Anyone who's telling you they're making money
in altcoins is lying, okay.
They're gambling, they should go to gambleholics
anonymous.
That's my recommendation.
The best thing to do is to simply hodl.
Hold your Bitcoin and let Bitcoin do for you
what you cannot do for yourself, and that
is get rich.
You know, Warren Buffett's track record without
getting bailed out by the feds every few months
would be horrible.
He'd be selling hot dogs in the park.
What's up, YouTube?
My name is Giovanni.
Welcome back to our show.
This time, I'm joined by the host of the Keiser
Report, Max Keiser.
How are you, Max?
I'm doing great, Giovanni, thanks for having
me on.
A few days ago, Warren Buffett's conglomerate,
Berkshire Hathaway, reduced its positions
in major banks and bought shares in Barrick
Gold, among the largest gold mining companies.
You said that Buffett's move is likely to
bring Bitcoin to $50K.
Can you explain the rationale behind your
statement?
Right.
Well, I've been following Warren Buffett's
career since I started on Wall Street back
in the early 1980s.
So I know his methodology and his career pretty
well.
You know, he was always bashing gold.
He hated gold.
And in the meantime, you know, he built huge
positions in banks.
He's a guy who made lost money on the airlines
twice, not just recently with American Airlines
and Delta and others.
But going back 20 years, he made a huge bet
on U.S. Air and it was a catastrophe for him.
He is somebody who's underperformed the S&P,
the index, for 15 years.
He's sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars
of the cash and he's ending his career as
a bit of a failure.
So just trying to salvage what he can of Berkshire
and his career, he finally did a mayor culpa
and said, you know what, I was wrong about
gold.
I need to own some gold.
I need exposure to gold.
So he's moving into Barrick Gold.
And this will be the beginning of a huge transition
out of financials, which he dumped recently
into gold.
And then therefore, he will soon be moving
into Bitcoin or whoever takes his place, because,
remember, he's 90 years old now.
So whoever takes Warren's place over there
at Berkshire Hathaway will be moving into
gold.
You know, they've been about 10, 15 years
behind the curve.
They were very late to get into Apple.
They were very late to get into Amazon.
They hated tech during the entire tech boom
of the last 20 years.
So they're about 10 years behind the times.
So I figured that once he gets a gold position,
he'll move into Bitcoin.
He's going to mimic what Paul Tudor Jones,
who is10 times smarter and 100 times smarter
than anybody else on Wall Street and recently
said that Bitcoin is the fastest horse in
the race and comparing it to gold, he loves
Bitcoin over gold.
He's got a position in Bitcoin.
So all these major money managers, old legacy
money managers, are starting to move into
Bitcoin as an extension of their move into
gold as a way to get out of the dumpster fire
that is the U.S. dollar.
Right, right.
So I hear you.
But at the same time, I have to point out
that Warren Buffett bought gold and not Bitcoin.
So what's your rationale is that.
Because gold and Bitcoin are synonymous, they're
the same thing.
One is digital gold and one is the yellow
metal gold that you dig out of the ground.
They're both gold.
Right.
And so now we have a major player who is moving
away from that, for 50 years, he's been bashing
gold.
Now he's into gold.
So now because of inflation, because of fiat
money, because we understand now that the
dollar is going the way of the Venezuelan
bolívar.
So you have to protect your assets and so
gold and Bitcoin are the go to assets for
preservation, for protection.
So Buffett is signaling to the market that
he quit the pretending that he knows what
he's doing when it comes to financials and
managing money.
He's given up.
He quit.
He essentially walked off the playing field.
He sold all of his airlines at a huge loss.
And he's retiring.
He's toast.
He's done, he's ended his career on a horrible
note.
That leads to my following question, because
you are making quite precise, quite detailed,
I would say, predictions for the price of
Bitcoin.
Most of the people we interview are usually
more cautious.
They tend to be very, yeah, like generic in
terms of price prediction.
While you back in July said that Bitcoin was
going to reach the $28K benchmark before correcting
and then hitting six figures.
So how can you make this kind of detailed
price predictions?
Well, my first prediction was in 2011 when
I said I'm looking for Bitcoin to go to $100,000.
So that was that prediction is still in place
from 2011.
OK, almost 10 years ago.
So that's my standing, my long standing prediction.
I recently increased that to $400,000, because
I now am completely confident that Bitcoin
will compete with gold.
So that's the macro trend.
That's the multi decade trend that we're talking
about now within that series of predictions
or within that series of price targets, you've
got medium and short term price targets.
On the short term, obviously, the run to $20,000
is key because that would make new all time
highs.
And so once it gets through $20,000 from being
a wall, long term Wall Street trader myself,
you know, I've been basically in stocks, markets
and finance for 30, over 35 years.
Once you see an asset like this break through
the old high and make a new high, you should
see a surge into an extension of, in my view,
I think we'll see $28,000 on that run before
we see any meaningful pullback.
That's the way I see, that's the way I read
this market.
Got it.
So switching a bit topic, you commented about
the latest drop of Chainlink, which is like
one of the most successful DeFi tokens lately.
You said that altcoins all exist to steal
your Bitcoin.
What do you exactly mean by that?
The track record is clear that altcoins are
basically designed to steal people's Bitcoin.
So you can't really, you can't really argue
against that point.
There's only been theft of Bitcoin.
That's the only reason altcoins have really
existed.
DeFi is just the flavor of the month.
You know, remember a couple of years ago,
it was ICOs.
And before that, you know, there's always
the invention of new thing is coming down
the pike and but for people to stay focused
on Bitcoin is a primary thing that must be
emphasized.
And you've got a lot of kind of activity in
these various altcoin markets that can really
be destructive to somebody's portfolio.
You know, with Link, of course, they had the
Winklevoss twins on with Dave Portnoy and
they talked about it.
You know, the price jumped up.
People kind of got FOMOed in and, you know,
now it's dropped 20 percent.
Right.
So and it's people don't want to, should not
be wasting their time trying to day trade
the altcoin market.
Just buy Bitcoin and hold it.
That's the one thing you can do for yourself.
Don't try to, don't try to time the Bitcoin
market, the altcoin market with all these
different coins.
And because we know from the last eight, nine
years that there's a very, it's very destructive
to people's portfolios.
There's just so much has been lost trading
these altcoins.
And for the vast majority, I would say 99,9
percent of people who buy Bitcoin just to
understand Bitcoin is a huge task that will
take up a tremendous amount of their time
that they should just focus on that.
Don't try to dig into the minutia of every
coin that comes down the pike and that.
And so I stand by my statement.
So far, every coin that's come down come along
has been good at stealing people's Bitcoin.
That's pretty much been the only use case
so far, including Ethereum.
You know, Ethereum gets a lot of hype, but
it's as the recent scandal about the accountability
of Ethereum points out, the people who have
Ethereum don't even know how many Ethereum
there are, right.
It's not even, it's still in beta.
It's not even, shouldn't even be trading.
The fact that they were even allowed to get
out there without a lot closer scrutiny from
regulators is a miracle.
And it's just not really worthy to be considered
in the same category as Bitcoin.
On the other hand, talking to some experienced
traders, they have been making good money
and good results by trading altcoins, especially
this year.
With all this, with all these DeFi coins that
have been showing outstanding performances.
Right.
If you go to, you know, Giovanni, if you go
to a casino in Las Vegas and you talk to every
gambler in there, they'll say, oh, we're making
lots of money.
We've always made lots of money, I'm making
money gambling.
No, no gambler tells you they're losing money.
Anyone who's telling you they're making money
in altcoins is lying, OK?
They're gambling.
They should go to gambleholics anonymous.
That's my recommendation.
I mean, you may make money one month or two
months, but are you going to make money over
five years, ten years, fifteen years gambling?
No.
We know categorically, emphatically without
equivocation.
The answer is a big fat no.
So you deny the existence of coherent and
successful risk management strategies?
Yeah, as I have been saying, I've been following
this for 35 years, and so far, nobody has
beaten the market, any professional, any market,
except for maybe two or three people.
You've got Paul Tudor Jones who is very successful.
George Soros is very successful.
Other than that, the number of people who
have successfully day-traded the stock market
in any market, altcoin market, stock market,
bond market is about three or four in the
past 40 years.
And that's it.
That's the fact that nobody has beaten, nobody
beats the market on a consistent basis.
There is no evidence of that.
The after years and years and years of research
and compilation of data and publishing of
data, there's been no successful trader who
has consistently beaten the market in a meaningful
way over any consistent length of time.
Look at the hedge fund market.
There's 9000 hedge funds.
None of them have beaten the market consistently
for more than a year or two.
Even Ray Dalio is considered to be the most
successful hedge guy in the world.
His track record stinks.
He loses money.
He doesn't make any money.
That's complete nonsense.
So that's why the best thing to do is to simply
hodl.
Hold your Bitcoin and let Bitcoin do for you
what you cannot do for yourself, and that
is get rich.
So moving on to the next question.
I want to talk about the flight of capital
from China, which we saw this year.
So around 50 billion dollars in cryptocurrency
were moved from China to wallets overseas.
So you kind of celebrated this piece of news
saying that this is all capital that is taking
the Bitcoin Express.
But on the other hand, this money was largely
moved through Tether, which is a dollar-based
stablecoin.
So why are you so celebrative about Bitcoin
when it's not about Bitcoin, but Tether?
Well, Tether is part of the Bitcoin ecosystem
and it shouldn't really be separated meaningfully
from the trends that are going on a Bitcoin
and as far as Asia and China moving money
out of the country, taking the "Bitcoin express",
that should be celebrated as it will be in
all countries everywhere, because the nation
state, as we know it, is dead.
The nation state won't survive the next 10
or 15 years because the nation state only
survives to the extent that it can print its
own money and then enforce people against
their will to accept that money.
Now, for the first time with Bitcoin, you
separated state from money so that now we
have individual sovereignty and people are
not going to be, people are going to go to
places that appreciate their wealth.
If you have any wealth, why live in a country
that doesn't respect your wealth, why not
just take your money, get a 24-word seed phrase
and go somewhere where you got some respect
for your wealth and people and the government's
not there to harass you.
If people are unhappy in China, if people
are unhappy in America, if people are unhappy
in Canada or wherever, they should leave immediately
and take their wealth with them with Bitcoin
and get rid of these nation states because
they've become no longer useful.
They're outdated.
Tether is just, you know, it's part of the
ecosystem.
It's a way to insulate against some fluctuation
risk and volatility risk.
When you're moving between currencies, you're
parking fiat in a Tether and then moving it
into a Bitcoin, etc.
So it's just part of the back end of the global
infrastructure that is Bitcoin, and I don't
have any problem with it.
So you said in 2017, you supported the initiative
taken by president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro,
to launch their own oil backed cryptocurrency,
The Petro, as a reaction to U.S. sanctions
and the economic downturn that the country
was going through.
So that initiative proved to be unsuccessful
because so far, very few people in Venezuela
knows how to use the Petro and a lot of rating
agencies even consider it like a scam.
So why did you take a supportive position
towards this initiative?
And what do you think about it now?
Right.
So my position in 2017 with the Venezuelan
Petro is that it was a good stepping stone
to Bitcoin.
I said it's great that the government is recognizing
crypto and it's great that they're trying
to do their own coin and if they're lucky,
they'll graduate to Bitcoin.
Just a stepping stone.
I said the coin itself will fail because it's
centralized.
And of course, that will never work.
But if it gets into Bitcoin, then that's great,
that's what I said.
So as a way for popularizing Bitcoin, right?
Yeah, I also heard, you know, a couple of
weeks ago we got the information that Iranian
government was also into Bitcoin, that they
were allocating resources to mining Bitcoin.
OK, that's extremely important developments.
So around the world on the margins, countries
are now getting into Bitcoin.
They went through their experimentation phase.
And it's the same thing will happen when the
central banks, you know, but they may get
into what I call around the world as a hash
war where countries are now competing for
Bitcoin the same way we went into a space
race in the 1960s when the Soviet Union had
the Sputnik project and suddenly America said,
you know what, we have to land a man on the
moon.
Well, if Nigeria suddenly became a Bitcoin
powerhouse or Belarus, which has a big stash
of Bitcoin or Iran or Venezuela, they suddenly
had a huge stash of Bitcoin.
Other countries are going to be like, wait
a minute, we need to join this hash war, this
hash race and get some Bitcoin.
That means the hash rate goes up, security
goes up, price goes up, the value of fiat
goes down.
And it's interesting because in some countries,
the message resonates a lot stronger.
In Mexico, where our show is dubbed into Spanish,
you know, the Kaiser report, we have a huge
fan base there.
And when we go to Mexico City, you know, we
get mobbed by people in the streets.
They love the fact that Bitcoin has totally
changed their outlook upon life.
They've changed their lives.
We do our live events there.
We get huge crowds.
And it's just a joyous experience, really,
and, you know, the countries and huge is obviously
going through some big difficulties.
In Argentina, you know, we were there a few
months ago.
The Argentine peso is a complete disaster,
has been for years.
But the people in Argentina that are now on
the Bitcoin lifeboat are very happy that they
got on the Bitcoin lifeboat and that these
are people for whom buying gold would be difficult.
You know, gold is hard to transport.
Gold and silver, very difficult to move around
if you're trying to leave the country.
If you want to get out of a country that's
under stress, it's going to be almost impossible
to take your gold and silver with you.
Where Bitcoin gives you the freedom to move,
it gives you financial sovereignty.
You know, it gives you all these benefits
that suddenly, instead of being in a place
of despair, you're in a place of hope.
And that's a very big difference in somebody's
life just to make a transition from "I'm in
a total sh*t hole of despair" to being "I
am hopeful that I can get out of this and
thrive."
And that can be available only, only through
Bitcoin.
Nothing else gives you that.
Got it.
And actually, the next, the last question
is actually connected to what you just said,
because you have been pointing at the Cantillon
effect as a main cause for wealth inequality
in the world and in the financial traditional
system.
And you also said that Bitcoin is an instrument
that can fix this Cantillon effect.
So can you explain what this Cantillon effect
is and how can Bitcoin fix it?
Right, so the Cantillon effect then we coined
the term "cantillionair" on the Kaiser report.
These are people that are rentiers on the
economy.
These are the people that live closest to
the money printers in Washington to get the
money first.
And then they go out and they'll buy an apartment
in Park Avenue in New York City for 200 million
dollars and their friends will do the same
thing.
And suddenly those apartments on Park Avenue,
New York City, are worth 300 million dollars.
So then they borrow money against that asset
that they just bought with the free money
they got from the Fed.
And those assets go up in value.
So the money never makes it to the real economy,
it gets stuck at that very, very narrow group
of folks who are get it first, right.
So when the government prints money, it goes
through the primary dealers and it goes to
the banks on Wall Street, essentially.
And then they keep it.
They didn't make loans.
If you look, all you need to look at is two
charts.
One is M2, which is the money supply figure.
If you notice, if you look at that chart,
it's a 45 degree angle that goes up.
And then in the last year or two, it's an
80 degree angle, 90 degree angle goes straight
up.
They're printing money.
Trillions and trillions and trillions, incredible
amounts of money printing all over the world.
Straight up hyperbolic money printing.
OK, now take another chart, the money velocity
chart, which shows you to what extent is the
money circulating in the economy.
It's at a 45 degree angle down, it's close
to zero.
So that's the Cantillon effect right there
in two charts, M2 and money velocity, M2 skyrocketing,
money velocity going to zero.
That's the Cantillon effect.
If the money doesn't go anywhere after they
printed, it stays in, it stays in a few hands
and it never circulates.
It's uncirculated money.
And as a result, you have this enormous wealth
and income gap, social unrest.
And, you know, problems are getting worse
and worse, but the people who and Warren Buffett
is one of those cantillionairs.
Without, you know, Warren Buffett track record,
without getting bailed out by the Feds every
few months would be horrible.
He would be selling hot dogs in the park.
He would be on a park bench like a bum.
He simply exists.
He's a cantillionaire.
He does nothing productive.
He's never invented anything.
He's never really provided any services.
He just sits there in his basement collecting
free money from the Fed.
And he doesn't even do anything with his life.
He doesn't travel.
He doesn't do any interesting things.
Ok, so and Bitcoin in this case can fix this
Cantillon effect because it's basically a
solution for the central bank government of
finance, right?
Well, it takes all the middle, there's no
middleman.
There's nobody in the middle.
It goes right directly from God to consumer.
Max, that was very good to speak to you.
It was very interesting.
Thanks for being with us.
Oh, yeah.
It's my pleasure, as always, for Cointelegraph,
the one of the finest publications in the
Bitcoin space, for sure.
