#1048 Eric Weiss On Helping Family Offices Invest In Bitcoin

Eric Weiss is a Digital Asset Manager and CEO of Bitcoin Investor Group & Blockchain Investment Group. In this conversation, we discuss Inflation in the United States, how family offices are discussing Bitcoin, how Eric is helping investors come around to adopting Bitcoin, and how Eric has seen demand in Bitcoin change over the past year. ======================= 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 ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/Pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK. ======================= FTX. US is the safe, regulated way to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital assets. Trade crypto with up to 85% lower fees than top competitors. There are no fixed minimum fees, no ACH transaction fees, and no withdrawal fees. FTX. US is also the only leading exchange that supports both Ethereum and Solana NFTs. Download the FTX App today and use referral code “Pomp” to earn free crypto on every trade over $10. The more you trade, the more you earn. =======================

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. Eric Weiss is the Digital Asset Manager and CEO of Bitcoin Investment Group and Blockchain Investment Group. In this conversation, we talk about how family offices are adopting Bitcoin, what their thoughts are of the asset in a high inflation environment, whether investors should get direct exposure to Bitcoin, or look at publicly traded mining businesses, and how Eric has seen demand changes in the investment category over the last few months. I really enjoyed this conversation with Eric, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. First up is LMAX Digital,

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  the number one institutional crypto exchange. They offer 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. If you've never heard of LMAX Digital, it's probably because you are not an institution. They have no retail, only institutions. They feature a central limit order book streaming spot Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash, all paired with US Dollars, Euro, and Yen. LMAX Digital, they're secure, they're liquid, and they're trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp.

• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, LMAXdigital.com/pomp. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep is the single best product that I have purchased over the last three years. It completely changed my life. I'm not joking, pay attention. The Pod Pro cover, which goes over your mattress by Eight Sleep, is the most advanced solution on the market for thermal regulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can go to eightsleep.com/pomp to check out the Pod Pro cover, and you save $150 at checkout. They currently ship within the United States, Canada, and the UK. And I told you, it changed my life. It helps me sleep deeper, helps me sleep longer. I feel much more refreshed, and I have better energy. You want to know how I have relentless energy? Every single day because I sleep on an eight sleep.

• 2:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Seriously, go check it out. Eight sleep.com slash pump today. This episode is brought to you by FTX US. FTX.us is the safe, regulated way to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital assets. You can trade crypto with up to 85% lower fees than top competitors. There are no fixed minimum fees, no ACH transaction fees and no withdrawal fees either. FTX.us is also the only leading exchange that supports both Ethereum and Solana NFTs. Download the FTX app today and use referral code POMP to earn these free crypto on every trade over $10. The more you trade, the more you earn. Go download the FTX app today and use referral code POMP.

• 2:53Speaker 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.

• 3:17Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, we've got Eric with us. Eric, how are you?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  I'm good, man. How you doing?

• 3:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm pumped. You have a nice shirt on, but you do not have on a suit and tie to defeat the bear market.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  I know, I'm impressed, man. I've been, I've been beating you up a long time to like, wear a suit and tie and not a black hoodie. And then I show up underpants.

• 3:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's talk inflation first, which I think is the backdrop for the entire investment world right now. The Fed seems to be in control. They say they're going to destroy demand. Inflation numbers today, 9.1%. What is your read as to how to think about the actual inflation people are experiencing? Do you believe the 9.1% number or do you think there's a different way to think about it?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  I think, you know, inflation is a vector. It's not just one static number to say this is the inflation rate. And I think it's pretty well documented that inflation in the areas that matter most, whether you're talking about prices at the pump, food prices, the things that are affecting real everyday people are dramatically higher than the 9.1%. But even if you go with the broken metrics of 9.1%. We're talking about the highest inflation in 40 years. This is dramatic. And if you look at inflation in other countries, it's considerably worse. So globally, we've got a massive problem and nobody is immune to it. Obviously, it hits people living paycheck to paycheck the hardest because they don't own assets that inflate with this inflation.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a really vicious thing. Everybody's in the same boat.

• 4:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Many investors, including myself, kept talking about Bitcoin as an inflation hedge. I think now there is kind of a nuanced view of that, which is, well, maybe it's not an inflation hedge in the sense of inflation goes up and Bitcoin goes up to combat that. But maybe it's actually a hedge on the loose monetary policy. So if the Fed says they're going to tighten, Bitcoin has come down because people anticipate risk assets to come down. How do you think about whether it's an inflation hedge or it's a loose monetary policy?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  I've read some stuff on that as well. And the correlation to the monetary policy is pretty strong. And so right now, that's looking like a pretty viable perspective. That said, I think that Bitcoin ultimately is an inflation hedge and that what we're dealing with are some unique circumstances where obviously there's very thin float in Bitcoin from a trading volume point of view relative to other assets. So it's not manipulated in a negative way. But when you get things like we have now where there's a correlation to equities with Bitcoin, which I think will ultimately break because Bitcoin is not an equity. But right now, it is heavily correlated and that correlation is being enforced by big

• 5:53Speaker 02

  macro hedge funds who are using Bitcoin to hedge their equity exposure, particularly to NASDAQ and big tech equity. So if a big macro hedge fund has a billion dollars of big tech exposure and they want to hedge that because the correlation with Bitcoin to tech is kind of four to one, like almost a four beta. So if you had a billion dollars of exposure, you could short $250 million of Bitcoin and be equally hedged. So if stocks go down 1%, Bitcoin is going to go down 4% and vice versa. So I think that's reinforcing this correlation, which is kind of hurting us right now. That'll ultimately break. And I also think we get that kind of technology adoption volatility.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Think back to Amazon, you know, ever since Amazon was a public company, it has lost 80% of its market cap, six times and one time more than 90%. So this is kind of expected and it's hard to be an inflation hedge when you have that degree of volatility, but ultimately as the asset matures, I think it's going to prove to be an inflation hedge.

• 6:56Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think of the Fed and their kind of talk track right now, obviously they are talking about destroying demand, which I always remind folks just means they're going to punish you until you stop buying things. And we have seen risk assets go down because people are selling them because they're listening to the Fed, but inflation is still at 9.1% and it's actually accelerating. What are they going to have to do? Like, can the Fed actually get inflation under control or no matter what they do, it's not going to come down? And so maybe they're going to have to pivot before inflation actually comes down.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  I don't think they're going to have to pivot before inflation comes down. I think that the Fed can be pretty effective by raising rates. It has a pretty dramatic effect. Maybe the most obvious place to see it is in housing. We're already seeing more housing deals break that are in contract than we've seen in a really long time. And just to follow that through one step, it's as interest rates go up and those mortgage rates that were two and a half, three and a half percent are now 6% mortgage rate, people are breaking those deals. Prices of houses are being revised downward. So I think we're starting to see that and we're going to see it across the board even more. Demand is going to decrease and I think there are signs that it already is.

• 8:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you look at core inflation versus kind of CPI inflation that includes energy and food, is there a reason to look at core inflation? Like, I know the Fed likes to point at it because it's going down right now, so that's their signal of saying, oh, look, inflation is going to get under control. How do you look at those two numbers and do you put more weight on either one of them?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  No, I just think of, I try to think of it across the entire spectrum of assets and services and

• 8:36Speaker 02

  There's what numbers say on reports, docs, news reports, et cetera. And there's what every individual feels. And the truth of the matter is, I think, most people only care what their personal exposure to inflation is. How is this affecting me? And everyone goes to restaurants. Everyone drives a car. Not everyone's sensitive to those prices. There are people with a ton of money who are like, I don't give a shit if the entree is $50 or $75 at the restaurant I eat. But there are a lot of people who do care about all those things. But those people, even the really affluent people, they do care about whether or not their purchasing power is impacting their ability to purchase a house, you know? And all of a sudden, even that wealthy person who's thinking of buying, you know, this

• 9:19Speaker 02

  $15 million house and is going to put, you know, 13 million of that, you know, in debt on mortgage, they care that that interest rate is 6% and not 3%. And so it impacts everyone. I just look at it through my personal vantage point to try to assess what the real impact is. And it's dramatic. I mean, I feel it.

• 9:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I continue to be blown away by the cost of food. Food, to me, is the big one, right? You know, gas, obviously, is high, but I think that they've got a stronger argument as to it's not just monetary policy that's driving that. There's supply chains, there's geopolitical conflict, all that. Food, while, yes, there is a little bit that can be attributed to some of the geopolitical conflict and the breaking of supply chains. It feels like that is very much more tied to kind of the monetary policy and to just 12% increase food at home.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Massive. I mean, I had dinner with a buddy of mine this past week here in Miami, and he runs business here. He's got a couple hundred employees. And he was telling me, true story, about a woman that works for him. She makes $60,000, $70,000 a year kind of range. And she came to him and she asked for a raise. And never came to him, worked for him for many years, never came and asked for a raise. And he said, you know, sure, tell me why. And she said, you know, I can't afford the gas and the groceries. She said, I've been going to the grocery store, you know, blah, blah, blah, so frequently. It's always, I get the same thing every time. And it's It's always between, you know, like 200 and 220 dollars. And now it's, you know, closer to 300 dollars and she can't make it on what she's gotten.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  It's like, it really hits, you know, when you hear it at that level. This is not just some fictitious numbers that you're hearing spouted on CNBC. This is really impacting everyone.

• 11:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's pretty incredible. You talked to a lot of family offices and managed capital on their behalf. What are they talking about right now in terms of Bitcoin and its relationship to inflation?

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they're generally speaking, and you can't generalize because every family office and every family has kind of a different perspective on their investments. But generally speaking, they're in the stay rich game, not the get rich game. You're talking about families that have had money for generations in a lot of cases. And they're scared of inflation too. Yeah, they own assets that are inflating as well, but this is really scary stuff for anybody. And the one thing they know is if they sit in US dollar cash, even though dollars kick an ass against every other currency, sure, they'll go to Europe this summer and they're happy that there's parity, you know, and Europe feels cheap, but they know that their dollars are melting away and that that probably isn't going to reverse course anytime soon. So they're looking for ways to hedge that inflation.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  And Bitcoin is something that comes up. You know, initially it was something they dismissed. And then, as you know, we used to see each other on that circuit back in the day, right? And when you had that great line, just get off zero.

• 12:09Anthony Pompliano?

  That was it?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  That was it. I think it's still relevant today, unfortunately, but really that's the key. But so they were kicking tires back then. They just wanted information. They had a son or daughter or grandchild that was telling them about this Bitcoin stuff. And they dismissed them and kind of pushed it off. And now this Bitcoin thing is a bug in the bottom right constant of their CNBC screen. It's front page of the Wall Street Journal, their New York Times, everything. So now they're coming and saying, hey, what's going on here? Is this a digital gold? What am I missing? Why is everyone talking about this? And really they want to dip a toe. And then, once they cross that threshold of saying, okay, I want to dip a toe. I feel like I should have some exposure to this.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Then it's a matter of evaluating the different ways that they could have that exposure. And that's where it gets pretty unique because this group of investors, they want this to feel like other investments they've made. They just want it to be comfortable, right? So do they go, you know, how do they buy Bitcoin, right? Do they self custody? That's not something that's really palatable for this 75 year old matriarch or patriarch of this family office who's like, you know, gonna have to worry about they're just not appealing to them. Do they go to a new exchange like a Coinbase or something that they've heard about, read about IPO, public company? Yeah, that's great, except two weeks ago, it was $100 billion market cap. And now it's $10 billion market cap.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  And is it going to be here tomorrow? Not interested in that for the most part either. So, you know, GBTC, yeah, that's an option. Why is it at a 30% discount? There's no ETF or ETP out there, which would be a nice kind of first order derivative. So really they want a way to own Bitcoin. And that's why I started my fund Bitcoin Investment Group, which we just charge 1%. And we try to give them the best of all worlds, which is we custody at Fidelity Digital Assets, which is a name that they're comfortable with. It's a buy and hold strategy where we, they give a million dollars, we buy a million dollars of Bitcoin. We maintain separate tax accounting for them so they're not impacted by anybody else's movements in the fund.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  And then the really cool thing about it, which was important to me, was if and when they decide they want out and they want to redeem, they have a choice. We can sell the Bitcoin and send them US dollars, or they can have the Bitcoin sent to, you know, their wallet, which is pretty cool. So they can actually take possession of it.

• 14:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And why are they so interested? Is it because inflation? Is it because they feel like there's asymmetry? And it's just, you know, kind of on top of and kind of higher leverage exposure to like risk asset? Like what is driving their interest other than just, oh, I hear other people talking about it?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Over the last year, it's been inflation. That's been a key. It's, it was the narrative that Bitcoin is a digital gold is I think the one that resonated the most because I think when, especially when you're, when you've got that generational gap. Having a close simile to something that you know they're familiar with makes it easy to understand. So they understand the challenges of gold. They understand that that gold bar is really difficult to move around and their kids aren't interested in it. So they know that there's a gap there, right? And you talk about Bitcoin in the context of digital gold and you point out all the things that make Bitcoin better than gold. They start to understand it. There may be a leap of faith there in accepting that this is going to be a thing. But then you start talking about kind of how your kid

• 15:31Speaker 02

  was really comfortable buying that skin for $10 in the video game that had no value. Don't you think that his generation or her generation is going to be comfortable owning this digital asset the same way? And then you can see the wheels start to churn and it clicks from and they say, okay, let's take a shot. Let's do something here.

• 15:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And how much are they putting in on a portfolio basis? This like 1% to 2%? Is this let's get to 10%?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  It's still low, single digits. We're not seeing, I'm not seeing anybody say, yeah, let's pile in. I want 40, 50% of my money in this. But what I am seeing this time around that's really different than past bear markets, and I think this is super encouraging. Past bar markets, the feedback we got is kind of a venture mentality, like, oh shit, did we blow our money on this? Is it all gone? Like, we took a shot. Oh, well, kind of thing. Now it's very much not that. Now the calls that I'm getting from existing clients is, hey, is it time to buy more? At what price do you think we buy more? And people have like this number in mind that they want to hit, whether it's 100 Bitcoin or whatever

• 16:37Speaker 02

  it is, they've got some number in their head. And this dip, as we say in our world, which is not a dip, but this downturn is an opportunity for them to average, price average down and hit the numbers they're looking to hit.

• 16:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And when we get into these bear markets, do you see difference in new clients, like in the sense of the interest? Are they scared because the price went down 70%? Are they excited if they don't already have exposure? Oh, now, you know, I feel like I didn't miss it. I can go and buy more lately. What are you hearing there?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  It runs the gamut. The challenge that Bitcoin has relative to a stock or a piece Of real estate or something else is when the price goes down, we don't have a stream of cash flows to say, hey, this is cheap. Right. It's not trading at a multiple of earnings or a discounted cash flow. We don't have those metrics with Bitcoin. So people can get scared and just be like, oh shit, the price is down, you know, momentum is the key thing here. It's just going to go further down. So we see that we see the gamut, people who've done the research, spent the time, if they put in a hundred or a thousand hours researching this, they have conviction and they're like, this is a buying opportunity. I'd like to buy more, you know, what, and then they, you know, maybe get a little technical analysis and they say, how far do you think we can go down on this cycle? You know, where should we buy? And they try to optimize that.

• 17:48Anthony Pompliano?

  We've seen issues with stable coins, with various lending outlets, both in the decentralized and centralized world. Over the last, you know, six to eight months, how much of that kind of news and developments have either helped Bitcoin or hurt Bitcoin? And kind of people's adoption or are these family offices paying attention to that stuff? And kind of what is the impact of it?

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. As you all know, don't, don't underestimate the intellect and access to information that family offices have. These are, these are people with means who care about things, who pay attention to everything, right? They, they will continue to impress you with what they know.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  But generally speaking, what I'm seeing is the media is doing us a disservice. This, this blanket term of crypto is a tremendous disservice, right? Cause it paints everything with the same brush. And even as we talk about kind of, you know, the, the firms that you alluded to that have struggled over the, you know, past handful of months with liquidity issues. Even within that specific genre, I think we're not parsing it enough to see where the problems are and where they aren't. The truth is in those areas that had problems, it was the centralized players, right? Like. Celsius, BlockFi, these guys, these are centralized finance, not decentralized finance.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  The truly decentralized finance, where it's kind of smart contract based, no, hey, we'll make a loan without collateral kind of decision making, no back office handshake kind of stuff. They fare much better than centralized finance players do. But this general painting of this big brush of crypto with Luna and all this other crap and the stablecoin problems, Bitcoin gets lumped into that discussion. And I think that as we kind of, this asset class evolves, we'll get more definition of more things. And Bitcoin, Bitcoin really is not crypto, in my opinion. It's its own thing, totally separate, different value proposition, going after a much larger addressable market and has a much more certain future.

• 19:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Based on a lot of what's played out over the last couple of weeks, even a couple of months, it feels like disclosure requirements will significantly increase. There will likely be more regulation, more regulatory clarity.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 20:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm assuming that that is a big tailwind for institutions and family offices and the kind of their interest in Bitcoin. Do you agree or disagree with that?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Completely agree.

• 20:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Completely agree.

• 20:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And is there something specific that they're looking for? Like when they, they say regulatory clarity, like we have the SEC chairman on national television saying Bitcoin is not a security, you know, there's data points.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:25Anthony Pompliano?

  But is there something that they're like, okay, when we get X, then I'm interested? ETF approval or something else? Like what are they waiting for?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  I think it's more concrete regulation than ETF approval will help. But generally speaking, I think to, to summarize kind of their perspective, it's kind of like headline risk, right?

• 20:49Speaker 02

  No one wants to make a ton of money in the financial world if it comes with headline risk. You insider traded, you engaged in something that, you know, was a security before it was recognized as a security, they don't want the black eye that's going to come with it. It's like, well, if you buy, you know, if you buy a lot of Bitcoin and scream about it and the price goes up, you know, Is someone going to come after you in some form of manipulation, you know, play or something? So they just want regulatory clarity. And then when the institutions have that regulatory clarity, I think there'll be much more comfort in them allocating larger chunks of capital to it. They want to come in now and they understand like, hey, the price is low because these things

• 21:34Speaker 02

  aren't in place. So there's a risk reward profile for dipping that toe now and getting smart on it so that when there is some clarity and less ambiguity, they can just flick a switch and come in a much bigger way.

• 21:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Many of these wealthy families own businesses or are large shareholders in other businesses. Is there a thought process that once they personally start to allocate that will leak into either the businesses they own or that they're large shareholders of?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  I think so. I think what's going to happen that's kind of key for Bitcoin is kind of what happens to gold where there's no price sensitivity to gold. If you're at an investment bank or asset management firm, it's an allocation, right? So your investment manager will sit down with you and they'll say, well, you've got $2 million with us and we're, you know, we should allocate, you know, 10% of that to gold, we'll put $200,000 into gold. There's no discussion of what the price per ounce of gold is. So when Bitcoin kind of gets to that threshold, I think we'll see that same thing and it'll be like, okay, it'll be an allocation. It'll be, we should put X percent of this money into Bitcoin, not, hey, what price per Bitcoin are we trading at in dollars?

• 22:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And I guess as you look around the world, is there a difference between like US-based investors and maybe people in developing nations or in other parts of the world of their interest level?

• 22:51Speaker 02

  At the family office level, well, yeah, there is. I mean, I talked to some, some folks in South America and here in the States, you can, you can be fooled into thinking that inflation is not as pernicious as you may think, right? Cause the dollar has fared better than every other currency. However, you know, you talk to, you talk to a family office in Argentina or Venezuela and they really get it. They're, they're looking for Bitcoin. They don't give a rat's ass about the volatility because they're looking at 100% inflation here in their currency. And they're just looking to get it into assets that are going to fare better.

• 23:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and I guess a huge piece of family offices is obviously they do a lot of investing, but also because they own businesses, they build companies. Do you see any of them saying, hey, you know what, maybe I want to allocate to Bitcoin, maybe I don't, but like maybe we should go build services or companies around the Bitcoin network, the payment rails, infrastructure, anything like that?

• 23:49Speaker 02

  I have not seen that yet. I would love to see it, but I haven't seen it yet.

• 23:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's interesting from the perspective of I've seen more and more family offices start to look for venture exposure in the Bitcoin ecosystem, but I haven't yet seen those family offices say, hey, well, we've built, you know, 10 other businesses, maybe we should go build in this space. Maybe mining-

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Ricardo Solanis maybe, you know, a little bit falls into that camp, but generally mining, yeah, you bring in mining. Yeah, I haven't, I haven't seen that yet. They're pretty familiar with on the venture side of things. They are interested in venture type stuff, but they're really viewing Bitcoin, generally speaking, as a digital gold, which personally I think is the most healthy narrative for Bitcoin.

• 24:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Why do you think it's the most healthy one?

• 24:33Speaker 02

  It's relatable. It's true. The benefits of Bitcoin relative to gold are dramatic. Anybody can understand them. And selfishly, as a huge proponent of Bitcoin, I think if you can get to a place where Bitcoin starts to rival gold at that, you know, even half of gold, even a $5 trillion level, $250,000 per Bitcoin, I think everything else that all the maxies dream about starts to fall into place and all of those battles are a lot easier at 250,000 to 500,000. And if history is going to repeat itself, every time a digital successor has, you know, replaced an analog predecessor, that digital successor has dwarfed that analog

• 25:17Speaker 02

  predecessor by a tremendous amount.

• 25:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Magnitudes, yeah.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:20Anthony Pompliano?

  What are you hearing in the conversation around Bitcoin? Obviously, there's the mainstream conversation. You see CNBC, Bloomberg, many of the mainstream outlets talking about it now. But then there's also like kind of Bitcoin Twitter, and it feels like there's a ton of infighting right now. And most of that, I'm assuming, is because of the bear market, although it's hard to kind of pinpoint one thing. Just prices go down, people are bored and they yell and scream at each other. But do most of these investors or family offices, are they on Twitter? Do they pay attention to that stuff? Are they completely immune to it?

• 25:49Speaker 02

  I think they're fairly immune to it. I don't have too many of my clients that follow me on Twitter. So I don't have too many people that follow me on Twitter, but, but, no, I think, I think they're really immune to it. We're in our own little world. And I think it's not just boredom that's brought out some of this vitriol. It's that people are all in and they're committed. And when you're all in and it goes down, you know, 50% or something, that causes personal anxiety and Twitter's an outlet for emotions. And we see a lot of that. Personally, I think, you know, some of the toxic stuff is, is really counterproductive to Bitcoin because it does get picked up by media. It does get

• 26:34Speaker 02

  put into news articles. And if we want Bitcoin to spread the way we all want it to spread, it needs to be approachable and welcoming. And it's really, it's always been really ironic to me that, you know, some hardcore Bitcoiners will want to dictate how these pro-freedom people want to dictate how different people use Bitcoin, you know, well, they're not all in, you know, like Elon Musk only bought a billion and a half dollars worth of Bitcoin. We hate him. It's like, no, dude, we love him. Thank you, Elon. You know, like, that's great.

• 27:07Anthony Pompliano?

  I, whenever I hear the term real Bitcoiner, and, you know, I, look, I've probably used it in the past as well, right? Just in conversation, whatever. But when you hear that term, it's almost this like, somebody who holds, you know, one Bitcoin and then holds a bunch of other assets and it's a small percentage, are they a Bitcoiner? And there's a lot of folks who would say, no.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, right?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Totally contrary to the get off zero, right? Which is like, come on, just get, get involved. Once you start paying attention to it, you'll go up the learning curve.

• 27:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And I also think, and I've talked about this before on the show, but there is a skill in being able to disagree with someone without offending them, right? It's almost like a, if you think of like a statesman, right? Which, by the way, is like hilarious for anyone on Twitter to be talking about statesmanship.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Because for the most part, everyone has had a bad day and said something stupid or bombastic or whatever. But there is this like statesmanship where it takes intelligence, it takes maturity, it takes emotional control, it takes patience, right? All these things that like every human's like, oh, you know, I gotta improve at those things. But if you can be somewhat of a statesman and disagree with somebody and have the patience, what ends up happening, I think, is

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Your credibility goes through the roof.

• 28:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and they just started to realize like, oh, this isn't like an emotional lashing out or anything like that. This is like somebody who understands this, is trying to help me understand it, and maybe I have somebody that I should be listening to or paying more attention to.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, in addition to that, I think, I agree with you completely. But in addition to that, I think our society has become so polarized on topics, you know, think political, right? It's like, one person says black, the other person says white, just reflexively, right? So Bitcoin is really unique in the sense that its appeal is truly bipartisan, right? I think the value proposition to the constituency that the left claims to represent is even stronger than the value proposition Bitcoin has to the kind of affluent investment right. This banking the unbanked and narrowing the wealth gap is a truly better value proposition for Bitcoin than the latter, à la Jack Dorsey's interest in it, right? And so I think, and just look at the bill, right? Cynthia Loomis and Gillibrand, I mean, we've got, how many

• 29:18Speaker 02

  topics have you seen in the last, you know, year that have bipartisan support in the United States government? Not a lot. So I think that we're really missing an opportunity not to seize on that and leverage that and be something that's appealing to everyone in whatever degree or application it's applicable to them, and be the big tent that welcomes everybody. Because that's really, you know, to my understanding, the ethos of Bitcoin, right? So I think we're missing an opportunity, and I think the infighting and toxicity kind of takes us away from that.

• 29:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, one development that's actually been pretty surprising to me is I saw recently, I don't know if it was a proposal or it actually got approved, and I believe it came from maybe a government ethics board or kind of community, was they don't want politicians who hold Bitcoin talking about Bitcoin.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  I think it was, they don't want politicians who hold even like $100 worth of Bitcoin being involved in writing some of the legislation related to it, right?

• 30:20Anthony Pompliano?

  So according to Bloomberg Law, I will give them credit and say that they got it right, "US officials holding cryptocurrencies and stablecoins directly as personal investments will generally be barred from advising President Joe Biden how to oversee the digital currency," government's ethics chief said, which, okay.

• 30:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Does that now mean if you hold US dollars, you should have no say in what happens from a fiscal policy standpoint?

• 30:44Speaker 02

  It sounds ridiculous, but from what I remember, it doesn't actually pertain to legislators. So it wouldn't pertain to like senators or congresspeople, I don't think.

• 30:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So it would basically be other federal workers.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Right. It sounds completely ridiculous to me.

• 31:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I wonder if that's because they don't have oversight over the senators and congressmen.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  It got even, actually, the actual, whoever wrote that legislation, like, the level of ignorance was painful because they even specifically said stable coins. Like, you can't own stable coins. And they talked about how the legislation might benefit, like, the holders of this, like.

• 31:26Anthony Pompliano?

  It may stay at $1.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  If it's pegged at $1 and you really benefit it, it might go all the way up to $1. Like, it just makes no sense.

• 31:33Anthony Pompliano?

  In the CoinDesk article, they wrote, direct quote, "The directive will likely have a significant impact on some White House staffers who have been open about their crypto investments, like Tim Wu, a technology advisor to the Biden administration, who holds millions of dollars in Bitcoin. Wu has already voluntarily recused himself from working on crypto policy," end quote. And so it kind of feels like if you have a technology advisor, you want them to advise you on the technology.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, by definition, we're saying that the people who are most informed on the topic are not allowed to weigh in.

• 32:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And I guess, you know, it's a weird thing where if everyone's just open, "Hey, this is my bias, this is my disclosure," right? Which I think is what historically they've tried to get at. That's probably good. I think most people, they like the disclosures. They like knowing that information.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Well, you get balance, right? If you, if you take out all the people of one constituency from the discussion, then you're swaying towards the discussion.

• 32:29Anthony Pompliano?

  It always goes back to mainstream media, right? If they hold Bitcoin and they write an article, first of all, most of them are barred from holding any investments, so they don't even hold it. But if they did, they have to disclose, hey, I hold Bitcoin. But every single article that you'll read about the US dollar, there's no disclosures.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And I get it, right? It's the native currency of the economy, it's legal tender, all this stuff. But there is a little aspect here of

• 32:57Speaker 02

  But the subpoint there

• 32:58Anthony Pompliano?

  How are we gonna treat it?

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the subpoint there is there's tremendous benefit to not being a security, right? You can't, a senator or a congressperson can't advocate for a security on Senate floor, but you could advocate for property and Bitcoin being property is more analogous to the US dollar, as you say, than it is a stock or a company or a bond.

• 33:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It definitely, and another piece too that I think is interesting is like in the United States, almost every single state, not every state, but most states have some sort of property tax, right? For real estate and things like that, which means even if you buy in cash, there's still a tax. And there's plenty of people who I think would be, you know, on the more libertarian or extreme end of the spectrum, they'd be like, oh, we shouldn't even have that. But those are the rules, people want to follow the rules. Bitcoin as property doesn't have a property tax in the sense of every year you owe X percent. And that is like a unique thing where you have this digital property, but there is no property tax. Now, there's capital gains tax if you sell and whatever.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  But there's not necessarily, there's not federal property tax on your home, right? That would be a state

• 34:06Anthony Pompliano?

  State level.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Right. And then I think a lot of people are also unaware that gold has its own tax rate, right?

• 34:11Anthony Pompliano?

  What is, do you know what the tax rate is?

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's 28%.

• 34:14Anthony Pompliano?

  28% for buying and selling gold?

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Collect, collectible tax, yeah.

• 34:18Anthony Pompliano?

  It's, it's pretty incredible, you start to kind of look at

• 34:20Speaker 02

  40% higher than Cap Canes, yeah.

• 34:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, and it's also, when you start to look at the incentives that are in place, right? Taxation definitely has a huge ability to incentivize people or punish people, depending on what they're doing. Which I think to your point, the security aspect is not taxes, but it still has an ability to incentivize certain behavior versus other behavior.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Hence, everybody moving to our state, man.

• 34:46Anthony Pompliano?

  That is, that is true. Today, we looked at the top states for business. There's a CNBC poll. Florida was not even in the top 10, it was number 11.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Great, that's awesome.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Don't come. Especially don't come from California or New York.

• 35:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, now we have said it out that it's going to move to Miami. And I was talking to a guy this morning and he was like, yeah, so I was trying to calculate, how many employees, what's the average pay? He was like, I think that, you know, some places in the world like Miami may not be experiencing the same letdown in real estate prices or other things because there's literally an influx of people with high income that are willing to spend money. And so restaurants benefit, real estate benefits, all these pieces of an economy. And it's just the dynamic of you have new people showing up with more money than the people who are already there.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Generally speaking, I think that the United States is going to start to focus more and more on state level policies as opposed to federal policies. And people, to the extent that they're mobile and have the freedom to choose, are going to choose to live in states that are more emblematic of their personal beliefs. And I think as a red tax friendly state with the only tropical climate in the continental US and a great international airport and kind of the hub to the Caribbean and South and Latin America, I think Miami is going to thrive for the next decade.

• 36:11Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a big part of the thesis as to why I live here.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Glad you do.

• 36:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about the investment asset management firm?

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Probably Twitter. I think my Twitter is Eric underscore B I G F U N D. That's the B I G stands for Bitcoin Investment Group, so.

• 36:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Amazing. And I love orange pill Michael Saylor. Got him.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:37Anthony Pompliano?

  The first time that we talked, you were like, yeah, I've been in Bitcoin since 2013. And it took a long time, but I've pretty much got all of my friends now.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Pretty much.

• 36:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you have a friend left that you haven't convinced?

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I do. I do.

• 36:52Anthony Pompliano?

  What is their biggest hang up? Like, what are they, they still can't get across?

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Uh, they're, they're a very successful entrepreneur with their own fintech company. And they've got a ton of friends in our space and they live here in Miami. They've killed it. They've got a unicorn company and, um, I don't know. He just doesn't want to touch it, doesn't believe in it, doesn't give a shit, has his own thing. And he's doing great and I'm in no position to tell him, you have to do this. So.

• 37:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I love it. Uh, last question for you is, uh, Eight Sleep is one of our sponsors. I sleep on it every single night like a baby. Um, and I always tell people that when I moved to South Florida, uh, my life got exponentially better. I go outside, I tend to eat healthier, uh, I sleep better, all this stuff. What is your daily routine now in a bear market?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  It's pretty much the same as it is in a bull market.

• 37:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Um, personal daily routine, you mean? Yeah. Um, I don't really push my crap on other people, but about five or six years ago, I started doing, uh, transcendental meditation. So.

• 37:57Anthony Pompliano?

  What is that?

• 37:58Speaker 02

  TM. Have you heard of TM?

• 38:00Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  All right. So, uh, I was actually.

• 38:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Pitch me, pitch me.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  It was actually happened here in Miami. I was out at a dinner with like six people and not to name drop, but one of the guys that was at the dinner was Dan Loeb, uh, the hedge fund manager, who I have a lot of respect for intellectually and think he's a real smart guy. And he didn't strike me as the kind of guy who would be espousing meditation, you know? And it was like the only topic you wanted to talk about at dinner and what a great impact it's had on him from an investor, a clear head or whatever. So I started looking into it and, and did a lot of research on it and figured, okay, I'm going to go, you know, learn what the hell this is, pay my little bit of money to this company. Don't get, don't think it's not a company, to give you a mantra to sit there and quietly repeat this word in your head for 20 minutes, twice a day. And it's just been, it's had a very positive impact on me.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  I used to grind my teeth when I sleep and after a week of doing this, that completely stopped. I sleep infinitely better, uh, when I.

• 38:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And you just sit and just say the same word over and over and over again to yourself in your head silently?

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 38:58Anthony Pompliano?

  For 20 minutes.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Twice a day, 20 minutes. So.

• 39:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, is it the same word every time?

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Same word every time. You pay this money to go get your mantra, which, you know, seems like it's special for you. But the truth is, a lot of people have similar. It's a meaningless word. If your mantra was like, love, right? And you repeated the word love over your head, that has meaning. You'd think about maybe what love means. You think about your wife, think about your daughter, whatever. But they give you like a meaningless word, like a sound, like shrim or something. And you repeat that crap over in your head. And it's just, no pressure, you just repeat it over and kind of just like, kind of just like emptying the inbox of your life, you know? And then when you're done, hopefully there's no unopened messages. And it's just kind of calmer, more tranquility.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  The only thing that it's been clinically proven to do is reduce the cortisol levels in your brain, which is essentially stress. So that's been good for me. I do that. Living in Miami is nice. I try to go for, you know, either a bike ride along the boardwalk or walk on the beach every day for an hour. And other than that, just try to eat healthy. Anytime there's like particularly challenging times, like bear markets, I just, I go with the clean up your life as much as possible thing, you know?

• 40:11Anthony Pompliano?

  De-risk.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  De-risk, yeah, just, you know, just not a lot of drinking, you know, zero partying, not a lot of excess, just try to kind of stay in your, stay in your lane, focus so that when you come out of this and better times are ahead, you're not in a worse position, you're in a better position.

• 40:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that's great. The meditation thing, I always fall asleep.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  That's okay.

• 40:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that okay?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:35Anthony Pompliano?

  I've tried like, I don't know, like two or three times, not a lot of times, but every single time I'm like sitting there, sitting there and then after five minutes I fall asleep. And I'm like, oh man, am I good at this?

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Then do you, did you try like the 20 minute versions, like the TM thing? Not the.

• 40:45Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I've never, I've never done anything, just, I just sat there and tried to be quiet and fell asleep.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, the nice thing about TM is that it's bite sized, you know? Like, it's really hard to screw up. And I think it was like University of Colorado Boulder, somebody did a study on it. And the only thing that they were able to prove is that it didn't matter, they asked people after, did you think you had a good session, meditation session or a bad one? And there was zero correlation to whether they thought they had a good meditation or a bad meditation to the reduction in cortisol.

• 41:12Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's literally just getting the cortisol out of your brain.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  You can't screw it up. You can't screw it up if you tried.

• 41:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, unless you fall asleep.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  I know, maybe that's good.

• 41:21Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, listen, thank you so much for joining us. We definitely have to get you in here more often now that we're all in Miami. And I think it's fascinating to hear what family offices are thinking about Bitcoin and kind of how they they're starting to get exposure, especially if prices are up or down. The interest is still there.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

• 41:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.