Speaker 1: Well, if you're measuring bitcoin and dollars, the equivalent question
is how low can the dollar go? And you know,
we know from studying fiat currencies of the past, you know,
hundreds of them, that they all go to zero eventually,
and so anything divided by zero is infinity. So really
the price of anything measured in dollars could go to infinity.
So it's not really a helpful answer, but I don't think.
I think at some point it will not make sense
for people to think about the price of bitcoin and dollars.
It's like if I asked you what is the price
of a dollar?
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Speaker 4: And welcome you are listening to and watching the Financial
Survival Network.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Carrie Lutz.
Speaker 4: With us today is Alan Hibbert Goldsilver dot com. Alan
frequent guest on the show, and haven't talked to you
in a while, you know, last time, I think it
was six months ago or so, gold was just kind
of beginning its ascendancy. But cryptos, we always talk about cryptos,
and what can you say about bitcoin here?
Speaker 2: Alan?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kerry, Well, thanks for having me back. Always good
to speak with you. I'm a big fan of bitcoin. Basically,
my thesis on it is its digital gold. So it's
real money. It's what money is supposed to be. And
for thousands of years, gold was our best version of money,
and I think now we have a better version of
money in bitcoin. So I think the reason for its
astronomical price rise over the last fifteen years is that people,
little by little, one at a time are figuring out
that bitcoin is money and it's the best asset to
hold their value for the long term if they have
nothing else to do with it. Right, So, if you're
going to wait ten, fifteen, twenty years or more, bitcoin
is the place to be. And then when you have
a reason to actually invest in something like starting a
company or you know, investing in real estate, then you
move out of bitcoin into that other endeavor. So that's
why I think bitcoin is taking off, and I think
it's going to continue and it's really exciting to be
a part of.
Speaker 4: Quite frankly, yeah, it certainly is. So question is how
high can it go?
Speaker 1: Well, if you're measuring bitcoin and dollars, the equivalent question
is how low can the dollar go? And you know,
we know from studying fiat currencies of the past, you know,
hundreds of them, that they all go to zero eventually,
and so anything divided by zero is infinity. So really
the price of anything measured in dollars could go to infinity.
So it's not really a helpful answer, but I don't think.
I think at some point it will not make sense
for people to think about the price of bitcoin in dollars.
It's like if I asked you what is the price
of a dollar? The question doesn't make a dollar is
a dollar because that's the unit you use to measure
other things. Eventually, they'll come a time where bitcoin is
the unit that you use. You think of things as
priced in bitcoin, and so if someone were to ask
you how much is a bitcoin you you wouldn't even
think about it in terms of fiat or anything else.
The question almost wouldn't make sense. You'd just say a
bitcoin is a bitcoin. So I don't know if that's
a good answer for you, Kerry. But that's kind of
how I think it's going to go in the future.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And we were talking pre call about how Wall
Street has never been a fan of gold because you
buy it once, there's nothing you do with it.
Speaker 2: Maybe you sell it once, can't You know?
Speaker 4: They came up with futures, They came up with lots
of different mechanisms to trade gold, but you know, compared
to traded cryptos, Wall Street was created to monetize every
possible opportunity how to trade bitcoin ETFs, ETF's futures options
spoty tfs. You know, there'll be an inverse ETF to
trade bitcoin and a leveraged ETF.
Speaker 2: You know they're going to come up with everything here,
aren't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're right. Basically Wall Street was anti
bitcoin and anti crypto until they found a way to
make money off of it besides just holding it themselves, right,
and of course they don't want to take that kind
of risk in terms of volatility, So you're absolutely right.
Is once they found a way to put it into
an ETF to you know, sell futures on it, all
these other derivatives and investment vehicles. That's when they embraced
it and they said, you know what, this is pretty good.
We can get behind it, and you know, it is
attractive to a lot of investors. I mean you look
at the Gold ETF, like Black Rocks Gold ETF for example,
it took twenty years to reach thirty three billion in
assets under management, and their Bitcoin ETF reached that threshold
in less than one year. So it's taking off like
a rocket. It's exploding. So yeah, now that Wall Street
has a way to make money off of bitcoin and
other cryptos, they've been braced it. And you know, if
you're a smart investor, you can figure out which of
those investment vehicles is going to make sense for you,
because not all of them are are good for everybody.
But but yeah, I think I think we're going to
see a proliferation of assets and offerings from Wall Street. Definitely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they love this because there's no cost here.
Speaker 4: You know, when they go take a company public, they
got to go do due diligence, they got to send
people out there here. The only thing they set up
in ETF. It's like we set up an account for
the ETF. We set up you know, we do our
disclosures and then we sell it and we're off to
the races. Now, presumably they're actually buying bitcoin fully funding
these these ETFs. Do you think there's a potential for
fraud with m Alan?
Speaker 1: There's always the potential, But I have no evidence one
way or another. I like to I like to think
they're doing what they say they're doing, but you know,
there's always a possibility that they're not. And that's kind
of one of the reasons why investors might consider skipping
these paper versions of bitcoin and buying the real asset.
Same with gold or silver. I mean, you don't really
want to hold the gold or silver ETFs for twenty years,
not only because of that risk, but also because of
tracking risk and management fees and all that kind of thing.
If you're going to hold it for a really long time,
you want to hold physical yourself. That's true of gold,
silver and bitcoin, right. So we learn a lot of
lessons from the gold and silver market and we apply
them to the bitcoin market.
Speaker 2: So I don't want to.
Speaker 1: Raise suspicions that I have no evidence that there is
fraud going on, but it's always a possibility. And if
there's no fraud, now maybe in ten years.
Speaker 2: There's a little bit of fraud.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's only partially backed by the underlying asset that
they claim, So you never know what's going to happen
in the future. Better safe than sorry. Make sure you
do your own due diligence and diversify where needed.
Speaker 4: Hey, And that's like, if the government sets up a
bit strategic bitcoin reserve, you can't believe them because just
like they don't have the gold, or it's questionable at
best that they have the gold, how are you ever
going to know that they have the bitcoins other than
the fact we say we do. I guess you'll have
to look at the blockchain and somehow figure out what
they're holding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. So, yeah, it's really hard
to know if they have the gold that they say
they have. And of course they can't just open the
vaults and let people walk around.
Speaker 2: You know, if they.
Speaker 1: Created a video of them walking around and counting the bars,
of course a video could be faked. There's no reason
to know. And the same thing with bitcoin is, yeah,
we could look on the blockchain, but we don't know
who actually controls the private keys of which coins, and
you know, there could be a technology in the future
like zero knowledge proofs where they could prove that they
have it without actually revealing the private keys. So it's
possible in theory down the road that that that is,
that that happens and then we do have a auditible
trail of these coins, but in the current state of things,
I don't think that's the case. I agree with you
that it's hard to know. You know, if they have
the coins. They say they have a fine.
Speaker 4: Country like El Salvador that's made bitcoin their currency, who
the heck knows whether, you know, they're not exactly transparent,
right as any government. You know, it's an interesting thing, Alan,
and we'll get into gold.
Speaker 2: In a minute.
Speaker 4: But basically everybody in this planet hates their government. Now,
you know, I yet to find one country, maybe Finland
they think it's okay, But everybody hates their government for
a varacy of reasons.
Speaker 2: It's the lack of, you know, government.
Speaker 4: We banded together to create mutual security, and all these
governments do is make us feel more and more insecure
every single day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's certainly a growing trend. And you know, the
world is obviously inching closer to World War three because
of you know, a failure in leadership. I mean, it's
it's amazing how how these leaders can't find a way
to negotiate peace or around the world. I know there's
a whole lot of history to everything, but it is
kind of amazing. And maybe Argentina. A lot of Argentines
love Javier Malay. You know, he lifted four almost five
million people out of poverty in the last year, so that's.
Speaker 2: Something might be the only exception.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then maybe Finland or Sweden. I know in
Sweden they didn't really do lockdowns for COVID, and there's
the only major country in the world that didn't have
a recession in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. But yeah,
it's few and far between, you know. I think a
lot of people, depending on political views or economic views
or whatever other kind of views they have, they dislike
their governments for different reasons as you're saying, but it
is pretty common for people to dislike their governments. And
I think the general trend is broken promises. Right, it
doesn't matter if you're left leaning or right leaning or whatever.
There's broken promises where you know, we sort of grow
up thinking if you go to school you work hard
to get good grades, maybe you go to college, you
get a good job. You should be able to take
care of yourself and your family without without worrying about money.
And like that promise has been broken. Everyone is worrying
about their money. Even rich people worry about their money.
They pay attention to the markets. Am I in the
right asset? Do I need to reallocate? It's such a
weird phenomenon that we just take for granted, and that
I think is a product of the monetary system that's
all FIAT, because FIAT is fundamentally a promise and it
is guaranteed to be a broken promise every single day.
So I think that's where it all stems from. And yeah,
that's how we fix it, is we fix the money.
Speaker 4: So true, you know what you're saying, the broken promises,
the Boulevard of broken dreams. You know, we're always looking
for to get something for nothing, right, It's just human nature.
Why do people go to Las Vegas even though the
odds are stacked against them and they know it. They
can't resist, can they?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I guess not.
Speaker 1: I mean I've never you know, done any casino gambling
aside from poker, which I consider more of a skill
game than luck. But yes, a lot of people are
attracted to that. And you know sports betting is taking off. Yeah,
obviously that's that's the same version of the casino activities.
And you know a lot of the crypto market obviously
is gambling. Not I would say, not one hundred percent
of it, but an overwhelming percentage of it. Oh yeah,
And I don't know if you saw if you saw
a fart coin which was launched about it, you got
to get your hands on far coin. Come on care
it's up to it's up to a billion a billion
dollars in market cap and it was launched two months ago. So,
I mean, this is this is insane. I don't know
who is putting their money into this, but there there
are all these different mean coins. It's absolute gambling. There's
there's no value to the majority.
Speaker 4: Of these coins and manipulation wise, there's no regulation here.
Cryptos can be traded by somebody in India or China
or in the United States and they could be front
running it, back ending it, all of that good stuff.
And you know, really it's uh, it's.
Speaker 2: The wild West literally, or the wild the East.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it absolutely is, and yeah, like you said, there's
no regulation and part of the part of the downside
about innovation is you can innovate faster than regulators can regulate,
so you can always get these all these get these
scammers that are pushing the latest technology that haven't been
regulated or or ruled on. And you know, it's just
a different version of the same story over and over all,
these different rug pulls, empty promises, hype, speculation, gambling. So yeah,
gotta be careful out there.
Speaker 2: People have got a gamble, you know.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I think the the attractiveness of gambling
comes from the difficulty in just living an honest life.
If you if you if you go to work, you
work hard, you know, forty hours a week, try to
provide for your family. That isn't really cutting it, you know,
for a lot of people, for like you know, the
average average blue collar worker. For some reason. We know
the reason, it's the monetary system. That path isn't working.
So a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't be gambed,
they become gamblers because because the ability to save has
been taken away from them by their governments and by
the monetary system. So part of the reason I love gold,
silver and bitcoin, and by the way, that's the entirety
of my portfolio. Goldsilver and bitcoin is because they're just
three versions of money and you can just hold them
and then I don't feel like I need to take risks.
I don't feel like I need to be in the
stock market or real estate or all these exotic cryptos.
I don't have to take those risks. I don't have
to gamble, I don't have to go to the casino.
I don't have to do sports betting. I don't have
to do that stuff. I can just save my way
to an increasing portfolio and perhaps retire like that.
Speaker 2: We'll see.
Speaker 4: Hey, it's an amazing thing to watch an incredible world take. So, Ellen,
we find you at goldsilver dot com. That's the place,
goldsilver dot com. Yes, or our Goldsilver YouTube channel. All right,
excellent links in the show notes, this interview on Financial
Survival Network dot com. And while you're there, we just
asked you please sign up for your free newsletter, like
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Speaker 2: Alan, We'll talk to you again soon.
Speaker 4: Merry Christmas, Happy healthy New Year, and hopefully well, one
thing I can.
Speaker 2: Guarantee you about twenty twenty five. It's not going to
be boring. That's right.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me, Carrie take care.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your
solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to
Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,