#1584 Polina & Anthony Pompliano | Why Bitcoin Is Going To $1 MILLION

Polina Pompliano and Anthony Pompliano discuss why bitcoin is winning, the summer of crypto, what’s changing with artificial intelligence, why the banks will have to embrace bitcoin, why Warren Buffett and Berkshire are losing, and this one idea you have to realize. ========================Markets are at all-time highs. Public equities are outperforming. And individual investors are driving it all. It’s officially the rise of the retail investor. On September 12th in NYC, I’m hosting the Independent Investor Summit — a one-day event built exclusively for self-directed investors. We’re bringing together some of the smartest public market investors I know for a full day of macro insights, market predictions, one-on-one fireside chats, and actionable investment ideas from each investor. This is going to be an absolute banger event. Join us if you like markets and think retail is two steps ahead of Wall Street. TICKETS: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.independentinvestor.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠/ (use promo code POMPYT25)========================Bitizenship helps Bitcoin-forward investors gain EU residency and a path to Portuguese citizenship in five years while maintaining exposure to Bitcoin. Their regulated fund qualifies you for the Golden Visa through an operating company focused on Bitcoin-native innovation. Book a free strategy call at https://bitizenship.com/pomp.========================⁠Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Created by Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, Polkadot empowers users to build decentralized applications with ease. Backed by industry leaders, making it a preferred choice for big names, Polkadot stands out as a leading choice for investors seeking a reliable, future-proof solution in the growing world of Web3 technology. Learn more at https://polkadot.com/.=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: ⁠https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Into the wild, the Calthea Panther encounters a shimmering crocodile, a lonely lovebird, a breathless zebra, and a restless tiger.

• 0:16Speaker 01

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• 0:48Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode.

• 1:16Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:39Anthony Pompliano?

  What's going on, ladies and gentlemen? Today, we got a great episode with Polina Pompliano, and in this conversation, I hold nothing back. I just let you know exactly what's going on with the summer of crypto, why Bitcoin is winning, why so many people who are looking at the past are wrong, how people who actually understand what's changing with artificial intelligence, Bitcoin, and all of this innovative technology, why they're winning and why they're going to continue to win, why Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is taking a big fat L ever since he stepped down, and then what's going on with the banks and why the banks now all have to embrace Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, that, much more. Here's my latest conversation with Polina Pompliano. All right, Paulina, what's first topic?

• 2:15Speaker 04

  Okay. Last week, the SEC launched Project Crypto to help make America the crypto capital of the world. SEC Chair Paul Atkins said, "We will make sure the next chapter of financial innovation is written right here in America." What do we think?

• 2:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, first of all, America already is the capital of Bitcoin and crypto. You can check to see we have the most mining hash rate. We have all the Bitcoiners. We've got the best liquid capital markets. We've got the ETFs. We've got some of the biggest crypto companies. Like, we're winning, first of all. Second of all, how funny is it? You know that quote that says, "First they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win?"

• 2:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, but Theranos kind of ruined that one for me.

• 2:57Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, it didn't. Because that's exactly what happened. Because I think it's actually, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win. Well, guess what? We're in the winning phase because they were fighting us. They were fighting us for four years. And you could just look at it. It's like a scoreboard. The old regime, L, they took that L hard. And Bitcoin and crypto won. Like, we're inside the fort now. It was a Trojan horse. We're in there. The SEC Chairman is saying, "The revolution will continue." The President of the United States, "The revolution will continue." The banks, "The revolution will continue." Everyone's on board. Everyone is now lined up and they say, "This is a thing that is going to happen in the world." There's a lot of details that

• 3:42Anthony Pompliano?

  need to be figured out. There's regulation. There's this rule. There's that rule. There's technology that needs to be built. People need to get convinced to buy it, hold it, store it, adopt it, whatever. But the revolution is unstoppable now. Bitcoin is going in every corner of the financial system. You're going to see every single large financial institution, they're going to participate in this game. The regulators, they're going to figure out the right rules. They're going to put them in place, say, "Hey, we want people doing the right things, but we want this to thrive in America." And the politicians, there ain't very many politicians dumb enough to get on the wrong side of this because they realize that some of the most engaged voters, some of the people with the most money, and the people who got the longest time horizon, because they're young, want this to happen.

• 4:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, it's game on now. And so, Project Crypto, think about 15 years ago, people were worried about, "Is the government going to ban Bitcoin?" Now, we got the regulators saying, "We are going to make sure this thrives in America."

• 4:37Speaker 04

  Was that 15 years ago?

• 4:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, of course. 2009. 16 years, whatever it ends up being, depending on when you start paying attention. And so if you take and you look at, okay, hold on. For a decade and a half, you have had people who have been worried, is the government going to stamp this out? We have a Bitcoin president. Almost everyone in the cabinet of the White House owns Bitcoin in their financial disclosures. The SEC, the CFTC, the OCC, the boom, bang, bang, bomb, boom. Every institution is saying, we're going to let you do this now. And so guess what happens? Larry Fink, he's the OG of the traditional world playing in this space now. It's only been a year and a half since those ETFs,

• 5:23Anthony Pompliano?

  but that was the shot heard around the world. When BlackRock came out and they said, we're going to do an ETF, everyone said, woo. Well, if Larry says that we're going to do it, I guess we're going to do it. And that completely changed the game. And so from that moment forward, there's before the ETF history of Bitcoin and there is after the ETF history of Bitcoin. Most successful financial product launch in Wall Street history. It's the most profitable product at BlackRock. And all these other financial institutions, they're all trying to get in the game. Stable coins, they're coming fast and furious. Bitcoin, they're coming fast and furious. Whether you like tokenization or not, like game on, that's all going to happen. And so it comes back to,

• 6:09Anthony Pompliano?

  well, you probably got tired of hearing me say back in 2017, 2018. You know, if you go back and check the tape, they're going to tokenize everything, tokenize the world. Remember that saying?

• 6:19Speaker 04

  Oh, I remember.

• 6:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I told you guys it was going to happen. It took longer than I thought. But here we are, they're going to tokenize all these assets. They now tokenized gold, they've tokenized dollars. They're going to come start tokenize equities now. They're going to keep moving down the line, all going to get tokenized. On top of that. Now that the pandemic has transpired and gone away, I for, you know, for five years, I gave myself a five-year timeout. But now I can officially say it again, the virus is spreading. The virus is spreading. I told you guys that pre 2020. Yeah. Since pre 20, if you were not here around from before 2020, just understand, there was only one idea that I had. I had a lot of ideas, but one that really was described everything. It was this is a virus.

• 7:03Anthony Pompliano?

  If you have the virus, you're a Bitcoiner, you understand how this works, you see the world this way.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  You meant like a mind virus.

• 7:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, it's funny enough, I didn't know this at the time, but actually since then, many people who were into Bitcoin before me has told me that on some of the early forums and things like that, they actually did refer to Bitcoin as a mind virus. And so it's always this funny thing of like, you're always standing on the shoulders of giants, people who are smarter than me, who saw Bitcoin earlier, who understood it better, like they actually came up with it and I didn't even know that.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But now you fast forward and you say to yourself, if I understand Bitcoin, I'm patient zero, maybe in my group of friends, what do I do? I tell you, then I tell you, then I tell you, I won't shut up about it and I keep just hammering away. And eventually now you're infected and then they're infected and they're infected. And then guess what? Larry Fink got infected, the President of the United States got infected.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  You know?

• 7:54Anthony Pompliano?

  They're all going to be infected. The virus is spreading.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  You know who I didn't expect to get the virus?

• 8:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Who?

• 8:00Speaker 04

  And he claims he hasn't, but he's got to do it is Jamie Dimon.

• 8:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Jamie Dimon, he's in, baby.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Another positive crypto-related headline is that Jamie Dimon said, so JP Morgan just did a deal with Coinbase and he said, it's what the customer wants, it's not what JP Morgan personally wants. First of all, JP Morgan, the bank is not a personal, he's talking, whatever, that's dumb, but he's doing it.

• 8:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that all of these banks realize you cannot take a

• 8:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Personal stance, you cannot take a political stance. We can talk about the pressure they're about to come under. All these major banks, they're about to get, it's gonna be mayhem on Wall Street with the banks. Because whether people want to talk about this or not, it's just, it is what it is. It happened. And we can't go back and change what happened, but we can at least acknowledge what happened. And then moving forward, I'll decide, that's not good. We have seen in this country, multiple times in the last 20, 25 years, where the financial institutions have tried to implement their own personal, or their

• 9:18Anthony Pompliano?

  own organizational view of the world onto their customers. They have gone and they have been abrasive. They've made things difficult. They've refused service to people. They have even targeted certain customers based on the companies they work at, the industries that they're in, etc. Now, some of them are matters of the bank could get in trouble. So for example, if you go back and you look at something like cannabis, if you remember, there was all these stories that used to come out about the cannabis companies dealt with a lot of cash. They had all of the armed security. They couldn't put the money in the bank. Now, the banks are sitting there saying, it's still federally illegal. We can't

• 9:58Anthony Pompliano?

  violate federal law. That's a different story. When it came to crypto, what was happening was not, oh, we are scared of holding the crypto assets because they're really volatile and that brings risk to our business. That's not what was happening, because they weren't allowed to hold the crypto assets. What they were doing is that they were actually targeting crypto companies' cash accounts. So now what you're basically doing is you are discriminating against an entire industry. And now it's coming out that they also were doing it based on political beliefs. And so, I know, I had conversations with many banks, where they would ask me more questions, or they would go and they would actually ask, there's one

• 10:41Anthony Pompliano?

  bank in particular, who actually asked me to move public stocks out of their bank.

• 10:48Anthony Pompliano?

  They've been really good to me, right? It was kind of an awkward conversation for them. But what's up with that? Public stocks? Then I have friends who actually had their bank accounts shut down. I have friends who had all kinds of issues in terms that you could even argue at the national level, we had at least one bank, at least one, maybe more, where the regulator stepped in and they killed the bank, even though the bank was solvent, simply because they had a crypto business. So, as usually happens in these situations, they ignore you, they laugh at you, they fight you, they put up a great fight. It was painful. There are companies who will tell horror stories for the rest of their lives.

• 11:33Anthony Pompliano?

  But we're the last man standing. And now what's happening is what you are seeing is that young people have an inherent distrust of these legacy players. Think about if you're, I don't know, I'll just make up a name, Charles Schwab. You're getting your butt kicked by Robinhood, right? And now all of a sudden, a company like Robinhood, or public.com, or Weebull, or Coinbase, or Kraken, or eToro, or Gemini, or name one of these businesses. They're rolling out credit cards. They're rolling out cash accounts with stable coins. They're rolling out high interest savings accounts.

• 12:16Anthony Pompliano?

  They're rolling out this and that, and this and that. Wait a minute. I'm starting to think, do I need a legacy bank account? Probably still, yes. 10 years from now, if the traditional guys don't innovate, if they don't change what they're doing, what do you think an 18-year-old today is gonna say? I'm just gonna hold my cash in stable coins? I'm gonna hold it in Bitcoin? I'm gonna have a credit card with my company that gives me crypto and stock exposure? It's a whole new financial system, whole new financial players. And that's what these new challengers are betting on. If you go read-

• 12:55Speaker 04

  That's crazy to have, to think that somebody could unseat like the legacy players of the US financial system.

• 13:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, they're not serving their customers. And so this like backhanded compliment thing like, oh, the customers want to, we don't want it.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:09Anthony Pompliano?

  You think that's earning you points? Right?

• 13:12Speaker 04

  If the customers want it, you serve the customer.

• 13:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, sure, maybe, right? But it kind of comes back to this idea of, on the other hand, the people who are competing are saying, we are go, we understand this. We realize that this is the future. We like, they're talking the talk, they're walking the walk, they're showing people that they understand the assets. Classic innovator's dilemma. Classic innovator's dilemma. But now everything changed. You know why? Because now the older people, the people with a lot of assets, they say, hey, wait a second. Hold on, hold on. These kids are making money. I want to make money. I'm 68 years old. I got 25, 50, 100, 500 million dollars in your bank. That kid's kicking my ass. His portfolio is exploding. I'm earning 3% on a bond.

• 14:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What are we doing here? Help me get access to the stuff or I'm gonna have to go somewhere that will.

• 14:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it's no longer just a young person's game. You now have people, and I used to say all the time, like, oh, the boomers don't get it. It's all young people, whatever. And the comments will be filled with people. I'm a boomer, I got Bitcoin, I got this, I understand this, but whatever. So my apologies. Yeah, my apologies. The people are right. This is an idea that has nothing to do with age. Right? Sure, are young people a little bit more open to trying new things? They don't have a bank account yet, you know, or they don't have a brokerage account. So when they first get one, they might be open to tech forward one, all that. Yeah, sure. But this is an idea. If you've got a brain, you can evaluate it. And if you can evaluate it and you're intelligent, you're gonna end up on the side of, I need to adopt this. I need to hold some of this.

• 14:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And so that's where this is all going is these financial institutions are realizing it is as clear as day. If we don't embrace it, we have risk of being disrupted. And now you have companies, right? Because if you're a big financial institution, well, we don't need all those little people, those little retail people. Ah, who cares about them? We got the big businesses. Well, now the businesses are putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet. Now they're using the stable coins. They're forcing the hand of the financial institutions or they will go elsewhere. And so I think that.

• 15:21Anthony Pompliano?

  What used to be this game of like us versus them is now becoming a game where everyone realizes the opportunity and everyone's racing towards it. And so it's no longer us versus them in the sense of like, there's gonna be mass disruption. Instead, what you're gonna see is all the big banks. Jamie Dimon says they're gonna do it. The Bank of America CEO says they're gonna do it. Just go out. All of the CEOs are saying, when we get the right approvals, or once we make the decisions internally, like we're in.

• 15:46Speaker 04

  And can you just tell us really quickly what the JP Morgan Coinbase partnership is?

• 15:52Anthony Pompliano?

  So this one is basically JP Morgan clients are gonna be able to transfer money more easily, credit card points, all that kind of stuff over to Coinbase, buy crypto assets on the Coinbase, and then vice versa, is that you can go the other way. Now,

• 16:10Speaker 04

  That's a big deal for Coinbase, don't you think?

• 16:12Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a big deal for JP Morgan.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean.

• 16:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Friggin' largest, most trusted crypto exchange brand in America. They could have done it with Bank of America, they could have done it with all these things, right? There's a heck of a lot of traditional banks, there's only one Coinbase. So you look at it from that perspective, it's actually Coinbase is way more kind of unique than any one bank. Now, obviously, if you go back and you take a look at, the reverse is also true. People will be able to take their assets from the digital world and go over. I think that Coinbase is now reaching a point where it may be too large to be acquired, right? I think the market cap now is probably, I don't know, 100 billion?

• 16:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe 75 billion, whatever the number is, is big. And so when you look at it from that perspective, you say to yourself, yeah, I think as a public company, like this is no longer, oh, we could go consolidate these. And so.

• 17:11Anthony Pompliano?

  What happens when Robinhood buys a traditional player? What happens when Coinbase buys a traditional bank? Like is that, is that a future that we're headed towards? Everyone's talking about like the banks will buy. Well, like, I don't know. Maybe it's the other way around.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 17:27Anthony Pompliano?

  We're going to find out.

• 17:28Speaker 04

  So speaking of Coinbase, their earnings were announced in their massive, it posts Coinbase posted a $1.5 billion in revenue in Q2 and 1.4 billion in net income. Coinbase also followed the trend of increasing their Bitcoin treasury. Brian Armstrong, the CEO tweeted Coinbase's long Bitcoin, our holdings increased by 2,509 BTC in Q2 and we keep buying more.

• 17:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that's the most important part.

• 17:57Anthony Pompliano?

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• 18:39Anthony Pompliano?

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• 18:54Anthony Pompliano?

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• 19:36Anthony Pompliano?

  blockchains with hundreds of applications already leverage Polkadot's technology to power their platforms. If you're looking for a reliable, scalable, and cutting-edge solution, Polkadot seems to be the top choice for industry players. Go check them out today at polkadot.com. Is now you have a company that, look, they, no matter having people slice it, right? People like Coinbase, don't like Coinbase, think this, whatever. They're probably one of the most important companies to onboarding people to buying Bitcoin in the history of Bitcoin, right? When did they launch? I think 2012 or 2013. I think they started the company in 2012 and people started using 2013. When you go and you, you look at it, you say, look, they, they were incredibly important to it. Now, did they expand past Bitcoin? Yeah. And so people don't like that in the hardcore Bitcoin community. That's fine, right? You don't have to like everything

• 20:19Anthony Pompliano?

  the company does, but they were incredibly important to onboarding people to Bitcoin. Now, they've been holding some Bitcoin on their balance sheet, but now they're starting to increase it, right? And I think that what you're seeing is you are going to see more and more public companies start to buy Bitcoin. Now, the question that I have, and question that a lot of people in the traditional financial system don't want to talk about, why are we not putting more pressure on these companies that are holding so much cash and treasuries? What are you doing? You're destroying shareholder value. Interesting. It's crazy. Berkshire Hathaway, listen, let's have a little conversation. Okay. Come close. Listen, no, no, listen. Warren Buffett is one of the best investors of

• 21:01Anthony Pompliano?

  our lifetime. Point blank period. Give the man a trophy. Go put him in the retirement home. Because guess what happened? When he retired in May, Berkshire's stock down 15%. 1-5% down. Thank you, Phil Rosen or opening bell for that data point. The S and P, 500 largest companies, have outperformed Berkshire by 26% since Buffett has left. Okay. So, the S and P is going up, Berkshire is going down. Guess what's been happening at the same time that's been going on? Berkshire continues to hold cash. 30%, 3-0, 30% of Berkshire balance sheet, or I'm sorry, of value is sitting in cash. 30% of Berkshire's value

• 21:45Anthony Pompliano?

  is sitting in cash. What are you doing?

• 21:49Anthony Pompliano?

  What are you guys doing? Are you saying that you're not smart enough to find places to put that cash? That's basically what they're doing. So here's my theory as to why Warren Buffett gave us the peace sign and retired. Game's up. Game is up. He's had nowhere to put the money. He has too much cash. What is he gonna do with it? If he continues for another three to four years as running Berkshire, I believe his reputation will start to be tarnished. Because what's gonna happen is that there's a massive destruction of value to Berkshire shareholders.

• 22:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Because they operate from a world that does not exist anymore. It doesn't exist. We live in a world where they are going to debase the currency. You cannot hold cash for long periods of time, especially a lot of cash. And so if you continue to think that you're going to take that cash and you are simply going to buy companies that are productive, you're getting your butt kicked by gold. Gold has outperformed the stock market over the last 25 years. Bitcoin destroyed it. The game is changing because we now have human intervention into the market where they're going to debase the currency at an accelerated rate.

• 23:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And therefore, will buying things for less than their worth always be a good idea? Of course, that core concept's not going anywhere. If Bitcoin's worth 100 grand and it's trading for 90, buying it would be a good idea. But the problem is that when they are trying to buy these things, they're looking at historical valuation data. And so they say, oh, historically, there was, I'll just make up, in X industry, there's a 5X EBITDA multiple. Right now, it's trading at nine times EBITDA. We can't buy it because it's overvalued. Okay. We're gonna wait till it trades at three times EBITDA. Okay. Probably never happens. Why do I say that?

• 23:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Not because there's not going to be market corrections and all that stuff in the future, but because we are now living in a world where as soon as those market corrections happen, the central bank will step in, the politicians will step in, bear markets have been outlawed.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 24:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Prolonged bear markets are definitely not coming back.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  That's so interesting.

• 24:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what used to be, I'm going to wait for this big crash like 2008, 2009. And when that happens, for six months, gold went down like 50%. Stocks went down. All this stuff was cratering. You got time because the part of the value investor entire strategy is to buy distressed assets.

• 24:43Speaker 04

  Right. Nothing is distressed anymore.

• 24:46Anthony Pompliano?

  There's plenty of distressed investing. It's just not in the same pockets that they're used to. And there are definitely way less opportunities at the scale that they need. And so I actually think what Berkshire should do is Berkshire, with the transition of Buffett out, should say, we understand that this change has happened. And I actually do think that they, they recognize it. It's just that if they change their strategy, a lot of their current shareholders will throw a fit. And what they should say is, we now are going to expand our investment strategy

• 25:28Anthony Pompliano?

  to include non-productive assets that will specifically benefit from the debasement of the currency. Now, do you know why I know that they know this is happening? Because Buffett's talked about it. Buffett has talked about the debasement of the currency. He's talked about the national debt. He's the one who came up with the idea that if we don't have a balanced budget, politicians aren't up for reelection. He knows this is an issue, right? He knows the trade deficits are issues. He's talked about that, like, but he's not a dummy. He's actually incredibly intelligent. He understands how the system works. But the game is changing now. And when the game changes, a lot of people will say, oh, this time is different. It's the worst four words, blah, blah, all stuff. I agree. Except for the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the White House,

• 26:11Anthony Pompliano?

  and all these politicians, they learned a new playbook. And that new playbook is, when you see danger, cut rates and print money.

• 26:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And they're perfect at it now, and it's happening all over the world. I saw a data point recently in 2022, three years ago. One third of all provinces in China, one third, one out of every three, were spending 100% or more of their provincial revenue to service their debt. So think of a province, just think of it like a state in America. Be like New York State saying, we spend 100, 125, 150% of all revenue we collect every year, just to pay the interest on our debt.

• 27:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, guess what you do? You gotta borrow more money. So you borrow more money, it accelerates that. That was in 2022 was one third. I don't know what the number is now, but it's gotta be higher. And so this is a global phenomenon. And so I've never talked about this publicly, but I'm going to tell you probably one of the most important realizations that I've had over the last, I don't know, six months or so. Every great investor has one idea that they understand deeply throughout their career.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  And that they double down on.

• 27:38Anthony Pompliano?

  And then what they do is they go find as many different ways to express that idea in the market as possible. So we're just talking about Buffett. Buffett's entire career was predicated on one simple idea.

• 27:54Anthony Pompliano?

  You can buy things for less than they're worth. And then he went and found hundreds of ways to do that. He found public companies, he found private companies, he took minority stakes, he took majority stakes, he did it off a dividend, he did all this stuff. Buying something for less than it's worth, the value investor, that was Buffett's one idea, and he killed it, killed it. He made an absolute killing on that one idea.

• 28:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I believe the one idea that I've been allocated, that I think this entire generation has been able to be allocated, is that they are never going to stop printing money. If they are never going to stop printing money, your job is to find as many ways to express that one idea.

• 28:51Anthony Pompliano?

  In investment opportunities, gold, Bitcoin, real estate, certain companies that like however you want to express it. My chosen method of expressing it originally was Bitcoin. I think there's many others that people will consider over time. You could argue that Bitcoin, Bitcoin treasury companies, Bitcoin ET, all this stuff. The one idea is that they are never going to stop printing money. That is our generation's simple conclusion. The people who understand it are going to do amazing. The people who don't are going to suffer. They're going to fall behind. If you look at the S and P 500 priced in dollars, it is up about 100% I think

• 29:29Anthony Pompliano?

  since 2020. Pretty good. If you price that same S and P 500 in Bitcoin, it is down 85% since 2020. If you simply were to denominate the S and P 500 in a hard currency rather than a debasing fiat currency, you went from up significantly to down significantly. That's the intelligence test. What are you gonna do, kid? You're gonna play the old game? Or are you gonna play the new game? And plenty of people will hear me say this, and they'll yell and scream, and they're gonna say how stupid it is, how young people don't understand,

• 30:09Anthony Pompliano?

  they've seen all these cycles, all this stuff. Bitcoiners have seen more market crashes than actually the stock investors have. You can measure experience in years, or you can measure experiences in bull and bear markets. Earlier this year, stocks went down 20%. Bitcoin went down 30% plus. Bitcoin in our bull markets goes down 30%, three, four, five, six times. So what you're seeing is you're seeing a bifurcation.

• 30:47Anthony Pompliano?

  There are investors who bet on the world never changing, the Buffets of the world. And there are investors who bet on the world changing. And what we are finding is that the investors who've been betting on the world changing are doing way better than the investors who are betting on the world not changing. Because what ends up happening is we go through these starts and stops in the economy. And right now, we are in an economic expansion, we are in an age of innovation, and what we are seeing is an assault on every single business with new technology. So the internet was the last time we saw something like this, right?

• 31:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And Buffett and value investors were historically very slow to adopt these technology stocks because they were betting on the world not changing. Eventually, they realized the world is changing. Artificial intelligence, Bitcoin, they are agnostic to what industry you operate in. They don't care if you're a restaurant, a grocery store, if you're some sort of tech company, if you're an accounting firm, a legal firm, it doesn't matter. Everyone can use these technologies. So what you have is you have widespread change in the economy. Naturally, the investors betting on change are going to do better than the investors betting not on change. And if an investor has bought into a company that is going to resist change, they're going to get their ass kicked.

• 32:10Anthony Pompliano?

  They're going to lose market share, and you're starting to see this in certain industries. And so if you look at the S and P 500, 10 companies are drastically outperforming. There's a guy, Mike Zicardi, he recently showed that the 10 companies, 10 largest companies in the S and P 500 are responsible for pretty much all of the earnings per share growth over the last two years. 10 companies. Which ones do you think are actually embracing the new technology? Which ones are funding the development of the data centers? Which are the ones that are developing artificial intelligence? Which are the ones that are leaning into innovation? And so you can want to be right, or you can want to make money. But if you do not update your worldview to understand that this innovation, this acceleration of technology progress is happening, you're going to be left behind.

• 32:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, sure, you can go and you can celebrate all this stuff about these legacy businesses that are not embracing new technology.

• 33:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Good luck. See how long it takes for you to catch up to the companies that are growing. And so I just think that we are in a moment where the Buffets of the world, the value investors, their core idea, buy things for less than they're worth. 100% I agree with. I think that's an excellent idea.

• 33:25Anthony Pompliano?

  But what is actually cheap? They're using historical valuations in a world where either fiat currency was not being debased, or was not being debased at the rate that it's being debased now. And so they're sitting around waiting for the big crash. And instead, what we're seeing is the government will do anything necessary, including destroy their currency in order to avoid the big crash. And so that's going to be the tale of the tape for the next 20 years. And I think young people are better positioned to understand this because they grew up in, you know, somewhat of this age of innovation to actually see what was happening with this technology.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  That was great. And my last point on the summer of crypto is that the CFTC will launch an initiative for trading spot crypto asset contracts. And you said in a tweet, in a decade, we went from critics claiming Bitcoin would be banned by the government to many people realizing Bitcoin is going to save the legacy financial system. If you can't beat it, you have to buy it.

• 34:26Anthony Pompliano?

  That's true. Think about it. How many of these firms are now embracing Bitcoin? Because actually they realize that's where the growth is, that's where new customers, new assets, new revenue come from, right? You think that Bitcoin is not going to be adopted at the sovereign nation state level? Everyone talks about this strategic Bitcoin reserve. Yeah, they're going to buy more Bitcoin, of course. You don't think bit bonds are ever going to get issued by the government? Come on. I don't know when it's going to happen, but it's going to happen, right? You don't think that Bitcoin is going to start infiltrating balance sheets of companies that are not just Bitcoin treasury companies? Of course it is. You can't sit there and ignore, our generation gets one idea. Our one idea is that they're never going to stop printing money. If you don't accept the idea,

• 35:10Anthony Pompliano?

  you're going to be at a disadvantage. And so what you're going to start seeing is, what do they call it? Circle of life? That's Lion King thing, right? Circle of life? What happens in Lion King one?

• 35:25Speaker 04

  What do you mean?

• 35:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Pops dies. Young Simba assumes the throne. Lion King two, I got kids, I watched it.

• 35:34Speaker 04

  Uh, our daughter.

• 35:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Simba, old man.

• 35:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Young pup assumes the throne. So guess what's gonna happen in these companies?

• 35:44Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 35:45Anthony Pompliano?

  The old lions, lionesses.

• 35:53Anthony Pompliano?

  They're gonna be gone. They're gonna retire. They're gonna move out of their seats.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Young people are gonna take over. Have you seen the new Red Lobster CEO?

• 36:02Speaker 04

  No.

• 36:03Anthony Pompliano?

  He's like 32, I think.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 36:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Killing it. He put himself in the commercials.

• 36:10Anthony Pompliano?

  He put himself in the commercials and you know what? I watched it. I said, I haven't seen a Red Lobster commercial that I remembered in years. This dude's killing it. Immediately, think about that. What regular corporate executive would be like, let's do a campaign and I'll be in the commercial? Somebody who's 32 years old who understands how the internet works and understands how social media works and realizes that the CEOs in the ad, that the ad's not only gonna play on TV, but it's also gonna get a bunch of people talking online and that he's gonna be the best advocate for the brand.

• 36:42Speaker 04

  So your point is that the guard is changing. This generation is coming in with all of its ideas of digital and the internet and Bitcoin and.

• 36:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm saying Mufasa is moving off to the side and Simba is taking the throne.

• 36:58Speaker 04

  Is it Mufasa?

• 36:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's his dad's name, right?

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, come on.

• 37:02Speaker 04

  What was the uncle's? Oh, Scar.

• 37:03Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. That's it for today. Appreciate it.