Bob Murphy

Gold and silver are, you know, more time tested, whereas Bitcoin has a lot of convenience and certain promise for the future, but maybe is not the thing you want to run to as a refuge.

Well, I think all of the above that I really do think that we're starting to see, you know, the unraveling of the U.S.

as being the global superpower and that, you know, there's just various metrics that I think China is rivaling it.

You know, they've added,

three times as much to their naval capacity over the last five years, say, than the US has.

By purchasing power or parity metrics, the Chinese economy has long surpassed the US in terms of total output.

They've been adding to their gold stockpile.

If you look at the official gold reserves, China and also Russia, like since 2000, have vastly increased, whereas the US's official number

stayed the same as I'm sure your listeners are familiar with.

There's lots of speculation that maybe the US's numbers aren't even legitimate.

So yeah, I think on many metrics, more people are realizing that 20 years from now, it's going to be a multipolar world.

The US is not going to run the show.

And so yeah, I think people are realizing the days of dollar hegemony are over.

And so just on that fact alone, right, central banks are diversifying, not as a strategic element necessarily, but just as a matter of financial prudence.

Well, yes.

And that's a good tension you pointed.

I've also seen that play out where, you know, as an Austrian school economist, of course, I don't like communism.

I think central planning doesn't work.

But like, oh, who's the big rival right now?

I'm worried about the Chinese Communist Party.