Pod Insights The Pomp Podcast Kiana Danial, CEO of Invest Diva: How Sanctions Impact the Development of Cryptocurrency About this episode Kiana Danial is the CEO of Invest Diva and author of Cryptocurrency Investing for Dummies. In this conversation, Kiana and Anthony Pompliano discuss Kiana growing up in Iran, the Bitcoin Lightning Torch, how to write a book on a subject you know nothing about, and the impact of sanctions on foreign countries. Get the book for your cousin who knows nothing about crypto: https://learn.investdiva.com/cryptocurrency-investing-for-dummies Invest Diva home page; https://www.investdiva.com/ ----- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Anthony 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.
0:13 Anthony Pompliano? Kiana Danial is the CEO of Invest Diva and author of Cryptocurrency Investing for Dummies. In this conversation, we discuss growing up in Iran, the Bitcoin lightning torch, how to write a book on a subject you know nothing about, and the impact of sanctions on foreign countries. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well.
0:34 Speaker 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.
1:00 Anthony Pompliano? Alright guys, I have a special treat for you today. We have Kiana here who wrote a book, so immediately you're smarter than I am. Thank you so much for coming.
1:10 Speaker 02 Thank you so much for having me. This is an awesome spot, by the way, I was telling Michael. This is a really cool view.
1:15 Anthony Pompliano? Absolutely. We are recording this in midtown Manhattan right now. Cool. Maybe give us a little bit of background on yourself and how you eventually discovered cryptocurrency?
1:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I first heard of cryptocurrency back in 2011, and that is when I was working on Wall Street. Actually, let's backtrack a little bit. Born and raised in Iran, Jewish family, went to Japan at age 18, and to study something completely out of, sorry, I studied electrical engineering. And seven years there, in 2008, I had no idea about finance, crypto, nothing, which is, by the way, 2008, you remember what happened in 2008? Two things, two important things happened in 2008.
1:59 Anthony Pompliano? Financial crisis.
2:00 Speaker 02 And?
2:02 Anthony Pompliano? I don't know.
2:02 Speaker 02 Come on!
2:03 Anthony Pompliano? What else?
2:04 Speaker 02 Bitcoin's white paper was published.
2:06 Anthony Pompliano? Oh yeah, of course.
2:08 Speaker 02 Dude!
2:09 Anthony Pompliano? I thought that we're talking non-crypto major events.
2:12 Speaker 02 So I didn't know about that at the time, obviously. But all I could hear was that the US dollar is getting cheaper in Japan. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. Maybe I want to go to the US someday. Maybe I should buy the US dollar now that it's cheap. And every single day I would go to the ATM machine and the US dollar was even cheaper than the day before. I'm like, oh my God, I want to like, I want to see when it's going to go down. What's the bottom of this? And I was talking to this out of nowhere. I was like, okay, how can I tell my bank to buy US dollar at the cheapest price? I think it's going to go here. Can I tell them? Can I write a code about it, you know, engineering mine? And she's like, yeah, the code is already written. It's called trading. You can actually go to a broker and tell them, hey, I'm going to buy US dollar versus Japanese yen at this price point. And they'll execute it for you.
2:57 Speaker 02 What's even more interesting is that you can use something called margin. I had no idea what that is. And she's like, you can even multiple your profit if you actually do win this trade. I'm like, okay, cool. So she did it for me. And within a month, a college kid, I made $10,000 in a very small investment. I was sold. I'm like, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I don't want to be an engineer. I'm going to pack, I'm going to go to New York. And that's what I did. I came to New York, I started working on Wall Street. And so on Wall Street, I started working at a currency company, not crypto, but a currency, foreign exchange, forex company. And that's a completely different kind of beast when it comes to investing and trading.
3:39 Speaker 02 And a lot of people started asking me about Bitcoin. I'm like, what's this Bitcoin? I've never heard of it. And one of my friends, who's an ambassador in Switzerland, told me, hey, you got to buy Bitcoin. 2011 Bitcoin was probably like $11 back then. I'm like, nah, it's a scam. I'm not going to do it. And of course, afterwards, I was kicking myself for not doing it. How I really got into it is very recently, two thousand seventeen, a company in the UK asked me to do research and analysis on blockchain and crypto. I'm like, hey, I have no idea what you're talking about. They're like, no, you're a good researcher. Like, why don't you go do this? And I started doing it and I was blown away. I'm like, oh, my God, I cannot believe I have not been involved in this
4:25 Speaker 02 earlier, and this is the spot to be at.
4:29 Anthony Pompliano? And so when you do this, you end up falling so far down the rabbit hole that you end up writing a book that's literally cryptocurrency investing for dummies.
4:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:37 Anthony Pompliano? So walk me through, and this isn't the first book that you've written, but walk me through the process of going from I want to write a book to finished product. Like, what does that process actually look like?
4:48 Speaker 02 Right, so this book, this book was a little bit different. I'll tell you about my first, because that is when I actually really wanted to write a book, and that was about currency trading. Back then, I was a newbie. I was, what, like twenty-six? And I didn't have the credentials that I have today, and no publisher wanted to talk to me. And I, I was really adamant, I really wanted to. My goal was to help women to start investing in trading. I wanted them to understand the risk. I wanted them to get in charge. My whole thing was women empowerment. And heck, the name of my company is called, is Invest Diva, right? And, but publishers were not talking to me. Agents were not talking to me. Nobody was taking me seriously. And what I did is that I started vlogging.
5:33 Speaker 02 So I started literally making videos in my room with my roommate in the Upper East Side of New York City. I had like this tiny room over there, and I had this green screen. I started making videos, educating people, posting them on YouTube about currency trading. And what's interesting, that six months later, after all the publishers rejected me, McGraw-Hill reached out to me. They're like, okay, your content is kind of cool. Do you want to write a book about it? I'm like, I literally called you guys six months ago. You rejected me. But that's how that one happened. Second time around, I wanted to go a little bit more technical. And that was, again, the publishers were not. Really buying it. They're like, this is not something we're interested in. They were going more after
6:18 Speaker 02 something edgy, you know, something for bitches, like the bitch's way of that was getting a little bit more attention. They wanted edgy stuff, so they were not into it. So I self-published my second book, which is actually even more successful than my first book. And this one, I did not want to write it.
6:36 Anthony Pompliano? You didn't want to write the cryptocurrency investing for dummies?
6:38 Speaker 02 I didn't. I didn't even have it under my radar. I was just doing the research analysis for this company and I was making videos for them. And I was pregnant and my daughter was due on March 8th in 2018, which is last year, and I was planning to take last year off. And this guy on LinkedIn, somebody was kept like pinging me, hey, I got a book deal for you on crypto. I'm like, obviously this is scams. I did not, I didn't get back to him for four months. And finally, right after I gave birth, I was in the hospital and I was like, he pinged me again. I'm like, okay, let me see who this guy is.
7:19 Speaker 02 And it turned out he was actually the author of Stock Investing for Dummies.
7:25 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, very cool.
7:25 Speaker 02 It's like the dummy series have asked me to write cryptocurrency investing for dummies. I have no idea what it is and I really want you to write it. And I was like, what have you got up your sleeve? Like this doesn't happen normally.
7:36 Anthony Pompliano? Yep.
7:36 Speaker 02 And it turned out they actually wanted me to write that. And this one, I'm gonna tell you, I just got lucky. And the thing is, I considered not writing it. I was like, I really didn't want to write this this year. I wanted to focus on my daughter. But then I saw so many of my students losing money in crypto, so many people asking me about it. People didn't know what it is. What's a wallet? Where to buy it? What to do? People losing money. Then the market started going back down and I was like, you know what? This is important. I have to write it and I have to write it now because the next turnaround in the market, that is going to be an opportunity that I don't people, want people to miss.
8:13 Anthony Pompliano? Yep.
8:13 Speaker 02 And I want them to be informed. And that's the reason why I decided that, all right, I got my first baby. And I'm gonna write a book while breastfeeding, I guess, and that's what I did.
8:24 Anthony Pompliano? And so as you're writing the book, what were some of the challenges in terms of actually educating yourself on crypto? Because you hadn't been in the industry too long, you had just started researching it. And so I would actually argue that that may be an advantage because you're starting from I know nothing. How do I teach myself this? And kind of documenting that process a little bit. But what were some of the major challenges as you kind of went through that process?
8:47 Speaker 02 You made a great point. That's exactly what it was, especially because you're writing a for dummies book. You have to be the dummy. So I knew what it takes. I knew what the questions were that were in my head. Like back in the day when I rejected Bitcoin, I was like, I don't know what it is. I'm not gonna trust this. So I had to go back. So that is how I actually planned out the table of content. You have to write the table of content beforehand, before you even write the book. And the way I did it was like, okay, what were the questions that I had when I started it? And these are probably the questions that are gonna be in other people's heads. And of course, I had the opportunity to interview my students. I asked them a bunch of questions. What do you want to be in the book?
9:29 Speaker 02 And so the challenge, though, was to find the right information because that is the biggest problem, in my opinion, in the crypto world is there is a ton of information. And there are opportunities and there are scams. And for somebody who's new to this, who doesn't know where to go, who doesn't know where to, the right places to look at, it is very easy to just slip and fall into the hands of the scammers. So that was my biggest challenge to make sure every step of the way. And this is a very fast changing environment. Whatever I've written in this book, some of the, some of the things may not even be valid right now because I wrote them back in like four months ago.
10:12 Speaker 02 And so I had to make sure that this book is evergreen. That people have the tools to actually go and find the right information on them at every given time. So that was my challenge.
10:24 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And so as you're writing the book, were there areas that you knew people cared more than others? Like, to me, part of it is like trading. So we want to make money, right? But then part of it also is, hey, how do I make sure that I don't get hacked and security and things like that? Where did you see most people interested, right? Was there kind of one area where you're like, look, this is actually the most important thing that people really care about, and so I've got to nail this? Or was it the entire book was was kind of intriguing from different groups of people?
10:53 Speaker 02 So that's the thing. There are different groups of people who are getting into crypto. People who have absolutely no idea what it is. Then we got people who are investors in traditional markets and want to see what what they want to explore, something new. And then we've got people who actually are in the industry, who are crypto experts or blockchain experts or miners, and want to see how they can profit in a different avenue rather than mining or being in the tech side of it. So for that reason, I had to go through all avenues. I started out with the complete people who have no idea how to invest or have no idea where crypto is.
11:29 Anthony Pompliano? Yep.
11:30 Speaker 02 So the main question I get from those people is that where do I buy it? And like, where does it go? And some of them have heard of a wallet. What's a wallet? So that is where I start the book. Okay, so this is where you buy it. This is where you store it. This is how you ensure you don't get hacked. So all the systems, all the risk managements around it. And then we get into investing for people who already know how to invest in other assets. I kind of approach it as a diversification method for them and the things that they can. So for example, one of the things that I believe cryptocurrency investing is similar to is actually a cross between currency trading, traditional currency trading and equity, like stock trading. So it's a it's a cross between both. And that
12:12 Speaker 02 is a great portion of the book is written on that, that how you can actually apply the methods that you use in traditional markets into crypto and then where it is different.
12:22 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And so let's switch gears a little bit. You grew up in Iran, right? And I think that that country is very interesting for a number of reasons. One, right now, the US is sanctioning them for a whole bunch of political reasons. Maybe talk a little bit about like what it was like growing up there? And some of the big differences that now that you live in the United States, you're like, oh, this was very different than I think how people in the US grew up.
12:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's really cool. Absolutely. Great question. I was born and raised in Iran. I was there until 18. And to be honest, I actually liked living there. And this might sound strange because I'm not even Muslim. I was a minority there, religious minority. And we never even told people that I was because I was, not because they're gonna kill me, just because I was scared of getting bullied. But I had a really good teenage years there. I grew up listening to Eminem and Britney. And he was my eye. I had the massive celebrity crush on Eminem. That's how I learned English. I mean, I don't use his vocabulary anymore, but that is literally where I learned English. And the first, so I didn't come directly to the US.
13:31 Speaker 02 I spent time, seven years in Japan. And my idea of the Western society was always equality, male-female equality. And you might find this fascinating that I went to six months of university in Iran. I studied computer science there. And more than half of the students there were girls.
13:53 Anthony Pompliano? Wow.
13:54 Speaker 02 And I was not only expecting this to be the same in countries like Japan and the US. I was expecting it to be even more. I didn't even think of engineering as a male thing or male dominant. In Iran, women are actually like go-getters and powerful. So I was incredibly surprised to go to Japan and be the only girl in my class for the whole seven years. Then came on Wall Street. I was one of the very few women in the financial industry. And I was like, okay, Hollywood makes a complete, paints a completely different picture of the US or of the Western society. So that was my biggest surprise. And that is one of the other reasons, the exact reason why I started investment.
14:37 Speaker 02 Like this is BS. I'm sorry. Like you, like women should, this is, that was shocking to me.
14:43 Anthony Pompliano? It, it, it's funny because there's two pieces there. One is the quality piece. And the second piece is the focus on math and sciences outside of the United States and the education system. Um, in the US, uh, I think that we are, um, I think we're good at teaching math and science. Uh, but there are definitely a lot of countries internationally that are much, much better. Um, and it's because they start earlier, the curriculum is kind of accelerated. Uh, they teach both males and females, uh, from a very young age. And so what, what's kind of your take now is the experience you had growing up? Is that similar to what you think many citizens in Iran are having today? Do you think it's kind of evolved over time? Like, like, you know, when's the last time we went back?
15:26 Anthony Pompliano? Just, just talk a little bit about like, what is it like today compared to when you grew up?
15:31 Speaker 02 Right. So I have a lot of friends who are now somewhere else in the world, Australia, US, Canada. And, um, we talk about this often and I was not the only person who had this kind of experience. And you were right about the fact that, um, these countries like Iran at high school or even middle school, they put a lot of pressure on math and science and it is not gender biased. And I, I feel like in, in, in the US, I remember saying, I studied electrical engineer, go, I want to do this. And one of my friends in America, actually one of my family members, they who lived in America is like, oh, that's not a very sexy major.
16:12 Speaker 02 I'm like, what majors are supposed to be ma- sexy? Like, yeah, why don't you do PR or something? I'm like, like that was a reaction. So I feel like that is just embedded in the minds. It's not that you don't, Americans don't learn math as much, but I only think that it's just embedded in their minds that, okay, guys should do math or they're better at math and women should just do something sexy because they're better at being sexy, I guess. So, um, How Iran is different now, the last time I went there was seven years ago.
16:44 Anthony Pompliano? Okay.
16:45 Speaker 02 Um, right after I came to the US, like literally two weeks later, I went back to Iran. That was the last time I came back. It's interesting because I never had a fear to go back to Iran. But American media definitely makes it scary. So even though my parents now live in Iran.
17:01 Anthony Pompliano? Hmm.
17:02 Speaker 02 Uh, they're American citizens too. They come back and go. But now I'm kind of like, I watch the news and like, oh Iran, oh, I think, how are you guys living in Iran? My mom's like, you used to live there, it's still the same. So it has not changed. The government is still oppressing. People still want freedom. It's the same old story. Iranian people are probably more Americanized than Americans themselves. Or the Iranians who live in America, who've lived for generations in America. They are less Americanized than the Iranians who live in Iran. Believe it or not, because the ones in the US, they want to preserve the traditional culture. Whereas in Iran, they really are looking up to the Western society. They want to get a piece of that.
17:45 Speaker 02 And that's the reason why I was, I was kind of Americanized myself as well. And I don't think that has changed.
17:50 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. Uh, the Iranian government is working on a cryptocurrency. What, uh, thoughts on this?
17:57 Speaker 02 Well, that's the Iranian government for you.
17:59 Anthony Pompliano? What do you mean by that?
18:01 Speaker 02 I don't want to be accused of being a spy. I honestly don't know what they're doing and what their purposes are. But I think they're using it as a way to kind of come back with the sanctions and show uh, the rest of the world, or Saudis and Americans, that hey, we got, we got, we got something. The same reason why Venezuela is creating their own crypto.
18:21 Anthony Pompliano? It's basically because of the sanctions, this is a way for them to evade those sanctions and still have some connection to the global financial system.
18:27 Speaker 02 Absolutely. Because there are a lot of European countries that they still do want to do business with Iran, but because of the US, they can't. And uh, it looks like the crypto is going to give them an advantage.
18:38 Anthony Pompliano? The ability to do it. Uh, what has been the impact of the sanctions? Do you know? Like in terms of, okay, so, so, and, and the context here is one thing that I talk about a lot is sanctions is another word for censorship. Right? One country is telling another country, you cannot do X, right? With your money, in and out of your country, uh, your citizens cannot do, uh, that. If we described it in a different way, if we said we're gonna cut that country off from the global financial system, I think people would say, oh, what is the impact of that? Oh, that's actually pretty negative for a lot of citizens, etc. Maybe explain from your vantage point what that impact has been so far, which may kind of help people
19:20 Anthony Pompliano? understand why a government or citizens would want to establish another way to connect with the global system.
19:25 Speaker 02 Right. So one thing you ought to understand is that Iranian government, that Iranian people are two different entities.
19:31 Anthony Pompliano? Okay, yep.
19:32 Speaker 02 And by sanctioning Iran, you think you're sanctioning the Iranian government, but the impact is actually on the people.
19:41 Anthony Pompliano? Okay.
19:42 Speaker 02 And the people are suffering big time. Even people like, my family is like middle class over there, they're suffering because like the same when they were coming to the US, they're like, hey, like, we can barely afford the air rate. It's like ridiculous. And we're freaking Jewish. Like, what does it do with us? So what the Western society doesn't understand is that the government, they've got the money, they've got their islands, all these ayatollahs, their children are studying at the top universities abroad, they're not even in Iran. And these sanctions, the government is not, is not getting it. The only impact that it's having is on the people who actually don't like the government. And I don't believe
20:25 Speaker 02 it's doing anything. And I think it's incredibly strategic. I don't even, I know that Americans don't even believe the top level government. This is incredibly strategic. Because if you wanted to sanction somebody, you could have sanctioned Saudi Arabia. They have far less human rights than in Iran, but because of the strategic oil partnerships that they have with the US, they, they decided that, okay, Iran has to be the enemy so that we can have a better oil deal with Saudi. So it literally is just strategic, has nothing to do with citizens' good in mind.
21:03 Anthony Pompliano? Well, and it's interesting because I think Regular citizens around the world have, you know, done things to try to show the power of crypto, right? So before we started recording, we were talking about the Bitcoin Lightning Torch, Lightning Network Torch. So for those that don't know, the Lightning Torch is essentially like I send you $1 on Venmo, then you send it to somebody else and we kind of keep track of who's holding that $1. Rather than it be a dollar on Venmo, it's Bitcoin and Lightning Network and it's been sent around the world. I think it's like over 40 or 50 countries at this point. Everyone from, you know, random anonymized accounts on Twitter to Jack Dorsey and Reid Hoffman have held Lightning Torch. And recently, it was sent
21:48 Anthony Pompliano? from somebody in the US to a gentleman in Wales. He then sent it to a user in Iran. So he broke the sanctions and there was no government, there was no financial institution, nobody could stop him from sending the uncensorable money of Bitcoin into Iran. To make it even more kind of, you know, wow, the Iranian user then turned and sent the Bitcoin Lightning Torch to a user in Israel. And so they really were showing the power of, hey, there's this decentralized currency that cannot be stopped by a government through sanctions, etc. What impact does that have on Iranian people, the government? Like, is this something that they, you think that
22:31 Anthony Pompliano? they're paying attention to, they're scared of? Just kind of what, what's the general kind of feeling when you see something like that, having grown up there?
22:39 Speaker 02 I was blown away when I heard this. And I think it's amazing. And I think it's fascinating. And I think it puts a lot of power in, in people. This is why cryptocurrency was invented to begin with, decentralization, to get, take the power from centralized entities. And this is a pure example of how this should be done. And the impact on the Iranian government. So I'm kind of mixed on that because just thinking about it right now, they might be happy, the government, because they're like, oh, look, like even I, like people in the government and the citizens can use cryptocurrency. So
23:20 Speaker 02 I'm a little bit torn that maybe could the Iranian government take advantage of this? And somehow go around and play this against the people again? Or this is going to be only in the people's hands without the Iranian government?
23:37 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, Bitcoin is really interesting in that the way I'm going to describe it to folks is it is the only tool that I know of, the only weapon, that if it falls in the hands of a government, it cannot be used against the people. Right? So if you take a gun, for example, I could have a gun or somebody could have a gun and their authoritarian authoritative government is oppressing them, they can use that gun as a weapon in some sort of revolt or, you know, kind of conflict. If that gun falls in the hands of somebody in the military or in the government, the government can turn and shoot people. Right? So a weapon can be used by either side to affect the other side.
24:18 Anthony Pompliano? Bitcoin is very different. It is a nonviolent weapon that people can use to fight back against governments. Right? So governments are using inflation to steal wealth from the poor and all the things that we know that happened with the inflation, inflation-driven fiat currencies. And so people can fight back against that with Bitcoin. But if the government then begins to adopt Bitcoin, it doesn't hurt the people. Right? Actually, what it may do is it actually may help the people. Right? Because if you know that your government is buying this asset that is scarce, it may actually drive more people to buy it and whatever you hold may increase in value. Right? And so it's this really interesting, like, nonviolent weapon that when it falls in the wrong hands, can't be used against them.
25:03 Anthony Pompliano? Now, to your point, does that mean that the government understands the power of Bitcoin, realizes that it can evade sanctions? And rather than build their own cryptocurrency, they say, look, we're just going to use Bitcoin. Right? My fear with something like that is now the media in general spins it as, look, Bitcoin is used by governments to evade sanctions. Right? And so while there is truth in the statement, it is not the only currency that is used to do that. Right? US dollar cash is used to do that as well in a much more grand way on a global scale. Right?
25:36 Speaker 02 Right, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is a great way to looking at it. And I, I just can't imagine what could happen when, when the Iranian government, I mean, the Iranian government is obviously now exploring all kinds of crypto. And I personally have been invited to go to Iran to talk about this stuff that I have refused.
25:59 Anthony Pompliano? Why?
26:01 Speaker 02 Kind of scared. I probably shouldn't be, but I don't know. I've been watching way too much media, US media.
26:09 Anthony Pompliano? Just not worth it?
26:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:11 Anthony Pompliano? Makes sense. Okay, so you wrote this book, Cryptocurrency Investing for Dummies. You gonna write another one?
26:17 Speaker 02 Uh, well, so that's the thing. The only missing piece among my trilogy book right now is what I'm most passionate about. And that is general wealth management. So my course is an investdiva.com. It's on that, but I don't have a book on that. And I think the first step anybody who's doing any kind of investment has to take is to do budgeting and doing the risk management properly before they do it. And I talk about it in cryptocurrency investing. I talk about my, my other books as well, but I don't have it as a standalone book. So I am already thinking of writing a standalone book on wealth management.
26:55 Anthony Pompliano? Very cool. What's your goal with the cryptocurrency investing for dummies?
26:59 Speaker 02 My goal is to inform as many people as possible about the opportunities in cryptocurrency and prevent them from falling into the wrong path and losing money. And well, right now, my biggest goal this month, Women's Month, is to donate all the proceeds of my book sales on my website to charities that help stop sexual abuse and trafficking of young children. Being a mom, that is important to me. And I cannot do that with the books published and sold on Amazon because that's the publisher's side. I can only have, I only have control of the other ones on my website. And by the way, I do accept cryptocurrencies.
27:41 Anthony Pompliano? Very good, very good. Well, I think part of, part of the book, right, is it's very kind of, again, it's for dummies in terms of educational standpoint. And so while the crypto community is very kind of in the weeds and, you know, people are debating everything from scaling challenges to, you know, privacy settings and kind of really nuanced arguments, there's literally billions of people who have no idea what a cryptocurrency is. They have no idea what a digital wallet is, right? And so a book like this, to me, is much more geared towards that mass audience of you just need to understand very complex ideas and kind of features and functions in very simple terms, right? And so a digital wallet
28:25 Anthony Pompliano? is a place where you store a cryptocurrency, right? And things that are probably very elementary to the sophisticated, intelligent cryptocurrency crowd, I think a lot of times, especially you see it on Twitter, like people forget about the mass consumer and realize that they'll never know as much as that sophisticated crowd knows, but we do need content to help people get on boarded, right, and learn.
28:48 Speaker 02 I actually, I absolutely, so one of the, when you asked about my goal, I talked about what my goal is with the profit, but, but the goal with this book actually was exactly this because the community has become very niche, especially after the bubble burst. The average Joe is, does not want to hear about Bitcoin anymore. And I think that is unfortunate. And the community is becoming very, very small. And if you really want to adopt for cryptocurrencies to start scaling and start being used by everybody, you have to educate the average person who doesn't know anything about crypto, who's burned, who's lost a ton of money in Bitcoin, about the possibilities so that everybody can take advantage of it and hopefully everybody can use it.
29:33 Anthony Pompliano? Absolutely. Before I finish up, I always ask rapid fire questions. Most important company in crypto?
29:38 Speaker 02 Oh, man. Basic Attention Token.
29:41 Anthony Pompliano? Why?
29:42 Speaker 02 Ah, I like their team.
29:44 Anthony Pompliano? Oh my god, no one's ever said that before.
29:47 Speaker 02 Well, normally I would say Ripple, but now that Jamie Dimon, J P Morgan is making their own crypto, it's kind of competitors to the first, that was my first instinct.
29:56 Anthony Pompliano? Wow, so for those that are, uh, basic attention token, uh, I think what it's built by the same team that built the Brave browser.
30:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, so that's the reason why I like them because they're trying to revolutionize the advertisement system. And I'm kind of geeking out on advertising at the moment and I feel it's brilliant. And I think it's an actual real life usage, user case for crypto. So that's the reason why I chose that.
30:18 Anthony Pompliano? I'll buy that argument. Um, what is the most controversial thought you have in crypto?
30:23 Speaker 02 I think that Bitcoin is going to go back down to one thousand one hundred and eighty dollars before it goes back up.
30:29 Anthony Pompliano? Really?
30:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:30 Anthony Pompliano? Wow, we have not had anyone do any price predictions on here. Obviously not financial advice. The compliance department will kill me if I don't say this is not financial advice again.
30:40 Speaker 02 Let me tell, let me actually double down, let me double down on that. Uh, that is a thought that I have, I have my arguments on that. This is definitely not a financial advice, I have to say it as well and.
30:52 Anthony Pompliano? But you think eleven hundred and eighty dollars?
30:54 Speaker 02 I think that could be around the, the price it could fall down to because that was the resistance. That was the price that Bitcoin was a peak for Bitcoin for a very long time before the two thousand seventeen bullish movement. And I don't see any reason why it couldn't go back down to it before the next generation of.
31:15 Anthony Pompliano? Listen, this is crypto.
31:16 Speaker 02 Cent to man goes back up.
31:17 Anthony Pompliano? Anything is possible. Uh, what's your, uh, the most important book you've ever read?
31:22 Speaker 02 Think and Grow Rich.
31:23 Anthony Pompliano? Really?
31:24 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, because I had a very weird relationship with money. As I said, when I was an engineer, I really thought money is source of evil and these kind of transactions. I didn't understand the true, uh, under, uh, what, what money really is. It's a, it's a tool for transaction, it's a tool for me to give something to you. And that is the reason why I'm very interested in currencies in general, now cryptocurrencies. And I think that has helped me shape the person that I am today and why I'm good with money now.
31:54 Anthony Pompliano? Very good. Uh, I always ask one non-crypto question before I let you ask me a question to finish up. Uh, are aliens real?
32:01 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
32:02 Anthony Pompliano? Why?
32:03 Speaker 02 Because you must be so vain if you think you're the only person on this earth, the on this, on this universe. This is a very, very large universe, so many stars, so many possibilities. There are definitely people out there, I'm not saying aliens have visited us, that I don't know, but there are definitely people out there.
32:22 Anthony Pompliano? So I usually ask that question, people come prepared. Now I've been thinking more about the depths of the ocean and like, it's pretty scary because there's just creatures and stuff that we don't know about down there. Would you rather go to the depths of the ocean or go to space?
32:34 Speaker 02 Space.
32:35 Anthony Pompliano? Nobody wants to go to the depths of the ocean. Everyone picks space.
32:38 Speaker 02 I, I freaked out, like I did, I dived one, I, I, I went whatever, while diving. I freaked out, I had to come back in like three seconds.
32:46 Anthony Pompliano? You, you had snorkel or?
32:48 Speaker 02 No, we did the.
32:49 Anthony Pompliano? With the actual scuba diving?
32:51 Speaker 02 Scuba diving, yeah, and first of all, my ear was popping and second, I was panicking. So I was like, nope, I'm out.
32:57 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, yeah, I, I, I think a lot of people, uh, spaced to them, eh, you know, they're getting planes, they're just like more familiarized with it.
33:05 Speaker 02 Also, you always want to go up. It's, I think in human nature that you always, I mean, you got heaven, you think is up on the clouds, like everything you, it's, it's, it's kind of evolutionary for us to go up instead of down, right?
33:18 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, I, I, uh, go to the bottom of the ocean is pretty scary. The thing that I think would be the coolest, we go inside, the inside of an active volcano. If there's a way to do it without dying.
33:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:27 Anthony Pompliano? Like, check out what's going on down there.
33:29 Speaker 02 Would you do that?
33:30 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, of course.
33:30 Speaker 02 Oh, my God.
33:31 Anthony Pompliano? I don't care, like I'm gonna die at some point, with an epic story.
33:35 Speaker 02 Last day.
33:36 Anthony Pompliano? No, I'll die whenever. Um, all right, what one question do you have for me?
33:40 Speaker 02 What is your, your top crypto to investing if you wanted to?
33:44 Anthony Pompliano? Uh, well, just the, forget investing, uh, I don't think that there's anything more important than Bitcoin. Um, I think that it is highly unlikely anything will ever be more important than Bitcoin.
33:56 Anthony Pompliano? It is, uh, for so many different reasons, but, uh, I, I've come to the conclusion that I actually think Bitcoin could do more for wealth inequality in the world than all philanthropic activity combined.
34:10 Speaker 02 But why, what, what about all the problems that Bitcoin has? Like, you know, energy and the slowness and?
34:16 Anthony Pompliano? I, I think that almost every single one of them is highly misunderstood and I think that, uh,
34:24 Anthony Pompliano? There are some legitimate problems or challenges. So, you know, when people always ask me like, "Hey, what do you think about Bitcoin?" I'm always very careful to say, "Look, it could go to zero," right? I think it's highly unlikely that it'll go to zero or won't be a thing. But if that was to happen, I worry more about things like software bugs than I do about like mining, right? There's a bunch of reports that have come out, like 65, 70% of all the energy is actually renewable energy. I would make the argument that Bitcoin mining is driving the adoption of renewable energy faster than most other things. So in that case, it's actually a good thing in terms of, you know, the security and the scaling and like, like there's plenty of issues that need to get solved, but I think
35:07 Anthony Pompliano? we're making quite a bit of progress. And so for me, it's just Bitcoin is going to be the most successful. It has been to date, and I think that'll continue for a long time. And if it is adopted as the global reserve currency, it removes the number one cause of wealth inequality, which is inflation. And so if you can get rid of inflation and you can go to a deflationary asset with a disinflationary monetary schedule, I think it becomes really interesting, the impact it could have on the world.
35:34 Speaker 02 All right. You're one of the few people who still is like all in because you don't believe in any other, the other other cryptos.
35:40 Anthony Pompliano? I think that there are some others that will have value. I think it's just a very small number of them.
35:44 Speaker 02 All right.
35:45 Anthony Pompliano? So we will, we'll see. All right. Cryptocurrency Investing for Dummies. I appreciate you reading the book. It's hopefully going to help quite a few people learn about crypto, Bitcoin, blockchain, and, and we need as many of them as we can get. So thank you very much. And we'll have to do this again in the future.
36:02 Speaker 02 Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
36:06 Anthony 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.
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