Navigating An Economy of Uncertainty

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Eric Rice is the Chief Growth Officer of King Operating Corporation. He started his business career in Chicago in wealth management for high-net-worth clients before spending almost 2 decades building his own businesses.

Along the way, he worked with founders across multiple sectors to create profitable, enduring enterprises, demonstrating a keen eye for the nuances of markets and corresponding growth opportunities. His real-world market experience has made him a sought-after partner for entrepreneurs and investors around the globe.

In this episode, Eric is loaded with information about the current climate and what our nation is going through. The Fed is raising rates during a recession, which we are currently in. This has never happened before and it is uncommon. Eric educates by sharing top key points of handling the current crisis, and guides on how to embrace during a depression.

Eric has an extensive background in the precious metals industry. He speaks about how to invest wisely and profitably by investing in gold, silver, and oil & gas funds with no better commodity and certainty.

You won’t want to miss out on this educational episode and tons of things that you can learn from Eric during these economically challenging times!

In This Episode

1. Eric’s background and his valuable learning experience.
2. Eric’s perspective about today’s time and the geopolitical risks.
3. The importance of investing Gold, Silver, and Oil & Gas.
4. Portfolio allocations for the current climate.

Jump to Links and Resources

Hey everyone, and welcome to today’s show on Wealth Strategy Secrets. Today we have a special guest. We’re joined by Eric Rice. Eric is the Chief Growth Officer of King Operating Corporation. He started his business career in Chicago in wealth management for high-net-worth clients before spending almost two decades building his own businesses. Along the way, Eric worked with founders across multiple sectors to create profitable, enduring enterprises, demonstrating a keen eye for the nuances of markets and corresponding growth opportunities. His real-world market experience has made him a sought-after partner for entrepreneurs and investors around the globe.

Eric currently lives in North Dallas with his wife and two children, where he runs his own part-time ministry and coaches baseball in his free time.

Eric, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Dave. I appreciate it.

Yeah, I’ve been really looking forward to this discussion, Eric. Ever since we’ve had the opportunity to meet, you’re always opening my eyes to new ideas. You’ve got a real wealth of information from your background and everything. So, maybe we can start there and, you know, tell the audience who aren’t really familiar with you. Talk to us about your background, your journey. It’s very diverse. Give us a sampling of that.

Sure. Well, you know, as a kid growing up, I was a baseball player. I played through college and a little bit after college, and for me, it was always a valuable tool in life. I thought that’s all I could do. I came from modest beginnings, so playing a sport was the dream. But baseball is a very good lesson to learn. Baseball players become very good business people because we understand that if we fail 70% of the time, we’ll actually be successful. So it allows you to be more aggressive.

Out of school, I was one of the first people hired on campus. I went to Indiana University and started managing money with American Express. Then I went to Raymond James and Morgan Stanley and realized that it wasn’t the path for me. The constant client service and things like that… there was something inside of me calling out to do something different. So, I moved to California from Chicago and started my own businesses.

I’ve founded or co-founded 14 companies in my career. Many disastrous fireballs at the end of the runway. Entrepreneur education is expensive. Some success, a couple of exits, a couple of public exits. Along the way, I’ve learned some valuable things. I’ve been in so many different industries because businesses are businesses at the end of the day. I’ve gone from alternative financial services to gaming and social media companies, machine learning, AI. My last venture was in quantum biology, where we applied quantum mechanics to biological entities to increase performance.

Pretty diverse background in the things I’ve done professionally. I’m terrible at talking about myself, by the way.

And Eric is being modest, but you’ve also been a public company CEO, correct?

Yes, never again. Anyone who’s done it will say the same thing. That’s a whole different animal, and pretty difficult to achieve. To do that and raise two kids is a pretty trying time, but it was a valuable learning experience. Something I wouldn’t take away or regret.

And it was a valuable learning experience, right?

Right.

So, as a wealth manager early on in your career, is that when you got really exposed to investing and business? Did you learn some things that you wanted to cover from a wealth perspective?

I took to it right away. I still remember being in my Series 7 class. Anyone who’s done that knows it’s you and ten people in a training class. I still remember the study sessions. I just took to the information. I was done with my Series 7 in an hour and 41 minutes, which at the time, the lady in the building said, “That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen it.” I knew I could get a seven. I didn’t need a 70. I think I got 79 on it, but I was three drinks deep by the time the rest of the class was done celebrating.

I understood the nuances of money quickly and started servicing some interesting clients. I was the manager for traders—guys who were trading bonds and commodities on the floors in Chicago. I built trust with them by letting them know I was young and learning things. I was in my 20s and didn’t want to pretend I was 45, with all the experience. I committed to being a student of my client base and understanding what they wanted to achieve.

Over time, I rose pretty quickly. I was a top 30 under 30, but the thing I learned most from managing money was understanding that in order to manage finances correctly, you need to know something about everything. It’s difficult to be a specialist. You turn to specialists for deep, relevant questions, but understanding bits and pieces of everything allows you to put a puzzle together.

And it’s kind of ironic that nearly 20 years later, that experience is coming into play today. It’s built in my mind that I need to understand a little about everything in order to figure out where I stand and where I’m going in the future.

Interesting. And would you say that today you’re more driven by your entrepreneurial expertise, investing expertise, or is there a fusion between the two?

Well, I don’t know if I’m an expert. I’m kind of the Jack of all trades right now. The thing that drives me is my desire to serve. It’s the reason I’m in oil and gas and do what I’m doing right now. It doesn’t make sense that I’m in oil and gas with my background, but it’s a need to serve.

I want to take my skill set, which is taking massive amounts of disparate information and making sense of it. If I can help people by filling voids in their knowledge gaps and help them make more informed decisions, then that’s what I feel called to do. That’s the church group I’m in right now. We’re going through discovering your God-given gifts, and it’s hard to answer that question. But everyone else in the group said, “You understand so much stuff and make it simple for us to understand.” After 12 people confirming it, I assume that’s my gift. I think that’s very important right now.

Yeah, so that’s a perfect segue, Eric. I know you and I have had a couple of conversations about this, but there is so much going on in the world today. We have a war going on between Russia and Ukraine. We have this runaway inflation train that we’re trying to deal with, that the Fed’s trying to deal with and manipulate. We really have an energy crisis across the globe, and there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market. So, maybe you can talk to us a little bit in terms of putting all those pieces together and what that really means from your perspective.

Sure, well that’s actually part of my journey. In late 2020, I was in Los Angeles. If you’re watching this and you’re in Los Angeles, I love the time I was there, but it definitely changed over the past four to five years significantly. During the pandemic, I was actually working on a therapeutic, which is now submitted to the FDA for COVID. They botched our trials a couple of times, which doesn’t happen. I started picking up trends and seeing what was happening in the economy, politics, and society, and started understanding that there’s so much to learn right now. My wife kept saying, “What are we going to do next?” and I said, “We need to know where we stand before we can figure out where we go.” So, I actually handed back my shares in the company. I lost a significant amount of money doing so because I felt called to. I got my children back in school, moved to Texas. I’m in America, and I don’t believe in Republicans or Democrats or conservatives or liberals. I am an American, and I wanted to get my kids into a good school system.

For about 14, maybe 15 months of my life, I volunteered all over the country, meeting with experts. I started my own little podcast or chat, whatever you’d like to call it, which grew pretty large before coming to work here. I actually considered doing it professionally. I had started taking in a ton of information. I’ve been a history student my entire life. I love history, and if you understand history, you can understand the future a little bit better. So, if we look at all the things that are happening right now, breaking them down and understanding the truth, in order to understand why something is happening, you have to look at all sides of what the end result will be.

If we look at Russia and Ukraine, which is technically not a war—it has never been called a war by anyone except for people outside of Russia—Russia has actually called it a special military operation. For those who paid attention from the very beginning, you’ll find that the Lugansk and the whole Donbas region invited Putin in to liberate them from genocides occurring in Ukraine. I’m not making this up. Do a little research, and you’ll find this information.

Inflation is another area. Inflation was at 1.9% when Donald Trump left office. We’re at 8.6% now. Inflation has been a tax designed to eliminate the middle class, which is the ruling class in America. If you eliminate the largest class and get rid of their financial status and means of freedom, it’s easier to control that population. If we look at what’s happening in geopolitics around the world, America is not unique. What’s happening globally is truly happening everywhere. We’re in the midst of a global tyrannical takeover. Tyranny is imposing itself upon free people, and tyranny doesn’t come with tanks and guns. It comes with legislation, law changes, and minor tax code changes.

The thing that scares me the most right now, Dave, is that about three days ago, Robert Kiyosaki spoke in front of about 2,000 people and said, “The best possible outcome for where we are economically right now is a depression. The worst outcome is a civil war.” When we talk about finances and understanding where we are, it’s important to go through all the topics.

Inflation is one of those terms that is often misunderstood, like the term “fascist.” Fascism is a collaboration between government and corporations. If we study it, we’ll understand it better, and it indicates we live in an era of fascism. If they don’t like what you’re saying, they call Twitter and censor you. This is not an opinion; it’s a fact.

Inflation is not just rising prices; it’s the decline of the value of the dollar. It’s a way of making the pieces of paper in your pocket worth less, so they extract more for the same basic goods. This is a way of eliminating the middle class in a free nation. Inflation hasn’t changed the way they mark and track inflationary rates since the 70s. In 1971, we went off the gold standard. Since then, we’ve had inflation. There are no coincidences between removing the gold standard and the creation of inflation, which comes with fiat money systems. If you pull out a dollar bill, it says “Federal Reserve debt note,” not money or currency. When you have the ability to print money constantly, you can create the value of money and dictate people’s freedom.

To give your audience an understanding, in September, inflation was 8.6%. That number is determined by markers from the 70s, so they’re not accounting for modern economics, which keeps the number low. The true inflationary number, according to many analysts, is around 24 to 25%, based on the price of gas, bread, and eggs. Eggs are up 38%. Gas is still up 44%, even though they keep telling you that they’re making it cheaper. Inflation from last September to this September is 8.6%, but the previous September was 6.7%. Add those two together, and you get a 15% inflationary trend.

The other interesting thing right now, Dave, is that we’re facing times that have never been seen before, with the convergence of events happening at once. We’ve seen inflation, we’ve seen massive interest rate rises, but never at the same time. The scariest thing to me is the term “recession.” Jamie Dimon recently said, “I think we’re going into a recession in 2023,” which isn’t revolutionary since we’ve been in a recession for over 65 days. A recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, and we’re in our third. The previous quarter was zero growth, so we’re in a recession. I agree with Kiyosaki that we are going into a depressionary era.

If we look at the recession we’re in with massive inflation—these two usually go together—the one thing we’ve never seen before is the Fed raising rates during a recession. The danger of that is catastrophic. It will be hard to leverage cash because of inflation, and it will be expensive to borrow. For example, look at credit card debt in America. In Q2 2022, $64.1 billion of credit card debt was added. That’s four times the amount created after the Great Recession of 2008. The average American now has $9,000 in credit card debt. Michael Burry, from The Big Short, predicted that by Christmas 2022, the average American household would have zero discretionary spending money. He also said that by October, Americans would be in such severe credit card debt they would be approaching what’s called a breaking point. The breaking point is when the average American household gets to $12,000 in credit card debt, and they have no money left to spend.

Rising rates, more expensive goods, and going into 2023, it’s hard to imagine how the stock market is up. We’re already in this environment, and for the last three weeks, we’ve already seen three 800-point days. I talked to traders around the world, and I told them three weeks in advance that the Dow would hit 28,700, and it did within two days. The charts look almost identical to 1929, 1987, and 2008. The stock market generally goes last. We also have what’s called a plunge protection fund, which uses taxpayer dollars to keep the market from crashing.

We’re seeing these market ups, like yesterday, when they told me I was wrong because the market was up 800 points. I asked one simple question: Why? Why is the stock market up 800 points when we’re seeing the highest inflation, rising interest rates, and a 30-year mortgage at 7%? New home sales are down 41%, and you’re looking at a pending real estate crash or a bubble bursting.

The bond market is also in a dangerous place. Sovereign bonds from nations are in a scary scenario. People are talking about investing in T-bills, but I ask, “Are you going to lend money to a bankrupt nation? The U.S. is anywhere between $31.1 trillion and $60 trillion in debt. The Fed and the Treasury have never been audited, so we don’t even know how much debt we’re in.”

If you want, I can dive deeper into geopolitical issues, as they correlate with economics. Everything happening right now can be connected into one bucket and shaken up, leading to the same conclusion every time.

Yeah, I think we should. No, I think this is great, Eric, because again, right, it is about trying to make sense of all these things. And I think sometimes, you know, we often hear a piece of news, right, and we’re kind of looking at it in isolation.

But this is really great to get the context of all of these broader things and then how they relate to one another. And then, you know, ideally, we’re going to get into some, you know, some type of solutions here and how people can actually prepare for themselves.

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Yeah, no, that’s really helpful, Eric. And, you know, one thing I find, right, being in this space, is that you really have to find information sources that are objective and that you can trust, and that can tell you the entire story.

Right? Because all of the things that you’re just talking about, you’re not seeing on headline news, right, in the papers or the primary media outlets. And, furthermore, I mean, the majority of the media outlets, right, they’re owned by two big firms. So, they are controlling the message.

Well, there are actually six True Media companies in the world that own all the other media companies, six total.

Right, which are owned by Vanguard and Blackstone. Yeah, so, it is very interesting, right, that, you know, the message is being controlled for what you want to hear. And similarly, right, you came out of, you know, private wealth management back in the day, and it’s the same thing, right?

As we get into investing in real assets and all these things, there are things like, you know, tax deferring, which is a great thing to do. Meanwhile, you’re just kind of kicking the can down the road, and you’re going to be paying ordinary income tax rates at a time where, you know, you’re probably going to have no offsets. They make the assumption that you’re actually going to retire with less money, right? And that’s why they’re saying to defer the taxes, so do it now.

Right? So, there are a lot of things I think that are put into our heads, right, between, you know, political leaders in place, corporate America, and Wall Street, right, all of whom have certain agendas. So, I guess I’m just trying to bring to the point here that these are really objective data that you put on the table, right? And it may be eye-opening for some, but I think it’s really important for all of us to be taking in some of these critical facts right now and trying to make some type of assessment on how we position ourselves in our own business, in our personal economy, with our family, right? And, you know, what is the best thing to do?

So, do you have any type of guidance there? How are you preparing for some of those events to hedge, as an investor, as a business owner, as a family member?

Well, yeah, let me pull one up here. So, I just, uh, just put this together because I think it’s going to be part of, I like to be factual. I mean, I can sit here and be theoretical all day, but it doesn’t do anyone any good. I’ve always been a factual person. Right now, we live in an era where, you know, there’s what’s called a succulum, so society moves in these 80-year cycles. Each generation of 20 years has its evolutionary shift—you should get into understanding generational turns. We are at the end of an 80-year cycle, and I won’t go too deep into it, it’s not really relevant for this show. But the last time we were at one of these turns was around World War II, about 80 years ago.

And in that era, you had Weimar Germany, which was kind of the pinnacle. I mean, Germany was the industrial and financial center of Europe. Europe is where the world used to revolve around until World War II, but after that, America became where the world revolved around, so we’re kind of the new Germany. Looking at history, the Weimar era is the period in Germany where you see people taking wheelbarrows full of Deutsche Marks to buy one loaf of bread—that’s what hyperinflation and depression look like. Now, one of the things I’ve been telling people for about 18 months is that in this market, number one, you want to be tangible. You live in an era where paper money, paper investments, and equity papers are all vulnerable and susceptible to market terms—they’re very easy to manipulate. Also, one of the biggest areas I’m in is oil and gas, so I’m going to mention that, because it’s been on my list for 18 months, even before I started working here. But I’ve been telling people to buy gold, silver, and Bitcoin for that long. Bitcoin kind of acts as a digital gold, but gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper—any sort of actual tangible physical assets have a new place in the world.

And I say this because, if you look at the BRICS nations, which include Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now Saudi Arabia, they are all teaming up to create a competitor to the U.S. dollar for supremacy of global currency. Now, will there be two global currencies? Probably not. Will the U.S. dollar remain dominant? I don’t know what’s going to happen—I don’t have a crystal ball. But I do know that, for the first time in 80 years, there’s competition for the U.S. dollar’s global reserve currency status. And I know that in Russia, they are pegging their ruble to gold. So if nations are going to switch back to a gold standard, that means they’re going to have to buy all the gold they can from open inventory. Now, Russia has been buying gold heavily, so has China, so has India, so has Japan. Ironically, who has confusing currency. But they’ve all been buying gold on the market for the last 14-15 years, and heavily in the last two years. Since Biden took office, the gold reserves in multiple countries around the world have tripled and quadrupled. I don’t know what that means—if I did, I probably wouldn’t be on this podcast. I’d probably be sitting on a beach somewhere. But to me, it kind of indicates that the world is moving back to physical, traditional tangible goods.

Now, silver is an interesting place to be because, in the commodities market, the silver dropped to 38 million ounces today. That’s the lowest level of silver in the market since September 28, 2017. There’s a very strong move happening—I’m sure you’ve heard of the GameStop and AMC short squeezes that were occurring about 19 months ago. They started in silver. I’ve been buying silver and gold since I moved to Texas, and those things are wealth preservations. They’re not designed to make you rich. So why am I buying gold and silver? Why am I advising people to buy gold and silver? Well, to me, it’s pretty obvious what interest rates are doing and what they’re going to do. The average American is going to run out of money by Christmas this year, given the massive amounts of credit card debt, sovereign bond failure, and corporate bond yields going through the roof. You’re looking at a complete collapse of the debt structure system worldwide, not just in the United States, but in the whole world. So, if debt falls apart, cash becomes important, right? But while that’s happening, your cash is losing at a very minimum 8.6% a year due to inflation. So, take your big cash positions and put them into something that won’t lose value.

Yes, gold fluctuates, silver fluctuates, but the simplest understanding I can offer is this: I did this for my son, and for everyone else. My son is 13. He came to me and said, ‘Dad, what’s inflation?’ I said, ‘What have you heard about inflation?’ He said, ‘It means that stuff costs more.’ I said, ‘Do you think that’s true?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘You’re wrong.’ He said, ‘What’s inflation?’ I explained, ‘Well, in 1971, our dollar used to be the equivalent of that amount of money in gold, but we decided not to do that anymore. Back then, we took all the gold, which was at $20 an ounce. A $20 bill was equivalent to an ounce of gold. Then, we sold it all to the rest of the world for $35, and everyone was really happy. So, let’s say you buried one ounce of gold in the backyard in 1971, when it was worth $35. If you dug it up today, that ounce of gold would be worth $1,650. The $35 is still just $35. And that’s how inflation works.’

The interesting thing about metals is that JP Morgan just had almost a dozen traders, including the head of trading for metals, arrested and convicted for over 20 years of market manipulation. This just happened—you won’t see this on CNBC or MSNBC, but it happened in Chicago. You can read the whole article. That means that the metals market has been manipulated for a long time, which is a logical deduction we can make. Now, the silver side of things is really interesting because, traditionally, silver has had a gold-to-silver ratio throughout history—usually 16 ounces of silver equals one ounce of gold. Well, in the world we live in now, it’s completely opposite—about 98 ounces of silver would equal one ounce of gold. So, if you look at that traditional balancing act of 16-to-1, and now it’s 92-to-1, you have a very undervalued asset. Why? Because 2.5 ounces of silver are used in every solar panel. Every solar panel has at least 2.5 ounces of silver in it. Every electronic device you use, all of these things, they all have silver in them for conductivity.

In my head, make your own conclusion—it’s pretty obvious to me that, for at least the last 20 years, someone has been manipulating the price of silver to make it very cheap for places like China to manufacture green energy products, solar panels, and electronics, so that someone else profits from a cheapened commodity for better performance. It’s just my theory, but it’s a pretty accurate one.

So, silver is interesting. Gold is interesting because we’re starting to see—you don’t have to do a lot of digging to find out. You won’t find it on Google’s first page, they don’t want you to know these things. Trust me, I’ve been in this a long time. When you start looking around, you’ll start to see that nations around the world are buying up gold. If they’re buying up gold, they’re reducing the supply, which will eventually increase the demand. I just explained to you that COMEX is at its lowest level since 2017, meaning there’s less supply and there will be increased demand.

So, if we look at economics and where to go in difficult times, you go to environments where there is less supply and more demand. That leads me to my third and fourth suggestions for people. I’ve said for over 18 months, before I even worked here, that oil and gas, gold, silver, oil and gas are key. Why? Oil and gas—well, most people can see what’s going on in the world with oil and gas, but I can get really detailed and we’ll do that later. But find a more valuable commodity on planet Earth than hydrocarbons—I dare you. There’s nothing more valuable. Ask anyone in Germany, anyone in Europe, or anyone in Africa—they’re going to get hit hard next. But we’re looking at mounting wars—when you have wars, you need hydrocarbons to fight them.

So, oil and gas, gold, silver, oil and gas, raw land, undeveloped land. You buy a house right now, it’s pretty much a set-in-stone loss of 15-20%, just where the housing market is. You buy a commercial building, say you buy a developed building—commercial buildings require businesses with high profitability to pay rents to make a profit. Well, with rising interest rates, you can’t borrow money. With rising inflation, you can’t make a whole lot of money. With rising taxes, you don’t keep much. So, developed commercial property doesn’t make sense either. But raw land does, because it’s expensive to develop today. But in the next 2-3 years, that raw land will be much cheaper. Especially if you have gold, silver, oil, and gas, and Bitcoin, you will get through these rocky times and be able to start development projects again. I deal with a lot of syndicators in this job, a lot of real estate single-family, multi-family developers, and that market is getting pretty thin. So, that’s good for us because we work with them and provide oil and gas solutions to their clients and customer bases. But those are the five areas I would focus on.

Yeah, that’s really great, Eric. So, let me ask you this question: As an investor, can you give us a ballpark? Again, we don’t provide financial advice on the show. We’re not CPAs or financial planners, but just in rough estimation, for a portfolio allocation, given the climate we’re in right now, how are you positioned, or what would you say?

Well, yeah, I certainly don’t want to give financial advice. In my last one, a couple of years ago, I gave away everything and served the nation. I literally took 14 months of service, didn’t have a job then, and was giving up my own time and money to fight for freedom in this nation. I know for some of you that may sound weird, but give it a year, and you’ll understand why I did it.

So, in rebuilding my portfolio, it’s a little different. I can’t give advice to anyone because it’s your money—do as you please. But with me personally, I take a percentage of every paycheck and put it into our fund, period. I want the tax write-off, I want to be able to fight against inflation with monthly passive income, and the growth multiple makes sense to me. So I do that.

I also—anyone in this office will testify—go down and buy physical gold and silver twice a week. It may take me a month to find somebody who has silver. In the real world, you’ll go to four or five metal brokers and find some, but many of them don’t even have silver. But I’ll go buy gold and silver.

I’m getting ready to purchase a piece of raw land, so I’m eating my own dog food, and I’m putting a percentage of every check that I make into Bitcoin. I have zero exposure to the stock market except for certain short positions—zero. I mean, when you look at the charts and you understand history, by the way, 1929, 1987, and 2008, I believe all three of those market crashes occurred in October, ironically.

But when you look at history and the charts, the exposure in the stock market to me personally doesn’t make sense. I’ll say this because I look at the media and I look at the market. So, I’m not in the stock or bond market at all. Oh, I can’t say “at all.” My wife has a 401k, so you have no choice but to be in stocks and bonds. However, we moved half of it to money market, and the other half will probably go to money market next week.

But when you look at what’s happening—just today, the 20th of October—today, the market’s kind of leveling off. Stock market and bond market today—everyone said, “Hey, the first articles that came out from eight to ten in the morning said the yields are at an all-time high; this is a great time to get in,” and then the articles that came out later were, “Despite the FED raising rates, this is still a great time to get into bonds.” It’s almost like they’re begging you to make mistakes.

So, I am completely detached from the debt market. Completely. I use my cash and convert it as quickly as possible. I don’t have much cash—it goes into metals or it pays off debt. So, I’m paying down my home. I have a 2.25% mortgage on my house, and I’ll get to a certain level, and then I won’t pay it down anymore because it’s cheap money.

But other than that, I am absolutely steadfast in my positions of gold, silver, oil and gas, raw land, and, I don’t want to say “me,” but Bitcoin. There’s a million, I’d say cryptocurrency. Here’s why: As we go into these inflationary times, it’s pretty obvious to me that either good or evil is trying to destroy the dollar. I mean, is that too much of a conspiracy theory to think that when the other side of the world is creating a competitive currency, someone’s trying to destroy the dollar? That would essentially destroy the power of the United States because really, the way the dollar has worked is: “Hey, you’re going to use the dollar.” “No, I’m not.” “Okay, we’re invaded.” That’s kind of how the dollar has been brutally enforced around the globe.

And now that we have this special military operation or war in Ukraine, which is escalating to nuclear levels, when you start getting into environments that are this geopolitically scary, you want to be as inflation-resistant as possible. You want to be as stable and tangible as possible. So, the only non-physical thing that I’m putting money into is crypto.

And here’s why: You have three types of money. The third was just created 19 years ago. Traditionally, you’ve had God’s money, which is eternal money—gold and silver. You have the devil’s money, which is fiat currency—fake money, death notes—and now we have the people’s money.

So, we’re in a centralized system right now, meaning that the internet is centralized, so it can be censored. The FED is a central bank, meaning most people don’t know the difference between centralized and decentralized. Centralized means used by all, controlled by few. Decentralized means used by all, controlled by all. That’s the difference. Tyranny can impose itself in a centralized system.

We are now in an era coming from technology. I know tons of guys. We have decentralized satellites that are up in orbit right now creating a decentralized internet. There are decentralized cell phones being created. Decentralized everything means nothing without decentralized currency.

So, I look at gold, silver, and oil and gas as kind of the stable baseline—maintaining wealth and looking for normal type returns. But my kind of moonshot on the other side, where I’m taking the risk, is more of the crypto side. Because as we become more digital as a society, especially transactionally, the more important it will be for us to get out of a centralized currency system.

Everything that’s happening in your life due to politics is because we are in a centralized, fully controlled environment. Meaning that few control all—kind of like the Roman Empire. The way that we get out of this is by using decentralized assets like cryptocurrency.

I have some Bitcoin, XRP, and a bunch of the other things. But you know, you have to have some there. When the US dollar— I don’t want to say “when,” but if the US dollar collapses, which at this point isn’t… you know, five years ago, it would be ridiculous to say that out loud. It literally would be ridiculous. Today, it’s possible. I don’t know if it’s probable, but it’s certainly possible.

When that happens, the world will flip upside down for a moment and then set itself right. So, I want to have some gold and silver so I’m safe and secure. I’ve got tangible things, but I also have some cryptocurrency kept in a cold wallet in a safe that will act the same for peer-to-peer transactions and actually should appreciate. That’s my moonshot—that’s my risk. I’m not taking risk on a stock at all. You know why?

How do you run a company, or how do you make goods, how do you package goods, how do you drive those goods to a shipping center, a distribution center, and a store, and then how do you buy them and take them? You need oil and gas. Without energy, there is no stock market. Without cheap energy, there are no profits. Without abundant energy, there is no freedom.

A nation needs food, water, and energy—three basics of a nation. And our water is a little behind. 97% of the world’s water is owned by Nestlé. That’s not good. We’re going through food shortages and supply chain issues that’ll probably never be repaired. The COVID-19 pandemic globally destroyed the supply chains—destroyed them.

This is something they will not talk about in the news, but I talk to guys all over the world. Supply chains in 2023 will be a major, major issue. It takes about a year for them to kick in. So, food and water—there’s a risk. Energy is being attacked by our government. I don’t know any other way to say that—it’s kind of obvious to me. But that’s the areas that I would focus on. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, there’s so much to unpack there. I wish we had another hour to keep going, Eric. I think we’re going to have to have a repeat performance here, maybe next quarter or something, and see how things are going.

I really appreciate this kind of global perspective on all of these dynamics, and again, it’s really more from this unique, objective perspective versus what the media is feeding us and wants us to believe. We have to put aside that information and really try to make educated decisions. But as you said in the beginning, this is a super complex problem, right? There are so many different variables and dynamics.

So, I really appreciate your insights and your time today because I think it’s definitely shedding some light. And you know, as good stewards of our investors’ capital, we want to be able to educate people—our audience here, listening to this—and our investors on how to prepare themselves, how to position themselves, and make educated decisions. Look at all the data points so they can be in the best position to win.

Absolutely, it’s a lot of fun too. I had a lot of fun. Thank you for having me.

If anyone would like to connect with you directly, learn more, or anything, what’s the best way, Eric?

Good question. I’m not going to put my phone number on a podcast; I’m generally an old-school person like that. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m Eric Rice 25 on LinkedIn, and my email is [email protected]. So, you can reach me at any of those or through you. They can reach out to you, and you can get a hold of me either way.

Definitely. Eric, thanks again for your time. I’m really grateful for the opportunity to connect. I know I always get smarter every time I have a conversation with you, and I know folks are really going to enjoy this episode. So, thanks again.

Absolutely. Thanks, Dave. Have a good one. God bless you all.

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