Podcast appearances and mentions of charlie morris

Gold broke out to new highs on Friday: $3,237/oz. It is proving one of the prime beneficiaries of all the market mayhem, and no surprise. Gold is your hedge against government, and this is all a creation of government.Where to park capital? Equities are all over the place and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. With US authorities transparent about wanting it lower, the US dollar is not the safe haven it's been since 2007 in market sell-offs. As for treasuries, they've become a weapon in the trade wars.Inert gold, on the other hand, is neutral. It doesn't care which side of the trade wars, the culture wars, or any other wars you're on, and at the moment, it seems everyone wants a piece.China, we learn thanks to the sleuthing of analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs, bought another 570 tonnes in 2024. Who knows how much more it has bought in 2025? To put that 570-tonne number in perspective, the UK's total holdings are 310 tonnes.Tell your friends.What's driving it all?This move in gold started shortly after the US confiscated $300 billion in Russian state holdings after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It hasn't been driven by retail. Central bank buying has pushed up the price.If you're not on Team US or Team G7, why own assets they can confiscate, like dollars or treasuries?Own gold instead. The US would have to invade you to take your gold—or send in Kelly's Heroes.In 1950, gold made up 70% of international reserves. In the noughties, it was just 10%. The dollar, meanwhile, reached 60%, with the euro at another 20%.Now gold is at 20%, the dollar at 45%, and the euro at 15%. The trend is clear, as this cool little video from Nieuwenhuijs and Money Metals shows:In my opinion, we'll be at 40% five years from now.Here's gold since late 2022. Every pullback has been bought. It's as though someone with deep pockets is saying, “Buy the pullback every time it hits the 50-day moving average (red line).”The UK seems to have been forgotten in this global rout, but I have little doubt the chickens of our shocking national finances and woeful productivity will soon come home to roost in the form of a sterling crisis. That's when we overlooked Britishers will be mighty glad we have our gold.Gold is now £2,475/oz. Another year of this, and we'll be north of £3,000.Summer is approaching, and May to August is typically when gold is weakest. Take advantage of pullbacks, is my advice. Do what the Chinese are doing. They're smarter than we are (when it comes to gold, at least).With oil having cratered, we should finally see gold miners fetch a proper bid. (They are already moving a little). Energy can represent 15% to 40% of mining costs. Lower costs and a higher price for the final product should mean they make more money, and thus higher share prices. (I'll cover miners again soon, I promise, though I am worried I'll jinx it)Here's something Charlie Morris observed—and you really should subscribe to his gold newsletter, Atlas Pulse; it's top dog in a crowded field - it's free. GDX is the largest gold mining ETF by far. Despite higher gold prices, it's seen outflows of 25% over the past year. When inflows start, these things will rocket. The sector is tiny relative to the capital out there.Here's three years of Brent, FYI. It's almost the reverse of gold. Good for mining.If you're interested in buying gold, by the way - and you should own some, if you don't already, given everything that is going on - the bullion dealer I recommend is the Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.A 2-minute video for your Sunday entertainmentI've got lots of content coming up over the next fortnight. I've just returned from two days of bitcoin conferences, so I'm fired up about that. I've got that gold mining piece to write. I have a lot more to say about gold. I have a fab video to share with you which I will send out tomorrow. And I want to explore where we should deploy capital in all this market mayhem: which sectors will do well in tariff wars, and which won't. So, plenty to come.You ought to subscribe.In the meantime, as it's the weekend, enjoy this silly little 3-minute vid I put together for my comedy Substack - not to be taken seriously - about alien invaders on planet Earth stealing our gold at the dawn of civilization. (Click the image below)Finally, if you're interested in gold and haven't already seen it, here's my guide to investing int he shiny stuff. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Gold broke out to new highs on Friday: $3,237/oz. It is proving one of the prime beneficiaries of all the market mayhem, and no surprise. Gold is your hedge against government, and this is all a creation of government.Where to park capital? Equities are all over the place and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. With US authorities transparent about wanting it lower, the US dollar is not the safe haven it's been since 2007 in market sell-offs. As for treasuries, they've become a weapon in the trade wars.Inert gold, on the other hand, is neutral. It doesn't care which side of the trade wars, the culture wars, or any other wars you're on, and at the moment, it seems everyone wants a piece.China, we learn thanks to the sleuthing of analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs, bought another 570 tonnes in 2024. Who knows how much more it has bought in 2025? To put that 570-tonne number in perspective, the UK's total holdings are 310 tonnes.Tell your friends.What's driving it all?This move in gold started shortly after the US confiscated $300 billion in Russian state holdings after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It hasn't been driven by retail. Central bank buying has pushed up the price.If you're not on Team US or Team G7, why own assets they can confiscate, like dollars or treasuries?Own gold instead. The US would have to invade you to take your gold—or send in Kelly's Heroes.In 1950, gold made up 70% of international reserves. In the noughties, it was just 10%. The dollar, meanwhile, reached 60%, with the euro at another 20%.Now gold is at 20%, the dollar at 45%, and the euro at 15%. The trend is clear, as this cool little video from Nieuwenhuijs and Money Metals shows:In my opinion, we'll be at 40% five years from now.Here's gold since late 2022. Every pullback has been bought. It's as though someone with deep pockets is saying, “Buy the pullback every time it hits the 50-day moving average (red line).”The UK seems to have been forgotten in this global rout, but I have little doubt the chickens of our shocking national finances and woeful productivity will soon come home to roost in the form of a sterling crisis. That's when we overlooked Britishers will be mighty glad we have our gold.Gold is now £2,475/oz. Another year of this, and we'll be north of £3,000.Summer is approaching, and May to August is typically when gold is weakest. Take advantage of pullbacks, is my advice. Do what the Chinese are doing. They're smarter than we are (when it comes to gold, at least).With oil having cratered, we should finally see gold miners fetch a proper bid. (They are already moving a little). Energy can represent 15% to 40% of mining costs. Lower costs and a higher price for the final product should mean they make more money, and thus higher share prices. (I'll cover miners again soon, I promise, though I am worried I'll jinx it)Here's something Charlie Morris observed—and you really should subscribe to his gold newsletter, Atlas Pulse; it's top dog in a crowded field - it's free. GDX is the largest gold mining ETF by far. Despite higher gold prices, it's seen outflows of 25% over the past year. When inflows start, these things will rocket. The sector is tiny relative to the capital out there.Here's three years of Brent, FYI. It's almost the reverse of gold. Good for mining.If you're interested in buying gold, by the way - and you should own some, if you don't already, given everything that is going on - the bullion dealer I recommend is the Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.A 2-minute video for your Sunday entertainmentI've got lots of content coming up over the next fortnight. I've just returned from two days of bitcoin conferences, so I'm fired up about that. I've got that gold mining piece to write. I have a lot more to say about gold. I have a fab video to share with you which I will send out tomorrow. And I want to explore where we should deploy capital in all this market mayhem: which sectors will do well in tariff wars, and which won't. So, plenty to come.You ought to subscribe.In the meantime, as it's the weekend, enjoy this silly little 3-minute vid I put together for my comedy Substack - not to be taken seriously - about alien invaders on planet Earth stealing our gold at the dawn of civilization. (Click the image below)Finally, if you're interested in gold and haven't already seen it, here's my guide to investing int he shiny stuff. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Last week brought a lot of Temple men's basketball portal departures and a big change in the Owls' fundraising and NIL world. We'll get you caught up on all of that, along with the latest Temple football roster and recruiting updates, on this week's podcast, brought to you by Greenspan & Greenspan Injury Lawyers. Intro: 0:00 – 3:02 On (or around) this date: 3:02 – 13:45 The portal, the TUFF Fund and the Competitive Excellence Funds – a week in review:  13:45 – 17:08 K.C. Keeler signals the end of spring games and a potential future joint practice with Penn State?: 17:08 – 25:44 Temple adds UMass linebacker Jalen Stewart: 25:44 – 27:40 Don Bosco Prep star Rhett Morris talks about his recruitment and Temple visit and some Temple trivia about his father, Charlie Morris: 27:40 – 36:14 Mailbag: 36:14 – end   (Time stamps are approximate due to advertisements.)

Did you see today's shocking news about Trump's new stablecoin?? I asked Charlie Morris, crypto and gold expert and CIO of Byte Tree, his thoughts on the president's latest foray into crypto...

Gold is enjoying a bump after President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on US steel and aluminum imports this week. Merryn speaks with reporter Jack Ryan, who covers mining and precious metals, and gold market veteran Charlie Morris of ByteTree to discuss what’s driving gold’s ascent and what investors can do to make some money out of the moves. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comHundreds of tonnes of gold - so much so that there is now something of a shortage in London - have made their way across the Atlantic to the US to get ahead of Trump tariffs. Something like 400 tonnes have gone to the Comex alone, never mind what's gone to the private vaults of HSBC, JP Morgan et al.With a shortage of physical gold for delivery in London, waiting times now as long as eight weeks, and the Bank of England refusing to comment, there are all sorts of rumours flying about. It's not a great situation for London, which is normally the epicentre of the physical gold markets.I don't think we're going to get a proper run on gold, but it's possible nonetheless, and if we do, talk about unintended consequences...A bit of zip in the normally quite sleepy physical markets.Today, however, I wanted to give my outlook on gold for 2025. Before I do this, I have two things to plug:One is my mate Charlie Morris' newsletter, Atlas Pulse. This monthly gold report is, in my view, the best out there bar none, and it's free. More here.And, two, if you are thinking of buying gold - and I think everyone should own some - my preferred bullion dealer is the Pure Gold Company. You should get your gold or silver from them.Gold's Silent SurgeThe gold price has been rising relentlessly since November 2022.Here we are in early 2025, within a few dollars of all-time highs at $2,800.Gold is at or close to all-time highs against the Japanese yen, the euro, the Swiss franc, the Great British peso, the Aussie and Canadian dollars, and pretty much any other fiat currency you care to mention.And yet I don't recall seeing much mention of this anywhere. This is very much a stealth bull market, the best kind of bull market. It means there is plenty more hype left in the can.Private investors are almost completely ignoring gold. In Germany, normally one of the biggest buyers of physical, I gather we are seeing net selling in the retail markets. One reason is there's profit to be had, especially for those who bought during Covid - of which there are many . Two, because the economy is in the toilet and people need the money. Higher rates in recent years have dampened both investment and speculative demand for gold.A lot of the money that fuels the junior end of the mining markets also comes from retail buying, and if they're not buying bullion, they are certainly not buying miners: hence the atrophy there.So who is buying then, if the price keeps on going up? The answer, as regular readers of the Flying Frisby will be able to tell you straight away, is central banks, especially in Asia. This trend accelerating after the US began freezing Russian assets following its invasion of Ukraine.China imported 124 tonnes just in November, writes Jan Nieuwenhuijs of the Gold Observer. It has bought 1,050 tonnes since the Russian Freeze, and it is buying 400 oz bars from London, which are almost certainly making their way to the People's Bank of China - 400 oz bars do not trade on the Shanghai Gold Exchange. It is also buying roughly three times as much as it declares.The explanation is obvious. Central banks need reserve assets which other governments can't freeze, so-called bearer assets. Gold, which is value in and of itself, is the answer. There is no equal.Here we see gold as a percentage of central bank reserves is now at 20%.I doubt we go back to the heady pre-WWII days when gold made up 80-90% of reserves - money was not fiat then - but you can see the trend is very much up. It has been for 10 years now. The percentage has doubled in that time. I see no reason why it can't double again in the next ten years. 40 % of reserves held in gold seems like a reasonable number, a conservative number.Nations are, says Nieuwenhuijs, "obviously preparing for a multipolar world in which the dollar's role as a reserve asset will be gently reduced."You can look at all this and describe the process as natural and sensible asset allocation: diversification away from other government currencies, especially the US dollar. Or you can proclaim that other nations are preparing to abandon the dollar and for a new gold standard. It's probably about 80% former and 20% latter. That may well change - but we are not there yet.While nations might not be so much abandoning the dollar as they are simply increasing their gold holdings, they, are, however, reducing their holdings of US Treasuries. De-dollarisation and diversification.At the moment, the whole process is covert and benign, but it may become a lot more significant a few years from now.I urge you too to be diversified and own plenty of gold. It may well be that you are going to need it, and you're better off booking your seat on the lifeboat now while they are still available. This is especially the case if you are in the UK: there has never been a Labour government that didn't devalue, and this particular lot are flip-flopping and clueless. My guide to buying gold is here, in case of use:I don't see any reason for this central bank buying to abate, by the way. My prognosis is that it continues.What about the new President?I want to, briefly, consider gold and President Donald Trump.Here is what gold did last time he was in power.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comHundreds of tonnes of gold - so much so that there is now something of a shortage in London - have made their way across the Atlantic to the US to get ahead of Trump tariffs. Something like 400 tonnes have gone to the Comex alone, never mind what's gone to the private vaults of HSBC, JP Morgan et al.With a shortage of physical gold for delivery in London, waiting times now as long as eight weeks, and the Bank of England refusing to comment, there are all sorts of rumours flying about. It's not a great situation for London, which is normally the epicentre of the physical gold markets.I don't think we're going to get a proper run on gold, but it's possible nonetheless, and if we do, talk about unintended consequences...A bit of zip in the normally quite sleepy physical markets.Today, however, I wanted to give my outlook on gold for 2025. Before I do this, I have two things to plug:One is my mate Charlie Morris' newsletter, Atlas Pulse. This monthly gold report is, in my view, the best out there bar none, and it's free. More here.And, two, if you are thinking of buying gold - and I think everyone should own some - my preferred bullion dealer is the Pure Gold Company. You should get your gold or silver from them.Gold's Silent SurgeThe gold price has been rising relentlessly since November 2022.Here we are in early 2025, within a few dollars of all-time highs at $2,800.Gold is at or close to all-time highs against the Japanese yen, the euro, the Swiss franc, the Great British peso, the Aussie and Canadian dollars, and pretty much any other fiat currency you care to mention.And yet I don't recall seeing much mention of this anywhere. This is very much a stealth bull market, the best kind of bull market. It means there is plenty more hype left in the can.Private investors are almost completely ignoring gold. In Germany, normally one of the biggest buyers of physical, I gather we are seeing net selling in the retail markets. One reason is there's profit to be had, especially for those who bought during Covid - of which there are many . Two, because the economy is in the toilet and people need the money. Higher rates in recent years have dampened both investment and speculative demand for gold.A lot of the money that fuels the junior end of the mining markets also comes from retail buying, and if they're not buying bullion, they are certainly not buying miners: hence the atrophy there.So who is buying then, if the price keeps on going up? The answer, as regular readers of the Flying Frisby will be able to tell you straight away, is central banks, especially in Asia. This trend accelerating after the US began freezing Russian assets following its invasion of Ukraine.China imported 124 tonnes just in November, writes Jan Nieuwenhuijs of the Gold Observer. It has bought 1,050 tonnes since the Russian Freeze, and it is buying 400 oz bars from London, which are almost certainly making their way to the People's Bank of China - 400 oz bars do not trade on the Shanghai Gold Exchange. It is also buying roughly three times as much as it declares.The explanation is obvious. Central banks need reserve assets which other governments can't freeze, so-called bearer assets. Gold, which is value in and of itself, is the answer. There is no equal.Here we see gold as a percentage of central bank reserves is now at 20%.I doubt we go back to the heady pre-WWII days when gold made up 80-90% of reserves - money was not fiat then - but you can see the trend is very much up. It has been for 10 years now. The percentage has doubled in that time. I see no reason why it can't double again in the next ten years. 40 % of reserves held in gold seems like a reasonable number, a conservative number.Nations are, says Nieuwenhuijs, "obviously preparing for a multipolar world in which the dollar's role as a reserve asset will be gently reduced."You can look at all this and describe the process as natural and sensible asset allocation: diversification away from other government currencies, especially the US dollar. Or you can proclaim that other nations are preparing to abandon the dollar and for a new gold standard. It's probably about 80% former and 20% latter. That may well change - but we are not there yet.While nations might not be so much abandoning the dollar as they are simply increasing their gold holdings, they, are, however, reducing their holdings of US Treasuries. De-dollarisation and diversification.At the moment, the whole process is covert and benign, but it may become a lot more significant a few years from now.I urge you too to be diversified and own plenty of gold. It may well be that you are going to need it, and you're better off booking your seat on the lifeboat now while they are still available. This is especially the case if you are in the UK: there has never been a Labour government that didn't devalue, and this particular lot are flip-flopping and clueless. My guide to buying gold is here, in case of use:I don't see any reason for this central bank buying to abate, by the way. My prognosis is that it continues.What about the new President?I want to, briefly, consider gold and President Donald Trump.Here is what gold did last time he was in power.

Here's one for you.Thousands of years ago aliens landed on earth. They came in great space ships, which the ancients took to be chariots of the gods, and they came for gold. They were the Anunnaki from the planet Nibiru, according to ancient astronaut theory, which derives from author Zecharia Sitchin's interpretations of Sumerian texts. Tall and imposing, with features both human and otherworldly, they were seen as deities. They needed gold dust to suspend in their planet's atmosphere to protect it from the solar radiation that was slowly destroying it.But the primitive hominids they found here, such as homo erectus, were useless, so they combined their alien DNA with them to create a worker race capable of mining the gold they had come for: Homo sapiens. They established mining colonies in Africa and in the Fertile Crescent, which became the cradle of civilisation. The Anunnaki taught humans many things – agriculture, astronomy, mathematics, writing and record keeping - to ensure their mining operations ran smoothly. Eventually, they departed, taking vast quantities of gold with them, but they left behind some of what they had created. Evidence of their existence can be found in myths, ancient mines, ancient texts and, of course, in the Megalithic structures they created such as the Pyramids and Stonehenge.There is actually some evidence that the capstones on top of the pyramids – the pyramidia – were gilded with a layer of gold or electrum (gold-silver alloy), which, of course, would add to the many celestial and religious connotations of these structures. It's also thought we could not build them today.This is one of the reasons we associate gold with the gods.That's my story and I'm sticking to it.Tell your friends about this ancient alien race.If you haven't already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. Sign up here.And, of course, if you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, as always I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.You really should subscribe.I mucked up the title of my mid-week piece, so in case you missed it here it is: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Here's one for you.Thousands of years ago aliens landed on earth. They came in great space ships, which the ancients took to be chariots of the gods, and they came for gold. They were the Anunnaki from the planet Nibiru, according to ancient astronaut theory, which derives from author Zecharia Sitchin's interpretations of Sumerian texts. Tall and imposing, with features both human and otherworldly, they were seen as deities. They needed gold dust to suspend in their planet's atmosphere to protect it from the solar radiation that was slowly destroying it.But the primitive hominids they found here, such as homo erectus, were useless, so they combined their alien DNA with them to create a worker race capable of mining the gold they had come for: Homo sapiens. They established mining colonies in Africa and in the Fertile Crescent, which became the cradle of civilisation. The Anunnaki taught humans many things – agriculture, astronomy, mathematics, writing and record keeping - to ensure their mining operations ran smoothly. Eventually, they departed, taking vast quantities of gold with them, but they left behind some of what they had created. Evidence of their existence can be found in myths, ancient mines, ancient texts and, of course, in the Megalithic structures they created such as the Pyramids and Stonehenge.There is actually some evidence that the capstones on top of the pyramids – the pyramidia – were gilded with a layer of gold or electrum (gold-silver alloy), which, of course, would add to the many celestial and religious connotations of these structures. It's also thought we could not build them today.This is one of the reasons we associate gold with the gods.That's my story and I'm sticking to it.Tell your friends about this ancient alien race.If you haven't already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. Sign up here.And, of course, if you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, as always I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.You really should subscribe.I mucked up the title of my mid-week piece, so in case you missed it here it is: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Here's the first podcast of 2025! 2024 was a tricky year for me for various reasons, but the podcast is back again! Apologies for the absence. Anyway, in this episode, Charlie Morris, CIO of ByteTree Asset Management and I have a chat about bitcoin and gold. Do YOU think that both or either of these assets is moon-bound this year?? Please note that none of the content here constitutes advice! This is just two guys having a bit of a natter...

Enjoy!Why not subscribe to this fantastic substack?Here's the original article if you prefer to read or listen” If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.And If you haven't already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. Sign up here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Enjoy!Why not subscribe to this fantastic substack?Here's the original article if you prefer to read or listen” If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.And If you haven't already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. Sign up here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

ICYMI (there were problems with the site mid-week), check out my forecasts for 2025, always one of my more popular pieces of the year.He has invented an entirely new digital system of money with the potential to change the world as we know it. He has watched it grow to a market cap of over two trillion dollars, with as many as 100 million users worldwide, including actual nations, and the US President promising a strategic bitcoin reserve in his 2024 election campaign. He has half the internet nosing about and trying to figure out who he is. His own coins are worth about $100 billion, making him one of the richest people on earth.Yet he has managed to stay completely unknown and anonymous. It is almost unbelievable.Never mind Big Foot, the Mary Rose or the Loch Ness Monster, the mystery of ‘Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?' is perhaps the greatest mystery the world has ever known - or not known.There have been thousands of investigative attempts, articles, blog posts and discussion groups involving probably millions of man hours dedicated to pinning down this man, with names bandied about from Elon Musk to little known computer scientists. They have all failed. Satoshi's identity is as bulletproof as his code.For my 2014 book, Bitcoin: the Future of Money?, from which today's piece is taken, I ventured on the same doomed journey. I spent many months poring over the 80,000 words Satoshi wrote in the three years he was active online, looking for clues. What unusual words did he use? Does he make any spelling mistakes? Does he have any quirky grammatical habits? I analysed it in such detail I can tell you where he places brackets, how he uses hyphens, even how many spaces he uses after a full stop and how that changed – all in the hope of finding idiosyncrasies that appear in the writing of other Cypherpunks - clues which might lead me to him.Profiling a genius – some broad brushstrokes‘I've had the good fortune to know many brilliant people over the course of my life, so I recognize the signs.' Hal FinneySatoshi reached such high levels of expertise in so many different fields that many believe he can't possibly be one person. He is a polymath. It is not just the breadth and depth of his knowledge, but, more importantly, its specificity that makes him unique.In order to first conceive a new system of electronic cash, one would have to have thought extensively about the nature of money and its history. Money is a subject that has found more interest in the last few years with the emergence of bitcoin, the 2000s bull market in gold, the financial crisis and the growth of libertarianism, but, in 2007–8, when bitcoin was conceived and first introduced, books and academic papers on the subject were few and far between. The subject did not have broad appeal.How many of those who cared actually had the ability to design a system like this? It is one thing declaring what needs to be done; it is another putting it into practice.Satoshi must have had expertise in computer coding, mathematics, databases, accounting, peer-to-peer systems, digital ownership, law, smart contracts, cryptography and monetary history.He had to have had experience in academia. The act of submitting a white paper, its presentation, the impeccable referencing – it all denotes academia, even government.It's also easy to infer from the way bitcoin was launched that Satoshi had experience in open-source tech start-ups.The resilience of the code suggests he had computer hacking experience. Moreover, his ability to keep his identity hidden, despite the fact that half the internet is trying to figure out who he is, suggests significant practical experience in staying anonymous. It also means he has the trust of those who know him, if anyone did, to keep his secret.Then there's the matter of his prose. It is consistent and of such a high standard it seems he must have had experience as a writer – perhaps he was a blogger, an academic or an author. He was also quite humble and dismissive of his ability in this regard. ‘I'm better with code than with words', he said.It's clear from his posts that he had the awareness to see shortcomings in his system, and the patience not to try to do too much too quickly. He had the foresight to perceive problems before they arose and the meticulousness to prepare for them. He appears to have remained calm and measured in the face of difficulty, but also of his own success. He treated those two imposters just the same. Signs of arrogance are hard to find.Then there's the way that bitcoin was introduced to the world. PR, like economics, is not an exact science. Sometimes something gains traction, sometimes it doesn't – and there's no explaining why. Bitcoin has been a PR masterstroke. The coverage it has received has been enormous. It gets more publicity than gold, which is the oldest form of money there is. Satoshi cannot take all of the credit for this, but he has to take some of it. He understood when to make his ideas known, at what point to release his creation into the open-source world and he had the self-efacement to let go of it for others to develop. He promoted his idea with huge under-statement – but the scheduled creation of bitcoins meant there would be no shortage of bitcoin-holders to do the promoting for him.So we can add an understanding of both PR and psychology to his list of qualities. His knowledge of how people on the internet, in the open source world and in large institutions work, allowed him to progress his creation.Finally, he has a certain honesty. Despite Bitcoin's similarities to a pyramid or Ponzi scheme, he never pumped-and- dumped his creation. Tempting though it must have been, he never sold the bitcoins he mined. That also suggests he already had money.There are not many people like this.From mathematics to computer programming to economics and monetary history to politics to PR and psychology to cryptography to business acumen and vision to plain old written English – in all of these fields he excelled. To cap it all, he's probably good-looking too.It's early in history to be drawing this sort of comparison, I know, but there are many parallels between Satoshi and Isaac Newton. Newton was a brilliant scientist and mathematician, of course, and an alchemist. But he was also Master of the Royal Mint. He redesigned England's monetary system, putting us onto the gold standard on which Britain's colossal progress during the next 200 years was built.If you haven't already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. Sign up here.First instinctMany believe that Satoshi was Hal Finney, the veteran programmer, who invented reusable proof of works, one of the models on which bitcoin was based. This was my first instinct. Often such “first instincts”, for reasons I cannot begin to explain, prove correct. When Satoshi first announced bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, nobody replied. The message was ignored for two days. In the short-attention-span land of the web, two days is a long time to wait for some feedback on something you've spent 18 months working on. Two days is a long time to wait when you might have nailed something Cypherpunks had been dreaming about for 20 years.The first reply came from Finney. Was he replying to himself in order to generate some interest and discussion – to bump his thread? Replying to your own posts, known as ‘sock-puppeting', is not uncommon. Let us pursue this line of thinking a little further.Finney was born in 1956 – in that same two-year golden window as so many computer-scientist geniuses that would change the world (from Bill Gates to Tim Berners-Lee to Steve Jobs) were born – and spent his life working on cryptographic systems. He was number two to Phil Zimmerman, the pioneer in the field, for many years at the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) Corporation, where they developed the most widely used email encryption software in the world.Such were his beliefs in privacy, freedom, and Cypherpunk, Finney was known to spend many nights writing and developing code for free, just because he believed in the work.In 1993, he published the paper, ‘Detecting Double-Spending'. Solving the double-spending problem (ensuring the same money cannot be used twice) was, of course, the key problem with digital cash. It was what Satoshi was so excited about when he proposed Bitcoin. In 2004, Finney developed the ‘reusable proof-of-work' (RPOW) system, which coders regarded as a brilliant step forward – but his system never saw any economic use until b itcoin.Finney is one of the few people to have the background and expertise to have developed bitcoin – but he is also an obvious person to take an immediate interest.In his very first reply to Satoshi's announcement, he wrote:“As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world. Then the total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With 20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.”The comment shows extraordinary insight. Many now see this “amusing thought experiment” as inevitable. But could it also be somebody trying to get others excited? Very possibly.(By the way, ‘thought experiment' is an expression Satoshi himself uses – though it is not uncommon in coding circles).Of the many names touted as Satoshi, Finney's writing style is one of the few that match. The major difference is Satoshi used British spelling and Finney does not. There is a similar calm, understated tone, similar use of language, similar punctuation habits: two spaces after a full stop. In stylometrics tests carried out by John Noecker Jr., chief scientific officer at text analysis experts Juola & Associates, Finney consistently scored high. (However, veteran cypherpunk blogger, Nick Szabo, scored higher). Then I noticed both Finney and Satoshi had ‘@gmx.com' email addresses. (GMX is a free email provider based in Germany. Many Germans use GMX, while Americans and British tend to gravitate towards Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo. Today they would probably gravitate towards P rotonmail). Was this just coincidence – or was it a clue?Why did Satoshi disappear?In December 2010, Satoshi made his final post and then disappeared from the internet.Why?Perhaps to protect his anonymity in the face of rising interest from the media and, more significantly, the authorities: to protect his own safety as the WikiLeaks panic began to erupt. (After Wikileaks was shut out of the financial system, many began sending it bitcoin. The effect, ironically, was thus to make it an extraordinarily wealthy organisation).But there is also the possibility that he disappeared because he was ill.In 2009, Finney was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease – amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – the same disease from which Stephen Hawking suffered. It is, for the most part, fatal and claims its victims within two to five years. ‘My symptoms were mild at first,' he says, ‘and I continued to work, but fatigue and voice problems forced me to retire in early 2011. Since then the disease has continued its inexorable progression.' Finney, eventually died in August 2014.In March 2013 he said, ‘Today, I am essentially paralyzed. I am fed through a tube, and my breathing is assisted through another tube. I operate the computer using a commercial eye-tracker system. It also has a speech synthesizer, so this is my voice now. I spend all day in my power wheelchair. I worked up an interface using an Arduino so that I can adjust my wheelchair's position using my eyes. It has been an adjustment, but my life is not too bad. I can still read, listen to music, and watch TV and movies. I recently discovered that I can even write code. It's very slow, probably 50 times slower than I was before. But I still love programming and it gives me goals.'Could a terrible illness be the reason Satoshi withdrew?Finney was one of the first to mine bitcoins. What did he do with them?I mined several blocks over the next days. But I turned it off because it made my computer run hot, and the fan noise bothered me. In retrospect, I wish I had kept it up longer, but on the other hand, I was extraordinarily lucky to be there at the beginning. It's one of those glass half full, half empty things.The next I heard of Bitcoin was late 2010, when I was surprised to find that it was not only still going, bitcoins actually had monetary value. I dusted off my old wallet, and was relieved to discover that my bitcoins were still there. As the price climbed up to real money, I transferred the coins into an offline wallet, where hopefully they'll be worth something to my heirs. Those discussions about inheriting your bitcoins are of more than academic interest. My bitcoins are stored in our safe deposit box, and my son and daughter are tech-savvy. I think they're safe enough. I'm comfortable with my legacy.Finney sold many of his bitcoins in order to pay for medical care, many at around $100. Satoshi never moved his.If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.We are all SatoshiFinney was a key player in the development of Bitcoin, no doubt. He was one of the first to ask real questions. He managed to understand from the start the inner workings of the Bitcoin protocol and its potential. He explored the weaknesses in the Bitcoin code – one of them is even named 'the Finney Attack'. He had many exchanges with Satoshi on the Bitcoin forums as they progressed the code and developed new versions. He asked question after question. But these very exchanges show there were two people talking. On January 10th, 2009, for example, Finney publicly complained to Satoshi that Bitcoin had crashed when he tried to receive a transaction. If it was his own code, and he was transacting with himself, he would surely have quietly fixed it himself.Moreover, coders all agree that Finney's coding style – and the style of the comments written in the code – is different from Satoshi's. Also, Finney preferred to code in the language C, whereas Bitcoin is coded in C++. This is something Finney himself confirms: 'I've done some changes to the Bitcoin code, and my style is completely different from Satoshi's. I program in C, which is compatible with C++, but I don't understand the tricks that Satoshi used.'Shortly before the publication of this book, the Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg published an interview with Hal Finney. Finney was now too ill to even speak – he could only raise his eyebrows to say yes. His son showed Greenberg fifteen email exchanges between Satoshi and Finney from January 2009. They mainly focused on bugs Finney had found in the code, to which Satoshi replied with fixes - and notes of thanks. Greenberg was also shown Finney's bitcoin wallet – with the transfers between Satoshi and Finney made back in 2009. As Greenberg notes, the wallet evidence and the Gmail timestamps in the emails would have been hard to forge. To cap it all, there is the fact that in 2009, at precisely the same moment Satoshi sent time-stamped e-mails, Finney, a keen runner, was photographed in the middle of a ten-mile race. Nobody, not even Satoshi Nakamoto, can be in two places at once.Bitcoin could not have happened without the work of Finney.If Satoshi Nakamoto was several people, Finney might have been one of them. But if Satoshi is an individual, Hal Finney was not him. This is an extract from my 2014 book, Bitcoin: the Future of Money? I hear the audiobook's excellent. ;)If you missed them (there were problems with the site midweek), check out my forecasts for 2025. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

ICYMI (there were problems with the site mid-week), check out my forecasts for 2025, always one of my more popular pieces of the year.He has invented an entirely new digital system of money with the potential to change the world as we know it. He has watched it grow to a market cap of over two trillion dollars, with as many as 100 million users worldwide, including actual nations, and the US President promising a strategic bitcoin reserve in his 2024 election campaign. He has half the internet nosing about and trying to figure out who he is. His own coins are worth about $100 billion, making him one of the richest people on earth.Yet he has managed to stay completely unknown and anonymous. It is almost unbelievable.Never mind Big Foot, the Mary Rose or the Loch Ness Monster, the mystery of ‘Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?' is perhaps the greatest mystery the world has ever known - or not known.There have been thousands of investigative attempts, articles, blog posts and discussion groups involving probably millions of man hours dedicated to pinning down this man, with names bandied about from Elon Musk to little known computer scientists. They have all failed. Satoshi's identity is as bulletproof as his code.For my 2014 book, Bitcoin: the Future of Money?, from which today's piece is taken, I ventured on the same doomed journey. I spent many months poring over the 80,000 words Satoshi wrote in the three years he was active online, looking for clues. What unusual words did he use? Does he make any spelling mistakes? Does he have any quirky grammatical habits? I analysed it in such detail I can tell you where he places brackets, how he uses hyphens, even how many spaces he uses after a full stop and how that changed – all in the hope of finding idiosyncrasies that appear in the writing of other Cypherpunks - clues which might lead me to him.Profiling a genius – some broad brushstrokes‘I've had the good fortune to know many brilliant people over the course of my life, so I recognize the signs.' Hal FinneySatoshi reached such high levels of expertise in so many different fields that many believe he can't possibly be one person. He is a polymath. It is not just the breadth and depth of his knowledge, but, more importantly, its specificity that makes him unique.In order to first conceive a new system of electronic cash, one would have to have thought extensively about the nature of money and its history. Money is a subject that has found more interest in the last few years with the emergence of bitcoin, the 2000s bull market in gold, the financial crisis and the growth of libertarianism, but, in 2007–8, when bitcoin was conceived and first introduced, books and academic papers on the subject were few and far between. The subject did not have broad appeal.How many of those who cared actually had the ability to design a system like this? It is one thing declaring what needs to be done; it is another putting it into practice.Satoshi must have had expertise in computer coding, mathematics, databases, accounting, peer-to-peer systems, digital ownership, law, smart contracts, cryptography and monetary history.He had to have had experience in academia. The act of submitting a white paper, its presentation, the impeccable referencing – it all denotes academia, even government.It's also easy to infer from the way bitcoin was launched that Satoshi had experience in open-source tech start-ups.The resilience of the code suggests he had computer hacking experience. Moreover, his ability to keep his identity hidden, despite the fact that half the internet is trying to figure out who he is, suggests significant practical experience in staying anonymous. It also means he has the trust of those who know him, if anyone did, to keep his secret.Then there's the matter of his prose. It is consistent and of such a high standard it seems he must have had experience as a writer – perhaps he was a blogger, an academic or an author. He was also quite humble and dismissive of his ability in this regard. ‘I'm better with code than with words', he said.It's clear from his posts that he had the awareness to see shortcomings in his system, and the patience not to try to do too much too quickly. He had the foresight to perceive problems before they arose and the meticulousness to prepare for them. He appears to have remained calm and measured in the face of difficulty, but also of his own success. He treated those two imposters just the same. Signs of arrogance are hard to find.Then there's the way that bitcoin was introduced to the world. PR, like economics, is not an exact science. Sometimes something gains traction, sometimes it doesn't – and there's no explaining why. Bitcoin has been a PR masterstroke. The coverage it has received has been enormous. It gets more publicity than gold, which is the oldest form of money there is. Satoshi cannot take all of the credit for this, but he has to take some of it. He understood when to make his ideas known, at what point to release his creation into the open-source world and he had the self-efacement to let go of it for others to develop. He promoted his idea with huge under-statement – but the scheduled creation of bitcoins meant there would be no shortage of bitcoin-holders to do the promoting for him.So we can add an understanding of both PR and psychology to his list of qualities. His knowledge of how people on the internet, in the open source world and in large institutions work, allowed him to progress his creation.Finally, he has a certain honesty. Despite Bitcoin's similarities to a pyramid or Ponzi scheme, he never pumped-and- dumped his creation. Tempting though it must have been, he never sold the bitcoins he mined. That also suggests he already had money.There are not many people like this.From mathematics to computer programming to economics and monetary history to politics to PR and psychology to cryptography to business acumen and vision to plain old written English – in all of these fields he excelled. To cap it all, he's probably good-looking too.It's early in history to be drawing this sort of comparison, I know, but there are many parallels between Satoshi and Isaac Newton. Newton was a brilliant scientist and mathematician, of course, and an alchemist. But he was also Master of the Royal Mint. He redesigned England's monetary system, putting us onto the gold standard on which Britain's colossal progress during the next 200 years was built.If you haven't already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. Sign up here.First instinctMany believe that Satoshi was Hal Finney, the veteran programmer, who invented reusable proof of works, one of the models on which bitcoin was based. This was my first instinct. Often such “first instincts”, for reasons I cannot begin to explain, prove correct. When Satoshi first announced bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, nobody replied. The message was ignored for two days. In the short-attention-span land of the web, two days is a long time to wait for some feedback on something you've spent 18 months working on. Two days is a long time to wait when you might have nailed something Cypherpunks had been dreaming about for 20 years.The first reply came from Finney. Was he replying to himself in order to generate some interest and discussion – to bump his thread? Replying to your own posts, known as ‘sock-puppeting', is not uncommon. Let us pursue this line of thinking a little further.Finney was born in 1956 – in that same two-year golden window as so many computer-scientist geniuses that would change the world (from Bill Gates to Tim Berners-Lee to Steve Jobs) were born – and spent his life working on cryptographic systems. He was number two to Phil Zimmerman, the pioneer in the field, for many years at the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) Corporation, where they developed the most widely used email encryption software in the world.Such were his beliefs in privacy, freedom, and Cypherpunk, Finney was known to spend many nights writing and developing code for free, just because he believed in the work.In 1993, he published the paper, ‘Detecting Double-Spending'. Solving the double-spending problem (ensuring the same money cannot be used twice) was, of course, the key problem with digital cash. It was what Satoshi was so excited about when he proposed Bitcoin. In 2004, Finney developed the ‘reusable proof-of-work' (RPOW) system, which coders regarded as a brilliant step forward – but his system never saw any economic use until b itcoin.Finney is one of the few people to have the background and expertise to have developed bitcoin – but he is also an obvious person to take an immediate interest.In his very first reply to Satoshi's announcement, he wrote:“As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world. Then the total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With 20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.”The comment shows extraordinary insight. Many now see this “amusing thought experiment” as inevitable. But could it also be somebody trying to get others excited? Very possibly.(By the way, ‘thought experiment' is an expression Satoshi himself uses – though it is not uncommon in coding circles).Of the many names touted as Satoshi, Finney's writing style is one of the few that match. The major difference is Satoshi used British spelling and Finney does not. There is a similar calm, understated tone, similar use of language, similar punctuation habits: two spaces after a full stop. In stylometrics tests carried out by John Noecker Jr., chief scientific officer at text analysis experts Juola & Associates, Finney consistently scored high. (However, veteran cypherpunk blogger, Nick Szabo, scored higher). Then I noticed both Finney and Satoshi had ‘@gmx.com' email addresses. (GMX is a free email provider based in Germany. Many Germans use GMX, while Americans and British tend to gravitate towards Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo. Today they would probably gravitate towards P rotonmail). Was this just coincidence – or was it a clue?Why did Satoshi disappear?In December 2010, Satoshi made his final post and then disappeared from the internet.Why?Perhaps to protect his anonymity in the face of rising interest from the media and, more significantly, the authorities: to protect his own safety as the WikiLeaks panic began to erupt. (After Wikileaks was shut out of the financial system, many began sending it bitcoin. The effect, ironically, was thus to make it an extraordinarily wealthy organisation).But there is also the possibility that he disappeared because he was ill.In 2009, Finney was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease – amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – the same disease from which Stephen Hawking suffered. It is, for the most part, fatal and claims its victims within two to five years. ‘My symptoms were mild at first,' he says, ‘and I continued to work, but fatigue and voice problems forced me to retire in early 2011. Since then the disease has continued its inexorable progression.' Finney, eventually died in August 2014.In March 2013 he said, ‘Today, I am essentially paralyzed. I am fed through a tube, and my breathing is assisted through another tube. I operate the computer using a commercial eye-tracker system. It also has a speech synthesizer, so this is my voice now. I spend all day in my power wheelchair. I worked up an interface using an Arduino so that I can adjust my wheelchair's position using my eyes. It has been an adjustment, but my life is not too bad. I can still read, listen to music, and watch TV and movies. I recently discovered that I can even write code. It's very slow, probably 50 times slower than I was before. But I still love programming and it gives me goals.'Could a terrible illness be the reason Satoshi withdrew?Finney was one of the first to mine bitcoins. What did he do with them?I mined several blocks over the next days. But I turned it off because it made my computer run hot, and the fan noise bothered me. In retrospect, I wish I had kept it up longer, but on the other hand, I was extraordinarily lucky to be there at the beginning. It's one of those glass half full, half empty things.The next I heard of Bitcoin was late 2010, when I was surprised to find that it was not only still going, bitcoins actually had monetary value. I dusted off my old wallet, and was relieved to discover that my bitcoins were still there. As the price climbed up to real money, I transferred the coins into an offline wallet, where hopefully they'll be worth something to my heirs. Those discussions about inheriting your bitcoins are of more than academic interest. My bitcoins are stored in our safe deposit box, and my son and daughter are tech-savvy. I think they're safe enough. I'm comfortable with my legacy.Finney sold many of his bitcoins in order to pay for medical care, many at around $100. Satoshi never moved his.If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.We are all SatoshiFinney was a key player in the development of Bitcoin, no doubt. He was one of the first to ask real questions. He managed to understand from the start the inner workings of the Bitcoin protocol and its potential. He explored the weaknesses in the Bitcoin code – one of them is even named 'the Finney Attack'. He had many exchanges with Satoshi on the Bitcoin forums as they progressed the code and developed new versions. He asked question after question. But these very exchanges show there were two people talking. On January 10th, 2009, for example, Finney publicly complained to Satoshi that Bitcoin had crashed when he tried to receive a transaction. If it was his own code, and he was transacting with himself, he would surely have quietly fixed it himself.Moreover, coders all agree that Finney's coding style – and the style of the comments written in the code – is different from Satoshi's. Also, Finney preferred to code in the language C, whereas Bitcoin is coded in C++. This is something Finney himself confirms: 'I've done some changes to the Bitcoin code, and my style is completely different from Satoshi's. I program in C, which is compatible with C++, but I don't understand the tricks that Satoshi used.'Shortly before the publication of this book, the Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg published an interview with Hal Finney. Finney was now too ill to even speak – he could only raise his eyebrows to say yes. His son showed Greenberg fifteen email exchanges between Satoshi and Finney from January 2009. They mainly focused on bugs Finney had found in the code, to which Satoshi replied with fixes - and notes of thanks. Greenberg was also shown Finney's bitcoin wallet – with the transfers between Satoshi and Finney made back in 2009. As Greenberg notes, the wallet evidence and the Gmail timestamps in the emails would have been hard to forge. To cap it all, there is the fact that in 2009, at precisely the same moment Satoshi sent time-stamped e-mails, Finney, a keen runner, was photographed in the middle of a ten-mile race. Nobody, not even Satoshi Nakamoto, can be in two places at once.Bitcoin could not have happened without the work of Finney.If Satoshi Nakamoto was several people, Finney might have been one of them. But if Satoshi is an individual, Hal Finney was not him. This is an extract from my 2014 book, Bitcoin: the Future of Money? I hear the audiobook's excellent. ;)If you missed them (there were problems with the site midweek), check out my forecasts for 2025. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comBitcoin to $200,000k anyone? Sterling to crash? The US dollar to 20 year highs? As for silver …OK, folks. It's predictions time.As ever, the eternal conflict applies: the more outlandish the prediction, the more entertaining it is to read about - but the less likely it is to actually happen.On these pages, we attempt to strike a balance.Here are 15 things to look out for in 2025.1. The long overdue correction in the UK housing market finally begins.“Record Boxing Day bounce,” says Rightmove. Read beyond the headline and you get this: “Our data shows a 26% increase in the number of new properties listed for sale compared to Boxing Day 2023, which previously held the record.” They're trying to spin more sellers.More sellers means more supply.Meanwhile… houses are overpriced. The economy is not booming, so people have less money. Labour's higher taxes also mean buyers have less capital to spend. Higher mortgage rates mean there is less money to borrow, and, thus, less newly created money to come into the market and prop up prices. The rich are not coming to Britain - they are leaving, if they haven't already left.More supply of houses, but less money to buy them with.Meanwhile, stamp duty is a massive deterrent to buyers. Never mind people choosing not to move because of it, anyone buying a second or third home - they're as good as gone: who is going to pay 5% stamp duty for a second or third home? Not many people, I wouldn't have thought. More supply, less money, fewer buyers.Then there is the general perception of the economy. Psychologically, people are not feeling rich, nor are they bullish about the economy, meaning fewer people will take the plunge.What about investment from overseas?See my earlier comment about stamp duty. The cost of buying drives away investment.Moreover, the UK is not currently well looked upon. Rich Americans, for example (normally a good source of buyers), are not going to pile in given, one, the costs of buying and, two, how the UK is currently perceived over there.Then Labour are going to loosen planning laws and build a whole load more houses - well, they say they are - meaning even more supply.As if that wasn't enough, 2026 is the year the 18-year-cycle in property turns down. If houses don't turn down this year, I'll declare this market permanently immune.2. Keir Starmer survivesHis premiership is already looking dicey. It's one crisis after another, and it's difficult to see how he survives, especially with all the rape gang stuff.However, I think short-term PMs became a bit normalised in the Cameron-May-Johnson-Truss-Sunak era. Cameron went because of Brexit. May went for the same reason. Johnson got his landslide, handed to him by Farage, but then Covid came along, and Johnson, under a lot of pressure from the Left, got the shove from Tory MPs with whom he was never particularly popular anyway, worried about their seats. Not having been elected, Truss and Sunak were toast before they even started.None of that applies to Starmer. I admit he is looking shaky, particularly under this extraordinary pressure from Elon Musk. But I still think it's too early for Labour MPs, worrying about their seats, to give him the shove, and it's normal for a PM to last the full term - what happened under the Idiots Tories was not normal - so somehow Starmer survives the year.3. Gold hits $3,000.I'm not wildly bullish about gold at the moment, at least in US dollar terms, though I still think it is absolutely essential you own some. One, because at some point the China gold story is going to hit the mainstream, and suddenly there will be a scramble for gold. It probably won't be this year, but you never know, and gold is one particular lifeboat you want to have ready in advance. Second, if you are in the UK, I think sterling has problems - more on this in a moment - and your wealth is much better stored in shiny yellow metal than it is in British government digital stuff. (You would normally say British government paper, but it isn't paper anymore).On which note, if you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.And If you haven't already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. Sign up here.$3,000 - landmark number though it is - is only 12.5% higher than where we are. We could easily see that by June.4. Microstrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) becomes a top 100 company by market cap. Currently, Deutsche Telecom (market cap US$145 bn) is 100th. Microstrategy is $85 billion at time of writing. It joins the elite. What a pick this has been for readers.5. Bitcoin … I was in Miami on New Year's Eve at Michael Saylor's - strictly on reconnaissance, of course - and one thing I learned there was that roughly half of corporate donations during the 2024 Presidential Election - $245m according to the Federal Election Commission - came from the crypto industry. Coinbase alone contributed $75 million. I'm a beneficiary, so I'm not complaining, but, really, you have to say, buying such favour is more than a little dodgy, even if that is how the world works and has almost always worked.But it means the likelihood of the Republicans delivering on their pledge for a strategic bitcoin reserve is likely. The US isn't going to buy a million coins straight away, but it may well buy 3-400,000 in year one. That sends bitcoin a lot higher.The prediction?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comBitcoin to $200,000k anyone? Sterling to crash? The US dollar to 20 year highs? As for silver …OK, folks. It's predictions time.As ever, the eternal conflict applies: the more outlandish the prediction, the more entertaining it is to read about - but the less likely it is to actually happen.On these pages, we attempt to strike a balance.Here are 15 things to look out for in 2025.1. The long overdue correction in the UK housing market finally begins.“Record Boxing Day bounce,” says Rightmove. Read beyond the headline and you get this: “Our data shows a 26% increase in the number of new properties listed for sale compared to Boxing Day 2023, which previously held the record.” They're trying to spin more sellers.More sellers means more supply.Meanwhile… houses are overpriced. The economy is not booming, so people have less money. Labour's higher taxes also mean buyers have less capital to spend. Higher mortgage rates mean there is less money to borrow, and, thus, less newly created money to come into the market and prop up prices. The rich are not coming to Britain - they are leaving, if they haven't already left.More supply of houses, but less money to buy them with.Meanwhile, stamp duty is a massive deterrent to buyers. Never mind people choosing not to move because of it, anyone buying a second or third home - they're as good as gone: who is going to pay 5% stamp duty for a second or third home? Not many people, I wouldn't have thought. More supply, less money, fewer buyers.Then there is the general perception of the economy. Psychologically, people are not feeling rich, nor are they bullish about the economy, meaning fewer people will take the plunge.What about investment from overseas?See my earlier comment about stamp duty. The cost of buying drives away investment.Moreover, the UK is not currently well looked upon. Rich Americans, for example (normally a good source of buyers), are not going to pile in given, one, the costs of buying and, two, how the UK is currently perceived over there.Then Labour are going to loosen planning laws and build a whole load more houses - well, they say they are - meaning even more supply.As if that wasn't enough, 2026 is the year the 18-year-cycle in property turns down. If houses don't turn down this year, I'll declare this market permanently immune.2. Keir Starmer survivesHis premiership is already looking dicey. It's one crisis after another, and it's difficult to see how he survives, especially with all the rape gang stuff.However, I think short-term PMs became a bit normalised in the Cameron-May-Johnson-Truss-Sunak era. Cameron went because of Brexit. May went for the same reason. Johnson got his landslide, handed to him by Farage, but then Covid came along, and Johnson, under a lot of pressure from the Left, got the shove from Tory MPs with whom he was never particularly popular anyway, worried about their seats. Not having been elected, Truss and Sunak were toast before they even started.None of that applies to Starmer. I admit he is looking shaky, particularly under this extraordinary pressure from Elon Musk. But I still think it's too early for Labour MPs, worrying about their seats, to give him the shove, and it's normal for a PM to last the full term - what happened under the Idiots Tories was not normal - so somehow Starmer survives the year.3. Gold hits $3,000.I'm not wildly bullish about gold at the moment, at least in US dollar terms, though I still think it is absolutely essential you own some. One, because at some point the China gold story is going to hit the mainstream, and suddenly there will be a scramble for gold. It probably won't be this year, but you never know, and gold is one particular lifeboat you want to have ready in advance. Second, if you are in the UK, I think sterling has problems - more on this in a moment - and your wealth is much better stored in shiny yellow metal than it is in British government digital stuff. (You would normally say British government paper, but it isn't paper anymore).On which note, if you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.And If you haven't already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. Sign up here.$3,000 - landmark number though it is - is only 12.5% higher than where we are. We could easily see that by June.4. Microstrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) becomes a top 100 company by market cap. Currently, Deutsche Telecom (market cap US$145 bn) is 100th. Microstrategy is $85 billion at time of writing. It joins the elite. What a pick this has been for readers.5. Bitcoin … I was in Miami on New Year's Eve at Michael Saylor's - strictly on reconnaissance, of course - and one thing I learned there was that roughly half of corporate donations during the 2024 Presidential Election - $245m according to the Federal Election Commission - came from the crypto industry. Coinbase alone contributed $75 million. I'm a beneficiary, so I'm not complaining, but, really, you have to say, buying such favour is more than a little dodgy, even if that is how the world works and has almost always worked.But it means the likelihood of the Republicans delivering on their pledge for a strategic bitcoin reserve is likely. The US isn't going to buy a million coins straight away, but it may well buy 3-400,000 in year one. That sends bitcoin a lot higher.The prediction?

Last year I did one of those Landmark Forum personal development courses, which, by the way, I recommend.One of the takeaways was that one should publicly declare one's goals and aspirations. In doing so, several things happen.You make yourself more accountable. Knowing that others now know your goals pushes you to take stronger action to achieve them. You thus become more committed to them. The act of public statement also solidifies goals both in your mind and in the public perception, thereby moving them beyond an abstract idea to something more concrete. The act of articulating goals also clarifies what it is you are actually looking for and may even give you new insights.Support networks can also emerge: friends, family, peers, contacts are more likely to help in some way, if they know what you are trying to achieve. They might introduce you to helpful people. Those who have been down similar paths might be able to offer advice, assistance or collaboration.You will have something to keep referring back to, better enabling you to track progress, which will further reinforce the whole thing.Finally, making such a declaration makes you vulnerable, but that is actually empowering and liberating. It reduces internal conflict; while others might empathise and want to help you for your honesty.With all this in mind, I thought I would share my New Year resolutions with you. I hope you find some interest, amusement or even motivation in them.Some are quite personal, but for reasons stated above, I've decided to post them anyway. I hope it is not TMI.I always tend to overdo it with my resolutions - reach for the sky and then, even if you fall short, you still end up pretty high.So here they are:Health, Body & Mind* Stay fit and strong. Weights two or three times a week. Something aerobic two or three times a week. Plenty of stretching. Daily deadhangs, pelvic floors, breathing and neck exercises.* Keep drinking less.* Fast once a week.* Eat more protein.* Get good at lucid dreaming. (Lucid dreams are when you are aware you are in a dream, while you dream - dreaming is something I have got very interested in of late).* Read at least 15 books. I read a fair bit, but most of it is online. I hardly seem to read actual books any more - my phone always takes priority. Put this right.* Try and do some mindfulness meditation stuff once per week.Money* Invest well and grow my net worth - and the net worth of Flying Frisby readers - by at least 20%. On which note, if you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.Work & Career - Laughter, Acclaim, Opportunity* Continue producing consistent, interesting content for this Substack and grow it - both subscribers and revenue - by 25%.Apropos of which, why not subscribe?* Get better at PR and marketing, significantly grow my online presence - both as comic and commentator - and build a bigger following. ( I have a plan here).* Finish my musical about the Peasants' Revolt.* Write my Gilbert and Sullivan musical.* Write stage and screen adaptations of Kisses on a Postcard.* Make something significant happen with Kisses on a Postcard. I've put that in bold because it is perhaps the most important of all to me. We are talking about something that could be as big as Oliver! or The Sound of Music, if there are any producers reading this.* Try and get some comedy gigs in the US and grow a presence there* Get more gigs and better gigs in the UK, working towards a full-scale tour.* Keep writing the songs, making people laugh and produce another album by year end (I try and produce one a year).* Get my new book, The Secret History of Gold, as good as possible; and market it as well as possible, especially in China and the US. (It's due out in August).* Practice my uke and singing most days and get better at both.A lot of asks: I think I might be going against everything I said here on Wednesday.Enjoying this article? Then why not subscribe …Love and Family* Be the best father I can be to Samuel, Eliza, Lola and Ferdie. Set a good example. Love them unreservedly. Help them fulfil their potential. Spend more time doing memorable things with all of them, but especially Eliza and Ferdie, as they lost out a bit this year.* Find a nice place to live and settle down happily with Miss Downing in a lasting, fulfilling relationship.* Be a good son to my mother, and justify the unreserved love she has shown in me.Not a lot then.I realise I am asking a lot of both myself and the universe, but the whole point of these resolutions is to be bold. I'm not going to say I won't achieve all these goals, as that defeats the purpose (I never manage all of them but I'M NOT GOING TO SAY THAT). If nothing else, at least I'll have something interesting to write about this time next year.This isn't all about me. What about you? What are your goals? What are they? Let's discuss them in the comments.I wish you a 2025 packed with happiness, growth, fulfilment, success and—fingers crossed—lucid dreams.DominicTell someone about these resolutions.PS A few final bits and pieces:* If you haven't already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. Sign up here.* If you missed my New Year piece, it's a good one. Here it is:* I recorded this interview with Rob Moore the other day, which you might enjoy: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Last year I did one of those Landmark Forum personal development courses, which, by the way, I recommend.One of the takeaways was that one should publicly declare one's goals and aspirations. In doing so, several things happen.You make yourself more accountable. Knowing that others now know your goals pushes you to take stronger action to achieve them. You thus become more committed to them. The act of public statement also solidifies goals both in your mind and in the public perception, thereby moving them beyond an abstract idea to something more concrete. The act of articulating goals also clarifies what it is you are actually looking for and may even give you new insights.Support networks can also emerge: friends, family, peers, contacts are more likely to help in some way, if they know what you are trying to achieve. They might introduce you to helpful people. Those who have been down similar paths might be able to offer advice, assistance or collaboration.You will have something to keep referring back to, better enabling you to track progress, which will further reinforce the whole thing.Finally, making such a declaration makes you vulnerable, but that is actually empowering and liberating. It reduces internal conflict; while others might empathise and want to help you for your honesty.With all this in mind, I thought I would share my New Year resolutions with you. I hope you find some interest, amusement or even motivation in them.Some are quite personal, but for reasons stated above, I've decided to post them anyway. I hope it is not TMI.I always tend to overdo it with my resolutions - reach for the sky and then, even if you fall short, you still end up pretty high.So here they are:Health, Body & Mind* Stay fit and strong. Weights two or three times a week. Something aerobic two or three times a week. Plenty of stretching. Daily deadhangs, pelvic floors, breathing and neck exercises.* Keep drinking less.* Fast once a week.* Eat more protein.* Get good at lucid dreaming. (Lucid dreams are when you are aware you are in a dream, while you dream - dreaming is something I have got very interested in of late).* Read at least 15 books. I read a fair bit, but most of it is online. I hardly seem to read actual books any more - my phone always takes priority. Put this right.* Try and do some mindfulness meditation stuff once per week.Money* Invest well and grow my net worth - and the net worth of Flying Frisby readers - by at least 20%. On which note, if you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.Work & Career - Laughter, Acclaim, Opportunity* Continue producing consistent, interesting content for this Substack and grow it - both subscribers and revenue - by 25%.Apropos of which, why not subscribe?* Get better at PR and marketing, significantly grow my online presence - both as comic and commentator - and build a bigger following. ( I have a plan here).* Finish my musical about the Peasants' Revolt.* Write my Gilbert and Sullivan musical.* Write stage and screen adaptations of Kisses on a Postcard.* Make something significant happen with Kisses on a Postcard. I've put that in bold because it is perhaps the most important of all to me. We are talking about something that could be as big as Oliver! or The Sound of Music, if there are any producers reading this.* Try and get some comedy gigs in the US and grow a presence there* Get more gigs and better gigs in the UK, working towards a full-scale tour.* Keep writing the songs, making people laugh and produce another album by year end (I try and produce one a year).* Get my new book, The Secret History of Gold, as good as possible; and market it as well as possible, especially in China and the US. (It's due out in August).* Practice my uke and singing most days and get better at both.A lot of asks: I think I might be going against everything I said here on Wednesday.Enjoying this article? Then why not subscribe …Love and Family* Be the best father I can be to Samuel, Eliza, Lola and Ferdie. Set a good example. Love them unreservedly. Help them fulfil their potential. Spend more time doing memorable things with all of them, but especially Eliza and Ferdie, as they lost out a bit this year.* Find a nice place to live and settle down happily with Miss Downing in a lasting, fulfilling relationship.* Be a good son to my mother, and justify the unreserved love she has shown in me.Not a lot then.I realise I am asking a lot of both myself and the universe, but the whole point of these resolutions is to be bold. I'm not going to say I won't achieve all these goals, as that defeats the purpose (I never manage all of them but I'M NOT GOING TO SAY THAT). If nothing else, at least I'll have something interesting to write about this time next year.This isn't all about me. What about you? What are your goals? What are they? Let's discuss them in the comments.I wish you a 2025 packed with happiness, growth, fulfilment, success and—fingers crossed—lucid dreams.DominicTell someone about these resolutions.PS A few final bits and pieces:* If you haven't already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. Sign up here.* If you missed my New Year piece, it's a good one. Here it is:* I recorded this interview with Rob Moore the other day, which you might enjoy: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

I was at a big family function on Christmas Eve, where I ran into my brother-in-law, who used to be a world champion boxer.David Haye is his name. Way back when, his sister and I were married, and he is uncle to my two oldest children. I don't know if that makes him former brother-in-law. Whatever.I still maintain that the world doesn't quite know what an exceptional boxer David was. His speed and power were second to none. The wins in France against Jean-Marc Mormeck to win the cruiserweight World Title, after being knocked down in the fifth, and then in Germany against the unbeaten Russian Nikolai Valuev, who at 23.4 stone and 7 feet, was the largest heavyweight in history, were two of the greatest British overseas wins ever.In winning both cruiserweight and heavyweight world titles, he achieved something only two other boxers, Evander Holyfield before him and Oleksandr Usyk after, have managed. That tells you how good he was. Yet, he is not quite seen in the same light as those other two, largely because of injuries and losses later in his career.I've known David since he was 16, and he was going to be the heavyweight champion even then. It was almost all anyone in the family talked about.What I always most admired about him is his singularity and clarity of purpose; that and his breathtaking, fearless honesty. He hides nothing. He tells it like he sees it and then lives with the consequences. Jordan Peterson would be proud.It's that singularity of purpose - that winning mentality - I want to talk about today.As a youngster, David used to spar with a fighter who was naturally more gifted but never made it through the amateur ranks. “He would rather be the guy who could have made it,” David used to say. “The guy sat in the pub 10 years from now telling everyone he could have made it. He would rather be that than take the necessary risks and make the necessary sacrifices to actually make it.”I was always incredibly struck by that attitude.Burn the ships: have no plan BWe all met up at David's mum and dad's, my old in-laws, on Christmas Eve. All our kids were there, and it was a lovely family do. David's son, Cassius, who is 16, is turning out to be quite the tennis player. I reminded them of a story from when Cassius was seven or eight.We were having lunch, and I said that tennis was a great sport to get good at because, unlike, say, football, if it doesn't work out, you can always get a job as a tennis coach. You can go anywhere in the world and have a pretty nice life.I looked to my right and saw David fuming, “What are you telling him that sh*t for? Why are you putting those kinds of doubts in his head?”I was thinking like a risk-manager, I guess. The sports stars of old always used to get a trade first. Not so David.His mentality reminded me of a story about Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, which I tell in my new book on gold to be published later this year. Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519. His purpose was to find gold and to conquer. He had 508 soldiers and 11 ships. On landing, he scuttled 10 of them. It meant there was no escape. His men now had to win - or die.Speaking of gold, have you signed up for Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse? It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. More here.Later that night, David and I back-and-forthed on texts a bit, and I told him the Cortés story. And so we come to the point of today's missive - and it's an appropriate one, given we are in the season of New Year's resolutions.David sent this message back in reply, which I think is one of the most brilliant texts - about winning, clarity, singularity of purpose - I have ever received. So I publish it in full here:Yes, I've heard the same story, and it's a lesson that resonates deeply with me—not just in the abstract, but in how I've lived my life and shaped the mindset of my children. When Cortés sank his ships, he left his men with no option but to succeed. That's not just a story of conquest; it's a metaphor for the winning mindset. When there's no retreat, no Plan B, the path becomes clear. The mind and body focus completely on achieving the one goal that matters. That same principle was drilled into me from an early age. My dad told me I could box aged 10, but only if I was the best. There was no room for half-hearted effort or second thoughts. From the moment I said I wanted to be the heavyweight champion of the world—the pinnacle of the sport—every decision I made aligned with that goal. There was no ambiguity, no backdoor exit. Winning wasn't just a possibility; it was the only outcome.That's the mindset I've passed on to Cassius and Kingston. He wants to be the best tennis player in the world, and he knows what that means: living full-time in Spain, training in the blazing heat on clay courts, and pushing his body and mind to the limit every single day. He understands, like I did, that greatness demands clarity and sacrifice. It's about burning the ships—eliminating all distractions and doubts—so there's only one way forward.Winning isn't an accident or a stroke of luck. It's the result of relentless dedication and a mindset hardwired from the very start. It's about creating an environment where success is the only option, so the journey becomes as clear as the destination. That's how champions are made—whether in the ring, on the court, or in life.Share this message with a friend.We don't all want to be number one. Many of us are content with what we have. But if you are serious about becoming top dog, then that text message - from someone who has been there and done it - should be put to memory.I look at my own life, and I'm the very opposite: jack of all trades, master of none. Comedian and financial blogger. What - how does that work? I've also been: prolific voiceover artist, podcast host, TV presenter, actor, author of three books, boxing ring announcer (for Hayemaker Boxing - who says nepotism doesn't exist?), and a million other things I can't remember. Even within comedy, my career is disparate: comic songs, stand-up, MC, witty raconteur, lectures with funny bits. Gold or bitcoin - which is it? Why not both...I'm occasionally asked why I am not more well known than I am. There's your answer. I do too many things quite well instead of excelling at one.I think it's partly because I get interested in stuff. But it's also a defensive thing, I'm sure. If one doesn't work out, I've always got the other to fall back on.Here is one of my resolutions for 2025: do fewer things better.What do you think? Please post your thoughts in the comments below.Happy new year, everyone. Let's hope it's a belter.Buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times? I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

I was at a big family function on Christmas Eve, where I ran into my brother-in-law, who used to be a world champion boxer.David Haye is his name. Way back when, his sister and I were married, and he is uncle to my two oldest children. I don't know if that makes him former brother-in-law. Whatever.I still maintain that the world doesn't quite know what an exceptional boxer David was. His speed and power were second to none. The wins in France against Jean-Marc Mormeck to win the cruiserweight World Title, after being knocked down in the fifth, and then in Germany against the unbeaten Russian Nikolai Valuev, who at 23.4 stone and 7 feet, was the largest heavyweight in history, were two of the greatest British overseas wins ever.In winning both cruiserweight and heavyweight world titles, he achieved something only two other boxers, Evander Holyfield before him and Oleksandr Usyk after, have managed. That tells you how good he was. Yet, he is not quite seen in the same light as those other two, largely because of injuries and losses later in his career.I've known David since he was 16, and he was going to be the heavyweight champion even then. It was almost all anyone in the family talked about.What I always most admired about him is his singularity and clarity of purpose; that and his breathtaking, fearless honesty. He hides nothing. He tells it like he sees it and then lives with the consequences. Jordan Peterson would be proud.It's that singularity of purpose - that winning mentality - I want to talk about today.As a youngster, David used to spar with a fighter who was naturally more gifted but never made it through the amateur ranks. “He would rather be the guy who could have made it,” David used to say. “The guy sat in the pub 10 years from now telling everyone he could have made it. He would rather be that than take the necessary risks and make the necessary sacrifices to actually make it.”I was always incredibly struck by that attitude.Burn the ships: have no plan BWe all met up at David's mum and dad's, my old in-laws, on Christmas Eve. All our kids were there, and it was a lovely family do. David's son, Cassius, who is 16, is turning out to be quite the tennis player. I reminded them of a story from when Cassius was seven or eight.We were having lunch, and I said that tennis was a great sport to get good at because, unlike, say, football, if it doesn't work out, you can always get a job as a tennis coach. You can go anywhere in the world and have a pretty nice life.I looked to my right and saw David fuming, “What are you telling him that sh*t for? Why are you putting those kinds of doubts in his head?”I was thinking like a risk-manager, I guess. The sports stars of old always used to get a trade first. Not so David.His mentality reminded me of a story about Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, which I tell in my new book on gold to be published later this year. Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519. His purpose was to find gold and to conquer. He had 508 soldiers and 11 ships. On landing, he scuttled 10 of them. It meant there was no escape. His men now had to win - or die.Speaking of gold, have you signed up for Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse? It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it's free. More here.Later that night, David and I back-and-forthed on texts a bit, and I told him the Cortés story. And so we come to the point of today's missive - and it's an appropriate one, given we are in the season of New Year's resolutions.David sent this message back in reply, which I think is one of the most brilliant texts - about winning, clarity, singularity of purpose - I have ever received. So I publish it in full here:Yes, I've heard the same story, and it's a lesson that resonates deeply with me—not just in the abstract, but in how I've lived my life and shaped the mindset of my children. When Cortés sank his ships, he left his men with no option but to succeed. That's not just a story of conquest; it's a metaphor for the winning mindset. When there's no retreat, no Plan B, the path becomes clear. The mind and body focus completely on achieving the one goal that matters. That same principle was drilled into me from an early age. My dad told me I could box aged 10, but only if I was the best. There was no room for half-hearted effort or second thoughts. From the moment I said I wanted to be the heavyweight champion of the world—the pinnacle of the sport—every decision I made aligned with that goal. There was no ambiguity, no backdoor exit. Winning wasn't just a possibility; it was the only outcome.That's the mindset I've passed on to Cassius and Kingston. He wants to be the best tennis player in the world, and he knows what that means: living full-time in Spain, training in the blazing heat on clay courts, and pushing his body and mind to the limit every single day. He understands, like I did, that greatness demands clarity and sacrifice. It's about burning the ships—eliminating all distractions and doubts—so there's only one way forward.Winning isn't an accident or a stroke of luck. It's the result of relentless dedication and a mindset hardwired from the very start. It's about creating an environment where success is the only option, so the journey becomes as clear as the destination. That's how champions are made—whether in the ring, on the court, or in life.Share this message with a friend.We don't all want to be number one. Many of us are content with what we have. But if you are serious about becoming top dog, then that text message - from someone who has been there and done it - should be put to memory.I look at my own life, and I'm the very opposite: jack of all trades, master of none. Comedian and financial blogger. What - how does that work? I've also been: prolific voiceover artist, podcast host, TV presenter, actor, author of three books, boxing ring announcer (for Hayemaker Boxing - who says nepotism doesn't exist?), and a million other things I can't remember. Even within comedy, my career is disparate: comic songs, stand-up, MC, witty raconteur, lectures with funny bits. Gold or bitcoin - which is it? Why not both...I'm occasionally asked why I am not more well known than I am. There's your answer. I do too many things quite well instead of excelling at one.I think it's partly because I get interested in stuff. But it's also a defensive thing, I'm sure. If one doesn't work out, I've always got the other to fall back on.Here is one of my resolutions for 2025: do fewer things better.What do you think? Please post your thoughts in the comments below.Happy new year, everyone. Let's hope it's a belter.Buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times? I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Recorded 14th November 2024 https://x.com/AtlasPulse https://www.bytetree.com Media Picks (links may be affiliate) https://brownstone.org/articles/the-neo-liberal-consensus-is-coming-apart/ Seasons in the Sun https://amzn.to/3ZjiArP Rivals (Disney+) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21906238/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 State of the Markets Podcast: Presented by  Tim Price ⁠⁠https://www.pricevaluepartners.com/⁠⁠ and  Paul Rodriguez ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/prodr1guez ⁠⁠ follow on  ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/sotmpc⁠

Jessica and Dini travel back to April 29, 1994! Join us as we discuss our top 5 favorite moments from S1 EP22, Born Again! This episode was written by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa and directed by Jerrold Freedman. While investigating the strange and sudden death of a New York detective, Mulder comes to believe the lead suspect in the case is an 8-year-old girl who may be the reincarnation of a murdered police officer named Charlie Morris. Do you have any X-Files-related theories, stories, key points, or podcast feedback? Please email us at TheXFilesChatRoomPodcast@gmail.com We'd love to hear from you. Please tell us how we can improve!You can find us on:Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram @TXFChatRoomPodResources: X-Files WikiIMDBnative-land.ca

An estimated one out of every one-hundred breast cancers diagnosed are found in a man. Charlie Morris is one of them. And he joins Dorothy to talk about his experience. During this episode, you'll learn how he discovered his cancer, how he beat it, the reaction from the guys at work, and what he does to spread awareness in the community. Help us grow the show by leaving a review on your podcast platform and sharing with your family and friends. And please consider supporting our mission at therose.org. Your donation could help save the life of an uninsured patient.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comA cock-up at HQ some of you didn't see Sunday's piece about a scam in the gold bullion markets. Here it is ICYMI: Also in video format if you prefer.Now we look at what must be the most important price in the world: that is the price of the global reserve currency, the US dollar.Does it go up or down from here?There is probably no more important question in global finance to know the answer to.If the dollar is falling, it usually signals boom times for assets: equities and commodities especially. The US prints and spends, and then exports the inflation. Money gets loose and the party rocks.But when the dollar is strong, everyone gets the jitters.Today the US dollar is seriously oversold.Conversely, the inverse trade—gold—is at all-time highs. US equity markets are flirting with all-time highs, while the euro and the yen, even the pound, have been soaring.What's more: the US General Election is coming. On which note, how about this for a chart? Since 1985, the dollar has declined with the Republicans - Reagan, Bush x2 and Trump - and rallied with the Democrats - Clinton, Obama, and Biden.Who wins in November has a big impact on the priceBut there're several months to go till November, and a lot can change in just a few weeks.Let's start with US dollar index, which tracks the dollar against the currencies of the US's main trading partners', over the past year. Look at the RSI.The RSI has gone beneath 30 for the first time in over a year. You would typically expect a reversal from these levels.Look at the 3-month rally the dollar had starting in July 2023, the last time it was this oversold, it was quite something.In fact, based on this, I have taken a small short position in cable, betting that the dollar will rise against the pound.Last week, Fed Chief Jerome Powell indicated that the Federal Reserve is now ready to start cutting rates, which should be bearish for the dollar. However, oversold is oversold."The time has come for policy to adjust." he said. "My confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path back to 2%."The market is somewhat divided as to whether that cut will be 0.25% or 0.5%, but lower rates go. The inflation—by their definition—monster has been tamed.“The 2-year yield has fallen to 3.9% compared to base rates at 5.5%, which is the bond market's way of pricing in future rate cuts,” says Charlie Morris at Bytree. (Have you subscribed to his letter? You should.) "The difference, at -1.6%, means that a full rate-cutting cycle lies ahead. Indeed, this reading is more pronounced than seen in 2001 and 2008, implying the cuts could come thick and fast."2001 and 2008 were major turning points in the US dollar. What about sentiment?To gauge this, I ran some polls on various WhatsApp chats and Twitter/X. What did they show?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comA cock-up at HQ some of you didn't see Sunday's piece about a scam in the gold bullion markets. Here it is ICYMI: Also in video format if you prefer.Now we look at what must be the most important price in the world: that is the price of the global reserve currency, the US dollar.Does it go up or down from here?There is probably no more important question in global finance to know the answer to.If the dollar is falling, it usually signals boom times for assets: equities and commodities especially. The US prints and spends, and then exports the inflation. Money gets loose and the party rocks.But when the dollar is strong, everyone gets the jitters.Today the US dollar is seriously oversold.Conversely, the inverse trade—gold—is at all-time highs. US equity markets are flirting with all-time highs, while the euro and the yen, even the pound, have been soaring.What's more: the US General Election is coming. On which note, how about this for a chart? Since 1985, the dollar has declined with the Republicans - Reagan, Bush x2 and Trump - and rallied with the Democrats - Clinton, Obama, and Biden.Who wins in November has a big impact on the priceBut there're several months to go till November, and a lot can change in just a few weeks.Let's start with US dollar index, which tracks the dollar against the currencies of the US's main trading partners', over the past year. Look at the RSI.The RSI has gone beneath 30 for the first time in over a year. You would typically expect a reversal from these levels.Look at the 3-month rally the dollar had starting in July 2023, the last time it was this oversold, it was quite something.In fact, based on this, I have taken a small short position in cable, betting that the dollar will rise against the pound.Last week, Fed Chief Jerome Powell indicated that the Federal Reserve is now ready to start cutting rates, which should be bearish for the dollar. However, oversold is oversold."The time has come for policy to adjust." he said. "My confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path back to 2%."The market is somewhat divided as to whether that cut will be 0.25% or 0.5%, but lower rates go. The inflation—by their definition—monster has been tamed.“The 2-year yield has fallen to 3.9% compared to base rates at 5.5%, which is the bond market's way of pricing in future rate cuts,” says Charlie Morris at Bytree. (Have you subscribed to his letter? You should.) "The difference, at -1.6%, means that a full rate-cutting cycle lies ahead. Indeed, this reading is more pronounced than seen in 2001 and 2008, implying the cuts could come thick and fast."2001 and 2008 were major turning points in the US dollar. What about sentiment?To gauge this, I ran some polls on various WhatsApp chats and Twitter/X. What did they show?

(And, no, I'm not standing on a stool!)After the unexpected popularity of my post about weight loss (still can't believe it had 11 million views), I am trying something a little bit different this Sunday morning with this short video about dead hangs, while doing a dead hang. I am planning to cover alternative health a bit more frequently on here in the Sunday morning thought pieces. (NB If you want to try dead hangs, but aren't yet ready to hang fully, try resistance bands or standing on a step and still putting as much weight as possible through your shoulders).Enjoy!In case you missed them, last Sunday's post on immigration was extremely popularAnd we also had an update this week on the Dolce Far Niente portfolioTRANSCRIPT:Hey Siri. Timer in 2 minutes.Today, I'm going to talk to you about dead hangs. I'm going to try and do a 2-minute dead hang while recording this video. Not sure if I can last two minutes while talking.I had a motorcycle crash when I was 27, and I've had problems with my neck ever since.Then, last year, I got a trapped nerve in my shoulder and I was in agony. My osteopath helped a lot. I did about 3 or 4 minutes of neck stretches most days. However, the problem continued.And it was only after I started doing dead hangs a few months ago, that my neck issues, shoulder issues and trapped nerve mostly cleared up.Dead hangs are great. Everything we do, whether exercising or just sitting, compresses the spine. Dead hangs stretch it all out.As well as decompressing the spine, they have all sorts of beneficial side-effects. * They improve your posture.* They re-aligning the spine.* They stretch out all the evils of sitting at a desk in front of a screen all day.* They increase neck and shoulder strength, flexibility and mobility.* They stretch through your torso, particularly if you swing from side to side, improving your stomach and core strength. * They are great for your grip strength, your fingers and forearms. * And holding the position for extended periods is probably good for your determination too.So get a pull up bar. The ones you hang in your doorway are you but the ones you put on the wall are better, like this one, and keep hanging every day. At first you'll only be able to hang for 10, 20 or 30 second, but keep doing it and you'll quickly increase the time you can hang for.Then you can start hanging in different ways. You can extend the width of your grip. swing, do one-armed hangs. Try and do a couple or three dead hangs a day and they will benefit you in all sorts of unexpected ways, I promise. I can't think of a physical more beneficial way of spending a couple of minutes than a dead hang. When it finishes you get this rush of pain, this exhilaration through your shoulders.And I'm hoping it finishes pretty soon. Hey, Siri, how long on timer?Hey, Siri, how long on timer?It didn't set!Tell your friends about this amazing video.Here's the original weight loss post, in case of interest.Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

(And, no, I'm not standing on a stool!)After the unexpected popularity of my post about weight loss (still can't believe it had 11 million views), I am trying something a little bit different this Sunday morning with this short video about dead hangs, while doing a dead hang. I am planning to cover alternative health a bit more frequently on here in the Sunday morning thought pieces. (NB If you want to try dead hangs, but aren't yet ready to hang fully, try resistance bands or standing on a step and still putting as much weight as possible through your shoulders).Enjoy!In case you missed them, last Sunday's post on immigration was extremely popularAnd we also had an update this week on the Dolce Far Niente portfolioTRANSCRIPT:Hey Siri. Timer in 2 minutes.Today, I'm going to talk to you about dead hangs. I'm going to try and do a 2-minute dead hang while recording this video. Not sure if I can last two minutes while talking.I had a motorcycle crash when I was 27, and I've had problems with my neck ever since.Then, last year, I got a trapped nerve in my shoulder and I was in agony. My osteopath helped a lot. I did about 3 or 4 minutes of neck stretches most days. However, the problem continued.And it was only after I started doing dead hangs a few months ago, that my neck issues, shoulder issues and trapped nerve mostly cleared up.Dead hangs are great. Everything we do, whether exercising or just sitting, compresses the spine. Dead hangs stretch it all out.As well as decompressing the spine, they have all sorts of beneficial side-effects. * They improve your posture.* They re-aligning the spine.* They stretch out all the evils of sitting at a desk in front of a screen all day.* They increase neck and shoulder strength, flexibility and mobility.* They stretch through your torso, particularly if you swing from side to side, improving your stomach and core strength. * They are great for your grip strength, your fingers and forearms. * And holding the position for extended periods is probably good for your determination too.So get a pull up bar. The ones you hang in your doorway are you but the ones you put on the wall are better, like this one, and keep hanging every day. At first you'll only be able to hang for 10, 20 or 30 second, but keep doing it and you'll quickly increase the time you can hang for.Then you can start hanging in different ways. You can extend the width of your grip. swing, do one-armed hangs. Try and do a couple or three dead hangs a day and they will benefit you in all sorts of unexpected ways, I promise. I can't think of a physical more beneficial way of spending a couple of minutes than a dead hang. When it finishes you get this rush of pain, this exhilaration through your shoulders.And I'm hoping it finishes pretty soon. Hey, Siri, how long on timer?Hey, Siri, how long on timer?It didn't set!Tell your friends about this amazing video.Here's the original weight loss post, in case of interest.Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

1. There are more people in the world than ever - and we all want better livesThere are some 8.2 billion people in the world - more than ever - and, whether it's people displaced by war, famine, or lack of water, or (the big one) people seeking a better life with more opportunity, more us are on the move than ever.Some stats:4.6 billion live on less than $10/day.7 billion live on less than $40/day. 7 billion!While the number of people in extreme poverty (below $2.15/day) has capitulated in South Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific, it is rising in sub-Saharan Africa.I was interested to know what the global population by ethnicity is (search engines do not make that easy to find out), but, broadly speaking, it looks something like this (obviously there are lots of mixed race people):* Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.): ~3.2 billion / 43%* Indian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka): ~1.5 billion / 20%* Black African: ~1.4 billion / 19%* White European: ~750 million / 10%* Middle Eastern (Arab, Persian, Kurd, Turk, etc.): ~500 million / 7%* Amerindian (North and South America): ~100 million / 1%* Pacific Islander: ~12.5 million / 0.2%Visualised:Though this is rapidly changing with Asian growth, the majority of the world's wealth lies in the predominantly white (for the time being) countries of Western Europe and North America. There are a gazillion different reasons put forward as to why this might be, which differ according to worldview, ranging from slavery to IQ to system of rule. Regardless of what the reason is, Western Europe and North America have become the prime destinations for migrants. That is where the money is. Language is a huge and overlooked factor too. Most people around the world speak some English. If the migrant speaks German, they might prefer Germany, but English is more widespread, and that means greater numbers will favour the Anglo-Saxon nations.But the population of Western Europe is less than 200 million, 265 million if you include the UK. The population of the U.S. is 345 million. We are tiny in the global context.The difference in the weight of numbers is staggering. (Another good stat for you: more people are born in Nigeria each year than in all of Europe).2. Modern transportationBecause of planes, trains, and automobiles, not to mention boats (fossil fuels and engines, basically), people are able to travel further and faster than ever before.Forget Around the World in 80 Days, itself a miracle in 1872 when the Jules Verne story was published, now, it's almost (not quite) possible to get around the world in 24 hours.Meanwhile, the days of the medieval serf, who was tied to his land and not allowed to travel, are long gone (for the most part—there are bits of Africa and Asia where you are still tied).3. Modern mediaMedia and communication are more advanced than ever. Whether it's TV, film, or, most crucially, social media, the whole world is able to see how the other half lives. As of 2023, there are approximately 6.8 billion smartphone users worldwide, representing about 85% of the global population.This has increased awareness of better lives to be had, and it has stoked desire. Modern communication has also enabled travellers to exchange information on how to move.So you have:* more people than ever* better transport than ever* more awareness than ever * more desire than ever.That is why the mass movement of people is now at levels never before seen in history. That is also why it is only going to increase.This is a point that nobody in a position of influence in the media or politics seems to be making. Global migration levels are not going down. They are going up.So instead of brushing the issue under the carpet and calling people racist, immigration is a conversation we need to be having.What is the plan in the face of migration levels that are inevitably going to increase? Do we want more people? Fewer people? More of certain types of people? What is the optimum number of people? Who are the optimum people? People with certain qualifications? People from certain cultures—Judeo-Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Hindu? People of certain ethnicities? Must they pass wealth tests, skills tests, IQ tests, values tests? What?How can this all be agreed? By referendum? By poll?And once agreed (fat chance), how can it all be ensured?Spoiler: it won't be. We are not even going to properly talk about, let alone do anything. At least not until it's too late (if it isn't already).Instead, we will see the further South Africanisation of everything, and yet more internal division while these issues of immigration continue unaddressed.If you are young, I really wouldn't hang about. There is a whole world out there. I'd go and be a migrant yourself.Until next time, DominicLooking to buy gold in these uncertain times? Then check out my recent report, and look no further than my recommended bullion dealer, the Pure Gold Company. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, and you get to deal with a human being who knows their stuff.On the subject of the recent protests, you might find this of interest: why I think they will achieve very little:Finally, Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

1. There are more people in the world than ever - and we all want better livesThere are some 8.2 billion people in the world - more than ever - and, whether it's people displaced by war, famine, or lack of water, or (the big one) people seeking a better life with more opportunity, more us are on the move than ever.Some stats:4.6 billion live on less than $10/day.7 billion live on less than $40/day. 7 billion!While the number of people in extreme poverty (below $2.15/day) has capitulated in South Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific, it is rising in sub-Saharan Africa.I was interested to know what the global population by ethnicity is (search engines do not make that easy to find out), but, broadly speaking, it looks something like this (obviously there are lots of mixed race people):* Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.): ~3.2 billion / 43%* Indian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka): ~1.5 billion / 20%* Black African: ~1.4 billion / 19%* White European: ~750 million / 10%* Middle Eastern (Arab, Persian, Kurd, Turk, etc.): ~500 million / 7%* Amerindian (North and South America): ~100 million / 1%* Pacific Islander: ~12.5 million / 0.2%Visualised:Though this is rapidly changing with Asian growth, the majority of the world's wealth lies in the predominantly white (for the time being) countries of Western Europe and North America. There are a gazillion different reasons put forward as to why this might be, which differ according to worldview, ranging from slavery to IQ to system of rule. Regardless of what the reason is, Western Europe and North America have become the prime destinations for migrants. That is where the money is. Language is a huge and overlooked factor too. Most people around the world speak some English. If the migrant speaks German, they might prefer Germany, but English is more widespread, and that means greater numbers will favour the Anglo-Saxon nations.But the population of Western Europe is less than 200 million, 265 million if you include the UK. The population of the U.S. is 345 million. We are tiny in the global context.The difference in the weight of numbers is staggering. (Another good stat for you: more people are born in Nigeria each year than in all of Europe).2. Modern transportationBecause of planes, trains, and automobiles, not to mention boats (fossil fuels and engines, basically), people are able to travel further and faster than ever before.Forget Around the World in 80 Days, itself a miracle in 1872 when the Jules Verne story was published, now, it's almost (not quite) possible to get around the world in 24 hours.Meanwhile, the days of the medieval serf, who was tied to his land and not allowed to travel, are long gone (for the most part—there are bits of Africa and Asia where you are still tied).3. Modern mediaMedia and communication are more advanced than ever. Whether it's TV, film, or, most crucially, social media, the whole world is able to see how the other half lives. As of 2023, there are approximately 6.8 billion smartphone users worldwide, representing about 85% of the global population.This has increased awareness of better lives to be had, and it has stoked desire. Modern communication has also enabled travellers to exchange information on how to move.So you have:* more people than ever* better transport than ever* more awareness than ever * more desire than ever.That is why the mass movement of people is now at levels never before seen in history. That is also why it is only going to increase.This is a point that nobody in a position of influence in the media or politics seems to be making. Global migration levels are not going down. They are going up.So instead of brushing the issue under the carpet and calling people racist, immigration is a conversation we need to be having.What is the plan in the face of migration levels that are inevitably going to increase? Do we want more people? Fewer people? More of certain types of people? What is the optimum number of people? Who are the optimum people? People with certain qualifications? People from certain cultures—Judeo-Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Hindu? People of certain ethnicities? Must they pass wealth tests, skills tests, IQ tests, values tests? What?How can this all be agreed? By referendum? By poll?And once agreed (fat chance), how can it all be ensured?Spoiler: it won't be. We are not even going to properly talk about, let alone do anything. At least not until it's too late (if it isn't already).Instead, we will see the further South Africanisation of everything, and yet more internal division while these issues of immigration continue unaddressed.If you are young, I really wouldn't hang about. There is a whole world out there. I'd go and be a migrant yourself.Until next time, DominicLooking to buy gold in these uncertain times? Then check out my recent report, and look no further than my recommended bullion dealer, the Pure Gold Company. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, and you get to deal with a human being who knows their stuff.On the subject of the recent protests, you might find this of interest: why I think they will achieve very little:Finally, Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

I am bringing my Edinburgh Fringe “lecture with funny bits” about the history of mining to London on October 9th and 10th to the Museum of Comedy. Please come if you fancy a bit of “learning and laughter”. The Edinburgh link is here. And the London link is here.Let's start with an overview of gold demand as it currently stands.Never mind central banks, investment banks, or private investors—almost 50% of annual gold demand comes from the jewellery industry. It is, by some margin, the single largely buyer of gold. Another 23% is investment demand, and 21%—last year at least—came from central banks. Just 6% of demand is industrial (excluding jewellery, of course).Jewellery, investment, and central bank demand have all been increasing in recent years. However, a change in macroeconomic circumstances could easily mean, for example, that central banks become net sellers. It's not like it hasn't happened before. But, while de-dollarisation remains a growing theme, I do not see that as likely for several years at least. Similarly, investment demand could easily shrink. Jewellery demand is more constant, and it increases when people feel rich and decreases when they don't.Gold's main use has always been and will always be to store and display wealth—in other words, investment and jewellery. Technological demand is rather at the margin, but might we see demand growth there? Let's investigate. Interestingly, one huge potential increase in demand will come, ironically perhaps since that is where gold came from, at the final frontier in outer space.At the Final Frontier - Also On Your PhoneBoth silver and copper are better conductors of electricity than gold, but gold is more resistant to corrosion and oxidation. Therefore, it finds considerable use in electronics as a coating, especially where long-term stability is important. It is used to cover connectors, switches, and relay contacts; in printed circuit boards, microprocessors, and memory chips. This resistance means it finds considerable use in both aerospace and outer space, where it is used to coat satellite components and spacecraft. It can reflect infrared radiation and protect craft from overheating—especially important in the wild temperature fluctuations of outer space. It is also used in the heat shields which protect sensitive equipment from high temperatures during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. The umbilical cord that binds an astronaut to their spacecraft is plated with gold. The visors of astronaut helmets are plated with gold to protect their eyes from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) instrument, which forms part of NASA's Mars exploration programme, is plated with gold. Its purpose is to create oxygen from carbon dioxide, effectively replicating the role of plants on Earth, so that a human mission to Mars can one day take place.Ultimately, gold's permanence is the fundamental reason for its use. You need durable materials. When you send a spacecraft to outer space, you can't repair it. This usage is not yet significant enough to radically alter gold demand, but that could change, and quite dramatically so, as space exploration increases.At the 2022 Olympics in Tokyo, the metals to make the medals came from a recycling initiative. The Japanese handed in nearly 80,000 tonnes of electrical gadgets, including laptops, digital cameras, gaming devices and 6 million phones. The appliances yielded 32kg/1,000 ounces of gold and 3,500 kg/113,000 ounces of silver. There is, I learn, about eighty times as much gold in one tonne of cellphones than there is a typical tonne of rock at a gold mine. Increased high tech means increased gold demand, but perhaps not enough to effect the price.Optics and Other High Tech UsesGold's reflective properties, combined with its stability, mean it finds use in optics—in lenses and mirrors, especially space telescopes, to reflect infrared light. Gold plates the mirrors of the celebrated James Webb telescope, the largest optical telescope in space, to optimise the mirrors' function, allowing it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. For example, the first stars, the formation of the first galaxies, and the detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets.There is a Canadian company, Totenpass, which has been developing some interesting gold tech, also related to gold's longevity: “a permanent digital storage drive constructed from solid gold that requires no energy and has no movable parts. Digital data is written onto the drive by way of a proprietary light-diffraction process which imprints images, documents, and other files that can be stored as either human readable without the aid of computers or machine-readable with the employment of a smartphone. This technology allows for the permanent storage of precious digital data, thereby eliminating any future dependence on the internet and the vast amounts of energy required presently to store content. By consequence, this technology will empower both individuals and corporations to decentralize, preserve and fully control their precious digital data once and forever.” Here, it seems, is a very modern application for the extraordinary permanence of gold.If you are interested in buying gold, check out my recent report. I have a feeling it is going to come in very handy.My recommended bullion dealer is the Pure Gold Company.Gold is being used increasingly in nanotechnology. Gold nanoparticles are used in photonics (the science of light waves), especially in the development of light-based technologies for imaging and sensors. Gold's inertness makes it an excellent material for nanoparticles used as catalysts in various chemical reactions. For instance, gold nanoparticles are employed in the oxidation of carbon monoxide in air purification systems. Researchers are also exploring gold's potential as a catalyst to improve renewable energy efficiency and solar cells. Again, its conductivity and resistance to oxidation make it ideal for nanoscale electronic components.Gold is like the sun: it can kill but it can cureAs for the medical industry, gold and healing have a long, intertwined history. Gold was associated with the sun gods who bestowed health and vitality, or “helped the body produce vitamin D,” as we might put it today. (More and more health benefits from vitamin D are being discovered today, especially bone health and immune function). The Egyptian God of the Sun, Ra, the giver of life, was made of gold. Gold was the flesh of the gods. It symbolised health as well as eternal life. Apollo, the Greek God of the Sun, was often depicted with gold, and he was also the God of Healing, and father of Asclepius, the god of medicine.Gold nanoparticles are used today in medical diagnostics and treatments, including targeted drug delivery and cancer therapy, because they can be easily detected and manipulated. Additionally, gold's biocompatibility ensures it does not provoke an immune response, making it suitable for use in various biomedical applications. In 2013, researchers found that gold nanoparticles reduced the ability of HIV to reproduce and infect new cells.It is becoming one of the weapons in the battle against malaria. Of the hundreds of millions of malaria tests sold each year, many contain gold: gold nanoparticles bind with specific malaria antigens, which help quick and accurate detection of the disease. The test results can be ready in 15 minutes.Golden BuildingsGold nanoparticles also find use in occasional building materials to enhance strength and thermal regulation. Coating glass with gold can reflect the sun's heat in summer while bouncing internal heat back into rooms in winter, resulting in substantial energy savings. It is corrosion resistant too, which increases longevity.But the main reason for its use in building is opulence. On the facades of buildings, gold will give your building unique and striking appeal. Toronto's Royal Bank Plaza, the Grand Lisboa hotel and casino in Macau, and Al Yaqoub Tower in Dubai are all notable examples, as is Trump International Hotel and Tower in Las Vegas: its gleaming gold-tinted glass makes it stand out even on the Las Vegas Strip. The golden domed St. Michael's Cathedral in Kiev is also a stunning example. To use gold on a roof or facade is extravagant but perhaps not as extravagant as you might think: an ounce of gold will cover up to 1,000 square feet (90 square metres) in gold plate and it brings substantial savings. Internally, gold also finds occasional decorative use: gilded furniture, fixtures and wall decorations, such as seen at the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, which makes extensive use of gold leaf in its interior design.ConclusionAll in all, exciting stuff, but none of this demand will be enough to significantly affect the price of gold. In most cases, we are talking about plate and nanoparticles. If every roof were to be coated in gold as part of some green energy initiative ordered by the government, or space travel were suddenly to get extremely popular, then I might change my mind, but neither scenario is imminent. The main source of gold demand will be what demand has always been: as a store and display of value. Jewellery and investment, in other words.Until next time,Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

I am bringing my Edinburgh Fringe “lecture with funny bits” about the history of mining to London on October 9th and 10th to the Museum of Comedy. Please come if you fancy a bit of “learning and laughter”. The Edinburgh link is here. And the London link is here.Let's start with an overview of gold demand as it currently stands.Never mind central banks, investment banks, or private investors—almost 50% of annual gold demand comes from the jewellery industry. It is, by some margin, the single largely buyer of gold. Another 23% is investment demand, and 21%—last year at least—came from central banks. Just 6% of demand is industrial (excluding jewellery, of course).Jewellery, investment, and central bank demand have all been increasing in recent years. However, a change in macroeconomic circumstances could easily mean, for example, that central banks become net sellers. It's not like it hasn't happened before. But, while de-dollarisation remains a growing theme, I do not see that as likely for several years at least. Similarly, investment demand could easily shrink. Jewellery demand is more constant, and it increases when people feel rich and decreases when they don't.Gold's main use has always been and will always be to store and display wealth—in other words, investment and jewellery. Technological demand is rather at the margin, but might we see demand growth there? Let's investigate. Interestingly, one huge potential increase in demand will come, ironically perhaps since that is where gold came from, at the final frontier in outer space.At the Final Frontier - Also On Your PhoneBoth silver and copper are better conductors of electricity than gold, but gold is more resistant to corrosion and oxidation. Therefore, it finds considerable use in electronics as a coating, especially where long-term stability is important. It is used to cover connectors, switches, and relay contacts; in printed circuit boards, microprocessors, and memory chips. This resistance means it finds considerable use in both aerospace and outer space, where it is used to coat satellite components and spacecraft. It can reflect infrared radiation and protect craft from overheating—especially important in the wild temperature fluctuations of outer space. It is also used in the heat shields which protect sensitive equipment from high temperatures during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. The umbilical cord that binds an astronaut to their spacecraft is plated with gold. The visors of astronaut helmets are plated with gold to protect their eyes from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) instrument, which forms part of NASA's Mars exploration programme, is plated with gold. Its purpose is to create oxygen from carbon dioxide, effectively replicating the role of plants on Earth, so that a human mission to Mars can one day take place.Ultimately, gold's permanence is the fundamental reason for its use. You need durable materials. When you send a spacecraft to outer space, you can't repair it. This usage is not yet significant enough to radically alter gold demand, but that could change, and quite dramatically so, as space exploration increases.At the 2022 Olympics in Tokyo, the metals to make the medals came from a recycling initiative. The Japanese handed in nearly 80,000 tonnes of electrical gadgets, including laptops, digital cameras, gaming devices and 6 million phones. The appliances yielded 32kg/1,000 ounces of gold and 3,500 kg/113,000 ounces of silver. There is, I learn, about eighty times as much gold in one tonne of cellphones than there is a typical tonne of rock at a gold mine. Increased high tech means increased gold demand, but perhaps not enough to effect the price.Optics and Other High Tech UsesGold's reflective properties, combined with its stability, mean it finds use in optics—in lenses and mirrors, especially space telescopes, to reflect infrared light. Gold plates the mirrors of the celebrated James Webb telescope, the largest optical telescope in space, to optimise the mirrors' function, allowing it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. For example, the first stars, the formation of the first galaxies, and the detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets.There is a Canadian company, Totenpass, which has been developing some interesting gold tech, also related to gold's longevity: “a permanent digital storage drive constructed from solid gold that requires no energy and has no movable parts. Digital data is written onto the drive by way of a proprietary light-diffraction process which imprints images, documents, and other files that can be stored as either human readable without the aid of computers or machine-readable with the employment of a smartphone. This technology allows for the permanent storage of precious digital data, thereby eliminating any future dependence on the internet and the vast amounts of energy required presently to store content. By consequence, this technology will empower both individuals and corporations to decentralize, preserve and fully control their precious digital data once and forever.” Here, it seems, is a very modern application for the extraordinary permanence of gold.If you are interested in buying gold, check out my recent report. I have a feeling it is going to come in very handy.My recommended bullion dealer is the Pure Gold Company.Gold is being used increasingly in nanotechnology. Gold nanoparticles are used in photonics (the science of light waves), especially in the development of light-based technologies for imaging and sensors. Gold's inertness makes it an excellent material for nanoparticles used as catalysts in various chemical reactions. For instance, gold nanoparticles are employed in the oxidation of carbon monoxide in air purification systems. Researchers are also exploring gold's potential as a catalyst to improve renewable energy efficiency and solar cells. Again, its conductivity and resistance to oxidation make it ideal for nanoscale electronic components.Gold is like the sun: it can kill but it can cureAs for the medical industry, gold and healing have a long, intertwined history. Gold was associated with the sun gods who bestowed health and vitality, or “helped the body produce vitamin D,” as we might put it today. (More and more health benefits from vitamin D are being discovered today, especially bone health and immune function). The Egyptian God of the Sun, Ra, the giver of life, was made of gold. Gold was the flesh of the gods. It symbolised health as well as eternal life. Apollo, the Greek God of the Sun, was often depicted with gold, and he was also the God of Healing, and father of Asclepius, the god of medicine.Gold nanoparticles are used today in medical diagnostics and treatments, including targeted drug delivery and cancer therapy, because they can be easily detected and manipulated. Additionally, gold's biocompatibility ensures it does not provoke an immune response, making it suitable for use in various biomedical applications. In 2013, researchers found that gold nanoparticles reduced the ability of HIV to reproduce and infect new cells.It is becoming one of the weapons in the battle against malaria. Of the hundreds of millions of malaria tests sold each year, many contain gold: gold nanoparticles bind with specific malaria antigens, which help quick and accurate detection of the disease. The test results can be ready in 15 minutes.Golden BuildingsGold nanoparticles also find use in occasional building materials to enhance strength and thermal regulation. Coating glass with gold can reflect the sun's heat in summer while bouncing internal heat back into rooms in winter, resulting in substantial energy savings. It is corrosion resistant too, which increases longevity.But the main reason for its use in building is opulence. On the facades of buildings, gold will give your building unique and striking appeal. Toronto's Royal Bank Plaza, the Grand Lisboa hotel and casino in Macau, and Al Yaqoub Tower in Dubai are all notable examples, as is Trump International Hotel and Tower in Las Vegas: its gleaming gold-tinted glass makes it stand out even on the Las Vegas Strip. The golden domed St. Michael's Cathedral in Kiev is also a stunning example. To use gold on a roof or facade is extravagant but perhaps not as extravagant as you might think: an ounce of gold will cover up to 1,000 square feet (90 square metres) in gold plate and it brings substantial savings. Internally, gold also finds occasional decorative use: gilded furniture, fixtures and wall decorations, such as seen at the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, which makes extensive use of gold leaf in its interior design.ConclusionAll in all, exciting stuff, but none of this demand will be enough to significantly affect the price of gold. In most cases, we are talking about plate and nanoparticles. If every roof were to be coated in gold as part of some green energy initiative ordered by the government, or space travel were suddenly to get extremely popular, then I might change my mind, but neither scenario is imminent. The main source of gold demand will be what demand has always been: as a store and display of value. Jewellery and investment, in other words.Until next time,Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Over the last decade, the Turkish lira has seen declines of more than 95% against the US dollar. It took just ₺1.50 to buy it dollar ten years ago. Now it takes ₺33. The lira has been one of the world's worst-performing currencies - and in a fiat world, that is saying something - rivalled only by the Venezuelan bolivar and the Argentinian peso.While in Istanbul last week, I spoke to two young professionals, Emre, 25, and İlker, 27, about life under the lira. Both are bright, articulate, and empathetic young men who speak three languages fluently - English, German, and Turkish - as well as competent French.Given that the currency has been so bad, I was expecting to see more widespread use of foreign money, but in fact, lira are changing hands everywhere - you see people all over the place with wads of them. “You have to use lira,” they explained. “It is the national currency.” Even with such dire inflation, there is still trade. The economy still functions, albeit badly. (That said everything in the airports was denominated in euros).Food, energy, travel, housing, consumer goods - everything has gone up in price, but, surprise, surprise, wages have not gone up by nearly as much. The result is that ordinary people have been impoverished.“The average wage in Istanbul is about £650 per month,” they told me. (One thing that impressed me was how immediately they could translate the lira into pounds, dollars, or euros).“What about the receptionist in my hotel or a waiter?”“Maybe £500. A taxi driver working all hours, maybe £800.”With those kinds of earnings, it is hard to make ends meet. “That's why everybody wants to meet a tourist,” they smiled in reply.“What do you do?” I asked. “Do you spend money as soon as you have it? Before it loses purchasing power?”“Yes,” they said. “There is no point saving. When we were students a few years ago, you could save for maybe three years and buy a car. Now it would take you 20 years. There is no point saving in lira. We spend the money as soon as we have it.”“Even on stupid things,” added Emre, pointing to his Casio watch. “You may as well.”Everyone is the same, apparently. They spend as soon as they earn. There is no point saving a currency that will soon be worth less. The rates of interest paid do not compensate, especially given that you usually have to tie your money up for one, two, or three years to obtain decent rates, and the inflation risk of doing that is too great.Interest rates have been quite the issue in Turkey, by the way. Mainstream Islamic finance prohibits interest, something they claimed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan exploited. Until 2023 Erdoğan kept a lid on rates (they are now 50%), arguing that high rates cause inflation. He repeatedly replaced central bank governors who resisted low rates.“How do people save?” I asked.“Gold,” came the answer straight away. Everyone who can buys gold, even tiny amounts below a gram.“Silver?” I asked.“Not so much.”I asked them if they use Revolut or similar to hold foreign currencies. They had no idea what Revolut was (probably a good thing, given what can happen), but it seems most banks also offer the ability to hold euros, pounds, and dollars, and so citizens tend to convert their lira as quickly as they can.“What about bitcoin?”“Not really,” they said. “Some young people.”I was surprised by that. I saw a few adverts for bitcoin-related products out there. But apparently gold is more common.“What about saving up to buy a house?”They both laughed at the impossibility. And there isn't even a lot of debt in the Turkish housing market. Mortgages, as we know them in the West, don't really exist, though there are ways to borrow money. Housing is still unaffordable“So people aren't starting families then?”“No, we can't. Our population growth is starting to turn negative.”“So you two are not close to starting a family.”They shook their heads sadly. “What do we have to offer?”I felt so sorry for these two young men. Both would be good husbands and fathers.“When people do start families, they rent small flats. Mum works, dad works, grandparents work.”This is something I saw directly. The taxi that met me at the airport had mum and dad in the front and their two kids asleep in the back, while dad continued working into the night.A typical one-bed flat might be about £500 per month. There is not really the same culture of flat-sharing among young professionals that we have in the UK, except maybe for students, and most young people stay with their parents until they marry.I struggled to understand how anyone could make any money in such a situation. All asset owners are doing is protecting their wealth against the currency debasement; they are not actually growing it. “Who's the richest person in the country?” I wondered.“Erdoğan,” they both said immediately. “Officially, probably the Koç family. They own Fenerbahçe, the football club. But really it is almost certainly Erdoğan.”The state of the currency and the political leadership is no doubt a huge deterrent to foreign investment.What about leaving?, I asked.That is hard too. The routes into Europe are not as easy as they once were. Far fewer Turks now go to Germany, for example. Even just getting a tourist visa can take two years, and the money they earn lasts barely a few days in Europe. Some illegals travel across the Mediterranean and up through Spain, but the US, via Mexico, is now the most common escape. Very expensive. Most are trapped in their own country. What a sad state of affairs. Isn't fiat money a terrible thing? What it can do to a country and its people, how it can make things so hopeless.The bizarre thing: there is economic activity everywhere. Everyone is hustling. Everyone is working. They all want to better themselves and their lot. People want to trade. That is the natural human way of things. Imagine if it were all underpinned by sound money.If you are interested in buying gold, check out my recent report. I have a feeling it is going to come in very handy.My recommended bullion dealer is the Pure Gold Company. I also like Goldcore.And one other thing:Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Over the last decade, the Turkish lira has seen declines of more than 95% against the US dollar. It took just ₺1.50 to buy it dollar ten years ago. Now it takes ₺33. The lira has been one of the world's worst-performing currencies - and in a fiat world, that is saying something - rivalled only by the Venezuelan bolivar and the Argentinian peso.While in Istanbul last week, I spoke to two young professionals, Emre, 25, and İlker, 27, about life under the lira. Both are bright, articulate, and empathetic young men who speak three languages fluently - English, German, and Turkish - as well as competent French.Given that the currency has been so bad, I was expecting to see more widespread use of foreign money, but in fact, lira are changing hands everywhere - you see people all over the place with wads of them. “You have to use lira,” they explained. “It is the national currency.” Even with such dire inflation, there is still trade. The economy still functions, albeit badly. (That said everything in the airports was denominated in euros).Food, energy, travel, housing, consumer goods - everything has gone up in price, but, surprise, surprise, wages have not gone up by nearly as much. The result is that ordinary people have been impoverished.“The average wage in Istanbul is about £650 per month,” they told me. (One thing that impressed me was how immediately they could translate the lira into pounds, dollars, or euros).“What about the receptionist in my hotel or a waiter?”“Maybe £500. A taxi driver working all hours, maybe £800.”With those kinds of earnings, it is hard to make ends meet. “That's why everybody wants to meet a tourist,” they smiled in reply.“What do you do?” I asked. “Do you spend money as soon as you have it? Before it loses purchasing power?”“Yes,” they said. “There is no point saving. When we were students a few years ago, you could save for maybe three years and buy a car. Now it would take you 20 years. There is no point saving in lira. We spend the money as soon as we have it.”“Even on stupid things,” added Emre, pointing to his Casio watch. “You may as well.”Everyone is the same, apparently. They spend as soon as they earn. There is no point saving a currency that will soon be worth less. The rates of interest paid do not compensate, especially given that you usually have to tie your money up for one, two, or three years to obtain decent rates, and the inflation risk of doing that is too great.Interest rates have been quite the issue in Turkey, by the way. Mainstream Islamic finance prohibits interest, something they claimed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan exploited. Until 2023 Erdoğan kept a lid on rates (they are now 50%), arguing that high rates cause inflation. He repeatedly replaced central bank governors who resisted low rates.“How do people save?” I asked.“Gold,” came the answer straight away. Everyone who can buys gold, even tiny amounts below a gram.“Silver?” I asked.“Not so much.”I asked them if they use Revolut or similar to hold foreign currencies. They had no idea what Revolut was (probably a good thing, given what can happen), but it seems most banks also offer the ability to hold euros, pounds, and dollars, and so citizens tend to convert their lira as quickly as they can.“What about bitcoin?”“Not really,” they said. “Some young people.”I was surprised by that. I saw a few adverts for bitcoin-related products out there. But apparently gold is more common.“What about saving up to buy a house?”They both laughed at the impossibility. And there isn't even a lot of debt in the Turkish housing market. Mortgages, as we know them in the West, don't really exist, though there are ways to borrow money. Housing is still unaffordable“So people aren't starting families then?”“No, we can't. Our population growth is starting to turn negative.”“So you two are not close to starting a family.”They shook their heads sadly. “What do we have to offer?”I felt so sorry for these two young men. Both would be good husbands and fathers.“When people do start families, they rent small flats. Mum works, dad works, grandparents work.”This is something I saw directly. The taxi that met me at the airport had mum and dad in the front and their two kids asleep in the back, while dad continued working into the night.A typical one-bed flat might be about £500 per month. There is not really the same culture of flat-sharing among young professionals that we have in the UK, except maybe for students, and most young people stay with their parents until they marry.I struggled to understand how anyone could make any money in such a situation. All asset owners are doing is protecting their wealth against the currency debasement; they are not actually growing it. “Who's the richest person in the country?” I wondered.“Erdoğan,” they both said immediately. “Officially, probably the Koç family. They own Fenerbahçe, the football club. But really it is almost certainly Erdoğan.”The state of the currency and the political leadership is no doubt a huge deterrent to foreign investment.What about leaving?, I asked.That is hard too. The routes into Europe are not as easy as they once were. Far fewer Turks now go to Germany, for example. Even just getting a tourist visa can take two years, and the money they earn lasts barely a few days in Europe. Some illegals travel across the Mediterranean and up through Spain, but the US, via Mexico, is now the most common escape. Very expensive. Most are trapped in their own country. What a sad state of affairs. Isn't fiat money a terrible thing? What it can do to a country and its people, how it can make things so hopeless.The bizarre thing: there is economic activity everywhere. Everyone is hustling. Everyone is working. They all want to better themselves and their lot. People want to trade. That is the natural human way of things. Imagine if it were all underpinned by sound money.If you are interested in buying gold, check out my recent report. I have a feeling it is going to come in very handy.My recommended bullion dealer is the Pure Gold Company. I also like Goldcore.And one other thing:Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Charlie Morris

Regular listeners of the Merryn Talks Money podcast know that Merryn Somerset Webb usually ends her interviews with one question. If you had to invest all of your money into one of these assets, and hold it for the next 10 years, which would it be: Bitcoin or gold? In this week's episode, she makes that question the foundation for a conversation with Charlie Morris, chief investment officer and founder of ByteTree, and Alexander Chartres, a fund manager at Ruffer. The episode was taped in front of audience at the Bloomberg offices in London. Want to see Merryn live? Check out her shows in Edinburgh at Fringe Festival this August! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An estimated one out of every one-hundred breast cancers diagnosed are found in a man. Charlie Morris is one of them. And he joins Dorothy to talk about his experience. During this episode, you'll learn how he discovered his cancer, how he beat it, the reaction from his guy friends at work, and what he does to spread awareness in the community. Help us grow the show by leaving a review on your podcast platform and sharing with your family and friends. And please consider supporting our mission at therose.org. Your donation could help save the life of an uninsured patient.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At a drinks party in around 2011 or 2012, I had the ear of Andrew Feldman, aka Baron Feldman of Elstree, former Chairman of the Conservative Party—he of “swivel-eyed loons” fame, though he never actually said that. (Andrew is a friend, by the way.)“Tell George Osborne to buy back the gold Gordon Brown sold,” I advised.“At these prices?” smiled Andrew with a mix of incredulity, amusement, and polite condescension.“Yes!” I said. “It might be good publicity, even. Or do it secretly, and announce it afterward. The important thing is getting the gold back. We will need it at some point. Why not just quantitatively ease the money and buy it back? You're doing that and buying bonds.”Andrew laughed at my joke, which wasn't a joke, and then wandered off in search of someone more sane to talk to.Given the government has this extraordinary power to create money out of nothing, why don't they just print money and buy hard assets with it?Park that thought for a moment.A couple of months ago, I was at Liz Truss's book launch—aren't you impressed with all this name-dropping?—and I ran into Mark Littlewood, former director of the IEA and now of PopCon. I started bending his ear about the media's failure to report on the Bank of England and how it had shafted Truss with its advanced notice of gilt sales, Quantitative Tightening, which began the day before Kwasi Kwarteng's budget and led to a collapse in the gilt market, the blame for which was then left at Kwasi Kwarteng's doorstep. Mark nodded. “Do you think I don't know?” said Liz.“I would love to be able to grill Andrew Bailey in public,” I said. “Or just ask him one question with people watching. I know exactly what I'd ask him.”“What?” said Mark.“If the Bank of England can print money, why do we need taxes?”Mark laughed and, thinking I was asking him that question, replied, “Money illusion.”Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial.Money illusion is one of those economic terms that is pretty self-explanatory, but here is an example. Most of know a hundred pounds does not buy you today what it bought you ten years ago, but we still think in terms of past prices. (Old people do this more, for obvious reasons). A worker might feel great with a 5% raise, but if inflation is 7%, he is actually earning less than before. This has been an ongoing process for decades with the result that, in real terms, wages are lower.Here's the Wikipedia definition (edited by me):In economics, money illusion, or price illusion, is a cognitive bias where money is thought of in nominal, rather than real, terms. In other words, the face value (nominal value) of money is mistaken for its purchasing power (real value) at a previous point in time. The term was coined by Irving Fisher in Stabilizing the Dollar, and popularized by John Maynard Keynes in the early twentieth century. Fisher also wrote a book on the subject, The Money Illusion, in 1928.Mark and I both doubted that Bailey would give that as the answer, even if he thought it, which we doubted he would. If governments started printing money and buying assets, many would start questioning money, and faith in fiat might quickly evaporate. If governments worldwide started doing it (eg Britain prints money and starts buying land in France) you are in race-to-the-bottom territory. It would be a race to the bottom for fiat currency.Even if Bailey thought money illusion was the answer, he certainly wouldn't say it because that in itself undermines fiat.Modern money has nominal value, but not intrinsic value. It relies on illusion (and the law) to function. The more you debase it, the less likely that illusion is to hold. Maybe money delusion is more accurate. Obviously, the backing of the law makes a great difference, as does the fact that taxes must be collected in this money, but, boy, is the system vulnerable. Illusions can last a long time. But when they shatter, they shatter very quickly, and then there is nothing.I don't say the system will pop. It has been going on for a long time. But I do observe that it very easily could.It's why I recommend both gold and bitcoin. Both are money in and of themselves: one is the product of nature, the other the product of extraordinary amounts of computer power. Neither relies on anyone else.If you liked this article, please tell a friend.If you are interested in buying gold, check out my recent report. I have a feeling it is going to come in very handy.My recommended bullion dealer is the Pure Gold Company.Life After the State - Why We Don't Need Government (2013), my first book, is now back in print - with the audiobook here: Audible UK, Audible US, Apple Books. I recommend the audiobook ;)And if you are in the Scottish neck of the woods this August, look out for me at the Edinburgh Fringe. I'll be performing one of my “lectures with funny bits”. This one is all about the history of mining. As always, I shall be delivering it at Panmure House, where Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations. It's at 2pm most afternoons. You can get tickets here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comTwo bullish developments for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies this week: first, Donald Trump, who is currently the favourite to be the next US President, declared, 'I am very positive and open-minded towards cryptocurrency companies and all things related to this new and burgeoning industry. Our country must be the leader in the field; there is no second place.'Those words will have been written for him, but they nevertheless show that policies, should he win the election, as currently looks likely, will be favourable. That has to be good for the sector.Second the Ethereum ETF got green lit this week in the US, so today we consider the implications of that, and give our outlook on the sector more generally.First up, ether has rallied. It's risen by about a third from $2,900 a coin to within spitting distance of $4,000.I must confess to being somewhat flummoxed by Ethereum. (If you want to read my guide, it is here). Briefly: its founding principle is to use blockchain technology for purposes beyond an alternative system of digital money. Known as "the world's programmable blockchain," it can be used to “codify, decentralize, secure, and trade just about anything.” Charlie Morris of Byte Tree likens it to a decentralized App Store (you should all read his letter by the way). Developers can use the platform to build and publish smart contracts and distributed applications (dApps), and it is a kind of marketplace for financial services (DeFi), NFTs (non-fungible tokens), games, and apps, all of which can be paid for in ether.The Bitcoin maximalists don't like it. Ethereum is not properly decentralized. The numerous forks that have taken place in reaction to hacks prove this—they would not be possible with a properly decentralised platform. Too many coins were pre-mined and handed out to founders. Ethereum 2.0 met with delay after delay. Transaction costs, known as gas fees, can get exorbitant. Its blockchain is not that robust. In short, it's something of a ticking time bomb.Well, maybe. But its founder, Vitalik Buterin, a billionaire many times over by the time he was 28 (just in case you weren't feeling inadequate enough already this morning), will know all this. He is a genius, and I satisfy myself that by owning Ethereum, I am effectively long Buterin—not unlike being long Elon Musk by owning Tesla.Ethereum also has numerous competitors—not least Solana, but also Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, Cardano, Terra, and Fantom - which may or may not be a good thing. Many of these are technologically superior, say critics—faster, more robust.Price-wise ethereum been something of a laggard. Its all-time high was $4,800 and it's about a thousand bucks, or 20%, below that. That said, it does tend to move later in bull markets - and by more.But despite all of this, Ethereum remains by some margin the number two cryptocurrency by market cap—at $465 billion—followed by Tether, which has another purpose altogether ($110 bn), then Binance Coin ($89 bn). By way of comparison, HSBC has a market cap of $165 bn. And you thought crypto was a passing fad.So what can we expect with the launch of this new ETF?

In this week's edition of the Weekly Investment Trust Podcast, Jonathan Davis, editor of the Investment Trust Handbook, reviews the week in the markets and speaks to Andrew McHattie, editor of the Investment Trusts Newsletter and Charlie Morris, CEO of ByteTree Research. Next week's podcast is likely to be shorter than normal while Jonathan is away, but you can still look forward to a discussion with HgCapital Trust (HGT) and the normal format will return on the following Saturday. We are grateful for the support of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which enables us to keep the podcast free. Section Timestamps: 0:00:39 - Review of the week 0:01:04 - This week's guests 0:03:21 - Summary of results 0:03:39 - Money Makers Circle 0:04:06 - Corporate news and announcements 0:06:47 - Q&A with Andrew McHattie 0:06:59 - Election announcement 0:09:50 - Performance of investment trusts this year 0:13:08 - Scottish Mortgage Trust (SMT) 0:17:49 - Asia Dragon 0:23:13 - HICL Infrastructure (HICL) 0:26:04 - Battery storage trusts 0:30:04 - Chrysalis (CHRY) 0:32:52 - Capital Gearing Trust (CGT) 0:35:57 - Looking ahead 0:38:05 - Q&A with Charlie Morris 0:38:22 - Fears and hopes for the election 0:41:15 - Thoughts on the investment trusts sector 0:43:16 - Commodities 0:47:02 - Outcomes from the year of elections 0:51:58 - Close Trusts mentioned this week (with tickers): Rockwood Strategic (RKW), Odyssean Investment Trust (OIT), Montenaro UK Smaller Companies (MTU), Scottish Mortgage Trust (SMT), Capital Gearing Trust (CGT), STS Global Income and Growth (STS), HICL Infrastructure (HICL), Caledonia Investments (CLDN), Shires Income (SHRS), Abrdn European Logistics Income (ASLI), GCP Asset Backed Income (GABI), US Solar Fund (USF), Asia Dragon (DGN), Ashoka WhiteOak Emerging Markets (AWEM), Seraphim Space (SSIT), Baker Steel Resources Trust (BSRT), Gore Street Energy Storage (GSF), Gresham House Energy Storage (GRID), Chrysalis (CHRY), RIT Capital Partners (RCP), Pantheon International (PIN), BlackRock World Mining (BRWM). If you enjoy the weekly podcast, you may also find value in joining The Money Makers circle. This is a membership scheme that offers listeners to the podcast an opportunity, in return for a modest monthly or annual subscription, to receive additional premium content, including interviews, performance data, market/portfolio reviews and regular extracts from the editor's notebook. This week, as well as the usual features, the Circle features a profile of RTW Biotech Opportunities (RTW). Future profiles include CT Private Equity (CTPE) and Scottish Mortgage (SMT). Look out for the latest edition of our new expanded weekly subscriber email which summarises Jonathan's latest thoughts including some of his most recent trust purchases, and includes a comprehensive summary of all the latest news. The content of that email is also available for subscribers via the website. For more information about the Money Makers circle, please visit money-makers.co/membership-join. Membership helps to cover the cost of producing the weekly investment trust podcast, which will continue to be free. We are very grateful for your continued support and the enthusiastic response to our over 210 podcasts since launch. You can find more information, including relevant disclosures, at www.money-makers.co. Please note that this podcast is provided for educational purposes only and nothing you hear should be considered as investment advice. Our podcasts are also available on the Association of Investment Companies website, www.theaic.co.uk. Produced by Ben Gamblin.

Good morning to you,I am going to be sending out two pieces in fairly quick succession: first, today's, some commentary on the latest bitcoin price action, and then another, tomorrow hopefully, about gold mining.It looks like bitcoin (currently $67,000, down from highs of $73,500) is now “enjoying” a correction. Microstrategy (NDX:MSTR) has 5xd, since we covered it in the summer, and some profit-taking is inevitable. My own strategy though is to HODL. I don't think this is the end of the cycle. Longer term I think bitcoin goes higher, even if it is short-term overbought and over-heated. I know of no strategy that has consistently beaten HODL, so that is what I am going to continue to doThere is an expression you will have heard me use from time to time: “from false moves come fast moves in the opposite direction”. Sometimes you will see a move above an old high, a “false breakout”, before a market reverses. At the moment the breakout above the old high to $73,500 then the reversal looks like it could be one of those. It may do that. It may not. You never know. But the risk with bitcoin is not having a position. My preferred interpretation is: “ongoing correction in a bull market”. But these are the kind of doubts that haunt you when climbing the wall of worry. There is nothing a bull market likes to do more than throw you off. Hence HODL.It has been said before, but I say it again: were you to sell your bitcoins for pounds dollars or euros, you would effectively be swapping a technologically superior form of money for one that is technologically inferior. When looked at in these terms, selling bitcoin for fiat makes little sense. When bull markets come along you always kick yourself for not owning enough bitcoin, so, again, HODL.I met a city friend of mine at a drinks party last night and he was telling me how many institutions are buying $200,000 btc September call options: that means some traders in institutions are, in effect, making leveraged bets that bitcoin will be $200,000 in 6 months time. Buying such high risk, out-of-the-money calls could be seen as symptomatic of excess bullish sentiment. It signals irrational exuberance. It signals catch-up trade - trying to make up the money you missed out by not being positioned sooner. But that institutional money, with all the information it has about order-flows and all the rest of it, is making such bets is also a bullish sign. I, for one, hope those call options come good.Altcoin Season is Upon Us - or It WasFinally, another anecdote from earlier in the week, which shows just how hot things were getting, this one about altcoin season. Fortunes, sometimes life-changing fortunes, get made and lost, though mostly lost, in altcoin season. It was upon us. My son's mate from uni, age 23, is now a trader. On Tuesday he was bragging on their Snapchat about a win he just had. LocalAI - I have no idea what that is - began trading on Monday. On Tuesday it was up over 17,000%. You read that right. On a Tuesday.I took a look at it on Wednesday. It had just fallen over 60%.The following day it nearly tripled, before falling 50% again. Nuts!How to navigate it all? It's a full-time job keeping up with what's going on in the altcoin world and they are not something I know a great deal about, I'm relieved to say. I'm familiar with about ten. Fortunately, I know a man who does. So let me take this opportunity to recommend Charlie Morris's Bytefolio. Charlie is a former fund manager from HSBC, who ran the billion-dollar Absolute Return fund for 20 years. He also wrote the extremely popular Fleet Street Letter for many years, before handing it over to Nigel Farage and his team. Charlie now runs a suite of letters at Bytetree. He was early to the bitcoin story, back in 2014. He has almost unrivalled knowledge of portfolio management and asset allocation, of technical analysis and trend following, and he applies it to the world of crypto and altcoins. So take a look and see what you think - you get the first month free. The crypto letter is ace, but I also like his more mainstream Multi-Asset Investor and his speculative Venture too.Right, I'll be back very soon, tomorrow hopefully, talking gold mines. Will I ever learn?Until then, This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

An estimated one out of every one-hundred breast cancers diagnosed are found in a man. Charlie Morris is one of them. And he joins Dorothy to talk about his experience. During this episode, you'll learn how he discovered his cancer, how he beat it, the reaction from his guy friends at work, and what he does to spread awareness in the community. Help us grow the show by leaving a review on your podcast platform and sharing with your family and friends. And please consider supporting our mission at therose.org. Your donation could help save the life of an uninsured woman.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Michael Wright interviews Paul Felton, an expert in biomechanics and bowling technique. Felton discusses his background and passion for cricket, as well as his ongoing research on prosthetic blades for Paralympic athletes. The discussion also covers the principles and application of fast bowling, including the key parameters for consistent fast bowling and the challenges of applying these principles to junior bowlers. Felton emphasizes the importance of talent identification and individualized coaching for fast bowlers.Introduction and Small Talk 0:16Biomechanics in Cricket 6:44Felton explains how he got into biomechanics and his passion for cricket, and discusses the work of Peter Worthington and his research on fast bowling. He also describes the process of analyzing movements in biomechanics and the importance of starting with a question rather than data.Biomechanics in cricket bowlingSensor Technology and Body Tracking 16:25Michael asks about the level of sensor technology used in a study and which body parts were tracked. Paul explains that they used reflective markers on 18 different body segments, including wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles. He also mentions the emergence of new technologies like inertial measurement units and machine learning for body tracking. Paul notes that the technology is rapidly changing and may move away from reflective markers in the future.Principles and Application of Fast Bowling 19:01Paul Felton shares insights from research on fast bowling, including the four key parameters for consistent fast bowling and the importance of talent identification. He also discusses the challenges of applying these principles to coaching and the need for individualized coaching based on a bowler's strengths and limitations.Illegal Action and Technical Issues in Cricket 28:15Paul Felton shares a story about Charlie Morris, a cricket player who was called for an illegal action. Felton and Matt Mason, a bowling coach, spent months trying to change Morris's technique, but it wasn't until Felton's friend Stuart Mcc and Nailer pointed out that Morris had a physical problem that they were able to solve the issue. Morris went on to have a successful professional cricket career.Individualized Coaching and Building Pressure in Sessions 30:19Felton and Wright discuss the challenges of coaching bowlers to improve their technique while maintaining their skill level. They also talk about the unique aspects of cricket technique and the need for individualized coaching based on physiological differences. They emphasize the importance of laying foundations for young players to develop their skills and reach their potential.Individualization in coaching and trainingDeveloping Safe Bowling Practices for Junior Players38:04Paul Felton shares his experience working with Matthew Mason in Western Australia during Covid, where they developed a new approach to coaching young bowlers. By focusing on alignment and safety before speed, they were able to develop some of the strongest pace bowlers in the world. This approach has been successful in Western Australia and has helped young bowlers avoid injury and develop their skills over time.Factors Affecting Fast Bowling Speed40:44Paul Felton explains that fast bowlers like Mark Wo and Jeff Rach have different bowling styles, but both have key factors like alignment and hyper mobility that allow them to bowl at high speeds. He also discusses the importance of horizontal momentum and range of motion in fast bowling. Importance of Backfoot Contact in Bowling 48:45Discussing the use of models in sports science research 52:00 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the last of these pieces about gold in ancient history. I'm back from the Edinburgh Fringe now, and more regular market commentary will resume. Lots of exciting things happening on this Substack. If you missed them this week, check out Wednesday's piece on uranium, the coming supply squeeze and how to play this (almost) inevitable bull market. On Monday I covered bitcoin - in particular, how UK investors can get exposure via a traditional broker (and thus have it in their SIPP or ISA). And Friday I told the story of one of the maddest gigs I have ever done.Coming up this week: Dr John will be sharing his picks of the North American oil and gas plays. Plus together, with Dr John and Charlie Morris of Bytetree, I have been working on the the Do F All portfolio: a do-very-little portfolio for the hands-off investor, who wants to invest his or her money safely and well, without constantly having to monitor it. There'll be a podcast and a piece about that very soon.So look out for all of those. For now, your Sunday morning thought piece, a historical piece with many parallels to today: the Romans and the debasement of money. The Roman Empire is probably more famous for debasing its currency, than for its money itself. But for that debasement to have been so prolonged (it went on for hundreds of years) and, some might say, effective, it needed an established, widely recognised and credible money as a starting point. Here look at the rise and full of sound money in Ancient Rome. There are many parallels to today.The geology of central Italy is not particularly abundant in gold and silver, and it was only really after Rome began expanding beyond central Italy in the third century BC that it started using gold and silver. Commodity money tends to be determined by the resources available.  Bronze (copper and tin) is abundant in the area, and bronze, in the form of weights - aes rude, often as heavy as 11oz (300g) - was the early currency of choice. As the Republic expanded, so did access to gold and silver, either from loot, tribute or mine supply, and so did these precious metals make their way into Roman money. The first silver denarius was minted in 211BC. Within 50 or 60 years Roman coinage was widespread across Italy. Much of the silver to mint the coins came from mines in Macedonia, which Rome now controlled. For the next 500 years this silver coin, containing about just over 1/8th of an ounce (4g) of silver - a little bit more than the weight of a 1p coin - would be the backbone currency of Rome. One denarius was exchangeable for ten asses (the aes rude evolved to become the as) - hence its name “of ten”, or tenner. It was 95-98% pure silver. To give you some kind of benchmark, sterling silver is only 92.5% pure. The purchasing power of a denarius would be more than the underlying metal value - ranging between 1.5 and 3 times the value. That's seigniorage for you.The denarius lives on today, especially in many Latin  languages. The Italian word for money is “denaro”, “dinero” is Spanish, “dinheiro” is Portugese, “denar” is Slovenian. In many Arab nations, the currency is the dinar. The symbol for the English penny used to be ‘d' - as in 1d.Heads of emperors appeared on coins, and so, as a result, did their use as imperial propaganda. The more coins circulating around the ever-growing empire, spreading the message of Roman imperial might, the better.As a side note, consider this Trajan denarius from AD 101. On the reverse we see Providentia, Roman goddess of foresight, overlooking a globe (the world, the empire).Similarly, this Roman aureus of Hadrian from 117AD, when he became emperor, and when the Roman empire was at its most extensive, shows, on the reverse, Trajan, the previous emperor (on the right) passing a globe - the empire - to Hadrian who accepts it. This Hadrian sestertius (there were four of these brass coins to a denarius) tells the same story.This surely kills the notion that people thought the earth was flat. Several centuries earlier Aristotle had argued that the world was round saying. "the Earth is spherical". While in 240 BC, Greek astronomer Eratosthenes actually calculated the circumference of the earth, and accurately,  by measuring the angles of shadows.Coin clipping and the debasement of moneyThe infamous debasement only began shortly after the Republic became Empire, and control of money passed from the Senate to the Emperor. It lasted several hundred years. By the first century AD, taxation and tribute only covered around 80% of the imperial budget. The shortfall was met by mining and the loot of newly conquered nations. But the empire was no longer expanding at the same rate, so this was becoming an increasingly risky strategy. Shortfalls, especially under extravagant emperors, became increasingly common. The solution to excess spending, as today, was not to rein it in, but to debase the currency. In AD64 Nero reduced both the amount of silver in a denarius (to 3.5grams) as well as the purity of the metal itself (to 93.5%).  A few decades later, under Trajan, the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent. From then on, it receded. That meant the supply of loot from newly conquered territories also receded. By lowering the amount of silver in its coins, Rome could produce more coins and "stretch" its budget. Successive emperors followed Nero's strategy. As with boiling frogs and the debasement of currency today, the process was gradual. 100 years after Nero, around 150AD, the purity of silver had been reduced to 83%. By 250AD the silver purity was 50%. But then the debasement accelerated. By 275AD it was just 5%. As time progressed, the sleight of hand was exposed. By the time of Diocletian, who was emperor from 284 to 305AD, there was so little precious metal in the money, the emperor had to resort to price controls. It was under Diocletian that the last denarii were minted.The most important gold coin of Ancient Rome was the aureus, similar in size to the denarius, but containing roughly twice the weight of precious metal (gold is denser than silver). It would be a bit heavier than a 2p today. An aureus was 25 denarii, so the gold-silver ratio would have been about 1:12, the historical norm. Nero reduced the gold content to 7.3g (coincidentally perhaps the same weight as the sovereign of the British Empire). By 210AD the gold content had fallen to 6.3g. However, unlike the silver denarius, the aureus kept its near-100%, 24-karat purity.By the fourth century, the idea of obtaining an aureus for 25 denarii was long gone. In 301, one gold aureus was worth 833 denarii; barely a decade later, the same aureus was worth 4,350 denarii. In 337, Constantine, who had re-located the heart of the Empire to Constantinople, replaced the aureus with the solidus - about 4.5 grams of 24 karat gold. Initially, one solidus was worth 275,000 denarii, but by 356, one solidus was worth 4,600,000 denarii. Talk about inflation. (That last stat is from Wikipedia and it sounds dubious).However, in a breathtaking show of hypocrisy that even leaders today would struggle to pull off, the Roman authorities, despite the declining quality of the metal content of their denarius, refused to accept anything other than gold and silver in payment of taxes. Take in the good money, send out the bad.Of course, one key reason for the relentless debasement was a bloated Roman state that was incapable of living within its means. But another reason must be lack of raw material. As central Italy had little supply, the metal had to be obtained elsewhere and most of it came in the form of war booty and the subsequent tributes and taxes levied. No wonder Rome was constantly at war. That was its business model. But the expense of continual wars, without the corresponding payback of loot from the newly conquered, made the model unsustainable. The expansion ceased, but the spending didn't.Interested in buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times? My recommended bullion dealer is The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, US, Canada and Europe, or you can store your gold with them. More here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Join Alex Tapscott and Andrew Young as they decode the world of DeFi with special guest Charlie Morris, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of CMCC Global. Listen in as they discuss the current crypto market cycle phase and next catalyst, the importance of intent-centric designs for Web3 transactions, improving wallets with account abstraction, channels to gain exposure to the user experience adoption thesis, dYdX's testnet launch on Cosmos, defining MEV, an analogy to the Sovereign Individual, embracing a mobile-first approach, Charlie's Solana cellphone, thesis area developer activity, and more!

ANTICIPATE STOCK MARKET CRASHES, CORRECTIONS, AND BEAR MARKETS WITH AWARD WINNING RESEARCH. Sign up for The Lead-Lag Report at www.leadlagreport.com and use promo code PODCAST30 for 2 weeks free and 30% off.What does it take for a broad asset allocation shift to occur, and how do gold and Bitcoin fit into the ever-changing financial landscape? Join me, Michael Gayed, as I sit down with ByteTree founder and multi-asset expert Charlie Morris for a fascinating conversation on these alternative assets and our evolving world of investment.We'll explore the performance of gold and Bitcoin, their low negative correlation, and the potential benefits of allocating both assets in a portfolio. Charlie shares his insights on why institutional investors have been slow to embrace Bitcoin, but how private investors can create opportunities in alternative investments. We'll also discuss market trends, safe haven definitions, and the challenges faced by these assets in the current market environment.Finally, we examine the implications of regulation on Bitcoin's growth and its place in the tech sector. Charlie reveals how Bitcoin faces competition in technology and has outperformed both the Nasdaq and gold in the last 30 years. We'll also dive into the importance of network effects, the risks of investing in Bitcoin miners, and the future of Bitcoin in the face of regulatory challenges. Don't miss this insightful discussion to expand your understanding of gold and Bitcoin's role in the world of investment.Nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. The content in this program is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information or other material as investment, financial, tax, or other advice. The views expressed by the participants are solely their own. A participant may have taken or recommended any investment position discussed, but may close such position or alter its recommendation at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction. Please consult your own investment or financial advisor for advice related to all investment decisions.See disclosures for The Lead-Lag Report here: https://www.leadlagreport.com/static/termsandconditionsFoodies unite…with HowUdish!It's social media with a secret sauce: FOOD! The world's first network for food enthusiasts. HowUdish connects foodies across the world!Share kitchen tips and recipe hacks. Discover hidden gem food joints and street food. Find foodies like you, connect, chat and organize meet-ups!HowUdish makes it simple to connect through food anywhere in the world.So, how do YOU dish? Download HowUdish on the Apple App Store today:

https://bytetree.com https://twitter.com/AtlasPulse Media Picks Greyhound (Tom Hanks Apple TV) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6048922/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 Madoff - The Monster of Wall Street (Netflix) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23732458/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2 The Polka King https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5539052/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 State of the Markets Podcast Tim Price of https://Pricevaluepartners.com https://timprice.substack.com https://sotmpodcast.com https://anchor.fm/stateofthemarkets https://apple.co/2OUGW6R Paul Rodriguez https://ThinkTrading.com https://twitter.com/prodr1guez --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stateofthemarkets/message

Gold had an epic bull market in the noughties - I still remember the key numbers like it was yesterday.There was the low in 1999 at $250/oz, marked for all eternity by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, as he sold off two-thirds of British gold at the bottom of the market, when there were no compelling need to sell.That low was re-tested in 2001 and we got a classic double bottom, followed by eight years of bull market, which ended, after a big wobble in 2006, in 2008 at $1,030/oz. Then the Global Financial Crisis came along. Gold plummeted along with everything else. An unstoppable rebound lasting three more years followed. First, the gold price broke out to new highs, and on it marched until it eventually peaked in 2011, with the Greek debt crisis, at $1,920/oz.Then came the bear market. Five brutal years of pain. It went all the way back to $1,040/oz.The period between 2018 and 2020 saw gold rally again, heading north of $2,000/oz, albeit briefly.But here we are in early 2023. And guess what? As I write, gold sits at $1,920/oz - the same price as it was back in 2011. Markets remember prices.What's next for the gold price? Will it pull back from here? Maybe. Probably.It has rallied $300/oz in barely two months. It's overbought. Neither silver nor the miners are leading. That's usually not a good sign. Charlie Morris says gold is trading above fair value. Charlie Morris is usually right.You can get cute and try and trade it, but no one knows what is going to happen. It's a precious metal and it's a market. If they can throw you, they will.  But then again, gold usually does well when trust in financial markets is low. I'd say that's the case now. Do you risk your position in the hope that you can get back in lower? What if it goes up instead?Or you can take the longer-term view. Like the famed trader, Old Partridge, in Edwin Lefevre's Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, who never wanted to lose his position in a bull market, a view since echoed by a memed typo, you can just hodl on.We must each make our own choices, learn from them and live with them.What happens to the gold price if everyone starts buying? Here's a nice little thought experiment. I've heard it before - but I'd forgotten it, and it was brought to my attention again by Winston Miles of Canadian investment house Eight Capital.There was a presentation by strategist Grant Williams in 2016 called “What If?” when he asked what would happen if pension funds, which currently had a 0.15% weighting to gold, increased that allocation. Miles decided to run that scenario in today's marketplace.“According to the OECD's most recent data, global pension assets are $56 trillion. I could easily see pension funds getting up to 1% of their portfolio in precious metals on average. But let's be a bit more conservative and go with two-thirds of 1%, or 66bps… which is $373,903,924,800.“That amount of money …  could buy every single company that makes up the Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index… which would set them back a cool $297 billion.  Then they could buy every share of GLD, even taking delivery of all that gold if they wanted, as it's all sitting in a vault somewhere.  That would cost another $56 billion. Then with the scraps left over, they could buy every share of the GDX… GDXJ… SIL… AND the SILJ.” (Those are the gold and silver mining ETFs).In short, there's a lot of money out there. On a relative basis, there isn't a lot of trade-able gold, and there aren't that many gold mining companies. A small shift in the narrative could send the gold and silver markets a long way higher. “It's an environment,” says Miles, “where almost no major pensions have a portfolio manager focused on metals and mining. The infrastructure is totally gone. It's hard to add supply, the mines are old, it takes ten+ years to build new ones, these are really long lead time projects.”You can conduct the same thought experiments with oil, gas and coal. Very little allocation (largely because of ESG), and very little investment leading to tight supply and long lead times.You can conduct the same experiments with bitcoin. What happens to the bitcoin price, if bitcoin were to become a core, mainstream portfolio holding?They all go a lot higher.You can't say the same about tech, the S&P 500, or government bonds. They are already owned.The narratives for gold, fossil fuels or bitcoin may not change, but if they do, look out above.On this note, here is the S&P500 relative to gold since 2000. When the chart is rising, gold is rising relative to the stock market and vice versa. At $1,920/oz gold is a lot cheaper today, relative to the stock market, than it was when it was $1,920/oz back in 2011. It's a third of the price. To get back to those equivalent levels, assuming no change in the price of the S&P500, gold would have to triple. I like the sound of $5,700/oz gold!$5,700 gold - that's a stat worth sharing.Gold and gold minersHere are the gold miners relative to gold. With the plethora of new ways that opened up to get exposure to gold in the 2000s - ETFs, online bullion dealers, CFDs, spread bets and all the rest of it - investors stopped bothering with miners, and who can blame them?Too much incompetence, too many frauds, too much political and environmental risk - and all the rest of it.Miners have been falling since 2003. But they stopped falling in 2015. Since then they've gone sideways. They are, as the technicians say, “building cause”.I reckon the low is in. It came in 2015. And we re-tested it last year.What do you think? Post your comments below.If you are interested in gold miners, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. I cover gold mining extensively.If you're buying gold, my current recommended bullion dealer in the UK is The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high. You can deal with a human being. I have an affiliation deals with them.If you're buying bitcoin, be sure to read my special report.And make your Number One resolution for 2023 to listen to Kisses on a Postcard.This article first appeared at Moneyweek. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Zaki Manian, cofounder of Sommelier Protocol and cofounder of Iqlusion and Jack Zampolin, founder of Strangelove Ventures, discuss everything about Cosmos, the new white paper, and how to improve MEV capture for ATOM holders.    Show highlights: how Jack and Zaki got involved with crypto and Cosmos what the Sommelier protocol is, the role of Iqlusion, and what Strange Love does the basics of Cosmos and application-specific blockchains (ASB) why would a project choose to be an ASB rather than an application on a blockchain whether Cosmos can achieve network effects the reasons behind launching a new white paper for Cosmos why the team decided to pursue interchain security whether there would be an increase in fees with so many chains relying on the Cosmos Hub for security how much economic value the Cosmos Hub will end up securing if the proposal gets passed how the Cosmos Treasury could be used to fund development the role of the Interchain Scheduler to capture MEV whether centralized exchanges are going to start trading against the customers the new issuance model proposed for ATOM the role of an active governance community to make Cosmos more decentralized what problems Liquid staking solves how USDC will launch on a consumer chain   Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com Ava Labs web3 with a16z Jack: Twitter Zaki: Twitter   Episode Links   Previous Coverage of Unchained on Cosmos: How Osmosis Is Trying to Improve the Crypto User Experience   New white paper Document Proposal   Interchain security Paper The Block article The DeFi investor thread   ATOM 2.0 Thread by Route 2 DeFi Youseff Amrain's thread Charlie Morris' thread   Other articles Vaneck's article: Why we are bullish on Atom Alex Valaitis article: A deep dive into Cosmos Liquid Staking Native USDC on Cosmos  

We are experiencing technical issues - please head over to our YouTube to watch the livestream. The recording will be up on the website soon after we go off air. The Institute for Supply Management reported that May factory activity exceeded consensus expectations, another sign of resilience for the U.S. economy. “Today's ISM Manufacturing data represents a decent middle finger to us growth cycle bears - although the market doesn't seem to care,” said Darius Dale. Still, the founder and CEO of 42 Macro believes the global downturn is not adequately priced into equity markets. Darius joins Andreas Steno Larsen to unpack the May ISM data, the economy, and recent price action. Want to submit questions? Drop them right here on the Exchange: https://rvtv.io/3m7TtE1. Watch the full interview with Charlie Morris and Michael Nicoletos here: https://rvtv.io/3PUGvHu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charlie Morris is a self-taught documentarian who highlights environmental issues to help sway public opinion and affect policy. We talk about how he goes about his work.