#1560 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Bitcoin Nears ALL-TIME HIGH Despite Debt, Chaos, & Riots

Polina Pompliano and Anthony Pompliano discuss Circle IPO, bitcoin, rise of crypto companies on Wall Street, what it means for your portfolio, what is going on with LA riots, how we could solve the problem, and why Invest America is pushing to give every newborn $1,000 to invest. =======================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.=======================Maple Finance is where real money meets real yield. With over $1.5B managed, Maple offers secure lending, Bitcoin yield, and premium DeFi assets like syrupUSDC. Get started today at https://www.maple.finance !=======================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

  The action's on the court and as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to US residents 21+ Begins on October 1st, 2026 and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Subaru. You know that place your mind always wanders to? The lake, the mountains, the homes of the people you love most? The completely redesigned 2026 Subaru Outback is built to help you get there. With legendary capabilities, standard symmetrical all wheel drive and the confidence to go further. The 2026 Subaru Outback. Love never looked so good. Visit Subaru.com/Outback to learn more.

• 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.

• 1:49Anthony Pompliano?

  What's going on guys? Today we've got a great conversation with Polina Pompliano. In this conversation, we talk about this Circle IPO. What's going on with Bitcoin? Are crypto companies the hottest thing on Wall Street? What it means for your portfolio? And then we talk about what's going on with the LA riots. Why actually it is more related to economics and monetary debasement than you may think? And then what are the potential solutions? Let's stop complaining about what's going on and talk about how we could actually solve some of this stuff. And lastly, we finish up with Invest America. The idea to give a thousand dollars to every kid in America to help them participate in the stock market and in capitalism. I love it. Let's get it done as a country. Here's my latest conversation with Polina Pompliano. All right, Polina, what's our first topic?

• 2:29Speaker 04

  The people want to get paid, I think. Stablecoin Issuer Circle launched its IPO a few days ago and has been one of the most successful IPOs in recent history with shares 25x oversubscribed and the company raising $1 billion, $1 billion, which is more than double expectations. What do we think about this?

• 2:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think that the oversubscription in the IPO is really the, uh, the big focus. I think it's the performance of the stock after it got published. It's gone up significantly on like, I think 400% or something like that. What I will say is, uh, there's a couple of things here that people don't want to talk about, but let's talk about it. First is the investment bankers pricing the stock real low so that their clients get a big pop. Bill Gurley, many other people have been talking about this for a long time. There's a very weird incentive. The company obviously wants to raise as much money as possible at the lowest dilution possible. So they want a high valuation, but the bankers and the clients, they want the lowest valuation. So there is some, uh, kind of thing there. That's not new. It's not the banker's fault. It's not the investor's fault. It's not the company's fault. It's just that is something that we all know about.

• 3:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Second thing is, uh, everyone sees the Circle IPO performance and they're like, oh my God, crypto's hot again. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down there, fella. Cause I actually think that this is more about stable coins being hot, not broader crypto. And if you think about, there's a lot of crypto businesses that would like to be public. If they came public, I don't think that you would get the same reaction that you're getting for Circle. So part of this is stable coins are hot, not all of broader crypto. Will there be other sectors? Of course, but I think stable coins are the big one. On top of that, you have more eyes now looking at, okay, well, how is Circle performing? Man, Tether, which is the other large stable coin issuer, they must be worth a gazillion dollars because they're even bigger. They did $13 billion in profit.

• 4:15Anthony Pompliano?

  So I think we're starting to get some marks from the public market about, uh, this industry. Uh, it's very good, but I just worry, do not extrapolate out. Circle was good. Here comes the next crypto IPO. It's going to be amazing. Um, and then I think the last thing is, uh, when you look at these businesses, one of the things that is happening, which I keep saying over and over again, is everything is converging into finance. So you have exchanges like Robinhood, Fast Grow Segment is crypto. You have Kraken, private crypto exchange that's now going to offer US public equities. That is a convergence of crypto and traditional finance all coming together. You now have Circle, which is using US dollars in this new format of tokenization. You put those together, bam, you've got a successful IPO. And so I just think that everyone is so focused on the traditional world and the crypto world.

• 5:00Anthony Pompliano?

  It's all going to be one big thing. You're not even going to worry about which rails is it on? I just want to know, does it solve a problem? Is it a product or service that people want? If the answer is yes, and it makes money, then people are going to want it from an investor base.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  Yes, and Gemini has also fought for an IPO.

• 5:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Go Gemini.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  And why go Gemini?

• 5:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I just think that, uh, obviously Coinbase has done a fantastic job as kind of the premier brand in the United States. They have on boarded, I think, over 100 million people as users. They were there in 2012, did a fantastic job of really getting a lot of people into Bitcoin early on. But Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Gemini, I think are kind of like unsung heroes as part of this story as well. They have consistently said, you know, there needs to be regulation, there needs to be rules. They really spent a lot of time doing that. And I think that Cameron and Tyler, in a very unique way, they drove a lot of interest in Bitcoin. Kind of indirectly, you know, people forget that like outside of the crypto world, Cameron and Tyler are very well known. Social Network movie, right? Kind of that whole story.

• 6:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And so their early bet on Bitcoin, they bought $11 million of Bitcoin at a very low cost. It's worth billions of dollars today. Probably one of the best investments that people have had in a long time. But I do think that they were able to pull a lot of like people who wouldn't have been interested in Bitcoin. Hey, why are these guys interested in this thing? What's going on here? Then obviously they have Gemini and they're now launching things like the Gemini credit card and stuff like that. So I just think that Gemini usually is not included in the conversation with the coinbases, the binances, whatever. But I think they're a very important part of the ecosystem. I think they've been a great player. We've worked with them for a long time across a variety of different things, events we've done or, you know, podcasts, stuff like that. But I do think that it's kind of like, um, these people genuinely believe in the industry.

• 6:44Anthony Pompliano?

  They believe in the assets. They're trying to figure out what are the products and services that users want. And so I want to see anyone in the industry who does those things be successful. And so far it seems like Gemini, you know, they're going to do this IPO. I'd love to see them have, you know, the same result as Circle.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  Is it fair to say that Wall Street now loves Bitcoin? Like that's the hot new thing?

• 7:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, a couple of months ago, I think we talked about the fact that Wall Street doesn't have any love for anything unless it can make money. So like, Wall Street is loyal to money. And so what Bitcoin and the broader crypto industry represents is the ability for them to get new clients, new assets under management, and new revenue. And if you can do those three things for Wall Street, they'll love you until they find, you know, a new mistress to go and find and hang out with. And so I think that's really what you're seeing right now is just like Bitcoin and crypto is this new shiny thing that showed up. They saw the launch of the Bitcoin ETFs. That was really the first big Wall Street product. Grand slam for the Black Rocks, the Fidelities, and you know, Vanax, et cetera, the incumbents. And now you're starting to see it

• 7:46Anthony Pompliano?

  trickle down. The bankers, they're making a killing. They're raising money for the Bitcoin Treasury companies. They're raising money for Circle. They're taking companies public. They're doing M and A. Like, they love this stuff. And so anytime you have a new industry with lots of activity, activity is how Wall Street makes money. If there's a lot of turnover in trading, if there's a lot of turnover in fundraising, if there's a lot of turnover in M and A, like, that is how Wall Street makes money. They need volume. They need volatility. And there's nothing that has more volume and volatility than Bitcoin and crypto, and kind of the surrounding businesses. And so I think that's why, yeah, sure, Wall Street loves them. Love them till they don't. But right now, this industry is providing a lot of paychecks to a lot of people across Wall Street. And so until that stops, you're going to see, you know, every single Wall Street

• 8:29Anthony Pompliano?

  executive, they go, yeah, I love Bitcoin, I love crypto, I love this, I love that. But guess what? They also love AI. They also love, you know, all these other industries that are providing this as well. It just happens to be that maybe we're the best at marketing what's going on because of the online kind of engagement of people in the Bitcoin crypto industry.

• 8:45Speaker 04

  And speaking of Bitcoin, the price is currently tracking with the global M2 money supply. And you wrote in your newsletter, there will be more money printing, a larger national debt, and liquid assets are going to be much higher. Stocks will appreciate in price, gold will appreciate in price, and Bitcoin will likely be the biggest winner out of every asset. Are we going to continue to see markets go higher in the coming months?

• 9:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Book it. Book it. Take a ticket to the moon. That's where, that's where all this is going, right? Because if you think about what's happening here is, uh, we just went through the single greatest, like, true faith effort to cut government spending we will see in our lifetime. We took the world's greatest entrepreneur, who is famous for slashing costs, creating efficiencies, you know, uh, going in and right sizing shitty businesses, just call them what they are.

• 9:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And he was within 120 days, 130 days, I'm out of here. That's crazy, crazy. Now, it's not his fault. If you go and you look, like, I, I have a lot of friends who went and worked these organizations and stuff. There's a lot of crazy stuff that was going on that will be stories told later on. But one example is, they would go in and they'd be like, okay, let's just say there's a department. It has 2,000 people. And they're like, I think this department can run with 50 people. We're not talking about like 2,000, you know, 1900, like 2,000 to 50.

• 10:11Anthony Pompliano?

  They can't fire anybody. So if you can't fire people, then obviously you don't have the best people, right? Because what ends up happening is people just, they, what do they can do to get the job and then they can't leave? It's kind of like, people don't want to talk about it. You ever watched, uh, I think it's, uh, called Super, Superman or something like that? It's the, uh, documentary about the New York City teachers?

• 10:30Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 10:30Anthony Pompliano?

  And the rubber rooms?

• 10:33Anthony Pompliano?

  You can't fire a teacher in some of these, uh, jurisdictions. And so, again, if you can't get rid of the people who are not good at their job and bringing people who are good at their job, what do you get? You naturally, you have a reversion to the mean. That's not good. That's not what we need. And so I think that, that, that is a big part of the story as well, is like, there were a lot of things that they should have done and they wanted to do, but they weren't allowed to do it. Now, for some reason, there, there's laws in place that didn't let them do it. And maybe some of those laws are there for good reasons, some of them aren't. But I think that's really the, the, going to be the story there. So, going to finance. They're going to print money and they're going to print as much money as they possibly need. It is a guarantee now. We took our best shot. I was excited. I thought we had a shot.

• 11:16Anthony Pompliano?

  We ain't got no shot. It's over. Lynn Alden says it best. No stopping this train. They're going to continue to print money. National debt's going up, which means asset prices are going up.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  So, so, so this, you know, cutting, spending, balancing the budget. It's kind of a fever dream. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can do it.

• 11:35Anthony Pompliano?

  They can't do it. Even if they want to do it, they can't do it. It's over. Game over. We have the white flag. The national debt won. The national debt's going to the sky, which means get out of cash, because that's going to get debased, and get into some sort of investment. I don't even care what investment, but you gotta get out of cash.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  Are you, are you disappointed personally? Because I know you were big on balancing that budget.

• 11:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, yes, of course. I think that the budget should be balanced. Of course I'm disappointed, right? Like, that was the best faith effort that we had to go and do it. And the fact that it's not going to happen, it's incredibly disappointing. It's depressing. It is sad. We got kids. I got friends that got kids. Guess who's going to bear the burden of all this stuff? Them. Thirty years from now, hopefully I'm still here, but they're not going to be gone in thirty years or forty years. This is a one-way train now. And so, how many countries used to be living large, in charge, greatest economy, strongest currency, et cetera, and they ain't anymore? You been to Europe? You're from Europe. That place

• 12:40Anthony Pompliano?

  a museum compared to the America. We got innovation. We got flying cars, literally. We now have air taxis. We got rockets. We got DNA sequencing. We got self-driving cars. We got guns. They all need our, I mean, they're begging us to give them our weapons, right? All this stuff that we got going on here. We're the kings of the world. But you know how kingdoms fall?

• 13:06Anthony Pompliano?

  That currency. And guess what we're doing? We're just a bunch of humans on this planet who didn't learn from thousands of years of humans before us. We're going and we're debasing our currency, which ultimately erodes away both the purchasing power of a large portion of the population. It is now 62% of Americans have stocks, 62%. Great, 38% don't. On top of that, if you go and you look, guess who owns the stocks? Wealthy people, well-educated people and disproportionately white people over anyone else. I don't care about all the race stuff. I'm just telling you what the data says. When you look at that, you say to yourself, okay, well, then how do we go and we get other people to have exposure to the American stock market?

• 13:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Because if they don't, 38% of Americans got no investments. They're getting their butts kicked financially because we're debasing the currency. And it's not at 2%, which is what they want to tell us. That's not the real number. It's really over 5%, closer to 8%. So if you say to yourself, hold on a second here.

• 14:09Anthony Pompliano?

  This only ends one way, which is unrest. You think that there's no connection between the LA riots that are going on right now? And what's going on in terms of the economy? Stop, stop it. This is how you get volatility in a society. It's happening across the world. It's not a US-centric thing. It's happening all around the world. But what you are doing is you're creating a bifurcated society. How is it possible that some people right now are like, I'm killing it. I'm getting richer than I ever thought. And at the same time, you got other people in the same country, sometimes in the same city, maybe on the same block, saying, I can't get ahead. I'm only falling further and further behind. It's true. That's crazy.

• 14:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And it all comes back to, it's a financial education thing. One group understands, own financial assets. The other group was told, save and get to some sort of economic freedom. Well, guess what? Only one of those groups is right. And so if you continue to debase the currency, you should expect to continue to see unrest. And all this pent up anger and frustration.

• 15:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm not condoning it. You wanna drive around a burning car on a motorcycle with a Mexican flag? Hey, man, this is America. I know exactly what's gonna happen, right? You ain't gonna be doing that very long. But what I also understand is you can be empathetic to people's plight, but also you can be critical of the way that they express it. And that's the difficulty of a lot of this stuff. It's super complex.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. But I think when there's a lot of pent up anger, it kinda like boils over.

• 15:45Anthony Pompliano?

  A hundred percent. But by the way, look, this sounds crazy, right? But again, how many people online are able to bounce two ideas in their head? To say, I understand why these people in their position, given the situation that they're in, why they feel the way they feel, right? Think about-

• 16:06Speaker 04

  Is there any right way to go about it? One thing that Anthony always says, like at home, when we're talking about the news, is you often say about someone that I'm surprised you agree with, you'll say they're right about what they're saying about the message, but they're going about communicating it wrong.

• 16:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Take, take what's going on in LA right now. Let me, let me paint a picture for you. You're a child. You were born here in the United States, or maybe you weren't born in the United States. So all kinds of complexity, right? But just use a simple example. Let's just say that you were not born in the United States, but you were brought here when you were very young. Your parents entered the country illegally. You never became a citizen. You have lived here for, maybe you're 20 years old. You've lived here for 15 years of your life. All you know is growing up in America. You probably feel some sort of tension between whether you came from, let's say, Mexico. Am I Mexican? I'm proud of my Mexican heritage. That's where I was born. That's where my family's

• 17:10Anthony Pompliano?

  from, etc. But also, I enjoy the benefits of America. But you don't have a piece of paper that says you're an American citizen.

• 17:19Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a large group of people in this country who say you are here illegally. And they're right, you are here illegally. Your parents broke the law and they came here. The person who grew up here, though, even if they weren't born here, what do they know? All they know is the American experience, right? They feel like this is home. And so you have to be able to understand both sides of that and say, they're both right. So rather than go into the streets, right? And attack police officers. And I mean, some of the videos are insane.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  But this happened in 2020. We've seen it happen.

• 17:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, we could see it happen over and over again. Every single time I see it, it's insane. I don't know if you saw the video of all the police cars underneath the bridge and they were all stopped and had been abandoned by the police because they were having rocks thrown at them. That's crazy town stuff, right? But here's the thing is the actual solution to the problem is that America needs to figure out, how do we get a more streamlined, uh, legal immigration process? Cause there's a lot of people who they would like to come here and go through the vetting and do it legally and all this kind of stuff. But if they're told, hey, you can't come for seven years, right? Well, guess what? There's a lot of guys who say, I ain't waiting seven years. I'm just gonna go walk across the border.

• 18:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it comes back to this whole thing of like, by the way, that's illegal. That's breaking the law. You're taking a risk in doing that. So if you go and you balance this out, you say to yourself, uh, both things can be true, but the solution is not what the people who are going through the plight, they're not going to accomplish the solution they want by taking the methods that they are. And so look at the response. There's a lot of people across the country who are saying, if you are burning cars, if you are attacking police officer, if you're doing all this stuff, you now went from somebody who is trying to be a productive, uh, part of American society to now you are doing the things that American citizens don't want in their cities. And so it's this very, very difficult situation, but I attribute it back to,

• 19:20Anthony Pompliano?

  you have a bureaucratic government that has not been focused on one, securing the border, nor creating legal immigration.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  And let me just tell you, even if you're legally here through the immigration process, the bureaucracy is insane and it takes forever and it is difficult and painful for the person trying to do the right thing.

• 19:37Anthony Pompliano?

  A hundred percent.

• 19:38Speaker 04

  I can understand. How?

• 19:42Anthony Pompliano?

  It's kind of like, you know, it's this weird thing where there's all these like studies or game theories or you know, type things that happen. And I forget one of them I read a long time ago. I thought it was this fascinating thing of there's like a plane, it crashes in the jungle. At what point do you start eating the other humans?

• 19:59Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 19:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But the whole idea was like, there's a bunch of decisions, right? At some point you say like, hey, we don't have access to food. Then there's like a moral, ethical, and like a, you know, reality, like, who do you eat first?

• 20:13Speaker 04

  It all plays into it, especially-

• 20:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And everyone's like, oh, my God, I could never do that. And then you're like, dude, if you haven't eaten in 40 days, and you're gonna die? Right? I mean, it gets kind of crazy. And so like- Today's episode is brought to you by Zappo Bank. This is where eligible members can unlock the power of Bitcoin without selling it. Do you need cash fast? With Zappo Bank's Bitcoin-backed loans, you can borrow up to 20% of your Bitcoin's value in just a few minutes. And you can do so with low interest rates and zero fees. Here's the best part. You keep your Bitcoin, meaning you get to watch your holdings grow as the price of Bitcoin increases. Whether you're looking to buy a house, fund your child's education, or seize an exciting investment opportunity, these loans give you the flexibility to access cash without selling your Bitcoin.

• 20:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Unlike traditional loans, Zappo Bank's Bitcoin-backed loans, they have no minimum repayments, no early repayment penalties, and the flexibility to settle your loan in USD or Bitcoin whenever it suits you. It's liquidity entirely on your terms. Zappo understands the unique needs of Bitcoin holders. That's why they developed a product designed specifically for you. With over a decade of experience in the Bitcoin space, Zappo Bank has been a trusted partner for those looking to make the most of their Bitcoin while keeping it safe. Your Bitcoin stays safe in your vault, untouched, never lent out, and secured in a global network of military-grade bunkers with cutting-edge security technology. Head to zapobank.com/pomp

• 21:37Anthony Pompliano?

  to learn more. That's X-A-P-O-B-A-N-K dot com forward slash pomp. Go check out Zappo Bank today at zapobank.com/pomp.

• 21:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Maple, the go-to place for on-chain asset management. There aren't many teams in crypto who manage real money the right way, but Maple does. Maple now manages over $1 billion, combining serious finance experience with DeFi innovation. I use Maple because they make it simple to earn real yield, whether that's allocating stable coins for over collateralized lending to institutions, depositing Bitcoin to their institutional Bitcoin yield offering, or accessing their premium DeFi assets like syrup USDC. If you're serious about putting capital to work, then go to maple.finance to learn more. Once again, that's maple.finance. Go check them out today. People are performing for social media, and it's actually one of the most dangerous parts of the system.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  And not just that, like I was having a conversation earlier with someone who was like, I can't believe that some of these people are doing this, knowing that they're sharing where they work, they're showing their faces, they're on camera. And it's very important, I mean, if you've taken one sociology class or read one sociology book, you know that like mob mentality, it dehumanizes you and you kind of become part of this whole thing. You're not thinking about, I am an individual with a job, with whatever. You're thinking, I'm part of this big movement and I'm going to do whatever it takes and I don't care. You think about the consequences later, which is why I think I'm scared of mobs in general. But, but it does. And you also kind of, it dehumanizes the other party,

• 23:11Speaker 04

  which is why you're seeing such violence with such little remorse or whatever.

• 23:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know if you saw, there's a YouTuber who walked up on the Las Vegas Strip and he shot another YouTuber that he'd been beefing with online. And by the way, when I say YouTuber, I'm talking about, I saw a video clip online. The dude had 1,500 views. Hey, I'm not judging, but you killed somebody over 1,500 view videos, right? And what happened was like, the YouTuber who got killed was like, I'm in Las Vegas or something. And the guy was like, looking for him, like record, like I'm looking for you. You come to my town, blah, blah, whatever.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  But what does that have to do with any?

• 23:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Because he's performing for social media, right? Like, the whole thing was, he, they were like concocting this like beef with each other. And it was all this performative thing. Guys are getting 1,000 views on a video. Imagine killing somebody over that. Go to jail for the rest of your life. So you then extrapolate that out and say, if people are willing to do that, of course they want to throw rocks. Of course they're willing to do this crazy stuff. Get the cool photo, holding the flag, standing on top of the burning Waymo or whatever, right? Of course, the whole generation is growing up with that as part of it. But I do think that there is a solution.

• 24:18Anthony Pompliano?

  You have to have the iron fist of enforcing the laws with the empathy of providing solutions. And it is an incredibly difficult line to thread, but you have to be able to do both.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  Do we think we have leadership that can do that?

• 24:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think that any of the leaders involved in this stuff is trying to do both. I think that you have the left-leaning California leadership that literally would watch the city burn as long as they didn't offend anyone and they said, we are going to be as empathetic as possible. Because that's how you get that in society. Can you imagine in New York City, people doing that?

• 24:59Speaker 04

  Why doesn't it happen in New York?

• 25:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, in 2020, in 2020, there's two specific incidents that I remember. There was a Molotov cocktail thrown into a police car, right? And they were lawyers. They were literally professionals.

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Mentality, I'm telling you.

• 25:14Anthony Pompliano?

  They ended up getting arrested. They got in a lot of trouble. The second one is, I think I remember showing you, there was a video, I'll never, ever, ever forget this, in Union Square on Park Avenue, right at the intersection, on the northeast corner.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 25:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I'll never forget this. And we had protesters squared up with the police officers.

• 25:36Speaker 04

  He showed me.

• 25:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And I remember saying to myself, you know what? I got respect for those police officers. They could have shot those people. They could have beat them with their baton. They could have done a bunch of stuff. By the way, I wouldn't necessarily agree with it, but I'm just saying that within their training, if you're getting beat and you think that you're actually in danger, you got a lot of things that you can do and be covered with the letter of the law. These cops didn't do that. They kept their gun in their holster. They kept a baton right there and they squared up too. And they said, we're going to scrap right here on Park Avenue. So it happens. But I remember one or two weeks later, there was this huge march from Brooklyn and they went over the Brooklyn Bridge and they were trying to get to Manhattan. And the cops met them at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. And they said, you ain't coming into Manhattan. And they stopped them there

• 26:21Anthony Pompliano?

  and they wouldn't let anyone get into Manhattan. And so that goes back to, things can happen on a one-off basis. There was looting. There was all kinds of crazy stuff in New York, but very quickly that stuff got shut down because it went to, hey, we gotta have an iron fist on the crime. And then I don't know if there was ever empathy, frankly, right? I think what you're seeing-

• 26:40Speaker 04

  I think there was. I think, I think there was a lot of like protests and marches that kept going on. I don't think those were shut down.

• 26:48Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, but that's not, but that people aren't, they're not burning stuff. They're not-

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I'm saying the empathy was there. Like, there's not, you know-

• 26:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I meant more so like, what are the changes that the, the people wanted, right? I don't know if that stuff ever happened, but the, the reason I explain it this way is, um, again, it goes back to economics, which people, they don't want to say this, but if people feel economic pain and they lose hope, they are much more likely to go into the streets. And into the streets can mean different things in different geographies. But what we are watching right now happen in LA has way more to do with economics than anyone wants to admit. And so you have a bunch of people who feel like, hey, I'm just here trying to work. I'm just here trying to make a living for my family, right? I don't want to be involved in some geopolitical thing. I don't want to be involved in some political thing. I'm just trying to go to do my job. But you have a government that

• 27:38Anthony Pompliano?

  is saying you broke the law. Both things can be true. And so I just think that, again, it goes back to the point of when I see a lot of these stories, I try to say to myself, if I was in this person, or this person, or this person's spot, how do I understand what they think? How do I understand their perspective? If you can do that going around a topic, usually-

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:58Anthony Pompliano?

  You can actually say to yourself, most of the people involved here, there is a degree of truth in what they're saying. It's just that they're coming at it from different angles. And so what I don't like is we basically have like a, a pissing contest between Newsom and Trump, but-

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Which is, which happens every time.

• 28:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, but again, it goes back to, I think Newsom is just performing. He's out here tweeting all kinds of crazy stuff, whatever. He's just looking for retweets. Guy wants to be the president. That's fine. Go be the president. Uh, we'll see if you can, uh, win. Um, but-

• 28:33Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't see a lot of him talking about stop looting, stop attacking law enforcement officers, all that kind of stuff. So it goes back to this thing of leadership matters and what you condone implicitly or explicitly is ultimately what the people are going to do.

• 28:50Speaker 04

  So what do you think is the solution here to say, hey, we're going to uphold the law, but here are some of the changes that we will make or what, how do you?

• 29:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, the first thing is, uh, you just have to have a zero tolerance policy. If you attack a police officer, you are going to be punished to the full extent of the law. Period. Like there's no ifs, ands, buts, maybes, this, that, like done. Then if you destroy other people's property, whether it's the government, other citizens, private businesses, any of that stuff, we will punish you to the full extent of the law. Done. No ifs, ands, buts, anything. By the way, if you want to come out into the street and protest something, that's as American as it comes. You should be allowed to do that and you should make your voice heard. But there's a fine line between your protesting

• 29:43Anthony Pompliano?

  and free speech and exhibiting distaste or frustration with something and burning cars or breaking into people's private business or assaulting police officers. And so I think that's one big thing is again, iron fist on enforcing the rules, but having empathy for humans. The second thing is that you need to go and look at this from a root cause standpoint. We need legal immigration that is efficient, that can successfully vet people to make sure they're not a threat, that can actually understand, are these people going to be productive in our society or not? And most importantly, are they going to assimilate to becoming American? That is one of the best parts about America is that every other country in the world

• 30:26Anthony Pompliano?

  does not have the ability to make someone assimilate, but that is what made America work. That is why we have so many different cultures.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  If you, if you moved to Bulgaria, you could never be Bulgarian, Anthony. I'm so sorry.

• 30:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And they don't ask you to be Bulgarian. That's the thing. They don't ask you to be Bulgarian. What we ask of people is that we say, this is a melting pot of different cultures that all come here. The one thing that we ask you above everything else is for you to become an American. And if you become an American, it means that you believe in core. Core values of America.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  I just think like what you said earlier, society has been, has bifurcated so much that I, I cannot see a world in which something truly brings us back together and makes us all feel proud to be American together. It's just so many people are now, you know,

• 31:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Unfortunately.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  So far gone.

• 31:13Anthony Pompliano?

  The thing that does is usually some sort of horrific tragedy.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  And we thought COVID would do that.

• 31:18Anthony Pompliano?

  If you think about nine 11.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  I know, but that was.

• 31:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Patriotism skyrocketed.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  But that was 2000.

• 31:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, of course. Well, we don't want to have horrific, you know, tragic events all the time.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  We've gone so far. I don't know if society even before nine 11, I think people are still very proud to be American. I don't think it was that polar.

• 31:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, of course. There's polarization, there's social media, there's the media, there's all these things, but I'm just saying like that is when patriotism skyrockets is like, it's kind of like we can fight with each other, but if somebody attacks us from outside like, hey, we're, we're Americans.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  And I do, I do think that on a microcosm of a scale, New York City is like the place where that happens. Like I've seen such acts of kindness to random humans like on the street here that I don't think I would necessarily, if I was walking alone in Atlanta and somebody saw me struggling with something, I don't think they'd help.

• 32:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, there's kind people everywhere. There's assholes in it, right? New York has a magnifying glass on both because there's just nine million people living in a city, right? So I think that it is, uh, yes, we would like to think because we live here that it's, you know, there's nicer people or whatever. I think that you're going to get the same amount of people pretty much everywhere. Um, but with that said, I think another core component of this is, um, when you become a citizen of the United States, which you did, uh, they ask you.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  I went to a little flag ceremony.

• 32:39Anthony Pompliano?

  What do they ask you? They ask you to pledge allegiance to America.

• 32:42Speaker 04

  To the flag.

• 32:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And to denounce allegiance to any other country.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  To renounce, but, um, yes, but you don't have to do it in any sort of obviously official way. It's just more of like a, I promise.

• 32:56Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a gentleman's agreement.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:58Anthony Pompliano?

  People are breaking the gentleman's agreement.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 33:00Anthony Pompliano?

  They have more allegiance to another country than America.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, but technically this. Which means, but like also this country has not allowed them to become American is the point.

• 33:10Anthony Pompliano?

  But here's, but here's the whole thing is again, it goes back to, we have to create an efficient, legal way for people to become immigrants. Now, I know people who, uh, you know, online, we're talking about this saying, oh, look, uh, people who escaped a country are waving that country's flag, blah, blah, blah, whatever. There's some of that going on for sure. But one of the parts of this whole thing, what is the professional planning? What is the professional coordination? What is the professional logistics that are going into that? That erupted way too fast. There is no way that you get a bunch of strangers who can go out in such a coordinated effort in so many different locations and somehow they all got rocks in their pocket.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  This happens.

• 33:53Anthony Pompliano?

  They all got masks. They all got, where, where'd they get all the flags from? Right? All that stuff. Again, I don't know how that works, but I just think that there's always layers to this stuff that we don't see on the surface. And so what you have to say to yourself is the only thing I know is that you can go and you can think from first principles. There's a lot of people who want to come to the United States of America. It's the greatest country in the world and there's a line out the door. Let's make it good, easy, cheap and fast for the good people to get in. What's good? Somebody smarter than me will figure out. Are you a productive part of the citizens? Uh, are you not going to be a threat to your fellow citizens? Or whatever criteria, somebody else will figure that out. But the ones that we want here, let's go get them. The people who are a threat, I don't know if you've been paying attention to this, FBI, they've been arresting, arresting

• 34:37Anthony Pompliano?

  a number of Chinese citizens who have either shipped or brought pathogens with them into the United States.

• 34:47Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 34:47Anthony Pompliano?

  So this stuff's going on every single day. And I think that if we can figure out a way to get the people we want here, great. People we don't want, keep them out, have a border, iron fist on the rules, empathy for humans, super complex. I'm glad I'm not the person who's got to figure it all out.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  Let's end with this. Trump is supposed to announce a Trump savings account, which is a program that would deposit $1,000 in investment accounts for newborn Americans. Dell Technologies pledged Monday to provide the same amount for so-called Trump accounts for new children of its employees. The provision to create the accounts passed the House last month as part of the major tax cut bill that Trump is pushing Republicans to send to his desk before the 4th of July. What do you think about that?

• 35:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I love this.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  So it's $1,000 in stock?

• 35:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So Brad Gerson, who will never get enough credit for this, but Brad Gerson is the founder of Invest America. And the whole idea is there's a lot of people who don't participate in the capitalist system. So if the government can cede $1,000 in an account, and I think it goes and buys the S and P 500, and it just holds that, I can't remember if it's still 18 or 22 years old. If you let that compound for 20 years, let's

• 35:54Speaker 04

  And it allows for additional private contributions of up to $5,000 per year.

• 35:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so somebody can keep putting more money in this thing. But you get to have that compound over time. And so when you become 18, 20, 22, whatever the age is, you have benefited from the American economy, the American stock market. One, you probably don't hate America. Two, you probably don't hate capitalism. But more importantly, even if you hate America and you hate capitalism, at least you've got a bucket of cash now, an economic value that you can go and get a head start in life. That's the whole idea. It's a fantastic idea. Now, do I like the fact that we need the government to do this because the system's broken, they're debasing the currency? People are, no, of course not. Do I want them to print money to do this? No, of course not.

• 36:40Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's better a solution than not having it at all. And so I think that Brad Gerson's done a fantastic job. I think that there's a number of other people who are all involved in this. Vlad Tennant, fellow Bulgarian, who runs Robinhood, he is, I think, going to be one of the platforms where people can hold the accounts.

• 36:59Speaker 04

  See, I like, I like in this public, private, you know, partnership thing where, yes, okay, $1,000 the government puts in, but then companies can use it as perks for their employees to say, hey, we'll keep investing in this for you and your kids. And I like that.

• 37:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's great. Well, because Michael Dell's smart, and he understands that that's a great perk for his employees. There's a lot of people who aren't gonna see that as being super smart. But whatever, let's see what happens. But I love the idea. I hope that it gets passed.

• 37:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I miss no secret, I would love for every single kid in America to have exposure to the US stock market.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  I, I remember, you know what I remember being in high school and like my parents weren't investing anything for me at that time, but um, there were a lot of kids who like for their 15th birthday, 16th birthday, whatever, would get like a stock certificate that their grandparents bought them Apple stock. And I was like, that's kind of cool. That's a cool gift.

• 37:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Like a physical one.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  I guess, I don't know. I mean, like they bought stock in Apple for the kid. Yeah. But, but like that's, that's awesome. That, that kid in 2003 owns Apple stock, you know?

• 38:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty good.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  Anyway.

• 38:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, hopefully they held.

• 38:11Speaker 04

  Hopefully.

• 38:12Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, it's gone up a lot. But now Tim Cook is there. You know what I saw someone said? I don't know if you saw the recent updates, people very controversial. They're saying Steve Jobs rolling over in his, in his grave.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  Why?

• 38:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Eh, design don't look as hot, you know, and it's thing got the, the cool factor.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  We don't know.

• 38:28Anthony Pompliano?

  So somebody, so somebody said, uh, Tim ain't cooking.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  On that note.

• 38:34Anthony Pompliano?

  That's it for today, guys. We'll see you guys next week.