#270: Mark Cuban on What He Would Do As President

Mark Cuban is a billionaire entrepreneur and investor. He is the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and chairman of AXS TV. He is also one of the main "shark" investors on the ABC reality television series, Shark Tank. In this conversation, Anthony and Mark discuss the current economic and health crises, the subsequent monetary policy decisions, how various asset classes will perform, what small businesses are doing to survive, whether corporations should receive bailouts, what privacy concerns people should be aware of, what will happen in the NBA, and what Mark's plan for the United States would be as President. =============================== BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. =============================== If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay updated on everything Bitcoin, tech, and finance. Check out my newsletter by visiting pomp.substack.com and join 35,000+ other investors currently subscribed to my daily investor letter. ===============================

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

• 0:00Anthony 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. Let's kick this thing off. Mark Cuban is a billionaire entrepreneur and investor. He is the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and chairman of AXS TV. He is also one of the main Shark investors on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank. In this conversation, we discuss the current economic and health crises, the subsequent monetary policy decisions, how various asset classes will perform, what small businesses are doing to survive, whether corporations should receive bailouts, what privacy concerns

• 0:42Anthony Pompliano?

  people should be aware of, what will happen in the NBA, and what Mark's plan for the United States would be as president. I really enjoyed this conversation and Mark didn't disappoint. Before we get into the episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsor, BlockFi. BlockFi's got three products. You can deposit cryptocurrency to receive a US dollar loan. You can deposit cryptocurrency and get paid interest in an interest-bearing account up to 8.6% APY. Or you can buy and sell cryptocurrency using their new exchange. I'm a huge fan of BlockFi. I'm an investor and also a user. Go check them out at blockfi.com/pomp. Again, blockfi.com/pomp. Their interest-bearing accounts pay incredibly high yields and so it's definitely worth

• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

  checking out. Blockfi.com/pomp. Alright, let's get into this episode with Mark.

• 1:33Speaker 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.

• 1:59Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got the one and only Mr. Cuban here. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's Mark. I hate that Mr. stuff.

• 2:09Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. I start off every interview with a billionaire. Same question. When did you realize you had a billion dollars? And what was that like?

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, I was naked. Literally, the broadcast.com stock was just going nuts. And I knew, obviously, how much, how many shares I had. So it was back in the day on my PC, and I was sitting there hitting F5, refresh. And then when I hit that number, I just did my little naked dance and, you know, went back to work. So never forget it.

• 2:37Anthony Pompliano?

  But listen, I know that's a real story because most people won't admit stuff like that. But I said, that's exactly what I'd be doing. I'd be refreshing the shit out of it.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  It was never my wildest dreams that I ever thought I'd get there, right? So I did my little naked dance and went back to work.

• 2:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. I love it. Let's jump into the economic situation. Maybe just give us kind of a quick minute or two on just like, where are we right now? And kind of how you currently analyze the situation?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Well, you know what? We don't know, right? Because everybody's sitting at home. We're, we're in a situation now where we can't look back, right? We can't look at America 1.0. We've just got to say, okay, what's this going to be like when the doors start to open up and we walk in, walk out the door into America 2.0? And what do we want it to look like? You know, we've got this amazing reset that's horrific in some ways, but it's an opportunity in other ways. And so we just have to ask ourselves, businesses have to ask themselves, you know, what am I going to do when we're allowed to go back to work? Employees have to ask themselves, you know, what's it going to be like for me? And then we've got to figure it out. So I think a lot of changes are going to happen. I don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but I know there's going to be an awful lot of opportunity.

• 3:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And I guess one of the questions that people really have is like, we've seen the unemployment numbers. We obviously see how much demand there is for the PPP loans and all that kind of stuff. Like, how bad is it for small businesses right now? Right? And kind of like, what's your assessment of the actual?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  It's not good because, you know, when you start a company as an entrepreneur, it's always, there's always uncertainty, right? But you have a feel for what the market's all about. You know who your competitors are, if there's any. You know what your product or service is. You know how to sell it. That's why you started the company. You have a general idea who your prospects and your customers are. Now that's all, you know, up in the air. Nobody really knows. And so, you know, for most small businesses, you're living hand to mouth, right? It's like, okay, no, because I remember going through it. I mean, I always tell the story. We were about two, three years in, and I had three employees. And I get a call from the bank. And then this guy with this Texas Southern accent goes, son, we just had this lady come through the

• 4:40Speaker 02

  drive through of the bank. And she had whited out the payees on your check and wrote in her name. I'm like, tell me you didn't cash it, right? They cashed it, right? So our back was against the wall. And that's the way it was when we started. And that's the way most, most small businesses are. So yeah, it's going to be tough for small businesses. But if you can get through this, knowing that some of your competitors are going to fall off. And if you, if you can hustle, if you can grind, you can, you can make it into something better. But you got to be agile. You got to be resilient. You got to recognize that things are going to go wrong. It's not going to be easy. But again, agility, smart, aggressiveness, hustle, grind. Those are going to be traits of small businesses that do well.

• 5:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And it feels like there's kind of two buckets right here, right? There's people who are worried about surviving through this. And obviously, then the cash positions they're in is going to dictate a lot of that. And then there's others that are kind of did the hard work already. They did the disciplined things in the good times. They've got strong balance sheets. And they're actually getting aggressive now. They're going to go steal market share when others are contracting.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're in a good spot, right? I mean, there's some companies that are doing well, you know, some companies that are doing decent. And I'm telling, you know, those I've invested in, ramp it up, right? Because the cost per clicks, the cost for customer acquisition have gone way down. You know, YouTube prices, Facebook prices, Google, you know, across the board, Twitter, they've all just dropped like a rock. And so if you can afford to go after, and you have a vision for what your company is going to be like, right? Because you got to know in 2.0, what you're, what, what you're all about, where you're making your money, and how you're going to do it. So if you have that confidence in your product, and your service, go, go, go, go, put the pedal to the metal, and don't stop to get where you're headed to.

• 6:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you keep mentioning kind of America 2.0. Maybe elaborate, just like, what exactly does that look like in your mind? Is this an acceleration of trends that were already underway? Is there other things that change? Like, what's different?

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of respects, yeah, the things that, you know, The things that caught people's attention before are, you know, now are just right in your face. You know, how do you treat your employees? What's your brand represent? How do you treat your customers? You know, how do your customers brand themselves and how do you fit into that? So those are all elements of 2.0. But again, if there's something that you think could be better, if there's a better product, if there's a better service, what is it, right? You know, I'm all about robotics and precision medicine and artificial intelligence. You know, what is it that I can do there? I'm about, you know, when we create medicines in this country, you know, we typically have them manufactured overseas. And there are a lot of problems with them being counterfeit, not being as pure as they're supposed to be.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  And that created all kinds of illnesses and challenges. You know, so we had already started creating some companies to address that. You know, how can I accelerate those? Companies like node.ai or I O rather, that, you know, for artificial intelligence, the big companies, the fangs, the Googles, the Netflix, the Amazons, they already have that code, right? They're investing billions, thousands of AI engineers and they're pushing that envelope. All the small to middle sized companies, they typically don't even understand AI. And so we're, we're going to walk into America 2.0 with a lot of have and have nots. The big companies are going to know how to go to work and put their, their balance sheets to work. The little companies are going to have to try to figure out how and where they fit with AI and new technologies.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  And so, you know, if you've got a vision of how to put these new tech technologies to work and something you think should be just radically different, then you just got to go for it. And so I think there's going to be a lot of great companies created. What's it all going to look like when it's all said and done? I don't know, but that's the opportunity, right? You know, that's why I'm trying to just visualize. Where do I see it? What do I think I need to do? How can I help? How can I change the game? And, you know, and just be agile.

• 8:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think a lot of people are kind of gravitated towards you on Sharp Tank because you really hammer home like this idea of the American spirit and entrepreneurship and innovation and that's like built what we have today, right? It's built the greatest country in the world. It feels like in times of crisis, kind of the saying of there's no capitalists in a crisis, right? We get more towards the other end of the spectrum. Maybe talk a little bit about like, how do we ensure that we keep true to the roots of innovation and not ingenuity and entrepreneurship and kind of use the American spirit to come out of this?

• 8:56Speaker 02

  That's who we are, right? That's in our DNA. That's what makes us different than any other country on the planet. You know, I mean, you don't see, you know, countries built around entrepreneurship like you see in the United States of America, right? They don't talk about the French dream or the Iranian dream, right? We talk about the American dream and that's why you see so many people come to this country. Even when you look at some of the greatest companies created over the last 20 years, they were started by immigrants who came here knowing that this was the best country in the world to start a business. That's not going to change, but you know, you have to pay attention to what's happening. You have to understand context. You know, Bernie Sanders didn't have a movement for no reason, right? There are a lot of people who question capitalism. There are a lot of people who want stronger rights for workers and deservedly so.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  There's a lot of people who rightfully want a higher minimum wage. You know, there's, I went back for some of my, for my companies that, that I run and asked the question, are any of my employees getting government assistance? Because to me, that's the ultimate socialism. When I'm taking money, when my employees are taking money from the government because I'm not paying them enough. And so I wanted to rectify that. And so, you know, for capitalism to continue to thrive when we come out of this, it's going to have to be a lot more compassionate. You're going to have to put employees first. You're going to have to put shareholders last, you know? And that's going to be good for business because how you treat your employees and customers is how your, your brand's going to be defined forever. You know, your people are not going to want to be associated with a company who just,

• 10:26Speaker 02

  who, who had money in the bank and just ditched all their employees. You know, and even if your back's against the wall and your company was broke and you had to lay or furlough or fire everybody, if you communicated with them and were honest and transparent, then people will understand that because you as an entrepreneur or CEO, you're getting crushed just as bad, you know, and, and, and so everybody's in the same boat. But, you know, how you do things now, if you don't show compassion, if you're not nice, if you're not understanding, if you don't offer equity to employees as an example, you don't recognize you're going to have to pay people more to keep them, um, then you're, you're going to be challenged.

• 11:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and, and we see this before, right? I mean, companies that obviously have strong cultures, took care of their employees, they've always, you know, tended to do well. People really write books about it because it's so rare. And now I think what you're basically saying is, hey, everyone's going to have to start to, to put this as a core tenet of what they're building.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Without question. I mean, look, every single person who's on social media, which is pretty much everybody forty and under, right? You know, if not older and under, you know, that's our brand. What we put on social media is who we are and it's what we want everybody to see about us. And the products that we discuss, the products that we show in our pictures, you know, the things that we say and do, those all represent who we are. And if you're not a product that has a good culture, that if you, you don't, you know, think of more than just the bottom line, people aren't going to connect to you. People aren't going to get behind you. And you're not going to have a company, you're not going to have a business, you're going to be gone. So the bigger picture is capitalism has to be compassionate, but that's good business.

• 11:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, for sure. Obviously, the economic crisis is, is happening, uh, and we're getting a bunch of monetary policy, uh, decisions, uh, that, you know, some are good, some are bad. Kind of what's your general take on just what's already been decided and, and kind of what you think we need to do moving forward on the monetary policy side?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  You know, I don't want to throw people under the bus because, you know, the reality is it's, it's easy because there are no great decisions right now because we don't have good information about anything, you know, but there's a whole lot of things that we're going to have to redo. We're going to have to redo healthcare. And it's not just about how we pay for it. It's about how we cost it, you know? I, I did a lot with healthcare. Before all this hit, and if you look, if you talk to hospitals, they don't know what their costs are. How much to fix that broken arm from that kid in the ER? They don't know, you know, how much for that hip replacement? They don't know, but yet now there's so much dislocation and disruption because of COVID. And they're going to need so much funding. When we give them that funding, we're going to have to require some things back. And part of that's going to be, you know, you're not building, you're not having the piano player.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  You're not having the artwork, right? You're doing it so that when somebody needs to come in and get primary care, they can afford it. Because how you, how you invest in what you, the care you offer defines how much you charge. And so all that's going to change. You know, how we tax is going to have to change. And it's not just about taxing me more, I'm fine with that and always have been. But you know, there's going to be so much forbearance of tax revenue. There's going to be such a reduction in tax revenue. We're going to have to give serious consideration to things like a robotics tax. You know, if you've got a job that could be done by an individual and you're paying a robot $25 an hour to weld.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Then let's hit that with the same 12.4 or 12.6, I forget, for the social security tax. You know, and let's take 9% of that and put it into social security and the treasury fund. And let's put 3. whatever percent into investing into robotics research for the country. Because we don't lead the world in robotics, whether software or manufacturing of robots. You know, we're behind Germany, we're behind Japan, we're behind China. And the only way we're going to bring back jobs and the only way we're going to bring back manufacturing from overseas, no matter what country is, whether it's Asian, Mexico, whatever it is, is through robotics. We're going to have to out-engineer, we're going to have to out-innovate those manufacturing

• 14:19Speaker 02

  alternatives that are less expensive because of lower payrolls and, and less climate restrictions and all those things, right? We're going to have to work on robotics to bring all that manufacturing back. Work on battery life, work on manual dexterity, work on the software. Because if we can do that and lead the world, we can get that manufacturing back. It won't be America manufacturing 1.0 with assembly line. And people sewing, but all the inherent jobs that come with dominating worldwide manufacturing, whether it's support, maintenance, monitoring, you know, software, whatever it may be, the aggregate employment would be much higher and the pay would be much higher even for people with not defined skills than it would be just trying to recreate manufacturing 1.0.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  You know, I think we tax cloud computing because that's where AI resides and AI is not going anywhere. That, you know, it's expensive for small companies to use cloud computing right now. That's a different issue. But for the large scale applications and processes, I don't think will hurt any

• 15:25Speaker 02

  any advances by taxing cloud computing at one or 2%. So that's a long answer, but you asked.

• 15:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, no, and I think this really brings up and why we got connected was you started really going off on the bailouts, right? And I'm with you kind of 100% on this idea of a lot of people I think are turning to the government and they're saying, hey, I could go to the debt or equity markets, but I don't like the terms there. Let me go find the idiot in the room, right? Oh, the government will give me better terms than the investor will give me. So maybe help under like explain what the issue with the bailouts are and let's just stick with companies right now. And then we can get into like local governments and all of that.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Got it. So look, everybody's suffering at some level.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  If a company's been impacted dramatically, like we've seen airlines, like we've seen the wedding industry, like we've seen cruise lines. I'm not opposed to them going to the government for help, right? But when you give help, when you effectively invest in a company, whether it's taxpayer money or my money or your money, you want something back. It's never a gift. And so in this particular case, I think any company that of a specific size, like small company will set aside as being a different example. But for larger companies, then if we're investing in them, I want it to be an investment, not a gift. And I want something in return. We've seen what Warren Buffett has done with Bank of America and Goldman Sachs.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  He gave them money. It was preferred stock plus he got warrants. He made a boatload of money. money afterwards. Why can't the the American Treasury do the exact same thing? The American taxpayers deserve that. And by doing that, we bring back the economy much more quickly. Because, you know, yeah, it's it's expensive, but um to the people getting that money. But at the same time, I believe in this country and I believe those stock prices are going to be much higher at some point in the future, just like they were um post the two thousand nine, two thousand ten Great Recession. And so it's a good investment for the American people. It's smart to take that money for the companies because, you know, they probably don't have many alternatives. And that's the only way to do it. I mean, who else is going to give their money and not ask for something back?

• 17:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and I guess some of this too is, uh, one, just the the philosophy of doing it. The second is actual execution, right? And I love that you said, hey, look, call your senator, I'll I'll come negotiate it with it.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 17:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there merit to the idea of let's go get five or ten business leaders who have done these deals over and over and over again? And say, look, Treasury, we're going to come in and, you know, you're not going to charge you anything, but we're going to help you negotiate fair deals or advantageous deals? Or do you start to get into a situation where it's just too hard to do something like that?

• 18:02Speaker 02

  I mean, everything's hard right now, right? So there's going to be a challenge. But, you know, in reading as much as I could of the law, they they created an oversight committee already, right? And so the goal would be not to just have politicians on that oversight committee, right? Because they're going to be influenced, they have their own dogmas, and they basically represent two parties. And so you want to get some independent names on there. Again, I'll volunteer for the oversight. Two, they said all the contracts had to be transparent and published, right? So everybody's going to see them, you know? And so you don't want to look stupid and you don't want the entire country just to think we just gave all this money away, our hard-earned taxpayer money, because somebody was just doing somebody a favor or somebody didn't have the skill set in order to to do a negotiation.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, I mean, we want to have transparency and it's okay on this oversight committee to say to have people in there who are going to call them out. Because the minute that first one hits, if it isn't well done, rip them the rip them to shreds, right? That's our job, you know, as concerned citizens. Why wouldn't we? You know, if it's not a deal, we feel is a good deal for the United States of America, of course you want to say something.

• 19:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and my whole thing too is why would you not want to have people who have experienced doing this stuff, right? It's a no-brainer.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Exactly, you know what, and if the company doesn't want it, bye-bye. Go get your money somewhere else.

• 19:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, if the company is fighting back against who's on the oversight committee, that probably means that they did a good job selecting who's on the committee.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  That's exactly right, that's exactly right.

• 19:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So, we've seen companies obviously go and look for the bailout money. Now, what we're starting to see is, yesterday we saw a group of governors come out and say, "Look, we need $500 billion to bill out state and local governments." You see things like the MTA in New York City saying, "Hey, wait a second, writership's down 90%. We might not be able to pay our bonds." Kind of, you're getting outside of just pure capitalism and private and public companies into these other things. How do you think about bailouts or relief or help for those types of organizations?

• 19:54Speaker 02

  I mean, you have to do it. Otherwise, it creates a cascading effect that could be far worse. I mean, look, what do they call it? MMT, the Monetary, yeah, I forget what the acronym stands for, but where you just keep on, you know, printing money and then you see what happens? We're going to find out, right? This is a real-world experiment, but, you know, the other side of the coin is you know what happens if you don't. You know, if all of these companies, you know, all these organizations can't pay their bills, you know, like the MTA, you know, like the, you know, transportation organizations in every city, right? The local governments in every city are facing the same problems. If we don't pay it, we know what will happen. So, we've got to try it. So, yeah, I'm not opposed to it, but you've got to make sure there's no fluff in there, right?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  And you've got to make sure that it's being run as efficiently as possible. And I get, look, I'm a libertarian at heart, and the idea of government being efficient is an oxymoron, but, you know, we don't have a lot of options. We just have to try to have some good oversight.

• 20:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, are you then worried? I generally agree that they're going to have to do it, right? They're in a lose-lose situation, they got to do it. Do you get worried about inflation on the other side of this, where it could get out of hand because they literally, they're just printing?

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we thought about that before. It was just like, okay, you know, when we do all these bailouts in 2009, 2010, inflation's going to be rampant, and it wasn't, you know? And then we've had, you know, other scenarios where the interest rates go down to zero or negative interest in other countries, and inflation hasn't been rampant. It's been, you know, deflation is more of a risk than inflation, so, you know... Every economist will give you a different answer. I don't have an answer, but we'll find out, won't we? And then we'll know for the future because this is, you know, a great experiment for future generations. Now, hopefully, they're not going to go through the same shit we're going through. But at the same time, we'll learn about monetary policy. We'll learn about fiscal policy. We'll learn about the impact of interest rates.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  And we'll go from there.

• 21:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, makes sense. One of the things that I've been thinking a lot through is this balance between the health crisis and economic crisis. And I think a lot of people look at it black and white. They say, hey, either you stop the health crisis or you stop the economic crisis. You just can't make that decision. And so how do you think through on a framework basis? Like, you got to address both of them. It's like, what are some of those solutions that we can move towards?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Well, kind of the way I'm looking at it, I actually see the health crisis as being short term, right? But the economic crisis is being potentially much longer term. But you can't, you've got to deal with both of them, right? And so all the things we've been talking about in terms of the economic issues, yeah, you have to address that. We're going to have to create jobs. You know, we're going to have to have tracers that do, you know, hire half a million, a million people that just go trace all these illnesses and see where they trace back to, if only to create work, right? We're going to have to do things like AmeriCorp is a great, AmeriCorp is a great program that has a small budget. Give them a huger budget because we're going to have to create jobs. And that's going to be a long term issue that we address.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Hopefully, like in 2009, 2010, we start to come out of it relatively quickly. And, you know, a couple of years, hopefully. But on the health side, I'm really optimistic that we'll have a vaccine, you know, in trial shortly and out of trial within a year. And we'll have therapies within months. But even those therapies are going to take time to build confidence. And I just think, you know, coming out of this, people are going to have to make the decisions, make their own decisions on what they do next. And that'll define where we go from here. And that's just going to take agility, you know, and that, you know, that's going to be operative

• 23:37Speaker 02

  word for America 2.0, being resilient, being able to bounce back and being agile, those two things and, you know, but agility is going to be word number one.

• 23:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's really interesting too, because I think that the way we kind of went into quarantine and lockdown really drove the point home, right? It's like, hey, get your asses at home, stay at home, we gotta, you know, crush the curve, all the things that we saw on social media, et cetera. The flip side of this is now, how do we come out of it, right? And I think that actually the way you come out of the quarantine has a lot of impact on the psychology. Do people go spend? Will they go to that movie theater? Will they do this stuff? Any thoughts on just like, what's the way to think?

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, the answer is no, right? Because it's going to be a process. There is no one thing, there is no light switch, like everybody's saying. It will be a process where you'll build trust and you have to know that going into the deals that you do. So as part of a bailout for an airline, if the government spends across all the airlines a billion dollars a year for airline seats for commercial travel, let's prepay that billion dollars and let's work out a deal with the airlines to say, okay, you know, the first travelers on your plane are, your planes are going to be government employees. And here's the requirements that we're going to set in place for your planes in terms of sanitization, sterilization, whatever the CDC, et cetera, requires.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  And we'll do that and, you know, we'll make sure that they're okay and that'll start to build confidence. We'll work with sports teams and arenas. We'll put together programs where we won't have an arena full, but we'll start playing the game so we can at least see groups of people together in an area that won't end up getting sick. Again, that goes back to the agility. We're going to have to just test things out and that's what'll build confidence. And of course, there's going to be kids that, you know, feel they're invincible and they're going to go out and do whatever anyways. They're going to be back in the beach, they're going to be back in the pools, they're going to be back partying no matter what. And then we'll see an increased instance, instances of COVID, right? And we'll learn our lesson, but it's going to be an ongoing problem.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  But what I do think the government needs to do is very clearly set standards on cleanliness and presentation, right, and information so that if you're walking into, if you're going to the park and there's a park bench and you want to bring your grandma there, you want to see a seal of approval that says this was the last time this bench was sanitized. Right? And it may be an app where you just pointed at it. It may be AR where it shows to, whatever it may be, there are going to have to be things that the government sets of standards that are confidence builders for us. Just like when we went back after nine eleven and we had the TSA there and the lines were long and you knew it was a pain in the ass and you knew you couldn't just run to the gate anymore, but that helped give us confidence.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  We'll need the same type of standards for, um, from the CDC so that we're, and whoever it may be, so that we know that the right things are being done because we can see the stickers everywhere. And when that starts to happen and if, and people don't get sick, then you'll start to see an acceleration of people coming out and the, the new abnormal, if you will.

• 26:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it, it's like the confidence game in the economic world is, is going to be the same thing in the, uh, society as well. Um, part of this, I think, is, uh, not only the facts of, or the information, but it's also the way it's covered. You know, yesterday you, uh, you had the tweet about, um, the, the idea of all the mainstream media kind of going away from a presidential, uh, conference and obviously super con- uh, controversialists like what was being said and all of that, but just on a more broad scale, how do you think that the media has been doing in covering some of this stuff? And like, what are they doing well or where do you wish that they would improve?

• 27:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I try not to look at the tele- uh, TV news anymore or the cable news because there, it's just all doom and gloom, right? And I don't think that really serves any purpose, you know, particularly since the audience for traditional television is older, right? When you look at the average viewing age for, um, CNN and Fox and MSNBC, it's sixty plus, right? And so those are the people who are terrified anyways because of all this, because they're staying at home. And when you look at the ratings and, you know, the number of people forty-nine and under, there are twenty-five thousand of them watching any given. The given show so they're terrifying people who are already terrified.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  And so I think that's the problem. I think we need to start talking more about what are you going to do on the other side? Right? How are you going to bring back your business or what are you as a consumer going to do? What are the things you're looking forward to buying so that we have an indication that you know what? We will get through this. There is a better way to do things and there's going to be some exciting things that we learn because all like we talked about capitalism, but there's going to be a lot of things that we realized. It wasn't right before. Let's, let's do a better way, or there's going to be lots of young entrepreneurs that say, I got this, right? This is my vision. They may be a 12 year old or maybe they're a 60 year old. But there's going to be new visions. Let's talk to them and let's hear some of those new visions. And then in terms of online, it just kind of replicates.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  You know, Twitter's Twitter, right? Everybody's going to go nuts on Twitter, but you know, online news sources are the same way. Here's what's wrong. Here's what this person did wrong. Here's what that person did wrong. You never see anything about what people did right, except for Dr. Fauci, right? And Dr. Burks, they're, they're all heroes and that's deservedly so. And the frontline healthcare workers, they're heroes and deservedly so. But let's get some things positive and let's start talking about America 2.0. Let's start talking about how we get through it. Like some of the things you and I are talking about are more macro. But there's going to be a lot of things, a lot of people that have specific visions. Let's get them out there and talking and getting feedback, you know? Cause that's, that could be around the corner, a month from now, two months from now, you know? We're not going to just do things all the same way.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Let's come up with a vision. Let's get fired up, right? There's so, I want to talk to those entrepreneurs. I want to hear about those entrepreneurs. I want to see what new products or services. I want to hear about those visions. Because god damn it, if we went through all this shit, I want it to be for something, right? And that, I think that's what they miss. If we went through all of this, let's make it for something. All those people who died, all those people who suffered, let's make it so that wasn't a bank. Let's turn this into something. That makes this country better.

• 29:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it goes back to the whole idea of the American spirit, right? You keep talking about like kind of the opportunity coming out of this. We know that in prior crises, there's been great businesses that have been built or kind of early days in those crises. What are you seeing as those opportunities? You kind of mentioned healthcare. Are there other industries outside of healthcare and AI that you think are going to be big? Or you all you see some of your teams now saying, hey, look, this is actually where we think that vision is.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. So I had this guy, company MEPO, M E E P O, who created new kinds of food. So he put the took the nutrients of a salmon dinner with sweet potatoes and put it into a cube that they're manufacturing right now. They're at the CoPacker. That's 340 calories and it costs $2 to make. Right? So when people are when we get caught with shortages or people afraid to go out to eat, you know, or still if we get a resurgence, right? And people, particularly older people, can't get out of the house or kids are not in school and can't get fed. You can get these things cheap and they have more nutrients than trying to eat, you know, a power bar type thing, right? Or a protein bar. So, you know, that's one example. How are we gonna, you know, how are we gonna have fun?

• 30:49Speaker 02

  You know? So, you know, right over here, you can't see it. I've got these two bubble soccer balls. Right? And so we're talking about how can we bring all the kids together? If they bring their own bubble soccer ball, by definition, you know, they're social distancing, right? And they could just get out there and we create our own little local instead of, you know, the local baseball or football or basketball league, we're going to play bubble soccer. You just get your own bubble soccer ball. Just little, I mean, it's silly in some respects, but those are the types of things that accommodate the new normal. Right? That allow people to try to get back to having some normalcy. And, you know, those are two areas that just came out of left field. Right?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Creative people do creative things. Yeah, there's so many more, but that you talk about the media. Let's hear about that.

• 31:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Every, every news show should have at least one segment. What about this? Right? America 2.0. What about that? Right? Why not?

• 31:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and I think the data suggests, right? There's a bunch of academic studies. One, the positive news actually goes more viral than the negative news. And then on top of that, one of the studies I saw was if you wake up in the morning and read three positive headlines, you're more likely to say you had a good day at the end than if you woke up and read three negative headlines.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Oh, exactly. We're not giving anybody anything.

• 32:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  You know?

• 32:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  It's not about survival. I mean, look, we're going to get through this. With this, this is not a situation where we're saying, oh, my God, there's no medicine coming. We're arguing about which medicine will work better. You know, we're arguing about the best way to deal with people who are sick. And it's horrific, you know, that we can't get it to everybody. And it's horrific that we don't, don't have the, the right solution for every scenario yet. But I think everybody would agree that progress is being made and that we're confident that we'll get through it. And because of that, there can be good news, right? And there can be a vision for the other, you know, when we get to the other side of this. But we're not hearing any of that at all, except for you, of course.

• 32:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. No, and I guess part of the new normal as well is this balance between more surveillance, right? We saw on like the 9/11 situation where we got the Patriot Act and TSA and all this kind of stuff. And there's a lot of people who are saying, wait a second, are we going to give up civil liberties, personal freedoms in exchange for more safety? How do you kind of think through, you know, where's the line and kind of how do citizens think through that?

• 33:04Speaker 02

  There's a guy named Scott McNeely who started a company called Sun Microsystems way back in the day.

• 33:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Never heard of it.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 33:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Never heard of it.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  A lot of people have it, right? It's crazy. Back in the day, it was huge. And he says, you don't have any privacy. No matter what, you walk down the street in New York, there's a camera on you, whether you like it or not. Right? Every, every, every building has got a camera looking out for it. There's security cameras everywhere. You know, we like having this sense of privacy. We really don't have it. But I think there's, there's a limit to how much people will give up. But, you know, we're, we're, we're going to have to Give up something, just like we did with with flight, you know, with with travel with the TSA. You know, it's just, it's just going to be a reality. Now, hopefully, we'll find better solutions, you know, so that they're not intrusive. You know, I I don't think temperature gauges are going to be the thing, right?

• 33:54Speaker 02

  You know, I don't think um just being tested, you know, is going to be the thing. Um, but we will have to give up some privacy. Now, where I do get a concern is people getting labeled, right? You have the antibodies, you don't, right? You've got it, you don't have it. And because they'll start with this and they'll extend to other areas. And that's where that's where I get nervous. So trying to prevent people from getting labeled, um, I think is important. But I think, you know, beyond that, we'll have to give up some things, at least, especially at the beginning till we get more confident.

• 34:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, makes sense. Uh, one of the most asked questions I saw uh from folks is just how are you personally navigating the crisis financially? Like, what are you buying? What are you selling? Where are you watching? Where do you think opportunities on the investment side?

• 34:40Speaker 02

  I mean, I've been lucky. Um, like, my entertainment businesses have gotten crushed. I mean, I'll lose, I'm losing a shitload of money there, right? Just crushed. But, you know, I I was lucky that my core holdings were Netflix and Amazon. And so, you know, um, that's kind of balancing some things out, so I'm fortunate there. But it, you know, I still am going to cash. The market's going up, and there's good reasons why the market's going up, right? For all the good things that we just talked about, right? You know, three years, five years from now, the market will be up from where we are today. It will be up, you know, who knows how much, but it will, it'll be better. Um, but I still think we have a leg down. And so I've gone to cash. And if, even if not in the public markets, if I'm wrong in the public markets,

• 35:22Speaker 02

  I think there's going to be companies that need capital in this, in this America 2.0 that are going to be, what we just talked about, right? There's going to be, when we look back in 10 years, there's going to be some amazing companies that were created. And having access to cash or having cash is going to give me the opportunity to invest in them. And like I said, I'm super excited about that. I don't know who it's going to be, but if you got it, bring it to me.

• 35:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, forget Bitcoin for a second. Let's just stick with other non-public assets. Anything around gold, land, uh, commodities, anything in there?

• 35:54Speaker 02

  I think commodities will go up because I think we'll get at least some modicum of inflation. And as companies kind of try to protect their own manufacturing and try to really bring core, core necessities domestically, I think that could push up the value of commodities. I couldn't tell you which ones to invest in, but just generically and on a macro basis. I'm not a big gold fan. I analogize that more to Bitcoin. And just because what are you going to do, right? We saw it all hit the fan and there ain't nobody walking around with gold. There ain't nobody asking for payment in gold and we're printing money as fast as we can. And things aren't deflating or inflating, at least not yet, right?

• 36:39Speaker 02

  And so there's, I don't see that as being a solution. We saw what happened to oil, right? And so manufacturers, you know, can come in or the drillers, in this case Saudi Arabia and Russia, the leaders can come in and just turn an industry upside down. And the same thing can happen with gold, you know, so.

• 36:58Anthony Pompliano?

  What about on the real estate side? Anything there?

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm looking, right? I'm trying to be opportunistic and agile, not necessarily to take advantage of people's misfortune. But I just think that there'll be a lot of reformulating because there's so many, there's so many companies that were leveraged, you know, so companies went to go buy land or buildings or shopping centers, whatever it may be. And they put down very little capital and they went and borrowed more and, you know, then they sold that, you know, then the lenders sold that in tranches and, you know, there, I think you're going to see some deleveraging there, which creates some opportunities to buy land. But you're not seeing all those discounts yet, except in big dense cities that have had the,

• 37:43Speaker 02

  like, like New York, you're starting to see condos, the prices there just drop like a rock. So if you think you want to live in New York in the future, now's the time to buy. You know, if you think you want a house in an area that's been hit hard, you know, Detroit or wherever it may be, now's the time to buy. So I think for personal purposes, it's a good time to, if you have cash, to buy real estate.

• 38:06Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. NDA, obviously, it's going to come back at some point.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  But before we go there, let me say one other thing in terms of investment.

• 38:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  College, right?

• 38:18Speaker 02

  You gotta rethink where you're going to school and whether you're gonna borrow money at all. And colleges themselves, you gotta make sure your college isn't gonna go out of business. Because their sources of revenue have just gone, they're gone, right? They dried up like that. You know, a lot of colleges made their money off of international students coming in and paying full ride um in terms of tuition and room and board. They can't get in the country, you know, and if they get in, they might not be able to get out and they may not have the capital, you know, or being able to afford. And so you're gonna see a lot of rejiggering of universities, public, and to lesser extent, you know, the Ivy League schools are gonna be okay because of their endowment, but below that,

• 39:01Speaker 02

  you know, you're gonna see a lot of reformatting, a lot of rethinking, and who knows when students go back? And so if your school was gonna have you have, was gonna force you to do online learning anyways, why are you gonna pay for a full credit when you can go to any of the other online sources or go to Coursera and learn the same stuff for free and then try to test out? Or go to a local community college and then go test out or transfer your credits? So beware that colleges, their economics are changing so dramatically that the world's gonna be different. If you're one of those who wanted to go to that school because it's got a great football or basketball team, they may not be playing anyways and it's not gonna be as social. Fraternities, sororities are gonna have to rethink everything. Dorms are gonna have to rethink everything.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  And so we talk about going to arenas, think about going back to school. It's not just about going to class or watching class, where are you gonna live? You know, there's just so many elements involved in college life that are going to change that probably the, after some of the entertainment industries, one of the the most negatively impacted industries is going to be schools, universities. And as a potential student, as a current student, you need to look at this as the biggest investment you're gonna make over the next 10, 15 years and really reevaluate what your choices were.

• 40:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, the stat that I saw was the average calculus one course in America in person, 2,500 bucks, online, $400.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  And then there's three versions too, right? And so at the school you want to go to, you can test out, go take it on course there or whatever, and just try to test out.

• 40:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  You know, and then that's the same with jobs too, man. Jobs are going to be completely different. What are you going to do for your first job? You're going to take any job. Because you're not trying to get a career, you're a free agent, right? And that free agent, you're just going to pay your bills, you just want to have some liquidity, you want to have some semblance of normalcy and confidence in your financial future. And then as you learn, and look, you just paid for college, now you're getting paid to learn when you get to that first job. Even if it's the worst job ever, you're going to learn what you don't like, and then go from there, and just start bouncing from job to job to job till you get to one you love, or you look, you figure out that there's something in this job you don't realize you love, but now you love. But take your, the way you approach your job life is going to be completely different.

• 41:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, getting paid to learn is better than paying to learn, for sure. NBA, when it comes back, does the business model change, obviously with fans not in the arena at first? And also, one of the questions was, does this kind of break the camel's back on the cable providers who are really holding on to a live sports as a differentiator?

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Well, a couple of things there. One, we come back without fans, and that helps the cable providers. You know, because they're our broadcast partners, and when we come back, those first games are going to be through the roof, because we need sports, right? We want something to cheer for, we want our team to get fired up about, we want to be communal, right? We're going to, maybe we'll have VR headsets on, and we'll be watching the game with, you know, 50 of our friends in VR, who knows? But we need sports, and so I think that will help. And you've seen like Shark Tank, right? Friday nights on ABC, you know, our ratings have gone way up, we're setting multi-year highs, and we're on traditional television. And so, you know, where, where there's been television on dramas or whatever on traditional

• 42:20Speaker 02

  cable, the ratings are doing better than they have, and the court cutting has slowed down. And so, coming back, bringing sports back, particularly with no audience in the arenas, I think the number is going to be huge, and I think that'll help them at least in the short term.

• 42:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, tell Mark Burnett he owes you a bonus for getting advertisements in there for sure.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Amen, right? Always, always selling.

• 42:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Two questions to wrap this up. One, obviously, you've got a position on Bitcoin. I actually think it's a pretty valid concern. Like, if you're gonna take the other side or the bearer's side, the argument you make, I think, is the perfect argument. What would have to happen for you to change your mind?

• 42:57Speaker 02

  It'd have to be so easy to use. It's a no-brainer. It'd have to be completely friction-free and understandable by everybody first. And then you can say it's an alternative to gold as a store of value. In terms of being a way to transact, whether it's just transfers of funds or whatever, you've got to be able to spend it. You know, because right now, you still have to convert it for anything that you want. And as long as you have to convert it, you're still dependent on fiat, no matter what you say, right? And I can trade bananas easier as a commodity than I can trade Bitcoin, right? And I can still eat that banana before it goes bad and get all my potassium for my workout. You know, I can't even, you know, with gold, at least a gold coin, right?

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Or I could point, I can use a gold bar as furniture, you know? But with Bitcoin, it's virtual, and that's its beauty, and that's its problem. And so, one, you're gonna have to make it friction-free so grandma can do it. Because now, the fact that we're arguing so much about it, and you have so many stans about Bitcoin, you know, for Bitcoin, that just proves the point, you know, that it's difficult. And two, you can't spend it on anything. You know, I think we've spent, we put it up for the Mavs. We did it originally four years ago, and no one bought anything. Now, we're taking Bitcoin, and please go buy everything at Bitcoin. I'm fine with that, right? And I think we brought in $130, and that's all the Bitcoin that I own right now.

• 44:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, I think part of it, too, is the user experience definitely has to improve. The big question is, is this email, you know, 25 years ago, and it does improve, or it doesn't? And that's opportunity and risk that people take, right?

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and plus, you know, there's so many peculiarities to Bitcoin, right? The halving, right? You know, the mining, that, you know, the fact that blockchain is a great opportunity, but in reality, we haven't seen blockchain applications really take off. You know, um, and there's uncertainty with all the different types of cryptos, you know, and the arguments between all the different types of cryptos. You know, these are things that just, you know, create more and more confusion and diminish the confidence. And so, yeah, I get all the arguments. I've seen all the charts, right? I understand that, you know, the problem, potential problems with fiat. But, you know, to Bitcoin's potential benefit,

• 45:13Speaker 02

  if everything goes into the shitter because we're printing so much money and there's global implications, Bitcoin has got something to deal with and something to say. And if we don't, Bitcoin ain't got nothing, right?

• 45:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I actually appreciate your detractiveness because they're usually pretty rational, right? So I tend to agree and I think it's the right position to take on the other side. Last question for you, the big one in the room. What would it take for you to run for president in 2020? And if not, then 2024?

• 45:43Speaker 02

  My family saying yes, otherwise I would have already done it. And, you know, I haven't ruled it out because everybody asked me and it's like, well, why don't you just say yes or no? Because so much crazy shit is happening, you know? Wrong person gets sick, right? Everything changes, you know? We don't, like, people are afraid to go out or the economy gets worse. Everything changes, you know? And I think what's really missing is no one understands technology and technology out of the candidates and even our senior politicians and, you know, our most powerful, powerful politicians, they don't get tech at all. And yet tech is going to drive America 2.0 more than anything we could otherwise do. You know, whether it's robotics, AI, precision medicine, all these things are going to be the foundation to our economy going forward.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  And nobody who's running and nobody who's behind those people who are running or in positions of power get any of that. And that's a real problem.

• 46:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Part of, I think, what's really interesting is the one thing that Donald Trump definitely did in his presidential run was he kind of changed the rules of the game, right? Certain things that were taboo before now are cool. You see that with the Andrew Yang type campaign. You see it with Mike Bloomberg and all the memes and just a lot of things have changed. I guess what's the playbook that you? Pull out like let's say for 2020. I mean, you got a couple of months and what do you do to even have a shot?

• 46:59Speaker 02

  I mean, I talk about America 2.0. I talk about the fact that I hate both parties. To talk about the fact that literally that I would, I would try to get rid of both parties. They serve no purpose. I talk about the fact that, you know, Supreme Court, I would balance it. I would make sure that there's a Republican, an independent, a Democrat, repeat, right? That when it comes to appointing people for positions, I don't care what their political affiliation is. I'd appoint the best person, you know, and most likely turns into a balance again with independents. Those are the types of things where people just say, you know what? Just put the best person in. I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat. I'm happy to work with you. You know, Speaker of the House, I wouldn't put a politician in there. You know, you don't have to be an elected official to be the Speaker of the House. I would go out there and find somebody from the outside who can add some balance.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  You know, there's just so many different things that, that just reject, that allow me to reject traditional politics. That nobody who's a politician is able to do. And so I think that's what creates a lot of opportunity for me.

• 47:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I gotta speak for a lot of people. If you went in and said, our whole, our whole mission here is to get rid of the politicians and get, you know, business leaders and entrepreneurs in here, I think you'd have a pretty big following.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  And not just entrepreneurs, right? I mean, look, there's people who understand government who aren't politicians. Right? The fact that you have, there's an organization that I give a lot of money to called CompetitiveDemocracy.org. And their whole mission in life is to help independents get on ballots. Because the Republicans and Democrats do everything possible to keep non-republic or democratic candidates off the ballot. So we don't get the best candidates. And so those are the types of things that if I walked in, I would say, all that shit's out the door. Right? Politics are gone, right? It's about doing what's right for the American people. That's, that would be me, right? America 2.0, from a political and an economic and technological perspective,

• 48:47Speaker 02

  where we put people first, you jack up the minimum wage, if a company has people that are on public assistance, you find out why and you solve that problem. There's just a lot of things where we can put people first and really propel this country to do better things when we get on the other side of this.

• 49:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it'd be hell of a story to go.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  I can't think of the top of my head.

• 49:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, it'd be a hell of a story to go from sleeping on the floor in the apartment to dancing naked, being a billionaire, and eventually in the Oval Office.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  I'd have to give you all the credit, though, man. This is dude that accelerated me, man. This is my launching pad right here, right now.

• 49:19Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, listen, Mark, I really appreciate it. Just keep doing you, man. We're all cheering you on, and we're enjoying it. So thanks so much for doing this.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  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.