#1566 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | How Geopolitics Are Making Bitcoin Stronger

Polina Pompliano and Anthony Pompliano discuss what is going on with bitcoin, bitcoin treasury companies, impact of geopolitical conflicts, stock market, and a little behind the scenes of announcing a bitcoin treasury company. =======================Simple Mining makes Bitcoin mining simple and accessible for everyone. We offer a premium white glove hosting service, helping you maximize the profitability of Bitcoin mining. For more information on Simple Mining or to get started mining Bitcoin, visit https://www.simplemining.io/=======================Invest as you spend with the Gemini Credit Card® (https://www.gemini.com/pomp). Sign up today and get approved by 6/30/25 to earn a $200 Bitcoin bonus. Terms apply (http://gemini.com/legal/credit-card-intro-promo-terms). The Gemini Credit Card is issued by WebBank. See rates & fees (https://www.gemini.com/legal/cardholder-agreement) for more details. Some exclusions apply to instant rewards in which rewards are deposited when the transaction posts. This content is sponsored by Gemini, but my opinions are my own.=======================Bitwise is one of the largest and fastest-growing crypto asset managers. As of December 31, 2021, the company managed over $1.3 billion across an expanding suite of investment solutions, which include the world's largest crypto index fund and other innovative products spanning Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, and crypto equities. Whether you’re an individual, advisor, or institution, Bitwise provides intelligent access to crypto with your unique circumstances in mind. Visit www.bitwiseinvestments.com to learn more. Certain of the Bitwise investment products may be subject to the extreme risks associated with investing in crypto assets. Visit www.bitwiseinvestments.com/disclosures/ to learn more.=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:58Anthony Pompliano?

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

• 1:26Speaker 03

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:50Anthony Pompliano?

  What's going on guys? Today we got a great conversation with Polina Pompliano. In this conversation, we talk about what's going on with Bitcoin, the Bitcoin treasury companies, how Iran and Israel and all of the geopolitical conflict, how that's impacting your portfolio and the price of Bitcoin. On top of that, we also get into what's going on in the stock market, why investors now like Bitcoin, the fact that the volatility's going down, not up. And then Polina gives a little bit of behind the scenes, what happened over the weekend before we announced the deal in the public markets. Hope you guys enjoy this conversation with Polina Pompliano. All right, Polina, what's the first topic you got?

• 2:21Speaker 04

  All right, let's talk geopolitics. Bitcoin's price dropped below 100,000 as the US, you know, bombed some nuclear bases in Iran on Saturday.

• 2:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  However, it is now, I just checked at back at 105,000.

• 2:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause it doesn't matter.

• 2:38Speaker 04

  So how should investors just in general view these constantly volatile geopolitical events?

• 2:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I think the first thing is you gotta remember that geopolitical events like this are a surprise by design. So there's now reports coming out that the United States sent some B-52s to Guam. And everyone's like, oh, where are the B-52s? Let's look, they're going west. At the same time, the US from Missouri sent nine B-52s east. No one saw it coming. They got in, they dropped the bombs and they got out. No shots fired at US servicemen and women, which is incredible feat. 37 hours, if I remember correctly, uh, flight. Now, why is that important? It surprises the enemy. It surprises the American people. It surprises the investor. So the surprise factor immediately people, like it's like the ground starts shaking in an earthquake. You're like, wait, wait, what's going on? Let me just get my bearings. So what do you do?

• 3:29Anthony Pompliano?

  That uncertainty leads to a quick degree of fear. If you fear, what do you do? Sell, sell, sell. And so you see algorithms and humans both sell. Now this happened over the weekend, though. You can't go sell your stocks. You can't sell a lot of these assets because the hours of operations of the traditional exchanges. So naturally what you get is you get a big sell off in things like Bitcoin, et cetera. As I predicted over the weekend is that it will come right back because ultimately it is a shock factor. So you see it go down and then it goes back up. And so what people I think have realized is, hey, everything is good. Everything's going to be fine. Now, of course, they did announce a ceasefire, which is helping the assets recover as well. And we saw stocks go down on Monday. We saw other assets go down. So it is really just people in response.

• 4:14Anthony Pompliano?

  They didn't have anything else they could sell. So if you want to raise dollars, if you're worried, what do you do? You sell in almost like a panic, a emotional response to the news and therefore you lose money. I mean, that's what happened, right? Is if you were selling at 100 and now it's at 105, that wasn't smart. And so I just think that is the general thing. And we've seen this happen before with a lot of the Middle East conflict. When Iran shot, I think it was like 300 missiles at Israel, then same thing happened. Bitcoin sold off and then it came back. And so it goes back to this idea that the people who tend to do best in the market are the people who lose their passwords. Just chill. Stop looking at the chart. If you're spending your Saturday staring at a chart, we got a whole nother conversation we gotta have. Instead, understand the asset

• 4:59Anthony Pompliano?

  that you own. Because if you bought Bitcoin, and then all of a sudden, Iran, Israel, and the United States start dropping bombs on each other, and you're selling your Bitcoin, you don't understand what you own. And so it comes back to this idea that you have a asset that is decentralized, that is censorship resistant, that cannot be seized, and it provides sovereignty for individuals, companies, financial institutions, and countries. The more uncertainty, the more chaos, the more that we get towards this like, fourth turning, the more valuable Bitcoin is going to be. And so to me, that is ultimately what we saw, is we saw an uneducated, emotional response. Bitcoin sells off, comes right back, everyone chill out, you're fine.

• 5:42Anthony Pompliano?

  If you went to sleep on Friday, you woke up on Monday, you don't even really know what happened, right? And that's the way that it should be, is just keep a long time horizon. Bitcoin is not supposed to be a speculative tool. Yes, people do speculate with it, but ultimately Bitcoin is to be held for decades. And if you do that, that tends to be in a much better position.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  Okay, um, let's talk about how actually volatility with Bitcoin has kind of cooled, and Bitcoin has become more central to people's portfolios. Co2, um, the investment firm, it has this list of the largest 40 tech quote unquote companies by 2030, and it ranks it by 2030 market cap. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Revolut, and AppLovin made the list, and there's no Apple or Google. What do we think?

• 6:35Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know about all the other ones, I'll talk about Bitcoin. With Bitcoin, I think that there's this concept of, uh, what is the child story, like not too hot, not too cold is just right?

• 6:44Speaker 04

  Goldilocks.

• 6:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Goldilocks. So you can say that basically Bitcoin has now entered the Goldilocks of volatility. And what I mean by that is Bitcoin, when it is a 150 vol asset, Institutions can't hold that. They can't see something go up thousands of percent and then drop 90%, right? It's just, it's too volatile. Bitcoin also is not that interesting to people if it only goes up 2 or 3% a year, right? So what you need is you need a higher degree of volatility than you could otherwise get in treasuries or stocks, but you need a low enough volatility where institutions can wrap their head around it. And Bitcoin has now entered into that area. Bitcoin, over the last five years, the compound annual growth rate is somewhere around 60, 65%. That's very attractive. The best hedge fund in history, RenTech, that is what they returned.

• 7:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So you now have entered, right? You just think of as volatility has fallen, or as the compound annual growth rate has fallen, you now are entering a zone where the absolute best hedge fund in history is. So that crossover is pretty important because now it is fathomable to people. They're like, okay, 60%, that's high, but I at least have seen something like that before. If you show up and you're like, yeah, compound annual growth rate is 240%, the fact that it's such a high percentage, they deem it's risky and therefore they won't put it in their portfolio.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  I mean, you were talking to institutions back in, what, 2018, 2019? Um, do you remember their reaction? Because it was very volatile then.

• 8:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I think the institutions that I was fortunate enough to work with, who backed those funds, one of the things they liked about the structure that we created is that we put Bitcoin inside of a venture fund. Now, why do they like that?

• 8:19Speaker 04

  I see.

• 8:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Because to them, they were only getting quarterly marks. So four times a year, they would be updated on what the whole portfolio was worth. So the private companies plus Bitcoin. If we'd gone to them and said, hey, we're going to buy Bitcoin in every week, every month, every, you know, quarter, we're going to give you these updates on just Bitcoin's price. And sometimes it's going to be up hundreds of percent, sometimes it's going to be down 50%. They're like, we can't put that in our portfolio. It's too volatile. So the way that we were able to get Bitcoin into some of the portfolios of these organizations was we basically put a wrapper around it that was able to obfuscate the actual volatility of Bitcoin.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  Say that word again.

• 8:54Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I say it. How you say it?

• 8:56Speaker 04

  Obfuscate? I don't think I've ever heard you use that word.

• 9:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Hide it. You know, hide it behind the curtain.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  No, I know what it means.

• 9:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, okay. Well, I'm just saying.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  Wow, that you just hit me with obfuscate.

• 9:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, I'm trying to teach my children how to read, write, listen, talk. I gotta start. I might start reading the dictionary to up my vocabulary so that I can help them.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  Just, just very quick. One time I, this was years ago. I didn't know that Anthony had a full, much of a vocabulary, if at all. And he was, he was like, no, I just meant like you use simple words, which I appreciated. So he was on the phone, I'm doing my work and he's pacing back and forth during his phone call. And all of a sudden I heard, it would behoove you.

• 9:38Anthony Pompliano?

  It would behoove that person.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  Did you pull that out, fraud?

• 9:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, listen, when you're have the intelligence level of me, when you're at high school, one of the things that you can do is you can really not care a lot. And if every once in a while you pull a word out that people are like, don't expect you to have. Now, now they're on their toes. They're like, wait a second, this kid, where did behoove come from? Where did these words come from? Because now they don't know, they can't put you in a box. So I gotta.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  Let's just say I am, I am bewildered by this.

• 10:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, well, the whole idea is that you can put it inside a structure and you can hide the volatility. Now what's starting to happen though is investors are saying, wait, the volatility is at a level that I actually want my portfolio. I want it to outperform my traditional assets and I can wrap my head around it. So they understand Bitcoin better, they understand what the volatility is, and they see the trend. We have the benefit of time, the compounding growth rate is coming down. So you know that, hey, today it's at 60 over the last five years. Five years from now or 10 years from now, maybe it's at 30 or 40, maybe it's at 20, right? Whatever the number is, it's going down, but you want to be able to capitalize that because it still outperforms your regular portfolio. And so I think that is really this idea that code two is talking about where they're like, okay, now investors are starting to put Bitcoin into the portfolio because the volatility has cooled.

• 10:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, yes, individuals, the reason why they were attracted to Bitcoin and why most of the people watching or listening to this front ran all the institutions and countries is because you wanted max volatility. You actually did not want the volatility to cool. You wanted up a thousand percent, down 80, up a thousand percent, down 80, you're cool with that. The institutions are not. And so now the volatility has come down. That's why you see individuals. I wouldn't do it, but other individuals basically push way out on the risk curve in crypto. They're saying, okay, well, this Bitcoin thing, that doesn't move as much as fork coin or whatever other coin. I'm looking for max volatility. Let me go to, you know, shit coin land, right? And so again, it goes back to what is somebody trying to optimize for the institutions are not

• 11:35Anthony Pompliano?

  optimizing solely for upside volatility. What they are optimizing for is kind of a well-rounded asset. They want something that has some degree of asymmetry, but also they want a thing that's not going to go down 80%. They want something that is resilient. They want something that now is starting to check all these boxes that Bitcoin brings to the table. They put it in the portfolio and sharp ratio goes up. They actually get some non-correlation or lower correlation between their assets in their portfolio and they still have a high enough degree of upside in Bitcoin that it outperforms some of the other assets and that makes it attractive.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  Perfect. Um, let's talk about stable coins. So on CNBC on Monday, you said people want to spend stable coins because they will be less valuable in the future, but they want to save Bitcoin because it will appreciate over time. Circle's stock has raised 600% since its IPO and the US Senate passed crypto legislation called the Genius Act last week, giving crypto industry the first major legislative win. Trump urged the House to pass it. He says, this is American brilliance at its best and we're going to show the world how to win with digital assets like never before. Just really quick before we get into it. Can I just shout out our producer, Matt

• 12:45Speaker 04

  Merlinsky for these topics? He does great research. I'm just out here like a talking head.

• 12:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Matt, how much do you pay for that? This is this, yeah, this is something.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  This is such good research. All right.

• 12:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Polina is getting paid in bagels or something. All right. So, uh, stable coins are, um, stable coins are hilarious to me. The great paradox of stable coins is they're incredibly important and they don't matter at all. Same thing at the same time, right? Why do I say that? They're incredibly important because they are the way that many of these traditional financial institutions, politicians, uh, emerging markets, they're all getting on board to this new digital world. They don't matter at the same time because they're just dollars. Dollars have existed for years, right? It's not some new crazy thing. And so

• 13:33Speaker 04

  Is it just like a digital doll? I'm trying to understand.

• 13:35Anthony Pompliano?

  The best way to think about it, if I ask you, give me $1 of physical cash, you're gonna hand it to me. If I say to you, send me a dollar on Venmo or from your bank, you still send me a dollar, whether you handed it to me physically or what I would call an electronic dollar.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I probably pay some in fees, so it's not

• 13:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Possibly, but it's still $1. It's just in a different form factor.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 13:57Anthony Pompliano?

  A stable coin is now just another form factor, which is a digital token on a blockchain that represents that same dollar. So whether it's physical, electronic, or digital, it's still $1.

• 14:07Speaker 04

  And what? It's backed by my like digital dollar, my physical?

• 14:11Anthony Pompliano?

  The dollar that is on the blockchain is backed by US Treasuries.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 14:14Anthony Pompliano?

  So they sit there, you can go, you can get them back, right? It's got the value behind it. And so the whole idea, again, is they're important because they're onboarding people to the digital world. It now is an ability for you to move without hours of operations, low cost, anywhere in the world, immediate, etc. So basically, the dollar gets more utility, but it doesn't matter because it's just the dollar. So you're opening access, you're improving the usage of the dollar, but ultimately, the actual asset itself is just $1.

• 14:42Speaker 04

  And just really quick, why?

• 14:45Speaker 04

  Why is it different from just sending a digital dollar? If I want to send money to Bulgaria right now, I can do it via like PayPal. Why is that different?

• 14:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  Maybe?

• 14:54Anthony Pompliano?

  It depends on what the country is. It depends on when you send it. It depends on what the fees are. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there, right? So for example, let's say that on the weekend, I may or may not have recently been involved in a transaction where people had to send wires. Well, the wires don't actually get sent till the weekdays.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 15:09Anthony Pompliano?

  And so there's hours of operations, right? Everyone has had the experience in business that they gotta get to the bank or get online and send the wire before 2:00 PM, right? You know, there's all these things that happen that again are somewhat antiquated. If you move all of the money into a digital token that now can just move freely at any time for no cost to anyone, now what you're doing is you're opening access, you're reducing friction. There should be more ...of money in the system. That's ultimately good for economies and for individuals. Do the banks like this? Well, the banks don't like it if they can't participate. Are they participating? So when Tether and Circle are out there having a field day. Right. And the banks are sitting on the sidelines because they can't touch crypto. Right.

• 15:52Anthony Pompliano?

  The banks are advocating, they're saying we should create rules. This is nonsense, yada, yada, whatever. But recently, two things happened. Uh, one, the banks who have been very clear, say if they, we get the green light, we definitely jumping into stablecoin game. JP Morgan came out, they announced, I think it was called the J, uh, JPMD, I think is what they called it, which is like, uh, their version of a stablecoin. A little bit, some changes they made, but it's their version. Bank of America, uh, Brian Moynihan, uh, he said that, uh, they're going to get in the game if they get the approval. And then the bank, uh, regulators just came out and they said that they are now going to reduce or remove this idea of reputational risk to a bank if they participate or touch things that are in crypto.

• 16:31Anthony Pompliano?

  So what used to happen is if a bank, Signature, Silvergate, et cetera, if they were doing anything that had crypto relation, uh, relationship, they would actually get dinged by the regulator and they would say, oh, that's a reputational risk. Uh, there, there's issues there. Now the regulators are saying, we're not going to assign that to you if you participate in this industry, uh, which is kind of a, a big moment because now it again is one step closer to the banks participating. And so the banks are also rumored to be talking about, should they come together? Should we get a little, uh, oligopoly? You didn't think I knew that word, right? But on top of that, uh, maybe they'll create a little consortium. You know, I knew that word, right? Um, and so as they create a partnership on Wall Street, uh, maybe what they will do is they will create a stablecoin that all the banks will use.

• 17:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And their idea is that they have a network effect. They've got a walled garden. They'll go to their customers and they'll say, use our products. Now, to all the subscribers of the POMP letter since like 2018, look it up real quick. POMP letter and then type, uh, corporate central bank, I think is, uh, the letter. That's big brain right there to remember what I wrote seven years ago. Um, what, what is it? What year? No, four months ago. Hold on a second.

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• 18:42Anthony Pompliano?

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• 19:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Go check them out today.

• 19:30Anthony Pompliano?

  It's no secret that Bitcoin ETFs have taken Wall Street by storm. With over $35 billion in assets in just one year, it's become the most successful ETF launch in history. My partner Bitwise is the first and only Bitcoin ETF provider to openly publish its Bitcoin wallet addresses, allowing anyone to verify the fund's holdings. I believe this level of transparency is exactly The kind of innovation that only crypto makes possible. Bitwise is also the only ETF issuer that is a crypto specialist asset manager, meaning their team solely focuses on Bitcoin and they have the research, education and support to help investors navigate the space with confidence. All of that is great, but what I love most about Bitwise is probably their commitment to developers. Bitwise donates 10% of their ETF's profits to Bitcoin open source developers.

• 20:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin developers are the unsung heroes, working tirelessly to maintain, improve and innovate the blockchain. Their efforts ensure that Bitcoin remains true to its promise as a decentralized system that is built to last. Go to bitwisepomp.com to learn more about their ETF and other services. Once again, that's bitwisepomp.com. Bitwise, P-O-M-P dot com. As always, remember investing is risky and carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before you invest. So my whole thing was JB Morgan tried this one time before. They type in a JPM Coin. They launched something called JPM Coin, which was a test. And what they said is we are going to have our corporate clients use JPM Coin to move money within the bank. What year?

• 21:00Speaker 04

  Is this five years ago?

• 21:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Something like that.

• 21:02Speaker 04

  Wells Fargo is creating a

• 21:04Anthony Pompliano?

  No, JP Morgan, JPM Coin. And so when they did that, and when they did that, the whole idea that I said was you have to be careful that they do not launch these things with a dollar backing. And then in the future, they remove the dollar backing and now they can just print coins at will. They basically become a central bank themselves. And that's what the US did. The US basically removed the dollar, the gold backing, and they just can now print as many dollars as they want. Every bank on Wall Street would love to be able to do that if they could. So what I think is going to have to happen here is you're going to have to create a rule that says, if you launch a stablecoin and you have a backing, let's say one to one to the US dollar, you may never remove the backing in the future. You can't onboard a bunch of people with the promise that the coin is backed by something

• 21:47Anthony Pompliano?

  and then in the future, remove that backing, change the rules and now all of a sudden you just have a money printer.

• 21:52Speaker 04

  Is it the corporate central bank playbook?

• 21:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Like I said, what year?

• 21:55Speaker 04

  2019.

• 21:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Ooh, I was off by one year, six years ago.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  But I'm not.

• 21:59Anthony Pompliano?

  I've been talking about this for half a decade.

• 22:01Speaker 04

  I just realized I'm not a paying member of the palm platter, so I can't actually read it. But I do see the corporate central bank play book. I'm sure I am on another account.

• 22:11Anthony Pompliano?

  You guys want to understand the dynamic between Clinton and I? She claims to not be a subscriber.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  I should be complimentary.

• 22:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Who was the first subscriber of the profile?

• 22:20Speaker 04

  Actually, somebody else, you were second. Somebody beat you to it, remember? You were upset.

• 22:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm still paying.

• 22:25Speaker 04

  But wait.

• 22:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Years later.

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Why did you, why did you not add me? It's complimentary. It's the least you could do.

• 22:31Anthony Pompliano?

  People just want handouts in this world, man.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 22:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Like a hundred dollars.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:35Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like you don't even respect the time, energy, effort I put into creating.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  My money, a hundred dollars.

• 22:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Big ideas I've been putting there for a decade. You know how much money people would have made over the last 10 years or whatever I've been writing that thing?

• 22:46Speaker 04

  Who came up with the idea for that thing?

• 22:48Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the next topic?

• 22:51Speaker 04

  All right. Um, all right. So let's talk about this deal that happened over the weekend. Um, you launched a Bitcoin treasury company, but more so than that, let's just talk about like this trend of Bitcoin treasury companies. By the way, fun fact, today I woke up, um, to a message from my family in Bulgaria to an article in Bulgarian about Anthony launching a Bitcoin treasury company. I was like, this thing made its way to Bulgaria?

• 23:19Anthony Pompliano?

  It's global. Bitcoin is global. Everyone wants Bitcoin. Do you not see everyone wants it? Doesn't matter what language you speak, what religion you're part of, what your education, your wealth status, where your geography, does not matter. Everyone wants Bitcoin.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  So just explain to me, like, what is a Bitcoin treasury company?

• 23:34Anthony Pompliano?

  The entire idea is when you capitalize a business.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:38Anthony Pompliano?

  And let's say in the dollar denominated world, you put dollars onto the balance sheet. Okay, when you put dollars on the balance sheet, then you gotta go figure out what are you gonna do?

• 23:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Some businesses say, uh, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna build, uh, a piece of hardware. Some say I'm gonna build some software. Some people say that I'm gonna go and do, uh, lending, or maybe I'll do asset management, or whatever the thing is, right? But you seed the business with some dollars and then you have a business that you get into. What the Bitcoin treasury companies essentially have said is whether they already are a company or they're starting a new company. I'm gonna put Bitcoin on the balance sheet and then my entire goal is to buy more Bitcoin. Now, what people generally think of as a true Bitcoin treasury company or a pure play Bitcoin treasury company is they essentially are using capital market tools to raise more capital to then go buy more Bitcoin. So for example, if let's say that you put a hundred dollars of Bitcoin on the

• 24:26Anthony Pompliano?

  balance sheet of a company and Bitcoin's price goes up, let's say 50%, now you have a hundred and fifty dollars worth of Bitcoin. Your share price should be increasing. If your share price is increasing, there's all kinds of capital market tools available to you. What is happening right now with many of these Bitcoin treasury companies is they're trading at a premium to NAV. And there's a lot of debate as to why. Some trade, you know, NAV. Some people trade in some cases as high as six, seven, eight, nine times NAV, right? Obviously, I don't think that's very sustainable. And so there is some sweet spot where what people are essentially, in my opinion, doing is they are trying to quantify or measure what is the value of the future Bitcoin purchases that are going to occur here. And the way that many people have started to think about this,

• 25:08Anthony Pompliano?

  which again, I'm not saying whether I agree with this metric or not, is something called Bitcoin per share. So if there's 100 shares and there is 100 Bitcoin on the balance sheet, one share equals one Bitcoin. So you have a Bitcoin per share of one. If all of a sudden now you have 110 Bitcoin on the balance sheet and you still only have 100 shares, now you have a Bitcoin per share of 1.1. That's a 10% increase. And therefore, if you keep getting that Bitcoin per share to grow, then people start to say, oh, you know what? If I hold this thing and the Bitcoin per share is going to grow in the future, then I should actually ascribe some future value and therefore it's going to trade at more than NAV. Well, if the stock trades at more than NAV, then people have even more capital market tools available to them. And so I don't think that the

• 25:50Anthony Pompliano?

  current version of what's happening in the market is going to be the version that happens forever. I do think that there is a lot of value, whether you are an individual, a company, financial institution, or a country, in buying Bitcoin and holding it. And I think that now what we are seeing is we are seeing the intersection of Bitcoin and traditional markets. And as those two things come together, there will be new ways that people can start to do things that they otherwise weren't doing a decade ago. How that plays out, we'll see. Obviously, given the the deal that we announced, there's not a lot that I can say in terms of our specific strategy. People can go look at the public documentation. People can look at the the press releases. But I do think that there is something very interesting happening in this space. I can analyze what's already occurring.

• 26:33Anthony Pompliano?

  I've got ideas as to how this will play out. And rather than be like a Monday morning quarterback sitting here critiquing everybody else, you know, in the words of Chamath Palpatia, like, let's jump in the arena.

• 26:47Speaker 04

  Well, I can talk about the deal because I was there.

• 26:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't talk about details.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  No.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  I can talk about behind the scenes of the deal because I was there. But anyway, so so basically, I just want to say that you may imagine Anthony, you know, doing a deal behind the desk, calling people. No, that's not what happened. What happened was I said, like a great wife, months ago, let's go on this nice trip in the woods in a mountain upstate New York.

• 27:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Celebrate our wedding.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  To celebrate our wedding, which is in a month. But still, I was like,

• 27:22Anthony Pompliano?

  You see how this works? We're not even in the same month of the wedding.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  So not only was it a nice trip, it was an anniversary trip. Well, it also happened to coincide with being the weekend before this deal closed. So I'd be like, hey, let's go on a nice walk in the woods. And then Anthony's on a call with someone trying to figure something out, or walking in the woods, bam, he loses service. Gotta go back. Then bam, there's a porcupine walking in front of us.

• 27:51Anthony Pompliano?

  You ever been on a call with 25, 30 people, and you lose service in the woods? And you have, listen, gentlemen, this is a very precarious, you know, I think I know that word, precarious situation. On one hand, you're very frustrated, the phone call start, you know, you start to get the the disruption of the phone call, you know, it's like, damn, can't I just sit inside? I can do the phone call. It's important. On the other hand, you got your beautiful, caring, amazing wife.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  Can you find a better word?

• 28:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Trying to walk in in the woods. And so you know what you do?

• 28:26Anthony Pompliano?

  You say, "Sweetie."

• 28:29Speaker 04

  You've never used that word ever in your life. When have you ever called me?

• 28:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Honey.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  When have you ever called?

• 28:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Whatever word y'all use. Why don't we walk over here and you do the old life?

• 28:41Speaker 04

  No, I gotta yo.

• 28:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Arm around, arm around, and then you guide her back towards cell service.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  I gotta.

• 28:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And then as you guide her back towards cell service, you may comment on the fauna. She doesn't think I know that word. The tree top, maybe on the animals, the reptiles, you know? Or anything going on around you. Call out maybe that there might be dog poop on the ground, you know? Like the white knight, the chivalry.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  It was actually horse, but okay.

• 29:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Make sure that she doesn't step in that. Yeah, just be a good guy. But you guide her back towards the salsa.

• 29:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So that you can continue your call. On top of that,

• 29:21Anthony Pompliano?

  if you ever are working on something, I would just tell people, I was up on Monday night until like 1:30, 2 o'clock in the morning, then I had to be back up again at like 5:00. So I was, you know, doing, doing what I had to do. And if you ever get a text message from your wife while you're up on calls with a lot of people, and she says, "Hey, are you gonna come to sleep soon?" Another thing you can do, just use the thumbs up. The thumbs up is the man's greatest friend in a text message with their wives.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 29:54Anthony Pompliano?

  You know why?

• 29:54Speaker 04

  No, I would not endorse this.

• 29:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Because it's just enough, it's just enough where you acknowledge it, but it doesn't give any information. And it just upsets her enough where she's probably thinking like, "Am I gonna go off on this guy right now?" But it's not so abrasive that she actually can attack you, because it can be interpreted with a lot of different ways. And so if you use the thumbs up.

• 30:16Speaker 04

  This is such bad advice.

• 30:17Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like, "I acknowledge you. I was being kind. I was thinking, you know, I could have not responded. I was on a call." But also, she knows that you're basically not answering. It's a polite non-answer. It's thumbs up. And so, that's why.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  Narrator.

• 30:30Anthony Pompliano?

  That's why.

• 30:31Speaker 04

  He did not go to sleep at 1:30 in the morning.

• 30:33Anthony Pompliano?

  I gave her the thumbs up. And then didn't go to sleep. So yes, uh, the behind the scenes of a lot of this stuff is a little crazy.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  Shocking we survived this weekend, but we survived. We are here today.

• 30:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I told Planets, she a real one. Hundred percent. She, she, uh, she knows the life that she signed up for. And, uh, we've, uh, we've been through all kinds of great stuff together in terms of, uh, different deals and, and different things. And, uh, as you could tell, she's still asking me what a Bitcoin treasury company is.

• 31:03Speaker 04

  No, I'm just saying.

• 31:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know how much paying attention she was doing all week.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  I was, I was out sunbathing while you were inside, like a gremlin.

• 31:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, she did say to me at one point, if you don't see the sun outside, it doesn't count that you went.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  I literally, I literally pulled up some research. I was like 20 minutes in the sun in sunlight boosts your vitamin D. He was like, uh, anyway.

• 31:27Anthony Pompliano?

  You know what, boys? We got it done though. All right. What else you got? Anything else?

• 31:31Speaker 04

  That's all I got.

• 31:31Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Thank you guys very much for watching. We'll talk to you guys next week.