Aleks Svetski, Founder of Amber: Why The Bitcoin Price Is Wrong

Aleks Svetski is the founder of Amber. In this conversation, Aleks and Anthony Pompliano discuss Bitcoin maximalism, the intolerant minority, why Bitcoin's community is so important, how investors should view the asset, and why the world hasn't priced Bitcoin properly yet. BLOCKFI-----BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. CRYPTO. COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine. Visit coinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world. ETORO-----This episode of Off the Chain is sponsored by eToro, the smartest crypto trading platform, and one of the largest in the world. Join 11 million other traders and create an account at etoro.com and build your crypto portfolio the smart way.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Alex Zvetzky is the founder of Amber. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin maximalism, the intolerant minority, why Bitcoin's community is so important, how investors should view the asset, and why the world hasn't priced Bitcoin properly yet. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. Skrt skrt. Wanna know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right, Crypto.com. They're a crypto platform with one goal: motherf***ing mass adoption.

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment. Everything you could want at Crypto.com. Go help your boy out, tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit Crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and wifi? All you gotta do is go to CoinMine.com, you buy a coin mine, it's like an Xbox or a Playstation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right, you purchase it, it shows up at your doorstep, you pull it out of the box, you plug it in, connect to your wifi, five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin.

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide, and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis. Kinda like how Tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software. Just your update in your coin mine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right, go to CoinMine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later. As many of you know, crypto investors store their digital assets on exchanges or in cold storage for long-term safekeeping. However, this strategy doesn't help them grow their investment holdings or build overall wealth. With the new BlockFi interest account, users can now securely store their Bitcoin or Ether at BlockFi and receive 6% Annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency. 6% is an absurdly high rate.

• 2:15Anthony Pompliano?

  It's the best rate in the industry. I highly suggest you go check out blockfi.com/pomp. Again, that's blockfi.com/pomp to sign up and start earning crypto today. If you follow Bitcoin and crypto, you've probably heard of eToro. They're the world's number one social trading platform, and I love it. They've got more than 10 million other traders that love it, too. And guess what? They just launched in the United States. eToro offers access to the world's most popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others. With the smartest trading tools and the ability to connect with the best traders around the world, there's no better place to build your perfect portfolio. If you're new to Bitcoin and crypto, you can test the waters with their $100,000 virtual trading feature. But if you're more experienced, you can create custom technical charts

• 3:00Anthony Pompliano?

  and use eToro's social feeds to inform your trading decisions. They've got transparent fees, and so you never miss out. They also have an easy-to-use application available on iPhone, Android, or any web browser. You can get started today in just a few clicks at etoro.com. Again, that's etoro.com. Get VIP access to Bitcoin and crypto markets today.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:47Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys, bang, bang. I've got Alex here. I'm super excited to do this. He's got a bunch of crazy ideas about where the world's going. So thanks so much for taking the time to do this.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Thank you, bro. Thanks for having me. My first time in New York, so. Great way to kick off.

• 4:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, first time ever?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  First time ever.

• 4:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, we're gonna have to tell you all kinds of cool things to go do.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Sweet.

• 4:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, all right, let's start with uh your background. You live in Australia now, but kinda what did you do pre Bitcoin?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Uh, I was um, I I had a crazy background, so I I um, I came out of uni um, and I I dropped out second year trading the um, trading the markets in in two thousand and seven. So I thought I was a genius. I started off by putting my three grand worth of scholarship money in the markets around early twenty two thousand and seven. Um, within about six months, I turned three grand into sixty. I thought I knew everything. Um, I thought I was gonna be a millionaire by the time I was twenty. Um, and then the pre GFC tremors happened and I, but but my my plan was to be a millionaire by the time I was twenty. I was a quarter of a million in debt by the time I was twenty. So I I went the opposite way.

• 4:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, it it's funny because I think a lot of young people, uh, there's very similar stories, right? I I know Chris Saka had a similar story to that. Um, I was lucky in that I took a little bit of money, turned it into a lot more trading uh foreign currencies in college.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 5:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, lost about half of it, but was still up and walked away.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 5:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, thankfully, but but I think that that is um a a starting point for a lot of people is they realize, um, you know, you kinda learn by getting thrown into the fire a little bit.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, that was the catalyst. So I I dropped out of uni because at that point in time I had to um, I I had to make fifteen hundred bucks a week just to pay my bills before I could eat. So I literally, the only thing I could, the only job I could get on short notice was knocking on doors, like selling pay television door to door. And I would put four fucking tuna cans, so two two tuna cans in each pocket, and I would sprint from door to door and I would only eat if I got a sale.

• 5:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. I love it.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  And and I dug my way out of debt over about a year of doing that. Then I set up my own sales company and then I sort of built myself up from there. I built a um, a renewable energy business that was installing solar panels and shit on people's houses. Cause I had an engineering background, so I can uh, you know, in, design the systems and all that sort of stuff. And and I I made my first million by the time I turned like twenty two, twenty three, and that was sort of my my claim to fame in the early days. And um and then I got my second big lesson in life, which was um, which was don't trust uh the government. Um and ba- basically in the industry that I was in, they were handing out uh rebates and shit to everybody, right? Um and i- it effectively worked. If if a customer bought a ten thousand dollar system,

• 6:29Speaker 02

  uh four thousand would be paid by the customer and roughly six thousand would come through these uh renewable energy certificates, which were effectively the the government funding element. Um the government towards right the end of the um of the scheme, they sort of uh three weeks out said, oh, look, if if um we're ending the rebate in three weeks, if you don't sign up um in three weeks, you miss out. And everyone went fucking gangbusters. Like, we signed up maybe five or ten million dollars worth of systems in like a couple of weeks. Like, we we we thought we fucking nailed it and we're like, all right, sweet. You know, we'll have to transition. The market's gonna be slower, but we've got enough systems to last us for a while. And anyway, we went and installed all those systems. And in that ten K chunk, there's probably about ten fifteen percent margin left in that.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  When it came time to pay out the the six grand, the government component, we um everyone got fifty cents on the dollar. So, well, they ran out of money. Uh basically, that that's the easiest way to put it. So so we went from having profit on every job to every job being a fucking loss. And the more jobs you did, the the more you lost. So that was my second big thing. So I I lost a shitload of money there. Um I I, you know, the I then went on a sabbatical. The the thing that saved me during that period was after the market crash in, you know, twenty eight, um two thousand eight, I really went down the the the gold, silver and, you know, monetary sort of um stuff. And I I had bought like some gold and silver because I was convinced the world was coming to an end. Um I was half a fucking prepper

• 8:00Speaker 02

  whilst I was still doing the solar stuff. So so it was just, it was a really interesting period. So I got fucked with that and then I ended up going on the sabbatical. Man, not many people know this, but I actually became a vegan for like, for like a year and a half. Um, I went like.

• 8:13Anthony Pompliano?

  That's not allowed in Bitcoin, but go ahead.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  I know, I know. Well, here's the thing, I was curious enough to try it and I actually came out of that knowing that that is the fucking dumbest way to eat. Like, it is absolutely categorically the worst way.

• 8:25Anthony Pompliano?

  When did you do this? For how long?

• 8:27Speaker 02

  This was in twenty twelve through to about twenty thirteen.

• 8:31Anthony Pompliano?

  So almost a year.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, oh, well, call it, I, I started being vegan just before twenty twelve and I finished like sort of coming into twenty fourteen. So it was about a year and a half that I was.

• 8:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so I was vegetarian for five months or so in twenty, ah, it's probably twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, maybe twenty seventeen.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 8:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, I actually never felt better in not eating meat. But it was unsustainable because I lost so much weight and I just couldn't, I just like couldn't make it.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  This, this is where plant-based works. Plant-based works if you wanna cleanse, or if you wanna clear out some shit, okay? But it is very, very bad for hormones, for hormone regulation, for muscle and for nutrient density. So what happens is, so I, I actually, Matt was giving me shit last night because when I went vegan, I wanted to write a book about it and show that you could actually build muscle and do all this sort of shit being a vegan. And for the first six months, I felt fucking incredible. My energy was better, my skin was better, my, like, all this sort of stuff. So I thought I found the holy fucking grail. So I started doing this thing, but over time I plateaued. And then after I plateaued, all my, my strength started to come down, my hormones started to get all fucked up.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  My, you know, my fuck started losing hair, I was getting flabby, all this sort of shit started to happen over time because what happens is your hormones, um, misregulate. So when I started eating meat again, so I was convinced by this dude, um, cause I was living in Bondi at the time, which is sort of like health mecca in, um, in Australia. And he sort of snuck some lamb into one of my vegan meals, the motherfucker. And um, and I went from there to eating some eggs and then I don't know if I can say this on the podcast, but I'm gonna fucking say it anyway. Dude, when I started eating some um, some meat again, I had a, I had a fucking boner for three weeks.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Remove that, but I swear to God, like I, my home, like I went back to from benching, I was like, I used to bench two hundred and twenty pounds and I went down to like a hundred and twenty pounds and then I went back to two hundred and twenty pounds within three weeks. Like, I wanted to have sex with every girl that I saw, I wanted to beat the shit out of every guy that I saw, like, I, and I was like, shit, this is what I was missing out on.

• 10:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  And, and so that's where meat is really important. It's nutrient density, it's hormones and it's um, it's, it's fucking strength, it's groundedness.

• 10:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Which you don't get in um, in, in being vegan. So, anyway, um, coming back to the journey, so that was a minor, minor detour. Um, I, I'd heard about Bitcoin at this stage, but I dismissed it. Um, because I was too involved in thinking that the world was coming to an end and I was stockpiling gold, silver, I was, you know, fucking buying solar panels and batteries and prepping, you know, for, for, for the end of times. And um, anyway, after that whole sabbatical, I um, I came back to Australia and um, and I, I spent some time in Singularity University.

• 11:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  In um, in, in SV, um, in about twenty fourteen and I was like, holy shit, tech is the way. Came back, I built some payroll automation software, exited that, um, and then built up this um, this recruitment automation software. Um, I got Steve Jobb out of my own business. Um, I um, I disagreed with the way the board wanted to run the company and all this sort of shit, so I moved on. And that was sort of my foray into Bitcoin. So twenty sixteen was when I really like went down the rabbit hole.

• 11:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and what was the initial interest there, right? So you, so you heard about it before, you dismissed it.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 11:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And we were talking before we started, uh, I had a very similar uh, journey, I think, but what was the thing that really threw you down the rabbit hole? And you're like, hey, I gotta check this out, see if this is real.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  If, if I boil it down to like the, the, the hook was the price. I saw the price, I was like, holy shit, I was like, this is six hundred dollars now. Like, the last time I'd heard about it, it was like a hundred and fifty or whatever it was, and I was like, Fuck me, like I I've just busted my ass working and doing all this sort of stuff. And I could have just put some money into this thing and gone to the Bahamas. So that was my initial hook. And then I I need to give credit where credit's due, like um I I don't agree with many of Andreas Antonopoulos's stuff these days, where he talks about fucking everything's gonna have a token, everything's gonna have a coin. But his initial talks, cuz cuz I I've got a background also in, you know, psychology, I studied anthropology, history and all this sort of stuff. And the way he presented Bitcoin just really, really lined up with my background and the way I think about things.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  And yeah, man, I like his his works, his talks, um I I went down that rabbit hole. Then, you know, obviously Saifedean's stuff, um I'll give some credit to to Tone Vase as well. Like he was um he was like one of those intolerant Bitcoiners that, you know, wouldn't, you know, it was Bitcoin or, you know, shitcoin, basically.

• 12:58Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, show the shirt. He brought he brought a shirt to uh to really get people all uh all upset. It says Bitcoin not shitcoin amber.app. So uh we'll we'll get that out there because uh he he wanted to uh to make sure that everyone knew where this conversation was going early on.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 13:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, all right. So let's talk a little bit about uh Bitcoin maximalism. And for those that are listening at home, we've got the uh the live stream going on Twitter right now. So there may be some people who jump in with some questions that we take as well. Um, but Bitcoin maximalism is uh generally um associated with a negative connotation. Uh, it's toxic, it it's tribalism, it's all these things. Just talk a little bit about how you think about Bitcoin maximalism um and and why you actually think it's important versus it being something negative.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Yep. Well, I've got a friend of mine and shout out to Rory Highside here. Um, he he coined the term, which I loved, which is Bitcoin supremacy. And and that is like literally, it it's beyond maximalism. It is, we don't even recognize anything other than Bitcoin. Um, to to and the reason I think this is important is um. We have a chance at creating a monetary network and a new money that is robust, that is um secure, that is um that is available, that is fixed. I think the fixed element is so fundamentally important because if you look at what money is supposed to represent, money is supposed to represent your work or your input into a society.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  And work, input and time are all fixed constants in the universe. And what we've got in today's society and in everything that we've had in the past is we've not been able to map work or time or effort put into society directly to money when money is supposed to be the measurement of those things. We've now created something that literally represents that. And by definition, um you know, if we're talking about digital scarcity and fixed uh fixed digital unit,

• 15:02Speaker 02

  we've got that now and all of our energy, all of our time, all of our efforts should be going into uh making that stronger and bringing that to more people. So for me, um I see this as a um a multi-decade, multi-generational shift that, you know, people are going to move towards the um the strongest form of money because of their own self-interest. When you do work, like people fundamentally value their time, they value their work, they value what they're doing. They're not going to want to long term represent that time or value or work in any unit other than the one with the greatest guarantee of um uh I guess

• 15:42Speaker 02

  supply, security, um uncensorability, unconfiscatability, the things that Bitcoin represents. And that's all the shit that Bitcoin has optimized for outside of um what every other shitcoin or crypto or anything like that has gone and tried to optimize for, whether it's fast payments, whether it's, you know, the the stupid world computer or whatever other fucking idea that people have taken and tried to um use the Bitcoin recipe for. So coming then back to Bitcoin maximalist is the intolerant minority that they represent, so the the the cohort of people that they represent.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Are um, I was talking, I was talking to Matt Odell um about this last night and we we kind of used the the example of the B cashers.

• 16:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  I don't know about you, but every B cashier that I've ever spoken to, a a lot of the things, a lot of the ways that they view Bitcoin are correct until you sort of get to like the scaling debate and you know how, you know, that they misinterpret um what uh the definition of cash is and the the dangers around really centralizing nodes and all of that. But um, the thing that you'll note about B cashers is most of them, if not all of them, hedge themselves by holding some Bitcoin. Whereas you look at the Bitcoiners, they dumped all of their fucking Bitcoin cash. They dumped any other fork. So that intolerant um ability to stick with what you believe in is really unique to the

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Bitcoin group and the Bitcoin maxis because we come from a core of people who will not compromise, who will not, you know, uh adjust our values just because it sounds nice or because, you know, so you know, we're gonna be hurting somebody's fucking feelings or any of that sort of stuff. It is literally Bitcoin, Bitcoin's consensus rules, and that's it. That we we will not waver from that. And the reason that's important is because this is a movement. This is lit- we are, this is the revolution of our time. We're we're separating money from state. The last revolution that happened of this magnitude was the separation of church and state. And that was, you know, the the emergence of science in the Renaissance, you know,

• 17:54Speaker 02

  four, five hundred years ago, like that is a big fucking deal.

• 17:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, one of the things that I I definitely think people misunderstand, right? So I talk all the time, I say, look, money's a belief system. And uh most people will agree with that to to some degree. Um and if money is a belief system, then money ends up looking very similar to religion, right? And so if you look at the US dollar, literally, um, you know, uh, in God we trust, right? The full faith and backing of the government, all all of these things are uh inherent to money and they have been for a very long time. It would make sense that people have a very uh Zealot or religious like view towards the next money, right?

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 18:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Which is Bitcoin. And in that situation, I think what you're basically describing is a very, in some people's eyes, fanatical approach to those ethos, to that belief. And saying, look, this is what we believe, and if we believe this, we're not willing to compromise. We're not willing to waver from this.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 18:56Anthony Pompliano?

  This is what we believe in, therefore we are here to defend it both. Kind of in the way that we talk about it, but also to attack the ideas that are that go against.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Correct. Well, it feels fanatical to people because people don't appreciate how important money is in society. Like, you know, we've been sort of taught over time that, oh, money is the root of all evil. Um, you know, money is just for these dickheads who are selfish and all this sort of stuff, right? But if you take a moment to think about it, if money is the tool that literally holds the fabric of society together. You cannot have society without money. You remove that element, society falls apart because if if we define society as a collection of inputs from a collective of participants. The only way these participants can collaborate and build a society is by performing some sort of function or work within a society.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  And that function or work needs to be measured through some form of unit. And that unit is money. So you cannot have it. So you cannot have society without money. So if we, if any of the people listening to this or anyone hearing this values anything that you have in life, it's because money actually exists. That's it. Now, the reason why people are so fervent about, you know, something like Bitcoin is because now for the first time in history, we've got a way to represent money that is that is uncompromisable. That is so fucking important because when you can fix that layer. Um. You can really start to um build a world that is incentivized appropriately.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  I E. In today's day and age, I always use this example when I try and explain to people why Bitcoin's really important. In today's day and age, if you're a government or if you're a central bank, you basically have, you you can play the game where it's um I flip a coin, heads I win, tails you lose. In other words, they can make a bet, and if they make a good bet, they um they make money. If they make a bad bet, they make money. You and I, in the real world, we go out there and you you make a good bet and you make a good decision. By and large, you know, not not counting for randomness, you get a good outcome. You do fucking something stupid, you get a bad outcome, right? That that is the corrective mechanism of all of life, of all of physics, of all of science, right? Only in the monetary system do you have a situation where

• 21:19Speaker 02

  one, the the vast majority of society has to abide by those rules. Do something smart, get a good result. Do something dumb, get a bad result. Whereas a small subset of society can do whatever the fuck they want, and they get a good result irrespective. And then that starts to create distortions in society. So when you can separate money and state, which is gonna be the, I guarantee that is the battlefront of today's day and age. When you can separate those two and make money a fixed constant that is uncompromisable, unconfiscatable, and unable to be censored by anybody, you have a society where the only way to earn more of that resource is by performing more work, adding more value, or doing more for society.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  That's it. You don't have any other fucking way. So therefore, the only way for you to um to excel in life or to move forward is by adding value to society. Or the alternative is you fucking steal. But you know, the the beauty of a society like that is you can build, you know, property rights into it such that, you know, the deterrent to steal is large enough, such that people's incentive is to add value and to produce. Because that is how fucking um, that that is how society should function, so.

• 22:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and I think part part of this, right, is um if you think out at every single country, they all have different monetary policies, they all have different governments, and one of the things that I've always uh found. Interesting slash confusing is if you and I are trading and we're going to denominate that trade or settle that trade, a lot of times, I don't know what you're doing with your currency if you're a different country, you don't know what I'm doing with mine. And therefore, we're trying to make a one-time trade where it's basically like a spot price, right? Okay, here's where the currency is, let's make this transaction. But if you get into more longer-term type relationships where I could easily manipulate my currency, you can easily manipulate yours, you end up getting this financial engineering game, right? It's not true value.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Quicksand, it's quicksand. Literally, we're living in a time of monetary quicksand where nobody knows what the fuck is going on. And do you know what? It's not only that we don't know what the other person's doing, we actually have no idea what we're doing. So there's a, there's a branch of complexity theory called systems thinking. And I, and I recommend everybody look into some system thinking and start to understand how this happens. But effectively, you've got a system which is complex and you have a set of inputs and outputs. And when you perform, when you add some sort of input into a system, it's very, very difficult, almost nigh on impossible in a complex system, to understand what the ramifications are going to be on this side. And that's what we've got with markets today, and that's what we've got with central banking

• 23:59Speaker 02

  and the, and the current system is, we're literally playing games with shit we don't understand. We're like, oh, what if we press this button here? What the fuck's that gonna do? Oh, it fucking just did this, this, this, which we wanted it to do, but here's another 10,000 side effects that we weren't expecting. Oh, now how do we fix those side effects? Oh, well, let's push this button here. And then that fixes a couple of those and then creates another 5,000 side effects. So we've got this game of like cat and mouse where we're continually adding fragility to the system to the point where the shit's gonna blow up in our face.

• 24:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, it's, I, I think what you're really talking about here is anytime that the system goes to structurally correct, right? So there are, just like in any system, where there's a market, markets can get overheated or underheated, right? And so.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  The normal functions.

• 24:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, what we have seen is when those markets go to correct, central bankers. Step in artificially to try to correct it. Now, there is an argument to be made, a moral, ethical, and more a societal argument that says any sort of downturn in an economy can be incredibly painful and can hurt a lot of people, right? So there's that piece of it. The other side of that argument is, but it is normal and it is better for the long-term sustainability of the system.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Correct. So let's talk about why it's normal. Actually, I was at an Airbnb in Palm Springs the other day for Crypto Springs. And I was talking to the Airbnb host there and he was sitting there telling me, oh, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, recessions are bad and, you know, we need to avoid recession, all this sort of stuff. And I was like, why are recessions bad? Let's take the idea of a downturn and the idea of a break and apply it to a situation outside of markets. Because this constant chase to avoid recession, to avoid pain, I think is one of the root problems with society today. We are all chasing the next fucking high, the next hit, the next bit of, you

• 25:55Speaker 02

  know, dopamine released happiness, because we're so afraid to experience a bit of lull, a bit of pain, or a bit of downtime. So if you, like, let's say you go to the gym, right? You go and train, you go and lift fucking weights. What do you do between sets?

• 26:10Anthony Pompliano?

  You rest.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  You rest. You stop for a minute. The whole nature functions in this way. One must, when you exert, when you move up, you must take a moment to rest. You have to take a moment. There needs to be intervals. You cannot move in a single direction forever. That is not how nature functions. That is not how the universe functions. Nothing else in the world functions like that. And we've become addicted to this idea that everything must move up and in a, in a, in a single direction, as if downturns or recessions are bad. Recessions, downturns, breaks, you know, opportunities to reflect one of the most important functions of any system, because they allow you

• 26:55Speaker 02

  to take a moment to breathe and to realize.

• 26:57Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a return back to kind of the average, right, if you will. And so the average is there for a reason. But what I think becomes more More interesting is when these central bankers step in and they try to manipulate the economy in a way to prevent those downturns, right? So they drop interest rates, they print money, all the things that we know that they do. Uh, what they're really doing is not fixing the structural issues or allowing the market to um find a point of equilibrium. What they're doing is they're kicking the can down the road.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  They're kicking the can down the road and they're they're increasing the um the deviation from the mean. So so so when the time comes to rebalance, it's going to be all the more painful. So what we're doing is we're sacrificing, this comes back to the um to the uh. Uh, what do you call it? The um the incentive mechanism that I was talking about earlier. In today's day and age, the world we live in today, the incentive is to value today more than tomorrow.

• 27:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Whereas the incentive in a Bitcoin ecosystem is to value tomorrow greater than today is to have a lower time preference. This is a meme that's going around now. So by valuing today more than tomorrow, we continually kick the can down the road. And we're creating a situation where our children and our children's children are gonna have to bear a debt. Or they're gonna have some sort of shit blow up in their face, all because we were too stupid, too weak and too impatient um to want to, you know, go in and actually fix the stuff that we've messed up.

• 28:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, it it's the whole idea of uh, it's like drinking, right?

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Exactly, it's drinking or drugs.

• 28:27Anthony Pompliano?

  When you when you drink the first beer, it tastes really good, you know, like, man, I I really miss having a beer. I want to have a second one, then you have a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and next thing you know, you're drunk. And when you're drunk, it's amazing. You feel like you're on top of the world, right? No one can stop you, etc. Where you feel the negative effect is the next morning when you're hung over.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Dude, I I'm gonna say it's even more like drugs, actually. You you take a drug, you feel high. You get you come down and you want to get that high feeling again, so you take another drug, you take another drug. And then all of a sudden you become addicted. And the only way to quit is by fucking stopping. And that's it. It's the only way you're gonna get better, because if you continually get high forever, you're just gonna kill yourself at some point. And that is exactly what, like, we are living in an economy in a time where everyone's high. Like, literally, we're all high on dopamine, we're all, the markets are high. Real estate's high, everything's high, everyone's on drugs, like we're so extended that, um, you know, we, we need a rebalancing, that, that, just the problem is going to be, and unfortunately, for most people, that, um, rebalancing is going to be really, really painful

• 29:30Speaker 02

  because we've moved so far away from the mean, that, um, it's going to be hard to, um, to manage that reversion in a sensible manner.

• 29:36Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Let's go deeper on this idea of the intolerant minority that you were talking about. Describe what that is and what the importance is.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  So, so Taleb talks about that in, um, I'm pretty sure that's in Skin in the Game, um, in his book, and he, and he talks about how intolerant minorities are the drivers or the catalysts for movements and for, for broad-based changes because they will not compromise on any values or anything that they believe in. Um, so he uses an example of like kosher food, for example. It is much easier for a large-scale food manufacturer to make all of their food kosher, because you and I, we may or may not be Jewish, whatever the case is, we will eat kosher food. But people who are Jewish will not eat kosher food. So instead of making two lines, what they do is they just make all the food kosher,

• 30:26Speaker 02

  because then they can cater for everyone. And that is as a result of catering for the intolerant minority. The same thing's going to happen here is we, we've got this intolerant minority of Bitcoiners who are true to the sanctity of what Bitcoin represents, which is an uncensorable, unconfiscatable, uninflatable form of money. So, a, and, and the reason we're so intolerant about that is because we've spent the time to sit down and understand what money represents. Most people haven't done that. Most people just.

• 30:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I recently tweeted, I said, on a percentage basis, of percentages, uh, there are more people on crypto Twitter who understand what money is than people on Wall Street.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I'm gonna say, I'm gonna nuance that and I'm gonna say Bitcoin Twitter.

• 31:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Because, yeah, because literally, I don't think many people on crypto Twitter actually understand what money is. Most people on crypto Twitter, I think, take a technologist's viewpoint of what this thing is. I believe Bitcoin is a monetary phenomenon, not a technological phenomenon. Although they're inextricably linked, the monetary phenomenon here is where the game is at.

• 31:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so this is an idea that I actually haven't talked about publicly yet, but behind closed doors, I've been talking more and more about with companies that we're invested in or other investors, which is a lot of what we're seeing here. The winners are not going to be technological innovations, right? It is actually going to be what I call, not a network effect, but a liquidity effect, right? And that a liquidity effect essentially is, you know, take Bitcoin. You could have somebody else recreate every single technical component of Bitcoin and launch it tomorrow. The problem is that they don't have the quote-unquote liquidity in the supply and demand of people who want to hold it or people who want to use it. And therefore, that liquidity effect is actually what the defining feature is, not the technical effect.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Now, exactly. So, okay, so I'm gonna nuance that argument a little bit because I talk about that when I explain why Bitcoin is the only game in town in this space. Is, step one, the first thing that another network cannot replicate with respect to Bitcoin is you cannot replicate the life, the period of time, that how Bitcoin was launched, the initial holders, libertarian movement, the disappearance of Satoshi, and everything that happened at that point in time. Bitcoin's initial dismissal by the world, people thinking that, oh, mining is a fucking joke and all this sort of stuff. Bitcoin is successful now because it was initially dismissed. And that period of time, you cannot replicate.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  There is, it is actually physically impossible to go back in time and to produce the same run. So that's the first piece.

• 33:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and it grew in the shadows, is basically what you're talking about, right?

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Nobody can go and replicate that because none of us, like, this isn't fucking Back to the Future, right? We can't go and jump in, you know, we're not Marty McFly and we can't go and replicate that future again with something else. So that's the first piece.

• 33:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Marty Benton might be Marty McFly, I don't know.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe, maybe. If anyone can do it, it's him. But that's the first piece. So now, once we've ticked that box... Because of those elements, Bitcoin now has the most liquidity. And if we look at what money is, money is supposed to be the most liquid good on the face of the planet. It is the good against which we price everything. So you you've got this what's called a convergent network effect, which is the more liquid a money is, um, the more liquidity it starts to draw in. Because people want to have or hold the money that is the most liquid. Now, the more, so so basically liquidity attracts more liquidity. And and now that Bitcoin is already um, the the size and the degree to which it is.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  For every year that Bitcoin grows, any other shitcoin, even if they somehow manage to solve or create their own initial complex method of growth, like, you know, their fucking founder disappeared or whatever. It would take them ten years to catch up for every year that Bitcoin grows. So so it's too late, the train has already taken off. Those kind of network effects you cannot catch. So you've got this convergent network effect happening. You've got this liquidity reinforcing um, happening. And you've got this unique um, uh, what uh, Gigi, who um, who wrote the twenty one lessons, he calls it this immaculate conception. Is that it happened once, we ain't gonna fucking repeat that. Furthermore, you've got digital scarcity, which is a one time event. That's another thing.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  And then you've got these this optimization for the objective attributes that Bitcoin has, which is it optimizes for uncensorability, for uninflatability, for unconfiscatability. Those objective attributes help reinforce the belief system around Bitcoin being a superior money. Because we've got objective attributes of Bitcoin that we can all agree to. Much like why gold became a better form of money than iron or copper. It was an inert metal, it was scarcer, it was harder to produce, it was more recognizable. All of these objective attributes or elements about it. So all of these reasons together mean that Bitcoin is in a position where it cannot be beaten. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe six or seven years ago. You know, maybe even five years ago.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  It's too late, the ship's sailed.

• 35:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, well, so in in part of this too is not only the Bitcoin was able to grow in the shadows, but one of the things that Uh, I think about a lot is uh, the lack of selfishness that Satoshi Nakamoto had, right? You know, there are, at least I'm not aware of a single token cryptocurrency, etc. That has been created yet, where we don't know who created it.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Correct, and it never will be, and it never will be. That's the thing, because thi- this was done. Now, anyone who does produce it, in order to cover your tracks the way that Satoshi did, we don't live in a world like that anymore. That was, it was a one-time event. It happened then because it was able to happen then. This ain't gonna fucking happen again. You know, it happened right in the um, in the depths of the GFC. That shit ain't gonna fucking happen again. The timing, the, the period, the, the style, the way it was done, that was an immaculate conception, and it's all over. Game, game, set, match. Um, the other thing I'm also gonna mention there just quickly about um, what you just mentioned on Satoshi's, like benevolence, like the fact that he came in, he created this, and um, and he left.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  I, I, when you look at the Bitcoin community, and you look at the, you know, the so-called toxic maximalists, when you look at what they're doing and their intolerance to shitcoinery, their intolerance to this whole fucking blockchain crap that's going around, their intolerance to anything other than Bitcoin, they're actually, they're an extension of the service that Satoshi provided, which is, when I go out and tell people about Bitcoin, I'm doing it from a place of, yes, I wanna pump my own bags, in, you know, in one sense, you know, so there is that um, selfishness, you know, around it. But really what I'm doing is, I'm actually doing a service to this person and helping them avoid losing their fucking hard-earned time, money, and effort on investing in a shitcoin,

• 37:16Speaker 02

  or going down the path of blockchainery or shitcoinery, or all of that sort of stuff that doesn't matter. So I'm actually doing them a service. If you look at the, the Bitcoin community, especially those hardcore maximalists who get a lot of shit, those guys are the missionaries. They are the people. That are doing more service to people coming into the space than any other muppet that is out there trying to promote their own shitcoin or create their own shitcoin or sit there and do, you know, poo poo on bitcoin because they wanna sell their own, you know, agenda or their own thing.

• 37:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Like, these maximalists are literally doing the greatest service to the community and they're doing it whilst copping all of this heat, calling them toxic, calling them assholes, calling them dickheads. And and we sort of, we take that in, we're like, call us what you want. We will not fucking move from this line and we will maintain the standard. And at some point, you will come around and thank us for not deviating.

• 38:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and and I think if you, if you look pretty early on at most large, successful companies, um, there was a, uh, especially in technology, there was, um, a founder or a founding team that had a very principal or missionary based. Uh, they had a very low level of, uh, social skills a lot of times, um, which led to their assholes, they don't get it, they, you know, all this kind of negative, uh, feedback. Um, but they stayed very, very, very focused on what they were trying to build and why it was important. And that focus and that lack of deviation from that mission ended up leading to uh, significant impact outcomes, uh, on the world, right?

• 38:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that money is not only no different, it's probably just, uh, all of that stuff on a much greater scale.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Correct. It's so, it's so much broader. Like, I, I was trying to explain to someone the other week that, um, that the market that money represents is immeasurable. It is the biggest market. This is the biggest opportunity and the biggest market. I don't care, like, Apple, all of the tech companies, all of this shit pales in comparison because they're all measured through a monetary unit anyway. Like, so mu- money absorbs and encompasses all of it. It's so much fucking bigger. Like, to, to, to, to your point there that you just touched on, I always ask this question to people. Would you prefer an honest asshole or a polite liar?

• 39:36Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a great point.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  It is. It's one of the most like, and most people, believe it or not, they'll say an honest asshole, but in real life, they'll hang out with polite liars.

• 39:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep, for sure.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  And, and that is a fucking shame because that's again, another function of the world we live in, which is everyone is too, um, too afraid to be called out, too afraid to be butthurt, too afraid to be, you know, um, to be confronted with reality. So we go and, you know, placate ourselves and placate those around us with what may not be outright lies, but, um, you know, uh, we, we meander around points, we soften things, you know, we do all this sort of stuff just to sound.

• 40:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's not true just in crypto or Bitcoin, right? That's true across all of society.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  And, and that's why people in the Bitcoin space come off so, you know, quote unquote, toxic or like assholes, because guess what? We're honest assholes.

• 40:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, it's, it goes back to the whole idea of like nomenclature and, and words really matter. Um, I usually talk about that in a sense of, uh, you know, when we go to war, we said we're going to go fight insurgents, not fight humans, right? When we sanction somebody, we don't talk about, we're going to censor them. We talk about, we're going to sanction them. Same thing here is you can say, hey, that person is toxic, or you could say that person refuses to say anything other than the truth, right? Those two things are not necessarily incompatible with each other. And also, if you were to say, uh, that person refuses to say anything but the truth, all of a sudden now, you might be much more attracted to listening to what that person has to say versus the negatively connotated, uh, that person's toxic or, or a maximalist.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. Well, do you know what I love about the Bitcoin community is that we take those memes anyway. So we take an insult, you know, initially maximalism was an insult from Vitalik, right? We took it and we've turned it into a powerful meme that we can, you know, that's a lightning rod through which, you know, Bitcoiners now, um, congregate around. Then the next one, oh, you're a toxic fucking Bitcoiner. Now we've taken that and we wear that shit with pride. Like you've seen Samson's caps, like we all walk around with that shit and we, we hold that with pride because we're not afraid of fucking words. Like it's the sticks and stones may break my bones, but, but, you know, names will never hurt me. It's like, we, we don't give a shit about that because we, you know, that, that's not, you can call us whatever names you want. We're here to do a service for the world and at some point in time you'll come around and you'll thank us not only for being

• 41:48Speaker 02

  intolerant, but you'll thank us for having the courage to remain intolerant despite the fucking insults and despite all that stuff.

• 41:54Anthony Pompliano?

  So one of the questions I get quite often, and I've got an opinion, but I want to hear yours first before I reveal mine, is if Bitcoin fails, can anything else succeed?

• 42:06Speaker 02

  I mean, if Bitcoin fails, what succeeds is basically 1984, George Orwell, fucking social credit system.

• 42:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  It is like, if we look at the way, like, let's go back to the cypherpunks. You know, the cypherpunks 20, 30, 40 years ago, whatever it was now, I think it's, you know, Jesus. It's, yeah, 30 something years ago, right? In the manifesto, like, and I'm going to really crudely paraphrase here, they were saying, "The world is becoming electronic, it's digitizing, and the more it does, the more the sanctity of privacy is going to be diminished." You know, the ability to communicate privately with someone across, you know, electronic networks or digital networks is going to be, it's going to be impacted because authorities or central parties are going to be running this stuff. So we need to create open encryption standards such that communication can remain private.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Furthermore, we need to create a form of money that can remain private and uncensorable, such that people can live in a free society when society starts to digitize and become electronic. That was the foresight. So Bitcoin's not a 10-year-old idea. Bitcoin is a 20, 30-year-old idea. It's always been around. So what they set out to do first, and we managed to crack the communicate, like, private communication first, obviously. That was a much easier problem to crack. The second problem was much harder, and obviously Satoshi cracked it in 2008, which is why it's so profound. And without that, the world that we're going to live in is literally the world that, um, that, you know, is described so well in the movies like Viva Vendetta or The Matrix,

• 43:42Speaker 02

  or, you know, George Orwell's book 1984, which is the...

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Let's look at it this way. If money is the resource through which we measure society and the resource through which, you know, your value and effort and energy is measured. And the resource through which you can trade and participate and actually, you know, buy other goods. If you live in a society where that is concentrated or able to be centralized and managed by someone, you, even if that someone is a good actor and, you know, wants the best for their people, you know, some benevolent dictator or whatever. You, you have a high degree of risk or you're in a very precarious situation where, let's say you like the wrong fucking thing, you say the wrong thing, your ability to participate in an economy is just simply switched off.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  You can't get on a bus, you can't buy food, you can't do fucking shit.

• 44:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, this is what we're seeing with the Chinese credit system, right? Which is essentially, imagine if you wanna take the express bus, but you're not allowed to because you came to work late today, so they're gonna force you now on the way home, you have to quote-unquote suffer, right, or be punished. You can't take the express bus, they have to take something else. That sounds like a really far-off, crazy, kind of like sci-fi-based world, but I don't think we're that far off.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Dude, it is happening right now. It is happening right now. There was, like, without Bitcoin, that is the world we get. And this is what I tell people is like, whilst, yeah, you know, we're all about, you know, making money with Bitcoin and the upside and all of that sort of stuff. What I'm more about, and we'll touch on this later, is the idea of collecting Bitcoin now, because it is the only free money that exists in this world. It is the only opt-out from a world that is, that is converging towards concentration and concentration in a manner that creates mal-incentives for those people who are running it. To do shit that may not be in the interest of freedom.

• 45:39Anthony Pompliano?

  So, all right, so before we get to that, though, one, one of the things I wanna talk about is this idea that.

• 45:46Anthony Pompliano?

  We are now seeing a showdown between corporations and countries over that control. Yep. Right? Yep, yep, yep. So we see deplatforming. Yep. We see censorship from many corporations, which was previously a nefarious activity reserved for governments. Yep. Right? Now corporations have gotten that ability because they own the platforms on which we're speaking. If governments and corporations are able to do this stuff, they end up competing over almost who can be worked, right? Who has more power? Who has more control? And this is where you see some of the stuff, I think, in the United States in the technology world of the who has anti-competitive behavior? Does somebody have a monopoly? Like, what monopoly does Facebook have? What has it a monopoly on attention? Yes. Right?

• 46:30Anthony Pompliano?

  It has a monopoly on a platform for speech. Yep. There's a lot of people who aren't comfortable with that. Yep. Right? And so I think that when you look at that, what we're talking about with Bitcoin is it's a way to bring back the monopoly on time, on money, on value, all this stuff. But we're doing it with from day one, it was designed in a way where it does not matter later on, if anyone wants to be nefarious, they cannot get control of the system. Skrt, skrt. Want to know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right. Crypto.com. They're a crypto platform with one goal: motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet.

• 47:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment. Everything you could want at crypto.com. Go help your boy out. Tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and wifi. All you gotta do is go to coinmine.com, you buy a coin mine. It's like an Xbox or a Playstation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right. You purchase it, it shows up at your doorstep, you pull it out of the box, you plug it in, connect to your wifi, five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide, and then you

• 47:55Anthony Pompliano?

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• 48:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Go check out blockfi.com/pomp. Again, blockfi.com/pomp to sign up and start earning interest on your crypto today.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  So you're touching a really interesting point. If we are seeing the corporations and the governments of the world censoring and doing all of this stuff with things that are just, you know, like social media for fuck's sake, which is nowhere near as important as money. What do you think they're going to do if they've got the same type of control over money?

• 49:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and they're doing it now, right? So like I continue to say this, and again, it sometimes it's unpopular. So I always caveat it with there are reasons and very strong arguments to be made for sanctions. Right? I am not in any way saying that I am against sanctioning. But if we were to go out and tell the United States people that we are going to cut off millions of people in another country, the citizens from the global financial system. I think there's a lot of people who'd be asking questions. Why are we doing that? How is that happening? What is their other alternative options? You know, how are those people going to get food, money? How are they going to make a living, survive all these different things? But what we do is when we sanction other countries, we are simply censoring them.

• 49:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And what we're doing, we're trying to apply pressure. We're engaging in economic combat, right? Or war in order to force or heavily incentivize the leadership of those countries to do things. You want them to do.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Yep, yep.

• 50:06Anthony Pompliano?

  So again, it's a completely rational position to take for the world's superpower and controller of the reserve currency.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Because it's the world we live in today.

• 50:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes, but the problem becomes the impact that it has below the leadership of that country can be devastating.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. And again, like, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and talk about, you know, what's right or wrong from a, you know, our people's freedom and all that sort of shit like that. That's, that is what it is. In the world we live in today, like, the US is the reserve currency and, you know, it is doing things, game theoretically, that makes sense for it to remain some sort of reserve currency. But the world that we're building on Bitcoin, and this is why I believe, you know, Bitcoin's so profound, is that we're reinventing a new world with its own economic system that doesn't have to, that doesn't need anything from the old world. So we can just build from scratch our own fucking way, irrespective of what the rest of the world is doing. And over time, people

• 51:06Speaker 02

  are gonna notice that what we're doing here functions better.

• 51:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  It looks nicer, it feels nicer, it's more equitable, it's free, the incentive systems, the incentives are aligned in a much more productive way, like all this. So people will come over.

• 51:21Anthony Pompliano?

  This goes to my whole theory that, and Parker Lewis, I think, from Unshined Capital said it perfectly. It's like gradually then suddenly, right? And I think a lot about this idea of, when we first started to develop a thesis around why is Bitcoin important to the world, you know, is this actually gonna last, is this sustainable, all this stuff. It was, people will trust software or algorithms, right, especially in a decentralized world, to store their wealth, right? And that was kind of step one. What we didn't realize, but now have come to the conclusion of, is it's not that you go from 100% in the legacy financial system to 100% in this Bitcoin and cryptocurrency system. No, what you do is you say, I'm 100% to 1, legacy system to new system. But you know what?

• 52:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I actually think this new thing's interesting. Let me put 1%, 5%, 10%, right? Some small number. And then you learn, and you spend time, and you see how it works. And you kind of become more familiar with it, more educated, more, it becomes less scary to you. Then you go from one, five, 10% to 25%, 50% to eventually, over a long period of time, it will be 100%, right? And so what you actually need is you need people first to make the binary, I'm open to putting some percentage. And then once they start with some percentage, even if it's 1%, then it goes to, okay, now how do we get from 1% to full more uh kind of wallet share, if you will, or wealth share?

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Okay, so that reminds me of, and I can't remember if it was Hayek or one of the other Austrian economists. He was like, you know, we need to create a money that is not owned by government that in some sneaky sort of way becomes the money that we all use. And if you look at Bitcoin, this is why I love Bitcoin's design and I feel like it's just so like perfect is Bitcoin's a monetary beast. And when someone says, you know, how is it going to become, you know, the reserve currency? Well, how? It's because through, through tapping into one of our strongest drives, i.e. greed or the desire for a better future, it is going to incentivize everybody around the world in some way, shape or form to participate

• 53:24Speaker 02

  or get some exposure to Bitcoin today. And as they do that, like I've, I've got a saying which I say, I came for the money and I stayed for the money, right? Which is I came for the money because I was, I wanted fucking gains, but I've stayed for the money because now I realize this is the money. And what's gonna, everyone's gonna go through that journey. Simple as that. They're gonna come in for the money. They're gonna come in for the incentive of a future return. And as they stay in it and as they go from 1% to 2% to 5% exposure, they're literally gonna get sucked into a monetary system that is superior to the system that they're currently in. And, and it's gonna do that all through initially tapping into greed and then over time

• 54:07Speaker 02

  uh delivering on the promise, which is survival. Like if you've read Richard Dawkins, Selfish Gene, right? It's, we are optimized for survival. We're a living fucking organism. And again, we increase our chances of survival through having our wealth stored in a more functional form. So, so it is. Th- th- this is why you just can't fucking beat it like and none of the governments or all this sort of stuff are gonna come close to it.

• 54:34Anthony Pompliano?

  So I want to talk about another idea that you have, which is this idea of collecting Bitcoin.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 54:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Um, I I know that there's a uh a saying or a meme that's really gone out there, um, which is uh stack stats. Right? And and maybe describe a little bit about what you mean by collect Bitcoin, um, and kind of how that compares to the stack stats meme.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  So Matt Odell and the guys, they came up with stacking stats and it was just, it is the best fucking meme. It sounds cool. Um, and it's a way that we can really brand Bitcoin as something cool, right? Um, what I've, what I've found though is I've started doing some talks around universities and everything around Australia. When I say stacking stats, sort of people like look at me like, fuck are you talking about, right? And um, and and what I've sort of started describing it with is um, is uh collecting Bitcoin. And and the the analogy that I give to people is um, is kind of like, imagine being alive 10,000 years ago. When we're still using shells and rocks to trade, you know, or to measure our value, um, to to to measure our value.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Um, you could have found a yellow shiny rock on the ground.

• 55:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  And exchanged it with someone for maybe a couple grains of salt or a few spices. Because that person would have looked at you and thought, what the hell am I gonna do with this yellow shiny rock? I can't eat it. I can't wear it. I can't drink it. I can't do anything with it. And you would have gone and traded that entire chunk of gold for a bit of salt. Because the rest of the world did not know how to price it, did not know how to value it.

• 56:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  We are at that point in time with Bitcoin right now. The rest of the world has zero idea what money is. They have zero idea how to value this new form of money. They have zero idea how to price it. Like what we're seeing in the market is not Bitcoin's value. What we see in the marketplace is people's perception of how to price a monetary instrument that is uncensorable, unconfiscatable, uninflatable. And there is very few people in the world that understand how to price that. So really, the game today. Is buying and let's even get rid of the word buying. The game today is collecting Bitcoin in the same way as you could have collected gold five thousand years ago, before anybody else knew what it was worth.

• 56:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep. Well, and part of this too, at least in my opinion, right, and this is purely my opinion, is if you look at gold and the appreciation that it experienced until nineteen seventy one, when we went off the gold standard, right? Since that day, it has appreciated over forty X, right? That's just price discovery. And part of that price discovery is what is gold worth? But some of that price discovery is also the depreciation of the US dollar, right? Against that asset. And so Bitcoin is gonna have both of those occur, right? It's gonna have the price discovery plus the depreciation of dollars. And so what you get is one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin, just like one ounce of gold is equal one ounce of gold forever, right?

• 57:31Anthony Pompliano?

  But you're gonna get the movement is actually on the US dollar side. The US dollar is volatile compared to Bitcoin. It's not that Bitcoin is volatile compared to the US dollar.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. And so you're actually gonna get two effects with Bitcoin. You're gonna get that effect, and you're also gonna get the discovery effect. So you're gonna get the demonetization of the US dollar effect, but I don't think that is gonna happen until the later half of Bitcoin. So the discovery element or the discovery period is literally the period of the world working out that we can have a money that is non-government issued that is superior to the money we have today. And once we've worked that out and it's broadly enough held, like once Bitcoin is past a million dollars a coin, at that point, you'll start to really see a flight towards getting out of fiat currencies and moving towards something like that.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  Because, I mean, let's, we touched on Libra before, and, you know, I really wanna just sort of mention that, like, when Libra came out, I was like, this is so bullish for Bitcoin, because what it did in one fell swoop, it did two things. Number one, it made

• 58:37Speaker 02

  For for the rest of the population of the world, it made the idea of a non sovereign issued money possible.

• 58:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  When people like with Bitcoin, people like, well, how how can you have money that's not issued by the government? But now that Facebook issued it, people like, oh, maybe you can. So all of a sudden, it made the idea feasible.

• 58:52Anthony Pompliano?

  This this goes with a buddy of mine who uh who I I gotta see if he's comfortable with me saying that he's when he said it, but just a friend of mine said to me. Uh, there's a lot of people who don't like Mark Zuckerberg. Nobody thinks he's dumb, right? So the fact that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and all this stuff was interested in a non sovereign issued currency. All of a sudden legitimized that idea.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, let let me say this right now is Facebook, Libra, Zuck, they're not interested in blockchain. They're interested in money. That is, this is the game, people. There there is no blockchain here. They're just using that as a buzzword. They're interested in money because this is the separation of money and state.

• 59:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm gonna I'm gonna blow your mind even farther than that. I'm I'm not even gonna say they're interested in money. What they, JP Morgan, HSBC, Wells Fargo, all these people announcing digital currencies. They're not interested just in money. They're interested in central banks. And the reason why is because today they're saying I'm gonna issue a digital currency. It is backed by either a commodity, a currency. Or a basket of currencies is pegged to something, right? So that's where the value comes from is my digital currency is backed by something else. But what I'm scared of in the future is that they're going to unpeg it. Now they have a digital currency. They control it and they're just a central bank. They can print all they want. And so they become central banks rather than just being uh in touch with the money.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, cor- correct. So so what I'm saying, when when I say money is I don't mean they're interested in making money, like they're making like dollar, dollar, dollar. I'm I'm saying they're interested in money, like the actual thing. Yeah, that's exactly what they're interested in, because that is the game right now. So.

• 1:00:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I call it the corporate central bank.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's it. Because like the way the world is trending at the moment is you've got, and we sort of touched on this before um we started the podcast is. You've got um a world that is increasingly moving towards what might look like Fed Coin, which is the USD. Um China Coin, which will be a digital yuan. You'll have Corporate Coin, which is like. To be Libra, Zuckbucks, and you'll have the one bastion of freedom that is the money that's owned by the people, which will be Bitcoin. And and people are gonna have an opportunity to, you know, you know, the the beauty of Bitcoin is that it's opt in and opt out. It doesn't care. You can do that anytime you want. I wonder how difficult it's gonna be to opt out of the other three. I get the feeling that it'll be

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  easier to opt out of something like Zuckbuck than it will be to opt out of a yuan, right?

• 1:01:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  You know, so so but but this this is literally gonna be the four different, you know, factions of the world is, um, you know, you'll probably have this whole social credit system, you know, communism under China. You'll have hopefully something a little bit freer in the US. You'll have something that is more um fast-paced, you know, technologically sort of driven in, you know, in in Facebook, but all inherently suffer from the same problem, which is this concentration of who runs the money. And the money is actually owned by a small subset of the cohort within that jurisdiction. Whereas Bitcoin is the one that is owned by the people, owned by everyone.

• 1:01:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I I I've watched one of our investors through recently and I said, what you have to understand is uh, just like in investing, doing something different and being right is where all the opportunity lies, right? And if you look at every single monetary um asset that we have today, and historically, they have all had one fundamental flaw, which is they can be debased.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:02:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And because they can be debased, that they can go on for very long periods of time, right? They can persist for decades, centuries, et cetera. But eventually they all fail because they can be debased away. Bitcoin is the first time that we have seen a globally adopted money that is non-debaseable, which can hopefully drive not just a short-term sustainability, but can actually drive a long-term sustainability and should be able to show, uh, and and in some cases cripple a lot of the currencies that are debasable because the flows will go to what has the longest term sustainable track record um or outlook.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Correct, cuz and and this kind Back to what we're saying before, the two phases, right, is we're in the Bitcoin discovery phase right now. So during the Bitcoin discovery phase, the incentive to get into Bitcoin is gains, you know? And and as we're doing that, we're actually strengthening the Bitcoin ecosystem. We're strengthening its security guarantee, we're strengthening its brand, we're strengthening its market capitalization. We're increasing its liquidity, we're doing all that sort of stuff. At some point in time, Bitcoin will be, the narrative will change and the incentive to buy Bitcoin is no longer going to be the gains. The incentive to buy Bitcoin is going to be the aversion to loss. Because at that point in time, it's going to be, I want to store my wealth in something that is uncensorable and unconfiscatable and uninflatable.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  So so so at every single point in Bitcoin's asymptotic life cycle, you have an incentive that is stronger than everything else in the market.

• 1:03:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  And tha- that's why it's unstoppable and it's unbeatable. Um, like, you you're not going to get, and and again, we're not going to replicate this. Now that the liquidity train is off, like, the the the brand train is off, the that initial immaculate conception is done, like, and you've got this intolerant minority who will not deviate, like, you don't have that anywhere else in anything that I've ever seen. Like, I was saying this to Adam Meister, I was saying, it, or or I can't remember who I was saying it to, actually. I was like, imagine if a brand today like an Apple had a cohort of millions of people running around doing podcasts, flying around the country, do- doing all this sort of stuff for something called Bitcoin.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Like, what the hell? Like, nobody has that kind of um, brand, like, uh, devotion or fervency.

• 1:04:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin's corporations' uh, annual expenses would be in the billions of dollars in order to get the same impact that this decentralized network with no marketing budget has, for sure.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  It's incredible. A- and and people, a- and and this is like, when you look at all of that, people, um, you know, wh- when people tell me, oh, Bitcoin's not a good investment, I was like, man, tha- and and this is why I believe like today Bitcoin is the most contrarian opportunity that exists today. Bitcoin is dismissed by the normal people, it's dismissed by the bankers, it's dismissed by the government, it's dismissed by block chainers, it's dismissed by crypto people, it's dismissed by all of these people, yet, when you look at the first principles, it is the strongest. Thing that exists today and as a result, it is the most contrarian bet. So the more is dismissed by all of these. It is literally that.

• 1:05:17Anthony Pompliano?

  It's literally that. Absolutely. Shout out Jason Williams who just joined. He's out here talking about Danny Dimes and Danny Bitcoin. Uh, we're going to be done by 12:30 just so everyone knows so we can go watch the New York Giants win another football game. Um, all right, getting back to the important stuff. Uh, Amber, let's talk a little bit about what you're building and how that fits into this whole idea of collecting Bitcoin.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Well, um, I have been talking to people for the last three and a half years now to just buy some Bitcoin and just, just buy some and shut up. Like literally that, that's sort of the, um, the message and you know, three and a half years ago, when I first started talking to people, it was still difficult, right? You know, like, you know, maybe Coinbase was sort of the app that you could go to, but, um, th- these days it is a lot easier and effectively one of my friends just said, why don't you stop talking about and, you know, build something that makes it easier? So I came up with the idea of, um, of Amber. I was like, all right, why don't we just round up people's spare change and invest it into Bitcoin? So that's sort of where it initially started. We've sort of moved more towards the, the dollar cost averaging meme and, you know,

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  move away from spare change and more just help people, um, uh, accumulate Bitcoin by downloading an app, linking their bank account, setting an amount, setting a frequency and getting exposure to Bitcoin in a manner that's sensible. Because like I, I, I like to transcend the idea of, you know, investing in Bitcoin is great, but most people are afraid of investing or don't understand the concept of investing. So how about we drive the meme of, you know, the, the variation of stacking stats that I was mentioning before, which is collecting Bitcoin, which is today, it's not, it's not even about investing in Bitcoin. Today it's literally about collecting Bitcoin. You're collecting Bitcoin because the rest of the world has not priced it yet. And by the time the rest of the world prices it, you're not going to be paying 10 grand for a Bitcoin. You're going to be paying millions for a Bitcoin and there's not a chance in hell.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  The average person will be able to afford some. I'm, I'm writing a, um, a short story now, which is the, the journey of a pre-coiner and a Bitcoiner. And I, and I've got three characters in there. Each who takes a different approach to, you know, hearing Bitcoin, hearing about Bitcoin for the first time. One of them consistently thinks they've missed the boat. And they never get in until Bitcoin is worth a million bucks. The second one thinks that they're really smart and they try and buy and they FOMO in at the top and they FOMO out at the bottom. And then the third one is the guy who just takes a simple approach of just slowly collecting. And he's the uni student who has no money, but he just buys twenty bucks a week.

• 1:07:41Anthony Pompliano?

  It it it is, uh, I I said this probably a year ago and it was offhand comment, didn't think too much of it. But um, somebody keeps repeating it to me. Uh, and now it's like ingrained in my head, it's just Bitcoin is a game of accumulation.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  That's it, that's all it is.

• 1:07:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And the reason why I like the the words collecting, accumulating, et cetera, is when you're collecting or accumulating, there's no uh, there there's no outflow.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And and the idea again is it changes the mindset of the individual. It changes the mindset of the investor um, or the user from somebody who is consumptive in their use of money, right? Uh, versus somebody who is much more um, into how do I see?

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Oh, man, you just touched on such a good point like this. This is one of the other um, zeitgeists that Bitcoin represents in today's day and age. In a world where, you know, supposedly GDP, you know, gross domestic produce. You know, GDP is actually a measure of consumption, not production. Like, we're on the wrong side of the equation here. But in a world where everything is optimized for consumption, for um, for, you know, for now, Bitcoin represents this one bastion where um, savings, patience, a low time preference, where optimizing for a better future is incentivized over spending, consuming, and getting the next dopamine hit now.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  And it's such a, it's such a profound thing when you think about it, because it's not just the better money, it's a better lifestyle.

• 1:09:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely. Look, I I I talk about it all the time. One of the best pieces of financial advice, and again, this isn't us giving financial advice, but just if you were to go ask any financial advisor in the country, what is the number one thing that people should do? It's quote, pay yourself.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, and pay yourself first. And what that means is make sure that you're saving, make sure that you're you're putting money towards your goals, and then go pay your bills. Do all these things. And the reason why that's important is because if you quote pay yourself first, you don't even realize that the money's gone.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Correct, correct.

• 1:09:38Anthony Pompliano?

  So if you get a thousand dollars in a paycheck and you take a hundred dollars and you stick it in a savings account, every time you get your nine hundred bucks, you don't even realize you're saving a hundred dollars.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Rich Dad, Poor Dad 101, right? It was literally pay yourself first. And what better way to pay yourself than paying yourself in Bitcoin?

• 1:09:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Because it is an artificially scarce asset, right? And I continue to tell people that it is more scarce than gold, it is more scarce than land, it is more scarce than pretty much any asset you can think of, right? Because it has a software-driven artificial cap. So there cannot be any more of them that are created.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Correct. Well, it's it's software, it's I would say it's software enforced and it's social consensus driven, right?

• 1:10:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  So like, yeah, we um, we and this is again, comes back to the intolerant minority, right? Is if if this is a social consensus driven thing, we by definition requires an intolerant minority who will not deviate from the the core tenants of what that social consensus is. And that forms the basis of, you know, the core of Bitcoin. And as Bitcoin continues to stay around, that core grows and the Bitcoin consensus, the base Bitcoin consensus rules ossify. And you then have a like, you know, you mentioned before money is this, um, you know, belief system. And and it is like, you know, fundamentally speaking, like we're the only species on the planet that,

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  you know, have this tool, which we decide to call money, um, in order to collaborate. But what's very, very important is that you can have a belief system that, you know, the Zimbabwean dollar is money. The problem is it's not based on any objective attributes, right? Outside of trusting Mugabe or whoever the last guy is to run it, right? Whereas gold, as an example, had objective attributes that we could collectively come to consensus on, were were a better set of attributes to represent this belief system of money. Bitcoin has a far superior set of attributes that through this social consensus.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  This mechanism have created a network that is now ossified or is to a large degree ossified around being uncensorable, unconfiscatable and fixed in supply, right?

• 1:11:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  And with those elements now, we have a better form of money. We have something that is superior and we have something that is more liquid and you know, all of those sorts of things that we mentioned before. And really just comes back to the point about today, the only game in town and the most important game in town is buy and accumulate Bitcoin, collect Bitcoin. Because at the end of the day, this thing like whether you're as a fervent believer as me or pomp, you know, and think that, you know, th- this is the game like I'm, I'm buying Bitcoin now because I'm not going to trade it back for, for dollars. I'm not looking for the gain. I'm collecting it because I want to participate in a Bitcoin economic system in the future. And, and that's what I'm basically collecting for before everybody else realizes what it's worth. This is my edge.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  This is my, this is the edge that I have on the rest of the world, right?

• 1:12:40Anthony Pompliano?

  It's what you believe that other people haven't realized yet.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  Correct. And so whether you believe to that extent or whether you don't believe to that extent and you're just think that, oh, Bitcoin is this interesting thing and you've seen it grow from a dollar to, you know, 10 grand or whatever it is now.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  It doesn't matter where you are on the spectrum. Having some exposure to Bitcoin now is the smartest decision you can make.

• 1:13:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think it's Parker and I apologize if I'm wrong, but Parker Lewis, he, he basically says, you know, we're, we're finally at a point where it is more detrimental for you to be wrong by not having exposure than it would be for you to have exposure and be wrong.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, the risk is now greater. Exactly. The, the risk is now greater because there is a higher probability now that this like five years ago, I could understand, right? You know, six, seven years ago, I could understand. It was hard, Mt. Gox, this, that, like you had a million and one things going wrong. I could understand. Right now, there is literally no excuse with apps like Amber, with, you know, things like Cash App. There's things out there now which make the exposure to Bitcoin in a sensible manner, simple and easy. If you're not holding Bitcoin right now, like, I'm sorry, you, you're deranged. You've lost the plot. Like it, it is. It's borderline ignorance at this point in time.

• 1:13:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What, talk through us, uh, what exactly is the functionality of Amber and where can people go uh find out more or download the app?

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Amber is available in Australia now. Um, next step.

• 1:14:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Only in Australia?

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  Only in Australia right now. Um, ne- next step is gonna be um UK and Europe. Um, we're we're sort of working hard to get that rolled out now. The functionality is really simple. You download the app, you link your bank account, you set an amount, you set a frequency, you click done. It ta- you know, wi- within a minute, you've um you've bought your first bit of Bitcoin. Um, you can do recurring, you can do a one-off buy. Um, you can withdraw over to your own um wallet. So we're we're really big believers of um, you know, your keys, your coins. So we, you know, fundamentally have built the product to be an easy on-ramp. If you wanna store some Bitcoin on Amber, by all means, go for it. We're a hundred percent cold storage. But if you wanna withdraw it out to your own wallet, by all means, you can do that as well. We actually, you know, promote that as a um as a thing to do.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  And that is literally game set match for what Bitcoin, for for what Amber is today. Down the track, I, what I sort of envision is the reinvention of the financial institution. If we look at financial institutions today, they are the the institutions that uh provide the function and access to three things. The ability to store, send and receive money. In the future, we've moved the ability to store, send and receive down to the protocol level. So the financial institution of the future is no longer gonna be the one that facilitates and provides the function. They will only be the access point. And the best access point is gonna be the best apps that provide the best features for those people who want to participate on a Bitcoin economic um system.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  And that's sort of, so so when I look at what Amber's future is gonna be, I look at us being what I like to call a Bitcoin bank. We're gonna reinvent what finance looks like, but do it all on top of Bitcoin outside of the existing financial world, such that people can have the ability to, you know, wh- whether it's lending, borrowing, interest, merge facilities, payments, you know, access to other investment class, whatever it is, you can do all of that on Bitcoin twenty-four seven globally without borders. All on a Bitcoin denominated infrastructure.

• 1:16:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  And Bitcoin rails, not on their legacy system.

• 1:16:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And and part of this is if you can basically be of the portal or or the entry point for people to uh collect Bitcoin, acquire Bitcoin, accumulate it, whatever you want to call it. Uh you then can build out all of the different functionality around that.

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  Correct, correct, exactly. You you don't you don't build out that other stuff before anyone has Bitcoin. So this is what I always tell people because you you see all these apps these days, like people are um, you know, building like um po- pos terminals and merchant facilities to accept Bitcoin. Nobody's got Bitcoin. Like, who the hell's gonna pay you with Bitcoin? We don't have Bitcoin. And furthermore, when you have Bitcoin and you buy a coffee for five dollars and in five years' time, that coffee actually costs you ten grand, you want to shoot yourself in the face. So it's the wrong thing. So today, the most important thing to build is the product that makes collecting Bitcoin as simple as possible. When you have a cohort of people that have Bitcoin, you can then provide products and services that enable them to utilize the Bitcoin in other methods other than holding it. That's the that's the most rational thing I can think of.

• 1:17:00Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And and and it really just comes down to, again, time preference, right?

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Literally. Well, it's time preference, but it's also self-preservation and um looking after yourself. Like, most people will come into Bitcoin initially. They'll maybe trade it for some shitcoins. They might spend some Bitcoin, you know, they'll do all that sort of stuff. But over time, what they'll realize is that they should have just held Bitcoin.

• 1:17:22Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Show them the shirt one more time. So he brought two things today. He's got one, a shirt. There there's one shirt, but here there's a second shirt that he brought, which is Bitcoin, not shitcoin. And then he also brought me the Bitcoin Times, which is a uh a a really, really high-quality um magazine, I think you can call it, right?

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  It's it's publication.

• 1:17:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Publication?

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's gonna be, we're gonna release two a year, so it's gonna be a limited edition publication.

• 1:17:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  It's not about news, it's about long-form, deep-thought content. Um it's the the writers, so I did the first um one. It was it was an extension to a talk I gave. Um so I did the first one. The second one is going to, and and subsequent ones are gonna be uh eight writers per edition by invitation only. Who are going to write long form, deep, well thought out content for Bitcoin that is going to be timeless. So the idea is that the stuff we write here is going to be timeless and will stand the test of time. So people can come back and look at it and think, holy crap, what were these guys thinking? So a couple of names I can mention for the next edition, which is going to be the last of this decade. Coming out in a couple of months is going to be, Gigi is going to be writing in there, Hasma Cook,

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Nick Carter, Murad and his brother Masir. We've got a couple, also writers like that. So there's a couple more. Dan Hell is going to be writing a piece in it. And effectively, we just want to have timeless content in there. And what we will also do each edition, we're going to print 2,100 of them. Satoshi baby. We're going to print 2,100 of them and have them up for sale on a lightning denominated BTC pace server shop.

• 1:19:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And so people can go to, it says bitcoin times dot news here is where some of those will be. And then there will be a bunch of them, I'm sure you'll see it all over Twitter, et cetera. And because most of you guys know that I will, I'll tell you what people put inside the books. This is number four of five and it says Bitcoin, not shitcoin, let's change the world, pomp. Which all of you at home know is exactly what we're trying to do here. So that's awesome. Thank you very much for this. I really appreciate it.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 1:19:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And by the way, in case you're unintelligent, it says the end at the end so that you know that it's over. All right, before I wrap up, I always do a rapid fire set of questions. What do you think is the most important company in Bitcoin today?

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  Ooh, I'm biased because I think it's me, but.

• 1:19:54Anthony Pompliano?

  So normally I say not including your own company, and I didn't think you were going to say that, but go ahead. So not including your own company.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:20:06Speaker 02

  I really, really like the stuff that um, I would have said back in the day Zappo, but I really like what Unchained Capital is doing. And then there's probably what Rodolfo is doing with Cold Card and stuff, but in different elements. So somewhere in that sort of space is self custody and more intelligent, you know, non self custody.

• 1:20:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, what's the one regulation you would change or improve if you could?

• 1:20:30Speaker 02

  Regulation?

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  If I was a government and I had a brain, I would be buying Bitcoin. And I would make it easier for everyone to buy Bitcoin.

• 1:20:43Anthony Pompliano?

  So anything that touches that?

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  Exactly, so if you can make it easier for people within your jurisdiction to buy Bitcoin, you're gonna have wealthier people, smarter people come to your jurisdiction, simple as that.

• 1:20:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the most controversial thought you have in Bitcoin?

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  Ooh, shit. I mean, Bitcoin not shitcoin has, you know, it's no longer controversial. I would say toxicity is really, really important. I would say it's the white blood cell mechanism inside Bitcoin. Is, you know, white blood cells are toxic to disease. And I would say us Bitcoiners, that intolerant minority, are the white blood cells in Bitcoin. And we must stay strong and irrespective of what people call us, whether it's toxic, whether it's whatever bullshit name they want to give us, we must maintain that standard. Because, you know, if we don't, no one else will.

• 1:21:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. What's the most important book you've ever read?

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. Yeah, it used to be Skin in the Game by Tyler, but Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, like she literally predicted Bitcoin 70 years ago.

• 1:21:51Anthony Pompliano?

  It's pretty crazy.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 1:21:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Aliens, believer, non believer? Ever met one before?

• 1:22:02Speaker 02

  Prob- probabilistically, it makes sense. Um. Uh, I, I, hmm. I think definitely i- if, okay, I'll, I'll put this caveat. If there are, they're not in a galaxy anywhere near us.

• 1:22:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, but, but probabilistically, they exist just a different galaxy.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:22Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Do you think that we would be able to reach them in our lifetime?

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  No, no chance.

• 1:22:25Anthony Pompliano?

  No? What if they come here?

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  Uh, they ain't coming here.

• 1:22:28Anthony Pompliano?

  No?

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Why not?

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  Uh, too far away. If, if it's, if it's, if, if, like, the, the.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think if they're in, in, in a galaxy, it'll be a galaxy very far, far away. Um, and, and I don't think we're, um, we're catching up anytime soon. Not, not in this lifetime at least, you know, and, you know, maybe, maybe, you know, five, 10 generations from now.

• 1:22:49Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, that's fair. Seven minutes left before I have to go watch the New York Giants march towards another Super Bowl championship. For all you, uh, clowns at home who disagree, leave me alone. Uh, what, uh, what one question do you have for me to finish this up?

• 1:23:04Speaker 02

  Hmm. Were we asking the audience or am I asking you?

• 1:23:06Anthony Pompliano?

  No, you ask me. I'm, I'm sure they'll chime in.

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  Okay, okay, okay, okay. All right, um, how, how rough can I be with these questions?

• 1:23:14Anthony Pompliano?

  As, as rough as you want. People, people have asked me all kinds of crazy stuff.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. Um.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  See, I personally don't see any value in, um, all of this blockchainery shit that's going on and around Bitcoin. So what, what is it that intrigues you? And why do you sort of drive narratives around, you know, blockchain being something special or, um, you know, all that sort of stuff?

• 1:23:36Anthony Pompliano?

  So the short answer is automation, right? And I look at a, a whole bunch of aspects of the world that are going to end up being automated. We use the word blockchain, we're talking a little bit about this before we start recording, um, because there are elements of what a blockchain looks like that are being incorporated, et cetera. I would say 99% of the things that are being called blockchains are not actually blockchains, right? They're some variation, or they've got components of it, etc. But for us, and we've started to really, I think, change the way that we talk about some of this stuff, because it's not about "blockchain technology", it's truly about automation, right?

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And so we start to say things like, you know, people were all upset in the Ethereum community, because I recently came out and said, "It's not about DeFi, it's about automated finance", right? And so it's like, you know, some of the automated finance products will be decentralized, but not, or I'm sorry, some of them will, but not all of them, but 100% of the decentralized financial products will be automated.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:24:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so the automation is actually the bigger trend than the decentralization. And so when you look at it that way, it's like, are there certain things that will be decentralized? Whether it's, you know, DeFi or other aspects that people are trying to incorporate "blockchain" into? Yeah, sure. Like, I'll buy that there will be some people who build decentralized things that get value. You could argue Wikipedia, for example, is "decentralized" to some degree, right? Doesn't involve blockchain.

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  Correct, correct. And doesn't involve a ton of shitcoin.

• 1:25:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so for us, it's, you know, the things that become interesting are when you have the automation as the end game, right? Or is what they're building. And so the best companies that we've invested in, who are not Bitcoin-related or interface with Bitcoin, right? So they have some kind of application of elements of a blockchain outside of Bitcoin. When they pitch us, they don't even talk about blockchain, right? And the only time that we uncover that there's elements of the blockchain is when we do the technical diligence, and you look into their technology stack, and it's like, "Oh, that looks like a blockchain",

• 1:25:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:25:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  I mean, okay, what do you mean by "looks like a blockchain"? What does a blockchain look like?

• 1:25:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so I'll give a direct example. So, as most people know, the largest investment we've made in our fund is a company called Figure Technologies. What Figure's doing is they're basically digitizing and automating. At first, it's mortgage origination, but really they're replacing DTCC, right? Now, DTCC, to build a fully decentralized DTCC on A blockchain and anyone can validate any transaction etc would be I would argue nearly impossible if not impossible. Right to replace that that legacy piece of infrastructure. So what these guys have done is they've taken something that has a lot of components of what are like a Bitcoin blockchain would have. And they've said, we're going to get large institutions to validate the transaction. So it kind of looks like a Libra type association.

• 1:26:31Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's not, it's not a true blockchain in the sense of a fully decentralized, immutable, etc. You're dealing with financial assets that, you know, if I have a stock certificate that's a bearer asset and you hack me. Well, the corporation is not comfortable with you now having a hacked stock certificate that you hold, right? So you have to have certain elements that Bitcoin actually are core strengths. Can't be core strengths in these other assets. And so for us, like that system, the value proposition of figure is there's a quote unquote digital mortgage. But the true value proposition, why they've grown so fast. You go within five minutes, they tell you whether you're going to get it or not. They fund it within four days.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? That user experience is compared to a forty five day HELOC origination process in legacy world. It's all about the user experience.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  Yes. So I, I think blockchain is just the word that gets thrown around to, to, to cover up, you know, the reality. So, so I, I, I remember when the smart contracts became a big name and I was just saying, smart contracts, nothing special. It's just business process automation. It's like literally writing code. Like if this, then that function.

• 1:27:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  That is what code has existed for since the beginning of time. You know, so it's not a smart contract. It's just code. That, that's literally it.

• 1:27:37Anthony Pompliano?

  We joke where like, nobody comes, nobody comes to our office and pitches us and says, hey, I have a MongoDB company.

• 1:27:42Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:27:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Or I have an Excel file company. And so when people come and say, I have a blockchain company, the way that we think about it, and this has evolved over time, right? But, but the way that we think about it today, I think is that's just one of the technologies that you use in your technology stack. But it's much more focused on the automation and that's where the value proposition comes from. It's not that you're just using a certain piece of technology.

• 1:28:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I mean, I would take the argument just one step further and I, I would just say that people should remove that fucking the word blockchain from any of their, of any of their vernacular because it just, it, it's not what it is. Like if we're going to describe Bitcoin as a, you know, as a blockchain, which I think is almost an insult to Bitcoin because like here's a fun fact and I don't know if you know this, but the word blockchain was never used. In the Bitcoin White Paper, you know that, right?

• 1:28:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I did not know that, but that's pretty, that's pretty good stat.

• 1:28:29Speaker 02

  The word blockchain came out in two thousand and eleven.

• 1:28:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that.

• 1:28:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the, so it never existed. So the, a correct definition of Bitcoin is actually a time chain. Like Bitcoin actually is something that it is designed so that you can't go back in time. Because traditionally, like in the real world, the one thing that we can't do is we can't reverse time. Every action goes forward. Bitcoin is a digital version of that. It's the only digital network that can only go forward in time. You cannot reverse anything. Or, or it's probabilistically, um, you know, difficult to reverse something. And that was the innovation that Bitcoin gave us, is digital immutability and scarcity. And that entire recipe that Bitcoin represents, decentralization, you know, segregated, timestamped, you know, data chunks, blockchain, um, you know, uh, incentive, disincentive mechanisms, economics, game theory,

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  all this sort of stuff has been mishmashed together to deliver digital immutability and scarcity. There's no point in taking elements, you know, s- subcomponents, and I write about this in Bitcoin Times. I say, if you take one element out of it, i.e. the data structure, and you try and sell it as immutable or whatever, y- you're lying, because that's not what you're selling. You're literally just taking a timestamped database, which we've had for twenty, thirty years. It doesn't matter, so.

• 1:29:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, it, it's, uh, like, and so Figure, for example, they called their, uh, you know, their settlement system provenance, because it's more about who owns it at this given time, rather than the media.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  And, and that's not a blockchain.

• 1:29:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 1:29:53Speaker 02

  And that's fantastic. And I think that's a great product. And I've been going around saying this to people for ages, is you don't need a shitcoin, you don't need a blockchain. You just need good tech that automates things, that makes things faster, that makes things better, and that has a better user experience. And that is where the innovation is gonna be. And when we look at, you know, again, another network effect for Bitcoin, and I'll end on this, is that what, you know, as Bitcoin becomes this stable settlement layer, we're gonna be able to build products and services driven around automation that can query and access and take the guarantee that Bitcoin provides, and abstract that out to deliver financial services that we've never been able to deliver in the traditional world, because you cannot get instant settlement finality and a guarantee of that through a traditional central bank.

• 1:30:38Speaker 02

  Bitcoin is the central bank of the internet. Like, that's what it is.

• 1:30:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin, not shitcoins.

• 1:30:43Speaker 02

  Bitcoin, not shitcoin, baby.

• 1:30:45Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, man. Listen, I appreciate it very much. Thank you so much for coming to do this. I appreciate the gifts, and I'll want to do it again in the future.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  Hundred percent, brother. Thank you.

• 1:30:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey everyone, Pop here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.