| Chris Lowe: Bitcoin (BTC) is up 182% since you called it the “new crisis currency” and recommended it to our Casey Report readers in June 2018. That’s a heck of a lot more than the U.S. dollar [which is down 2%] or other fiat currencies. You wrote one of the most interesting reports on bitcoin I’ve read in a long time. You make the case that the reason you want to own gold and bitcoin over government-issued currencies like the U.S. dollar is that they’re “hard assets.” They’re both hard to produce more of. That means their value can’t inflate away. Gold is a physical thing. And a lot of folks view it as the hardest currency in the world. But you’ve been making the case that bitcoin is an even harder currency than gold, and potentially an even better store of value as a result. A lot of folks may get confused and think, “How can bitcoin be hard money? It’s digital. It’s not physical.” Could you explain why you’re so bullish on bitcoin? Why not just go all in on gold? Why have bitcoin in the portfolio at all? Nick Giambruno: It’s an interesting question. And I know it’s one a lot of our readers are thinking about. Bitcoin is an entirely new phenomenon and asset class. It doesn’t fit into the mental frameworks most people have when they analyze investments and currencies. It’s a completely new thing – genuine digital scarcity. And that’s a very profound invention. You’re absolutely right – hard does not necessarily mean physical. It means hard to produce relative to existing supply. That’s the proper use of the word, in the context of a hard asset. Another way to think of it is like this. Hardness is simply resistance to inflation, and in my view, that is the most important attribute of a good money. | Recommended Link | | "LATERAL IPOS" (LIKE THIS ONE) TEND TO MOVE EXTRAORDINARILY FAST… And they have the potential to make you absurdly large returns like: 10,245% 53,405% 95,875% Among many others. Now of course, we can’t promise you’ll see gains this high… But the next potential winner is expected to jump to the NASDAQ any day now. For the biggest gains, you need to get in right now! | | | -- | Chris: But if bitcoin is digital – like most dollars these days – how is it hard to produce? I think that’s a big stumbling block for a lot of folks. Nick: This is a subject we could talk about all day. But the thing you’ve got to grasp about bitcoin is its rate of inflation is constantly decreasing. Your readers may have heard of the “halving.” About every four years, the supply of new bitcoin entering circulation gets cut in half. [In order to earn new bitcoin, “miners” must solve complex math problems that use a lot of costly computer power. The halving cuts the reward for solving these problems in half. For a more in-depth explanation, go here.] Compare this to gold, for example. The rate of increase in the supply of above-ground gold is about 1.7% a year. Bitcoin is right around that sweet spot, too. But unlike gold, the supply of new bitcoin gets cut in half every four years. Here’s an easier way to think of the halving… There’s a euphemism that central bankers use for printing money. They call it “quantitative easing.” Well, here’s something that’s not a euphemism – bitcoin’s halvings are quantitative hardening. That’s really all you need to know about bitcoin. Bitcoin is becoming harder and harder, as government currencies are getting easier and easier to produce. Over time, this is going to cause a lot of people to dump their government confetti currencies and buy bitcoin – and gold – to protect their buying power. Chris: What about the argument you hear that, because it’s relatively easy to code bitcoin copycats or competitors, bitcoin’s fixed supply isn’t relevant? Nick: It’s true that there are plenty of other cryptocurrencies out there. But the bottom line is bitcoin is the only one you can call a truly hard asset. All the other cryptos can be controlled by insiders, development teams, and founders – from Ethereum (ETH), the second-most valuable crypto in the world, on down. The rules are up for change – especially the monetary policy. The folks at the head of Ethereum don’t even know what their monetary policy is going to be in a few years. Bitcoin isn’t like that. It’s truly decentralized. As a result, none of the other cryptos have a credible monetary policy like bitcoin. They are not hard assets. That’s the whole value proposition of bitcoin: No group of insiders can get together and alter the bitcoin protocol. We saw an attempt to do that with the whole Bitcoin Cash (BCH) fiasco. That’s where the most powerful group of bitcoin insiders tried to get together and alter the bitcoin protocol. It was an abysmal failure. They couldn’t do it. Actually, it was a terrific reinforcement of bitcoin’s value proposition –nobody can control it, not even the most influential crypto folks. That means bitcoin has a monetary property that no other crypto has: Namely, it is truly immutable. Here’s the bottom line. Don’t be fooled by bitcoin knockoffs and other cryptos claiming they are better than bitcoin. The imitators cannot copy bitcoin’s immutability, decentralization, hardness, liquidity, economics, or network effects. The issue is clear to the market, where real people are voting with their money. The market values these knockoffs and other cryptos as mere fractions of the real bitcoin’s market cap. Today, bitcoin is about to reach new all-time highs. While Bitcoin Cash is at an all-time low priced in bitcoin, and is not far off from hitting an all-time low in dollars too. In both cases, Bitcoin Cash is on its way to zero in my opinion. Are You Collecting "Tech Royalty" Income? Chris: You also run a deep-value advisory called Crisis Investing. Your aim there is to profit in places where crises have knocked prices down to extremely low levels, with huge upside. One of the trips you took – which I found fascinating – was to Zimbabwe. The country suffered a terrible hyperinflation. At its height, between 2008 and 2009, experts estimate that the Zimbabwean dollar, the country’s currency, was inflated at an impossible-to-conceive rate of 79.6 billion percent month over month. Along with Legacy cofounder Doug Casey, you met up with Gideon Gono, who ran the central bank of Zimbabwe when this was happening. What insights did you take away from that meeting? From left to right: Nick Giambruno, Doug Casey, Gideon Gono Nick: Gideon was actually highly intelligent and an interesting individual. It’s not as if he didn’t know that printing money was going to cause hyperinflation. He can put two and two together. But when you give governments the power to print money, they’re going to exercise it. In Gideon’s case, he mentioned there was pressure from the army and the military to do just that. And you don’t say no to people with guns when they tell you to do something – unless you have a death wish. That’s why central bankers shouldn’t exist. People don’t realize it. But central banking is not that old, in the grand scheme of things. The Federal Reserve, for instance, wasn’t set up until 1913. Central banks don’t add any value to society. All they do is redistribute wealth to insiders and connected political hacks while impoverishing everyone else. It’s completely toxic and should be abolished. And central bankers give you these ridiculous notions like, “We need to have 2% inflation a year.” These people have no useful purpose. They should be abolished too. The case of Zimbabwe is an excellent illustration of that. When governments have their backs against the wall – as many Western governments do right now – what are they going to do? Are they going to shut down the printing presses? Of course not. They’re going to print money. It’s the easy option. This happens only when governments aren’t constrained by a hard money they don’t control – such as gold in the past and bitcoin more recently. Zimbabwe is a preview of things to come. Exactly the same thing can – and will – happen in other countries. | Recommended Link | | Why They’re Getting Rich and You’re Not There’s a new trend sweeping across Wall Street that’s making a lot of people rich. According to Morgan Stanley, at least $1.5 trillion is already invested in it. Billionaire Steven Cohen invested a whopping $6 billion. That’s half of all his money. And JPMorgan Chase hired 33,000 software engineers to profit from this trend. Unfortunately, most everyday folks are missing out on what Investopedia called “easy money.” | | | -- | Chris: A recurring question we get from readers is about bitcoin’s legal status. They worry the feds might ban citizens from owning bitcoin just like they did with gold in 1933. [On April 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102. It banned U.S. citizens from holding gold or gold certificates. This ban remained in place until 1964.] Nick: First of all, they can’t shut bitcoin down. No government can shut it down. Unless the internet goes down for the whole world, everywhere, simultaneously, they are not going to be able to shut it down. Trying to prohibit something that’s digital and borderless is completely impractical. I’d like to see them try, because they’ll fall flat on their faces. Chris: So on a practical level, how should our readers approach owning bitcoin and gold in their portfolios? Nick: The easiest way to think of them is as alternative forms of cash. Cash can be used for long-term savings. And here, gold really shines. Gold has been used as a store of value for thousands of years. But bitcoin should be there, too. Bitcoin is an emerging store of value, so there’s that much more upside to it. But there’s also more risk. So I would have a healthy mix… but skew it toward gold. The other use of cash is for day-to-day expenses. So you might as well spend your central bank confetti for your day-to-day expenses and pass the hot potato on to someone else while it is still accepted. Chris: Thanks, Nick. Nick: Thanks, Chris. Anytime. Chris: Tomorrow, I’m unlocking more of Nick’s research for our paid-up Legacy Inner Circle subscribers. It’s all about why bitcoin is a harder asset than even gold… why its price will keep climbing… and why it will be the ultimate winner in the government’s War on Cash. If you’re already a Legacy Inner Circle subscriber, look out for that in your inbox – and in the members-only app – at midday ET tomorrow. If you’re not yet a Legacy Inner Circle subscriber, and you don’t want to miss out… click here to find out how to join. In the mailbag: “Reject all ideologies”… Regular readers will know all about the debate that’s been filling up our mailbag. It concerns Legacy’s globetrotting goldbug, Tom Dyson, and his take on bitcoin. Tom says it’s “100% useless.” He sees gold as a far superior kind of money. But Tom doesn’t share insights on just money and markets. In his Postcards From the Fringe e-letter, he also shares tales of his travels around the world with his ex-wife and three kids. He’s already visited 29 countries on a year-and-a-half world tour from 2018 to the start of this year. And more recently, he spent five months touring the American heartland. Tom and his ex-wife, Kate, are homeschooling their kids. And he mentioned that they were showing the kids a TV series by libertarian economist Milton Friedman on YouTube. Tom said he wanted to “indoctrinate [his] kids in free-market and libertarian principles.” This prompted one of Tom’s readers to get in touch with a suggestion… Reader comment: I would recommend taking a different approach. Teach them to reject all ideologies and to adopt good ideas wherever they find them. I think ideas are the most important thing mankind has given to the world. New ideas appear as if from nowhere. Ideas can be developed. Ideas can be challenged. Ideas can be changed. Ideas can trigger yet more new ideas. Ideas represent freedom. I think ideologies of all forms are the evilest thing mankind has given to the world. Ideologies are fixed. Ideologies must be followed. Ideologies cannot be challenged. Ideologies cannot be changed. Ideologies represent incarceration. Free-market capitalism and libertarianism started as ideas. But political groups have turned them into ideologies. I reject all ideologies. I am a pragmatist. If it works, use it. If it doesn’t, stop using it. Teach your kids to take an interest in all ideas and adopt the ones that work, while rejecting the ones that don’t. Where the ideas came from is irrelevant. Do you agree that libertarianism is no longer an idea, but an ideology? Share your thoughts with us at feedback@legacyresearch.com. Regards, Chris Lowe
November 19, 2020
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