#429 Bo Jiang on Secure Virtual Cards

Bo Jiang is the co-founder and CEO at Privacy.com, a company focused on protecting your privacy online. Their team builds easy to use online privacy and security technology for everyday users. In this conversation, we discuss secure virtual cards, better security at checkout, how they got the privacy.com URL, their API growth strategy, and what the recent partnership with 1Password means. ======================= LVL is a new crypto investing platform that I'm an investor in. They allow anyone to trade an unlimited number of times per month for only $9. If you buy or sell more than $500 in Bitcoin on any exchange, you're spending too much on trading fees. Use LVL to save money and trade as many times you want, but only pay $9/month. https://lvl.co/ ======================= OKCoin.com is the leading crypto exchange for both beginners and experienced users. You can fund your account in under 2 minutes, and get access to the most advanced trading engine, all while paying the lowest trading fees in the industry (0.1%). Visit www.okcoin.com/pomp and open your account today. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 80,000 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://www.pompletter.com

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. Let's kick this thing off. Bo Zhang is the co-founder and CEO at Privacy.com. They're a company that is focused on protecting your privacy online. Their team builds easy to use online privacy and security technology for everyday users. In this conversation, we discuss secure virtual cards, better security at checkout, how they got the Privacy.com URL, their API growth strategy, and what the recent partnership with OnePassword means. I really enjoyed this conversation with Bo, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  our sponsors. First up is Level, spelled L-V-L. It's a new crypto investing platform that I'm an investor in. They allow anyone to trade an unlimited number of times per month for only $9 a month. If you buy or sell more than $500 in Bitcoin on other exchanges, you're likely spending too much money. So use Level, L-V-L, to save money and trade as many times as you want, but only pay $9 a month. That's right, it's a subscription fee. So you pay $9 a month, trade as much as you want. Go check them out at L-V-L dot C-O. Again, L-V-L dot C-O,

• 1:26Anthony Pompliano?

  a new crypto investing platform. Go check it out. Next up is OKCoin. I recently had the CEO on the podcast, and I was really, really impressed by her. There are a lot of crypto exchanges for us to choose from. So whether you're new to crypto, or an advanced trader, or an institution, the most important thing when choosing an exchange is typically how easy it is to fund your account and the cryptos you can access through it. I always recommend people to have an account on a regulated exchange, so you can easily go in and out of the market using your bank account. Recently, we have seen large regulated exchanges hike up trading and withdrawal fees. That's not cool. OKCoin is a US-based regulated exchange that serves 184 countries,

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Super easy to use and offer some of the lowest fees in the industry. What I love about OKCoin as an individual is I can go from registering to verifying my profile and connecting my bank account in minutes. In fact, OKCoin is literally the fastest exchange to go from zero to having a crypto portfolio. You don't have to wait three days for your deposit to show up. You don't have to upload multiple ID documents or facial scans to get started, which by the way is kinda creepy. But they've also been listing popular DeFi assets and I hear they are working on even more popular listings. So go check them out. Go to OKCoin.com/pomp. Again, OKCoin.com/pomp.

• 2:53Anthony Pompliano?

  If you're new to crypto, go check them out. OKCoin.com/pomp. If I have to keep saying it, OKCoin.com/pomp. Eventually you'll go to OKCoin.com/pomp. Alright, that is it. But don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 85,000 investors about business, technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. Oh wait, did I mention, go to OKCoin.com/pomp. Go check it out. Alright, let's get into this episode with Bo. I hope you guys enjoy it.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:07Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Beau here. Super excited to do this. Thank you so much for joining us, sir.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 4:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's jump right into your background. What did you do before Privacy.com?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I started my career as an engineer at a company called IAC, which is basically a tech private equity-esque holding company. They own Mash.com, or you still own Mash.com, you still own Expedia, still own Vimeo, a bunch of other internet properties. I was within the incubation group there called Hatch. We basically incubated five to 10 different companies. Pretty much all of them died, except for one, which was Tinder. And so that was sort of my first exposure to tech and what venture-backed returns and portfolio theory looks like. Afterwards, I decided to do my own thing. This is around 2012, 2013. There's this really interesting thing called Bitcoin at the time, and kind of got interested

• 5:05Speaker 02

  in digital currency. And came up with our first idea, which is basically a Bitcoin-backed debit card. So there are a ton of those now. Coinbase just launched one. But at the time, it's a pretty novel idea. And the thinking was like, people have Bitcoin, and it's actually kind of hard to spend your Bitcoin. So why not bring the convenience of the car network rails to Bitcoin? We talked to something around 50 banks at that time. And I'd say the responses from the banks kind of fell into two categories. You had banks that didn't know what Bitcoin was, and naturally, somewhat risk averse. So they were like, no, this is

• 5:46Speaker 02

  not for us. Let's wait a few years. And then you had banks that were pretty forward-looking and knew what Bitcoin was. And they were like, definitely no. The door is there. Get out. And so we honestly kind of hit a roadblock there. And sort of...

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Refocused a little bit and we're still really interested in improving the financial infrastructure and this is where the idea for privacy.com came out of where we said like, hey, what are like the valuable parts of Bitcoin to like the consumer as a spending instrument? So there are two things, the security, it's a push mechanism versus a pull mechanism. And then the second thing is sort of the privacy and the pseudonymity of it.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  And so we basically came up with the idea to generate virtual cards on the fly using a browser extension and a mobile app and you can set spending controls on it. It's really great for managing subscriptions, sharing cards with friends, family, coworkers, so on, right? So this is back in 2016-ish when we launched. And as we scaled the company, we realized that the infrastructure, the issuing infrastructure that we built our product on top of wasn't really that stable. So we ended up actually having to build our own issuer processor. So a quick sort of overview on payments. So you swipe a card, that card goes from the merchant acquirer to the Visa or Mastercard and then they pass

• 7:20Speaker 02

  it on to what's called an issuer processor that then decrypts and sort of accepts or declines a transaction. So we actually had to build that entire piece of infrastructure out and over time realized that actually, hey, many other companies want what we've built for ourselves. So over the past year and a half or so, we've actually been opening up an API to allow developers to issue credit or debit cards essentially on the fly programmatically.

• 7:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Let's go back to IAC. You guys are incubating Tinder. What did you learn going through that process? Well, if you had to take away one or two learnings for people who are listening, what was the one or two things you learned?

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so two things that really kind of stuck out. First of all, like, you know, People always say like, there's no such thing as an overnight success. And I saw that very much firsthand with Tinder. If you sort of looked at the press, it seemed like, hey, like a team had like an idea. They built it in a week and boom, it was just like wildfire, like fastest growing app ever, you know, on college campuses or whatever, right? Behind the scenes, it was like a lot more sort of concerted deliberate. It was kind of like pushing up a boulder, up a hill, and then eventually getting enough energy, you know, as things, you know, started rolling. So that was like very valuable early career perspective, seeing that firsthand. The second thing, which is less obvious, so it wasn't a direct takeaway from Tinder,

• 8:47Speaker 02

  was cap table management is super important early on. Because, you know, with the incubation model, what ends up happening is like a lot of the incubator basically ends up owning a lot of company. And so if your product doesn't have product market fit really early on, it's very hard to capitalize the company. You eventually have to recap the company, you know, to keep going. And I think there are a handful of companies, you know, and really good ideas out of the incubator that maybe could have survived if the cap table was a little more equity towards equitable towards the team.

• 9:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's awesome. And when you got into Bitcoin, when was the first time you heard about Bitcoin? Or like, what kind of pulled you down the rabbit hole?

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think I heard about Bitcoin in college. Or maybe it was like briefly after, it was around that time, like 2011-ish timeframe. And it seemed like kind of a toy at the time. I think everyone thinks, you know, it kind of seemed like a toy at the time. You know, people, people were, you know, setting up their own mining rigs and stuff like that, which is like really cool. And it's like, that's like super interesting from a technology perspective.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  What got me interested and kind of drew me to Bitcoin originally was actually I like many, I like many people had like pretty poor experiences with PayPal as a company. I think if you, if you were doing stuff on the internet in like the mid 2000s, like I was in high school, just had a pretty bad experience there and saw it as kind of an opportunity to kind of do things differently. So that was the original kind of hook for me, where it's like that experience, how can we make it better?

• 10:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely. And then when people hear privacy.com, the first thing I think of is how the hell did you get that URL? What's that story?

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So that is a, that is a good question.

• 10:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Every time there's a good URL, there's always a good story behind it.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  There, there is always a good story. I think I encourage early-stage companies to try to punch above their weight on domain because it just lends you a bunch of credibility, especially if you're doing something that requires like high trust or in financial services space. How we ended up coming up with it was we, so we, we actually contacted the owner of the domain and he wasn't doing anything with that at the time. And we said, hey, like, you know, why don't, we're working on this, you know, cool new product and basically pitched the owner on what we were doing. He was excited about it and basically invested the domain in the company. And, you know, we had a clause that basically said, hey, like if we go belly up or whatever, like you can get the domain back. So, you know, it's a pretty low-risk, you know,

• 11:40Speaker 02

  investment in that sense, especially if you're not doing with anything with the domain for like 10 years.

• 11:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. So basically it was like, hey, you give us the domain. If this works, you'll get some equity. If it doesn't work, then we'll give it back to you.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And I think this is also around the time where when Uber is really taking off and like, you know, Uber famously got like 2%, traded like 2% of the company for the domain. And that was like a phenomenal investment. So that was a great case to kind of point to for us.

• 12:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Well, now you're just going to go build the next Uber and, and make them very, very happy, right?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Let's talk about the secure virtual card. So walk us through the process. I'm going to buy something on the internet. How do I interact with the product?

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you sign up, you connect a funding source. Generally, signup takes like, you know, three minutes. You put in some personal information so that we can comply with the law effectively and run our KYC processes. And then you install either our browser extension or mobile app. And then anytime you go to a checkout page, there's a little button that shows up next to checkout form. You click the button and you can generate a brand new card number on the fly. As you're creating the card, you can set limits on it. You can have it be a one-time-use card. So if you're signing up for a subscription that you're not sure you want to renew, it's really good for that kind of use case and sort of, you know, smaller websites where you're maybe not sure about the security and so on.

• 13:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when I'm going to do this, what's the risk to me, right? Like, obviously, there's a ton of benefits in terms of it provides much more security and privacy, but what are the risks associated?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  The risks associated with signing up?

• 13:24Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, look, I think there's a, you know, fundamentally, there's a social contract being entered with us where if we get breached, that is, that is a risk. So you're saying, you're basically saying, hey, like, you know, privacy.com, in exchange for trusting you with my information, you know, you're going to make my life more secure, more convenient and easier. So that's one. I think another trade-off, not necessarily a risk, is rewards points. So some folks are, you know, rewards junkies and, you know, you don't get credit card rewards with our, with our product. So that's, that's sort of a very clear downside.

• 14:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it seems like kind of the initial use case here or the experience is very much, I go, I set up the card with the parameters, right? So I want a one-time-use card. I want it to be able to spend up to $1,000. I then go to Nike.com and I say, hey, I'm going to buy $700 worth of this. And I basically protected my privacy and security by preemptively going and getting this one-time-use card through your platform. It would make sense, I think, and it sounds like you're already trying to work on this, where I just go to Nike.com and when I go to checkout. Check out Nike.com basically automatically does this for me kind of in the background so that my my credit card details or my banking information is never exposed throughout that transaction.

• 14:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that a world where you think like, you know, the pie in the sky vision is like every single website in the internet will have some version of that experience at some point in the future? Or is that more dreams than reality and just will never get there?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Um, I'm not sure. Yeah. So I'm not sure we'll actually ever get there. Um, I think what you're seeing is kind of interesting is there are more and more different options at checkout now that do involve like, you know, single use cards. So for example, um, if you go to Peloton and you decide to, you know, do a buy now, pay later loan, um, or maybe Peloton is maybe not a good example, but like, you know, you can go to other websites um, and get a, you know, uh, sort of point of sale financing. And sometimes like that's dispersed via a card, uh, that's generated on the fly. And it's actually not only are you getting financing for the product, it's also more secure because, you know, it's not, you know, you're not entering in your actual card information. Um, so.

• 15:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And how does this change for the merchant? Do they care? Or is there any pros or cons versus whether I'm using my card or using kind of the the one time use or some sort of privacy.com virtual card?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  So, you know, what we find is like for, uh, for bigger merchants, the main thing is actually like, it does help from a convenience perspective. Um, you know, you click the button and like you just go, um, and so that's, that's the main benefit for a merchant. Larger merchant. For smaller merchants, uh, we actually find the peace of mind really helps a lot more. So, uh, you know, if you go to Amazon or like, you know, um, you know, Walmart or whatever, like maybe you're not that worried about like what, you know, what's happening with your card info. If you go to like a much smaller merchant, that does become something that comes up in people's mind where it's like, oh, there's a little apprehension.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Like maybe I shouldn't be buying this product from this website. Maybe I should be going to Amazon or somewhere else, somewhere else to see if there's a similar product. Right? So, um, we find that like, it does actually help. Conversion rate, it's just like not, it's sort of different levers depending on who the merchant is.

• 16:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that that makes a ton of sense to me if basically if you can make your customers believe, hey, we are trustworthy in some, you know, whether it's through the URL that you have, right? Or through the the use of virtual cards, things like that, uh, conversion would go up. Talk to me about this API or set of APIs that you guys are building. It seems like that's kind of stage two for you guys in this business is using those APIs to really try to scale and become much more of a like integral part of the infrastructure of companies.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, uh, you know, I think there's a kind of similar analog of Amazon and AWS, where we built all of this infrastructure. Because if you look at like, you know, just in terms of like payment volume, we're on track in the US to do $10 trillion in, you know, credit, debit, prepaid card volume by 2023. And 95% plus of that is going to run over like basically at that point, 40-year-old companies, companies like Fleet Core, Tesis, Jack Henry, so on, right? They do a great job, but like, you know, fundamentally, it's very old infrastructure that makes it relatively hard to innovate and build new products on top of, you know, actual sort of card issuance. And so we we end up actually in the process of building our virtual card product,

• 18:01Speaker 02

  had to build all the pieces around issuing, um, uh, credit or debit cards, or largely debit cards, but we can also support credit cards. And finding like tons of other companies want to do this as well. It's normally a really painful process. So let's say you wanted to, um, you know, issue a card. Today, it's actually usually a 12 to 18-month process. And costs on the order of $500K to $1 million in terms of expenses. And that's like legal, payroll, setup fees with, you know, the various stakeholders and gatekeepers. So we we're sort of looking to dramatically bring down the cost of like issuing a card with our APIs.

• 18:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so what's kind of the vision there, right? Let's fast forward 10 years, like you were able to build out the technology from the API suite. How are you positioned kind of in the market with all these other players?

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think it's helpful in some ways to frame this in the context of the acquiring world because card acquiring is a much better understood space. If you look at companies like Stripe, Adyen, Braintree and so on, they've done a really good job on the acquiring side to make it really dead simple for any developer to accept cards online. The issuer processing space, which is the other side of a financial transaction in the card world, lags this by around seven to 10 years. So what they've done, the Adyens and Stripes of the world, in making acquiring processing super product and developer oriented, we're looking to do

• 19:44Speaker 02

  for the issuing processing world.

• 19:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so what is the kind of concerns or the way that this is treated with law enforcement, governments, etc., right? So the first second that somebody says, "Hey, I want to hide my identity," it feels like all of the people in suits and ties with badges say like, "Oh, you're hiding something," right? Usually that ends up not being true, but that's definitely the reaction. And so, one, have you guys seen people saying like, "Why do you need to use the virtual cards?" Have you seen kind of nefarious activity? Or just how do you think about preventing that, anything in that space?

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, as a financial services company, we obviously take compliance, regulation, and all that very seriously. And in order to operate in the US, we need to. And so that is the integral part of like, you know, kind of what we've built. You know, that is, so that's one piece of it. We sort of, we need to have a compliant KYC and AML and, you know, BSA policy as a company and as do all other card issuing companies. On the other hand, I do think sort of the definition of privacy and, you know, how important that is, is changing

• 21:03Speaker 02

  as everything is going digital. So if you think about it, like, we're We're in a world today where not to sort of get super tinfoil hatty, but everything, you know, the cost of storage and the cost of computing are both effectively going towards zero. And what that means is like, you know, basically, you know, everything that you do online can be tracked and can be searched pretty quickly. And so I think that is kind of a paradigm shift that it has has come. And maybe the full effect of it hasn't been felt. Whereas like previously, you know, if you go go to a local bodega or somewhere and you like, hey, I want to buy something cash like that's, that's pretty, you know, that's, that's totally legal.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Maybe you're buying a pack of gum or, you know, a bag of Cheetos or whatever. Like that's, you're buying something totally legal, but it's also private. And that's a right that's kind of being eroded, I think, in in today's world.

• 21:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it also feels like the only way to fight back against this is going to be with technology. Right? Like, like, there's not going to be some, hey, let's go negotiate in the halls of Congress or something like it definitely feels like the non-technology momentum is against those who believe in privacy, individual freedom, et cetera. And the last remaining kind of, you know, parachute, lifeboat, whatever, is to build the technology just to make this standard across these various technology companies, right?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, that's why I'm super bullish on the space. I think if you look at like, you know, investors, I think investors are starting to come around it. But I think for a really long time, there's actually this received wisdom, you know, around like this around the privacy and security space where, you know, all the tools out there were like super user and friendly and accessible. And as a result, like, no one wanted to invest in the space to build more user friendly and accessible tools because there's a perception that, hey, like, the only people that use these like really crappy tools are criminals or people are like super paranoid. And, you know, it's not a fair one to one comparison. If you're comparing like, you know, Uber and Tinder and Gmail to like, you know, super underfunded, like academic products that, you know, of course, like, you know,

• 23:13Speaker 02

  your average consumer doesn't want to use, right?

• 23:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Talk a little bit about your partnership with OnePassword and kind of what that is going to look like.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so shortly after we announced our API, we started talking with OnePassword. You know, as a company, like we're sort of very, I think there's a lot of sort of overlap in terms of like where we'd like to see the world. You know, OnePassword, what they're doing with passwords, there's a perfect analog to what we're doing with cards.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  And originally, we started talking about like maybe a co-marketing type thing, or you know, some way to sort of join forces to get the word out more to more folks. But you know, over time, like it was like, oh, this is actually something that we should just, you know, integrate and allow folks to generate virtual cards from one password. And so that that sort of integration actually came together really quickly because we already had an API and they were sort of able to very quickly ingest and, you know, integrate that API.

• 24:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So. Absolutely. And in terms of continuing that, is that something where you'll look for other partners to have similar types of partnerships? And and can kind of grow somewhat organically by just kind of getting this through other distribution pipes through those partnerships?

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So our, you know, in terms of like what we want to do as a company, we want to make payments safer and easier for everyone. And that isn't necessarily like being, you know, the go-to first-party app that's, you know, on, you know, the bottom of your iPhone or whatever is not necessarily the way, you know, we're dogmatic about doing it. So, you know, partnering with like-minded companies and getting sort of distribution and even, you know, a white label approach is something that, you know, we're very, very much pursuing.

• 25:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. What's the biggest challenge for you guys right now?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  The challenge?

• 25:13Speaker 02

  From a company perspective, I think honestly, the hardest thing has been adjusting to like a fully remote setup. You know, I think this gets glossed over sometimes, but people, people, people often get a lot of social interaction from their work and I think. Being remote, sharing a computer screen for eight hours a day is like not really the same as like the in-office human interaction. So that's something that we're still very much kind of adjusting to. And there's also stuff around communication, like how do you, how do you make sure that everyone's on the same page? As you're growing in the remote world. So I think like many companies, we're sort of navigating that.

• 25:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Before we get into the rapid fire to wrap this up, what would just your pitch be to users? Right? So as much people who are listening to this, you've got the floor. What is your pitch on why they should use privacy.com for virtual cards?

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the reason why you should use this for virtual cards is we make your life safer and more convenient. So we save you time and money. That's, that's what it comes down to. You know, everyone's had the experience of like, hey, I signed up for Boeing Wi-Fi. Six months ago, and I'm just finding out that they've been charging me 14 bucks a month or whatever it is for the past couple of months. And so, you know, not only do we, you know, save you time in making that purchase a lot faster. We also save you money in terms of like, you know, forgetting to cancel transactions and so on.

• 26:43Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a pretty good pitch, saying that you're going to save someone time and money. That tends to be something that people are very interested in.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Before we wrap up, I always ask everyone the same two questions and then you'll get to ask me one question at the end. The first question is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 27:05Speaker 02

  It's a good question. I am a listener of the podcast, so I'm going to buck the trend a little bit. I think a lot of folks say like an early book that they read. And there's a book that I read recently called Out of the Gobi. It's by this Chinese private equity fund manager. And I think runs, he managed, it's now like a $40 billion fund. And what's interesting about it is he grew up during the Cultural Revolution and basically spent six years of his life. Instead of going to high school and college. Working, doing hard manual labor out in the Gobi Desert.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Uh, came to the US, ended up getting his PhD and uh, now sort of is obviously super successful. Interesting for really three reasons. The first being that uh, obviously it's super, super inspirational. You know, I think in a world where uh, youth is like kind of prioritized and like everyone's like, "Oh, like if you haven't made it by, you know, 25 or 30, uh, you're kind of a failure, right?" I think it's really inspiring to sort of hear about this person that, you know, basically uh, lost six years of their, their youth uh, and is, is still like, you know, been really successful. The second one on a personal note, um, that is uh, really uh, resonated with me is, you know, my parents came here as graduate students.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Uh, and I think this is a piece of Chinese history that doesn't really get talked about very much. Uh, and so it's this like whole generation that kind of went through this. And it's, it's like a really sort of unvarnished perspective on that. And um, you know, I uh, I feel like there's a third, now I'm blanking on it. Let's, let's come back. I'll, I'm sure I'll think of the third thing.

• 28:57Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a great suggestion though. I, I love books where uh, you can one, learn about something, two, there's like the inspiration, then three, also like there's a personal connection to the book for you. Right? Like I always, you know, after asking so many people this question, it's like very much uh, what did the book mean to them more so than like, this specific book is the most important book in the world, right? Uh, and it's always interesting. Usually it is time related, right? So like you said, you know, earlier in your life, there's some formative period, they read some book. Uh, but, but this one is uh, sounds pretty cool. So I'll have to check it out for sure. Uh, second question, aliens, uh, are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Um, I, yeah, I, I'm a believer. Um, you know, the, the, the world is way too big for us to be, you know, is it, you know, a carbon life form is, you know, are aliens, you know, do aliens, you know, walk and talk like us, like probably not, right? But like alien life forms like I, you know, I would say like definitely, definitely do exist. So.

• 30:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Let me ask this question. I've never asked anyone this before, but uh, just came to me. Do you think it's more likely that quote unquote, some carbon life form, intelligent life, whatever you want to call it, is on like the moon slash Mars? Or do you think it's something where it's so far away that like, you know, it'll be your grandkids, grandkids, grandkids, grandkids who even have a chance to potentially figure it out?

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Um, that is interesting. Um, that's a good question. Um.

• 30:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And I don't know the answer, obviously, right? But, but it's like, you know, is it something where it's closer to us or it actually is really, really far away?

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess I would say I'm actually along on both. Um, so.

• 30:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain that.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  So, so I think there's, there's, there's a, it feels like a reasonable likelihood that there's like some, you know, if life came from like a, you know, asteroid or something like that, um, that it's also like somewhere else in the ecosystem, uh, in the, in the solar system. Um, but I also think that it's very likely, you know, given how, you know, big the universe is that, uh, there, there's life elsewhere too. Um, so almost certainly there's life elsewhere, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was, uh, life, you know, elsewhere in the solar system, but.

• 31:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it, it's just fascinating to me to think about, uh, if it was both, right? Like what, and again, there's no, uh, data that suggests this now, but like, what if every planet had some form of intelligent life on it? People's entire concept of space would change.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it'd be, it'd be mind blowing.

• 31:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. Uh, all right. What question do you have for me to, uh, wrap this up?

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Um, let's see. What is a, uh?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Have you picked up a, any sort of post COVID or like, you know, during COVID, like New York specific habits? Like, has there been anything there that's like, really been like, hey, like, I really like this about like New York City?

• 32:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I was gonna say from like a habit standpoint, um, there's a couple of things. So like, one, I now every single day go on a walk. During like the hardcore like lockdown component of COVID, it was more of like a, I gotta get out of my apartment, you know, I can't sit here all day type thing. Now it's more of like, I enjoy it. Uh, Plin and I go and, and, uh, and kind of walk around. So that's, uh, nice. The second thing is I've like really focused on sleeping more. Um, I don't think that like, I had anything that was preventing me from doing it before. It just like wasn't a priority, right? And like, I maybe I traveled a lot and that kind of screwed it up a little bit, but like, that's been really nice to kind of like say, hey, I'm gonna sleep at least eight hours every single night.

• 32:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you prioritize things, obviously, you know, you, you end up doing it. Um, and then the only other thing I would say is just, uh, there's little things in New York that you or I probably took for granted before. And so it's less about like some new habit as much as it's like, man, I really enjoy doing X, right? And so, you know, like a, a kind of a easy one is, um, I don't know if you've ever been to the JP Morgan Library, uh,

• 33:21Speaker 02

  I have.

• 33:22Anthony Pompliano?

  in New York, right? It's like one of my favorite places in New York and, uh, the other day I was talking to Plin and I was just like, man, I kind of want to go, but like it wasn't open, right? And so you're just like, like that is so stupid, but yet at the same time, like you start to realize just how important that type of stuff is. So I think that's probably like the things that I've kind of picked up. What about yourself? Anything that you specifically, uh, like feel you picked up?

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, it's really funny. As you said, like going for walks and sleeping more. That's, those are two things that like I, I like very much started doing. And I, I actually, I got this aura, kind of a, I guess, plug during, during COVID. And it's been like, actually really helpful.

• 34:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 34:12Speaker 02

  My favorite fitness tracker, I guess. The, the idea is in terms of like, just, you know, being able to like, kind of keep,

• 34:21Speaker 02

  keep using it.

• 34:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  So, so those are two, two, two that definitely resonate. I think another thing that I've really enjoyed is just outdoor dining. It's, it's one of these things where like, you know, I just, I kind of hope stays, stays, you know, in some capacity. So.

• 34:43Anthony Pompliano?

  My brother, Jules, we were talking about it before. They built these like huge buildings in the street and he's like, they're not taking those down.

• 34:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like those business owners just expanded their square footage. Are you kidding me?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, totally. I think, I mean, I think like, you know, but everyone I talk to likes it. The businesses obviously like it. So I feel like those are, those are probably going to stay. We'll just, yeah, we'll see though.

• 35:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely. They just got to figure out how to keep them, keep them warm during the winter, right?

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So we'll see. All right, Bo, listen, where can people find you on the internet or find more about privacy.com?

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. So privacy, I am, go to the website, privacy.com. I'm, uh, keep a pretty low profile online, but occasionally tweet at Bowling J. It's B O L I N G J. Um, yeah.

• 35:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Well, thank you so much for doing this. Everyone, go check it out. Virtual cards, in my opinion, are a no brainer. I mean, if you want to basically keep your privacy and security, you should probably use a virtual card rather than the credit card in your wallet or purse. So, um, you know, go check it out. But, uh, well, this is again, in the future, my friend, thank you so much.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me.