private data. So you want to run this on your own computer.

• 50:34Tom Bilyeu?

  You don't want to have to be beholden to somebody else's ABI call. So what if we did all of this on a local machine that you control? And now I don't know that that is going to come to fruition, but when you start thinking about a Disney or whatever, who's, you know, currently suing

• 50:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Sea Dance and saying, okay, hold on a sec. You guys trained on our data. Now they're denying it, but nonetheless, you can understand why they would want to control their own IP in-house, train an AI that they control in-house that other people can only access if it's a part of their model. And so I have a feeling whether it's creating a spreadsheet or it's creating an engine to make something look like Disney. People are going to want to go on prem. So as you watch these shifts happen, how do you guys not get overextended in making a like really specific bet? Or are you saying, bro, this is where I've gone like this is we're now a deep research firm. What we do is place individual bets.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  It's a little bit of both. So

• 51:35Speaker 01

  let's, let's go back and understand what does an investment portfolio look like? Cause if you just invest all of your money into one industry AI, it's less of kind of you really now dialing it into one specific play and that's not the game that we're playing. We have a number of investments that we make and

• 51:57Tom Bilyeu?

  All based on where shifts are happening.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Based off of shifts are happening, but also we want to hedge our own bets as well. So the traditional investment was something like the 6040 portfolio.

• 52:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  6040 portfolio is 60% stocks, 40% bonds. But the reason why this doesn't work for the average person anymore is because number one, bonds have performed so bad. And stocks have become extremely volatile and many people don't know where to invest money in stocks, not to mention that now because of inflation, that same 10% return in the S and P 500 is leading to more and more people not having enough money to be able to retire. That's why the United States is facing a retirement crisis. So now, how do we build a new, modern day portfolio that has stocks and bonds, but not in the same way as before? So what we do is in our stock side, we don't do 60, 40, we're more closer to that 80, 20. But on the 80 side- 80 stocks.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  80 stocks. On the, the stock side, we are analyzing different types of shifts and we have five proprietary shifts that we are constantly studying. Wall Street shifts, which is when a Wall Street institution, like the tariffs, they're shifting where they invest their money. Main Street shifts, when people and businesses spend their money differently, like people are buying cats and dogs. Uh, we have innovation shifts, where we're studying IP. We're studying new patents. We're studying where new types of technology is shifting. A broad market shift, when there is a recession or interest rate cut or rising, doesn't have to be in the United States, it could be anywhere in the world.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Like in 2025, in the early part of, in January 2025, investing in European banks was almost in, uninvestable because the European instability that was happening in the early part of 2025. What we discovered is we have these companies or these countries that are now stimulating banks. They're printing money, stimulating banks, but their stock price hasn't seen any growth yet. Well, if they're getting all this money from the government and they're paving the way for these banks to grow, certainly these bank stocks could benefit. So we were investing in those, uh, European bank stocks. Then come 12 months later, turns out that banks, European banks not only had a good year, it was their best year on record. So that is identifying now a broad market shift.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  And then finally is a government shift, when there's new economic policy, new legislation, new government moves, that also moves money. So we're identifying that, but then even on the bonds side, there are many ways to invest in bonds without getting the-

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Crappy returns you're getting in the United States because you can invest in foreign countries around the world that also borrow money that are backed by the United States and the United States dollar. Where there are many allies to the United States, where we have essentially supported their economies. We've pumped money into many countries around the world. And so now you're investing in these foreign countries' bonds, getting significantly higher rates of returns. And they're essentially backed by the United States government. So there are many ways now to structure your portfolio. Again, I'm not, I don't recommend what I do to anybody else, but the idea is now,

• 55:17Speaker 01

  if you can get slightly better returns, compounded over time, it can lead to significantly more wealth. Because for the average person, the way that you invest your money goes down a few different options. Number one is the hope and pray investor, which is just put it to have a 401k and I have a house. I should be good, right? Well, that worked in previous generations. But today, what people are realizing is, oh, my house is not going to put food on the table. It's not going to give me an income. And if my house goes up in value, I have higher property taxes and I have higher insurance. Not that it's bad to own a house. But if you actually want to make money on the house, you have to either sell it or do a cash out refinance, but then you have to pay that back plus interest.

• 56:01Tom Bilyeu?

  And you have to sell it and downsize or go to a different market.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  With the 401ks, the founder of the 401k has said that the 401k was never meant to be the sole, your sole retirement plan. And unfortunately, we are in the United States today are facing the biggest retirement crisis in the history of time because we have so many people that are retiring based off of their 401k and social security and their house hoping is going to be enough. Unfortunately, for most people, that's not going to be enough statistically.

• 56:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Because the 401k didn't grow enough because it was a 6040 portfolio and the bonds tanked, like what?

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Bonds didn't grow. And then high fees. The average 401k in 2025 with under a million dollars in assets had a 1.26% fee.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Which is, doesn't sound like a lot, but that can eat up a huge chunk of our portfolio because it compounds over time, considering the fact that most 401ks did not even see a 8% annual return, while the market did 10% a year, and that's before fees.

• 57:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Right.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  So now, when you look at that, the average person is going into their 401k just buying a fund and not realizing that a lot of these funds are underperforming, because we don't have any knowledge on how to do that.

• 57:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Hmm.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  And now, we have another problem, which is a newer problem, which I was reading an article about this very recently, is one of the growing, fastest-growing economic demographics that are facing the biggest threat right now are single women. Because we're seeing this larger, growing demographic of women that went through life thinking, "My husband managed the money. He invested for me, I never really invested before, and now for whatever reason, he's no longer in the picture. Passed away, divorce, whatever it is. And now, I have no idea how to invest." And so, this is the hope and pray investor that are now, as they get older, realizing, "Oh, no, I don't have enough assets to be able to retire."

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Then, it is, "I go to a financial advisor." It's not a bad option, it's a great option for many people, but it comes with a fee. Then, the next option is, "I can just invest my money into the markets, the 10% return I'm putting into the S&P 500, but because of inflation, that 10% return doesn't yield the same type of lifestyle that maybe it did 20 or 30 years ago." Because if you invest $500 a month for 30 years, get a 10% return, you're gonna retire with a little bit under a million bucks. Well, nowadays, you need closer to a million and a half to be able to retire comfortably for the average person.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  So, that creates now a problem where I need something more. Now, unfortunately, many people get caught into desperation, and desperation generally does not lead to good financial decisions. And so, now, we look for, "What is a way that I can make more money quickly?" So, we get into the-

• 59:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Kalschi, Polly Market, let's go.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  It's, and that is the-

• 59:08Tom Bilyeu?

  You're about Pokemon cards? 16 million for one card, Jaspreet, let's go.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  This is what I call Phase 3 of the investment cycle, where people-

• 59:19Tom Bilyeu?

  The ultra-toxic phase?

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Phase one is I want to own the asset because I love the asset. I want to buy houses because I believe in the value of the house. I want to buy stocks because I believe in the value of the stock. I want to buy Bitcoin because I believe in what Bitcoin is.

• 59:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Right, got a thesis.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Phase two is this underlying asset is great. I want more of it. So now I leverage my way to buy more. I want to buy more houses with more debt. I want to buy more stocks with more debt. I want to buy more Bitcoin with more debt. And maybe there are new ETFs, uh, whatever, more derivatives to buy more stuff. It gets fun. We saw this happen time and time again throughout our history because while history doesn't exactly repeat itself, it does rhyme. You can look at the 2008 crash, the 2000.com bubble bursting. We've seen this happen again and again and again. Phase three is I don't really care about the asset. I just want to get rich. And so during the dot com.

• 1:00:18Tom Bilyeu?

  What takes us from one to the next?

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Greed.

• 1:00:21Tom Bilyeu?

  That's it, pure and simple.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Greed and access.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Greed is always there. Greed is a underlying authority, but when when people in phase one start to see asset values rise and they start to make money. Now the question is, how can I make even more money? Because real estate prices keep going up, stock prices keep booming, whatever, gold prices keep booming. I want to own more of this asset. If I just own more, I'd get richer. I just don't have more money. How about I use more debt, more leverage, more derivatives? So that's when the the phase two derivatives come out. And then phase three is I don't care about the asset. I just want to get exposure to whatever is going to make me rich. So in the 2000.com bubble, this was the growth of momentum day trading. Because remember, this is when all these new online brokerages started coming out.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, people can now start buying whatever stock that they want and just own it for a small period of time. That way I can make a lot of money quickly. During the 2008 crash, it wasn't about the people that were buying the real estate. This is all the people that are trading the mortgage-backed securities, that are trading the derivatives of the mortgage-backed securities, that are trading the derivatives of the derivatives, the synthetic CDOs, the synthetic mortgage-backed securities. And so now it's, I don't even know what I'm buying. I'm just buying this thing because it's going to make me a lot of money. Today. Call sheet. Why would you, if you think Bitcoin is going to go up to $100,000 or $150,000,

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  instead of buying the Bitcoin, you can make 10 to 100 times more money by just buying some call sheet contracts. And so that's what we have is, it's not even Bitcoin. Forget that. Let's talk about stocks. Why would you invest in stocks? And I can just bet on if the stock market is going to open higher or lower tomorrow. Now, that's kind of a weird concept because to me, as, as a guy thinking about investing money, you're telling me that people are just betting their money in the stock market instead of investing in the stock market?

• 1:02:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  That's kind of weird. And that has never ended well, ever, in the history of time. We can go back to Tulipomania, when people were buying derivatives of the tulip bubble, which created the first financial crisis in the history of time, financial bubble and burst. And that's what we're seeing happen today. How long will it last? I don't know. But all I know is-

• 1:02:46Tom Bilyeu?

  You said that it's greed that drives that. I would say, yes, greed is fundamental to the human condition. So for sure, that's there. But I don't think this happens without the K-shaped economy that we're in, where if people could make ends meet, and they could retire when they wanted to retire by a set and forget strategy that they put in place when they were 35 or 40 years old, I don't think you'd be seeing this. I think you see this when you get a combination of Instagram telling you that everybody's life is better than yours, and you can't make ends meet because the cost of everything is going up and your wages are not.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  So, there's one more part to that. It's how much you're bombarded with thinking that this is normal. So, you probably know, I run a newsletter called Market Briefs, where we break down what's happening in the markets. Well, we have advertisements in our newsletter. And do you want to know, in the last, let's call it nine months, which industry has come to us more than any other industry with huge sums of dollars saying, hey, can we advertise this in your Market Briefs newsletter? It is this poly-market industry.

• 1:03:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Of course.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  And I haven't, I didn't even knew what that was when I first started getting these, these ads. And I remember someone was telling me that it's, it's a betting industry. And I was like, oh yeah, no, clearly not.

• 1:04:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Right.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  But then they started to change their advertising pitches, saying, hey, we're not betting. It's a type of investment. How about you promote this? And so now, again, I don't, I'm not in that industry. So I'm like, okay, present it to me. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, wait, so people are buying these contracts because they think the markets are going to go up. Do they actually own any stocks? No, no, no, they don't actually own any asset. It's just a, a futures contract or something like that. And I was like, no, keep that out of our newsletter. And then they start coming back with bigger dollar amounts, bigger contracts, more unique packages. And I'm like, holy crap, that's can't be good because they're catering to

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  the young crowd. They're catering to people that want to make money quickly. They're catering to the people that need to make money quickly and they're presenting it in a way as if it is a type of investment. That can't end well.

• 1:05:01Tom Bilyeu?

  That's it for part one. Make sure you are subscribed so you do not miss part two coming up soon.

• 1:05:10Tom Bilyeu?

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