My buddy Larry Lepard (whose gold fund was up over 150% last year) joined me today to unpack the current macro environment — from Bitcoin’s volatility and gold’s historic breakout to what may be the most important question of the decade: is the global monetary system on the brink of a reset?
Bitcoin vs. Gold: Sound Money in Two Different Gears
The discussion opened settling an argument Larry and I were having on X the other day, when he took exception with me comparing Peter Schiff’s EPGIX to Saylor’s MSTR on a year-to-date basis at EOY 2025.
That went into an exchange over Bitcoin’s recent underperformance versus gold. While acknowledging Bitcoin’s painful drawdowns, Lepard stressed that the asset’s long-term thesis remains intact:
“Bitcoin has good years, exceptionally good years, and really awful years… that’s exactly what you expect from a new network that’s still being adopted.”
He framed Bitcoin and gold as complementary forms of sound money — gold thriving in crisis and uncertainty, while Bitcoin responds more to liquidity and risk-on conditions. Importantly, he warned new investors about Bitcoin’s extreme volatility and the necessity of proper position sizing:
“Buy an amount where if it went down, your first instinct would be to say ‘it’s cheap, I should buy more,’ not ‘I made a mistake.’”
Gold and Silver: A Structural Shift Underway
Lepard believes the surge in precious metals is not merely speculative but reflects deep structural changes in global finance. Tight physical supply, de-dollarization, and rising distrust in government finances are converging:
“We are in the first or second inning of a nine-inning game… this is a secular trend.”
With silver breaking multi-decade resistance and physical premiums emerging across global markets, Lepard argued these moves signal a fundamental repricing of monetary assets rather than a temporary blow-off.
The Bond Market: The Real Fault Line
One of the most sobering segments of the discussion centered on the bond market. Lepard outlined a scenario where persistently negative real yields eventually force the Federal Reserve into full-scale yield-curve control — triggering an inflationary shock far larger than anything seen during COVID:
“If the bond market revolts and the Fed caps yields… the inflation that comes out of that will blow your socks off.”
In his view, the long end of the bond market is structurally broken, and the consequences for currencies and asset pricing are enormous.
