Dylan LeClair On Central Banks Going Bankrupt #901

Dylan LeClair is the Senior Market Analyst at UTXO Management, a digital asset fund investing in the analog to digital transformation of money and the emergent financial system. In this conversation, we discuss The Bitcoin Conference this week in Miami, Michael Saylor buying more Bitcoin, Elon Musk joining Twitter Board of Directors, and Central Banks losing control of their currencies. Dylan joined us in person at our Miami studio for "The Best Business Show." To see the video with the graphics referenced throughout, go to "The Best Business Show: LIVE" YouTube Channel. ======================= Bitcoin 2022 is the LARGEST Bitcoin event in the world that takes place April 6th - 9th in Miami Beach, Florida. All four days will be jammed-packed with exclusive content, exciting announcements and an incredible lineup of bitcoin speakers, artists and leaders. Day 1 is INDUSTRY DAY for enterprising bitcoiners who are looking to build a business or career within the ecosystem. Days 2 and 3 are general conference days featuring speakers like El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, CEOs like Michael Saylor, Elizabeth Stark, Jack Mallers, Adam Back and hundreds more. The conference caps off on the fourth day with the world's first and largest Bitcoin Music Festival - Sound Money Fest headlined by rapper and fellow bitcoiner Logic, featuring artists K. Flay, MØ, Royal & the Serpent, Apashe, Asadi and more. Stay tuned for the upcoming lineup announcement! Last year’s conference SOLD OUT and this year’s is on pace to be 3x larger so make sure you grab your tickets before it's too late. Visit http://b.tc/conference to learn more. Ticket prices increase on JAN 14th, use promo code POMP for 10% off and I will see you in Miami!ire ecosystem bringing utility to #NFTs. ======================= Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a web3 crypto browser. No extension required. Store, manage, and grow your portfolio, get NFT & multi-chain support, and more. Download the Brave privacy browser at brave.com/Pomp, and click the wallet icon to get started. =======================

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. Dylan Leclerc is the Senior Market Analyst at UTXO Management. He also writes a newsletter with Bitcoin Magazine. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, on-chain metrics, we talk about Bitcoin's price, the market structure, and what to expect in the coming weeks. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dylan, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by FTX US. FTX.us is the safe, regulated way to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital assets. You can trade crypto with up to 85% lower fees than

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  top competitors. There are no fixed minimum fees, no ACH transaction fees, and no withdrawal fees either. FTX.us is also the only leading exchange that supports both Ethereum and Solana NFTs. Download the FTX app today and use referral code POMP to earn these free crypto on every trade over $10. The more you trade, the more you earn. Go download the FTX app today and use referral code POMP. Today's episode is brought to you by Brave. Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a Web3 crypto browser. What's Web3? Web3 is freedom from big tech and Wall Street. More control and better privacy. But there's a weak point in Web3,

• 1:26Anthony Pompliano?

  your crypto wallet. Most wallets are browser extensions, a Web2 technology. That means the same old risks, app spoofing, phishing scams, and theft. Brave Wallet is different. Brave Wallet is the first secure wallet built natively in a Web3 crypto browser. No extension required. With Brave Wallet, you can buy, store, send, and swap assets, manage NFTs, even connect other wallets and dApps, all from the security of the best privacy browser on the market. Whether you're new to crypto or a seasoned pro, it's time to ditch those risky extensions. It's time to switch to Brave Wallet. Download Brave at brave.com/pomp and click the wallet icon to get started. Again, go download Brave at brave.com/pomp and click the wallet icon to get started.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is sponsored by the Bitcoin 2022 Conference. Bitcoin 2022 is the largest Bitcoin event in the world that takes place April 6th through the 9th in Miami Beach, Florida. All four days will be jam packed with exclusive content, exciting announcements, and an incredible lineup of Bitcoin speakers, artists, and leaders. Day one is Industry Day for enterprising Bitcoiners who are looking to build a business or career within the ecosystem. Days two and three are general conference days featuring speakers like El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, CEOs like Michael Saylor, Elizabeth Stark, Jack Mahlers, Adam Back, and hundreds more. The conference caps off on the fourth day with the world's first and largest Bitcoin music festival, Sound Money Fest, headlined by rapper and fellow Bitcoiner Logic, featuring

• 2:52Anthony Pompliano?

  artists K. Flay, Mo, Royal, and The Serpent, Apache, Asadi, and more. Stay tuned for the upcoming lineup announcement. Last year's conference sold out, and this year's is on pace to be three times larger, so make sure you grab your tickets before it's too late. Visit b.tc/conference to learn more. Again, that's b.tc/conference to learn more. Ticket prices increase on January 14th. Use promo code POMP for 10% off, and I will see you in Miami. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:23Speaker 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.

• 3:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm here with two of my brothers, Joe and John. I'm also here with an honorary Pomp Boy for the day, Dylan McLaren is in studio.

• 3:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's go. We have all kinds of stuff that we got to get through. First is Bitcoin Conference Week is this week, hence why Dylan is here. How big is the place?

• 4:09Speaker 02

  It's massive. I don't know the dimensions, but it's so much bigger than last year.

• 4:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Give us the four point.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  I mean, I did get like kind of a, you know, backstage view the past couple of days, but it is huge.

• 4:22Anthony Pompliano?

  It's bigger than last year's venue?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, by far.

• 4:25Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So second then is, are you two going to be there every day? Or just some of the days?

• 4:32Speaker 03

  I don't know. I'm going for certain at nine thirty tomorrow morning.

• 4:37Anthony Pompliano?

  At nine thirty? I'll be there at nine fifteen.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  There's this guy that I know that's interviewing someone that I want to hear talk.

• 4:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you're an idiot. All right.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  You're talking to Mike Novogratz, who I want to hear talk. Oh, cool.

• 4:48Anthony Pompliano?

  We get to hear you all the time.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  What?

• 4:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, my point.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  You got the joke.

• 4:53Anthony Pompliano?

  My goal yesterday or tomorrow is not to provide any insights. Let's just ask a couple of questions.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  That's what I said.

• 4:59Anthony Pompliano?

  You guys should come up with a great question and then I'll ask it.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  John and I are working on our entrance with Jack Mallers.

• 5:05Anthony Pompliano?

  I talked to Jack yesterday.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  He didn't mention that to you?

• 5:08Anthony Pompliano?

  No, he definitely, he actually told me the exact opposite. Jack's a low key kind of guy. He said, do they want to be my mascot? They could dress up in costumes.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  All right.

• 5:20Anthony Pompliano?

  He didn't really say that, but they got real quiet here real fast. Michael Saylor bought another $190 million worth of Bitcoin. What, just, what do you think about this? Highest conviction trade ever on Wall Street?

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think so. I kind of jokingly was saying that he should lay down some limit orders, but it seems like he's just going for the market buy, which, you know, you got to respect. Super high conviction.

• 5:47Anthony Pompliano?

  It feels like this money, which I don't think it was confirmed, but the $205 million loan that he got, 190 million of it, he's buying Bitcoin. The other 15 million is for expenses, interest payments, whatever. So like, I was trying to do the math. 25% LTV.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 6:07Anthony Pompliano?

  He did it with 800 million or so. He has another five billion, give or take.

• 6:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm not a mathematician, but I basically could buy another billion dollars worth of Bitcoin if he posted the rest as collateral and only took 25% against it. Now, I don't think he'd post it all, but if he posts half, he posted 800, maybe he could get to like 3 billion. That means he could post another 2 billion and change. You're starting to talk about another 500 million dollars of Bitcoin he could buy. Like, that's like a pretty material, depending on what kind of leverage he wanted to actually take on.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I'm pretty sure, and I should know the specifics better, but the junk bond issuance, the 6.25%, I believe that he like formed a separate corporate entity, and that, I think like 20,000 or 10,000 Bitcoin, I should know the specifics, but that's already collateralized, so he can't pledge that again. But yeah, I mean, he is going leveraged long, and it is mark-to-market, but I think, you know, I think that loan's not callable until the LTV's 50%, so he did it at 47K. So unless Bitcoin goes to 23K, he doesn't have to post any more collateral. Relatively safe bet, but yeah, I mean, he

• 7:25Speaker 02

  is literally doing everything in the book to buy more Bitcoin. It is quite impressive.

• 7:31Anthony Pompliano?

  What'd you guys think when you saw him do it?

• 7:33Speaker 03

  I mean, it's just another...

• 7:34Anthony Pompliano?

  It's not even a surprise anymore. It's like, what took him so long? Like, he got the loan three days ago, why didn't he buy it?

• 7:38Speaker 03

  When you see him get a 200 million dollar loan, you know exactly what he's gonna do.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Do we know the rate on that? Is that known?

• 7:45Anthony Pompliano?

  If I remember correctly, and one of these guys can look it up, but I think it was the LIBOR plus, I think like 3% maybe, something like that. Like, there was some kind of floating rate, plus, I think it was like a 3% or something.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  The fact that it's not the lowest financing costs available, and it's completely over-collateralized mark-to-market, like every second, you know, globally liquid 24/7/365, that shows me we're pretty early. Because Bitcoin collateralized loans, over-collateralized loans, yes, it's volatile, but as it becomes more liquid, again, like 24/7/365, and it...

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Isn't rehypothecated, like that's one of the biggest problems in Wall Street. Like, part of the reason of the great financial crisis was so bad. All of this collateral, like this collateral was pledged multiple times over. And with Bitcoin, you can just verify that, that there's no problem there. And that's to the network, like it's inherent to the network itself. So, uh, just the fact that, you know, it's even still LIBOR, you know, risk-free plus 300 basis points. It's pretty early, in my opinion.

• 8:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Floating rate plus 3.7%. He posted $820 million of Bitcoin and took the 25% LTV loan. The, uh, your point about Bitcoin being this like perfect collateral. It's actually most likely, let me, let me caveat and leave myself a little bit of room. It's most likely the single greatest piece of collateral that a Wall Street bank could lend against.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Because of the structure in which they do it. Overcollateralization, low LTVs, all this stuff. Your point about mark-to-market every second of the day, important. Two, high divisibility, so I don't have to sell the whole asset, I can sell pieces of it. Also, highly liquid market, really important as well.

• 9:34Anthony Pompliano?

  The rates on these are going to accelerate towards zero. The question is just, how long does it take for all the banks to realize how good the collateral is? Because right now, Silvergate is like pretty much the only game in town at a, at a, a bank, a chartered bank. You need the other folks to come in to actually drive the commoditization of the interest rate. Without the competition, then you don't get any commoditization. And Silvergate's gonna keep taking their, you know, 3.7% and be doing just fine there.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  It's kind of crazy that like they're the only game in town though. You know, like Silvergate's a Fed member bank, which is like, you know, that speaks for itself. But it's, it's, I mean, it's not risk-free because there's, there's, you know, I guess risks that are, we can't see or, you know, aren't quantifiable. But, you know, it's like, it's way better than lending unsecured or a lot of the, you know, corporate debt we have out there. That's collateralized by, you know, the equity or completely unsecured, right? And that's based on a credit rating like this. Changes the game. And so I think not only from like the lending side, but from the borrowing side, it's really interesting because the biggest game in town, the biggest driver, if you just look, if you break it down in equity markets over the last decade, has been share buybacks. They borrow money, buy back their shares. Sailor's borrowing money,

• 10:49Speaker 02

  buying Bitcoin, and then he's taking that Bitcoin, pledging it as collateral and buying more Bitcoin. And I think, you know, history will look back at this and be like, hey, this is the fastest horse. He killed it. His share price reflected that. And he's showing everybody what to do. And MicroStrategy is like relatively small. I mean, that's like, you know,

• 11:05Anthony Pompliano?

  The market cap right now is 5.3 billion. They have 5.9 billion on their balance sheet. So basically what they're doing is they're essentially assigning negative value to the operating business, which doesn't make sense. Or you can look at it as they're actually discounting the Bitcoin on the balance sheet. And GBTC obviously is obviously trading at a huge discount as well. But to have 5.9 billion of Bitcoin and your company's trading at 5.3 billion, like you don't have to be a genius here to just say, I'm literally buying something that is worth $1 for less than $1. That's probably a pretty good purchase. Now, what happens from here in terms

• 11:44Anthony Pompliano?

  of the price of Bitcoin, whatever is up for debate, but just in terms of like a value investor mindset, every value investor in the world would love to buy, you know, a dollar's worth of assets for, you know, whatever it is, 90 cents.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they do have liabilities, but essentially it's like, I mean, you know, they're spinning off cash flow. It still is a software business, but it's somewhat of a leveraged Bitcoin ETF. Like, there's obviously corporate risk and all of that. It's not, it's not an ETF product, but it's trading like beta Bitcoin, which is, you know, crazy.

• 12:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Something that's related to this is, I just saw the news before it came out. I don't, haven't looked at all the details, but Stillmark, which is the Bitcoin Focused Venture Fund, they now are trying to raise a $500 million credit fund specifically to lend capital to Bitcoin companies. And it's a little unclear in terms of what all of those mechanisms would look like. Is it just lending against Bitcoin? Is it lending for operating purposes? Is it more like venture That we've got to figure all that out as more news comes out. But I do think that everything in the space has been equity based for pretty much the entire existence of Bitcoin. Now we're starting to get more credit market exposure, whether it's for the companies or for the individuals with the assets.

• 13:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's really kind of started two, three years ago, and now it's exploded in popularity. Once the credit investors from Wall Street start to figure out how to play in this game, like game on, right? They just have so much money and equity investors have other options, right? There's plenty of companies that went up more than crypto companies went up over the last two years. There's plenty of other assets that went up, you know, more than Bitcoin even went up. In the credit markets, though, like you're screwed right now.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:30Anthony Pompliano?

  And so if they can find, you know, attractive yield and attractive risk return, it feels like that's like a no brainer for them to go to.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  The interesting thing is, like, I talked to some of the guys at Unchained Capital to try to like, and the other like kind of Bitcoin lending businesses to try to like wrap my head around why these rates were still so high. It was like, hey, like this Bitcoin collateralized lending business, it's in theory a no risk, a no loss business, right? At the very least, you break even, you liquidate the collateral, right? And you come out, break even. I mean, that's, and usually, you know, you always will get those interest payments, you come out on top. So why are these rates still 8%, 9%, 10%? And Unchained Capital, which is like a pretty, pretty base team of Bitcoiners over there, they, they told me, they're like, hey, we're a Bitcoin business, we're denominating things in Bitcoin.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  We're not going to be giving out 2%, 3% interest rates because we're trying to stack more sats. And so the interesting thing is, it's going to be, you know, when, when the people that aren't thinking as a Bitcoin unit of account, Bitcoin standard come in and are used to, you know, lending at 2%, 3%. I mean, the junk bond market's at 6%, while inflation's at 8%. Like, the world's upside down in credit markets right now. When they come into this, to this collateralized Bitcoin lending business, I think that's when it gets really interesting and it'll probably accelerate this, this adoption and monetization process.

• 14:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Do any of your guys' friends do any sort of, that hold crypto, are they borrowing against it at all, John?

• 14:56Speaker 04

  No, none of my friends are borrowing against it. I think they're all, one, it's a little, they're skeptical, right? They don't know where the market's going to go. They don't want to over-leverage. And a lot of them are just unexperienced traders, right? They don't want to go, go long on something or leverage long on something that they don't know what's going to happen and they don't have the experience of ever getting a margin called.

• 15:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's, it's pretty crazy. Another thing that has recently transpired is that the country of Lebanon is now stating that they are bankrupt. Like, game over, checkmate, we're bankrupt. The central bank is, is declaring bankruptcy and we've got some, some data and some information here. If we take a look at what's going on. So, this is from a Reuters article. We've got a kind of a synopsis, if you will, of the situation. So, during the third year of financial implosion caused by decades of corruption and bad policies, it's led to the currency to crash in value by more than 90% and most banks have locked people

• 15:58Anthony Pompliano?

  out of any of their hard currency accounts. So, currency drops 90%, banks lock out their users. And the World Bank estimates that Lebanon's economy has contracted by nearly 60% in the two-year period between 2019 and 2021. Then our favorite economist, Steve Hanke, has, has a great tweet, says, since basically the end of January, their FX reserves have fallen by $837 million. Most of it can be attributed to selling USD reserves to try to prop up the Lebanese pound. And, you know, the government's incompetent in tanking Lebanon, which he seems to yell about every government around the world. And then we've got two quotes here from Deputy Prime Minister of the Lebanese government. He says losses will be distributed to the state, the central bank, the banks and depositors, and there's

• 16:43Anthony Pompliano?

  no specific percentage. Unfortunately, the state is bankrupt, as is Bank of Lebanon. We want to come out with a result. The loss occurred due to policies for decades and if we did nothing, the loss would be much greater. Basically saying, hey, look, this would be way worse if we weren't doing what we were doing, maybe. And then he continues and says, we're in the Some negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, daily contact with IMF. First time this large mission has come and we've made great progress with the IMF negotiations. Like, are these people delusional that they actually are not to call, like, they're not the reason why over the last three years, basically 90% of the currency value has been eroded away. The economy's contracted 60% and the average, you know, person in Lebanon is just screwed.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's devastating. And then you'll see guys like Steve Hanke, they'll rag on the government, they'll rag on the central banks and they'll say, what do we need? Better currency boards. It's like, we need, we need different people, you know, we need, we need different puppets in charge. Kind of on this note, did you see the, the former central bank, head of Central Bank of Canada, talk about inflation and monetary policy and Bitcoin?

• 17:48Anthony Pompliano?

  What was he saying?

• 17:49Speaker 02

  He was basically, they were talking about like the record high inflation and someone, someone proposed, they're like, what do you think about Bitcoin? Because Pierre Poliev was saying Bitcoin is, is an opt out of inflation. And essentially the central bank, the central banker was, it was like the most Keynesian propaganda you've ever seen.

• 18:07Anthony Pompliano?

  I've seen some pretty good stuff, man.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, but it was just next level and it was, it was honestly quite delusional. But the sad thing is like, some people believe that. He's like, no, inflation's good. Because with, you know, say the gold standard, we had, we had a great depression, which was caused by the, the lack of inflatable money supply. And it was just like, seeing it from someone that's, I guess, you know, I guess I would identify as being orange pilled. Or maybe, you know, being a little bit out of the matrix in a way. It was just crazy to see, you know, it was like, oh yeah, prices are skyrocketing, but it's a good thing for you citizens. It'd be bad if we had hard money.

• 18:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, one of the things that I, I keep going back to is just like, how much of this is pride, ego, like, reputation stuff versus, I fundamentally believe this is the solution, right? And so if you're in the central bank and you're looking around the room,

• 19:01Anthony Pompliano?

  maybe the best way to kind of visualize the challenge that they have is like, I go in my, I'm, I'm working on something like, like manual labor and I'm, I'm assembling something.

• 19:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And I go in my toolbox and I need a tool, but it's only two tools. There's a hammer and there's a screwdriver, right? And even if the tool I need is maybe like a pair of pliers or something. I just have two tools. So what do I do? I like grab the hammer. I'm like, well, maybe I could like, you know, pop this out here. If I hit it in the right, like, and everyone's in some point in their life figured out like, oh, I don't really have the tools necessary to do the job. But like, maybe I can kind of just figure it out. And that's kind of feels like what the central banks are doing is they're in a situation and they're like, all right, this is a bad situation. Like, what should we do? And they look in their toolbox and it's like, you basically can manipulate interest rates. You can do some asset purchasing and you've got QE.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 19:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Outside of that, like you can pray. Like that's basically the only tools they have. And so when you look at the actual solutions, if you took it from a first principle standpoint, it's like, no, you got to go back and actually recreate what that means to have this currency.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:12Anthony Pompliano?

  But there's no social appetite for that, political appetite for that. Uh, and possibly even an economic appetite because it would mean millions of people are going to get hurt in the process. But it feels like we're getting closer and closer to the point where some of these governments and central banks are going to have to say, I think it's time. Right? I, I do think it's time and like, I don't think them crashing the currency is intentional. Right? But like,

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:38Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the solution?

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think in the long run, they're, they're going to try to tighten and the funny, maybe not funny, funny is the wrong word. The interesting thing is they're using, you know, these monetary policy tools right now to come combat inflation. When really the inflation right now is, is being caused by a shortage of real goods. Right? They're, they're trying to tighten money to, to make up for like, they can, they can ease monetary policy. They can tighten monetary policy and deal with, you know, traditional demand driven inflation. But right now it's all a supply side phenomenon with commodities, oil, energy skyrocketing. And so they're trying to tighten monetary policy, which at the same time you see credit markets rolling over. There's a potential for this to get really ugly. And I think over, You know, if we're looking farther than just the short to medium term,

• 21:24Speaker 02

  there is no political appetite for austerity, none, in a global fiat standard. You know, the US is the dollar, every other, every other country, or let me say like the EU, they have the euro, but there's no long-term appetite for austerity, which leads to what? Just perpetual monetary expansion. Like, that's, that's the end game here, and that's why we, you know, we continue to just hammer that point home, is because the money supply in this system, in this credit-based system, has to increase forever. And, you know, they can raise the price of money a little bit, marginally, but still, I think real yields can't be positive. There's just no way with this much debt in the system, which is why we continue to say, like, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, because give me an alternative besides that.

• 22:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And- Have you, um, have you read Ray Dalio's book, Changing World Order?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  I've, I've actually started to get through that. I, I watched like the teaser, like 30-minute YouTube clip, which is like, which is fantastic, it's like a summary of it. But yeah, I mean, I think, I agree on a lot of things, and Ray Dalio is an extremely smart man. I disagree with the conclusion, which is essentially like, you know, the CCP, you know, the New World Order is, is the yuan and all that, but-

• 22:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I haven't got to the end yet. I'm listening to it on audiobook. It's very dense, right, in terms of just the amount of information. It's done very well. One of my critiques of the audiobook is that Ray was reading it at first, and then they rug pull you, and then all of a sudden, he's like, "Okay, due to time constraints, so-and-so will now take over." And I'm just like, dude! Like, and the other guy's like so much harder to listen to than Ray was. I don't know about, like, his voice was like much more, uh, uh, higher retention. And so I was like, first of all, you get rug pulled halfway through the audiobook, like, that's bullshit. But in it, he talks about the cycles, right? And if you've watched the 30, 45-minute video, whatever it is, uh, it, it's obvious that his point is like, look, we are transitioning between cycles. And I think that his point around-

• 23:17Anthony Pompliano?

  There's wealth that's created. It ties in with power and military might. As people get more comfortable, they take on more debt to finance this lifestyle. And it happens at the individual and the nation-state level. And then eventually, they basically get overextended. And then there is some other, essentially, more economically durable country that then comes along and replaces them. And this happens in these like 80-year cycles. And we shouldn't be surprised, I think, is kind of his point. And when you look at it, you're like, yeah, like, that that pretty much is, like, that is a very strong argument. There are nuances.

• 23:59Anthony Pompliano?

  There's details that he misses. There's obviously overgeneralizations. But when you when you listen to what he's saying, and you look at the current situation, like, I think it's probably one of the most accurate takes I've seen on a longer timeline of like, what's happening right now.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's also, I think, and Ray refers to this a lot. It's not a coincidence that that wars happen at these kind of huge inflection points in history. And also, like, obviously, because of the war, but really, like, the monetary standards. And when you're looking at, like, say, Bretton Woods, or, you know, whether we've transitioned off of, like, gold standards, why is why is it always happen at these, you know, huge debt bubble peaks? Why does a war just kind of come up? And there's obviously, like, a ton of factors there that we're just kind of glossing over. But, you know, COVID, this Russia-Ukraine conflict, I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing this, you know, when we're at record levels of debt around the world. And you're seeing increasingly, people say,

• 24:58Speaker 02

  hey, is this kind of petrodollar monetary world order? Is this coming to a close? And a lot of people are kind of having to evaluate their stance on, you know, the staying power of the dollar as a world reserve currency.

• 25:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What do you guys think?

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I agree. I'm curious what's going to be happening with interest rates, right? Because if they start to rise too quickly, in my opinion, then we're going to have some trouble. And then they're going to be in a really difficult position. But the the side effect of this all is like, what does this do for Bitcoin, right? So I think about that a lot. But I don't know if anyone has, like, the right answer, because we ultimately don't know what the Fed is going to do. Because when they're faced with that decision, there's not really a good one. And ultimately, anything could happen from that. So I think it's going to be a fascinating year, or maybe even less, right? Six to 12 months at this point. And we're going to see how many times they end up raising it. But my my guess would be that What'd they say, seven or eight? I don't, I don't know if we're gonna get that high before they, they start running into some problems. John?

• 25:51Speaker 04

  I think this is a perfect storm for Bitcoin. I've said it before, I'll say it again. It's everything that has happened over the last six to 12 months is a great thing for Bitcoin, whether it's inflation, the geopolitical issues, the Canadian trucker situation that happened earlier this year. Basically, a lot that has happened should be driving the adoption and driving people towards the use cases for Bitcoin. And I'd be shocked to see over the next six, 12 months, as the Fed raises rates, if people, whether they're going for liquidity or not, I would expect some people to put some of their portfolio into Bitcoin that don't already have it already.

• 26:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What, um, just changing topics real quick, uh, for something a little bit more fun. Elon Musk, uh, obviously bought the 9.2% stake in Twitter, uh, for about $3 billion. Yesterday, we were talking about this, and I asked my brothers, it's Monday, by Friday, do we get to Friday and him still be a quote-unquote passive investor? 14 hours later, 16 hours later, he's now on the board of directors. Uh, and our point was like, Twitter should lean into this. Like, literally make him the chief meme officer, right? Like, use it from a, a marketing standpoint. Uh, and I think we said, what did we say? If, if you make him the chief meme officer, then have him sign every one of his tweets, chief meme

• 27:06Anthony Pompliano?

  officer at Twitter. Like, just like, completely lean into this. Don't fight this guy. It seems like they're doing that. What's your read on Elon Twitter and like, what this could mean for, for tech?

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Do we get an edit button?

• 27:19Speaker 03

  So, do you? I was gonna say, I have a side, I have, uh, I have the opposite view. I don't think they should add an edit button.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  I don't think they should either.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  Really? Yeah. I don't think- Screw that. Why the hell should you be allowed to change? If, if you made a mistake, delete it and then repost it?

• 27:31Speaker 04

  I think you should have the edit button for about 20 minutes after you post it, because that's normally when you realize-

• 27:35Speaker 03

  20 minutes is too long.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you don't want the ability-

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Do you guys have Twitter Blue?

• 27:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, you get like-

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Where like, you got like, the little like, loading button where you can read-

• 27:41Speaker 03

  Someone made a good point the other day. They were like, uh, my Twitter Blue subscription ran out or whatever. Now I don't have to read tweets twice.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  To retweets twice before posting. I'm like, yeah, I guess, but it's helpful sometimes.

• 27:52Anthony Pompliano?

  The

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Sometimes I probably shouldn't have sent that. Undo.

• 27:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that the edit button should be something people pay for. If I'm Twitter, like if everyone wants the edit button, have people pay for it.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? So like, how much would you pay to get an edit button? If you really want it, you'll probably pay five bucks a month.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  You'd be surprised how many people would be like, I don't need another button.

• 28:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, but like that, but that's the whole thing is like, it's not a technical challenge to create an edit button. Right? It's obviously a product decision. And so I think as they try to move from Twitter as we know it today, where they tell us what features you get, how your feed works, whatever. If they want to transition it to you kind of choose your own adventure, like just put a paywall in front. And guess what? They came out with Twitter Blue. Guess what my ass did? I pulled out my credit card and I gave them the $2.99 a month. And I said, cool, I can upload 10 minute videos on desktop. I get a undo feature on the tweet and they had a bunch of other nonsense in there that I didn't care about. Like what color the icon is on my phone? I'm not paying for that. What I'm paying for is the functionality that I want. But I think that that's the key to it.

• 28:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And with their goal, I think it's by the end of 2023, they want to get to 315 million daily active users. Be massive, right? How much could they get? If you get 1% of those people, it's 3 million people paying three, four, five, $10, whatever a month. Like, that's a real business.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:14Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it feels like that's kind of where they're going. But I do think that Elon, uh, do you think it was planned? Like, do you think that he thought about this? Or do you think he literally was like, last week he was like, I wonder if Yeah, like, how, how long did it go from, I have an idea to I own $3 billion of Twitter stock?

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's tough to secure that large of a position. Like, I mean, he must have had, you know, like a team do it, you know, like I can log into Robinhood and buy 100 bucks Twitter stock. You can't go buy $3 billion of Twitter without

• 29:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Two percent of the company.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  That's a big part of the free flow. Like, he was probably in the market for, I don't know, days, weeks. I mean.

• 29:51Anthony Pompliano?

  When he ran the original, uh, when he ran the original poll, I'm assuming that's when it all started.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And then he tweeted, he's like, you know, vote carefully. This will have consequences. We're like, all right, Elon. And then he's like, no, literally, I'm now the largest shareholder.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Elon, Elon's the definition of fuck you money. Like, they're just, just having that much capital.

• 30:11Anthony Pompliano?

  How much cash do you, we think that Elon must cash just sitting around?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  How much, how much Twitter did he, he sold the top of Twitter, uh, of Tesla. I'm sorry. He sold the top.

• 30:21Anthony Pompliano?

  But he paid 11 billion in taxes. So what do we know how much he sold total? If he, if he paid 11 billion in taxes, let's just say tax rate's 40%.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  He sold all his houses, too. That, that gave him some cash, not 3 billion, but.

• 30:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The, uh, did you ever hear Grimes, what, what, uh, what she said about living with him or something? She gave this interview and to be honest, it made me respect the shit out of her because she said, she, uh, in the interview, it's the one where she's like, oh yeah, by the way, don't like, ignore that baby. That's just the secret baby I have with Elon. But in it, she said something like, uh, yeah, the, like, the, like, uh, bro just lives like he's poor or like, so like, and they're like, what? She's like, yeah, bro's the richest dude in the world and, uh, lives in like, you know, $5,000 house, like whatever she said. And she kept calling him bro. And I was like, all right, this is like a weird relationship.

• 31:17Anthony Pompliano?

  But they were, she was basically talking about like, I couldn't live like that anymore. And so I think that he like legitimately has like a unique viewpoint on the world. He obviously doesn't care that much about material things. But to do this, like, how much of this is marketing, a distraction from something going on at Tesla? Versus just like, he's like sitting up at night and he's like, huh, you know, I think we should change Twitter. And he goes, I don't know what the answer is, but it just feels very different than, uh, a traditional activist investor.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  I don't think he cares about the, you know, the like the, the share price or, you know, I don't think he's investing it to increase his capital. Like Elon said multiple times, it's like, I'm not an investor. The only share, the only like stock I own is Tesla and SpaceX. And so I think he's buying Twitter because, you know, he's, he's said multiple times, he cares about free speech and all this. And he wants to hopefully transforms into, into more of a kind of a neutral platform. And obviously they're a business, they're going to try to monetize it. But instead of, you know, the increasing amount of censorship, we've seen that trend, hopefully that kind of, there's an inflection point there with Elon.

• 32:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I did see Trung, who was at the hustle but left, one of the, you know, local meme gods on the internet. He said, scoop, Jeff Bezos just bought 9.3% of Twitter.

• 32:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Which does feel like people will, obviously now this is going to change the attention. Here's my call is, remember when Chamath did the first SPAC? And it literally set off like a chain reaction and all these people ran and did SPACs. And they were like, this is amazing, you know, invention, even though SPAC's been around for a long time. If Elon is even partially successful in creating change at Twitter, you're going to see a bunch of successful founders start to position themselves as like modern day activist investors. We're thinking about, well, if Elon could do that, like I don't need to do it at Twitter, but like, look at this other company. And they're all going to start buying up stakes in businesses. And it's going to be this like very memetic response. If the richest man in the world does it, like, I'm not the richest, but like, I'm rich.

• 33:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Let me go do it at a different company.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, it's kind of similar to like what GameStop, what are they, like a gold miner or something? And there's like, the shares went, went parabolic after that. It's like, it's like the meme economy, you know, like Twitter shares skyrocketed. I don't know, has it retraced since then?

• 33:41Anthony Pompliano?

  As of like two hours ago, it was up 33% since Friday.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's sending a message, right?

• 33:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Would you judge him if he sold the Twitter stock? Like if he came out and he sold half the position now? And he was like, thanks for the half billion dollars, guys.

• 33:59Speaker 04

  I mean, that'd be boss, but I don't think that's what he's in it for, but.

• 34:02Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I don't think so either, but like, how does he have time to do?

• 34:05Speaker 04

  He should, he should sell 75%, then it's all house money after that. He's like, I get my original investment back. I got a billion dollars worth of Twitter stock.

• 34:12Anthony Pompliano?

  This is great. Do you want to know what just would send the Tesla, like the TSL, was it TSL AQ, right?

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Tesla.

• 34:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah. All those guys, all the shorts, all the Elon haters in just an absolute frenzy. Is explained that he basically is pursuing the meme stock portfolio and he's outperforming all of them. He bought Bitcoin. He now went and aped into Twitter, right? Like, if you think about like what he's actually doing is he's not buying anything that kind of the value investors, the virtue signaling, like, you know, we buy value. He's not doing anything. He's finding the exact opposite. He's up huge on the Bitcoin position. He bought it at like 33,000. We're at 47,000 now. And he took what a hundred million dollars off the table, right? So there he's already up very big. Twitter, he's up 30% in like a week.

• 35:03Anthony Pompliano?

  So you started to look at it, you're like, obviously he has ingredients that other investors in the market don't have in terms of his reputation and kind of following all that. But like, if he was an investor, even though he says he's not, like, he probably could be one of the best investors in the world.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  Is Twitter gonna buy Bitcoin?

• 35:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Who? I'm gonna say that odds increased, but still unlikely in the short term.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  I mean, it would be wild if they don't buy Bitcoin under Jack Dorsey and then Elon comes in and they buy Bitcoin.

• 35:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Does, is Elon Musk the, the shadow CEO now?

• 35:40Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 35:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, again, I think they should play into it, but.

• 35:44Speaker 04

  Funny story. I lost my Twitter checkmark the day that Jag resigned as CEO.

• 35:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 35:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you get it back?

• 35:52Speaker 04

  No.

• 35:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  Hey.

• 35:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Brog, what's going on?

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Elon.

• 35:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, Elon, Elon, what's going on? Yeah, we just go skip over, we're gonna skip over the CEO now.

• 36:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. We don't talk to Andy Jassy on this show. We just ignore him. We go right to Bezos. Bezos still runs Amazon in our opinion. We go, Bezos make it happen. And, you know, he has more time on his hands now because he's not, he didn't have direct reports, like, he's chilling. Chairman, his word goes. Yeah. He's Andy Jassy's boss. We want to talk to the boss. So the question now is, does that mean Elon Musk is the boss of Twitter? And if so, then we need to appeal to Elon, not to Twitter CEO.

• 36:31Speaker 04

  Elon, if you're watching this, help a man out. Does Elon carry more weight than, I would say, almost any investor in the world when he gets behind a company like this? Like Bill Ackman or Carl Icahn, like they come out and they say, hey, we bought $3 billion of Tesla. We're going in on it. Like, we are very bullish on it.

• 36:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I tweeted it yesterday. Carl Icahn, I love Carl Icahn. I think that he is just like a special breed of a time in investing. We're just like, he pioneered a whole different type of investing. Carl Icahn goes to sleep at night dreaming to have one tenth of the effectiveness on something like this that Elon Musk does. Because Carl Icahn doesn't have the notoriety, the audience, like all these different things. Now, with the Wall Street crowd, nobody other than Bill Ackman on CNBC years ago is playing with Carl Icahn. He's just not playing the game. Like, if you see Carl Icahn on the other side of the trade, you're like, I'm a step down here.

• 37:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, you know, just go ahead, do your thing. Elon Musk could do anything in finance and has a very high probability of being successful, simply because people assign him as a winner. So like, one of my favorite distressed investors in the world, do you guys know about Elliot Management?

• 37:53Speaker 02

  They're a big, they're a majority shareholder of Twitter, no?

• 37:56Anthony Pompliano?

  They are. I think it's Elliot. Yeah, Elliot Management. This is a crazy story. Elliot Management and Paul Singer, who runs it, at one point, this is what year? 2016. Elliot Management fought for 15 years with Argentina to get paid back billions of dollars in debt payments that they'd never received. So, this was the first time in history, a hedge fund took on a sovereign nation.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 38:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And Paul Singer said, "We own your debt. We're not absolving shit. Pay us our money." And the country was like, "You're a dumb hedge fund. We're a country. We're not paying." Overgeneralized. In order to collect the debt, this is from the Washington Post, and I made this in a conspiracy theory, this isn't Reddit, Alex Jones didn't say this shit, the Washington Post, which is the mainstream conspiracy theory, said that they tried to take the money deposited by Argentina, central bank in US and Europe bank accounts. That was the first thing they tried to do.

• 39:19Anthony Pompliano?

  So what the United States just did to Russia, central bank reserves, Elliot Management in 2016 tried to do to Argentina.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 39:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Because they said, "You owe us money. You didn't pay us. And so instead, what we're going to do is we're going to take your central bank reserves, and the banks in US and Europe, and US and European law was like, "Ah."

• 39:39Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know if we're gonna play a game where we're gonna let hedge funds take on nation states and seize assets. That seems like a little out of bounds. So then they tried to seize two satellite launch contracts between Argentina and SpaceX. And they said, those are our contracts now. Attempted, not necessarily successful. But this all had come after. In 2012, Elliot, remember, they're doing this for almost 15 years. They were fighting with Argentina to try to get this money. The Argentinian Navy had a three masted

• 40:22Anthony Pompliano?

  tall ship that was pulled into a port in Ghana. The ship was so big, it had 250 crew members onboard. They claimed that the ship was only worth a fraction of what the hedge fund said Argentina owed them. Hundred meter ship. And Elliot management persuaded a Ghanaian court to seize the vessel. So that they could then reclaim it. And they were using a Ghanaian court that now had possession of an Argentinian ship as a poker chip to try to get paid back

• 41:07Anthony Pompliano?

  from a 15 year debt that they were going after.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  That's pretty base.

• 41:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Probably one of the craziest stories in finance ever play out is Elliot management versus the country of Argentina. But Argentina, Argentina, eventually in 2016, they agreed to settle with the hedge fund. So all this nonsense that was going on, they finally agreed to settle.

• 41:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Elliott Management walked away with $2.4 billion for their bonds.

• 41:48Anthony Pompliano?

  The face value was 617 million and they'd been purchased for 117 million.

• 41:56Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 41:57Anthony Pompliano?

  So they spent 117 million. They walked away with $2.4 billion, but it took them a decade and they literally were going to try to seize the country's central bank reserves. They took over a fucking ship in Ghana. Absolutely nuts story. And so when I start to think about like, I'm just gonna post this. When you see this, uh, pull this up real quick, Matt. When you see this photo of the ship, you're like, what dude in New York City is sitting there being like, yo, the fucking ship is at port. Let's go get that.

• 42:31Speaker 04

  Elliott Management has 480 employees. The country, Argentina, has almost 46 million.

• 42:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you start to think about this, Argentina, Argentina had defaulted on $80 billion of debt. Most of the country's creditors, 93% agreed to walk away with just 30% of what they were owed. And Elliott Management, basically, they said, we're not, we're not walking away.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  Not taking no for an answer.

• 42:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, it's crazy, but if you think about now in context, Elliott Management was trying to freeze the central bank reserves of a sovereign nation 10 years ago. And now the United States is doing it to other countries. There's the ship.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  Different game getting played in, uh, in hedge fund versus sovereign nation land.

• 43:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Dude, what do you think some guy ran in the conference room and was like, they have a ship going near Ghana. We can contact him right now. I, I promise you what was happening was they were, Paul Singer was probably sitting there saying, I'm not gonna back down. And if you watch some interviews with him, like, this dude's a gangster. He, he literally, I think that if you were like, hey, you get 80, you get your $80 billion of a debt paid, but you have to go and do a, a 12 noon draw at the OK Corral. He'd be like, what are the odds that I get shot before I get shoot hit? Like, like that's the type of guy he is, right? And so I absolutely think what they'd probably did was they mapped every single asset the country had and they were trying to figure out what assets can we seize?

• 44:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Seize, not like, oh, we know where it is. Can we seize to use as a chip in negotiations with this country? And then eventually there were, somebody was probably like, yo, Ghana probably is going to be, you know, that we probably could do some stuff in Ghana that's going to be cool with us getting this ship.

• 44:17Speaker 04

  The shareholder, the shareholder letter was probably hilarious. They're like, yeah, we got the ship. Ship secured.

• 44:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes. I mean, it's just, uh, absolutely nuts. And by the way, of course, this isn't the only country that he's tussled with. In the Washington Post article, they say, uh, the billionaire Republican fundraiser, which of course is like, uh, exactly what you would expect from mainstream media. How about just financier, also developed a taste for tangling with foreign governments, including Peru, Congo, over the value of government bonds.

• 44:49Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 44:50Anthony Pompliano?

  So I just like, man.

• 44:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And the hedge funds tactics in Argentina case drew international attention. The country launched its own campaign against what it calls the vultures and financial terrorists. Like, all right, hold on a second here. So you sold them debt. You don't want to pay them, but they're the bad guys. All they're saying is pay me the money. You promised me you're going to pay me. And so the country, this was the part I remember when I first heard about. The country took out full page ads in the Washington Post and other publications, and found some supporters on Capitol Hill. They argued that giving the hedge fund what they wanted would expose it to a cascade of claims that it could not afford to pay. So you're bankrupt.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  Basically.

• 45:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? I don't know. It's, it's just, uh, it's crazy to think about how, uh, countries now in some way are being like brought down to the level of other hedge funds or individuals.

• 45:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:42Anthony Pompliano?

  It's been going on for a decade, but like, seems to be happening.

• 45:47Anthony Pompliano?

  You like that story?

• 45:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was cool. I'm surprised they didn't actually seize the assets in foreign countries.

• 45:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Dylan, you got any like wild predictions around Bitcoin that like maybe super far fetched, but if they came true, you're thinking about them already?

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, I think I've probably said most of the crazy expectations I have on this show before, but I mean, I definitely think in this decade, we're going to see central banks, whether they announce it or not, just printing money to buy Bitcoin in the same way they print money to monetize debt. Um, you know, like, or like, for instance, like the Swiss Central Bank prints, prints francs, buys dollars, buys US equities, prints, you know, just to devalue their currency makes their, their exports more attractive and they get dollar denominated assets. Like the Swiss National Bank owns Tesla stock. They own Apple stock. You know, so I guess they already kind of own in a way, kind of, they have some Bitcoin exposure, but like, they're totally, I totally believe, and this is still somewhat

• 46:46Speaker 02

  of like an outlandish prediction in like mainstream circles and legacy finance, but yeah, I totally think that's coming. Um, and I definitely not priced in at a trillion dollar asset class.

• 46:56Anthony Pompliano?

  What would happen if that occurred? Like, what happens to price? How does it play?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  I mean, for, for them to even secure a meaningful allocation, price is going to have to get bid like crazy. But when that's announced, I

• 47:06Anthony Pompliano?

  To what? Like a million dollars more or less?

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, if a, if a, you know, legit, like G7 central bank or, you know, ECB, Fed, BOJ, I don't think that's, that's here yet. Um, but yeah, I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars, high six figures, a million eventually. And then it's like, what's the purchasing power? What's the value of a dollar or a fiat currency at that point? Um, because you're, I mean, if, never mind Bitcoin, like price, price your, your money and energy, right? That, I mean, that's really like what, what it all comes down to is, is what's your purchasing power for a barrel of oil, right? Um, and like, something like gold or over the long term really can kind of maintain that. But I think Bitcoin is still

• 47:52Speaker 02

  completely underpriced in terms of energy. And we focus on, like I talk all the time, like the marginal, the marginal production costs of Bitcoin in energy terms or really anything, the marginal production cost of satoshis is Programatically designed to increase.

• 48:07Speaker 04

  Did you see Nick Carter going after some energy FUD last night on Twitter?

• 48:11Speaker 02

  I mean, there's no one better than than Nick in that regard, just just destroying FUDsters and academics. Yeah, I mean, he's he's a champ in that regard.

• 48:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I I just loved that he was like, yes, I have a philosophy degree and I know more about energy than you do. PhD.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Bro, he changed his name on Twitter. I'm looking right now to Nick No Credentials Carter.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  That's so good.

• 48:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I saw someone in the comments was like, you know, when the letters start coming out after your name, you're already lost the argument. If you're pulling out the the letters of the credentials that you have, you're done. No, what did the guy say? He was like, I have a P. I have like a master's and a PhD in energy, whatever. And then Nick went and like, of course, did the research and he's like, dude, you talk about water resources. What do you know about fucking energy? Right? And and the other piece of it, too, is we've talked a number of times on this show about the idea that Bitcoin needs better critics. But one of the keys to it is not just better critics, but better critics who also have better arguments. So like, the quality of the people who end up yelling and screaming about Bitcoin is like shaky at best.

• 49:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And most of the intelligent people who even are skeptic, their arguments are just higher quality. And so it's like, I wish those people were more vocal.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  This is a tough question. Who is who is the most informed or best? And this is best is a very subjective term. Who's the best Bitcoin skeptic?

• 49:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Brad Sherman.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Okay, that's fair. That's good. That's

• 49:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you know why?

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Because he's

• 49:47Anthony Pompliano?

  He doesn't understand anything about today till five years from now. He understands the hundred year game.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:55Anthony Pompliano?

  That's why.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  About Peter Schiff.

• 49:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Peter is he's a nice guy.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  Peter Satoshi.

• 50:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, didn't you see? He revealed it.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Peter and Craig Wright are gonna have to fight it out to see

• 50:07Speaker 04

  What was the date he revealed it? Oh, April Fools. That was the date.

• 50:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Yeah, I I'm joking about Brad Sherman, obviously, but I think it's a very good question. Who would you say?

• 50:20Speaker 02

  I think there's some like directionally correct, I don't even have really anyone in particular, but the people that say Bitcoin is somewhat of like a, you know, a risk on high beta asset that, you know, I actually like respect a lot of people in the legacy, in the legacy financial system and their views on things, but they completely disregard Bitcoin and say it's, you know, it's a mania that's riding on the, you know, high liquidity tide of monetary debasement and central bank quantitative easing. And I think that's somewhat accurate, but at the same time, they're missing the big picture, which is that for, you know, millions of people, and I think soon to be billions of people, it's not, it's not a speculative risk on asset like Tesla or an equity. It's, it's a monetary

• 51:04Speaker 02

  asset. So yeah, it trades, it trades like, you know, I think some of the correlations with meme stocks, like if someone ran the numbers, it was like over the last two years, it's like pretty crazy. Like, you know, when, when GME and Tesla go up, Bitcoin has a positive day as well. So in that, in that sense, like some of those skeptics who actually really respect their opinion on the legacy system are, are right, just, just by looking at numbers. But there's more to it than that, in my opinion. And so that's where obviously we come to different conclusions.

• 51:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Does it still shock you how many people just don't believe in the asset at all?

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Uh, it doesn't shock me. I mean, it gets me excited because it's like, okay, we're still, we're still pretty early here. I mean, obviously 45K or whatever it is, billion dollar, trillion dollars, close to be, maybe I think 900 billion dollar market cap, 13 years in, it's like, oh, it's pretty late. But in reality, you see so many like well-informed, really smart people completely dismiss it. And you're like, okay, yeah, we have some time.

• 52:06Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. We got other things we gotta do. But before we let you go, I have two questions.

• 52:12Anthony Pompliano?

  What is, you've now been doing Bitcoin for a year now, full-time?

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 52:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. What is the single best memory you have? And what do you think is the biggest surprise after working on Bitcoin full-time in the last year?

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Uh, that's a, those are great questions, uh, and I haven't, haven't really thought of that. My best memory, um, I don't think anything in particular. I think just amount of awesome people I've met, um, first, like mostly online and then, um, you know, meeting people in, in the meat space, just like, like I am here today. Um, it's pretty awesome. Uh, have a ton of, ton of awesome memories. And in terms of surprises, uh, that was the second question, right? Biggest surprise? Um, yeah, I, I just think, uh, the timeline's kind of accelerating. I've in, in 2020 and 2019, when I was really becoming orange-pilled per se, um, a lot of this stuff was, was hypothetical, uh, and now it's, you know, I can only imagine being in the space for, you know, five, 10 years, but, uh, it's coming to fruition faster than I thought.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  And, uh, you know, despite all that, it still seems like we're, we're quite early. So kind of skirted around the question there, but, um, just, you know, met a lot of awesome people and, and like excited for the future.

• 53:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that's fair. Do you two have any last questions?

• 53:25Speaker 03

  No.

• 53:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks for going on, Dylan. Are you gonna, uh, come party with us this week?

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, can you hook me up with a SoFi after-party ticket?

• 53:35Anthony Pompliano?

  John's in charge, yes.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Let's go.

• 53:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Anyone who wants SoFi after-party tickets, contact John.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Hit me up.

• 53:41Anthony Pompliano?

  See if you can get them. Only a few. There's few. They gotta be following you, right? Gotta be following me. If you tip him, then maybe. No, no, no, no. Do not send me money, cause I will keep it.

• 53:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes, we can get you a ticket.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 53:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, we have no other ones. That was literally the last one, everyone, so sorry that, uh, didn't get anybody else.

• 54:04Speaker 04

  So if you're mad that you didn't get a ticket, hit up Dylan.

• 54:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Dylan is flipping tickets. They're not NFTs. There he is on Twitter.

• 54:12Speaker 04

  Almost 150,000.

• 54:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's go. The rise, the rise. All right, my friend. Appreciate it. I'll see you at the conference and it sounds like at the after-party as well.

• 54:23Speaker 04

  It's been a lot of fun.

• 54:25Anthony Pompliano?

  See you, buddy.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  Peace.

• 54:26Anthony 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.