 Welcome to Digital Asset News. Today what I want to bring to you is a discussion, a rational discussion between myself and somebody who is into gold in a major way. Some may call this person a gold bug and I wanted to bring it to everybody's attention is that you can have a discussion about crypto and digital assets as well as talk about precious metals, gold and silver and not lead into some kind of catastrophe. So what I did is I reached out to a gentleman by the name of Robert Keynes and Robert, he is the owner and creator of Gold Silver Pros, the YouTube channel and he had this great video talking about the IMF plan to implement worldwide electronic currency and it really got me thinking about exactly what the IMF is doing in two different publications and also about negative interest rates. So what I did is I asked him to come on and he graciously accepted, actually came in the studio and we're going to go over a litany of questions. So for your viewing pleasure, this is Robert Keynes from Gold Silver Pros. Let's take a listen. All right, buddy. So I have a special guest today. This is Rob from Gold Silver Pros. Thanks for coming on, Rob. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, because what I want to do is I want to get into the meat and potatoes of gold and silver and I got a couple of questions. So the first thing of course we're going to ask of course is Rob who is Rob and why Gold Silver Pros? The second one I want to ask is what's the risk between a gold bug and a gold investor? And the question is why do some, not all, why do some hate and or dislike crypto? I just don't get it because I think we're like on the same team. Also a quick question, which is what's the purpose of Gold and Silver to an investor? And lastly, I think this is the one where you're keenly aware of that you can answer this question is when the e-dollar and the CBDCs come out, how is that effect and how does the average Gold Silver crypto investor, what are that storm and how does it work? So let's jump in. So Rob, who are you? What's going on today? So I originally started off in technology. I was in technology for about 25 years. I started off on IT and did consulting for a couple of the big four firms and have a master's in information insurance, especially cybersecurity. So I did cybersecurity for a big telecom, the biggest one in the U.S. Verizon for a number of years, until basically I quit doing this full time. And along the way, I got laid off when I was an energy young due to the financial crisis, February 2009. Yeah, I was young and then people, I mean, we all get laid off, right? That's like a rite of passage. Yeah, it almost like you have to be. So I started researching the economy, taught myself a lot of things, got a bunch of financial licenses along the way. Of course, I've been doing real estate since 2000 and began to understand the economy, Austrian economics. I know a lot of crypto people are into Austrian economics as well, free market economics. And basically at one point, I wrote on everything I wrote on technology, I wrote on real estate, but I started getting into Gold and Silver. And the reason was is because Gold and Silver, for me, was the natural hedge against the devaluation of the dollar from the central bank. And so that's why I started Gold Silver Pros. I was writing for Seeking Alpha and some other online outlets. I didn't like the way that they were going, they were closing their, you know, they were coming from a free contributor-based form to like a marketed paywall form. So I said, I'm going to start Gold Silver Pros, start my own gig. Yeah. And we did that and we've grown a lot over the last few years. It's been a lot of fun. Perfect. Yeah, that makes sense. The hedge, I think we hear about that a lot, the hedge and super important, especially, I mean, however you want to do that, which leads me to the next question, which is, what's the difference between a Gold Bug, Silver Bug, I guess, and a Gold Silver investor? And why do they hate us and or dislike us so much? Because I got to tell you, like this is, this is my theory. In the old days, remember your grandparents would say, just put it into a bank and just let it sit there with the 0.025% or whatever it was. And you'll be rich by the time you are a thousand years old. So like I see it like the new savings account me personally, it is Gold Silver Bitcoin. Sure. And I don't get it. I don't get the animosity. So tell me what, well, I guess that'd be the first part. So Golds have been around for about 6,000 years since money. If you trace it back, and I've done a lot of research on this dating back to like, you know, well, even before the ancient Assyrians, you know, a lot of it had to do was it was a good replacement for what we used to use this money, whether it be seashells or early Chinese paper, Chinese were the first to come out with a paper currency. But Gold and Silver held their value. They met Aristotle's five requirements for currency, you know, fungible, divisible, all those kind of things. And so they were used for a long time. And so it has a big history in the financial system. Of course, 1913, we get a Bretton Woods, or we have a central bank, and then we get on Bretton Woods after the war. And so we have this system in which we're pegging the dollar to Gold. 1971, Nixon removes this off of it because the French and the Europeans were coming over and basically saying, you've devalued your dollars, so we'll take your gold. Thank you very much. And that's our charge on the weakness of the dollar. So in any case, so so a lot of people, you know, especially the older generations, trusted Gold and Silver, and they trusted commodity money, they trusted the old 65 and before coins with silver in them. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense. And so Gold and Silver has been around for a long time. And I think Gold and Silver bugs may be more traditional investors, real estate, stock market, other tangible things like Gold and Silver. But I think Gold and Silver bug is a term used now in a negative sense, maybe to disparage people that are into Gold and Silver, which I, you know, I call myself a Gold and Silver bug in the finds of that because I really don't care what people call me. But the difference to answer your question between investors is you can trade Gold and Silver if you want. Silver is a little bit more volatile, you certainly can make more money in there. Honestly, most Gold investors are buying, hold investors, it's like buying a real estate, you buy it, you hold it, maybe you rent it out. And it's sort of that model. And if you look, say, over the last 20 years, Gold's beaten most of the stock markets. And over time, it's actually done really well, especially, you know, since we came off the Gold standard in 71 to a lot of the traditional markets. This is course before Bitcoin, all the other cryptos. So I'll keep talking about that, about renting it out, because that's a foreign concept to me. So let's say you buy Gold, however many ounces, you say, I want to rent this out. It'd be the same thing as like, you know, you're putting up as a collateral, and you get cash for that. Exactly. So a lot of people say you can't make money off of Gold, but if you lease it, you can actually make money. Now it's not 9%, like if you're putting, you know, USDC to an online account, but you can make money off of Gold. Now, the problem with Gold is unlike real estate, it doesn't stay there. And there's no, you know, NT for each Gold bar, there's a serial number etched on the bar. So if you say lease it out to someone, they remelt it. How do you know if you're ever going to get your bar back? How do you know what they did with it? How do you know if they didn't make it into a bunch of coins or put a new serial number on it? How do you trace that? So really with Gold and Silver, for me, I would never lease it out. I would hold it, you know, in a safe place. And that would be my hedge long-term against currency. Yeah, because like, I mean, if I take a look at it, it is a hedge, right? But we take a look at, we take a look at price action. Let's say like back in the 80s, you're looking at Gold at like, what, $300, $500, $600 somewhere around there? And then of course, the 90s went up a little bit. But then the last 10 years, we've seen like this little hammock, hammock type of action, right? So you start here, if you got a five years ago, actually doing not too bad. Right. You know, and then of course, you go along. So I can see the hedge itself. I just, one of the things that I think about is like, I think we're all on the same team, right? You know, because we all know that these CBDCs are coming, this e-dollar potentially coming. So how do we protect ourselves against those things? And then like, I just see it in the forums, and I'm like, you know, why is there, it's like, it's like siblings fighting, right? Because I mean, look, it's really us against the status quo, us against the Fed, because the bankers aren't coming to save us. The Federal Reserve, which is about as federal as federal express is not coming to save us. So like when I see these things, I'm like, why can't everybody just get on board and just go, hey, whatever your percentage is, you know, you put into that, and it doesn't make sense. But I don't, I don't. I think a lot of traditional people that are into physical things don't understand Bitcoin. I think I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. The younger generation surely does because it was here when it came. If you think about the internet, it came out in the early 90s. I was at TechStand in the university and it came out and I had access to it because universities had it, but not everybody did. And it took a while for that adoption to occur. It took a while for commerce to emerge, you know, on the internet. It took a while for us to get high speed internet. So it takes a generation for people to adopt it. So I think what you're seeing is a transition from an older generation to a newer generation. The newer generation has been exposed to it and it's been exposed to technology. The older generation has it. So it makes sense. I mean, if you're, if you're used to a certain world and that's what you grow up in, a lot of people may not want to adopt that. But I agree with you a hundred percent. I think the gold bugs, if you will, and the silver bugs and, you know, the crypto bugs are, you know, people that are investing in those crypto coins and technology, you know, we all come from the same space. Most of the people that I talked to are crypto or austrian economists. They're libertarians. Libertarians. They do not believe in central banks. I don't believe in big government. I'm a libertarian and a constitutionalist and originalist of the constitution, not, you know, what we have now, which is a semi-socialist sort of government that we live in now. And so I have a lot in common and I have a technology background. In my case, I didn't adopt the cryptos right away, not because it was a challenge to gold, but because I saw the issues early on in Bitcoin and the issues early on some of the crypto space and much like what happened in the traditional banks and traditional gold markets, it was like the Wild Wild West. Yeah. And so I didn't hate the idea. I just thought it needs to mature a little bit and be honest with you, Bitcoin spent out for what, 12, 13 years versus 5000 years ago. I think Bitcoin is going to get there. And I think it's going to be very fast because it's technology, but I think it's going to take some time for people to understand and adopt it and understand that Bitcoin could do a lot of the same things that gold can from a currency perspective. And see, that's okay. So that's a point I think we both agree on, but around about way because like when I first got into Bitcoin, it was the narrative was in 2017, it is a crypto currency, currency, currency, currency. And then we found out that it's 2017 escalated in the December. We found out, wow, we can't be a currency right now because the transaction costs were so high, it didn't make any sense. And then that whole narrative failed. And then, of course, we went into store of value. And the store of value worked out pretty well. And then as time went on, then we go into El Salvador. And of course, we had the lighting network. And now it becomes more of like a cryptocurrency. So just, I agree. So just like what you said, it's like, hey, I get it. Gold's been around a couple more years than Bitcoin. So let's just see it work out. I think it's going to get there. It's going to take a lot of time. And it's just the same thing with like what you said about with the older population or the people who have been investing for a long time. Remember stocks and bonds? Stocks, bonds, savings account, 64 to split. Who does bonds anymore? I mean, some nobody in the right mind. So that's it. So okay, so that leads me to my next one. And I think we kind of answer this, but anyone to add in this is what's the purpose of gold and silver to the investor? Because we talked about just buying and holding. We talk about putting up as collateral. Is there any other type of way we can use these precious metals? So traditionally, gold is not an investment. It's a store of value and it is a currency. It's the oldest currency. It's a natural currency. It's a naturally limited currency. The way that governments control it now is from the derivative market through Comex and London OTC. They put the derivative complex on top of it, put the traders on top of it, you know, this paper trading that abnormally affects the gold price. We had a true free market for gold would be up. But that's what happens when you get the banks and their buddies into those markets. And then they try to control commodity prices. By the way, that happens in sugar and tea and oil and all of the commodities markets. It's not just for gold and silver. I would say that it is an investment because if you look at gold, just from a talk technical trading for a moment, there's a cup and handle pattern in there that's almost identical to that 70s, 80s market and cup and handle patterns, whether it be stocks or any type of asset that's been around for a while or extremely bullish. So I think we're going into a bullish mode. The central banks have been net buyers for gold. There's something called Basel 3 that came out of Brussels from the BIS, which talks about gold being a high quality liquid asset along with the other central bank holdings. So gold is going to be used along with other things like bank stock and different currencies to recapitalize the banking system. So it's become very prominent. So gold will always have its place in the financial system. And therefore, you'll always be able to store value. But I think whenever we get to what we call the reset, the financial reset, gold will be revalued because if you look at history, every time we've had a financial reset, gold has been what they revalued it to. And unless they plan on doing it to Bitcoin or something else, gold will have tremendous value. That's the theory. That's the history behind it. We'll have to see what happens. Silver is a bit different because silver is very useful in industry. All this equipment that you see around us has silver in it. It's used for space industry. It's used in medical industry. Silver is in a deep shortage right now. About 100 million ounces short of what we're producing this year versus what we're needing. And so those markets are starting to get very tight. So silver to me is more of a traditional speculative investment because it's industrial use more than gold. Gold to me is more long-term store value, Aristotle's version of money that type of thing. Yeah. And this is one of the reasons why I hold it in my Roth IRA because I'm like, why wouldn't I? Because who knows what's going to happen in the future? I have no idea. That's right. So I just wanted to just, I want to diversify a little bit. I know some people say, well, you shouldn't diversify too much. Trust me, working out so far, well, so far. Yeah. So what you just talked about, and you hinted at it, the reset. Yes. And this is what brought me to you. Here's a question. The E-dollar and CBDCs come out. Yes. And the reason why we're talking about that is when we take a look at, there was a video you put out and it talked about the reset. And it actually came about by this paper, one of the IMF working papers, breaking through the zero lower bound. And also, there was another one. It was breaking through not US immigration, deep negative. Oh, enabling deep negative rates to fight recession by the same gentleman. That one is the real eye opener. The working paper is an eye opener. If you combine it with that paper, it's very interesting. And there's a lot to talk about this. I'll try to give the cliff notes version. Perfect. In the 1870s, there was an Italian economist called Silvio Giselli. Nobody, he's not in textbooks, wrote about going to negative interest rates. This is 150 years ago, 155. Real quick. Before we go on, just explain to everybody, like, they're five negative interest rates. How bad are those? How does that work? Yeah. So negative interest rates, and we're just talking nominal, meaning not real, not, we'll just use nominal for now. Negative interest rates are when, let's say you have a bond, typically in positive interest rates, if you look at the 10-year bond now, it's like 2. something percent. You'll get 2. something percent on your money for giving and loaning that to a corporate or the US any sovereign nation. So you'll get something back. Negative interest rates are where you actually pay a rate of interest to who's issuing the bonds. Not only are you taking on their debt, you're paying them to hold that debt. Now, why do they have to do that? Because there's so much debt in the system right now, they can't afford any increase in interest rates. It'll bankrupt the sovereigns. As a percentage of the GDP, the amount of money that we have to pay to service our existing level of debt, not only in the US, but around the world, it's gotten so high. The European central bank started issuing something like 15 to 16 trillion dollars of negative interest rate debt. What the IMF is talking about is spreading that out to the rest of the world. Why would they want to do that? Because in the traditional system bonds and money are flip sides of the same coin. To get new money issuance, you issue debt. So currency, like a paper dollar a pound, is a debt note. It's a promise to pay. It's not tied to gold anymore. It's not tied to commodity money or Bitcoin or anything like that of real value. It's a promise to pay. So they have to go negative because as this has expanded over time, it's gotten so big, they need people to pay them so they can afford not to have to make those interest payments or the whole thing collapses. So what the IMF is doing there is saying, we're going to take that concept, but we're going to put it into the banking system. And the reason they're putting the banking system is they figured out the same reason we were talking about before with the older investors. They will not accept negative interest rate debt. They won't pay for it. So what they're doing is they're putting their interest rates into the banking system. So for example, let's say you get paid $100, whether it be direct deposit, however, you know, put $100 cash in your bank account, the nanosecond that goes into your bank account, they discount it by a rate factor of negative interest. So let's say 5%, because 5% you now have $95. And now they want you to spend it in e-dollars. They don't want you to spend it in cash. Why? Because it's easier control with a computer in e-dollar than it is hanging up cash or gold or those types of things. Yeah, total control. Total control. It's a total control system. And they're going to get rid of the bonds. The follow up piece to April 2019 blog post says that they're going to get rid of the bond system. And they're going to go negative interest rates in the banking system. And why did they do that? In short, and the reason Silvio Giuselli wrote this and the reason John Maynard Keynes and Irving Fisher applauded him for writing this. And this was one of the, a lot of people know this. This is a genesis of John Maynard Keynes' famous book that he wrote and why we have Keynes in economics. They knew 150 years ago we're going to negative interest rates. They just didn't have the method. They didn't have the technology. But they knew that eventually that central bank system would too much debt and it would collapse. So in short, they have to implement around the world all the central bank's negative interest rates to deal with the collapsing bond market but also to control what all macro economists want to do is aggregate money supply. Aggregate money supplies the whole drill. They have two ways to do it. They have the bond market and they have taxes. You increase the tax rate, you pull more money out of the system. If you decrease it, you put more in. And the bond, by the rate of creation of bonds, you can control how much money is created. But the bond system is breaking. They said we have limitations because we're always arguing about how many bonds we should have. Forget that. We want to press a button and control it like this. Sure. Think about it. We're in the technology age. You want to send money quickly, you use Bitcoin instead of wire. Well, how do the authorities control the monetary system? Instead of issuing a paper bond, they want to use the banking system and taxes. And now instead of negative interest rate bonds or just bonds in general, they're going to go to the banking system and they're going to implement aggregate money quotes that way. From the source, almost. From the source. As soon as you get your money. So all the corporates, anyway, you get your money, tax return, you put money in the bank. They do it right there before you can spend that money. They take that interest rate out. Which leads me to the question. So now that could potentially happen, let's be honest. We printed trillions of dollars like it's going in style. That's a lot of debt to create in a very short amount of time. Let's say they do that. How can we get around this? You mean use an individual? Yes. So you as an individual want gold, silver, Bitcoin or whatever cryptocurrency you want. You want anything outside the system. They have central bank digital currencies, which are not decentralized ledgers. They're centralized. So what they did was they used the technology of Bitcoin and, you know, Hashgraph, whatever you want. Right. And they said, we're going to do a centralized version of it. We're going to control it. Yeah. And we're going to put that into to the digital dollar, the digital you want, the digital pound. You know, they're creating it in the name of the existing currencies because they know people will marry the money at the state. Yeah. So they're not going to call it, you know, the digital, the, they're not going to call it Bitcoin. They're going to call it the digital dollar. So we'll accept it. Yeah. And they're going to have those. And there's going to be a rail system, which right now is XRP, which would allow each of those regional currencies to trade against each other over XRP and potentially some other options. JP Morgan's working on another one, but right now it's XRP. And that's how that system is going to work. Now, the problem with that is it's closed ended and centralized. So you lack all the benefits you would get with Bitcoin or H bar or any of these others. And that's what they want. And that's why the other piece to this puzzle is they're using the SEC, they're using the CFTC, these regulatory agencies to wrap legalistic control mechanisms around Bitcoin and some of those currencies. So right now it's a race. Can you get enough adoption of Bitcoin for it to be a true decentralized currency versus the powers of being in the banking system, which want to control it just like they control gold and silver. Yeah. So that, you know, it leads me to a question because if we talk about, because I've been talking with the channel for quite some time, I'm not going to use digital you want. I'm not going to use digital. I'm not going to be, I'll probably not, at some point, I'll probably have to use a digital dollar. It's just to get around something because I'm lazy. Let's be honest. However, the thing I think about is let's say I need to get something from Russia for God's sake. I don't know why. So how would I, would that be the rails that is Ripple and XRP? You see it as like to go from the digital dollar to the digital ruble to the digital blah, blah, blah. If you're in the traditional banking system, yes, you'll use the rail to trade. So the thing is because yeah, because what else could it be? I mean the JP coin, but it means JP coin. Yeah. People see the world in terms of nationalities because that's how we grew up. That's how we were taught. Yes. But this system is really a one world currency. Now there's not a system developed that can handle, you know, trains or transactions every day by itself. So and they know that people were rejected. If it come out with the one world currency, people in the world are going to say, no, I want to identify with the Chinese currency. I want to identify with the Australian depending on where you are. Sure. So it's a devilishly brilliant system to get people to accept the digital version without understanding all the negative consequences. But yes, that's how it would work. If you wanted to buy something and have to transfer over to rubles, it would go across XRP or whatever the rail system is going to be from one such bank digital currency together and it settles on that legend. Well, I got to tell you, the Ripple people right now are like, the XRP people, the XRP army is like super happy you said that. And now all they got to do is just win that SEC case and everything switches. And I think they'll win the SEC case. I think the SEC case is to slow it down because they're not quite ready. And I think XRP probably will win the day. Like I said, JP Morgan's come up with a competitive offering that I don't think the central banks right now are wanting to adopt. And I think that's because the commercial banks are fighting the central banks. Anyway, that's a whole different story. That's a whole different story. And then when you talk about the manipulation of the metals market with spoofing and JP Morgan, that's a whole different story. We know about that. But you know, the one thing that I think about though is this, is that if you're going to the dollar comes in, let's say you get paid at whatever job you're at, right? So you get paid. And that that's going to have to hit your bank account. And then to get crypto, and then you go to the to the exchange. And of course, if there is negative interest rates, you get 100 bucks, that's 95 bucks or whatever else it is. So you're still getting kind of, you're still getting screwed out. Yeah, I think the only the way that it works is the early ones that are here right now. Like if you're watching this video right now are here, and you're like, Oh, well, I already have crypto in digital assets in my hardware wallet, in my metamask wallet, whatever else wallet, I think that'll protect you, you know, as as a hedge. But the ones that are like, I don't like this, you know, this negative interest rate. Well, it's kind of tough if you're getting paid, unless you're unless you're employer somehow is like, I'll pay you in Bitcoin, that will be something or gold or silver. Yeah, gold, silver, Bitcoin, those are the ways you asked earlier how to stay outside the system. Now you may have to come in and out of the banking system on the audit offering. And at times in what you have to do that, you're going to have to deal with the system. There's no way around it. It's like when you get on the road, you have to have a driver's license issued by the state. You can chance it by not having that, but they can also put you in jail, right? So at the end of the day, you may have to use a banking system. The key is to do business with my good friend, Max Hill, we just did a video for these helping companies establish business locally here in Puerto Rico using Bitcoin other currencies like USDC. If we can get people to adopt that, then you have an alternative system to the state that operates outside of state balance. And I think that's why the SEC and the CFTC are trying to build legal wrappers around those coins. But if you adopt now, it doesn't matter what wrappers they put around it, because you don't have to go through their system to trade Bitcoin. You can do it with two hardware wallets, right? Even if they try to put a wrapper around the exchanges, the SEC wants to treat the exchanges like a bank so they can put banking laws on it, but you can still transfer Bitcoin otherwise. That's what it's done. There's a way to do it. You can also do it in gold and silver. Now gold's kind of hard to carry around and it's risky because if somebody punches you in and takes your gold, there's a little bit of risk. Whereas if somebody takes your hardware wall and they don't have your key, they're not getting in, right? And maybe you have a backup or something like that. So I do think that Bitcoin and some of these other coins have some advantages over commodity money, but I would say don't shy away from gold and silver too much, because honestly, I mean, that is another way to do it. And I think you can use both. I think so too. So the last question, this is a bonus, is so, Rob, what percentage of your portfolio is Bitcoin? So this will shock the people that follow my channel, but I recently put about $50,000 into Bitcoin miners. So a friend of mine has a Bitcoin. So by proxy. Okay. Yeah. So we're mining Bitcoins. I don't own Bitcoin other than what's being mined. I'd rather be a miner than just buy retail. So we're mining Bitcoin. And I'm having a lot of fun doing that, learning a lot about it, enjoying that process. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm fully into that. I'm also looking at HBAR because I kind of like a hashgraph story and what they're doing, looking at Cardano and Monero and some of these others may be a speculative things, but as a currency, definitely Bitcoin. Perfect. So two things. First of all, it's where it all starts. Ray Dalio, Paul Durer-Jones, name your traditional investor. I'm just going to do a little bit before I know it. Bam. And the second thing is, see how that works? You have somebody in, you have a nice discussion. Nobody gets, nobody raised their voice that goes crazy. And I hate this guy or whatever else. Look, Gold Sliver Bitcoin makes a lot of sense. Rob, anything else? Any last words of wisdom for the investors out there before we take off? I would say follow your channel. You do a great job of watching our videos, honestly, since I was introduced to you last week. And the one you did on Puerto Rico is great, but the one you do on the crypto versus, they're awesome. Yeah. Thank you. I would also say we're starting a new service called Financial IQ TV. FinIQ.tv. It just started. We have a crypto channel. We have a real estate channel. Real estate. We're going to add a bunch of other channels. So anything that you want to know about FinIQ to go to that website, we'll have probably some content. Awesome. So I'll put all those links in the description and that is it so much. So Rob, thank you for stopping by. We appreciate it. No, I appreciate you having our show. All right. So I hope that made sense. And it was very easy. I mean, I really do believe what I was talking about in that video, which is I think we can both come to a common ground, the Gold Sliver bugs and the crypto and digital asset enthusiasts and meet in the middle. Because in all honesty, I think we're really going towards the same goal. So that's it for today. So look, if you like this video, give it a thumbs up. Also consider subscribing while you talk about our time sensitive. That's it for today. So thanks so much for watching. I appreciate it. And we'll see you on the next one.