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Larry Lepard Predicts How The Fourth Turning Ends: $5M Bitcoin & Michael Saylor President In 2032!

• Mike Peterson

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What if a US dollar collapse is not doom talk from the fringe, but simply the logical end of the fiat currency game we are already playing. In this episode, Mike Peterson sits down with investor and author Larry Lepard inside El Salvador’s National Palace to unpack the thesis behind The Big Print book and why Larry believes the next massive round of money printing is not a question of if, only when. From the setting to the stakes, this is a conversation about what happens to real people when a reserve currency reaches the edge of the map.

Larry Lepard walks through his journey from pure gold bug to running a fund that owns both gold stocks and Bitcoin, and why he still respects gold while expecting Bitcoin to crush it in performance. He and Mike Peterson explore what sound money really means in a world of relentless monetary debasement, why he sees fiat currency as the true enemy, and why he thinks “cash on the sidelines” is a dangerous illusion. If you have ever argued Bitcoin versus gold with friends, this gives you a deeper, more nuanced view from someone who lives on both sides of that trade.

From there, the episode dives into macro reality. Larry explains the US debt doom loop, the trapped position of the Federal Reserve, and why the next Big Print could push us closer to a visible US dollar collapse. He talks about the balance sheet, interest expense, QE under different names, and why he thinks fiat currency has no real bottom once confidence breaks. This is not framed as chart guessing. It is framed as a very direct question about where you want your savings when politicians decide that printing is safer than telling the truth.

The setting in El Salvador is not a backdrop. Mike Peterson and Lawrence Lepard talk about President Bukele, Bitcoin as legal tender, and what it means for a small country to defy the IMF and move toward a Bitcoin strategy while the United States digs deeper into fiat. They reflect on safety, investment, and whether “Bitcoin Country” was a PR stunt or an early glimpse of a world where sound money policy starts outside traditional power centers. If you are curious about how one nation is already testing ideas while the rest of the world still debates online, this part of the conversation hits hard.

Finally, Larry pushes into a future that sounds crazy until you sit with it. He sketches a timeline where Bitcoin trades at 5 million dollars a coin, Michael Saylor runs for president on a sound money and nuclear disarmament platform, and the United States has to confront a real choice between honest money and the old fiat game. It is provocative, it is uncomfortable, and it is exactly the kind of thought experiment that forces you to ask what you actually believe about Bitcoin, the dollar, and the world your family will live in. If this episode moves something in you, subscribe, share it with someone who still trusts the system by default, and let us know in the comments where you stand after hearing it.

-Bitcoin Beach Team

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Web: https://ema2.com/

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Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:
00:00 How does Lawrence Lepard imagine a Michael Saylor 2032 presidency and a Bitcoin sound money standard
01:35 Why are Mike Peterson and Lawrence Lepard recording this Bitcoin conversation inside El Salvador’s National Palace
02:29 Why does Larry believe “the big print is imminent” and fiat currency is at the end of the road
05:03 How did Lawrence Lepard go from gold bug to running a fund that owns both gold stocks and Bitcoin
09:02 Is the clas

Live From Bitcoin Beach

Lawrence Lepard:

Then, here's the good news. Here's the really bright part. And I haven't even spoken to him about this. Michael Saylor runs for president in 2032 and he comes in, he says, Look, I'm giving all my bitcoin away. I'm already the richest man in the world because bitcoins at $5 million a coin, right? I'm an MIT educated engineer. I'm a loyal American. I'm a veteran. I have the receipts. I know where we went wrong. I know what the fundamental problem is. And here's my com, you know, I'm a Thomas Jefferson for our age. Here's my comprehensive plan. You know, we have a constitutional convention. We're going to do term limits. We're going to take the money out of politics. You know, we're going to publicly fund elections. We're going to, you know, I mean, just, there'll be a laundry list of things we're gonna do. We're gonna we're gonna build nuclear power like there's no tomorrow. I'm gonna go to China, Russia and every other nuclear power. And I'm gonna suggest we all unilaterally disarm. Just take these things apart. We don't. Mankind does not need to have weapons that can kill or eliminate the race and and, oh, and by the way, everything's now priced in Satoshis, and we're back on a sound money standard. And at that point in time, fourth turning is over. It's totally over. You Hey,

Mike Peterson:

Larry, we're here in the National Palace doing a show. This is pretty amazing, pretty cool. I mean, that this the history of this building they were telling me as I was walking in, it's pretty, pretty substantial, you know, built in the 1850s and,

Lawrence Lepard:

you know, it's a, this is a great event, and I'm really excited to be a part

Mike Peterson:

of it. Yeah, I think this, like, behind this was originally, like, the legislator here, like, this is where the, like, Congressman sat at these desks here and did the votes. That was the hall where,

Lawrence Lepard:

this is just one of many halls I wandered through as I came in here, all this marble and grandeur. It's, it's, yeah, it's a neat old

Mike Peterson:

thing, yeah. So you're down here for Bitcoin historical, which obviously is a historic Bitcoin event here in El Salvador. So tomorrow you're going to be giving a speech. Give us a little preview, or, I guess by the time people viewers see this,

Lawrence Lepard:

and I'll put the slides out, and maybe they'll put the video out on Twitter. X, I'm not sure, but the title of the speech is why the big print is imminent. Because I really do think we're getting to the end of the road in terms of fiat currency being a viable, you know, store of value. And, of course, that's what I wrote my book about.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah, show the book here. So,

Lawrence Lepard:

yeah, so it's, and I kind of go through chapter and verse, you know, the charts, the data points, etc. I mean, we just see everything leading up to it. And, and, to be frank, the markets really reflected. To Mike, I mean, you know, as down as a lot of Bitcoiners feel like, Oh, you're only in 103 or wherever that we are right now. You know, we were at 126 you know, a month ago was a new record high. And, you know, and it's the companion sound money, you know, the old fashioned sound money, gold was at record highs A month ago, as well as at 4400 which, you know, it's really quite substantial. I mean, I remember, I remember gold at 300 800 1000 2000 I mean, 4400 on gold is a big deal. In my view. It's going to 5000 plus. And so the markets are waking up to what I described in the book. And you know, it's to my way of seeing it. It's pretty clear sailing ahead. I mean, these, these numbers are going much larger because, you know, they've, they've labeled this the monetary debasement trade. JP, Morgan just put that label on it. And I find that interesting, because it's not a trade. A trade implies that you buy something, it kind of works, and you get out of it. It's actually the monetary debasement trend, and it's going on for years. So I want to make that distinction right up front that, you know, I mean, you know, I like those. I can't recall who said it. I'm stealing it. But if somebody said, you know, Bitcoin and gold have no top because Fiat has no bottom, you know, they're just, they're just, they're going to

Mike Peterson:

continue to print money. Yeah, there's no point where you're going to want to get back

Lawrence Lepard:

in. I've made a lot of money in some of my gold stocks and gold, and some of the Bitcoins, and so are that I and I think to myself, you know, gosh, I got a lot of money in this. I've made a lot of money, you know, maybe I should take some off. What am I going to buy? That's the thing. Where are you going to put? Where am I going to put it? You know, cash. No, that's melting. I mean, maybe real estate in El Salvador, right, like you have, yeah?

Mike Peterson:

But even with real estate, which, you know, I love real estate, and you know, if you're using it especially, then, you know, for your lifestyle, that's great, correct? But there's carrying costs, there's hassles, there's headaches that come with real estate

Lawrence Lepard:

liquid. You got, yeah, you got big brokerage fees on both sides of it, yeah? So I. You know, it's a trend, right? And it's accelerating, in my view.

Mike Peterson:

Have Have you been surprised? You know, I know you know, originally you were a gold bug, most people know you, but, but that was your, your pretty much your sole focus, absolutely, pre 2008 for sure, and then you've moved into Bitcoin, as Bitcoin is has grown. And I know you, you run a fund that I think just investing,

Lawrence Lepard:

pretty much, we got a little bit of golden, a little bit of Bitcoin. It's basically my investors believed I was investing in gold and silver mining stocks, which I've done and, you know, just, I mean, it's a data point that funds up 130% year to date. So which is kind of, you know, yeah, well, but full disclosure, we have plenty of bad years too. Yeah. I mean, all these assets are very volatile, so, but yes, I ran a gold fund, and I still believe in gold. I mean, I one of the things I'm very strong about, and I've said this many, many times, it's just, I hate it when gold people shit on Bitcoin. I hate when Bitcoin or shit on gold, because they have they both are sound money. They both are constrained in their ability to be printed. One is geologically, it's only so much gold, and the other is mathematically. And you know, they both are helping kill the Fiat world. And Fiat is the enemy, right? Fiat is what has made our world so bad, and what's caused all the pain that we're experiencing and and so I want to kill the Fiat beast. And you know, if people want to express it through gold, great, it's less volatile. It's not going to go up as much. Bitcoin is going to crush it. Performance wise, bitcoins ultimately going to demonetize it. But one thing I do think some Bitcoiners have done is they've said, Well, that's going to happen overnight, yeah, and, and we all know that in human beings, well, I don't know about centuries, no, at least decades. Years, probably a decade or two, yeah, so it's going to take some time.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah. Have you been surprised at how much gold has run in this past year. Well, mine is kind of stagnated

Lawrence Lepard:

a little bit to be honest with you. I mean, it's, it's kind of, to me, it's a very good signal. It's the world waking up to the debasement. Okay, and it brought in my presentation, and maybe you can link it in the show notes to this pod. It brought up my thoughts of a chart which I ran, of the Bitcoin price and the gold price from 2017 to present, I overlay the two, and the scales are very different, because in that time frame, bitcoins gone up 800% and gold's gone up 300% or something. But what you can see is interesting is at several points in that chart, gold moved first, Bitcoin followed. There was a lag and gold. Gold so widely distributed, it's being bought by central banks. You know, everyone knows it's old fashioned sound money. And so when the basement is being smelled, the big money goes after gold. The big money is still not in Bitcoin. Yet. It's coming. We see evidence of it, the ETFs, Larry, Fink, etc, but, but it's still not we, you know, we still just don't have a big money bid for Bitcoin yet, but it's coming. And so in I really like the case that happened in 18 and 19 and 2020 1819, so 2019 there was the pivot, the Powell pivot, and that was when the repo spike occurred, and interest rates blew out. And so what happened is it became very clear that they couldn't keep reducing the size of the balance sheet. So they pivoted, started adding growing QE again. And this is before covid, this late 2019, and gold took off, okay? And then covid came, and gold took off even more. And throughout the entire time period, Bitcoin was kind of stuck between six and $10,000 and it's just, you know, flatline, flat and gold's going up. Gold stocks going all this stuff. And I was in both at the time. I'm kind of like, gosh, this is weird. Gold's really working. Bitcoins, not. Then one day, Bitcoin woke up, and it was in later in 2020, and it went from 10 to 60, right? It went up 600% in a very short period of time. And I kind of feel like, okay, you know, I'm as an investor, one of the things I do a lot of is what I call pattern recognition, kind of what happened in the past, it might happen in the future. And so I kind of have a sense in my gut tells me that's going to happen here. Gold's running, bitcoins kind of been flat ish, not terribly flat, but flat ish. And, you know, at some point it's going to wake up and rip faces off. I really do believe that.

Mike Peterson:

So based on that, do you think that the four year cycle is kind of dead? I kind

Lawrence Lepard:

of do. I'm not sure it's entirely dead, but yes, I kind of do. I mean, I think the cycle got started based on the size of the block rewards. And now the black reward is awfully small compared to the total outstanding So changing the block reward probably doesn't matter as much as what the ETF buying is. As an example, you know, ETFs are buying much more than the block reward. So, so I kind of do think the four year cycle is fading. I think there will still be Mike, I think there's still be a cycle in Bitcoin. I mean, it's just the track, you know, the classic fear and greed cycle, right? And we just saw it a little bit in the treasury companies. You know, everyone got all excited. And then, you know, you know, greed, agree. Oh, now, fear, fear, fear, fear, very accelerated, yeah. And I think, I think we're gonna see that again. So my, my model just, and this is just, I'll be wrong, okay, but I'll just give you my best guess. My model is that we're going to break out from this 120 some odd area, and we're going. Go to 141 50, very quickly. And then it's really going to get a little nuttier, and we might squirt up to, you know, to 150 202 50, maybe even three. I don't think we may make Samson's number of a million, but I could easily see us, and at that point in time, will be a couple standard deviations, or one and a half standard deviations, away from the power law, which I use as a model for modeling the price. And I think when that occurs, when that deviation occurs, then we might get a correction, you know. And people get over their skis. Everyone will be excited. People will be using leverage, all the things that you know, we know get people in trouble. And you know, it'll go from 300 back to 140 you know. And that'll feel terrible for the people who bought it at 300 and for those of us who've been around this for a while, we go, oh, yeah, that's normal. You know, the prior corrections have been 70% I don't think we're going to see a 70% correction again. I think we're too far into its adoption. There are too many institutions on the bid side, you know. I mean, look at all this reported OG selling. I mean, billions and billions of dollars, and it's held steady as a rock, yeah, over 100 so I think there's a very and by the way, that is about the power law level of where it should be right now. So, yeah, my view is we're, you know, we're just continuing. I mean, you know, it's funny, because Bitcoin is, are very impatient, some. I mean, even though we have longtime preferences, we also, we remember the past glory days, and we want it to happen overnight, you know. And look, I mean, you know, my view is focus on the power law. If this thing goes up, you know, 35 to 39% a year. I mean, show me another investment anywhere in the world that's, you know, has the probability of doing that. There aren't very many. There are a few, but not many. And, you know, so that's how I see him.

Mike Peterson:

So, so, going back to the big print in your in your mind, do we need to have, you know, some type of catastrophe, or some, some type of covid type event to happen for us to get the next

Lawrence Lepard:

really great question. And yes, to shove us to the outside of that range. I think that would, that would do it for sure. We are, as my speech will show, and I'll talk about, we're we're printing we, you know, the Federal Reserve has just said, you know, we're stopping the runoff, and we're going to have to grow the balance sheet. And they've said it two or three times they tried to, nor. Times. They tried to normalize like, this is no big deal. It's not QE, which it is, you know, right? They're trying to, they're trying to just make it sound normal. And so we're now back in a printing environment. We've also got, you know, interest rates coming down, and probably likely to come down more. I saw somebody on Twitter they say that seven of the Fed governors want 50 BEPS this time. I don't know if that's true, but, but you know, and we've got a Fed chairman who was Hawk, was hawkish, has been beaten up pretty bad by the President, and is gone in May. And it's very clear that the new fed people you know, will be more dovish, and rates will come down, and they'll give up on the inflation mandate for a while, which they pretty much mathematically have to do. And so we will be going back into, you know, printing money. And that will, then, I think, put stress on the tenure. And I that stress on the tenure will lead to QE, and again, they're going to try and just say, Oh, it's all normal. Ignore the man behind the curtain. But it's not normal. It's money printing. Now, you know, the wild card that I can't predict, you can't predict, nobody can predict, is, does something break, you know, do we? I mean, it's all we've got this very highly leveraged system. We got a lot of tenuous shit out there. You know, we're now seeing that there's a lot of cracks in private credit. You know, we're now, we know that there's a huge private equity business where all the marks of those things are kind of made up. We've got, you know, tri color failed. We've got first brands failed. We've got another one recently, I think it was Renovo just failed. These are bankruptcies, large bankruptcies that are highly levered. And I as these things continue to unfold, we've got a lot of commercial real estate that's underwater. You know, Zoom came along and basically made it so that we could all not go to the office. So all these $200 million office buildings in these cities in the United States, which had hundreds of millions of debt against them are now worth, you know, 30 cents or 20 cents on the dollar. Well, some that debt went somewhere, money, heaven. But somebody, somebody lost that money, and it's hidden in the insurance companies. It's hidden in the regional banks. I mean, I heard from a friend in DC who's very well connected. He said there'd been discussion inside the Fed of doing something along the lines of, you know, a commercial real estate lending facility, you know, okay, small bank, you made a bad commercial real estate loan. We'll buy it from you at par. I mean, this is like what they did with Silicon Valley Bank with a btfp. So, you know, the book says, I believe, I think we know, most Bitcoiners know they are going to have to print the money mathematically because of Lynn's point that nothing stops this fiscal track train wreck. However, what we don't know is how they're going to do it, how normal they're going to make it seem if there's going to be an emergency, and by the way, I mean, I should. Warn everybody if there is an emergency, because I remember March 2020, you know, like it was yesterday. And I remember 2008 like it was yesterday, Bitcoin is going down, yeah. I mean, if we have a big sell, what you can Yeah, if, exactly, if we have a big credit event, okay, like something breaks, and, you know, some banks in trouble, and, you know, just, I mean, you'll know it. I mean, fact, we almost kind of had one, you know, on Liberation Day, right, when Trump said we're gonna put 100% tariff on, you know, on China and all. I mean, market was down 20% you know, a 10 year went up, you know, shot up. I mean, it was, we were on the cusp, yeah. And he quickly turned around and said, Oh, no, I was only kidding. Well, the 90 day, we'll wait for 90 days. But, I mean, something like that, something really serious and large breaking that seems like contagion would lead to a correlation of one where, you know, bitcoins down, gold's down, stock market's down, bond markets down, rates are up. I mean, all of it, it would just be a well for briefly, rates would go down, and then they would go up, because everyone know the prints coming. And then we'd have another, you know, big print, right? I mean, we've had two, 2000 was one or 2008 was 120 20 was one and and we know it's it, you know. I mean, you know, humans learn through experience. We've seen this playbook. We know what they do. We know they are not going to let our economy fail. We know that inflation, you know, pick one economic collapse or higher inflation, they're always going to pick higher inflation, because economic collapse is just untenable. And so, you know, I believe the next print could take the balance sheet, the Fed balance sheet, from its current level in the mid, high sixes to 20, you know. And I mean, if that, if that happens, gold, 10,000 Bitcoin, a million, possibly. I mean, it's, you know, I'm not saying it's for sure, but it's possible, right?

Mike Peterson:

So that's, that's what kind of cracks me up sometimes, is people, when you try to explain the current system how broken it is, they think, Oh, you just want this to happen because you think it's going to make Bitcoin, you know, go up, you're like, No, the current system is actually working very well from us, because we understand that we're manipulating it. We're playing into it by buying hard assets, that's right, and and getting wealthier. We don't want that to continue. We want there to be a level playing field for everybody that wealth disparity.

Lawrence Lepard:

I've been accused of being a Doomer. And I've been accused of, accused of being a Doomer. I've been accused of, you know, being negative and, you know, look, I mean, if a big storm is coming and you're saying to your neighbor, hey, the storm is coming, you know, maybe we should seek some shelter. I think that's, you know, responsible and prudent, not not being a negative Doomer. I mean, I'm an incredibly optimistic person on the long term, you know, for this country and for human beings in general, I just think we're in a, we're in a period where the money's broken, and until we fix it, you know, it's going to be rough for particularly for the people at the lower end of the spectrum, which I think it's just tragic. So it's kind of like, you know, we're just, I think what we're saying is, hey, you know, we got to fix it. And by the way, you know, you can protect yourself and help to fix it by buying Bitcoin.

Mike Peterson:

Have you seen like anybody come out with a convincing theory of how we get out of this, other than printing? I mean, to me, the math is the math. And there's, there's no other way. And I get that when people say, like, oh, people have been predicting the end of the system

Lawrence Lepard:

for decades, which is true. It happens until kick in the can forever, but at some point it does, actually, yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, so you're on the Titanic and you know? Oh, well, it's listing a little bit. No, it's no it's no big deal. It's listing a little more, you know. But to your question there, there are really only three ways out. One is you just you let it all collapse. You know, you have a debt default, yeah. And it kind of looks like 1929 you know, you have massive depression, social unrest. All asset values collapse. Everyone loses a lot of wealth. And, you know, then probably there's some kind of a reset, which is what they did with gold back then. So that's and that my view is that politically, they just won't let that happen. They'll choose hyperinflation. Sadly, they'll choose inflation before they choose that the middle, the middle way, the best in the fairest way, and the, you know, the positive way, where, you know, look in this transition when, when rules change, people are on the long side of the rules get hurt. So there's no way that, no way avoiding that. But what I care about is, I want my kids and grandkids to live in a good world. So, so the rules have got to change. The middle way is a monetary reset. I mean, you know, the Trump should have, in the early days of his presidency, he should have come out and said, Hey, look, we really made a mistake here, folks. We believe this Keynesian model. We built up way too much debt. We've emphasized growth over efficiency. You know, we've trusted the Federal Reserve and they made a mess of this whole damn thing. We've got to return to sound money. And here's my plan for how we're going to do it. And. Would have involved gold or Bitcoin or some other form of sound money. It would involve writing down the debt and saying to the debtors, I'm sorry, you're getting 50 cents on the dollar or less on a real basis. And but we will, and the pain will be felt across society, but it'll be evenly, relatively evenly distributed, well, except for the people who hold the debt and on the other side of it, at least, we'll be back on a sound money standard. That's, that's the responsible way to actually have a chapter in the book where I talk about that, and I recommend that, and I explain I wrote the speech that I would have given if I were president. But, you know, i To be quite frank with you, Mike, I think the odds of that happening aren't really high. Yeah, they're just it takes a lot. It would take enormous political courage, and it might even backfire. You know, somewhere along the line, they might say, you can't do it, although, you know Roosevelt and Lincoln and FDR and others have, you know, I mean, obviously Roosevelt, others have reset the monetary system. Nixon have reset the monetary system. So there's precedent for being in the executive branch, but So yeah, that's the reason, and the third way. And I'll just give you kind of my model, because I'm sure people want to know this, and I'm going to give this model in my speech. Model in my speech the third way is kind of how I see this unfolding. Okay, the Fed is going to print more money. We know that we're either going to have a big print or we're going to have a medium print sometime the next couple of years, because of the math, inflation is going to go up a lot. You know, nine sounded high, and we brought it back down to three. Where do we? Where do we get back to 1% interest rates and growing the Fed balance sheet and yield curve control? And, you know, we'll, there'll be a wave of home refinancings, because we'll get, you know, the mortgage rates down. That's all creating money, right? And so inflation will go up a lot in the next few years. Okay? I mean, like, double digit, like

Mike Peterson:

they need nine and be able to tell us it's three, well, that's

Lawrence Lepard:

right, yeah, and it'll be, it'll be 18, and they'll be telling us it's 12, yeah, but it'll be high, yeah. Okay, so the good, I mean, the flip of that is, the good news is economy kind of be working. There will be jobs out there. There'll be people building AI centers and energy and so forth. So the economy was still in one piece, but it'd be inflationary. They're going to run it hot. Okay, so that's that's kind of model one. So now what? Now it gets to 2028, and electoral cycle. This gets really interesting. The question there, the $64,000 question, is, Can red team win, or does blue team win? And I fear that what happens is, you know, and people are going to be hurting and inflation, I mean, everyone's going to be screaming about inflation. And what I fear is that blue team will come in with some lie about how they can fix it, and they'll mean price controls, you just exactly and and stimmies and free bus fares and free universal health, you know, universal childcare. And I mean that we just saw in New York, right? And all of these socialist, you know, forgiveness of student debt, etc. And, you know, half the country is stupid. I mean, close to half. And they might, you know, we might get outvoted, right? And so, so now the blue team wins. Okay, so that's pretty bad. And they do all these things. Andrew Yang is vice president, maybe Stephanie Kelton is Treasury Secretary, you know. And they do UBI right to help all the people who are losing their jobs from AI and, you know, I mean, it's just, it's a, it's a orgasm of money coming out of the government. Well, all of that happens. I mean, Bitcoin is going to be at half a million to a million, and gold's going to be at 10,000 15,000 Okay, fine, because, you know, again, we're sound money, but it's going to get really bad and and the currency is going to fail. I mean, we're going to have that, you know that I believe in the power law, until it breaks to the upside. And the reason it breaks to the upside is what I call critical state events. Critical state events are things that can go on and go on and go on at Stein. If something can't go on forever to land, think of an avalanche. You gotta you got snow on a on a crescent. Snow keeps falling, falling, falling, falling, falling eventually. Boom, avalanche, you know, I mean Titanic, you know, hole, sink, sink, sink, sink, sink, boom, bottom of the ocean. Okay, fire in a theater, same, throw a little bit of smoke. Pretty soon, give me the hell out of here. It's Gresham's Law at scale. And my sense is that will happen in that 28 to 32 timeframe, the currency will literally fail. Then here's the good news. Here's the really bright part. And I haven't even spoken to him about this. He probably is angry at me for doing maybe not, I don't know. Michael Saylor runs for president in 2032 and he comes in he says, Look, I'm giving all my bitcoin away. I'm already the richest man in the world because bitcoins at $5 million a coin, right? I'm an MIT educated engineer. I'm a loyal American, I'm a veteran. I have the receipts. I know where we went wrong. I know what the fundamental problem is. And here's my com, you know, I'm a Thomas Jefferson for our age. Here's my comprehensive plan. You know, we have a constitutional convention. We're going to do term limits. We're going to take the money out of politics, you know, we're going to publicly fund elections. We're going to, you know, I mean, just, it's going to be a laundry list of things we're gonna do. We're gonna, we're gonna build nuclear power like there's no tomorrow. I'm gonna go to China, Russia, and every other nuclear power, and I'm gonna suggest we all unilate. Really disarm. Just take these things apart. We don't. Mankind does not need to have weapons that can kill or eliminate the race and, and, oh, and by the way, everything is now priced in Satoshis, and we're back on a sound money standard. And at that point in time, fourth turning is over. It's totally over, right?

Mike Peterson:

I like that. That's the most positive ending of the fourth turning that I can think,

Lawrence Lepard:

right? I mean, isn't it? Isn't it, isn't it cool? I mean, I mean, maybe it's a dream, maybe it's unrealistic. You know, people say, Well, no, you know,

Mike Peterson:

I don't. So if you let Michael Saylor know about your plan, yeah, he'll probably,

Lawrence Lepard:

somebody will probably tell him, but it's not like I talked to him on a regular basis. I've talked to him and met with him, but, but we'll see. But I, I think that's kind of who he is and where he's heading. I mean, I think he's, I think he's extremely competitive. I think he does want to be the richest man in the world, and I do think he will be and then, but then, once you've achieved that, what do you do with it? Yeah, what do you do with it? And you know, we all just have one life. And you know, my sense is he wants to be a historical figure and and it's very clear to me that he knows where we went wrong, and that, you know he would be, you know, he would be in a position to lead a country and the world out of, quote, unquote, where we went wrong. So let's hope that's what happens. I don't know.

Mike Peterson:

So, so what was the the motivation behind writing this book? I mean, you've, you've been very successful, you, you run a successful fund. You, you obviously have plenty to do with your time. And I know how much work goes into something like this. Yeah,

Lawrence Lepard:

it was six months of hell. I mean, my wife was very mad. She said I was she was a book widow. So in 2024, between, before Trump won the election, I watched, I think it was the comma Trump debate, and I was a painful watch. Oh, wasn't it awful? Or maybe it was some other political event in discussion. I can't recall, but I watched something that had both sides arguing vociferously and and I sat there, I thought to myself, you idiots are all talking about shit that doesn't matter you're talking about. I mean, I use the analogy you're arguing over the color of the drapes and the goddamn house is on fire. Nobody's talking about the deficits, nobody's talking about the money, nobody's talking about the government being out of control spending, none of that. It's just not being discussed. And then I thought to myself and people, you know, and you got red team hating Blue Team, and it's awful. It's just absolutely awful. I mean, I I'm not a big fan of either team. I'm libertarian team, but in there, I mean, I lean red team,

Mike Peterson:

but yeah, I'm probably along the same lines as you lean red team.

Lawrence Lepard:

But Red Team ain't perfect either. I mean, you know, Trump coin, you know? I mean, I mean, some of the shit coin already that they've done is just ridiculous. So, but anyway, set all that aside. And I thought to myself, you know, you're 6768 years old. You've seen, you know, you've lived this sound money life. You understand all the history of it. You've got all these young people who haven't didn't live it, didn't see it, don't know how it happened, don't know how we got here. And and then I thought, well, there's some really great books out there, you know, like, safes book is fantastic, and Lynn's book is fantastic. Jeff's books, they're all good in their own way. I've given out those books to other people, a little more scholarly, a little more you know, I find people didn't read or didn't always dig in. And as you know, a lot of the country doesn't read, but maybe, you know, I'm going to try and write a book that is written with enough detail to prove my point, you know, not, not, not a lightweight book, but but a heavy enough book that to prove my point, but I'm going to try and write it in a way that, you know, a really average citizen could understand. I mean, you don't have to have a degree in economic you have gone to college. You can, you can be a blue collar. You can be anywhere, any and if you're if you can understand logic, you could read it and go, Oh, I get it. I see how they've been systematically screwing me. I see why the system is broken. I see why my grocery costs are going up. I understand the fundamental problem. And then once they do understand the fundamental problem, you know, that's and it's depressing. The book is in two parts. Part one, what's the problem? Part two, how do you fix

Mike Peterson:

it, right? So don't start. Don't stop. After part one, you'll be depressed.

Lawrence Lepard:

You will be, I mean, and some people wrote me said, com Part one was really depressing. And I'm like, Yeah, I know, I'm sorry, but it's just, it is what it is, you know. I mean, those events happened, right? But, you know, okay, so what do we do about it? Right? Well, first, take care of yourself. Grab your own oxygen mask before you put on other people's right? You know, get bitcoin, get go, get sound money, protect your own family's financial security. Second, spread the word. You know, let's get everybody else to do this. Because I was with Jeff booth, not very recently, and he said to me, Larry, if we could get everybody to do this and buy bitcoin, their whole system would collapse overnight. And he's kind of right. But as you and I both know, things take time and years. In, arguably, decades, but, but we're going in that direction. And so if you want to be a part of the solution, you know, that's, I mean, look, we're all here for Bitcoin. Number goes up. I mean, I love the fact that, you know, I feel comfortable that my savings will not be debased because they're in Bitcoin. But we're also, I think a lot of us are also here for this. Could really make the world a better place, you know, and wars and inequality, you know, take the contillion errors down, etc, etc, so, so that was really the purpose behind the book, was just trying to trying to help average people, and trying to explain the problem in terms that people could understand and and I've been quite satisfied. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback that it's worked. In some cases, I've had some criticism too, but, you know, the Doomer stuff, but it is what it is. And so, you know, I'm not writing a second one, you know, it's, you know, I kind of probably,

Mike Peterson:

if you knew what it was gonna entail the well, yeah, you probably wouldn't have written this good about those things.

Lawrence Lepard:

You wrote a book, and you told me about, I mean, you know, when you're in that book writing process and you're like, 80% through, it's like, oh, you know, you're like, it's like, you have homework all the time well, and you just, it's like, running a marathon, or you just, like, Is this ever gonna end? Like, I gotta get this goddamn thing done. It's driving me nuts. So, yeah, so it's done and I won't do it again.

Mike Peterson:

What was kind of the most surprising thing to you through through the process, like getting into the publishing world, because that's a whole different

Lawrence Lepard:

Well, yeah, we animal. We can talk about that. Let's talk about publishing a little bit. I mean, it's, I've sold, I don't know, 45,000 maybe creeping towards

Mike Peterson:

which, for people who don't know publishing that that is, I mean, that puts you probably, I'm guessing, in the top 5% of books

Lawrence Lepard:

I have no that was a big number. I have no frame of reference. I mean, it's it, yeah, and obviously, I wish we were bigger, but it just is what it is. And it's, you know, I was self published. I self published on Amazon. I've had a book agent. I've been, she's been to most of the large publishers, the books kind of edgy, you know, I'm calling out the powers that be. I'm calling out the structure of our society. I'm calling out the monetary authorities and in, you know, and I'm not, I'm not shy about doing it, and I criticize a lot of people that I think have done the wrong things. And as a result of that, the no publishers picked it up. I guess it's not surprising to me. There's a guy named Richard professor, Richard Warner, Dr Richard Warner, who wrote something called the princes of the yen, which was a very good book about the Japanese bubble and the Japanese problems. It was published in Japan. Was the number one bestse tried to write it in America, and it was critical of a lot of our society, a lot of our institutions. No one would touch it. They wouldn't publish it. And so, so, you know, and the reason, the only reason I care about the publishing is not, you know, the money. You don't make any money on books. I, what I care about is the reach. You know, if you, if you don't have a publisher, you can't get on the Ingram list. If you're not on the Ingram list, you can't get into the airports. And tons of books get sold in airports. Yeah, people are waiting, you know, they're walking around waiting for a flight. They pick up a book, and they read it on a plane. And I'm not there yet. So, you know, hopefully, maybe that'll change the future. Maybe it won't. Maybe when the big print comes, it'll get a second leg. I mean, that's my agent says that's what will happen, you know, you'll be proven right, and then everyone will buy it. Who knows? But you know, it is what it is. You know, the books out there, and I know, you know, it's kind of like, if it makes, if it helps some people, then I feel good about that.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah. Well, I think you do see that with a lot of books that that 10 years down the road, they become more popular because people see that they were ahead of their time. And there are books like the fourth turning, just gonna

Lawrence Lepard:

think of that. There are books that, quote, unquote, have legs, yeah? That are kind of like, wow, that's, that's an, you know, or the sovereign individual, which was written a long time ago, but was so prescient. And

Mike Peterson:

so, you know, initially, I think both of those didn't get very much up to Yeah. And

Lawrence Lepard:

yet, today, you know, I mean, the fourth turning has become a phrase that pretty much everybody knows, yeah. So, so who knows? Maybe the big print will become a phrase. I've seen a lot of people use it, which, yeah, it's obvious. It's a takeoff on The Big Short but, you know, you can tell that they're gonna have to do it.

Mike Peterson:

So speaking of, you know, leaders that are kind of taking their country in a different direction, like you mentioned, hopefully, maybe sailor will in the future. We're here in El Salvador. Yes, this is your second time here.

Lawrence Lepard:

Second time here. Yes, I came for the halving party. Stillman del Zante. Want to get there. Have not been the Bitcoin you've invited me and offered, offered me a place to say, I appreciate that. Yeah, my second trip. This is, we're in San Salvador, obviously the capital city, which is beautiful, you know, huge respect for President bukele and what he's done in terms of making his country safer and taking it in the right direction, also having the courage to take on the IMF and buy bitcoin and, you know, show leadership. I think you know it has the promise and the. Potential to be, you know, to revolutionize this country. I mean, it so huge kudos to him and and for what he's done. And so, you know, I'm just, I'm it's exciting to watch it unfold. I mean, it's so interesting, Mike, I'm sure you've observed it. I mean, think about it, because you and I've been in this a long time, right? You know, we met each other two, three years ago. And I mean, if somebody had told you, you know, they're going to be these ETFs that anyone could buy in their brokerage account. And this guy, Larry Fink, who's a huge Fiat master and runs the biggest, you know, asset management company in the world, BlackRock, is going to endorse it and start an ETF and then we're gonna have a president who wants to have a strategic Bitcoin reserve and is going to come speak at a Bitcoin Conference. And I mean, that, you know, we're gonna have a treasury secretary and a Fed governor, Stefan Moran, who's just the most recently appointed fed governor, you know, he was on Twitter, you know, saying Bitcoin fixes this went, Okay, that's kind of cool. I mean, could you imagine a Federal Reserve official saying that, right? So, I mean, it's, I mean, there's just these things falling into place. You know, El Salvador. You know they were, they're actually in front of many of these things, because Jack came down here and orange pilled them. But, you know, they're just, there are lots, I mean, more and more people, you know, institutional money managers, you know, pension funds of state of Michigan, state of Wisconsin. You know, it's just, you can just see it coming and you know, I'm sure in the next five years, it's gonna look entirely different. I, I was on the stage with Michael Saylor Madeira a year and a half ago, or something, and, and he just said, he said, This feels like the gold rush. I mean, we really, you know, pre him getting involved, and, you know, we were still kind of bumping along, you know, you know, even after the big print from covid, but then now we've got all these other things coming in behind and, you know, I I think we're going to see very, very rapid acceptance and acceleration in the next five or 10 years.

Mike Peterson:

So what are you going to be sharing with people tomorrow? Give us a high the high point. High

Lawrence Lepard:

points are that it's imminent, in the sense that the Fed really has pivoted, okay, it's, you know, starting high point is going to be, I'm going to try and show again why it's mathematically assured that we have to. This isn't like a political debate like, well, maybe we should print. Maybe, no, you have to print, or you're thinking your structure is going to collapse. Pick one. That's, I mean, that's I mean, that's math. Okay, then I'm going to show how there are all these signs, I mean, that it's coming. I mean, the most recent one was Powell saying the balance sheet would grow. Laurie Logan said the balance sheet would grow, you know, New York Federal Reserve, you know, President fish, yeah. Fisher said the balance sheet would grow. You know, it's just it's or it's just over and over again. You can see all the indications that it is coming. And you know there. The other thing is, monetary conditions have gotten very tight. And I've got some good charts on how sofr, which is secured overnight. Funding rate has blown out above the Fed funds rate. You know, the Fed has a standing repo window. Well, usage of it just shot up. I mean, these are kind of technical.

Mike Peterson:

Nobody was talking, nobody's even talking about that. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of, well,

Lawrence Lepard:

it's kind of geeky technical, you know, monetary plumbing stuff that you know Joseph Wang and Luke gromen And Lynn and all know all about, and I know somewhat about, but I learned a lot from them. And you know, what it suggests is that money is getting tight, and every time, historically, when money has gotten too tight, they need to print to alleviate that pain. And the reason they have to is, you know, the Federal Interest expense is $1.2 trillion a year. And if the bond market, I mean, the bond market is the sucker at this table, right? The bond market is saying, you know, that the US has bonds, and they're saying, Hey, hang on to these for 10 years and get 4% a year, right? And then the bond market saying, I think you're about to print a ton of money and inflate the way the value. So I could give you 1000 now, and we'll get back 1000 but it's only gonna buy$600 worth again. Now pass and so, so we're going to see interest rates go up, we get into a debt doom loop as a result of that. Then yield curve control comes in, and they have to print the money to buy the bonds, to grow the money supply. This is, and this is traditionally, third world country type of behavior. I mean, you know, the thing that's unique about it is it's happening with the reserve currency in a first world country. So that's what's different. But you know, it's like play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I mean, if we do the same stuff that all those guys have done, and we know that in all their cases, they had either high inflation, or, in some cases, hyperinflation, like Venezuela Argentina Brazil a couple of times, or going way back Weimar, Germany. You know, the outcome of doing that is only one way the currency fails. And you know, I've got, I didn't put these in the presentation, but I have them in my quarterly newsletter, which people can see on my website. You know, since 2020 and that's really when the last big print occurred, Bitcoin is up compared to the sovereign. Bonds, 10 year bonds, Bitcoin is up 2,000% gold is up 277% so, you know, we're in it. I mean, we're in it. Fiat currency is, you know, it's, it's, it's dying and, and so when people say, Well, yeah, they've been kicking the can for years and they can keep kicking the can, well, no, they can't, not. If the market, you know, the market response, I think, is telling you that we've actually hit the end of the road on the can kicking, you know.

Mike Peterson:

So I've heard Mike McGlone say several times that the big print, but he doesn't realize it already happened, and now we're going into deflationary what would you say he has wrong

Lawrence Lepard:

Mike, a lot. He's a good analyst. He's a good commodity guy, but he's a tradfi guy, and he's looking backwards. I think what he's I think the error that he's making is not understanding how I mean he actually thinks, I believe, that we can actually go into a deflationary state and make it through, and make it and make it right. And I just, I mean, he thinks, I mean, he agrees the stock market is a bubble. And he and I kind of agree on that, but he thinks that what happens is the bubble pops, and everything, just the air, comes out of everything. And, you know, I would say, you know, and maybe with no government response, and I would say that's just not, it doesn't fit the pattern of what they've done now, the politicians don't want to bear that pain. Yeah, they're gonna be the quickest the job. I mean, are they gonna have? You don't want an excuse to print, yeah. I mean, they're gonna have. I mean, are they gonna have, you know? I mean, what's here's what's amazing to me, we're running a $1.8 trillion deficit last year, and we've got record GDP growth. Or, you know, we've got record stock prices. We I mean, everything's going well, yeah, okay. What happens when, you know, Mike says, the economy turns over. The stock market goes down. Tax receipts from stock gains go down. You know, social spending goes up. I mean, if you look at Oh, eight and 2000 I mean, the deficit grew, like, as a percentage of GDP, by like, 6% and 8% respectively, you know, in the other way around, but eight and six respectively in those periods. And, I mean, so are we going to run four or $5 trillion deficits? I mean, or, you know, three, four or five. I mean, right? And if we do, I mean, I guess so. Here's the thing. I've studied all these hyperinflations, and the hyperinflations occurred when everybody eventually comes to the same conclusion, which is, your currency is FUBAR, because you can't keep the system going unless you print a ton of it. And then what you know, sir Gresham pointed out way back when in Elizabethan England, is, you know, when it's very clear that one money is losing value and another money is holding its value. You spend the money losing its value as quickly as you can. If you receive it, if you're paid in dollars, you spend them or you convert them into the money that is holding value, and that's called Gresham's Law. And a mass Gresham's Law event, and it happened in Weimar, Germany, you know, the prices were changing literally daily on things. So people would rush to buy groceries before the price went up. You know, I'm not saying we will get there. That's a tail case, but my point is that as that kind of thing gets worse and worse and more and more common. You know, the currency ultimately fails. And every fiat currency except the British Pound has more or less failed, you know, since the beginning of time, and the British pounds more or less failed in terms of holding its value, but it's still called a pound, and it's been around 500 years.

Mike Peterson:

Well, I think that's a good somber note to end on. But like you said, I do think that there's still long term that we will come out of this, and there we will solution.

Lawrence Lepard:

There is, and there's so many good things happening in the world. I mean, the technology what allows us to broadcast to 1000s of people around the world. I mean, you know, human beings are smart, and human beings are ingenious, and most of us don't want to kill don't want to kill kill other people, you know, like big governments do, and the world is going to get to be a better place. We're going to make it through this transition. But, you know, I would just argue with my and I tried to argue with my book that, you know, you're really you got to, you got to have, you got to pay attention on this transition. And I think there's a, there's something here that's going on. It's getting to be relatively obvious. You got to pay attention. Because in a, you know, in a five and 10 year time frame, I think you're going to just like, like, like, look backwards. Did you have any friends who bought Nvidia, or did you have any friends who bought apple, or any friends who bought Google? I mean, their economic outcome was significantly better than you if you didn't buy those things. I mean, I know people who had the stock portfolios going up a ton for buying those good stocks. And I think that same pattern is going to repeat itself here five or 10 years, you're going to know who owns sound money, yeah, because they're going to be substantially better off financially than the people who didn't. And that's that's sad, but for the people who didn't sad, but it's just kind of a fact based on the. Looking at the situation. So,

Mike Peterson:

so we want to make sure people get your book. Yeah,

Lawrence Lepard:

go to Amazon is really the best way. There's also a site called Bitcoin 21 in Europe. It'll sell it for SATs, but the shipping cost from Europe is high if you're buying the US, go to Amazon or in England or Australia. Amazon's all around the world, hardcover, paperback, ebook, epub, Kindle,

Mike Peterson:

the hardcovers, they did such a great job with

Lawrence Lepard:

it. They really did surprising to me. And and then there's an audio version Walker. Walker America Reads it just so you know, it's a 13 hour read. So it's not impenetrable. You can get through it. It's a story. So I try to put a lot of anecdotes and my personality in there, because I know people read stories, they don't read textbooks. So, you know, it's very it's very digestible, I think, for the average person,

Mike Peterson:

awesome. And then on Twitter, where I'm on Twitter,

Lawrence Lepard:

under my name, Lawrence Lepard, I make a lot of noise. Occasionally I get triggered. I recently got triggered by a gold bug who called all Bitcoiners shysters. And I went off on the guy, which I kind of regret, but I just, I don't, I'm not a shyster. And I, you know, it just it annoyed the shit out of me. The the other place people can find I do still run this gold fund, this gold stock mining fund, and I have, it's called equity Management Associates. I have a site called Ema two.com every quarter, my partner and I, David Foley, my partner and I, we write a quarterly letter. It's it's a macro overview of all the things we were just discussing. It's free. You can sign up for it, just scroll down. You can put your own email in there. We will never spam you, and you know, so it's usually about 15 or 20 pages of, here's what happened this quarter. Here's where we think we're going gold. And talked about gold, silver and Bitcoin. So, so that's, that's how to track me. And, yeah, it's, uh, I mean, all you know, first of all, I want to say, make a couple statements, if I could, Mike, one, thank you to everybody who's bought the book. I'm deeply grateful that it's been well received and, you know, positive recommendations, etc. I really appreciate that too, if you if you believe in this stuff, and once you get it, I think the only obligation we all have is to try and help everybody you know, and spread the word. You know. People say, Well, what can I do? You know, I mean, I mean you and I didn't create the Federal Reserve. We didn't create this broken system. But what we can do is we can recruit others to fight back. And so I would ask everybody, if you read the book, you like it, you believe in the thesis, tell your friends, you know, it's help out people, you know. I mean, that's the only way we're going to make this system reform is if we all demand that we reform it, right?

Mike Peterson:

So, no, I love that. And, yeah, definitely, you know, I know a lot of times people, I'll get the book next week because it just, just do it. Now, if you're watching this, yeah, just pop on the Amazon and put that in your cart, yeah,

Lawrence Lepard:

well, and read it. I mean, I, you know, I know a lot of people don't read, but, you know, don't like to read, don't have the time to read. But I think I, you know, people who started it generally kind of get engaged, I mean, and say, Oh yeah, I want to finish someone here. I want to hear where he's going with this. So there's a lot of history in there too. You learn some things that you probably didn't know about. How we got to this condition, and it was a slow deterioration. You know, as so many things are. So yeah, I again. Thank you so much. I look. I consider you a very good friend, and I really appreciate you giving me this platform and all that you've done down here in El Salvador. It's fantastic. El zonte is on my to do list.

Mike Peterson:

Com, I will bring, bring, bring your wife the beautiful beach. Want to leave with one last thing. We we don't do price predictions on here, because I don't, I don't like to focus on price. I believe bitcoin is freedom money, and so we're not measured in Fiat in general. But I am curious, since you are in, you know, involved in the gold and Bitcoin space, which do you think is going to be the better performer in the next 12 months.

Lawrence Lepard:

Oh, without a doubt. Bitcoin, without a doubt. Yeah, I think, because gold's at 4000 I don't think gold will go to 8000 the next 12 months, not even close. I mean, I think gold will go to five or six possibly. But I feel like everything I see and pattern recognition, looking at the 2018, to 2020, example, I'm pretty highly confident that Bitcoin will close to double from here in the next 12 months. I mean, I maybe I'm a little off. Maybe it's 70% but I think we're going to see, you know, 150 to 180 to potentially quite more. But let's just be conservative, say that level and that that will make the percentage increase in Bitcoin significantly more than the percentage increase in gold. If you'd asked silver, I might have said it's gonna be a close race. Silver is actually very interesting story. You know, 50 was the all time top, and we broke through it. We're 52 right now. And if you credibly look at the silver and analyze it, I mean, we could go to 75 to $100 silver within the next year.

Mike Peterson:

So. Silver was my first investment. My dad talked me into spending all my savings on silver when I don't know, I was like, eight years old, and I think it was, it like 11 and over the next 20 years, and went down to like four or five, I think I can't remember what it bought. Well, I did, yeah, I did. So, so silver for me, I have it's, well, it still has a little bad taste in my mouth, from a young from a young kid. That's painful watching that.

Lawrence Lepard:

Well, it's the junior monetary metal. It's more volatile than gold, but it's been, it's largely been demonetized, yeah, but, but there is. It has a role to play, and it's absolutely essential, and it's getting used in a lot of more applications. So no,

Mike Peterson:

and I agree it's it'll probably catch up with with gold. I think it will. I think it will. So anyway, all right, well, hopefully next time we do this, we'll be in El zonte in the studio.

Lawrence Lepard:

Let's plan that. Thanks. There. Thank you, Mike. You.