#871 Bitcoin Is For The Working Class w/ Blue Collar Bitcoin Podcast

Josh & Dan are hosts of the "Blue Collar Bitcoin Podcast". They're two firefighters who focus on bringing Bitcoin education to the working class through their podcast episodes. In this conversation, we discuss their background as firefighters, how they got into Bitcoin, why Bitcoin is so important to the average American worker, and how they are helping to change the narrative around this asset class. ======================= Exodus is leading the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. With its focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. It’s supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies straight from your wallet. Interactive charts let you view an asset’s price history and your portfolio’s performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the Trezor hardware wallet - making advanced security easy for everyone. Visit exodus.com/pomp for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or Playstore. ======================= Today’s episode is sponsored by Abra. Based in California and backed by top VC firms, Abra is an all-in-one simple, secure app that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies, get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral and earn interest with up to 14% APY on stablecoins and 8.15% APY on Bitcoin. Join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the Google Play or Apple App store. If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account. You came, you invested — now conquer. ======================= DeFi Technologies represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U. S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at http://defi.tech =======================

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. Today's episode is with Dan and Josh of the Blue Collar Bitcoin Podcast. In this conversation, we talk about hardworking Americans, the middle class, why the hell is Bitcoin important for them, and what should they know about this brand new technology? I really enjoyed this conversation with both Dan and Josh. It was a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Exodus, the world's leading desktop, mobile, and hardware crypto wallet. They offer beautiful, user-friendly blockchain products that sync across all of your devices, making it easier to send,

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  receive, and exchange over 150 or more crypto assets in one place. And with world-class customer service available to you 24/7, Exodus always has your back. But the fun doesn't stop with staking and trading. They recently launched a new NFT marketplace where you can buy and sell your favorite NFTs on the Solana network. By partnering with the popular NFT platform, Magic Eden, they're offering the Full Monte Unverified Collection, with more added every single day. Ready to check it out for yourself? Run, don't walk. Over to exodus.com/pomp for your free download today. Again, if you want the world's leading desktop, mobile, and hardware crypto wallet, go to exodus.com/pomp today. Today's episode is sponsored by Abra. They're based in California, and they're backed by

• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

  top VC firms. Abra is an all-in-one, simple, secure app that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies, get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral, and earn interest with up to 13% APY on stable coins and 7.15% APY on Bitcoin. You can join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the Google Play or Apple App Store. If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account. You came, you invested, now conquer. Abra, conquer crypto. Go check it out today. This episode is brought to you by DeFi Technologies. DeFi Technologies represents what's next in the digital economy. They're providing simplified, trusted access to Crypto, decentralized finance and web three investment opportunities.

• 2:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. DeFi Technologies is currently listed on the US exchange at DEFTF Stock ticker and the Canadian NEO exchange at DEFI. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at defi.tech. I'm really excited about what these guys are doing. I've become an advisor to the business and I highly suggest you go check them out. Go to their website at defi.tech today. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 2:54Speaker 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.

• 3:18Anthony Pompliano?

  We're gonna do like a joint episode. Normally I interview people, Joe and John interview people, but we've never had anyone come on here and ask us questions. So that'd be weird. So instead, we're gonna do is just have a little conversation. They're gonna ask us questions. We're gonna ask them questions. We're gonna keep going until we get tired of asking each other questions. So why don't, like a little Van a White action, John, why don't we bring them on out?

• 3:43Speaker 02

  What's going on, guys?

• 3:44Anthony Pompliano?

  We're doing fantastic. How are you guys?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Wonderful, wonderful.

• 3:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Man, with the four, with the four boxes, I feel like we're killing it right now.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Where are the mustaches at, boys? You guys are going to my, you're going to Bitcoin 2021 without mustaches? Come on. What is this?

• 4:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I need some time. How long does that one take you to grow out?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  I don't know, but it's majestic. That is a stick on. I'm gonna call you out. That is a stick on. It looks good, though.

• 4:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, is that fake? Are you a cop?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  It is. Thanks for having us, boys. We're excited to chat.

• 4:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you hear what my brother just asked?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  No, what'd he say?

• 4:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you a cop?

• 4:21Speaker 02

  As far as you know, no, no, we're on the other side of the coin, man. Everybody loves a fireman and cops don't get that same treatment. So.

• 4:28Anthony Pompliano?

  That is true. That is very true. Everyone's like.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  We get away with absolute murder.

• 4:34Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Tell us before we get started, so our audience understands what's going on with the blue collar Bitcoin podcast, which by the way, is just a baller ass name for a podcast. But what is, what's the general premise in terms of the episodes you guys do?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, we've been at this for about a year. This, I'm Dan right here. Josh is the unmustached fellow.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Unmustached and gray.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  We've been at this about a year. We are both career firefighter paramedics near Chicago. We work together. We're good friends and we've had sort of lifelong passions and interest in finance, econ, philosophy. We have been in Bitcoin since 2017 and it's more than fun and games for us. We think it's super important. We're convinced that it's key to our demographic surviving the economic pandemic ahead. And we've been privileged enough to talk to some people that we've respected and read and, and been diving into for a long time over the last year. So we're just, we're just exploring as organically as we can. We're being ourselves and, and diving into the implications of this paradigm shifting protocol.

• 5:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Do the other firefighters you guys work with get it or do they think you're crazy?

• 5:43Speaker 03

  We, we've been in a years long process of figuring that out for them.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Um, I think they thought we were crazy initially and at this point, I mean, obviously number go up technology has helped make us look a little bit smarter than five years ago, but um, it's, it's, uh, people are getting it, you know, people are starting to understand that you shouldn't get shaken out when this thing goes down 50% or 80%. And in the long term, it goes up and to the right. So it's been, uh, it's been easier and easier as things go along.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  We've got, uh, the, the department we're at, it's about 50, 50 firefighter paramedics. We got nodes running. We got cold cards galore and I'll tell you boys this much. If this thing does anything remotely close to what we're expecting, there may be a wave of unexpected retirements about 2023.

• 6:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Hold, hold, what is this? The name of the city or the town?

• 6:36Speaker 02

  We, uh, we do not dox that information, unfortunately.

• 6:39Anthony Pompliano?

  There's gonna be a whole town that's like, oh shit, we better not fire it. The whole fire department quit.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  There's a whole village secession planning model. We've got 16 firemen that we presume have this much Bitcoin priced here. We gotta start replacing some guys.

• 6:54Anthony Pompliano?

  So, uh, uh, I don't know if you guys, uh, ever heard the episode I did with Rachel Feinstein, who is, uh, a comedian and she's married to, uh, a New York City, uh, fire chief. And so she told me this hilarious story. She's like, when I first met him, uh, all the firemen would come over to, uh, the house and they'd be like, you know, hey Billy, fuck the government.

• 7:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey Billy, I read this conspiracy theory on the internet. What do you think?

• 7:22Speaker 03

  All the conspiracy theories, man, alive and well in the firehouse.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  We've got guys that are into ancient aliens that take this stuff like this is gospel.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  I think there's a Bible of ancient aliens in that firehouse.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Gentlemen, there is nothing rowdier on planet earth than shift change coffee at a firehouse. I mean, it is, it is rambunctious. If you guys think you're rambunctious, you gotta drop by at about 8 a.m. at our agency. It gets nuts.

• 7:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I can only imagine the things that get said inside of a firehouse around this stuff. And, and she was telling me this story because she was like, by the way, they all love Bitcoin because they just, they're, they're questioning everything, right? Nonstop, all the time. They question everything. And so Bitcoin is this like source of truth. So help us understand in terms of what's been the biggest, uh, like question that the other firefighters have had? Have they been, uh, more concerned about the technology? Do they just think it's like a Ponzi scheme? What, what's the biggest like obstacles in their mind?

• 8:16Speaker 03

  I think the biggest obstacles, uh, are, are basically what everyone experiences, which is when they start understanding this, they start going down the rabbit hole and then these shiny objects that we all call shitcoins get involved. And they start following those into, you know, spending, just putting tons of money into random, uh, low liquidity shitcoins and, and getting wrecked eventually. That is the biggest problem that we see. And that's primarily why we started this thing and why we. Are so, we think it's so imperative to help people understand why Bitcoin is very different from the rest of these assets because it's very easy to get distracted by a whole lot of other smaller nonsensical things in the space. NFTs come to mind, ICOs in 2017.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  And each one of these times that the price pumps, there's always a new shiny object that people seem to chase off of a cliff. And so our, what we're trying to do is basically guide people away from that, the lemmings jumping off the cliff into something with some substance and help them, help put some guide rails up so people don't end up getting hurt.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  I think the other thing too, pump boys, is that, you know, we're not trying to make enemies and we're, we're on this learning journey with anyone else. We're not looking to be dogmatic and close minded, but we are saying in this space, you gotta, you know, that fidelity just released, released this piece, I don't know, a couple of months ago, Bitcoin first. And I think our message to a lot of our listeners and peers is, hey, understand the implications of this protocol first, and then you can branch out from there if you so choose. But, you know, we're, we're as members of the middle class median wage earners, we just don't have cash flow to waste. You know what I mean? So a lot of what we're trying to do is push people down the learning journey. You know, don't do what we're saying necessarily.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  We're here to try to motivate you to go learn and understand and grow on your own. And fortunately, I, you know, having been in this since 2017, the, the space is so much more right. There's so much more education material that it just, it just abounds. And there's many places to go to learn more about macro monetary history, Bitcoin, altcoins, the whole gamut.

• 10:26Anthony Pompliano?

  When people come to you guys in the firehouse, what do you tell them to go do first?

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Read books. We've got a list of articles and books. I think I've filled notebooks full of them already, but I mean, it's a lot of the major ones like the Bitcoin standard. So the bullish case for Bitcoin is a couple that come to mind. A one that I love, which is probably something that most people would just fall asleep reading, but it's really good is Nick Zabo's shelling out piece. If, if anyone listening hasn't read that and they're interested in the history of money, amazing piece. I mean, he goes back thousands of years from the beginnings and kind of helps you understand why money is really just a mental construct we all agree on. And that's something that it's kind of like a, that old. Tail of the fish in water doesn't realize it's swimming in water because it's been in it

• 11:15Speaker 03

  its whole life. If the money that we use today is really only 50 years old or so, and it can change quickly. And understanding that these mental models can change because it's all about trust. What is the thing you trust?

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Everything Dalio has ever written is early in our recommendation. Just a holistic, basic understanding of macro. Like Lynn Alden's blog is unbelievably high on our list just because, you know, Lynn Alden is, first of all, the intellectual integrity is off the charts. The genius is off the charts, but she's also approachable. She's the kind of writer and thinker that a firefighter who spent 40 hours learning macro can still kind of trace through her articles. But yeah, as Josh said, the first order of business isn't haul out and buy Bitcoin. It's, hey, start asking some fundamental questions about what's going on in the economic landscape around you and then begin the learning journey. And then obviously, we think Bitcoin fits in that equation, but don't trust, verify, baby. Go do your own homework. Absolutely.

• 12:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I know one of the things that you guys spend a lot of time on and would be valuable to talk about is this idea of like Bitcoin's role for the average American or like the hardworking, average American. And when you think about this, how much, and my brothers and I have talked about it a ton, is like, there's the investment case, there's the like censorship and caesurship resistance as a, as a value proposition. But to me, it seems like the most simple way to wrap your head around this is just savings technology. Right? It's like the average American isn't worried whether they should be or not, but they're just not worried about somebody not allowing them to transact or coming and confiscating their wealth. And again, maybe they should be, but just if you go and you polled the

• 12:57Anthony Pompliano?

  average American, they're not going to say that is a concern for them. They also, for the most part, the average, it does not think that they are going to the casino and going to triple their money overnight. Some younger people, maybe they do think that, but like the average person who just goes to their job every day doesn't think that. And so, is that aligned with kind of how you guys have seen people talk about this and kind of wrap their head around it? It's just like, okay, I've been told my entire life that I should save my way to financial security, but it seems like if I do that in dollars, it ends up getting eroded away because of inflation, or, or I have this feeling that I can't get ahead. Now, if I do it in this new asset, then there's some ability for me actually to preserve my wealth? Or how do you guys, you know, kind of have those conversations right now?

• 13:39Speaker 02

  I love, yeah, we resonate massively with everything you just said. I think what makes us slightly unique in this space, and I don't mean to undermine everybody else's experiences with what's going on with the basement and inflation, but we are in a subset of earners that we are feeling this right now, right? We're, we are feeling inflation, right? And when you think about real wages and the implications of, you know, 7.9 CPI prints that show no sign of abatement and our wages are going up, let's say one to three percent a year, you have declining real wages, you have asset price inflation that impacts people's ability to say buy homes. You know, we talk on our show a lot about how I've been on five years, Josh has been on 10, even since we got on and bought

• 14:20Speaker 02

  our houses. It's different for guys we have on probation that are trying to buy homes, right? Things are changing rapidly for middle-class members. And you need to do something to protect yourself, both from the implications of a long-term debt cycle unwind and pension risk, right? We talk a lot on our show about pensions. We just had Foss and Pish on, I don't know, a few weeks ago, talking specifically about pensions and just the implications of fixed income exposure mandates. And if the system really implodes, that's in jeopardy, and that's what a lot of people are relying on. So this is far more from just a fun theoretical joke for us that we really, the two of us believe strongly and have for years now that this is insurance on

• 15:05Speaker 02

  the traditional fireman investment account, if you will.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  And even to jump in on a very simple level, the incentives behind this make saving so much more aggrandized for people. Like people are saving with dollars, they're, even though they may not realize it, they're, they're watching, they're buying, they're purchasing power, you know, just dissolve. But when they're over the longer period of a couple of years watching the, the amount of money they've saved in Bitcoin increase in value in dollar terms, it incentivizes the saving on a much grander scale. And we see that at work, too. Like people are DCA-ing in more and more as they understand the implications of all this and that they're actually getting ahead by saving in Bitcoin instead of in a

• 15:48Speaker 03

  Money market paying them point zero two percent at Chase or you know, whatever their alternative is it's this is the best savings technology available if you have the uh the balls to just withstand those 50% drawdowns you just have to be you have to be educated well enough to understand that this is a long-term proposition and you can't be shaken out of it at 50% down and then you'll be rewarded.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  I I think the other thing along this line to to that that needs to be introduced is we have seen Jen's that this does change financial behavior. It changes time preference, right? As you learn and grow and understand Bitcoin, it it

• 16:29Speaker 02

  lengthens your time preference. It is a great, you know, we we often call it a financial decomplexifier. The current system is so complicated and there's so much you need to know and understand to even stay above water. You know, Bitcoin really simplifies that and then you know, this is going on more long-term, but we believe firmly Bitcoin will restore an actually sensible, non-clownish cost of capital, which will probably disincentivize unproductive debt to some extent, which we also see a lot of our peers involved in, right? There's a there's a time and place to have productive debt, but if you're driving cars you can't afford, buying homes you shouldn't have and financing TVs, your cash flow isn't freed up to buy productive assets. And part of the reason people are incentivized to do those things

• 17:15Speaker 02

  is because interest rates are manipulated so low and we're not looking at a true cost of capital. So the implications of how this affects portfolio performance and investment behavior are they're tremendous, we feel for us and our demographic.

• 17:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely. When you start to think about pay, uh I I hopefully I'm not wrong on this, but I think that your pay is determined as a firefighter by the uh local or state government, depending on uh kind of what the the network is that you're in. And it's set at predetermined percentages as part of the annual budget. And therefore, if inflation explodes, they don't necessarily have the ability to come and change pay to react to that economic environment. So when you have kind of a pegged pay, it's not like you guys can show up, you know, the fire chief and be like, hey, you know, big dog, I need I need a 5% raise that there's no ability, right? Uh, there's no ability for them to do that.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  No, that's absolutely true. Um, the way ours works is we're based, basically they, they choose a bunch of comparable fire departments in the area and they, they give us the, I think we're number three out of like 10. And so we get slotted in right in the number three spot between 10 other departments around us. So, and yeah, nobody's getting 8% raises to keep up with inflation. I can guarantee that.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  It's gonna probably be a 2.3% or something.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  And, and to be fair to the private, like that's not unique to us. Everybody's gonna, real wages are gonna lag for most people. Obviously, we have, uh, some people suckling from the QE, what's gonna be yield curve control teat. Um, but in terms of like, you know, most salaried employees, public and private, um, you can bet your bottom dollar, your real wages are gonna lag. Um, but they have to. There's just a mathematical guarantee. I know you guys talk about this on the show all the time. There is a mathematical guarantee that we're gonna be in a, unless you're positioned properly, a harmfully inflationary environment for the foreseeable future.

• 19:13Anthony Pompliano?

  When you guys tell folks that you're into Bitcoin and also a firefighter, does that make them more interested? Like, I always think of this idea of like, if a Wall Street banker in the suit and tie, cologne, slicked back hair, you know, the shitty fake watch, like they step out and they're like, let me tell you about this financial investment. People are like, I'm good, man. Like, like I just, I'm out of here. But when you hear it from not your friend, because you're again, you don't believe your friend, you don't believe like your parents when you're a young kid or whatever, but it's somebody in the community that you respect, and I put firefighters up there. Does that change the conversation at all from what you guys have seen? Or do people not really look at the occupation as part of the conversation? And they're just like, oh,

• 19:55Anthony Pompliano?

  here's two guys who seem to have a good understanding of kind of economics and what's going on in the world?

• 20:01Speaker 03

  I'll take, I think that, um, at least the guys we work with, they, I think they understand that the two of us have done our homework a bit. As far as Dan said at the top of this, that, you know, the two of us are into economics, finance and all that stuff. And this has been a long journey for me before Bitcoin. And the same for Dan. We've both been, uh, invested in, you know, the S and P 500. We haven't really been stock pickers traditionally, but, uh, understanding the way money works. Like I've been huge into Austrian econ for years and, and I thought gold was gonna be the thing that was gonna save the system until 2016, 17, when I understood the implications of Bitcoin and what this actually means for things like gold, which are You know, barbarous relics, as some central bankers would have called them. But the, I think

• 20:46Speaker 03

  the thing that gives us some gravitas in this, at least with the people that we know, is just the simple fact that we've both dove down deeply into some of the books of guys like Ray Dalio, and tried to have a real holistic understanding of macroeconomics, which I think is fundamental for having any idea of where this is going and why. Most importantly, why? Dan, you got anything?

• 21:09Speaker 02

  I think it can cut both ways. You can kind of have the assumption that it's unlikely we're going to have something to contribute. That could be on one side of it. You also have a hardcore libertarian bent in the Bitcoin community. So a couple municipal government employees talking about Bitcoin can rub people the wrong way. But then I think on the other side, there is something unusual, let's say, that unexpected about a couple firemen barking this hard about this. And then, you know, on our show, I think one of our goals is to have robust substantive, meaningful conversations, but also make names and people you've heard a lot of in this space more approachable. You know, that's one of our goals with having these people

• 21:52Speaker 02

  on our show is to explore both the superficial and the deep. And I, you know, I think what we do for a living and being sort of down to earth and tactile and in our vocation allows us to be sometimes more approachable for, for people that are sick of here, not sick of, but tired of hearing the next finance guy talking about Bitcoin.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. When you really boil this down to it, this is an innovation that takes thousands of hours of study for most people. If they're really going to try to get a grasp of it, you've got everything from economics, the two, you know, the Austrian versus Keynesian. If you want to understand that, that's hundreds of hours of reading and research to understand just that, the history of money. And, you know, we talked about the changing world order and shelling out, and how those are great resources to understand what money is. That's another couple hundred hours to really get a grasp of that. The game theory, reading something from like John von Neumann from basically the guy who invented game theory and understanding the incentive structures are what really matter here. Like you, I forget who said it, but you show me the incentive system. I think it was Charlie Munger and I'll show you an outcome.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  And that's really like theoretically where this thing goes is where, how are the incentives set up? What does that impel people to do? And then you can kind of see, not exactly, but you can get a rough idea of where this is all going. And then the software side of it, the tech side of it, which is, I would say, Dan, in my weakest point, but it's imperative to have at least some, at least flimsy grasp of how the software works and why this is such an ironclad system.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  If you don't mind, Pop, I want to flip it over to you three. What are, what are some of your guys' thoughts, speaking to our audience about why you think Bitcoin might be an empowerment tool for the middle class? Maybe dive into inflation if you've got any fresh thoughts. What are, what are the pop boys thinking on that side of the microphone here?

• 23:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Forty-five percent of Americans have no investable assets and they're fucked. I mean, point blank period, right?

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And they don't even know it, which is like the worst type of dire financial position is that you think the solution to pursue is to simply save money. And actually what you're doing is you're making it worse and worse in some way. The other thing is obviously there's a huge debt crisis in America, whether it's student loans or other types of debt. And so I always say to folks that like, the rules of this game are pretty simple. It's like spend less than you make, get the hell out of debt, make sure that you get invested, be super patient and just chill. And like, and they're going to do the work for you. And it sounds too simple, but like the key is actually to be consistent and disciplined over very long periods of time. And so I think that Bitcoin is, got this very unique structure, but more important than

• 24:37Anthony Pompliano?

  the structure is that it helps people focus. And when people focus, they then get out of this game of like, oh, how do I go and trade or try to do anything that would be quote unquote risky? Instead, all I need to do is go to my job, be great at it, get paid. Take that money, spend on whatever I need to, from an expense standpoint, and then go and just save. And that savings type technology allows you over long periods of time. It's no different than real estate, right? If you really think about real estate, now, yes, there's cash flow associated with it. And there's, you know, some tax ramifications that can be potentially positive. But at the end of the day, all you're doing is you're dollar cost averaging into a hard asset. And you're essentially just arbitraging time so that the dollar gets devalued against the hard asset.

• 25:22Anthony Pompliano?

  So Bitcoin does as well. And so I think that like, that to me is the most powerful piece of this is just getting people to understand money. Getting them to understand what the challenges are in the financial system. And then just saying like, look, you don't have to be a genius. I think that's what scares people is like, oh, I don't even know how to, you know, open a stock brokerage account. Well, Robin Hood and SoFi and a number of these businesses all solve that by dropping the friction so low. But if you think about what these platforms are having to do, right? And the reason why we actually partner with SoFi is it's not just about trading or buying equities. Like it's a whole, it's like a holistic financial experience. And so when you think about it, it's like, how do I get out of debt, right?

• 26:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I gotta refinance, I gotta be able to get out of that debt so that I can actually have money to invest. How do I get exposure to various financial assets, right? Okay, I've got to figure out, how do I get the money? Then also, how do I think about banking? And like, if you really think about the average American, like they go into a bank, the bank screws them, right? Like whether it's because they don't allow them to get upside in certain opportunities, or it's because they sell them shitty products. And so when you start to kind of look at all of that and you just boil it down to a first principle standpoint, like what is the problem? It's corruption of the money and the incentives get tossed Absolutely. in the wrong direction. And so now it becomes a zero sum game. And in that zero sum game, guess what?

• 26:50Anthony Pompliano?

  One person versus a corporation, good luck, right? And I think that to me is like the big thing. And so I always sum it up with a statement that everyone always like, oh my God, that's such, that's so bombastic. But I genuinely believe this. The adoption of Bitcoin globally will do more positive impact than all global philanthropy combined.

• 27:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And the reason being, it's the only first principle solution to a wide range of problems, which is if you uncorrupt the money, you set us back on the right path. And what other thing affects 45% of Americans and changes and closes that wealth inequality gap? There's nothing.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then, and then to zoom out, you know, internationally, beyond these domestic issues we're exploring. Like we had Gladstein on last year and the freedom implications, the liberation implications of this technology are an absolute mindfuck. I mean, it is crazy what you got 3 billion people globally that are unbanked and they're never going to be banked. You know, that's what, that's the crazy thing is you look at the uptick of peer-to-peer usage on Bitcoin and say Nigeria and countries in Africa. They are going to absolutely leapfrog the banking system because of this technology. And it is mind blowing. And you got, you know, I had my, I had my dad over the other night who I've been working on hard for years and he's starting to get this.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  And what really, really brought this home for him and really clicked, this was just two nights ago, was seeing Jack Dorsey and Alex Gladstein on the main stage last year at Bitcoin 2021. And Jack saying, there's going to be nothing else like this in my lifetime. Talking about him and Jay-Z doing work in Africa and saying, I'm dedicating the rest of my life to this technology. It is magnificent what the implications are going to be, not just domestically, but internationally for all people that have been cut off from and disenfranchised as a result of this current exclusionary financial system.

• 28:48Anthony Pompliano?

  It's great to see that. That's what, uh, that's what puts them over the edge, right? Is, is the, the conviction of it. I don't know. Joe, John, what do you guys think? I was just going to add, it's not even, unbanked is certainly a large part of it, but just financial sovereignty in general is a huge part of it. We've seen what's happened, not only in Russia, but in Canada, right? Where they're freezing the bank accounts of people that are protesting against things they don't believe in, right? So just the sovereign individual, I think is obviously going to be super important and Bitcoin is a large part of that.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. The billboard after billboard is Dan and I like to say, that has been put up in the last couple of months alone, is, is extremely compelling for anyone paying attention. A country like Canada, which I think most Americans, Dan and I would probably agree are, we view them as Americans almost. I mean, they're just above, you know, they're right over the border. They're very similar. They have a very similar structure to us. And to watch, you know, a first world Western country censor its, uh, censor its citizenry with almost with no cause. Just this is what we're doing today because we didn't like what you did yesterday. Uh, no court order, nothing. We're just gonna do it. And And then to see it happen.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then to see it recently transcend the individual to the sovereign nation state level. I mean, we're no fan of what Putin's up to, but when you can just freeze FX reserves, it doesn't take a genius to realize we're going to a different global settlement layer. I mean, it's crazy when you think about how, I mean, it's an innovation that's time has come. I don't know what else. I don't know what else to say. Um, and it's almost, it can be almost exhausting and infuriating when people have been exposed to it and don't see it, but there, we need to have patience. We've all been there before and it does, it takes a lot of pecks on the head before this thing clicks. And that's how it is for, for most individuals.

• 30:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Pecs on the head is such a good description.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  I think it was Laurie on your show the other day that said, all these third world or, or developing countries like in Central America, they're having to describe, subscribe to a nuclear power. Right? They're going to choose the Eastern or Western side for this because it's going to bifurcate. Um, why wouldn't they choose an independent, um, structure of money that the, that they can't be censored? I mean, if you subscribe to the Eastern one, now you've got China and potentially Russia being able to censor you. You subscribe to the Western one, the US can censor you. Why would you choose to have any ability to be disintermediated? Just pick the censorship resistant money at the baseline.

• 31:15Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you guys think like, uh, is the, is the biggest thing that us certainly, but other people also can do from an education level? Is it just telling people to listen to podcasts and read books and stuff like that? Because in my mind, right? Like, and I think your guys too, this makes a ton of sense. Once you start to do the homework and you understand that, uh, maybe you have to do a thousand hours or a hundred hours or whatever it is, but you start to get it, right? And I think at some point, it's just how many more people can we tell about it? How many people can understand it? So is it just, uh, education in your mind? Or is there something else for the average individual?

• 31:45Speaker 03

  I think personally, it's something different for everybody. So just exposing yourself to as much as possible in order to cast a wide net, I guess I would say, because eventually you're going to run across that one article for for Dan's father. It was listening to Dorsey and Alex Gladstein. And for me personally, it was reading the book Sapiens back in 2017. There was a, there was a chapter on digital currency in there and I'd heard of Bitcoin, but after having heard a couple of times about Bitcoin, two pecks on the head, you know, and reading that chapter in that book, something just clicked and I, I had an, I just had to read everything I could find on it. But that was the moment where it happened for me. And I don't know what it is for most people. It's probably very different for people, just depending on their disposition, what it is they're

• 32:28Speaker 03

  interested in. But I would say, if you have any interest in this at all, try to just read a wide range of things, because one of those things is probably going to be the, the linchpin that finally sets you off on the right angle.

• 32:41Speaker 04

  As you guys talk more and more about Bitcoin, I'm sure the community around you has like, basically seen you as, hey, this guy knows what he's talking about. He's more educated than I am when we reach out to him. Why are people reaching out to you guys if they are about Bitcoin? Is it the price appreciation? Is it the technology aspect of it? Like, why, why do people come to you guys or just like, think about Bitcoin in general?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  I think that we, people are more aware of artificiality in the system right now than they ever have been before. You know, I've been in, I'm 32 years old, so I've now been investing for roughly 10 years. It's, the ball is really rolling downhill and there's, there's more things to grab on to right now. So you're seeing people ask fundamental questions like, hey, during one of the biggest economic crises of the last hundred years, global pandemic, why is my fucking retirement account at all time highs? You know what I mean? These are, these are things that, that aren't making sense to me. How, why is my house up 28% in one year? There's just more evidence right now. Why is meat twice as expensive as it was six months ago? What, why are, there's

• 33:44Speaker 02

  more, uh, entry points, there's more touch points that where people are recognizing there's something going on bigger than they understand, which I think is prompting people to want to learn more. So that's one side. The other side is just, number goes up, man. I mean, we, we were first started, we were talking about this when it was at four grand in 2017 and it's, 10x. So it's, uh, it just, it's shiny. It's bright. And that is, you know, as much as price can be a deceiver, it's also very important. I, you know, I was drawn to it because it went from a thousand to 20,000, right? In that cycle in 2017. And that'll be the same thing when, when we go from whatever our low is here to, you know, new all time highs, it'll, it'll draw people in and that's fine. We've

• 34:27Speaker 02

  all been there and those are opportunities to seize. I, I think, you know, Josh said this off the top and, and Anthony, you hit on this a second ago. The main priority though is to get people learning because if your habits aren't in order, if you're impulsive and emotional and reactionary, and you think you're going to generate wealth by trading stuff around, you're sorely mistaken. And that's the, that's the beauty of this asset is it gives you an opportunity to kind of sit on your hands, man. I mean, we firmly believe if you're in our shoes and you free up your cash flow and you DCA over the next five, 10, 15 years, you're going to be okay. And it is that financial

• 35:11Speaker 02

  decomplexifier that allows people to sort of get out of their own way with personal finance, because we do have a lot of peers who are swing trading and momentum trading and excited about this and excited about that. And they're almost assuredly late to the market. Because if you're a fireman and you're thinking a stock sexy, you're probably late to the market. You know what I mean? So there's just not that many asymmetric opportunities out there for a firefighter. And I'm here to tell you, this is one of them. And it's a, it's a thing of beauty.

• 35:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Tell me more about, uh, the nodes. Do you guys have miners? Like what's going on in the firehouse in terms of, uh, uh, what I would consider not just the knowledge, but the actual like activity that that's going on there?

• 35:54Speaker 03

  We've got, Dan's got a node running. I, I think we've got like five or six guys running nodes at this point. Miners are just out of reach for a lot of people because, you know, they're $12,000 for an S19 at this point. Plus the fact that residential power is 11 or 15 cents a kilowatt hour, whatever it is, it's almost, it's almost pointless. You might as well just, just, uh, just buy a DCA with the money personally is my view. Um, a couple of guys are shitcoin mining with, uh, with, uh, video cards in their computer to buy Ethereum and then flip it for Bitcoin, stuff like that. But yeah, no one, no one that I know at least is mining right now.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  It's kind of this road to sovereignty in this thing because I mean, we're, we've been longtime cold card users. We're running our own nodes. We're routing our cold cards through our own nodes, you know, but that's something that's happened over, over years and a lot of messing with this protocol and using it. So you gotta be careful with the cold storage thing. I mean, we're constantly barking like cold storage your Bitcoin, but we're also saying, there's a large disclaimer saying, don't do it until you're ready. And that, that just comes with experimenting and time. But yeah, we, we have a lot of dudes cold storing their Bitcoin on cold cards at our fire department. I would say we have the highest cold card per capita usage of any fire department

• 37:15Speaker 02

  in the, in the United States.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  I think there's no argument, no argument on that point.

• 37:20Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what is, uh, significant others? What are their thoughts on all this stuff? Is this just like, oh, like my husband, boyfriend, you know, whoever, uh, and his crazy friends and like at the firehouse and let's just ignore this? Or has this spilled over? I think I see quite a bit of Bitcoin paraphernalia all in the backgrounds of, of both of your shots. So it seems like maybe this has infiltrated the home as well.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're, we, yeah, we're both married. We have kids. Josh has two. I have one. I actually have another one on the way April 1st, which is, well, it's absolute bullshit that it's coming April 1st because I'm not going to be at Bitcoin 2022. I tell you, I messed up, man. I, hey, word to the wise here, you gotta keep the wife at arm's length nine months before this conference.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  This is, this is bad timing. Um, I think our, our wives trust us. You know what I mean? We're, we've been disciplined, non-impulsive investors for a long time and

• 38:19Speaker 03

  They've also watched the number go up over the last five years, so they're okay with it. I think my wife might watch the price of Bitcoin more than I do. I actually think, I know she does, which is hilarious.

• 38:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Is she watching it because, uh, it's part of her paying attention to like what's going on in the market? Or is she watching it like calculating in her head?

• 38:39Speaker 03

  It's criticizing me when it's not going well. And then on the other end, it works the other way, you know? It's a double edged sword.

• 38:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Sorry, if it makes you guys feel any better, when when my daughter was born, my brothers over here said that I was screwed and my wife reminded everyone that the baby cannot receive Bitcoin yet. And so I feel like every family, as they get educated on this stuff, it becomes obvious, right? Yeah. In terms of how valuable it is.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  I think having kids has made me even more interested in this, which is which has demonstrated to me how important it is because I want to provide for my family. I want to have a stable situation for all of us and to pass on. And I think in some ways, that's been a good introspective checkpoint of having been a dad for a couple of years. I'm actually taking this more seriously than I was before.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, Dan and I've talked a lot too about how funny it's going to be in the future when either this podcast recording is still around and like our grandkids listen to it and either A, grandpa was a complete idiot, or B, grandpa was a genius. There's going to be no middle ground.

• 39:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe it'll be both. Maybe like, damn, grandpa and his friend was an absolute moron, but at least they bought Bitcoin.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Hey, hey, I gotta, I got a question. I gotta get in for the three of you. And this is, this is the most important question of the segment.

• 40:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm out.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Okay, so just brace yourself. So Fight Breaks Out in the Pom House.

• 40:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I went hands down.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  That was easy.

• 40:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Put their heads in a toilet seat.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Fight Breaks Out, hold on, Fight Breaks Out today, not 2015, not 2005, not in the glory days. Okay, today.

• 40:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Appreciate that.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  This isn't noogies and charlie horses. This gets real. This goes to the floor. Their tempers are flaring, emotions are high. Rank the brothers, not just top dog, rank them top to bottom for us.

• 40:35Anthony Pompliano?

  There's only, there's only two people in this room that are hitting the floor and they're sitting next to each other over there. I was just gonna say, I'm top dog, the other two don't matter.

• 40:45Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I don't know if you guys have siblings or brothers, but we have five boys in our family. And what used to happen, there's two things that were important. First was when fights would break out, it was kind of like the geopolitical chaos going on right now. Like if you weren't involved in the fight, you better pick sides quickly because you could get caught in the crossfire. So it was like, all right, who I think is going to win, who I think is right. And it kind of, all that happened. The second thing is that there's this amazing story where I don't know how my dad thought this was a good idea, but he bought two pairs of boxing gloves at one point. Joe and John were probably, I don't know, five and seven or something like that. And myself and my two other brothers were older.

• 41:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And so we decided that it would be a genius idea to give our two youngest brothers, Joe and John, boxing gloves. I took one of them as like, I was going to be the corner man. Another brother took one as the corner man. And then the fifth brother was the referee. This lasted for under 30 seconds. Obviously, there's between a five and a seven year old is like pretty significant at that age. Joe punched John and as soon as one, literally one time, one swing, as soon as John got hit, he just looked at all of us and went, oh shit, he's about to cry. And it was just like, keep him from running upstairs and telling our parents. And he had a bloody nose, he ran upstairs, boxing gloves never made an appearance in our house ever again. Yeah, that's right. Your boy gave him a bloody nose.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Hey, when's the last time things got chippy in the pomp household? Like some wine going on at Thanksgiving?

• 42:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Nah, there hasn't been a bloody nose in a while, but there's, yeah, there's some, some verbal sparring for sure.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Who's, who's the guy who's punching someone in the balls when they're losing?

• 42:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Nah, like this is the thing is when, no, when you're, when your brothers, growing up the way that we did, there was basically two rules. One was you ain't go too low because that was like, that was like you disrespected him too much. Not cool. And then the second one was we never punch each other in the face. Cause that would leave obvious damage that would then lead to more punishment from our parents. But everything else was fair game. Throw things, tackle, whatever we could do, we did. Which now I'm going to flip it on you guys. What goes on with the fistfights inside the firehouse?

• 43:02Speaker 03

  We know what we haven't had like a knock down, throw out brawl, but there's definitely like wrestling that goes on. Like somebody will, somebody will do something stupid or say something stupid, get tossed over a lazy boy and go to the ground, you know, just for some wrestling. Like no punching, none of that. Just, yeah, who's gonna hold out?

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Obviously if our chiefs are listening, we're totally kidding.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  I do, I do have another, I have a firehouse dilemma for you guys.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  All right.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  So this is like a little bit of like what goes on at the coffee table. Of course not at our organization.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  No other organizations surrounding us.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  No, none of us. But, um, so you guys have two choices. There's two doors to choose from. Door A is Janet Yellen in lingerie, dolled up, hot and bothered, ready for the, the three of you guys to enter door A. Door B is Christine Lagarde swinging in a Chinese basket. Which one of you guys choose?

• 43:52Speaker 02

  A or B, boy.

• 43:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there a C?

• 43:55Speaker 03

  No, that's it, man.

• 43:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I can't wait to be a firefighter. I'm definitely going to become a firefighter. That sounds like a lose, lose to me.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  That's like the situation the Fed is in right now, man. Rocking a hard place.

• 44:10Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like inflation or recession. Pick your poison, of course.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  The old Yellen, Lagarde, uh, rocking a hard place, Fed dilemma.

• 44:17Anthony Pompliano?

  People are, people are putting the throw up emojis in the chat.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  Well, I'm sure Lagarde gets down. She's European, you know?

• 44:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, the, the one thing that I will say is, uh, in the military, there was always, uh, marry, kill, right? As the three, uh, as the three options. And that, that game goes to some weird places real fast in conversation.

• 44:45Speaker 03

  It sure does.

• 44:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So, uh, I'm not going to answer, which is me bitching out, uh, but, uh, Well, the people in the chatter seem to be answering. They said,

• 44:55Speaker 03

  What's the poll going to? What are we calling here?

• 44:57Anthony Pompliano?

  They said Lagarde is, is kinda spicy.

• 45:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, there's some nonsense going on in here, but she seems like the winner.

• 45:10Anthony Pompliano?

  We'll let the community go ahead, little community engagement project today. All right, where can we send people to listen to the podcast and find you guys on the internet? If, I guess you guys technically aren't on the internet as much, the podcast's on the internet.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're active on Twitter way more than we should be. We're at blue underscore collar BTC. Our wives like hate Twitter at this point, like we're so glue, you know, I'm sure everybody's been through this, but it's fun. It's fun. It's fun to engage both seriously and jokingly on there. And then we have episodes coming out weekly. We're on every podcast platform, Blue Collar Bitcoin Podcast.

• 45:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Now, I will say one other thing is as a fireman, obviously you need to be well rested, which is exactly what our sponsor Eight Sleep does, is help people be well rested because they have a thermo-regulated mattress. What do you, what is your guys' sleep schedule? Do you guys get eight hours? Or is this like one of these things where you're getting woken up all the time?

• 46:07Speaker 03

  When we're, when we're on shift, it's almost always guaranteed you're getting up at least once in the middle of the night. You might get lucky once or twice a month and actually get some sleep. But that's why we have two days off, so we can come home and get some sleep.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's one thing that's, I'm handicapped on every episode because I'm coming off a poor night's rest and Josh is well rested. We're on different shifts, so I'm always coming up, like I was on duty last night. We only got up once, which was nice, but man, sleep, any, you talk to any fireman, we love our sleep. Like when we're at home for those two nights in between shift, out like a freaking light because.

• 46:41Anthony Pompliano?

  They have an eight-sleep mattress.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, hey, we'll give you our address.

• 46:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can have them send them over. We'll test them out.

• 46:50Anthony Pompliano?

  By the way, you guys are the only two smart podcast guests we've ever had who realized that, yeah, that would probably be a smart ass.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Hey, we've got.

• 46:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's test them.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  We've got like between the three firehouses in our town, we've probably got around 30 mattresses guys are on. So if you could just give us a 30-spot pump, we'll give you the address.

• 47:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Not an issue at all. We'll just not sell any of our Bitcoin to try to send you guys mattresses.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  We appreciate it.

• 47:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. All right. Anyone who has not listened to the podcast, please go listen to it. As much as we're joking around here, both of you guys have a very strong understanding of economics and kind of really just money in general and kind of what's going on in the world. I've been, been pretty impressed. So please keep up the, the great work and know they don't have any, any bed bugs. And people in the audience are saying you guys are hard workers, which is bullshit because just because you have a mustache, doesn't mean that you're a hard worker. Right. But that is.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Start growing them, boys. John, Joe, Anthony, let's go get these things rolling. It's the new laser eyes.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Don't be caught without it down in Miami.

• 47:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I love.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Get that laser stash to get that thing off.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Thanks for having us, guys. We enjoyed every minute of it.

• 48:01Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. We'll definitely do this again in the future.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  Keep doing what you're doing.

• 48:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks guys.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Later, guys.

• 48:06Anthony Pompliano?

  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.