Sunset Studio Sessions - Conspiracist or Realist? A Debate on Gold, Bitcoin and Investing for a Changing World Order
What does it mean to protect your clients' wealth in a world where governments are spending without restraint? This session from the Adviser 3.0 2026 conference puts two of the most compelling voices in alternative assets on stage together -- and lets them argue it out.Dan Parkinson, the Bitcoin IFA, traces his conviction to Lebanon, where he watched a currency lose 99.9% of its purchasing power in three years. Thomas Holl, Portfolio Manager at BlackRock responsible for several of the firm's gold strategies, came to his view more quietly: two decades of watching what governments actually do with money, not what they promise. Both arrived at the same destination by different routes -- the conviction that holding cash or nominal bonds amounts to a slow-motion loss of purchasing power, and that something else is needed.Moderator Laurentius van den Worm, Head of Investment Strategy at Timeline, keeps the debate honest. He pushes both guests on valuation (how do you price an asset with no cash flows?), regulatory risk (gold was banned before; could it happen again?), and the practical question every adviser in the room is asking: how do I actually get this into a client's portfolio?Dan makes the case for Bitcoin as a hedge against money printing, pointing to the relationship between Fed balance sheet expansion and Bitcoin returns, a four-year cycle with a 99.8% success rate over any holding period, and the argument that at roughly five percent global adoption, we are still in the early adopter phase. Thomas positions gold as a zero coupon inflation-protected perpetual bond with zero issuer risk -- and explains why central bank buying doubled after 2022.They don't agree on everything. But on the things that matter most to advisers thinking about portfolio construction in an era of fiscal excess, they're closer than the title suggests.
