This week’s Off The Cuff (OTC) is special. The guest is Peter St Onge and it’s special because of his crisp ability to communicate, his authentic desire to help people, and his cheerful good nature (despite the heaviness of the topics being discussed).
Honestly, he’s “one of us.” Or we’re all “one of him.” Either way, we’re on the same team, and you’re going to be hearing more from him in the future.
As before, we’ve split this OTC into two parts, one public and one private. This is the public portion. The private part, reserved for Peak Prosperity members, can be found at the link below.
The topics we cover include:
Inflation
The economy
BRICS and the prospect of gold-backed currency.
The Fed and how much it has utterly distorted the markets.
How all of this maps into the fall of the Roman Empire.
As always, nothing contained herein constitutes or should be taken as financial advice.
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Fair warning; you’ll love them and find solace in speaking to a financial professional who shares your concerns and speaks our language.
A gold-backed BRICS currency seems ideal for those countries, although disastrous for the US. So who custodies the gold? Who audits it? More importantly, how does one guard against value manipulation by non-BRICS actors who would want to destroy the BRICS economic platform? Whilst it’s scarce, global supplies of gold will not be finite in our lifetime. Could we even go as far as mining it in space?
A gold-backed system could be further strengthened by a more pristine, scarce, finite asset. One which will eventually surpass gold’s global market cap, with its holdings being 100% auditable and 100% immutable. Even better – an asset which could be moved at lightning speed across space and time, costing only a few dollars. All of these qualities would supercharge the BRICS system.
I know it may not necessarily be a popular asset for discussion here at PP, but it’s almost impossible to look past bitcoin as this pristine secondary asset for BRICS. [And I remain unconvinced by the argument that the West will succeed in closing the on-ramps to bitcoin. Asia has the numbers and the clout to switch its citizens off the USD and onto bitcoin, whatever the West decides to do to those on-ramps.]
I’ll just wait until all these chart thumping geniuses figure out the worlds financial solutions, then, after thorough verification, I might trade a bit of real money for their new, improved fiat. Until then, I’ll chalk it all down as entertainment.
Well, it seems RFK Jr. is the new political messiah, so let the worship begin. We can all pay our tithe in bitcoin? Who knows, maybe RFK will appoint Crypto King Sam Bankman-Fried as Treasury Secretary?
OFF THE CUFF CONVERSATION. Every year a large Swiss corporation prints dozens of pages with everything concerning gold. There are only four private refineries that produce the pure gold that China demands and they are located in Switzerland. We are able to track through them and gold transfers from London and through Singapore etc. the amounts flowing to China. Also one of the largest gold mines producing about 400 tons of gold per year is located in China. Thus, the estimation of existing gold in China is approximately 20,000 or more tons and not the 1,500 tons China claims. Also recently it was disclosed that the Chinese public owns 23,000 tons of gold. Now contrast that to the 7,900 tons the US claims to have. No independent audit has ever been made. In addition gold experts feel that most of the gold held in storage has been rehypothecated
at least 200 times.
The suspicion is that the daily downward manipulation of gold in the early mornings before the opening of the NY Stockmarket might be incorporated in an agreement between China and the USA. The Chinese would not dump the US securities in return for cooperation of suppression of the gold price which would enable them to purchase at a low price. At least a half dozen GP Morgen and other bank employees have been tried and convicted of gold downward manipulation by forward selling and short selling without backup collateral. They never get sent to prison… The banks pay 200 million and continue the same.
China will most likely not push for a gold backed currency because of the
immediate destruction of the US dollar; because of their US security holdings and because they still have a huge trade surplus with the USA.
However, the periodic accumulation of often 350 or so tons of gold by central banks around the world; the accumulation of gold by China and Russia and all the other very valid points brought out in the recent “off the cuff conversation” one might place some serious bets on gold.
Show me a candidate besides RFK who could have articulated this answer. Lawrence ODonnell hammered him for not taking a science course. Sheesh.
RFK Jr answers @MartyBent's question about Bitcoin mining and the attack from certain states like New York that cite environmental impacts.
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The specific answer RFK/J gives is part of what I am pointing out here. Bitcoin mining requires energy, but miners can follow the cheapest energy sources and mine during the times of the day where energy producers have surplus energy.
A hydroelectric dam on a river continues to produce electricity at night, for example.
This makes both 1) the miner, and, 2) the utility company, profitable.
This is also helpful in balancing the grid.
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The second point is the intelligence and articulation of political candidates. Can you imagine other politicians with such a nuanced, educated, extemporaneous explanation of this issue?
My impression is that RFK/J is a major tier above most politicians.
Click link to hear a ~2 minute audio of RFK/J's explanation: https://twitter.com/DavidBCollum/status/1684338754876473352?s=20
RFK, Jr. also articulated a plan for the US Treasury to start acquiring bitcoin to back USD. His proposal is to back Treasuries with hard assets, and named gold, silver, platinum, and bitcoin. He’d start at 1% hard money and increase the percent over time, gradually helping stabilize the dollar’s value by linking to a basket of assets (article here). The proposal was also briefly addressed on Bitcoin Magazine’s show “Fedwatch” (here, 4 minute segment). As the written article notes, RFK’s also in favor of eliminating cap gains on conversions from btc to usd. While tax income would be lost, he says, the treatment would strongly incentivize the bitcoin development entities to domicile here rather than offshore, anchoring the next gen money tech in the US.
The point of interest, as Fedwatch hosts Ansel & CK noted, is the fact that the Overton Window on BTC is shifting, the narrative changing. All of a sudden we see politicians and public officials talking about bitcoin ownership on a sovereign level. And, of course, Blackrock’s proposed spot etf has put a lot of spotlight on btc. Here is an interesting, skeptical conversation from the Simply Bitcoin podcast on the possible cause of Blackrock’s change of heart about BTC and, also, why to remain suspicious of Fink et.al. (16 minutes from this point). IMO, we are watching an example of case, case, cluster, cluster behavior. We have more clusters to go, probably multi-years to play out, but at the end of it is the boom phase.
The interesting speculation is: if we’re here now - with dark horse political candidates and certainly-influential fund managers (a few known for their hostility, avarice, and lust for power) talking up btc as we go into the 2024 halving, and all of it coming certainly faster than I expected - where will we be as we go into the 2028 halving?
I thought we were at the start of the “then they fight us” stage of adoption with a lot more pain to work through. The Simply Bitcoin folks advise eyes wide open to the potential that Blackrock is setting up a squeeze play; I don’t disagree. In fact, I’m very suspicious of what Fink might be up to, as I wrote here, in June, following Allan Farrington’s substack essay digging into the details of Blackrock’s ETF filing. Yet, for all that, recently I find myself thinking that the “then we win” stage could come this decade. Perhaps with the 2028 halving bull cycle.