#1023 Mark Moss On How Bitcoin Is A TimeChain, Not A Blockchain

Mark Moss is a Financial Educator and Host of "The Mark Moss Show" On iHeart Radio and Youtube. In this conversation, we talk about the future of the decentralized world, advantages to a deflationary currency like Bitcoin, Mark's theory around Bitcoin being a "timechain", and the possible innovations that may be built on top of Bitcoin in the coming decades. ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/Pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK. ======================= DeFi Technologies represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U. S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at http://defi.tech =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Mark Moss is the creator and host of The Mark Moss Show on iHeart Radio. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, proof of work, why crypto is different than Bitcoin, exactly how Bitcoin fits into the global macro environment, and what is the big C change that is underway across financial markets. I really enjoyed this conversation with Mark, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. First up is LMAX Digital, the number one institutional crypto exchange. They offer clients the deepest pool of crypto liquidity on the planet, underscored by 100% uptime

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  track record through volatility spikes. They leverage LMAX Group's liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology. LMAX Digital is the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading and custodial services. If you've never heard of LMAX Digital, it's probably because you're not an institution. They have no retail, only institutions. They feature a sent-and-troll limit order book streaming spot Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash, all paired with US dollars, Euro, and Yen. LMAX Digital, they're secure, they're liquid, and they're trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Again, LMAXdigital.com/pomp. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep is the single best product that

• 1:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I have purchased over the last three years. It completely changed my life. I'm not joking, pay attention. The Pod Pro cover, which goes over your mattress by Eight Sleep, is the most advanced solution on the market for thermal regulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can go to eightsleep.com/pomp to check out the Pod Pro cover, and you save $150 at checkout. They currently ship within the United States, Canada, and the UK. And I told you, it changed my life. It helps me sleep deeper, helps me sleep longer. I feel much more refreshed, and I have better energy. You want to know how I have relentless energy every single day? Because I sleep on an Eight Sleep. Seriously, go check it out, eightsleep.com/pomp today. This episode is brought to you by DeFi Technologies.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  D5 technologies represents what's next in the digital economy. They're providing simplified trusted access to crypto decentralized finance and web three investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry leading equity products and protocols through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. D5 technologies is currently listed on the US exchange at DEF TF stock ticker and the Canadian NEO exchange at DEFI. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at D5.Tech. I'm really excited about what these guys are doing. I've become an advisor to the business and I highly suggest you go check them out.

• 2:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Go to their website at D5.Tech today.

• 2:57Speaker 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.

• 3:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Mr. Mark Moss, dude, I'm very excited about this. I feel like you've been all over so much of what's happening in the world.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  We've been, we've been on it.

• 3:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, let's talk macro environment first. Stuff's messed up. It just seems to be breaking to say the least. What is your analysis as to like where we are today, right? Like when you, when somebody says to you, hey, what's going on in the economic world? Like, how do you describe where we are?

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think if you zoom out and then zoom out and then zoom out again, right? So a big thesis I've been working on for about a year and a half is like three revolutionary cycles that are converging, that are changing the world. So we have a 250 year political revolution cycle. Every 250 years, the world, the pendulum swings from centralization and swings back to decentralization. 250 years ago was the American Revolution, pushed back on the centralization of the monarchy, set up a decentralized republic government. 250 years before that Protestant Reformation. So we have that on this cycle. On an 80 year cycle, there's a financial revolution cycle. 80 years ago, Bretton Woods Agreement, etc. On a 50 year cycle, there's a technological revolution. Cycle every fifty years. There's been five of them. We're in the sixth one right now. So all three are converging right now. So that's like super high level.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  When you zoom in, you see that in real life. So we have like this war of globalism right now. The WEF, Davos, Europe, right, ECB, etc. And so I think the world is breaking apart because of that, because it's on this timeframe. And then, of course, it's being exaggerated, played out in real time with Russia, Ukraine, China, supply chains breaking down. This morning, we saw India and a bunch of other countries are banning exports of food. So now countries are starting to hoard food, hoard precious metals, hoard commodities. And so it's starting to break apart really, really quick.

• 4:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Has there ever been a point in time where those three cycles, the two hundred and fifty year, the eighty year, and the fifty year cycles all converged around the same time point?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, back in, back at the Industrial Revolution in the late seventeen hundreds.

• 5:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what was kind of your analysis of, okay, these three things converged? What happened then?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Well, the world swings back to decentralization, right? So things start getting more and more centralized, central planners, right, more control, and then it starts breaking apart. So

• 5:30Speaker 02

  the last two hundred and fifty years, we've been on the path to centralization. So we went from, the Industrial Revolution led to that, right? So in the, before the Industrial Revolution, it was agriculture society. So people were just in the farms and cottage industry. And that started bringing people into cities, into factories. Then you had to be in the United States, you had to be in New York, you had to be in Chicago, right? And so it led to that. And now it's starting to swing back the other way. So we haven't really seen this for two hundred and fifty years.

• 5:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So put the technology piece aside for a second, put the financial component aside. What does that mean for an average person, you know, over the next ten, twenty years? Is it everyone's going to go live out in the woods and, you know, kind of be on their own?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  They already are. I mean, look what happened with COVID, right? Because COVID forced people to work from home. So now, look at real estate in Colorado or Wyoming or Idaho. People always wanted to live there, but they never were able to. And now real estate there is blowing up because people can go live there now. But not just that, now they're going into Cancun in Mexico, they're going to Florianopolis in Brazil, right? So now we're starting to see these areas starting to blow up. So the world will Continue to decentralize because people will be able to go live and work in those places.

• 6:33Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the financial impact across asset prices when something like this happens?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Well, you said to remove the tech piece, but you can't because the technology is what is what always changes things. So when you look back through history, it's always technology that drives these. And so these technological revolutions, they're different than technologies. Technology is like an iPhone. I took a computer and a phone, put them together. That's cool. Technological revolution has two main components. One, it changes the course of humanity and it drives financial markets. So there's been five industrial revolution, steam engines and railways, steel and electricity, oil automobiles. And then 1971, the microprocessor, which brought us personal computers, telecommunications and the internet. So those all changed the course of humanity. I don't need to go through that. But they also drove financial markets. What's been the financial markets the last 40, 50 years?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Telecom, internet. What was before that? Ford, GM, GE. What was before that? Steel, oil. So when you look at it from financial implications for most people, you can see how that's going to start changing. In the shorter term, how is it going to start changing? So as the world starts to break apart, which it already is, it's going to change a lot of things. So for example, just this morning and throughout the course of the week. But this morning, Japan announced that they're backing off of their EV mandate.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Germany announced with, I think, three other European countries last week that they offer as well. So the globalists, the European Union have these mandates to transition to EV vehicles, right? Like 100% by 2035. And now they're all backing off of this. So they're like, well, I guess this isn't going to work. We need 60 countries to get the minerals to make one EV vehicle. And now that countries aren't able to cooperate and a lot of these countries, like I said, are banning exports. I guess this transition probably isn't going to be possible. So now we're starting to revise that. So when it comes to like financial markets, when you're betting on things like EV transitions and booms like that, I think you have to be aware of that.

• 8:27Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you start trying to analyze what's happening right now. There is a technology, there's a finance component to it, and then there's this decentralization component. I mean, the elephant in the room is, it sounds like Bitcoin is a huge piece of that. How do you kind of think through what is occurring in the moment right now? So you talked about a swing back towards decentralization. What is the technology revolution that's going to change the course of humanity? And like, what is the impact on financial markets then?

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Well, and this is a piece that I talked about at this event I was at this weekend, George Gammon's event, shout out to Rebo Capitalist. What people are missing, and Lynn Alden put out a quote last week, "To equate Bitcoin and crypto shows you don't understand either." And so I use that quote in my talk, and there's a technological revolution that's happening here, but most people are blinded to it because of the crypto boom and bust that's been happening. But there's actually a revolution that's happening. So for the first time ever, we've created digital scarcity, we've created true decentralization, we've been able to now move into the information age without copying information, which is incredibly powerful. Now, what does that mean? We don't really know. When steel was invented, it gave us a new material that we could build skyscrapers and bridges with. It also gave us material

• 9:41Speaker 02

  we could build a space shuttle with, but we didn't know that when steel came out, right? When electricity came out, the first application was a candle. It was like a digital candle. Candles were light for 5,000 years. What do we need that for? But it gave us the building block to do what we're doing right now. And so we have a new set of building blocks. We don't know exactly what we built off of that. But I think it's a, you know, I would imagine you would agree, it's probably the best risk-adjusted investment that we could make right now if we're willing to wait.

• 10:05Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you use the electricity example or the steel example, those were building blocks, as you mentioned. And in hindsight, we know that, okay, yes, the first applications were interesting, but they were really small compared to what eventually was possible. Is the revolution-driven, or like the innovation, the blockchain? Is it Bitcoin as an application of a blockchain? Like, how do you think through? Because I immediately jumped like, okay, what would the critics say of the Bitcoin-only viewpoint? They'd be like, yes, of course, the blockchain is the innovation, and that we're going to go put all these different applications, and it's a building block and all that. How do you think through? Is it actually the blockchain? Or is it the application of Bitcoin? That ends up being the like the true innovation? That serves as the foundation for whatever is to come?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  I believe that the true innovation is decentralization.

• 10:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, interesting.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  So how do we achieve decentralization? We achieve decentralization by instead of having one database, we have multiple databases. In order to achieve that, everyone must be able to run a database. So with Bitcoin, anyone in a third world country with a five year old laptop can download the database and run it. But you can't do that with any other of the other whatever 19,000 coins. And so the innovation is decentralization. And I believe there's only one that really gives us that.

• 11:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Because it's not, it's not just decentralization though, right? It's like a technology coordinated decentralization that is operating. Like my mind jumps to Balaji Srinivasan's whole idea of like, you know, these cloud based economies, right? These cloud based societies where really the decentralization is the ability to coordinate via technology across the world in a digital format.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  I don't think that's it.

• 11:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, explain.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Embalaji is super smart, by the way. So shout out to him. He's, he's like a walking encyclopedia. He's insane, right? But I don't think that's it, right? I think what it really is, is it's, it's decentralization that makes it where nobody controls the ledger. It's all about the ledger, right? If I have a coin and I give you the coin, you have the coin. If I have the coin, I have the coin. But if we do it in an information age, we need a ledger that shows who has the coin.

• 12:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Now, who controls the ledger? That's the crux of the matter, right? So I think the oldest problem that mankind has had is how do I protect my property from being stolen? So we make a tribe, a village, a kingdom, a country. But now if nobody can control the ledger, then nobody can steal my asset. And if I want to send it to you, nobody can stop it, block it, prevent it. So digital coordination is great. Don't get me wrong. It's going to be massive for production and things like that. And of course, when we have this globalization, we can all collaborate together and we can get more progress. That's awesome. That's great. But that, that doesn't prevent people from manipulating the ledger.

• 12:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think we're saying the exact same thing, which is there's only one truly decentralized ledger today, right? In terms of the ability to know what I have is I have. And if I send it to you, no one can stop me.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:50Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a lot that aspire to. Do that, claim to do it, whatever, but there's only one that is truly decentralized. When I was talking about this kind of like cloud economy or whatever, it's just now we have the ability in a digital format. If you think of Balaji's whole idea of like, there's gonna be three currencies in the future. There's like the United States dollar, there's the Chinese, and then there's Bitcoin.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And it's like, one of those three ends up quote-unquote winning. I think you and I both lean towards, well, the decentralized version.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  And there'll be many, there'll be many, right? I mean, think about the dollar took over the reserve currency of the world from the pound sterling, but that was a 40-year process. But the pound sterling is still being used today.

• 13:23Anthony Pompliano?

  It's really hard to kill currencies.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Right, it's really hard to kill currencies. So I think, I believe as the world moves to become more decentralized, instead of the one, one reserve currency of the world, everyone's waiting for the final moment. It's decentralized. So maybe my reserve is different, maybe MicroStrategy's reserve is different, maybe El Salvador's reserve is different, but other people use other things.

• 13:41Anthony Pompliano?

  So this is an interesting point. So you think that as we move more and more towards a decentralized world, it won't be one single global reserve currency, whether that's Bitcoin or a fiat currency. You think actually that there will be many reserve currencies, and it's almost like, choose your own adventure. What is the currency that you need, and which one do you choose as your reserve currency?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Well, which nation puts 100% of their reserves in one asset? Today? None.

• 14:05Anthony Pompliano?

  None, yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  They all use multiple reserves, right? So we saw Russia, what happened with Russia, they had their FX reserve seized, which were multiple currencies, not just one, multiple currencies, but they also had other assets, commodities, etc. So no country puts 100% of their reserves into one thing. So I think we're looking at it from the wrong perspective by doing that. The BIS put out this piece last week, I'm sure you saw it, because I know you're all over the news, but the BIS put out this piece, and he talked about the soul of money. And he said, "The soul of money is based off trust." And for whatever centuries, we've trusted central bankers. First of all, money has no soul, but I do believe money is based off of trust. And I think what happened with Russia, Ukraine, and the, and the world, basically not just the US, but the world, moving against Russia's FX reserve was more profound than most people think, because it was the death of trust.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  And if you've ever been in a relationship with a girlfriend, a partner, a wife, a business partner, whatever, when trust is lost, trust is lost. And I think the world just realized that we can't trust whoever holds the ledger.

• 15:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you think it was so profound? Explain more in detail in terms of like, what you think the ramifications of all these financial sanctions against Russia are.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Well, because, as I said, we seized, we, the, whatever, the world, there was multiple currencies, but their FX reserves were seized, frozen. And so that money was on this global ledger through the SWIFT system, the payment system, and it was just frozen and seized. And so how can we trust our money if it can just be taken away?

• 15:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you see the commentary from Vladimir Putin last week? It was translated, and I always caveat this with, we have to accept it as fact based on the information we have today. If somebody disproves it later or something, I don't speak Russian.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't speak Russian either.

• 15:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, so I'm somewhat relying on the translations, but it was a fairly well-articulated, pretty honest assessment. And in it, I think you have to separate out who's saying it versus what's being said. And if you can do that, which is hard, but if you can do that, one of the things he talks about is this, which is, why would any nation-state go ahead and now increase their dependency or keep their dependency on a system which is dependent on the owners, the US or G7 nations or whatever, continuing to be friendly to them, right? It's not only that it happened to Russia, I think to your point, it's every country in the world now is asking themselves, whoa, hold on a second here, we're cool today. Is there a world in the future where we're not cool?

• 16:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And even if I can't see that world, maybe I don't want to bet on us still being cool in the future, and I may do some things differently.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Which brings us all the way back to the actual revolution, which is a decentralized ledger. So what he's saying is whoever controls the ledger has the power, and it becomes a very political tool. And so we almost need a decentralized ledger that nobody can control, which is kind of what he was hinting at, I think. And I think, you know, Russia is one of three global superpowers with nuclear weapons. So what chance do tier two, tier three nations have?

• 16:55Anthony Pompliano?

  None.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  None.

• 16:57Anthony Pompliano?

  None, zero. How important is it that Russia's FX, it wasn't just sanctions, you cannot send this anywhere. So for example, we just saw G7 go ahead and ban Russian gold, right? Gold from Russia. And they said, hey, we are not going to allow our countries to import this in. And so I think of that as almost the transacting of the asset. But that doesn't mean that the United States or any of the other G7s took gold out of Russia, right? It's more so just, we're going to keep it in your country, and we're not going to do business on this specific transaction kind of rail.

• 17:29Anthony Pompliano?

  But also, there was the seizing of FX reserves as well. And it's because Russia was keeping those reserves in other kind of custody, right? Outside of their own self custody.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Well, you have no choice unless you print it out and put it in pallets in a bank.

• 17:42Anthony Pompliano?

  So this is gonna be my question, is in the legacy world, can you do self custody in any kind of scalable way if you're a country with the types of assets and size that they have?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  You can with gold, but the problem is, is it's hard to move gold around. So Venezuela had gold, but they were keeping it in the UK vaults. But the UK seized $2 billion worth of Venezuela's gold. So then it's like, well, shoot, I guess I have to have my gold in my country. And so you start to see the problem that we have, and it gets to this drug dealer moment where it's like, give me the drugs, no, give me the money, right? And so it gets very difficult to do business that way. I think, yeah, I think it just further proves like, how do we move forward in a way where the world has global cooperation without the ability to pay on some sort of a rail that can't be seized?

• 18:23Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the difference between how countries are gonna think about this and kind of analyze where the world is going versus individuals? Or is it the same exact analysis?

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I think so now when we go back to adding the three cycles together, we have the financial revolution cycle. And so I think what we're starting to see really quickly, the world is being slapped in the face this morning, Japan announced they're coming back off that EV mandate. What we're realizing really quickly is that in a world where we print unlimited amounts of fake fiat currency, people want to buy real hard things. So we have this commodity super cycle, right? We have this massive under investment into commodities, and now today we have this massive shortage, and the central banks have found out very quickly, we can't print more energy or more food. And so the world's been slapped in the face. And so we're starting to see this kind of transition going back to that. And so I think that's kind of how the world is starting to be reshaped, and we're starting to see that real things are worth real, like, real things, right?

• 19:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And this feels like a continuation. If you go back to COVID, early on, I think Chamath Palpatia, I talked with him, and one of the insights that he had almost immediately was, hey, the world, but specifically the United States, has pursued efficiency to the extreme. And we've ran around the world looking for this efficiency, and we found it. We found cheaper labor, we found more efficient supply chains, better manufacturing, all these different things. But in our pursuit of efficiency, we gave up the resilience. That is necessary in moments like in COVID when you shut down the global economy. All of a sudden, kind of the United States was exposed and we're like, damn, get those ships over here. Get those materials here. We need to import certain things because we don't have the manufacturing or supply chain set up here in America.

• 19:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And it feels like what you're talking about is a very similar trend and almost is a continuation of what we saw back in 2020.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it is, right? Because these cycles, they hit, but it's not like, like a season. It's like summer starts on this exact day. But really, the weather kind of changes plus or minus a month or two. So we're seeing a transition over this decade. It's not like it happens on a certain day. So for sure, it's, it's all part of this. We've been transitioning for like the last seven years. So it's certainly part of that, but there's other things that play as well. But as that continues to play out, also part of it is the Triffin's dilemma. As I'm sure you're aware, right? The nation that has a reserve currency has to be a net exporter, right? So we have to export dollars to the world, so which means we had to offshore all of our manufacturing. But also because all that money printing was so inflationary, then we also had to offset that inflation by cheap, you know, outsourcing, cheap labor, et cetera. But I think that all that's coming to a head. Obviously, we can see it, right?

• 20:45Speaker 02

  And the nations that have the assets are going to be the ones that move forward in the next decade.

• 20:50Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the big critiques of deflationary systems, so Bitcoin obviously being one on a structural basis, but, but in general, deflationary systems is that you will kill velocity of money and you will kill any sort of true economic growth.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, I always say, okay, that's one argument. There's another argument, which is no, the loose monetary policy and the continued devaluation of a currency essentially is a financial incentive for people to get rid of the cash. So whether you invest or you consume, do it. And unfortunately, financial education is not very pervasive in the United States or elsewhere. And so most people, they consume rather than go and invest in any material way. And so because there are so many people with this cheap money that are sitting there ready to consume, it means that manufacturers could create less and less high quality goods and people were still wanting to buy them. And so in some way, the devaluation of the currency and the loose monetary policy drove lower quality goods being flushed into the system.

• 21:48Anthony Pompliano?

  If we were to start to adopt a deflationary system, is it that the actual velocity of money would slow down? Or is it that people would only spend the money for the most high quality goods? And in some way, we would like wipe the the bad consumerism and return back to this like high quality, uh, goods and service based economy?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  These are super in-depth conversations to have. And so you have to look at cost benefit analysis on a bunch of things. So for example, uh, Fiat, uh, safety and talks about Fiat money Fiat food. And so in order to hide that inflation, we've had to make food cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. We've substituted for worse and worse products. McDonald's used to make their fries with tallow, which was good for you. Now they make it with seed oils, which is very bad for you. And so in one of the pursuits of making things cheaper, now we're making ourselves more unhealthy. So now we're spending more on healthcare. Right? And so there's a lot of cost benefit analysis there. But I think to your point about this inflation, or I'm sorry, the velocity of money, they believe that we need to make people spend money because if we don't, they're going to hoard it. Really? I think people have no problem spending money. We all want more things, right? That's human greed. So we don't need any help spending money. We're already going to spend money. But I, this is a conversation I had last night at the conference.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  And I think a lot of people say that we need, um, without, if we were on a fixed monetary system like Bitcoin, then there's no credit markets. And without the credit markets, then the economy would expand very slow. The velocity would slow down because now I can't go buy 10 houses. I can't expand my business and go buy 10 trucks if I don't have the loans. And we don't know, it's academic, but maybe the story of the tortoise or the hare. And maybe the economy would grow slower, but more steady. And in a fiat money system, we have more booms and busts. And maybe over a period of time, we end up ahead.

• 23:19Anthony Pompliano?

  I, um, this, I hate to admit this because people will laugh, but, uh, yesterday I was actually watching a speech from Peter Lynch, uh, who ran the Magellan Fund at Fidelity for, you know, however many years. And he gave it, I don't know, probably two decades ago, it seems like, based on the quality of the video, uh, to, uh, I think it was the Washington Press Club or something like that. And in it, he talks about, uh, you know, look, investing is really not that hard. Corporate profits go up about 8% a year and the stock market goes up about 8% a year. And like, the entire point of investing is if you buy something today and it's still around 20 years from now and it goes up about 8% in terms of corporate profits. Like the, the math would suggest. That this is also going to go up about eighty percent a year.

• 24:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you start to look at that, you're like, yes, maybe twenty or thirty years ago, that was one hundred percent true. But that's not what we were seeing for the last two years in this loose monetary policy. So in some way, the intervention into the market ended up really diluting what many people would have thought as like the traditional signals of value or value accrual.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:21Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about asset markets or asset prices when there is this kind of manipulation of the market? And not necessarily in a nefarious pursuit as much as just like we feel as humans, we have to do something so we're in control. So let's intervene every time there's, you know, a bad time. And then that ends up, you know, creating these kind of asset bubbles, if you will.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, Preston Push put up a chart yesterday that showed central bank balance sheets in the S and P five hundred. And I mean, they just move in lockstep, right? And so if you want to look at all the world markets and then and then break them down into US dollar value and then break out the monetary issuance or expansion, then you see that we haven't actually gone up that much. So I think it's pretty evident that the central bank balance sheets have a lot to do with these markets and these asset prices. And then at the end of the day, I think most people don't really understand the crux of the matter. And the crux of the matter is that we need food, we need energy, we need goods and services, wealth is goods and services, wealth is not money. And so what happens is we get caught up in the US dollar valuation of these stocks. So he says it's going up by eight percent a year, my stocks go up by eight percent, that's great.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  But what we really want is we want our money to buy us more goods and services in the future. We want our costs, our, you know, we want, we want to be able to buy more things for doing less work. And so if our asset prices are only going up with the cost of inflation or the rise of the price of inflation, then we're not getting any more purchasing power. So really not any better off in US dollar terms. Oh, my house is worth more, my stocks are worth more, but if I sell my house at this inflated value, I can only go buy the same exact house. So I haven't gained any purchasing power.

• 25:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And the idea is something like Bitcoin, obviously is different than that.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Well, it could be, it could be. And one thing I would say about Bitcoin is a lot of, a lot of critics, I was the only person, only Bitcoin person at this event, so I had to deal with this all weekend. But a lot of people, a lot of people expect it to be what it's, what it could be in the future, they expect it to be that today. If we were walking through the forest and here's a little oak tree this Big. I'm like, hey, Pom, check this oak tree out. Can you imagine this little thing's gonna be giant one day? And you're like, no way. Look how small the thing. It'll never be big. It's like, no, it's an oak tree. It will be. No, it can never be, right? And so like Bitcoin's on an evolution path. Uh, right now it's volatile, right? If you live in a third world country and you're trying to use Bitcoin every day and you're trying to, you know, put your money for food in that, like it's volatile and that could be dangerous, which, you know, maybe a lot of people think CB, or not CBDCs, but stable coins could work in conjunction with Bitcoin in some of these countries.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  And so it's not the best, it's not the most stable currency today. So all these critics wanna say it's not a good currency. Well, it's probably not today because it's super volatile, but it has been a good store of value. If you can zoom out and look over a long period of time. So is it the best store of value over the last six months? No, um, it's up 20% in the last seven days. Uh, it's down 65% in the last eight months, but it's also up 450% in the last 24 months. So depends on what kind of timeframe. So if you wanna, it's, it's on its path to becoming a store of value. And then eventually I think you can move on to a medium of exchange.

• 27:05Anthony Pompliano?

  In your recent presentation, you talked about the idea of Bitcoin, not so much a blockchain as much as a time chain, uh, which is a very unique concept. Uh, explain what this means. Time chain, not blockchain.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  So in Satoshi's white paper, he never used the word blockchain. And so, and you mentioned earlier, is blockchain the revolution? And I'm guilty of that. I got into Bitcoin in 2015. In 2016, I started writing a cryptocurrency newsletter and from 2016 to 2019, I published a thousand pages of research on cryptocurrencies. And I was like, hey, it's blockchain. It's not Bitcoin. So I, I was guilty. But after publishing a thousand pages of research, I was like, no, that's not it. But back to the time chain. In the white paper, he used the word time chain. And uh, Gigi put out this article how time is money, but money is time. And so time has an order of things. And so basically the time chain keeps order, keeps time of these blocks being added one time after another.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  And the importance of that, back to this revolution, it gives us this new ledger that keeps track of time. And we can do all types of things that we don't know. So in a good example, as a consensus, two weeks ago, I was down there in Austin and they announced, Dorsey announced Web 5. Like, it's whatever.

• 28:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Skip over Web 4.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  It's a meme, right? But, but what they introduced is with these DIDs, right? So Daniel Burr has been working with Ion Microsoft right now, these DIDs and these decentralized identifiers, where I can control my ID, my data, instead of having to log in with Facebook or Google, I can now keep my ID, right? And they use the Bitcoin blockchain to put that hash in, to keep that record. So now we have this decentralized ledger that nobody can control, and we can use it for things like a DID, that we wouldn't be able to do that before. If we put it into another chain, that could be hacked or manipulated, or whatever. So, so we're starting to see how this time chain can be used for other types of things like this DID.

• 28:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you think of the time chain, one of the kind of nice things on Twitter that I've seen, which every time I see it, it just makes me smile, even though I know what they're doing, is a number of people I've seen recently announce the birth of their child. And rather than say, you know, kind of the historic or historical, on this date, at this time, the baby was born, this, whatever, they just put, what is the block?

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Hmm, I haven't seen that.

• 29:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. What, what, basically, what block was?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  You know what block your baby's on?

• 29:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I do, I do not, to be honest. With my first child, I was just making sure that the baby was there. My wife was good, all that. But when I saw, you know, people started to do this over the last couple of months, I was like, man, that is so cool. Because now all of a sudden, it's not like, oh, on June 4th at 11:03 PM, you know, Eastern time, and you're like, okay, GMT to EST. Like, you just get rid of all that. And it's just, here is the actual block in which this occurred, and that block is the same across the world, right? Which goes back to this idea of a time chain. And if you could almost standardize time, not based on some sort of geography, which we have today with time zones, but instead you can actually have a globally agreeable time, it's pretty powerful.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, because if you think about who keeps the ledger, so if we were both using the same bank account, we both had debit cards, and we're in different parts of the world. So you run a transaction, I run a transaction, and then that ledger is trying to reconcile that. But to your point, we're in different time zones. So which transaction came in first? You're a day ahead of me, a day behind me, et cetera. And so it creates that problem. And again, it's a building block. We don't know what can be built on top of it, but I hadn't really thought of that, but I think it's a great illustration.

• 30:29Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the craziest thing you think is possible? Right? Obviously, I understand this is a building block, and we can only see so far into the future. It's super foggy when you look too far. But like, what is the thing that you're like, you know what? I do think that this will happen.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  What I think happens more than anything is changing the incentive structures of the world. In Bitcoin Miami, Breedlove had a good conversation with Jordan Peterson, and they talked about how if everybody's playing the game, everybody's playing together and everyone's productive because everyone's enjoying playing the game and they're all working together. But if half the people had to step out of the game to enforce the remaining half to play the game, you've lost productivity because now half the people have to force the other people. But also, when they're forcing the other half of the people, they don't really want to play anymore, so their productivity goes down. And that's kind of the environment that we're in today. So imagine if we change the incentive structure to where everybody can play the game together, how much better the world could be. We have a fiat money system that's losing value, so we used to be able to save money in dollars.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Today, we've had progress because of the specialization of labor, right? So if I could be the best brain surgeon I could be, maybe I could change the world. But today, I have to be half brain surgeon, half investor.

• 31:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I talk all the time about, we ask teachers to go be the best teachers in the world, go be the best accountant, go be the best marketing manager, whatever. And then, oh, by the way, nights and weekends, like, become a great investor so you can protect your purchasing power.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, that doesn't feel fair.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  So we've lost massive mindshare. So I look at, how much different could the world be if everybody was providing value? As far as what technologies could be built, it's very difficult. Humans are horrible at imagining the future. We imagine better versions of today. We have cars, we'll have flying cars. So if you look at books of the future from 50, 60 years ago, they envisioned us teleporting and spaceships. We didn't do that. They didn't envision iPhones and things like that. So it's very difficult to say.

• 32:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think that the innovation on top of Bitcoin will come from the Bitcoin community, or do you think it'll be outsiders who are looking for some technology and realize they can use Bitcoin, but they aren't necessarily "Bitcoiners" as they create the innovation?

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Probably eventually non-Bitcoiners, right? So I think what happens is, I look at it like a TCP IP protocol, and there's trillions of applications built on one protocol. And now we have a Bitcoin protocol, and I believe there will be trillions of applications built on top of the Bitcoin protocol eventually. You know, like this Taro, for example, seems like a pretty cool option where we could maybe launch other tokens on top of that. A lot of Bitcoiners aren't super happy about that. But I think about, like, one of the big revolutions is keeping property in a way that can't be stolen from me, and if I want to send it to you, nobody can. censor that, right? So think about before the internet, how did you have stocks? You had stock certificates. They were pieces of paper that I would keep in my safe. And if I had the stock certificate, a bare instrument or a bond, right? I would have that bare instrument. And almost if you could put assets back into bare instruments where I could hold them and we could exchange them freely.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  So I think that's probably a big innovation that could happen. And I think we'll start to see a lot of stuff come on that aren't Bitcoiners. Eventually, you know, they'll just be building companies. I was investing in the early days of the dot com in the late 90s. And I remember at the time I was young, just started my investing career, my roommate quit his job and we're trading these things called internet stocks. Everyone thought we were crazy. They'd never heard of these things. But today, there's no such thing as internet stocks. They're just companies.

• 33:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Last thing I want to talk about is Taro. I think it's a really interesting way to kind of apply a thought process as to where this could be going. So for those that don't know, you have Bitcoin layer one. We then get layer two on top of that, trying to make it more scalable, cheaper, faster, which is Lightning Network. And now there's this idea from Lightning Labs they put forward called Taro. And the idea is that you would be able to create all sorts of different assets on top of and tie into eventually the layer one of Bitcoin via.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  A decentralized ledger.

• 34:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Correct. And so when you think about that, is if the world does move to a fully digital world, which seems to be the overarching trend over the last couple of decades and centuries even. Is it one ledger or do we end up getting multiple ledgers? And really it gets at this point of like the Bitcoiners that are upset or don't like the idea of Taro, is it because they don't believe that other assets will become digital and need a decentralized ledger? Or like, why are they not as excited about it? Maybe as the people who are working on it?

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Well, a lot of people believe that we don't need a bunch of tokens. We need one. And I would agree in a sense, right? So we need one money. We don't need a bunch of money. So you know, you talk about business, obviously the best business show. And part of a business is to reduce friction. You want to reduce friction as much as possible. I might have 15 minutes to kill and there's Dave and Buster's and I might want to play a couple of video games, but I don't want to go stand in line and have to convert my dollars into the stupid tokens and I don't. So there's friction. I won't even play, right? So we want to reduce friction. I could see they're having one money, but there are other assets. Continue to have businesses. People are still going to want to invest into businesses. Like, we're still going to have other assets that I don't see that going away. So the ability to own those assets, whatever they may be, shares of a real estate property, shares of a company, I could see those other assets needing a way to own them and hold them

• 35:18Speaker 02

  and have custody of them. And so I think having tokens is a way to do that.

• 35:21Anthony Pompliano?

  It's so fascinating because I've used the example in the past of why do people invest? To get more dollars, right? If you're in the United States. And so your whole idea is I'm gonna take dollars, I'm gonna put it in some other asset that is going to outpace the growth or decline of the dollars. And then when I sell, I will get more dollars. In the Bitcoin world, there's a lot of folks who think of it as I'm gonna take my dollars, I'm gonna convert it to Bitcoin, this decentralized digital currency, and I'm gonna hold that. But it's hard for me not to see a world where there's people who say, okay, I have Bitcoin, and I have three Bitcoin, I'm going to invest so that something outpaces, and then I get five Bitcoin. And if Bitcoin becomes your reserve currency, then naturally, you're gonna want more and more

• 36:01Anthony Pompliano?

  of it, and that would be a metric for gaining wealth. I think the critique of that viewpoint is what's gonna outpace, you know, Bitcoin's 125% compounding growth rate of the last decade. And so how do you think about that? Like, is it that the compound annual growth rate will go down over time, and eventually you'll have to invest to get more? Or like, what do you think?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course, of course it does. You can't keep going up like that at that rate forever. I go back to history. So how did it work on a gold standard? People saved gold, they consumed less than they earned, and they lent it out, right? And the rich people would lend to the kings and the governments, right? Go back and watch Game of Thrones, right? So the rich people are loaning money out. So people earn less than they consume, and then they loan it back out. And so people always do that. Obviously, at some point, you know, we're gonna have to see that the rate of increase is gonna go down. But I just go back to that. History shows us how it works, and people are always gonna want to lend for more yield and to increase what they have. And we're gonna need economic growth. People are still gonna have ideas to create new products and new things, and they're gonna need startup capital to do that. And people are still gonna be willing to lend money for that.

• 37:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Where can we send people to find you on the internet? I feel like more people need to hear your ideas and kind of your thoughts.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think just go just on Twitter, at one Mark Moss, the number one, or just at one mark moss.com. I have links to everything on there. I do a couple hours a week on iHeart Radio, nationally syndicated radio show, and the podcast, and my YouTube channel, and on and on and on.

• 37:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I just dropped the link in the chat for anyone who wants to go follow him. Last question actually is, you always seem to be very high energy. Similar to me, I try to be high energy all the time. One of our sponsors is Eight Sleep. I sleep on the Eight Sleep mattress, love it. What's your sleep schedule? I see you have coffee, so what's your caffeine schedule? And how do you keep high energy throughout the day?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  So I haven't tried that mattress. I got a Sleep Number bed and I've been sleeping in a hotel. I can't wait to get back under my bed. About eight years ago, I read Tim Ferriss's book Tools of Titans. And he talked about this, this state that some people get in where this fog lifts off their brain into this crystal clear thinking. I was like, oh, I want that. And it comes through fasting and then you have ketones start going through your body and you get that. And so I was like, all right, I'll skip breakfast. I'll do an 18 hour fast every day, but I love breakfast. I don't know if I can do it. I can do it for two weeks. I'll commit to two weeks and if I, you know, we'll see what happens. And that was eight years ago and I still do it every day. So I do have some coffee, but I don't eat. I still do about an 18 hour fast every day.

• 38:19Anthony Pompliano?

  What time do you eat for the first time?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  I usually eat about two o'clock, two, two or three o'clock.

• 38:22Anthony Pompliano?

  So like two to eight o'clock or so?

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Two to eight, usually like a six hour window.

• 38:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  And then maybe twice a month I do like a 24.

• 38:28Anthony Pompliano?

  So I don't eat breakfast either. Do you eat more, the bigger meal, the first one or the last one?

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Usually the first one.

• 38:38Anthony Pompliano?

  The first.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  The lunch would be a really big meal, yeah.

• 38:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and then you eat a smaller meal for dinner. I think that that's the only way to do it or I get too hungry and then I start eating crazy shit.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause I'm waiting for dinner.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think that's what really gives me the energy. It gives me that clear focus that I was after and it makes it easy too. Cause I don't have to think about what I'm gonna eat every morning.

• 38:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, relentless.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:58Anthony Pompliano?

  That's the whole key.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 39:00Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, man, listen, thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks, man.

• 39:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And we'll definitely have to get you on here more often because I think that you've got a number of ideas that people would really benefit from.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 39:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. 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.