Bitcoin, Buenos Aires Real Estate, and Why Gold Miners Still Look Mispriced
This week on Doug Casey’s Take, we tackled a grab bag of smart (and slightly paranoid) subscriber questions—Bitcoin’s “currency problem,” cheap Argentina real estate, gold miner reratings, whether Hollywood is basically making propaganda now, and why I don’t love stop-losses in volatile sectors.
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Below is the cleaned-up Substack version, in my voice, with the key takeaways—and a few direct lines from Doug that are worth repeating.
1) Bitcoin: currency… or digital gold… or something else?
A subscriber asked the obvious question: if everyone says “HODL forever,” how does Bitcoin ever become money people actually use?
Doug’s answer is basically: that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
He pointed to Gresham’s Law logic (in plain English): people spend the bad money and hoard the good money. If you can pay in weakening dollars, you save the harder asset. Same instinct applies to Bitcoin.
Doug also laid out the classic “good money” checklist (durable, divisible, convenient, consistent, has use value… and importantly today: can’t be created out of thin air). In his view, Bitcoin checks most boxes—and has advantages over gold in portability and transfer.
My added caveat: financialization changes the beast.
Once Bitcoin futures and the whole derivatives complex got layered on top (late 2017 was a big turning point), the price action stopped feeling like a relatively “pure” supply/demand phenomenon and started behaving more like a Wall Street casino.
And yes—we also touched the uncomfortable angle: Bitcoin’s history is not as clean as the marketing makes it sound. I mentioned Roger Ver’s book Hijacking Bitcoin as a solid “read the other side” counterweight to the pure Bitcoin-evangelist narrative.
Doug’s bottom line: Bitcoin isn’t going to zero, and on a long horizon it can still be a very interesting speculation—especially after big drawdowns.
2) Argentina real estate: why Doug likes Buenos Aires (and why raw land is harder)
Doug’s been saying Argentina real estate is cheap, and he doubled down.
His most “actionable” point: Buenos Aires apartments are the easiest entry point. You can compare them to major-city pricing elsewhere and immediately see the gap. Doug’s framing was basically: BA can look like a fraction of New York pricing, and with Argentina’s political momentum (in his view), BA has a better forward path than New York.
Raw land in Argentina can be wildly cheap too—but the practical issues matter:
management from afar
keeping squatters off land (a real issue in parts of LatAm)
liquidity (big parcels can sit… and sit… and sit)
Doug shared that he and Bill Bonner have held huge land positions for years—beautiful assets, but not the kind of thing you can casually flip.
3) Gold miners: “rerating” talk, conservative models, and why the market still doesn’t believe
A newbie asked about analysts using low gold prices in their models and the idea that miners could get rerated as reality forces estimates higher.
Doug’s take: the market still treats gold like just another commodity that will mean-revert lower. He doesn’t. He thinks we’re at (or moving into) a new equilibrium level, and the market hasn’t caught up.
I used Barrick as an example: their results show how gold price acceleration explodes earnings, and even the companies themselves often model forward prices conservatively. If gold stays higher than those assumptions, cash flow can get absurd.
Doug’s blunt version:
“These stocks are really cheap, cheaper than they should be. Way cheaper than they should be.”
We also talked about the reality that miners carry geopolitical risk (Mali came up), and that part of the “discount” is the market not wanting to deal with messy jurisdictions.
4) Experts Roundtable: the free education most people ignore
We reminded people that Doug Casey’s Experts Roundtable isn’t just entertainment—it’s a real education in how seasoned geologists and investors stress-test a story.
Sometimes the experts like the company. Sometimes they torch it. Sometimes they disagree loudly—which is the point.
If you want to learn how pros think about red flags, structure, dilution, geology, jurisdiction, management… watching those discussions is time well spent.
5) Christianity, Rome, and a very “loaded” question
One subscriber sent a long, opinionated question tying Christianity to the rise of science, markets, and Western greatness—and asked Doug to weigh in.
Doug didn’t play along. He basically said the framing was slanted, and he pushed back on mixing theology with economics/history in a way that pretends it’s objective.
Doug’s style here was classic Casey: he’ll give Jesus credit for wisdom, but he’s not going to pretend Christianity is the engine of free markets or science.
6) “Project Vault” and Aries Strategic Mining: the state is back in the mining business
We got an update question on Aries Strategic Mining (the permitted U.S. fluorspar angle).
Doug’s warning was straightforward: government involvement in business “ends badly” in general—but if a company is positioned as a direct beneficiary of a state stockpile program, it can still work out very well for that specific insider circle.
We also mentioned our newer Substack project State Speculator, where we’re tracking these public-private moves and trying to map investable themes around them.
7) Hollywood dystopia: “One Battle After Another” and the no-middle-class tell
A question came in about a new DiCaprio film, One Battle After Another, described as a biased but not-totally-wrong dystopian snapshot: elite villains, crushed rebels, no real middle class on screen.
Doug hadn’t seen it yet, but the broader point landed: the absence of the middle class in the story is a pretty revealing signal about how a lot of people think the trajectory looks.
8) Silver’s pullback: paper games vs physical reality
We discussed the silver spread anomaly (West vs China/India) and how these markets get distorted—especially when “price discovery” is dominated by paper leverage and positioning.
This tied right back to the Bitcoin point: once the derivative layer becomes the main arena, reality can get bent for long stretches.
9) Stop-losses in miners: why Doug doesn’t bother
Someone asked how tight stop-losses should be for mining stocks.
Doug’s answer: he doesn’t use them, and he’s not trading. These are volatile instruments and “little guys get stomped” when elephants are dancing.
I added my own scar tissue: I’ve seen stops triggered at the exact low tick of the day, only for the stock to close higher. In a market full of predatory liquidity-hunting, stop-losses can be an invitation.
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00:00 Introduction and Subscriber Questions
00:21 Bitcoin’s Viability as a Currency
05:18 Bitcoin’s Financialization and Market Dynamics
12:44 Real Estate Opportunities in Argentina
19:01 Investing in Small and Medium Enterprises
21:18 Gold Mining Stocks and Market Analysis
28:18 Christianity’s Influence on Western Civilization
40:29 Doug’s Take on Ari’s Strategic Mining
43:40 Review of DiCaprio’s New Film
47:34 Gold as a Tier One Asset and Tax Implications
49:51 Investing in the Japanese Stock Market
54:36 Silver Market Dynamics and Arbitrage
59:12 Fractional Reserve Banking and Usury
01:04:53 Stock Market Crash and Precious Metals
01:11:42 Stop-Loss Strategies in Mining Stocks
