#694 Bitcoin Can Make You Better with Pete Rizzo

Pete Rizzo is Editor at Bitcoin Magazine and Editor-at-Large at Kraken. He previously served as Editor-in-Chief at Coindesk. Pete has spent the last few years documenting the early days of Bitcoin. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin, maximalism, toxicity, ETF, and end of year price predictions. ======================= If you haven’t started building your crypto portfolio on Okcoin, there’s no better time. They’re one of the fastest growing global exchanges around and they have some promotions happening right now to help even more people be part of the future of finance. If you have an account already, you can split $100 in BTC with a friend when you invite them to sign up for Okcoin if they buy $100 of crypto in the first month. The more friends who sign up and buy, the more BTC you get. And I always recommend dollar-cost averaging as a way for investors to have more control over their average price when building their portfolio. Now you can automate dollar-cost averaging with completely fee-free daily, weekly, or monthly recurring buys on Okcoin until November 1. That’s no fees at all on your purchases until the holidays. Get started on the web or on their new super easy-to-use app at okcoin.com/pomp ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= Cryptocurrencies offer boundless potential, but who will protect yours? Arculus is the crypto cold-storage wallet that combines the world’s strongest security protocols with an easy-to-manage app. Unlike other storage solutions that are less secure and more difficult to use, Arculus doesn’t compromise security or usability. You can store, swap, and send your crypto all with a simple tap of your Arculus Key™ card. And with no cables and no USB connections, you’re insulated from the thousands of hackers online trying to get at all the digital assets people store in the cloud. So that the only person with access to your crypto... is you. Order the safer, simpler, smarter crypto cold storage solution at getarculus.com today.

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Pete Rizzo is editor at Bitcoin Magazine and editor-at-large at Kraken. He previously served as editor-in-chief at CoinDesk. Pete has spent the last few years documenting the early days of Bitcoin as well. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, maximalism, toxicity, ETF, and the end-of-year price prediction that will blow you away. I really enjoyed this conversation with Pete, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is OKCoin. If you haven't started building your crypto portfolio on OKCoin, there's no better time. They're one of the fastest-growing global exchanges around, and they have some promotions

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  happening right now to help even more people be part of the future of finance. If you have an account already, you can split $100 in Bitcoin with a friend when you invite them to sign up for OKCoin to buy $100 of crypto in the first month. The more friends who sign up and buy, the more Bitcoin you get. And I always recommend dollar-cost averaging as a way for investors to have more control over their average price when building their portfolio. Now you can automate dollar-cost averaging with completely fee-free daily, weekly, or monthly recurring buys on OKCoin until November 1st. That's no fees at all on your purchases until the holidays. Get started on the web or on their new super easy-to-use app at OKCoin.com/Pomp. Again, no fees on all recurring buys until November

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  1st. Go to OKCoin.com/Pomp today. OKCoin.com/Pomp. Next up is LMAX Digital. LMAX Digital is the number one institutional crypto exchange. They offer their clients the deepest pool of crypto liquidity on the planet, underscored by 100% uptime track record through volatility spikes. They leverage LMAX Group's liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology. LMAX Digital is the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading and custodial services. They feature a central limit order book streaming spot Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and more. It's all paired with US Dollar, Euro, or Yen. You can go to LMAX Digital, the number one institutional crypto exchange. They're secure, they're liquid, and they're trusted. If you've never heard of them, it's

• 2:13Anthony Pompliano?

  because you're probably not an institution. Every institution knows LMAX Digital. LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Again, LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Secure, liquid, and trusted. LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Last but not least is Arculus. Cryptocurrencies offer boundless potential, but who will protect yours? Arculus is the crypto cold storage wallet that combines the world's strongest security protocols with an easy to manage app. Unlike other storage solutions that are less secure and more difficult to use, Arculus doesn't compromise security or usability. You can store, swap, and send your crypto all with a simple tap of your Arculus key card. And with no cables and no USB connections, you're insulated

• 2:56Anthony Pompliano?

  from thousands of hackers online trying to get at all the digital assets people store in the cloud, so that the only person with access to your crypto is you. You can order the safer, simpler, smarter crypto storage solution at getarculus.com today. Again, getarculus.com today, or go click on the link in the description. All right, let's get into this episode with Pete. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Pete, what's up, man? How are you?

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Doing great, man. It's a great day for Bitcoin. Great day to be out there talking about it, so.

• 3:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's just start with kind of what you do on a day-to-day basis. So you're the editor at Bitcoin Magazine. Explain kind of what your day-to-day is like and what you're focused on.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Editor at Bitcoin Magazine, editor-at-large at Kraken Cryptocurrency Exchange, and in my spare time, do a lot of sort of historical archiving, or looks at Bitcoin as a sort of historical invention. So I guess a lot of my time is spent talking to people, digging deep into the more philosophical questions about what Bitcoin is, where it's going. You can find me on Twitter Spaces, a lot of that stuff. But yeah, otherwise, just trying to understand the mystery of Bitcoin is my day-to-day.

• 4:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what's really interesting is you used to be at other publications, right? And now you've basically gone from, literally your job was to kind of focus on everything to Bitcoin only. Explain what that journey was like and kind of what really focused you in on Bitcoin? And had you thinking like, hey, this is where I want to spend my time?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. That's a great question. I'll just be super honest, right? You know, when I joined, you know, the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a journalist, right? So I started in 2013, you know, I was coming from someone who just wanted to be a journalist, right? I didn't have a background in cryptography, didn't have a background in economics. I was somebody who was, you know, trying to write for a living, right? No harm in that, but that's how that was my entrance, right? And I just found Bitcoin fascinating. I thought it was a great story. The stories that I were writing were interested and, you know, found myself in the right place, right? Time was part of the founding team over at CoinDesk, helped steal that business to be, you know, the largest, you know, online platform for news at the time. And, um, you know, I think that was great for me in my career. But really, I think, um, you know, if you're thinking about my transition, you know,

• 5:28Speaker 02

  over time, I began to basically realize that, you know, I held a prominent position where my work and decisions reflected on Bitcoin. It reflected on how people perceive Bitcoin. That made me the target of certain types of attacks that I'm sure we'll dig into in this episode. From people who felt my work was misleading and educating people about what was happening about Bitcoin. And, uh, you know, as someone who was, you know, felt like they were doing a good job on a day to day basis. I mean, obviously I felt like they were wrong and I harbored a lot of sort of negative conceptions about that. But over time, I began to look at my work more critically and, you know, I think I began to agree with these people, right? I think, um, to a large extent, you know, like many people who professionally focus on Bitcoin, right? I wasn't, you know, maybe initially here to focus on the subject.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  And maybe my work wasn't providing a large benefit to Bitcoin or the world, right? So I had to take a hard look at that and, you know, make decisions to align myself and what I was doing with things that I thought were more aligned with Bitcoin.

• 6:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think about Bitcoin today, like if you just meet somebody on the street and they kind of talk to you about it, what are the parts that either one you think are kind of most valuable or the most interesting as new people are looking at it?

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. I think one of the biggest things is, right, people are often coming to Bitcoin and just thinking of it as a speculative asset, right? It's often framed as an investment. And really, I just try to wipe that slate clean. I think where I try to come in with a conversation is Bitcoin as an invention. I've thought a lot about what it means for something to be invented, right? You're literally invalidating some previous law of the world. You think about flight being invented every moment of human history, prior to the Wright Brothers flying above North Carolina. It was a scientific fact that man had never achieved flight. And then thereafter, you know, human beings can fly and we fly all the time, right? We take it for granted. So I try to frame Bitcoin as this, right? It invalidated this law of the world where prior to Bitcoin, we really needed a government or a large institution

• 7:20Speaker 02

  to help us operate a monetary system. And then thereafter Bitcoin, we live in a time where that is no longer true. We can rely on this technology to, you know, create and mediate a neutral monetary system that has a lot of benefits, you know, compared to the other systems that have been there historically. You know, so I try to start people with that really, which is like, you know, cleanse the palate, you know, to take a reference from cooking and say, you know, forget the misconceptions that you might have and get rid of the lens. I think a lot of people, you know, they're coming to Bitcoin and their first impression is CoinMarketCap or Messari or something like that. It's a big list of coins and numbers and ticker symbol. And it's just totally devoid of context, right?

• 8:04Speaker 02

  There's, it's really hard to learn in that environment. So I always like to start at the 10,000th view of, you know, forget what you knew previously and get ready to learn something new.

• 8:13Anthony Pompliano?

  So I find you absolutely fascinating, and I really enjoyed talking to you every time we've talked before, because I think you and I agree on like the end results. And part of what, I don't think we disagree. I think there's just like nuance to how we get from where we are to that end result, which ultimately, you know, I like to think you and I are both rational enough to say like, hey, I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but like, here's where kind of like I think the world is going and how it's playing out. One of the things that is one of those nuances that's fascinating to me is You talk about you're either aligned with Bitcoin or you're not, or your actions are aligned with Bitcoin, or they're not. But there's no such thing as Bitcoiners. And so, you know, I saw you tweet this recently and I was like, man, that's like, pretty interesting.

• 8:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, explain that a little bit more as how there's no Bitcoiners, but like, your actions could be aligned with Bitcoin or not.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's an interesting lens to it, right? A lot of people immediately think that if you can be a Bitcoiner, right? Like, you can somehow represent this as a technology. But I think that's not really a good way to look at it, right? As people, we ultimately just don't have that much of an impact on Bitcoin, right? It is this neutral monetary system that operates sort of outside of us. So I think when I say, you know, your actions either align to Bitcoin or they're not. What I'm trying to say is that, you know, I think people look at it as a binary perspective. Oh, this person isn't a Bitcoiner because he said something that we don't like. Or, oh, this person isn't a Bitcoiner because he supports these other things that aren't Bitcoin. And I like to look at my life a little bit differently, right? I try my best to align my work with Bitcoin. I try to make sure that, you know, what I'm doing has a positive impact.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  And, you know, but I'm not a Bitcoiner like every sense of the word. Like, I'm gonna go to the grocery store, I'm spending US dollars, right? I'm not furthering the Bitcoin economy in that moment. So I'm not aligned with Bitcoin in that moment, right? As a philosophical movement that is attempting to make change in the world. Does that make me a bad person? No, it's like at that moment, I'm not aligned with Bitcoin. And I think it's a more nuanced perspective because I think we're both sort of arguing about and talking about is this tendency for people to, who are really involved in Bitcoin, to sort of claim some ownership of it and use that as a way to sort of, you know, attack or target other people to try to kind of, you know, I guess, bring them to the Bitcoin side, right? So I guess it's just a different perspective for me, right?

• 10:29Speaker 02

  I wasn't someone who was initially a Bitcoiner. I was a journalist. I was someone who was, you know, essentially paid to be quote unquote, "objective" about what was happening with the Bitcoin market. You know, but over time, you know, I just felt that, you know, that was misaligned and it didn't really, and I don't really even know today whether it's best to describe me as a Bitcoiner, right? I'm someone who simply tries to align as much of my work and human time as possible with Bitcoin, but there are limits to that. And if you have some idealistic standard, you know, for what a Bitcoiner is, I might not live up to that. And maybe that's okay, right? Like, maybe there's a good discussion to be had about how we're both perceiving what is good for Bitcoin. And that's maybe a healthier way to look at it.

• 11:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, what's fascinating about this is it's almost like if you take every single action you have throughout the day and you were literally to score them on like, good for Bitcoin, bad for Bitcoin, agnostic.

• 11:22Anthony Pompliano?

  A person who is in the Bitcoin community would be trying to optimize for as many of those actions to be good for Bitcoin as possible, but it would be nearly impossible to actually get 100%. And so, in some way, people are trying to categorize, like, what do you have to have? 80% of the actions? 50% of the act? Like, what is the cutoff for Bitcoin or not Bitcoin? But I do like this idea of essentially, how many of the actions on a daily basis are aligned with the asset, with the community, with the network? And if you think of it that way, you really are the sum of all those individual decisions. So you start to almost try to change your behavior in a way that increases the total number of decisions that are aligned with Bitcoin.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Right. I think that's all you can do at the end of the day, right? So I think when people have problems with quote-unquote Bitcoin toxicity, or the way that Bitcoiners behave online, it's oftentimes that they really feel that people are just putting forward an impossible standard, right? That nobody could possibly live up to being the sort of ideal Bitcoiner. And I think it's a, it's an interesting lens to look at it, right? Like, who is the ideal Bitcoiner? Is it someone who's, you know, saving Bitcoin all the time and never spending anything? Is it someone who's trying to further the Bitcoin network by, you know, actually spending it and, you know, actually advancing the economy in some way? So I think it's a way to look at it, just acknowledging, as you said, like, the human limits of it. And also, you know, divorcing yourself from, you know, feeling like your

• 12:43Speaker 02

  whole personality or identity is, you know, is derived from being a Bitcoiner, right? There's often, there's many other things that I'm sure interest you as a human being and every listener here that make you you, right? And I think that, you know, we sort of have this like for us, against us, sort of binary, you're either a Bitcoiner or you're not. And I don't really think that's healthy yet, because I think the better discussion is what does it mean to be a Bitcoiner, right? So I think when people argue about Bitcoin toxicity, or the state of the Bitcoin conversation, I don't really know if they're arguing about any of those things particularly. They're often arguing about, you know, other tangential things, such as, you know, are we, you know, is our... Is how our online behavior like encouraging to people is it are we promoting an idea of what

• 13:25Speaker 02

  it means to build on Bitcoin and I find like those questions are much more interesting than sort of oh is this person a Bitcoin or a real Bitcoin or um I don't know I think we would probably both agree to start there as saying like there's there's definitely impossible standard and I don't know who the perfect Bitcoiner is is it Michael Saylor is he the perfect Bitcoiner uh some Bitcoiners would disagree right so I prefer to look at it as you know you're aligned with Bitcoin or you're not and I think you should you know try to ask yourself if you were aligned with Bitcoin and then make decisions against that way and we could talk about why that's a good lens right and why I think it's a helpful lens is you who are really in Bitcoin uh what we're trying to do is build a better financial system for the world right and that if you think that is a worthy ethical cause then I think it's worth applying that lens to your own life

• 14:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah it's absolutely fascinating when you think of it also as a way to change behavior right like it's almost kind of you you uh you move what you measure right if you think of kind of like building a company and so if you measure the metrics those are likely the ones that you're gonna end up moving uh same thing here is if you're actually measuring hey how many actions today that I take that are aligned with the Bitcoin uh kind of ethos or with the movement you're much more likely to increase that number over time because you're thinking about it uh one of the things that we we were uh messaging about earlier today and I apologize this is my public apology we were messaging and he told me that you were on a run and then you made me feel bad because you said uh I don't want to get hit by a car I was oh I'm gonna stop messaging you

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah trying to trying to maintain that bear market physique during a bull market

• 14:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it uh but you had this tweet and it said I'm in Bitcoin because of toxic maximalist toxicity in general or in action uh I'm sorry toxicity is action against complacency action against agnosticism action against those who protect the status quo how you react is on you now again this is like the perfect example where I think you and I both we meet at the end and we say okay the the action of standing up the action of saying something the action of uh constantly pushing back against the status quo or against people who are doing something that we disagree with is probably the most important Thing in all of Bitcoin. The way to do it, right? Some of it is what I'm gonna use toxic toxic maximism. Cause I think those people just ultimately think of like, hey, this is something right?

• 15:42Anthony Pompliano?

  It's the behavior online. It's the way that you kind of are constantly going over the top and attacking and etc. Versus more of like, maybe let's call it like a statesman approach where you can actually have the conversation with somebody. And you can be firm, but you don't necessarily have to be a kind of abrasive or overly kind of arrogant or toxic. Or, you know, whatever term you want to use there. So walk me through kind of how you think about the idea of toxic maximism. And like, where is the place for it in your eyes?

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think for me, again, it helps to start with a definition. So for me, toxic maximism, it's really, you know, it's people who are, you know, there is, I think. If you view them with some empathy, they're trying to be agents of change, right? They're trying to, you know, and I really framed this tweet of trying to say, you know, they're attacking people who support the status quo. I think that's important because for a long time, you know, when I was speaking about my public position as a journalist. I didn't really realize that the actions that I was taking were in some ways defending the status quo. Right? So, and I think the end of the tweet that you pointed out, right, is how you react is on you. You know, what I was really trying to say there is that, you know, you can choose to react with people who are abrasive with empathy.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Right? So I think what I learned from people who are toxic maximalists, and again, I don't think I would even describe myself that way. I would just say that I learned a lot from people like that because they took a very uncompromising view towards Bitcoin. They took a very long-term perspective on the technology and they were willing at any point when I made, you know, some sort of mistake or like advocated for something, you know, they were, they were very uncompromising in how they dealt with me. Right? And say, and they never really changed, right? And that was for me, just a completely new perspective because I think I was often, you know, dealing with people who were. Taking a very business-type lens to the cryptocurrency industry. So I think you can think about, and I wrote a recent piece in Forbes about this, where I really tried to delineate, okay, what is a Bitcoin maximalist?

• 17:34Speaker 02

  And who are people who are not Bitcoin maximalists? So I ended up categorizing people who are not Bitcoin maximalists as crypto agnostics, and trying to really delve into what they believe, right? And I think they ultimately believe on some level that, you know, essentially, all of these cryptocurrencies can be good, can be useful, and that there's just some way that the market itself, the US dollar market for cryptocurrencies, is telling us some useful information about what's going on in this market, right? And I think, you know, when I was writing in such a way where I was talking about what was going on in the broader cryptocurrency market, Bitcoiners were, you know, often ruthless in pointing out that by doing that, I was helping support some system that perhaps wasn't aligned with their vision for the future, right? So, and I don't think they were always the best at expressing this,

• 18:19Speaker 02

  but ultimately, I think I've come to realize that really what they were expressing is that, you know, there's a division between Bitcoin and crypto. And Bitcoiners are trying to build a financial future in which there is an equitable financial system. And their critique of the cryptocurrency ecosystem at large is that in many ways, it exists to continue to propagate, you know, the status quo in which, you know, everything is an investment. We have meme stocks, we have, you know, environment of money printing. And there was another tweet I had about this recently, where it was essentially, you know, in Bitcoin, no one is a money printer. And crypto, everyone is a money printer, right? So there are differences between these ideologies, right? And I think ultimately, what got me to the place where I could confidently assert that I was a Bitcoiner, is really, I took a while to think about, okay,

• 19:04Speaker 02

  what does it mean to be neutral to cryptocurrencies? And am I neutral to cryptocurrencies? And is it good to be neutral to cryptocurrencies? And, you know, the people who were the most toxic in supporting Bitcoin, the people who were the most abrasive and assertive and uncompromising in their view about Bitcoin was, were the very people who ultimately ended up helping me figure these things out myself, right? To actually think through this perspective of, okay...

• 19:32Speaker 02

  I assume as a journalist that all cryptocurrencies are neutral. I don't believe that anymore because ultimately I was convinced by people who were assertive and aggressive and you know, convincing me that that viewpoint was wrong. And I think I would say that I've become sympathetic to their aggression towards me. Because without that aggression, I wouldn't have maybe changed, right? Maybe I wouldn't have taken the steps to treat their ideas as seriously. And maybe I would have just gone on, you know, continuing to cover the cryptocurrency world. As if it was a market, if it all, if all of these cryptocurrencies are the same. As if Doge point is Ethereum is as is Bitcoin. And all these things are the same, right?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  So I think that's the way that I would walk through and say, for me, it was getting past this lens of neutrality. Uh, delineating between Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. And ultimately coming to the realization that the people who were most stubborn antagonistic. Uh, willing to uncompromisingly argue with me about why I was wrong. You know, some people brand those people toxic. Uh, and I would just say it's, it's hard to argue that they weren't effective, right? Because they were the people who ultimately, because they were uncompromising. For me, they moved the needle. For me, they changed my mind. And even though, you know, I had to come to that on my own terms, that journey started with being opposed by them. Right? There was an equal opposite force. And I think, um, again, I'm not a toxic Bitcoiner.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  I think that you don't have to act that way to people. But I would be remiss not to note that this was a very important thing for me in my personal journey. And I think it's a big reason why, uh, you know, Bitcoin has continued to differentiate itself. From the larger cryptocurrency world, it's a very hard concept to understand. And a little bit of aggression, you know, might go a long way.

• 21:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So all of that agreed on. Could they have been just as effective by simply being nice to you? Or do you think that it was necessary for them to, you know, and I'll use not nice because that can encompass so many different things. But like, is the effectiveness in that they were uncompromising and persistent and refused to back down? Uh, or is it in the tactics that were employed in terms of, uh, you know, use the over generalized terminology, they were assholes.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, look, you have to, it's tough with behavior, right? You have to take behavior on a case-by-case basis. I would say that, you know, certainly it was a phenomenon that I didn't see in other places, right? So when I saw other cryptocurrencies or cryptocurrency businesses, you know, you have to remember that a lot of these people, you know, were making decisions from a business perspective, right? If you're a business, it's better to sell more cryptocurrencies, right? So I think a lot of the people who were in the business community early on in Bitcoin and who now sort of are crypto-agnostic, you know, you can see where the compromises sort of led them, right? And the compromises led them to supporting Bitcoin. Yes, they support Bitcoin. But they also support this other class of financial innovations that, you know, I would

• 22:28Speaker 02

  argue are, you know, one, much more experimental, two, probably a lot more restrictive in terms of the rights they offer users, and then three, you know, perhaps just, you know, speculative investments that should not be considered on the level of Bitcoin, right? And I think, you know, when I think about how I arrived at that framing, yes, sure, could people have been nicer to me? You know, I think so, but, you know, if I look at the people in the other cryptocurrency communities, you know, oftentimes, really, you know, you think about debate structure, right? You know, you kind of start with two ends of the pole, right? And there's negotiation of something in the middle. And I think with Bitcoiners who are toxic, really what they're trying to say is that there is, what is the middle ground?

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Is your middle ground here that we're going to continue the, you know, fiat status quo and adapt it to the cryptocurrency industry? To me, that's my biggest fear about what's going on in the alternative cryptocurrency in space and why in my public writing I've tried to delineate it from Bitcoin. Because I do think that, you know, human beings, you know, you know, great, we've done a lot of great things, but we're also capable of building highly complex systems that can have systemic errors that elude us for a very long time, right? So I think we have to really ask ourselves, and a lot of my public debates recently, especially with Udi Werthermeyer, have really been about this. If Bitcoin is Bitcoin, if it is this attempt to build a neutral financial system, and cryptocurrency is something else, it's sort of this crypto fiat system, you know, I think we have to understand.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Right? We have to try to, we have to try to figure out what it is. And, you know, if we're talking about hostility and aggression towards an idea, maybe that is an idea that is worth being aggressive or hostile to. Because we don't really know where that is going, right? We don't really have a firm understanding, I think, of what, you know, even the vision for that system is, right? And I think, um, you know, at least the talks at Bitcoiners, they have a very clear vision for where Bitcoin leads, I would say at this point. And to the extent that they're uncompromising in evangelizing for that position, I think that uncompromising nature,

• 24:32Speaker 02

  you know, while the behavior may err at certain points, it's really trying to get across the point that it's, there is no compromise for this vision. Like, what is the, what is the compromise to this? There is either a neutral financial system that grows to sort of, you know, encompass the, the world economy, or, you know, there's some version of the status quo where, you know, there are some, you know, new version, new world, you know, leaders or new system, right? That ends up kind of impacting people. So I think you have to look at it from that perspective, right?

• 25:02Anthony Pompliano?

  So let me, let me pitch you a variation of this. The most effective are not toxic. Michael Saylor, not toxic. Jack Dorsey, not toxic. Alex Leishman at River, not toxic. Jack Mahler's, not toxic. Right? Senator Lummis, not toxic. Naib Bukele, not toxic. Now, again, I think each one of those in a variety of different ways are steadfast. They're committed. They don't back down. At times, they can have uncomfortable conversations, right? If you watch Senator Lummis with the Treasury Secretary, kind of saying, why do you need to look at my bank account? You know, to know about cattle or a couch purchase? So it's not that they're not willing to, to not have the uncomfortable conversations, right?

• 25:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that that's where ultimately it's the standing up, the action, the doing something, the constantly pushing back. We've seen, you know, Jack Dorsey on multiple occasions say to people, well, actually, it's not Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, it's Bitcoin. Or it's not crypto, it's Bitcoin. So still remaining steadfast and kind of drawing the line in the sand and not being willing to. Compromise on either ideals, ethos, beliefs, etc. But at the same time, I would make the argument that if you're embracing toxicity, you have a natural limiting ceiling. You can't possibly break into the mainstream. You can't have incredible global impact. Because what ultimately gets is, it goes back to simple things, right? It's, you know, how to win friends and influence people.

• 26:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Is you ultimately can't be just an asshole and screw everyone over all the time. Because here's the best part. You know who's toxic? Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York. And people were laying in wait and they were waiting to screw him over. They couldn't wait for him to slip up. And he had screwed over so many people and stepped on so many people to get there. That eventually, when he slipped up, they all came with pitchforks for him. And we've seen this over and over and over again. So I think that like the nuance, my personal view, right of this is, if we take what most people would label as toxic maximalism, and we draw a box and we say, what are the principles? What are the ethos? What are we unwilling to compromise on? And we, and we pull that out. That to me is the value.

• 27:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Every, the wrapper around it is actually, you don't have to yell and scream. You don't have to curse somebody out. You can be just as steadfast. And in some way, I actually think it's more effective, right? When I wrote the piece yesterday, kind of about Sun Tzu, about like, the more that you are aggressive towards someone, the more they dig their heels in. Right? The less aggressive you are, and almost the more, again, like statesman you are. And again, this is like hilarious that you and I have this conversation. Cause I've dunked on nine million people on the internet as well. But like over time, I'm learning this of, that's ultimately where if we look and say like, who are the people over the last, I don't know, 12 months? Who have probably had the largest kind of inflection point impact? A nation state adopted it, pretty big deal. Now, some people may say, oh, it was toxic compared to other presidents. But he's not cursing people out.

• 27:56Anthony Pompliano?

  He's not yelling and screaming. He's not kind of doing that stuff. He's definitely dunking on IMF or posting, you know, memes and stuff like that. So like there's like a variation to this. But I think that's a kind of the, the thing that I'm spending the most time thinking about. Now, here's what I will say. I'm willing to change my mind over this as I think about it more and I see more. Examples and stuff, it just feels like the same things that existed in the legacy world about just building relationships with people and like the ability to communicate information is going to apply here as well. And if we ultimately want, you know, take the the Mark Cuban conversation the other night, if everyone had gone in there, just yelled and screamed and cursed and all this stuff, like all it would have done is further divided everyone. But instead, if you say, hey,

• 28:37Anthony Pompliano?

  look, we disagree on something, explain to me your point, I'll rebut it. Explain to me your point, I'll rebut it. Explain to me why you think this is a big obstacle. I'll give you some data point, whatever. Like you enter into this conversation, which again, you don't have to compromise at all. And I think that's where you and I are like, that's the common ground between you and I in this view is like, the non-compromising perspective is why Bitcoin is where it is. The fact that millions of volunteers on the internet all came together and created this trillion dollar asset by building infrastructure, by writing software, by, you know, going ahead and kind of building this global brand, etc. That's all of these small actions by individual people added up. It's just in some weird way, like there's nothing better than winning and smiling while you do it, rather than like flicking somebody off while you do it. Right? And I think that's

• 29:20Anthony Pompliano?

  ultimately the the my thought at the moment.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say what I would interject in that is, is I think a lot of this is also shaped by my understanding of sort of the historical like periods of Bitcoin and the conflicts and then how they were shaped. And I think that

• 29:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain that.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so let me dive into that a little bit. So, you know, one of the, I think, ongoing questions about the cryptocurrency space is, is it possible or within cryptocurrencies for some minority group to, you know, evade the changes of a majority, right? So I think a lot of people kind of look at Bitcoin as this protocol that ensures rights, right? That you have the rights, when you own Bitcoin, you have the irrevocable right to that money. But these are still sort of complex systems in which it is possible for people to build, you know, political type coalitions and to enforce change on other network users. So I think when you look back at the sort of history of Bitcoin's progression as a technology, what you find is that, you know, there was the stream that was Bitcoin, and then there was the initial code that was launched, right? And I think one of the

• 30:19Speaker 02

  kind of big narratives of Bitcoin is, you know, how do we get from this original codebase? You know, to this vision, right? And I think if you look at that historical conversation, what sort of emerges is that, you know, just while Bitcoin is, you know, definitively this this neutral monetary system, you know, there are points in which political groups tried to form and force actions on the community, right? And I think, you know, when I look at Bitcoin toxicity, I really see it emerging out of the earlier periods in Bitcoin, in which the definition of what Bitcoin was and what it was trying to achieve was not as clear. And there were many people who were, you know, of the belief that it was necessary for Bitcoin to change and compromise in ways that ultimately would have been net negative like for the protocol, right? It would have pushed it

• 31:04Speaker 02

  towards being something that maybe operates more like Ethereum does today than the Bitcoin that we know, right? And I think what's important to kind of to bring back from that time period and inject it in this conversation is that, you know, without that response, without those people who are, you know, essentially saying like, look, Bitcoin gives me autonomy over my money. For the first time in human history, I am able to own an asset, to hold that asset, and I don't have to be subject to anyone because I own this asset, right? I think even though that is what Bitcoin achieves, right? And we know and now celebrate that by, you know, sort of holding our own keys, celebrating Bitcoin sovereignty.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  There were still groups that tried to form and exert, you know, some form of political authority over over those individuals, right? And said, you know, hey, that's great, but you know, we have this other idea for what Bitcoin should be. Wouldn't it be better if it was for payments? Would it have been better if it became more like Bitcoin Cash? And it was, you know, easier on the base layer for you to send Bitcoin payments. So, you know, again, I think that it's easy to say that Bitcoin toxicity, you know, or this idea that you are, you know, you can be acerbic and assertive about your rights in Bitcoin, you know, has qualities that we don't like, right? That that may be people who, you know, express those sort of views, act in certain ways we don't like. But I think what you find if you look in the past is without these

• 32:27Speaker 02

  people who are willing to stand up to these things, you know, you may have had situations in where Bitcoin was just another Their money system in which, you know, there was a group of people who could change the monetary supply for whatever reason, right? And this is, and this happens in many other cryptocurrencies, right? There's many other cryptocurrencies you can find today that have monetary supplies that are, you know, changeable and they have governance structures that are somewhat opaque and, you know, that's all well good, people can use them, but that's not Bitcoin. But those things almost came to Bitcoin, right? So I think what you find when you look at Bitcoin toxicity is it's this way, I think where it sort of comes from is this idea that in Bitcoin, you know, you have certain rights, right? And, and those rights really should never be infringed upon, you know,

• 33:10Speaker 02

  in the system if Bitcoin is to achieve its goal of being Bitcoin. And so I think because I look, I'm able to look at it through those lens, I'm a little bit more sympathetic, right? I see that, you know, the level to which people have needed to be uncompromising in the past, you know, because there are people who have been in the position like a Michael Saylor, who have tried to enact change on the network. They've tried to force things to be different than they are. And in those situations, you know, what you find is that the people who were more uncompromising, you know, had to embrace tactics that, you know, maybe, you know, we've people find unpalatable. And of course, the argument remains, maybe these aren't necessary anymore, right? And that's something that's recently been advanced. But again, I would still assert that, you know,

• 33:53Speaker 02

  one Bitcoin toxicity has been historically important for Bitcoin, because two, there are always going to be conditions under which Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are potentially, you know, technological systems that could be co-opted in some way, right? You know, we were still quite early in the experiment of Bitcoin. And this is think is one of the dramas around the ecosystem that's going to play out.

• 34:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I got two of my brothers here with me. They got questions for you. What questions you guys got? So how's it going, Pete? Thanks for doing this, by the way. So mine would be, I think I saw the other day, you had said you had written like 2000 articles on Bitcoin or something like that. So obviously you've spent a bunch of time and done a lot of work, you know, in the industry for a long period of time. So my question would be, how has that?

• 34:36Speaker 03

  Kind of from when you started, I'm not sure exactly what year it is, but when you started until today, how has the kind of the information that you're sharing been accepted? And how many more people are reading it now? And kind of how has that adoption taken place? Not only between retail investors, but also kind of the institutional folks that read it also?

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, interesting. I mean, obviously, you know, in 2013, I wrote my first article for CoinDesk about a local Boston-area vegetarian restaurant that accepted Bitcoin. So you could imagine that the market for that story was pretty small and that, you know, if such a thing happened today, it wouldn't be of relevance to the global Bitcoin community. Right? But I think it's important to remember that's how small the ecosystem was back in the day. I often said that in some ways, it felt like writing for an early Bitcoin media startup. It was writing, it was like writing for a local paper that just happened to be global. Right? But I think that, you know, in terms of my writing, my writing has definitely skewed a lot more towards, you know,

• 35:33Speaker 02

  towards being, trying to be of interest to the people who are deeply trying to understand what Bitcoin is. Right? I think if you take a long-term view of Bitcoin, I think we're still early. But because of that, there are still very serious questions about, you know, how Bitcoin operates as a technology, whether it will be able to achieve its aims. Those are the things that I'm more interested in digging into. So luckily, you know, Forbes, who I write columns for and Bitcoin Magazine, who I do my more historical research for, you know, they're interested in supporting that. And I've sort of moved away from catering to the mainstream business crowd. You know, I know you guys are the best business show, so hello to all the business people out there. But again, you know, what I saw from writing for those companies in which, you know, their target audience was businesses is I thought that they were, you know,

• 36:18Speaker 02

  moving away from some of these questions that I thought were important. And, you know, again, focusing on the more speculative investment type, you know, articles about Bitcoin, I'm sure of which there'll be many today about, you know, the first Bitcoin ETF, that this is, you know, some sort of great advance for the industry. You know, again, I sort of felt that that market was oversaturated and, you know, over time, I wanted to work on that less because I didn't feel like the conversations that were happening within those articles, you know, were terribly meaningful.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  John, what questions you got?

• 36:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, Pete, thank you for doing this. So you seem like a pretty rational guy. Some of the Bitcoin maximalists, they really go off the edge and say, look, if you're not

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Involved in this, um, don't want to hear from you. Where do you see Bitcoin going in the next like five, 10 years on the adoption side of things? Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, uh, we're at a very unique inflection point in Bitcoin history right now. You know, institutions are taking a look at it in a big way for the first time. We have a nation on earth where you can move there and then Bitcoin is effectively legal tender. I mean, that said, I do feel like, um, you know, some of the estimates about where we are in Bitcoin's adoption curve are probably a bit overstated. You know, again, I, I tend to kind of look at it, uh, from a view of the longer I've been here, the less I feel like I know. And the more that I feel like I want to know about Bitcoin. And I just see that, um, you know, I don't see that learning curve accelerating, right?

• 37:36Speaker 02

  I don't feel like the investors today who are looking at Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry necessarily know a lot more than they did in 2017. Right? When the conversation was more about cryptocurrencies generally and ICOs. So I think when I look at the industry, I try to look at it of, okay, is the meaning as the, is the median investor today more sophisticated than they were in the past? And I just, you know, one of the things that I would say is like, I just don't know if that's true, right? While Bitcoin has come a long way and the network, uh, you know, has advanced. I think there's a, it's really tempting to equate Bitcoin's price, you know, with how well understood it is, right? Obviously it's amazing Bitcoin was originally worth $0 when it was introduced.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  You know, it's grown to be a $60,000 asset, you know, that's how much one Bitcoin is worth. But that doesn't really tell us much of anything about how well people understand it, how big the network is going to be. And I think people have really kind of, um, put too much importance like on the price of Bitcoin in that respect, right? I have, you know, another Forbes article where I talk about that, you know, Bitcoin's price looking increasingly predictable and cyclical. And it's looking more and more like we're headed towards the end of the year where Bitcoin is going to, you know, re-parity with all time highs. You know, make some jump into the, you know, six digits. And then I think, you know, likely kind of, you know, experience some sort of downturn and sort of, uh, you know, reformation of the cycle.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Because again, I just don't think. We're at the point where, you know, even if everybody in the world was ready to get on a Bitcoin standard, like the technology of Bitcoin like isn't quite there, right? It's great that we can support the country of El Salvador. And that's, you know, really amazing technical achievement. But to say that, you know, we're ready for some sort of hyper Bitcoinization moment today, to me seems premature, right? I don't think the technology is ready. I don't think people are ready. And, you know, so the other question about my work, that's one of the things that I'm increasingly focused on is I think that, you know, when hyper Bitcoinization does occur, I mean, I think it's going to be a really destabilizing moment for a lot of people, right? I don't really feel like the average person has really accepted the extent to which Bitcoin may impact their lives, right?

• 39:46Speaker 02

  And I think that at that moment, I really worry about, okay, what is that person going to feel like when that occurs? Have we done enough to really explain to them what Bitcoin is and why this transition is good? Or are they going to react to it fearfully, right? Are they going to, and you see this in El Salvador, right? There's massive demonstrations in which the political opposition to the president has, you know, effectively weaponized Bitcoin as, you know, part of their partisan strategy, right? One political party is pro Bitcoin, so the other political party is against Bitcoin. And so I worry about those things on a larger scale, right? Maybe we just see that play out. Because there are certain people who are incentivized to be against Bitcoin because they don't understand it, because we haven't done enough to evangelize for it.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  So I think, yeah, those are some of the things that I think about, right? I tend to think that we're sort of earlier in the adoption curve. I tend to discount how much the price really means about adoption. And I guess I tend to worry about a future in which, you know, Bitcoin really does take off on a massive scale. Because, you know, I worry whether people are psychologically ready for that. Because I think it does mean a big change to just everything in the world.

• 40:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Pete, before I let you go, now that you are Bitcoin focused, you got a price prediction for the end of the year? You said six figures in there. What do you think is going to happen?

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure, I'll throw it out there. I think we're going to go above six figures for sure. And I think that that number is going to be a lot larger than most Bitcoiners think it is. I think my personal prediction is that we're going to go. Probably north of, north of 300, I would say that this is based on my personal opinion that, you know, one of the things you see in Bitcoin is when it really goes parabolic, you know, there's no one selling Bitcoin, right? So what is the Bitcoin price? It is a, you know, number that essentially, you know, the market's sort of looking for a price at which the marginal seller will return. So I view Bitcoin tops as a sort of social attacks on Bitcoiners, right? So, so for me, like, the top is the moment where you're like, man, I have to sell. Like, I have to sell some Bitcoin because, you

• 41:49Speaker 02

  know, my brothers are gonna yell at me, something's gonna happen, you know, I'm gonna be sleeping on the couch tonight if I don't sell my Bitcoin. So, you know, since most Bitcoiners expect 100,000, I don't think they're selling at that point, right? So I think the Bitcoin price is going to have to continue going up until some point at which it convinces enough people to redistribute their Bitcoins. So, yeah, I'm expecting the peak this year to be pretty aggressive. I'm a big believer in cyclical Bitcoin price theory, and I actually really take the side of thinking that we want the Bitcoin price to be more cyclical and predictable. I think if Bitcoin, you know, you know, this four-year cycle kind of theory, if that breaks down, then I think I may be a little bit less confident in Bitcoin than I am right now.

• 42:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And do you think that those long-term holders are just gonna hold it until there's some specific price? Or do you think that they eventually just say, hey, 300K is nuts? This is just, keeps going up at vertical, and then I gotta sell it?

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think that that's one of the big questions, right? So, I talked a lot, you know, Dylan Leclerc a lot on this program. He writes the Deep Dive newsletter for Bitcoin Magazine, and, you know, we go back and forth on this a lot, right? And my perspective as someone who's been in the industry for a long time is that, you know, what is the marginal seller? If you really believe that the Bitcoin price, you know, is defined not by people acquiring Bitcoin, but people refusing to sell, then in a top situation, really what you have is the reemergence of the marginal seller, right? Someone has to be selling Bitcoin at some point, right? Otherwise, it's just, you know, you're, you kind of are in a parabolic spot. So I think it's, to me, at least this is consistent with what I've seen in the past tops is

• 43:27Speaker 02

  The previous tops were essentially the price was so high that they had to convince the long-term hardened Bitcoin hodler to become the marginal seller, right? Somebody has to provide the market with Bitcoin. The Bitcoin price is just a number. It's looking to kind of coax demand out of the market and it's going to go up until some point where psychologically, you know, we as long-term Bitcoiners break. So I do think it will be the long-term Bitcoiners, you know, who maybe start to think that they can take something off the table, right? I think the alternative view is essentially that, oh, that's not going to happen, you know, no one's ever going to sell their Bitcoin. I don't know. I think the Bitcoin price can go high enough to convince you to sell. Look, when I started writing about cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was worth $50. So I think it would go to $1,200.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  No, I watched it go back to $200. Did I then go to $20,000? No, I didn't think it would do that ever. At this point, my capacity for disbelief in the Bitcoin price is.

• 44:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Infinite.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  You know, I think at this point, it's, you know, but again, I would, I would actually, you know, argue on the other side of that. I, you know, I think that would be a great thing for the industry, like more people will become interested in Bitcoin, hopefully. But, um, you know, I would caution like how much we've really achieved at that point.

• 44:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I love it. You, you, uh, you may be more bullish than, uh, anyone else who brought on the show recently. I love it.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Okay.

• 44:47Anthony Pompliano?

  I just dropped, uh, your Twitter account into, uh, the chat. Anyone who, who does.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Who is the number one on your, uh, on your price prediction? Who has the most lofty prediction?

• 44:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Lots of people for like the next, uh, having in a million plus.

• 45:02Anthony Pompliano?

  But probably, what was it? Raul Paul, I think, actually. He said 400. He said 400, but he said it not till the end of Q1 or Q2 of next year. And so, yeah, by the end of this year, he thinks 200K. So you're.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  All right. So you know what? I actually, because this is recorded, I actually, I flipped a little bit and I said 300, but privately I've been saying 500 because again, I think that. The number has to be high enough to really wow like you got like like I think again like one of my theories here is that Bitcoin tops are psychological attacks on Bitcoiners because again we're people who were born in the fiat system right we are people who are looking at Bitcoin and viewing it in US dollars and I was talking about my recent article about you know sort of Bitcoin agnostics right one of the things with the cryptocurrency industry is that you know we're sort of looking at all these dollar symbols and we're trying to derive some meaning from it and I think that most Bitcoiners also are guilty of that right so I think you know uh yeah if Bitcoin

• 45:59Speaker 02

  wants to create a top it's gonna have to convince some of you know you the never sell Bitcoin bulls to give up some Bitcoin so I I think I am confident in the Bitcoin technology's ability to coax sellers back to the market and I think that that you know the price at which it does so will likely be higher than we can posit currently because you know it's it's an attack on us.

• 46:23Anthony Pompliano?

  500k Bitcoin a lot of people be freaking out for that one.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  I just want to be top on your board.

• 46:28Anthony Pompliano?

  You're the top, don't worry, you're the top, no problem. You you you took the entire fort by storm there.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Hey, you know, again, I I never thought I would see the prices that I saw and again I you know I don't you know what's different about the time we live in now than then.

• 46:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I hear you. All right, everyone make sure you go follow Pete on Twitter and definitely pay attention to all the work he's doing. You're doing a fantastic job. So I appreciate you you coming on on short notice here. I think people really enjoyed it and we will definitely have to do this again as we get closer to 500k Bitcoin price by the end of the year.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  Awesome, man. Appreciate it, guys.

• 47:03Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, sounds good. See you soon.