Key Takeaways

Gold revaluation is a conditional policy scenario. Alden discusses releasing financing from a higher official gold value. A separate legal and accounting mechanism would be needed to turn the change into spendable Treasury funds.

A financing change would not end recurring deficits. Alden sees liquidity and inflation tradeoffs. The outcome would depend on how funds were used and the surrounding policy mix.

Fiscal conditions can complicate interest-rate policy. Alden argues that higher rates restrain some borrowers while increasing income for some savers and financing costs for government.

Stocks and gold are not mutually exclusive in her outlook. She distinguishes nominal gains from relative performance and purchasing power, while acknowledging that either asset can fall against the dollar.

AI creates both demand and financing risks. She separates adoption benefits from investment returns and identifies leases, vendor financing and equipment depreciation as concerns. Commodity demand also depends on China, construction and defense.

Long-term ownership is part of her business approach. Orange Juice combines permanent business ownership with a Bitcoin treasury. Alden is a co-founder; its strategy and anticipated benefits are not established performance results.

Key Moments

00:02:10 - Fiscal dominance and the limits of rate policy

00:07:40 - How Alden’s gold revaluation scenario could work

00:10:02 - The distributional tradeoffs of releasing funds

00:12:04 - AI financing risks and continued adoption

00:17:26 - Commodity demand beyond AI data centers

00:19:45 - Why Alden’s outlook includes stocks and gold

00:38:16 - Orange Juice and permanent business ownership

00:50:25 - AI-generated media and public trust

Gold Revaluation: Lyn Alden on Debt, Inflation and AI

Gold revaluation means changing the official accounting value of gold already held by the government. US Treasury gold is recorded at $42.2222 per fine troy ounce, rather than the market price.[1] Lyn Alden discusses how a higher valuation, combined with a mechanism to release funds, could affect government financing, inflation and assets.[2]

In a Wealthion interview published October 19, 2026, Alden connects that possibility to fiscal dominance. She argues that deficits can complicate the Federal Reserve’s efforts to restrain inflation. Speaking with Maggie Lake, she allows for strength in both stocks and gold, alongside risks in AI financing and unequal economic outcomes.

The interview treats gold revaluation as a possible policy response. It is not an announcement that the Treasury has adopted it.

How would US gold revaluation work?

A higher accounting value would recognize more dollar value in the government’s existing gold. Converting that gain into spending power would require a separate financing mechanism.

The distinction matters because the Treasury owns the gold, while the Federal Reserve holds gold certificates. Those certificates are denominated in dollars and do not entitle the Fed to redeem them for bullion.[1] Section 5117 of federal law limits outstanding certificates using a valuation of 42 and two-ninths dollars per fine troy ounce.[3]

Alden describes a scenario in which revaluation releases funds into the Treasury General Account, the government’s account at the Fed. Treasury could then finance some spending without issuing an equivalent amount of new bonds. Her explanation assumes that the legal and accounting arrangements permit that transfer; a bookkeeping change alone would not accomplish it.

Revaluation also would not create more physical gold or automatically set a new price for privately traded bullion.

Would gold revaluation solve the government’s debt problem?

It could provide a finite source of financing, but it would not eliminate a recurring gap between spending and revenue. That is the central limit to the idea.

A Federal Reserve staff study published in August 2025 examined international uses of reserve revaluation gains. It found that governments had used proceeds to retire debt, while emphasizing that this may leave larger fiscal problems unresolved.[4]

Alden’s concern is what happens when released funds are spent. She sees potential for additional liquidity and inflationary pressure, with different consequences for asset owners and people dependent on wages. She also stresses that the magnitude and accompanying fiscal policies matter.[2]

The financing benefit and the inflation effect are therefore separate questions. Replacing borrowing for already-planned expenditure differs from using the proceeds for additional spending. The policy design and monetary response would affect the outcome.

What does Alden mean by fiscal dominance?

Alden uses fiscal dominance to describe an environment where government deficits play an increasingly important role in economic conditions. She argues that interest-rate policy has less leverage over that source of demand than over private borrowing.[2]

Higher rates can discourage mortgages, business loans and investment. They can also raise government financing costs as debt is issued or refinanced, while increasing interest income for some savers. In her account, those effects help explain why tighter conditions can coexist with spending strength elsewhere.

This is Alden’s interpretation of monetary and fiscal transmission. It does not establish that the Fed has no influence over inflation or that every dollar of government borrowing creates an equivalent amount of money.

The inflation measure also matters. The Fed’s 2% longer-run objective refers to the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. Consumer and producer price indexes provide additional information, but they are not the target measure.[5]

Could lower energy prices bring inflation down?

Lower energy prices could ease inflation, Alden says, without resolving every pressure she identifies. She distinguishes an energy shock from the fiscal and distributional conditions that preceded it.[2]

Her conditional example involves an end to conflict, fewer refinery disruptions and easier transportation. Those developments could reduce fuel costs. They would not, by themselves, change government spending commitments or the borrowing conditions facing households.

She also sees competition for physical resources. AI infrastructure requires power, equipment and construction capacity, which may compete with other uses. The size of that effect depends on local supply constraints and the pace of building, rather than AI spending alone.

Does AI financing pose another subprime-style risk?

Alden sees genuine financing risks, but she does not equate the current AI buildout with the mortgage crisis. Her distinction is between growing contractual exposure and a banking-centered crisis.[2]

She identifies long-term data-center leases, vendor financing and links between chip suppliers and their customers. Another issue is depreciation: profits depend partly on whether the useful life assigned to computing equipment matches its economic life.

Her counterargument is continued adoption. A company may improve productivity, gain customers and expand employment by using AI effectively. Benefits to users can coexist with disappointing returns for some developers or infrastructure owners.

That distinction also explains her interest in open-weight models, whose trained parameters are available for others to use under their licenses. She questions high valuations for loss-making providers whose competitors are only months behind. It does not follow that useful technology guarantees attractive returns for every company supplying it.

Does the commodity outlook depend entirely on AI?

No. Alden treats AI as one source of demand for power and materials, alongside construction, defense spending and economic developments in China.[2]

Her longer-term interest extends to gold, silver, copper and energy-related assets. She separates gold’s role as a competing store of value from the industrial demand affecting other commodities. She also discusses businesses adjacent to resource-producing economies, rather than treating all resource exposure as a direct commodity-price trade.

The counterweight in her account is China. Demographic pressures, existing buildings and manufacturing capacity could limit incremental demand. Slower AI construction could weaken another source of demand, even if other uses remain substantial.

Those competing forces leave a more differentiated argument than a single, uniform commodity boom. Demand for a material and the profits earned by a particular business are different outcomes.

Why can Alden be positive on both stocks and gold?

Alden’s argument does not require a stock-market collapse for gold to have a role. She distinguishes an asset’s dollar price from its value relative to another asset or its purchasing power.[2]

Stocks can rise in nominal terms while lagging gold over a particular period. Both can also fall against the dollar. Her criticism of sweeping bearish forecasts concerns their time horizon and their implicit preference for holding currency, rather than a claim that equities cannot decline.

Within public equities, she emphasizes profitable businesses. That differs from venture investing, where a company may be building scale before generating profits. Higher financing costs make the timing of cash flows more consequential in her framework.

Her support for real assets therefore sits alongside an interest in productive companies. It is not a forecast that all scarce assets will rise together.

Could AI help smaller businesses compete?

Alden sees a potential benefit for smaller businesses that use AI effectively. A small team could accomplish more with the available tools, even while capital concentrates in large technology companies.[2]

She separates the initial investment surge from the technology’s longer-term use. That leaves room for both a financing correction and productivity gains. Her caution is that relying on AI without retaining human judgment can undermine those benefits.

How does Orange Juice fit her broader argument?

Orange Juice applies her interest in long-lived businesses through a company that combines acquisitions with a Bitcoin treasury. Alden is a co-founder, so this part of the interview concerns a business in which she has a direct interest.[6]

The company’s July 2026 announcement describes plans to acquire, improve and permanently own cash-flowing American businesses. Alden contrasts that structure with investment funds that need to sell holdings within a defined life. She argues that permanent ownership can change incentives around staffing, investment and succession.[2][6]

The distinction does not establish that one ownership model always produces better results. Execution, financing and Bitcoin volatility remain relevant, and the company’s stated strategy is not evidence of achieved performance.

The wider conversation connects business opportunity with social strain. Alden identifies aging populations, unequal economic outcomes and weakening trust as interacting risks. She argues that social-media algorithms shape what people encounter, not only what gets censored.[2]

Her novel, The Stolguard Incident, explores a related concern: technology can expand access to information while making authentic evidence harder to distinguish from synthetic media.[2][7]

Her overall argument is that fiscal pressures can shape economic outcomes before a dramatic debt-market event occurs. Gold revaluation is one possible response within that setting. Its significance would depend on the legal mechanism, how funds were used and the economic conditions surrounding the decision.

What Could Change the Picture

Policy design: A revaluation’s legal authority, transfer mechanism and use of proceeds would determine how it affected financing. A higher book value alone would not release cash.

Fiscal and inflation data: Deficit persistence, interest costs and PCE inflation would bear on Alden’s fiscal-dominance argument.

AI adoption and commitments: Business use, lease exposure and equipment economics could diverge. More adoption would not establish that every supplier earned adequate returns.

Physical demand and social outcomes: China’s activity, construction, defense and energy constraints would affect resource demand. The divide between asset owners and wage-dependent households is another part of her argument.

FAQ

What is gold revaluation? It is a change in the official accounting value assigned to government gold. US gold is recorded at the statutory value of $42.2222 per fine troy ounce, which is separate from the market price.[1]

Could gold revaluation eliminate US debt? A revaluation could provide finite financing if an authorized mechanism released funds. It would not eliminate recurring deficits or automatically cancel existing debt. Alden discusses it as a possible response with tradeoffs.[2][4]

Would revaluation automatically raise the gold price? No. Changing the official book value does not set the price at which private buyers and sellers trade. Alden’s scenario concerns the possible effects of subsequent spending, liquidity and market reactions.[2]

What is fiscal dominance in Alden’s argument? She uses the term for an environment where large government deficits increasingly shape economic conditions and complicate monetary policy. This is her interpretation, not a finding that interest rates no longer affect inflation.[2]

Does her commodity case depend only on AI? No. She also discusses construction, defense and China. Slower AI investment could weaken part of the demand outlook without removing the other forces.[2]

Who is the expert in this interview? Lyn Alden, founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, a general partner at Ego Death Capital and a co-founder of Orange Juice. She joins Maggie Lake in the Wealthion interview published October 19, 2026, The Treasury’s Gold Revaluation Play. Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xagpUfToyqA.[2][7]

A complimentary, no-obligation portfolio review with an advisor in Wealthion’s network is available for a discussion of portfolio diversification and investment goals.

Full Transcript

Commodities and scarce assets

Maggie Lake: Lyn, great to see you. Thanks for joining us today.

Lyn Alden: Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Maggie Lake: Part of your core thesis is that commodities and scarce assets are in a bull market?

Lyn Alden: Yes. I have been bullish on gold. That is somewhat separate from commodities because it is more of a competing store of value with Treasuries. I think that bull market got ahead of its skis for a period, but over the longer term it is still on track.

I think silver is a long-term beneficiary from these trends, potentially platinum and copper. I am a long-term energy bull, including assets that transfer energy. I think those will be in demand for a long time.

I invest in places like Brazil, and sometimes it is not even a commodity trade. One of my favorite trades there has been owning its biggest bank, and it outperforms the index. There are ways to be adjacent to that trend. Capital was primarily going toward non-resource things, and now it is going toward resource things. There are broad ways to participate, and I think that need will exist for a long time.

Inflation and fiscal dominance

Maggie Lake: With consumer and producer price readings coming out, inflation has remained above the Fed’s target for a long time. Should the Fed officially abandon that target? What is the new norm for inflation?

Lyn Alden: I do not think it should abandon it. The challenge is that the Fed’s tools are not geared toward this type of inflation. The point I have made in macro is that we are in fiscal dominance, not monetary dominance.

The Fed’s primary tools, especially interest rates and to some extent its balance sheet, are meant to encourage or discourage bank lending. If rates become very high, fewer people are likely to take out a large mortgage and overpay for a house. They become more conservative, and that works through the economy.

The tools are primarily saying: if things are running hot, bank lending is strong and inflation is above target, let us slow bank lending and broad money creation. In stagnation, they try to lower rates and encourage borrowing, which uses resources and labor.

That can be effective in an era like Paul Volcker’s, where bank lending was a key driver of money-supply growth. It works less well when fiscal deficits are a bigger source of new money entering the economy than bank lending.

We have reached a phase where annual deficits, the net new Treasuries created over a given 12-month period, are bigger than the sum of net new bank loans and net new corporate bond issuance. The Fed can focus on slowing bank lending, but it is a smaller factor than deficits.

Higher rates also make deficits higher. In some ways, every time the Fed raises rates, I get a raise. An investor with a locked-in mortgage and money in a money market fund gets more income when rates rise.

At Orange Juice, when we raised capital, it was held in interest-bearing fiat. Higher interest income on a large capital pool can marginally allow us to buy more companies or hire more people.

When debt is around 100% of GDP and the problem is more the deficit than bank lending, they are solving a different problem. I am not saying what the Fed should do. The question is how it communicates that some of this is outside its purview. The structure of a central bank is built around the idea that it can solve it, and I think we have created an illusion around that.

Maggie Lake: There is another narrative that an end to the war would bring fuel prices down, solve inflation and improve affordability. Markets sometimes seem to be pricing that outcome. Would lower energy prices resolve the inflation problem?

Lyn Alden: They would do some of that. There are always multiple factors. In the 1970s, high bank lending combined with a Middle East crisis that created a real-world constraint. Now we have structural fiscal deficits alongside real-world constraints, especially energy and refined products.

If the war ends, refineries stop being hit and transportation bottlenecks ease, that can contribute to lower energy prices and mildly lower inflation. That part is true. The problem is that it is one factor among many.

We already had a two-speed, or K-shaped, economy and above-target inflation before the war. The war added another layer. Policies and wars matter, but there is also the fiscal side.

AI matters too. When power is being built out and resources are being used, that can take away from things like building homes, making it harder for home prices to decline despite higher rates. These factors come together, but a lot is driven by the fiscal side, which I do not expect to be addressed within an investable time horizon.

Gold revaluation and its tradeoffs

Maggie Lake: Treasury appointments, including Judy Shelton, have fueled speculation about a major policy move to address high rates and debt. Could revaluing US gold holdings be one of those moves?[8]

Lyn Alden: It is worth monitoring. Revaluing gold is one of the break-the-glass mechanisms. It is one of the few ways the government could create new money without an associated amount of debt.

Increasing the official valuation of its gold could fill the Treasury General Account with cash that it could spend. That would be inflationary and pro-liquidity. If the intention were to weaken the dollar, it would be a mechanism, but that has to be balanced against inflation concerns and the effect on wages.

This far into the dollar system and its debt, all these decisions have tradeoffs. Some might be better than others, but they benefit one group and hurt another. An administration has to decide whether it wants to pull that lever or leave it for the next administration.

Maggie Lake: There may be support for extraordinary measures. Who would benefit or suffer in the immediate aftermath? Would gold holders be happy while the average worker loses out?

Lyn Alden: It is more complicated. At first, revaluing gold is mostly an accounting change. It does not necessarily change the price of gold relative to oil or houses.

They would be changing the official bookkeeping for Treasury gold from roughly $40 an ounce to the current price, which in this discussion is around $4,000-something. That could fill the Treasury General Account and allow spending without bond issuance until that amount was used up.

In theory, they could choose an even higher valuation and give themselves more cash. As that money flows into the economy, it could find its way into assets such as gold and influence the price.

It would be a shock. Shocks of that nature are generally likely to lead people to buy something like gold. As a gold holder, I would not mind that day. Equity holders, Bitcoin holders and scarce-asset holders might also find it interesting.

But creating spendable fiat without debt issuance would be a surge in money creation and, to some extent, inflation. It would be comparable to some of the stimulus during and after COVID, depending on its magnitude.

It can feel good in the moment while wages struggle to keep up years later. In general, it could be good for asset holders and bad for wage earners, but that depends on fiscal policy. Policies beneficial to wage earners could offset some of it. The full policy mix matters more than any one policy.

AI financing and adoption

Maggie Lake: That raises questions about whether an opportunity like this would be used wisely, given its costs. On AI, there are also concerns about sales accounting and contractual obligations that are not showing up as debt. Could those obligations create a systemic risk comparable to subprime mortgages?

Lyn Alden: Potentially over the longer term, but I do not think we are there yet. People are right to raise it. I think we are still in the early-to-middle innings, and problems outside the banking system tend to be less catastrophic than something like subprime. I would not put it in quite that category.

Hyperscalers are taking on increasing lease obligations. Someone investing heavily in a data center wants a client willing to sign a long-term lease.

Some semiconductor companies also help finance the data centers that buy their chips, including backstopping some of the financing. That creates circular complexity. Venture capital has gone into the models, including OpenAI and Anthropic, which face competition from open-weight models.

It is hard to justify a trillion- or two-trillion-dollar valuation for a company that is aggressively unprofitable and only months ahead of its closest competitors. I think some of this will experience large drawdowns at certain points.

But I think we are still in the buildout phase, with substantial semiconductor bottlenecks. One thing I follow is whether businesses are spending more or less on AI than they were months earlier.

There are occasional headlines about a business pulling back after spending heavily, or adding safeguards. Those things keep happening, yet overall spending continues to rise. When technology unlocks, there is a zero-to-one moment in which businesses move from not using it to some baseline of adoption.

Studies show that companies that are higher adopters of AI tend to be winning and taking market share against others in their field. They also tend to increase headcount. AI does not necessarily make employment a zero-sum issue. It can make employees more effective, improve margins and pricing, and let a company gain customers and grow headcount.

I still think there is room to run. Vendor financing, large capital expenditure, shifts from corporate bonds toward lease obligations and questions about depreciation are valid concerns. What is the true useful life of a leading-edge graphics processing unit? These questions matter, but I think it will take more time before a reckoning.

Commodity demand beyond data centers

Maggie Lake: Some investors see commodities as a preferred way to participate in AI. If AI slows, does that undermine commodity demand? The scarce-asset crowd can be suspicious of AI, yet are the two trades connected?

Lyn Alden: AI is fueling part of commodity demand. At the margin it matters, although it is still a small share of global commodity consumption. Particular commodities can be in greater demand in a particular area.

This differs from the internet companies of the 2010s. They needed data centers, but social media and search were less computationally intensive. Moving things into mobile and the cloud involved relatively low physical costs. This computation is inherently different and has greater physical costs.

The need for compute means more demand at the margin for power and computing materials. That is real. But most energy consumption is still outside AI, and other construction is a large part of copper and other commodity use.

Militarization matters too. Europe is spending more on defense, and there has been a request for a $1.5 trillion US defense budget. Those things have commodity implications. Building missiles is, sadly, a source of demand.[9]

There are other major factors, including China’s slowdown and demographics. China has an oversupply of buildings and manufacturing output. It can produce more than it currently does without necessarily building much more capacity.

That is an overhang. AI and defense can ask for more commodities while China has less growth in demand. Those are competing forces in a macro commodity argument.

Stocks and gold

Maggie Lake: A viewer asks why financial podcasts repeatedly predict stock-market trouble and describe gold as the answer, while stocks continue climbing and gold struggles. Is that sensationalism? What would you say to someone who understands the hard-asset argument but sees their equity holdings rising?

Lyn Alden: My answer is that one can be bullish on both gold and stocks. If one looks at the S&P 500-to-gold ratio, I describe this as the fourth major bear market in stocks relative to gold over the past century, although it has been mild.

Gold has outperformed stocks from some starting points years ago, while in other years the opposite happens. I like to own both. That goes back to fiscal dominance.

When we are running deficits around 7% of GDP as far as the eye can see, being bearish on stocks means being bullish on fiat: saying stocks will go down against the dollar.

They certainly can over a year. Stocks are volatile and fell in 2022. Gold can fall against the dollar too. When a market that large moves from roughly $2,000 to $5,000 so quickly, it can need time to take a breather.

I generally disagree with narratives about selling all stocks, owning only gold and expecting an imminent reckoning. I see a hot environment with winners and losers, where hard assets have generally been winners.

Since COVID, gold, Bitcoin, high-quality equities and some real estate financed with fixed-rate fiat debt have generally worked well. It has been one of the worst five- or six-year stretches to hold bonds in our parents’ and grandparents’ lifetimes. It has been a massive bond bear market, both nominally and especially in real terms.

I think much of the move from near-zero rates toward a roughly 5% 10-year Treasury yield is probably behind us. But fiscal dominance remains and can continue supporting equities.

In emerging-market currency crises, stocks can rise in local currency while falling in dollar or gold terms. That is part of why I have remained positive on both equities and gold.

Profitability and competition

Maggie Lake: You publish a model portfolio and explain your thinking transparently. In a digitized world where intelligence becomes widely available, what does a profitable moat look like?

Lyn Alden: Semiconductor companies, for example, can be very profitable. I have emphasized profitable equities since the 2010s, when there was a long stretch of enthusiasm for unprofitable companies.

In a zero-rate environment, investors could emphasize growth without caring as much about when profits arrived. Now there is a cost of capital. Unprofitable growth at all costs is not where I think most of the value is. I am more interested in profitable growth.

In venture capital, we usually invest in businesses that are not yet profitable because they are building scale. In public markets, I generally want profitable businesses. If I want unprofitable exposure, that is what I do through venture investing. Once a business is large enough to be public, I think most should be working toward profitability.

Maggie Lake: You have spoken with Jack Dorsey about open systems. Is there a tension between equity investors who want profits and defensible moats, and citizens who may benefit from open networks? How does that apply to AI?

Lyn Alden: There are two different issues. One is whether a company wants its own model open or closed. The more concerning issue is whether it tries to get government to ban open competitors and preserve that closed model.

Companies can decide what to do with their code and systems. The question is how far they want to lock in that decision with a regulatory moat.

I think the long-term effort to suppress open-weight models is a losing game. They exist, and trying to stop them is like whack-a-mole. They let more than a small number of companies control the technology. People can customize them, run them locally and use them more privately. I think that is valuable.

Demographics and the two-speed economy

Maggie Lake: What economic trend worries you most?

Lyn Alden: Several coming together. One is demographics. Things are easier with six workers per retiree than three, for example. Many systems were designed around each generation being larger than the one before it.

When that stops and decades pass, the costs become apparent. Social Security and Medicare face major challenges in the US, while Japan, Europe and China are dealing with aging too.

There are also changes in international law and geopolitics. We went from a multipolar world toward a unipolar one and are moving back toward multipolarity. That is a more natural arrangement, but the transition can be tumultuous.

Alongside demographics and fiscal commitments, the two-speed US economy is important for trust. People ask when debt and deficits will matter. My answer is that they have already been mattering.

It is not necessarily the moment a bond auction fails. Structural deficits have recipients, while others bear costs without directly receiving the benefits. A family facing high rates while trying to buy its first home is indirectly paying some of those costs.

That helps explain the divide between strong stock prices and weak consumer sentiment. Even after sentiment moves off its lows, there is an unusually large gap between asset holders and others, and between deficit recipients and non-recipients. That concerns me.

Maggie Lake: This is apparent if there are young people in your life. I have college-aged children, and their concern reflects the situation they see. Different media environments can make other people unaware of that reality.

Mike Green has also raised the concern that wealthy people are not sharing spaces with others as much. It is harder to see someone else’s circumstances. I worry about anxiety turning into anger, and whether people express that through elections or lose faith in the process.

Can a two-tier economy continue for a long time, or must it eventually come to a head?

Lyn Alden: I think it can continue longer than people expect. Aristocratic systems sustained very different economic realities for a long time, although that was a different era and political structure.

The risk is a break in one direction or another. If people believe the status quo is not working, they may move toward more extreme political alternatives. That can mean more extreme decisions or election outcomes and start to fray institutions. But it can take much longer than people think.

Algorithms are also a major issue. Social media can help people communicate over distances and find communities. But a handful of large platforms have algorithms whose incentives are not necessarily to promote truth or social virtue. They may maximize profit or serve an adjacent commercial interest.

I interviewed Jack Dorsey about decentralized social media and choosing an algorithm. The issue is not only censorship; it is what the algorithm directs attention toward in the first place.

I have watched people gradually fall into unhealthy rabbit holes. Each step can seem normal to the person experiencing it, while from outside it is clear they are entering a bubble.

That also fed into my fiction. I imagined an internet with a centralized, censored and geographically constrained system, alongside activity at the edges. Centralized algorithms are quietly among the most powerful influences in society.

AI and small businesses

Maggie Lake: AI raises the stakes. On the two-tier economy, so much capital is going toward mega-cap technology while other businesses struggle with interest rates. Have we reoriented the economy around large companies, or do we still need startups and smaller businesses?

Lyn Alden: We need startups and smaller businesses for a healthy economy. Small and medium-sized businesses account for a substantial part of employment.

I would separate the current rapid wave of AI capital expenditure from other trends. A new technology creates a surge toward an area without that rate of investment necessarily continuing forever. There is a move from zero to one when something becomes possible.

Railroads and aviation provide analogies. Once the technology existed, or once aluminum and hydrocarbons made aviation feasible, there was a long runway of development after a period of limited progress. Eventually, that initial surge levels out.

The hardware and software combination now enables things it could not do a few years ago, leading to a large temporary reorganization of resources.

In the 2010s, much of the value created by rising technology companies concentrated within those businesses. AI can also make its leading providers large, but end users can benefit substantially if they use it well.

In some ways, a small team has never had more tools and resources available. Some businesses still need capital, but others can accomplish more without first asking someone else to fund a large organization.

It separates people who can use those tools effectively from those who cannot. One drawback is becoming dependent on AI without thinking. Used to solve problems while retaining judgment, it can be an equalizer.

Orange Juice and permanent ownership

Maggie Lake: You and the team at Ego Death Capital are doing something with Orange Juice that seems to address a neglected problem. You acquire small and midsize businesses and combine them with a Bitcoin treasury. Why did the idea come about?

Lyn Alden: Some of us are both Bitcoin bulls and value investors. We do not think of it as a Bitcoin treasury company. It is a company that happens to have a Bitcoin treasury as part of its strategy.

Private equity solves a real problem. A business is one of the hardest things to sell because it is large, illiquid and unique. Private equity offers a market for buying and selling businesses, which has been useful for decades.

My criticism concerns incentives. During the long period of falling rates, a common model was to acquire a business, add debt at a lower cost of capital, cut staff and resell it after a few years. That can maximize near-term profits while weakening its foundation for the next 10 or 20 years.

Someone might have loved a veterinary clinic before an acquisition, then experience more cross-selling, reduced service and higher prices. It can feel run by a spreadsheet rather than by people who love animals. Business discipline and passion have to be balanced.

Private equity companies have a larger-than-average failure rate because they get loaded up with debt and have some of their soul ripped out. I am not saying private equity managers are evil. They have an incentive structure: a fund may have a 10-year life and a mandate to buy businesses, improve them, sell them and return cash to investors.

Maggie Lake: Employees can feel that change too, with more debt, fewer people and higher quotas. People I know describe being on a treadmill after an acquisition.

Lyn Alden: The incentive is often the next few years rather than building a foundation a decade out. A permanent capital vehicle is a company that can hold businesses indefinitely.

Berkshire Hathaway is a familiar example. It buys businesses and holds them for decades. It still wants them competitive and successful and may make necessary changes, but the incentive is toward decades of cash flow and growth.

Orange Juice seeks to acquire businesses and hold them indefinitely. Decisions are geared toward that longer horizon rather than maximizing profits three years from now.

Permanent capital companies need a complementary advantage. For Berkshire, it is insurance. Berkshire has the lowest cost of capital in the world, more or less, and a very stable source of capital. That gives it a large advantage. For people positive on Bitcoin, having it on the balance sheet can be rocket fuel if managed appropriately. It helps build a fortress of assets that are volatile but cannot be debased.

We find that combination interesting. Some owners already like Bitcoin and would rather sell a company to a long-term owner concerned about its legacy.

Others want to continue working while gaining liquidity. Someone may be wealthy on paper but have 95% of that wealth tied to one business. They may want diversification, liquidity or help with operations without leaving the business.

We can also provide technical support. Our new chief technology officer came from Nvidia. The idea is to bring strong AI capabilities to businesses that would not otherwise have that support.

The goal is not to arrive and fire everyone in the back office. It is to reduce busywork, improve competitiveness and let people focus on their core work, whether that means treating animals or another activity.

Maggie Lake: It sounded to me like a modern variation on permanent ownership. Is Bitcoin a hurdle for sellers? Do you focus on business owners who already like it, or find a good business and explain why the model might fit?

Lyn Alden: In the early group, we have had hundreds of companies reach out, and the funnel has tended to include owners who already like Bitcoin. Some founders of Orange Juice have large audiences, so people hear about it through us.

If we execute the early acquisitions well and become larger, some later sellers may not care about Bitcoin. They may simply like the permanent capital structure, just as someone selling to Berkshire does not necessarily care about insurance.

It also gives us multiple ways to use capital. A pure Bitcoin treasury company often finds investors more willing to provide money during a Bitcoin bull market. It buys more when prices are high and has less capital available during a bear market. Accumulation can become procyclical.

Our primary focus is acquiring cash-flowing businesses. If the acquisition funnel is strong, we can acquire more. If it is softer, the Bitcoin treasury is another possible use of capital. It gives us a second avenue alongside operating businesses, in what has historically been a volatile but strongly performing asset.

Fiction and investment time horizons

Maggie Lake: That gives small businesses another potential ownership option. Moving to your novel, The Stolguard Incident, did your macro outlook influence the book, or did imagining the future influence your investing?

Lyn Alden: Both to some degree. My background blends engineering and finance, so I think about technology adoption alongside financial considerations.

In investing, three to five years, or perhaps 10 years for venture investing or buying an entire business, is about as far out as someone can realistically develop a thesis. That is the sort of period in which an investment should have worked or not.

For thinking much farther ahead, fiction is an interesting way to express ideas. It can then feed back into the present. If the world might look a certain way in 50 years, what might the halfway point or a quarter of the way there look like?

Part of it is entertainment. Broken Money was nonfiction, while this book grew from a separate interest in narratives and concepts that would be enjoyable to explore.

Science fiction is sometimes more focused on technology or ideas than on character. I wrote something more character-driven. It is about what people are going through.

I still tried to give it a realistic background: what technology might look like in 45 or 50 years, and which political structures might remain or change. There are fantastical elements for the plot, but outside those categories I tried to make the setting reasonable.

Maggie Lake: It is fascinating to wonder whether science-fiction writers see the future, or whether society starts building a future influenced by those stories. Do you have that feeling when you read today’s headlines?

Lyn Alden: I do. I have joked that I write science fiction because it feels more normal than reality, which is not how it is supposed to be.

Although the book came out this year, it was in development for years and the idea goes back more than a decade. My instinct was to tone some things down. Looking at the present, sometimes I think I should have been more direct.

There are dystopias and, less commonly, utopias. Star Trek is closer to a utopia. Conflict creates stories, which helps explain the prevalence of dystopian settings.

My world is intentionally messy: our world extrapolated through technology and related social changes. One example is people naturally distrusting video. Strange things happen, and people are unsure whether what they saw was real.

AI media and trust

Lyn Alden: Even in that world, safeguards exist. A device could take a photograph and cryptographically sign it, establishing that it came from a particular device. Investigators might be able to authenticate evidence, but people have only so much attention for that process.

There is so much noise that people’s worlds may shrink. Before technologies such as the telegraph, most people were confined to their communities, travel was rare and information moved slowly.

In the 20th century, video and communications connected the world. For a period, it was easier to capture and share video than to convincingly fake it. People could agree more readily on what had happened, even if they disagreed about its implications.

There was also more trust in institutions and the media. Now AI reduces video’s usefulness as straightforward proof, while trust in governments, institutions and authorities has declined.

People ask whether something happened and, if it did, whether its importance has been exaggerated or minimized. They wonder why an algorithm selects one event out of 10. Is it the most important, or is attention being directed away from something else?

That clutter can draw people back toward local concerns because the wider information environment feels confusing and distressing. I think technology has contributed to that trend.

Maggie Lake: A fascinating conversation, Lyn. Thank you for sharing your thoughts across so many subjects.

Lyn Alden: Thank you for having me.

Sources

[1] Federal Reserve Board, Does the Federal Reserve own or hold gold?, updated November 5, 2024. Treasury ownership, certificate mechanics and the statutory $42.2222 valuation. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/does-the-federal-reserve-own-or-hold-gold.htm [2] Wealthion, The Treasury’s Gold Revaluation Play | Lyn Alden, published October 19, 2026. Complete stored interview transcript. Chapter list checked against Wealthion’s official podcast episode description. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xagpUfToyqA [3] 31 USC 5117, Transferring Gold and Gold Certificates, subsection (b), published by the Federal Reserve Board. Statutory limit on gold certificate valuation. https://www.federalreserve.gov/frrs/statutes/transferring-gold-and-gold-certificates.htm [4] Colin Weiss, Official Reserve Revaluations: The International Experience, FEDS Notes, August 1, 2025. Reserve-transfer mechanisms and limits of using gains to address structural fiscal problems. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/official-reserve-revaluations-the-international-experience-20250801.html [5] Federal Reserve Board, What is inflation, and how does the Federal Reserve evaluate changes in the rate of inflation?, updated August 22, 2025. The 2% PCE objective and distinction from other price indexes. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/economy_14419.htm [6] Orange Juice, Introducing ORANGE JUICE, July 15, 2026. Company statement on founders, permanent ownership and a Bitcoin treasury, not independent evidence of investment performance. https://orangejuice.com/blogs/insights/introducing-orange-juice [7] Lyn Alden, About Lyn Alden, accessed October 27, 2026. Current professional roles and the title The Stolguard Incident. https://www.lynalden.com/about-lyn-alden/ [8] US Treasury, United States Department of the Treasury Announces New Appointment, October 9, 2026. Judy Shelton’s appointment as Counselor in the Office of the Secretary. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0654/ [9] White House, Rebuilding Our Military, fiscal year 2027 budget fact sheet, April 2026. $1.5 trillion proposed defense resources, not an enacted-spending figure. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/rebuilding-our-military-fact-sheet.pdf

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