Dan Conway, Author of Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: Betting his Savings, his Marriage, and his Future on Crypto

Dan Conway is the author of Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape from Corporate America. In this conversation, Dan and Anthony Pompliano discuss his backstory, the process of writing the book, the ups and downs of crypto market volatility why Dan cashed out $13 million in January 2013, and what he's doing from an investment standpoint today. BLOCKFI-----BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. CRYPTO. COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine. Visitcoinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world. ETORO-----This episode of Off the Chain is sponsored by eToro, the smartest crypto trading platform, and one of the largest in the world. Join 11 million other traders and create an account at etoro.com and build your crypto portfolio the smart way.

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

• 0:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Dan Conway is the author of Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape from Corporate America. In this conversation, we discuss his backstory, the process of writing the book, the ups and downs of crypto market volatility, why Dan cashed out $13 million in January 2018, and what he is doing from an investment standpoint today. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. Skrt skrt! Wanna know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right, Crypto.com.

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  They're a crypto platform with one goal: motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment. Everything you could want at Crypto.com. Go help your boy out, tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit Crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and wifi? All you gotta do is go to CoinMine.com, you buy a coin mine. It's like an Xbox or a Playstation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right. You purchase it, it shows up at your doorstep, you pull it out of the box, you plug it in,

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:14Anthony Pompliano?

  paid monthly in cryptocurrency. 6% is an absurdly high rate. It's the best rate in the industry. I highly suggest you go check out blockfi.com/pomp. Again, that's blockfi.com/pomp to sign up and start earning crypto today. If you follow Bitcoin and crypto, you've probably heard of eToro. They're the world's number one social trading platform, and I love it. They've got more than 10 million other traders that love it, too. And guess what? They just launched in the United States. eToro offers access to the world's most popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others. With the smartest trading tools and the ability to connect with the best traders around the world, there's no better place to build your perfect portfolio. If you're new to Bitcoin and crypto, you can test the waters with their $100,000 virtual

• 2:59Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:24Speaker 01

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

• 3:50Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got a very special guest here today, Dan Conway, the author of the new book, Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape from Corporate America. I'm super excited to have this conversation. He's got a wild fucking story. I'll just give you a little teaser from the back page of the book. It says, "When the Financial Times interviewed Dan Conway for a story about cryptocurrency millionaires, he told them the unvarnished truth. Quote, 'I invested because I wanted the underdogs to win for once, losers like me who didn't make the rules and didn't have the money. We'd been forced to tweet corporate philanthropy hashtags, and we weren't going to take it anymore.'" Bang, bang. All right, man. Thanks so much for coming in and doing

• 4:33Anthony Pompliano?

  this. How are things going so far?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  It's going great. Thanks, Paul, for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. So, things are going great so far. The book has been, you know, well-received. I spent two years on it, trying to capture everything that happened to me, and try to make sense of, you know, the 2015 through the beginning of 2018. And so, I'm happy to hear that readers are responding to different aspects of the story. That's good. You don't want to write a book for two years and everyone says it sucks. So, hopefully, knock on wood, that's not the case yet. Or hopefully, ever.

• 5:07Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. So, let's start with your story, right? Kind of, let's go before crypto. What was going on? And what were you doing? And then, we can get into some of the corporate America issues.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Sure. So, I was working at a big company, which, for legal reasons, I call Acme, in the book. And basically, it was one of the largest corporations in the world. And I had worked my way up. This was like my big break, you know. I started at this company when I was about 40. I think I was 40 exactly. And so, I'd worked my way up for 18 years in corporate America. And I had found myself in a sort of a lower executive rank, you know, where that's where the big money is supposed to be. And finally, I was gonna, you know, be able to make it. I lived in Silicon Valley, and my wife and I were raising three kids. So, we were not poor by any stretch, but we were financially stretched, for sure.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  After the 2008 Great Recession, we lost our equity line on our home. We were kind of like using credit cards some months to get by. So again, most people on the planet would want to be in my position, but the strains of working in a corporate job that I soon found I was sort of ill-suited for were really growing on me.

• 6:21Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so we were talking beforehand about this idea of, you know, some people just aren't cut out for the corporate executive world. Maybe talk a little bit about some of the things that you realized, you know, over the years and, you know, some of the personality stuff as well.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I, so I, when I'd finally gotten to this, what I considered like, you know, fairly high up perch, I was still basically a middle manager, but I could, you know, call myself an executive and I, you know, primped and preened my LinkedIn profile and all that. The problem was, once I got there, there was this, this thing you needed to stay and thrive in your position and especially to rise up further, and it was executive presence. You know, Acme, like many companies, they believe in kind of what I've called like the cult of the leader, that, you know, there's these people with these great leadership qualities that will drive organizations and lead us all to greater wealth and happiness. And I, I just could not do it, man. I, I could fake it well, but when you get to that, that position that I was at, I needed

• 7:21Speaker 02

  to, to, I, I didn't have the skills to maintain it. So I would, you know, I would crack a bad joke, I'd get insecure, get quiet in a meeting, or else I'd get, you know, kind of manic and speak a little too much. Nothing extreme, like no one was going to call the hospital and take me out on a stretcher. But when there's that very narrow window of, you know, where you need to show your leadership qualities, I, I just couldn't seem to hit it. I just kept bouncing off of it.

• 7:45Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And I think that a lot of it probably is, you know, it's personality driven, but it's also, people get bored, right? There's a lot of folks who, I call it the, the trap, right? And the reason why I call it the trap is, I talk to people on an almost daily basis who work a corporate job, there's people who are listening to this right now who are in this situation, and they are, you know, late 30s into their mid-

• 8:10Anthony Pompliano?

  40s and then sometimes even to their 50s and they're sitting there saying, you know, how the hell did I get here, right? I'm married, I got kids, I work in corporate America and this is not the life that I had dreamed of or envisioned and they feel trapped and the the risk is if they make some big move or some big decision, it could not only disrupt their lives and potentially be detrimental, but they've got to worry about their significant other, their kids, kind of all these things that, you know, again, they trap you into a certain life.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's exactly right. And I'm not like an overly literary guy, but there's one quote by Thoreau that always stuck with me. It's, "Men and women living lives of quiet desperation." And that's the way I felt in corporate America. And, you know, especially after the Great Recession, we were all just happy to have a job. But if you take a step back, all the studies show that, you know, I think it's like 75% of people are unhappy with the teamwork and the experience at their job. And I have these stats in the book. And, and we've kind of accepted that as like a sort of a deep sliver in our heel. And, you know, I'm at the age now where, you know, like late 40s, sadly, like people are like a very few people outliers are starting to drop off from cancer and brain tumors and stuff, you know, that's one of the blessings, curses of

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Facebook is, you know, like people in your outer circle suddenly. And you just realize, like, you know, you only, I mean, it sounds corny, but you can only have one life. If you're sitting behind a desk, doing something you're miserable miserable at, even if you have enough money to take your family out to dinner on the weekends, you know, is it worth it? And that was kind of where I was at.

• 9:44Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so let's dig in a little bit on the on the crypto Bitcoin and Ether stuff. When is the first time that you ever heard of Bitcoin or Ether?

• 9:53Speaker 02

  I, so I first heard, I first heard about Bitcoin in like 2012 or something like that. And like many others, I thought it sounded like total bullshit. And of course, I, you know, I was just like working my trying to trying to make it still at this company and the handwriting was on the wall and I didn't see it. But it was when I was really having problems at my job. It was, it was a period in, in 2015 that I

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Came across an article on Bitcoin and Bitcoin was about 300 then. And it was just simply the thought, what if it goes up again? And you know, it was pure greed, pure, you know, investment, like speculative energy. That got me kind of going and learning about crypto and I loved Bitcoin and the thing that just blew me away. In addition to the spy novel stuff like Satoshi, no one knows who he is, worth billions, all the, you know, the dark net stuff and Silk Road stuff. Well, was a big part of the story back then, still, I mean, still a part of the story today, but, but it really just got me. And, and, and then I quickly learned about, I always loved Bitcoin, but I quickly learned of Ethereum.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  And the thing that, that became really interesting, once I learned about Ethereum was two things. One is Ethereum hadn't popped yet. I think when I first learned about Ether, it was at about $3 or $4. So it was like this new emerging coin and you know, back then, of course, everyone thought, well, you, we all missed Bitcoins. So, you know, at 300, 400 bucks, like too late for that one. So it drew me in my speculative side to Ether because it hadn't popped yet. But then, and then this was like, what made things really interesting was it was also the promise of decentralization and the idea that, and folks in Ethereum were talking about this more than Bitcoin, how Ethereum and smart contracts and decentralized blockchains could disrupt the court, could disrupt, disrupt centralized corporations, centralized organizations, things like that.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  And, and you know, no one was saying it was going to happen tomorrow, although they tried to do it almost relatively tomorrow with the Dow, which we can talk about. But it was that concept and then I started to go deep, deep, deep down the, you know, the rabbit hole. And it was like, I was fueled by both the speculative, you know, greedy guy. And also though, this guy that was like struggling in his career and I like immediately saw the potential benefits of decentralization. In terms of like wiping away the bureaucracy, the chains of command, the bullshit phony corporate culture. And you know, I, I, I wasn't naive to think it was going to happen tomorrow, but I, I saw that with Bitcoin working, you can never un-invent blockchain. And so that's why I, I started to go so deep on, on Ether because of sort of that promise of decentralized organizations.

• 12:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And what's interesting to me is, you know, as part of the story and in the book, it's not like you were sitting around with millions of dollars in cash and you made a decision of, hey, I'm gonna put 1% of my net worth into this speculative asset and let's see what happens. Maybe talk a little bit about, you know, kind of where you were financially at the time, what decisions you made and, you know, what the thought process was leading up to those decisions.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so the book, the book's titled Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire, as you know, and it's got a kind of a clickbaity title, but that tested better than anything else. And it's the thing that I'm hoping brings mainstream people in to learn about, you know, the deeper, the deeper goals and of blockchain and where the movement and what's happening with all of it. But the, so where I was at, where I was at basically at the time that this all happened was, was I was, we were, we were just, just making it financially. We were doing fine. And then, oh, the reason why I mentioned that about the title was that, you know, it's, it's, the book is not meant to be a rebuttal to

• 13:39Speaker 02

  people to say I got lucky. Not at all. It's a response to it though, because something like this doesn't just happen for no reason. And there was like a lot of factors that, that occurred in my life that allowed this to happen. And a lot of people out there, probably other listeners have similar factors now, and they might in the future. But I just find the whole thing interesting. Like, how do normal people, quote unquote, "normal people," like, go so deep in this stuff? And at the time, though, when, when I got in, we, one of the big blessings was, we had a windfall. You know, we were basically, my mother sold her house and gave us 50 grand. My wife's startup got bought by Microsoft and she lost her job, but she got like 25 grand. And then, at my company, I had some

• 14:23Speaker 02

  options that finally vested. I had like another 20 or 25 grand. So we had like a, like a hundred grand total. And it was like, right around the time that I was starting to, to like, spend four or five hours a night, like, no joke, after work, after the kids were asleep, listening to podcasts, reading on Reddit, on Twitter, just like trying to soak it all in. So I had a decision to make about You know, about what I would do with this money. And, you know, the other thing we haven't mentioned is, you know, I, like, I'm an outlier in a lot of different ways. One of them is that I have a massively addictive personality. And I had been recovered at the time that we had this hundred grand and I was deciding whether to invest it. I had been recovered for, let me see, three years from pills and alcoholism.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  And I got deep into oxys and Vicodins and I was leaving my corporate job and going to Pill Hill and the Tenderloin and buying these pills. And, you know, I was clearly unhappy and combined with an addictive personality at the time. But anyway, I say that because I was in charge of our investment, investments, me and my wife. My wife doesn't like to talk about money. You know, they just don't talk about it in her family, like most families. So I had, in my mind, I convinced myself that I sort of had the ability to take this money, which we were using as a security blanket because my job was shaky, and do something, and do something, you know, to make a plunge, to so to speak.

• 15:46Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so when you're sitting in that seat and you're kind of doing all this research, you know, there's an element of, okay, I'm going to invest in this, here's why I want to do that. And again, you know, I always caveat these conversations with, none of this is investment advice, none of this is a suggestion for anyone else to go do something. I think this is just your story, right? You literally wrote a book on it and kind of as to, you know, what your decision making was. But describe kind of what happened, when exactly you invested, and then what transpired in the months afterwards.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  So I don't know the exact moment, but there were, a flip switched in my head. I had a tipping point. And it was like, you know, during some crappy meeting on a Tuesday morning, and I just, I just, I just knew I was ready. So I folded the papers in my coat and I walked down to Wells Fargo, the bank that had pulled our equity line eight years before. And I walked in and I started a wire and I wired a hundred thousand dollars, all hundred thousand dollars to Gemini. They were like the first big one to offer Ether, and that was the coin that I was most interested in. And so, you know, I just decided I was ready, I was making the plunge, you only live once, scared but excited.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  And I looked down at my phone and there's a text from my wife and it said, "What the fuck is this?"

• 17:08Speaker 02

  And it was an alert, obviously, from Wells Fargo, letting her know that all hundred thousand dollars was being sent to something called Gemini, which she had never heard of, of course. So, the rest of that day sucked, and, uh, and we went home and we talked about it, and then I, you know, she was mad, obviously. We spent a lot of time on it, um, she was not at all interested in it in the least. Um, she did later say she noticed that I had changed, you know, I'd kind of been, you know, just sort of slumped over for even the, though I'd gotten sober and was healthy, I was just so miserable. She, she humored me a bit, and then I go into the book, "We Made a Deal," that, um, that shows, you know, that shows we have a good marriage, and it's weird, and it's interesting, like most marriages, but, uh, ultimately, I was able to put that hundred grand in.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  So, I, I proudly went, uh, down to the bank, and it was early June, um, 2016, and I bought a hundred thousand dollars' worth of Ether. And then, on my birthday, uh, about two weeks later, on June 18th, um, that's when the Dow hack happened. And we were walking to the breakfast spot, and my phone started blowing up, because I had all these alerts for, you know, people I followed on Twitter, and Reddit, and all this kind of stuff, and, uh, uh, we lost, we eventually, we eventually, like, lost a, a large part of our stack. I tried to make, I, I tried to make a disastrous trade. Um, I thought, I thought, "Okay, this is clearly gonna go lower." You know, I wasn't even worried that ultimately it would be okay, I was such a true believer, I mean, I just, I was certain.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know, you know, I, that was just how I felt at the time, and, so I, I thought I could, you know, it's just like a famous mistake, I just had a lot more at stake, I just thought that I could, I could sell and buy back lower, and you, you know what happened? Like, right, right when I sold, it started going back up, I panicked, I'd back in, lost 25% of my stack, and then, literally, right when I got back in, it started to finally recover and go up. So, I ended up losing, like, it's in the book, like, 35% of my stack, something like that, right off the bat.

• 19:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, it's classic, right? It's the whole, you know, people buy high and sell low when they should be doing the opposite. But it's also, I don't know a person who came into the cryptocurrency markets and doesn't go through some degree of what you're describing, right? It's a highly volatile asset. It is very news-driven at times. And there's a very easy access to buying and selling if you're already on one of these platforms. And so, literally with the click of a button, you can make an emotional decision, which leads to, in some cases, bad decision-making over a long period of time.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. And, you know, it reminded me of being at a blackjack table, where you have 18 and the dealer gets 21, or you have a 12, you know you're going to get a queen when you hit. I mean, just like, trading crypto for me, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know TA. And more importantly, though, it was stupid, because I was really a long-term play. I mean, I never, I figured in a few years, once there's mainstream use for Bitcoin and Ether, that at the time was my calculus. Like, this stuff can't be uninvented. I mean, just like it is today, you see how much development's happening. And I figured that it would be a play for two or three years. So, I ended up getting fired from my job, and then, and I, you know, document that all in the book. And then I, and then

• 20:25Speaker 02

  I started a PR practice in crypto, and I worked with companies like BitGo, and some other projects. And, but, you know, at the time, Ether and crypto in general, and Bitcoin and all the rest were, had not recovered yet. And so, I was wondering, you know, like, okay, I'm going to try to make it as a PR person here. I'm not sure if this investment's going to pay off anytime soon. And it was, it was becoming a bit of a strain. Can I, do you want me to mention what happened then?

• 20:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  So, things were going well in crypto and the deeper I got into it, I'm always brushing up against people like Eric Voorhees and Andreas Antonopoulos. These were like superheroes to me, you know what I mean? Like, I just knew them from the virtual world and so I was having a blast, obviously. You know, and listen, I'd never been on the cutting edge of anything. I'm like, you know, I'm like a fine individual, but I was like 45 years old and working in a corporate job and, you know, I was, it felt very much like if you read a story about Steve Jobs and Apple and the Valley and people would see him at different places and have breakfast with him and all these, you know, Scott McNeely, all these big titans like before they were big and not just them, but their whole, their industries were so small. You could, you could like become involved and work with and collaborate

• 21:40Speaker 02

  with these people before they became kind of like legends of business. And, you know, I'm a homer for the industry. I absolutely believe that that's going to happen and in some ways it already has. So, it was super fun for me. And the thing about it though was that I was spending so much time in the industry that, and I was trying to work the numbers on my investment, which at this point by the end of 2016 was down about 65, 70% I think. Again, I have all the exact numbers in the book. But I became convinced, I became convinced, and this is, I document how this happened, but I really kind of went off the deep end. And like you, like Pomp said, like you said, dude, don't do what I did. This is, this is, my story is meant to give people an idea about how they handle risk. It's

• 22:25Speaker 02

  a fun read, I think. It's, and it also is a way to learn about the industry, but it's not like a how-to guide. But for better or not, I went, I went way deeper. I went and I, my wife had, by the way, had, did not want to talk about crypto anymore. It's like literally all I talked about. And so, and so she said, well, just do what you want. And so I ended up going into our home equity line. We had gotten that back from Wells Fargo a year or two prior and I put another $250,000 into Ether when it was about 8, 9, 10, $11. I had to buy slowly. So now I was in 350K at the end of 2016.

• 23:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, for those that don't know,

• 23:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Ether specifically was kind of let's call five to $10 and it continued at that, you know, that kind of price and pace for a while. And then in, I think it was like March of 2017 is, I remember vividly because I was really paying attention, it went from 10 to 30 to 100 by like the end of May, right? It was almost like a 10x in a very short period of time.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Crazy. Started in February and really picked up in March. And we were on a trip. So part of the deal by me with my wife was, we had to take, we, we, we, we had to take all these family vacations, like, like extravagant family vacations. Like, that was her part of the deal. She was focused on the family. And so we were, we like went to the Alani in Hawaii. We went to Puerto Vallarta. We went to Cinque Terre, Italy. We went to Costa Rica. I mean, I'm not kidding. It was, it was insane. At the same time, we had this big investment. It was not a smart thing to do, but I would have, I would have done anything, anything to buy crypto at that time. I would have agreed to

• 24:11Speaker 02

  anything. So, so basically we're in Puerto Vallarta and we were at this disgusting resort. It was actually like beautiful views, but horrible food. And there was this fajita bar and they had like, you had to scoop your own meat, like your raw meat onto your plate and then you give it to them and they cook it. It was like totally disgusting. And, and so that night, I was, I was, I woke up at like 11pm. I was like foaming at the mouth. I was puking. I'd never been this sick. Like, I thought I was gonna die. I could not stop puking. So I ended up like by myself, jumping in a cab at like 3:00 in the morning in Puerto Vallarta and going to downtown Puerto Vallarta to buy Dramamine. And that's when, that's when F started to pop. And, and when it started to pop,

• 24:52Speaker 02

  it was like, it was like seeing Santa Claus in the flesh. Like, I thought it would happen. I knew it was gonna happen, but it was, it was so crazy how quickly that it went up. I mean, you know, this is a crypto listenership. People know. They lived through it. And, and I believe it's gonna happen again for sure, by the way. But it was crazy. And I, I remember that time being like, I was in a cab, like wanting to puke and I was gonna like puke all over this guy's cab. And I didn't know like what the situation was. He was like gonna kick my ass or something. I can't even know where I was. I was like in some back alley of Puerto Vallarta, but I didn't care because I had made like, by the time I got in that cab, I'd make like $70,000 or something insane like that. And it was just this feeling that like, holy shit, our life is going to change.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  And it was mostly euphoria, but there was also this like underlying like tension, anxiety and fear. And I've talked to a lot of people who have been through this and it's a very common feeling. Because your whole world is shifting, not unlike when you win the lottery. People say it's very destabilizing.

• 25:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, and the crazy part to me of this whole thing is, uh, you know, you kind of made an early bet. You actually failed to some degree, right? You lost some of the investment. Uh, you double down. The um, ether price starts to explode. Uh, you know, newsflash, it went all the way to $1,400 at one point. Um, so from 10 to 1,400 is a, is a pretty big increase there. Um, what, what was kind of the journey from, you know, pre-February, March 2017, all the way to the uh, um, the, the top of that price point of $1,400? And what did you do along the way? Skrt, skrt. Wanna know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right. Crypto.com.

• 26:36Anthony Pompliano?

  They're a crypto platform with one goal: motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending and card payment. Everything you could want at crypto.com. Go help your boy out. Tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and wifi. All you gotta do is go to coinmine.com, you buy a coin mine. It's like an Xbox or a PlayStation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right.

• 27:16Anthony Pompliano?

  You purchase it, it shows up at your doorstep, you pull it out of the box, you plug it in, connect to your wifi. Five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide. And then you receive over the air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis. Kind of like how Tesla does over the air updates and updates the car software. Just your update in your coin mind. Consumer mining made easy. That's right. Go to coinmine.com, tell them Pomp sent you and thank me later. One more word from our sponsor BlockFi. Their new interest account allows you to securely deposit your Bitcoin or Ether at BlockFi and receive 6% annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency.

• 27:58Anthony Pompliano?

  This rate actually compounds, so you receive a 6.2% APY, which is very attractive given the alternatives. So you can actually take your Bitcoin, you can deposit it with BlockFi and get paid an interest rate of 6% in return. Go check out blockfi.com/pomp, again, blockfi.com/pomp, to sign up and start earning interest on your crypto today. What was kind of the journey from, you know, pre-February, March 2017, all the way to the top of that price point of $1,400? And what did you do along the way?

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was, you know, it was like the year of magical thinking. I mean, it was, I had like zero frame of reference to handle what I went through. Zero. It was, you know, like some days I would, I would, like there were days where I was up like a million dollars, you know? And, and, and it was, it was like, there was some half days where I was up a million dollars. And, and basically, I became like this prophet in the community for crypto. And, you know, I talk about my flip side in the book, and that's what didn't let me succeed in corporate America. It's part of me and it's insecure and it's also has illusions of grandeur and, you know, say this stupid stuff. And, and, you know, it's just like the reason why I never had executive presence.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  But it was a part of, that, that part of my personality, that addictive, greedy, kind of like chip on your shoulder guy, was a part of, was right there with me. Right along with the like, the smart, like inspired side, the part that could see the future, this kind of thing. So I was like the perfect communicator. I mean, it just seeped out of me. I'm sure, Pomp, you can rec- you recognize some of this too, just from talking crypto. But when it's in this kind of a bull run, man, like I- people wanted to hear it and I wanted to talk about it. And it wasn't my intention to get them to invest, but I was just like the perfect communicator. I would share anecdotes about my story. I would talk about projects. I would talk about price movement. Um, like one good example of, of what it was, and this wasn't just a reflection of what was going on with me. But at the time, I mean, it was all anyone could talk about was crypto.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  I mean, people were making millions, millions, millions. It- with the news cycles now, we forget so soon. Like, not we, the crypto folks that are on this podcast, but, but people like, um, in the general population. But like, I met with my tax guy. He's like 71 years old. You know, I had this guy. He was a great guy, like family friend. Um, and he started off the meeting, he had heard from my brother. I'd made a bunch of money. I think I was up like $900,000 or something at that point. And, um, and, and he had started off the meeting like, Tom, I listen. I had this guy. He once, you know, invested in this watch company and the guy said he'd make millions and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. Well, when it was my turn, I just like stood and delivered, man. And by the end of the meeting, he told me he was gonna put in 10 grand into Ether.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  He called me the next day to say he put in 20 grand. And it was just like, I had people like literally knocking on my door. Um, I had people like hitting me up on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit. And the problem was, there was a lot of ups and downs during that year. And, uh, I thought I got hacked twice. Um, I, I, uh, you know, I, I, we didn't get out. Uh, there's just like ups and downs. I mean, during that period, people forget during 17, it crashed down like 60%. And I hadn't taken out much of my investment. And so it was like, I was on this drug. I mean, it was the most powerful drug I'd ever been on. Um, and I'd been on oxys and booze. Um, and, and when, when the price dropped, even if I was up on paper, it was like this sudden brutal withdrawals.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  It was completely insane. And again, this is something, I have a bunch of early readers. And this is something people can relate to too. It was just a phenomenon that is hard to, um, it's, it's, there's not a lot of examples of it. Uh, you know, it was, it's such a new thing, these crazy crypto bull runs.

• 31:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So I got to ask though, I think that a lot of this, you know, we sit here and we're enjoying the story because it ends well, and we'll get to that in a second. What do you think is the risks? Or if you look back, you're like, look, it was insane for me to do X and Y or Z and kind of what's your advice to people today as they look at this and realizing it's a highly volatile asset and some of the challenges that come with the market?

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's a really good point. Again, I'm not a financial advisor and all that. But, but basically what I, what I tell people today is, first of all, I tell them like, I'm kind of like Rip Van Winkle, as I mentioned to you, Pom, earlier. You know, I like, I, I got out and I got out 70% of my stack at, in early January 2018. Lucky as hell, fortunate. I talk about how that came about. I had a financial advisor, a family friend, and he helped me through it because he was kind of my straight man. But, you know, it was, for me, it was more than an investment. It was like an identity. It was a lifestyle. Like, I finally won. Do you know what I mean? Like, all these crazy things that aren't going to show up in like Peter Lynch's investment book, or Warren Buffett's

• 32:51Speaker 02

  like, you know, scribe at the beginning of the year or whatever. So what I tell people, what I tell people is, A, you need, you need, you need to be comfortable with risk. Those people that don't do like a nine, an eight or a nine on the risk factor, the Charles Schwab or whatever, be very careful about investing in crypto, or only invest a very small amount. But if you're, if you're someone who likes risk, who's heavily into stocks, who might even have, you know, thought about like, oh, hey, let me put like 5% or 10% in something speculative, like, you know, currencies, or derivatives, or, you know, stuff that you know more about than I do, Pom. Like, it's hard for me to see how you wouldn't put 5 or 10% of your money into crypto, because I just feel like, and again,

• 33:32Speaker 02

  this is just me. Listen, you heard my story. I'm a moon kid, right? And I am still to this day. But it's hard for me to see all these institutions, all the development, all the partnerships, all, everything, and everyone's saying, okay, it's a volatile asset, and not think that it's going to pop up again. There's just too much happening. And, you know, while some of the stuff that people are working on, there, there, it's going to turn out to be impossible. There's gonna be some stuff like that. I just have faith that the engineers are gonna be able to to pull it off and the UI folks are gonna be able to pull it off where crypto Bitcoin Ether, some others, becomes more mainstream. It's just hard for me to see how it doesn't pop. So if you have a high-risk mentality, you know, I think it's a great asset to buy. And I have zero

• 34:15Speaker 02

  I have zero concerns about crypto long-term. So if you're thinking five or 10 years, it's especially in my mind, something you need to seriously consider.

• 34:25Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So you hinted a little bit towards what ends up happening in the end. What's kind of the end of the story here when it comes to the crypto investment?

• 34:33Speaker 02

  So it was, we had ups and downs. And then, you know, right around, let me just think. Okay, it was fall 2017. And it looked like there for a few months before that, that, you know, Ether and Bitcoin kind of leveled off. Then they started to fall. There was like a 40% decline. And so it might have been like, okay, this is that once in a decade bull run. It's over, you know, and so let's wait for the next big round. Who knows when that'll be? Maybe five years, maybe 20 years. And then, and then it just like, it was, it turned out that was the eye of the storm. And it just picked up. It was like, as I say in the book, it was like, it was like a 9.0 earthquake with like, an infinite number of 9.0 aftershocks.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Like, I had already documented, I was up like, I don't know, five or six million. Again, the numbers are in the book. And then it like doubled in 30 days. And then, and then it kept going up. And I was up, I was up, like, $15 million. And, you know, I finally, I got a critical email from my financial advisor, okay? My family was in Boston, hanging out with my in-laws, just by chance. It was early January. They'd been there for New Year's. It was early January. And I went for a run one morning, like at 5:30. I couldn't sleep. I could hardly sleep during this period. And I got an email from my financial advisor, who was also up early, because he's on New York hours, I'm in the valley. And it said, you know, listen,

• 36:02Speaker 02

  he goes, something has changed in crypto. And in all my years of experience, this change cannot be good. He said, "Yesterday, I received two calls from 80-year-old investors. They both asked me what I thought of Bitcoin." Yesterday, we also were going to get our photos done by a photographer for our new analyst, but he didn't show up. I got an apology email later, saying that he had quit his job because he had made $2 million trading crypto. And it was a couple of other examples, and he said, "In all my years of experience, this can't be a good thing." He said, "I would just be..." He goes, "You know way more about it than I do, but I would be not doing my duties as a financial advisor if I didn't tell you my thoughts at this point." Something started to click.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  And for me, it wasn't like, this was not based in my rational... It was partly based in my rational mind, but it was partially, I was finally kind of winning. And so, I went through this mourning of like, excruciatingly trying to decide whether I was going to sell. Because, I mean, at the time, here's the deal. We look back, "Oh, God, yeah, January 2018, of course you got to sell, that's at the top." No, no, no, no, no. My subreddit at the time, ethtrader subreddit, I mean, talk was $5,000 Ether. I mean, even at that price, it wouldn't be as worth as much as Facebook. So, it was not an easy decision. If I sold then, I'd be up $10 million. But, I mean, the addict in my mind said, "How fucking good would $30 million be?"

• 37:29Speaker 02

  I mean, and it was like, then you're talking like, just some extravagant wealth. And even though wealth wasn't necessarily what I was after, I wanted to quit my job. I mean, give me a break, $30 million. Would I buy a newspaper, start a foundation? I mean, it was... So, but thankfully, thankfully, I was able to pull away from that. And I was able to... There's like, Christmas cards on my mantle, you know? And, you know, that was part of it. And also, you know, like I say in the book, like, it was not just about my family and financial security at all, it was about me. I wanted to win. I was like Walter White in that famous scene from Breaking Bad, man. He wanted to win, and that was me. But... I did sell and I sold 70% of my stack and I was sitting on the couch. I did it over

• 38:14Speaker 02

  the course of two or three hours. Now, at that time, the Gemini order books. I mean, this was like full-on mania. I mean, there was the green dot. It was full-on mania, okay? I sold $10 million. Again, I forget about the numbers, but they're all in the book. I sold about 10 to 12 million, no, $13 million of Ether over the course of three hours, selling chunks of like 300 grand at a time. And that order book just gobbled them right up. Gobbled them right up. Each time, gobbled them right. Each time I sold, it kept going up. Six days later, I sold at 9:15, six days later Ether hit 1,400. A few months later, it was back down to 400. And of course, it hit a low of 80. And you know, Bitcoin's

• 38:59Speaker 02

  mirrored that. Bitcoin's done a lot better. But, you know, and then the other thing I'll just mention, Pom, since I'm going this far, is a lot of people say, like, my friends, like, they're like, "Well, how'd you turn that money?" They're like, "How did you get that cash? Like, how'd you turn that into US dollars?" And like, it couldn't have been easier. It was right on Gemini. And by the way, I have it on the book. I know people don't like to say what exchange they have or whatever, but I'm doing it anyway. I've got lots of, lots of security in place, put it that way. But, but basically, I clicked the button, wired it to my Wells Fargo, and the next day, I walked down to Wells Fargo and it was all right there. I mean, it was online that day. It was unbelievable.

• 39:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, that's a wild story, right? You essentially took what ended up being $350,000, turned it into 13-plus million dollars, and you did it with very little kind of traditional training in finance. You did it with very little, you know, I think, experience in terms of investing, etc. And so, it's funny to kind of talk about it now, right? Because you did win in that sense. But I do think that there's a lot of people who will listen to this and say, you know, "That's the one-in-the-million story." And for sure, I think, you know, you and I would both agree that that's probably true. As you look at it today, kind of how do you think about investing in general, right? Do you still look just solely at crypto

• 40:25Anthony Pompliano?

  markets? Do you look at other asset classes or kind of that experience? How has that really guided you into what you're doing now with, from an investment standpoint?

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the thing was like I, you know, after I, before I got into crypto, I was, I was heavily into blogging and I've, I've always wanted to be a writer, always liked to write. So I kinda like was heads down for two years writing this book and, um, you know, after I sold and I was like, I threw everything I had into this book and multiple professional edits and just, just like everything you can do to make a good book that people want to read. I've done that. What it meant though was that I was tracking crypto, but I wasn't like at all emotionally involved, even though I still have a pretty good stack. I sold 70%, so I sold 30% of my stack and I, I was not at all emotionally involved though. And you know, I pop up with this book

• 41:15Speaker 02

  and I'm like going on some of my subreddits, "Hey everyone!", like I, you know, I, I like, I'm trying to make a, like a Reddit post that people like will, will click on. So I'm like, "I made 13 million, uh, I wrote a book about ether, like here it is, about crypto and ether, here it is." And like, you know, "Fuck off, fuck you, go away Lambo boy, blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "What? These are my brothers. What's going on here?" And, you know, I just like totally misplayed where people were at in the market. I knew it like at a rational level, but intellectually, I kinda forgot how hard it's been and I can't even imagine like, uh, I mean, I felt it a little bit, but not really nothing compared to what people, what people have been going through.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  So, um, I, anyway, I just, I just, it just dawned on me how I had not been the level I was connected at before. But anyway, so, excuse me. So for me, um, I, I'm holding, uh, I'm holding crypto long-term. Um, if it goes, if it skyrockets again, I'll probably sell half. But I think like long-term is the real play. And then, you know, like before crypto, my investments were like very conventional. I had like index funds and things like that. And they were like, you know, uh, they were, you know, 70, 30 for stocks or 60, 40 stocks and bonds. And I'm pretty much back to that. I mean, it's like, you know, it turns in, like, it went from this like crazy and thing, insane thing that like took over my soul,

• 42:35Speaker 02

  back to this little thing I manage on a spreadsheet. But, um, you know, I, I'm not so far as to think like the US dollar or the traditional economy is going to collapse. I believe in crypto, but I don't believe enough to keep it all in crypto, obviously. I mean, it's not just me, it's like my kids and my wife and stuff. But, but, um, but I, I do think long-term it's a great play and I just, you know, I, um, I- I have conventional investments otherwise and they're managed by the same guy who helped me get out of crypto and he does well and it's ensemble, ensemble capital. Oh, sorry, I shouldn't say any pitches here or whatever. So I don't know what the financial rules are or whatever. Anyway, but I mentioned them in the book just in terms of this friendship and guidance and all that.

• 43:15Anthony Pompliano?

  You can shout out friends, that's allowed?

• 43:19Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, before we wrap up, I mean, this is a wild story, but what do you think is the most important company in crypto today?

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Okay, I don't have a solid answer here, so I'll throw out a company that I think, that I think is important. But like I said, I have not been studying it as closely. I think Gemini, Gemini is important. And I think, I think even though we think we're like eons past, you know, the crazy, like everyone is associating crypto with dark markets and buying heroin and like hitmen and stuff online, we're still not entirely past that, especially after 17 and there were so many scammers, so many lost so much money. And I just know, and you all probably know from talking to your friends, like people still think it's risky, it's dangerous, and it is in a lot of ways. So I like Gemini because even though they're kind of like squares in some way, you know, they're talking about like crypto needs to be regulated and stuff. And this is a lot of what Mesrak talks

• 44:12Speaker 02

  about in his book. I still think there's a need to like normalize this for the normal population. And I think those guys have shown like they know how to do it from a security perspective, from a branding perspective, like they're very like conservative for a crypto company. But, but I think that's what we need. I like having like this blue chip company run by the Winklevii, you know, in, in New York. And I think it's good for the, it's good for the industry to have them.

• 44:36Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. So you're now writing and the book is fantastic. So I highly suggest people go get it. What do you think is the most important book you've ever read?

• 44:47Speaker 02

  I would say, okay, I would say the most important book I've ever read is, um, there's a book called The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. And, uh, I, I love Theodore Roosevelt. He was a moderate. Um, he happened to be a Republican, but he was a moderate. He took on, uh, the corporations and was a, a monopoly buster. Um, but this book documents how he got there. And it was like, um, he, he, he is just like the most amazing, like, young life. He grows like a sickly child and, um, and like one of his, I think his mother died or something like that. And he just like built himself through the years, through study, through physical labor, through like courage and perseverance. And, and then, and then, then the second half of that book is all about like, he was like governor at 25.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  He was, and he was just like one of those people that like, you know, the whole famous question, if you want to sit down with someone at dinner, who would you sit next to? And he's just like a fascinating guy. Um, but he was, um, he was self-built and, um, and he was a very progressive, uh, meaning he was open to new ideas. And that's like the thing I love about crypto is that, you know, this is like, this is just like the conceptual stuff is so mind-blowing. Um, and it's, it's, as much as the money and the greed, it's what draws a lot of us into the space.

• 46:02Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. What, um, what do you think in the book is the hardest part about writing it? Right? So you spent two years writing this book. Like what, what to you was the most surprising or the hardest part?

• 46:17Speaker 02

  I would say, yeah, it's, that's a, it's a, it's a very good question. Um, okay, I would say, I would say this, that when you're writing a memoir, like, um, I, I, this is like my fourth draft of the book and I, um, like deciding what parts of your career to mention are critical because books, good books are scenes and mesrecks books like this, and I've crafted mine that way, they're scenes. And what scenes you choose to put in is, is, is indicative of what story you're trying to tell, what parts of your character you're trying to describe. Like I'm not, my whole essence isn't boiled down into this book. It's the essence that's most important to tell.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  telling this story but you know as a writer of a memoir you're you're like pretty much blind to what is to what is most important you have a good you have some instincts but you have to have an outside reader because like I had scenes in this book I probably have the book is about 270 pages I probably have another 150 pages of like polished finished content that a good editor like I really had a brilliant editor um she just convinced me like listen this does not tell the story this is kind of funny this is kind of interesting ah you look kind of good here oh this is kind of a sordid tale that would be but it doesn't advance the story and when you're writing a book you're just trying to like like I wanted to I wrote this book so that it would be an easy read you know I really I

• 47:38Speaker 02

  I knew I thought crypto people would love it and so far so good um it's been very well received um but but I want mainstream people to read it and to do that you can't give them a bunch of technical crap and you can't bury him in some boring parts of my early story so I crafted all those parts of the story that had to do with me but also could could I could identify to how I got into crypto why I got into crypto all that kind of stuff

• 48:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it before uh before I end I always let the guest ask me a question and and we talk about aliens believer non believer

• 48:10Speaker 02

  oh that's funny I just heard that question um yeah absolutely I mean mathematically there has to be there has to be aliens uh and I and by the way I heard your mesrak interview and that I think that's why I was that's why I was thinking about that stuff that he talks about is fascinating that that there's a lot of the unexplained phenomena and all that I can't remember the specifics but yeah absolutely aliens and I also hope they don't come while I'm here

• 48:33Anthony Pompliano?

  he uh he shocked me I didn't realize that he had written books on aliens

• 48:37Speaker 02

  yeah me neither I had no idea I was I'm tempted to go get it in fact I just you just reminded me

• 48:42Anthony Pompliano?

  yeah he uh he's fantastic um all right what uh one question you have for me to finish up

• 48:48Speaker 02

  what was your scariest moment in crypto

• 48:51Anthony Pompliano?

  scariest moment um

• 48:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't really have scary moments for me personally as much as many people who listen to podcasts have heard the story. One of my partners got hacked and or SIM swapped and then there was a follow-up attack after he kind of corrected all of that and it put up better security and he got a text message one day from somebody who basically said, "I'm going to kidnap your daughter unless you send Bitcoin to this address." And you can imagine, you know, I don't have children, but you can imagine any father who gets something like that. There's a bunch of emotions that come in, both from fear, from anger, right? All this kind of stuff all at once. And so he screenshotted

• 49:36Anthony Pompliano?

  and sent it to me and basically was like, you know, what the fuck? And so even though, you know, it was a situation where it wasn't directly at me, right, or involving me, it was somebody so close to me that it was pretty nerve-wracking, frankly.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Well, we can't end on that. So what was a happy day in crypto for you?

• 49:56Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. I gotta say that when Bitcoin rallied, it wasn't one day, but when Bitcoin rallied from, you know, the depths of 31, 3200 in December of 2018, back over 10,000, right? That to me was, 10,000 was a big psychological moment for a lot of people. And I think it kind of reinvigorated people to, "Look, you can pay attention to these short-term price movements, but over a long period of time, you know, this asset and this network have all the value and advantages and, you know, everything that we're all excited about." But to me, that was a really big moment because, you know, this was a

• 50:39Anthony Pompliano?

  big, big bear market for many people, the first. And so when they kind of see an asset draw down 85% like that, you know, it's natural to think, "Hey, we're going to zero."

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. No, that's a great one. I agree.

• 50:53Anthony Pompliano?

  So, all right, where can people go find the book today?

• 50:57Speaker 02

  It's on Amazon today. It's an audiobook, ebook, and a paperback book. And so it's Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape from Corporate America. You can also find me on Twitter at DanConway650.

• 51:09Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, man. Dan, I appreciate it very much. The book is fantastic. I have a a copy here that is now inscribed on the front cover that says, "Pomp, I wrote this book for you, you filthy animal." So the rest of you filthy animals, go pick it up and we'll have to do this again. Great. Thanks so much, Pomp.

• 51:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey, everyone. Pomp here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.