#843 Bitcoin's Expansion Around The World w/ Nic Carter

Nic Carter is a Partner at Castle Island Ventures. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, Mining, Mexico Senator Encouraging Bitcoin, Russia/Ukraine conflict, and Canada's financial censorship. Nic joined us in the studio as a guest host on "The Best Business Show". To see the video of this episode, head over to the "The Best Business Show: LIVE" Youtube Channel. ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= Compass Mining is the world's first online marketplace for bitcoin mining hardware and hosting. Compass was founded with the goal of making it easy for everyone to mine bitcoin. Visit compassmining.io to start mining bitcoin today! ======================= The world's 2nd largest crypto exchange, OKEx, has dropped the "E" to become OKX, reflecting its evolution from a traditional crypto exchange to a comprehensive, cross-platform crypto services provider. With OKX's decentralized platform and Web3 wallet, MetaX, you have full custody over your crypto. Explore DeFi, NFTs and play-to-earning gaming with the world's most powerful crypto exchange. Visit OKX.com to learn more. =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Nick Carter is a partner at Castle Island Ventures. In this conversation, we talked about Bitcoin, mining, regulation, and market structure. I always enjoy talking to Nick, and I hope you enjoy this episode. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is LMAX Digital, the number one institutional crypto exchange. They offer clients the deepest pool of crypto liquidity on the planet, underscored by 100% uptime track record through volatility spikes. They leverage LMAX Group's liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology. LMAX Digital is the market-leading solution

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:54Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:18Speaker 01

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

• 3:41Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, I want to talk about a couple of different things. First, we're going to go around the world. I think that's the best way to do this today. Let's start with positive news and then we'll get into the darker, deeper stuff. Mexico, there's a senator in Mexico who's now saying that she's working on a legislative bill that they're going to put forward to make Bitcoin legal tender and openly talking about making it legal tender exactly like El Salvador. So El Salvador did it. Here's the playbook. Oh, here in Mexico, we should do this as well. I think we saw South America, Central American countries, plenty of Them saying like, this is interesting and trying to figure this out.

• 4:20Anthony Pompliano?

  We've got two quotes that we can pull up to give you an idea of this. So, you know, we need Bitcoin to be legal tender. If not, then it's very difficult to like, take action or do anything if it's not actually recognized as legal tender. And then she went on to say, it's clear to me that financial exclusion is one of the public problems a few of us have addressed with alternatives. This type of technology is allowing us to generate an alternative so that millions of people can be included in the financial system. So like, this is not a, what it appears like speculating on price or anything like that. It's more so just let's make it legal tender. Let's get more people in the financial system. Is this going to be the default? Like, do you think every single country is going to eventually do this?

• 4:58Speaker 02

  I mean, this is what we expected to happen after El Salvador. There would be a wave of more of these, you know, in particular Latin American countries that maybe are chafing at the dollar-based financial system. We'll see banks getting turned on to Bitcoin as a settlement network, probably sooner than you expect. But yeah, I mean, who knows if this is going to pass in Mexico. I can't tell you. I know the dynamics of their senate down there. But we're seeing similar statements made by many Latin American politicians. I mean, even Russia, not to, you know, get ahead of ourselves, they've done in the last few weeks, a favorable pivot in some respects towards Bitcoin. So everyone sees the merit of a neutral settlement network.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  It's just, when is it actually adopted? And does each country kind of take its own stance on it?

• 5:45Speaker 02

  You might need a catalyst. Yeah. You might need to be excluded from the established network or have something, you know, go wrong.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  So should these countries like Mexico, for example, when they go ahead and make a legal tender, should they do the El Salvador playbook of just, hey, let's try to acquire a bunch of Bitcoin with as much money as we can?

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Well, those are distinct concerns. One is acquiring a hard asset in your foreign exchange reserves alongside gold, for instance. You might want to do that to hedge the dollar. I, you know, I think you probably want to acquire an equivalent amount of Bitcoin than your fraction of gold owned, so that you're fully hedged. That's sort of a monetary question. The other one is, do you want to incorporate your financial sector into this neutral settlement network? Both have, you know, there's a case we made for both, but one doesn't necessarily imply the other.

• 6:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The other piece of this too, I think, is we see here in the United States, lots of politicians. I was saying yesterday, there's maybe, I don't know, 20, like important elections, you know, or like battlegrounds, if you will, on the midterm elections. I think that I've had in almost every single one of those elections, one of the candidates reach out to me or somebody I know and be like, hey, I'm pro Bitcoin, I'm pro crypto. And, you know, the mayor of New York, obviously saying like, I'm pro Bitcoin, but not Bitcoin mining. It highlights maybe there isn't a complete understanding of like the nuances of this stuff.

• 7:09Anthony Pompliano?

  But there is now, it feels like a recognition by the politicians, like if you're not pro this technology, like you are going to have a hard time with certain subset of the population.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah. And on both sides of the partisan divide too. We have politicians in Congress right now that are progressives and are pro Bitcoin. You'll be hearing from them soon, I'm sure. But yeah, in all of the congressional races, it seems to me that at least one of the candidates has a declared position. Some of the races, both candidates are pro Bitcoin.

• 7:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Crazy.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  So cancels out.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Are they declaring like being pro Bitcoin, you think, because they actually are, because they know that it might get a new audience, like some new voters to kind of back them a little bit? Cause a lot of them don't really do a lot with Bitcoin, right? They don't hold it, whether that's for like regulatory reasons or whatever. But some of them just say like, yeah, I'm pro Bitcoin and then move on.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. Some of it is political hedging for sure. Just, you know, why not incorporate this new demographic? Some of it is very sincere, you know, and you guys have talked to a lot of these people. I've talked to a few of them as well. And, you know, there's a very sincere commitment. They'll accept Bitcoin donations. They learn the issues, you know, the full scope and, and, you know, they generally frame it as a pro innovation stance.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. Like Tom Emmer is pro Bitcoin.

• 8:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. There's definitely people who understand this. Tom Emmer is one, Warren Davidson, Senator Lummis. Like we can go through and we're going to leave people out. So don't take any one candidate we mentioned or don't mention as a endorsement or not, but. I do think that it's going to become much harder to identify who actually understands it, right? And so if you had asked me, I don't know, four months ago, whenever when the New York City mayor came out and was like, oh, I'm gonna take, you know, my paychecks in Bitcoin, we're gonna make it a crypto-friendly city, all this stuff. It's like, okay, that all sounds great. And you really only have the talking points to judge them on.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Well, get them on the show and quiz them on the fundamentals.

• 9:02Anthony Pompliano?

  So, so I wasn't gonna go there, but yes.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  I'm gonna do a circuit of shot 256.

• 9:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes, like, like now, what I'm realizing is a lot of them are not exposing themselves actually to having the conversations. Like, it's easy to say the talking points and then kind of back away, right? And it's like, oh, okay, I scored my points and, you know, I don't want to say something bad. But also, just the longer time that we have to evaluate them, like, they eventually will say something where you're like, okay, they really get it, or they don't. And so seeing this stuff in Mexico, like, I don't think that's a US-specific thing. Like, I do think you're gonna see this around the world. People are gonna start saying like, hey, I'm going to use my sympathetic approach, or my understanding of Bitcoin cryptocurrencies, whatever component of the industry, as a way to separate myself from my political candidates. And like, that's kind of the game theory Bitcoin has been

• 9:52Anthony Pompliano?

  talking about for, you know, a decade.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  And it's not just political expediency, especially abroad, where crypto penetration is higher than it is in the US. I mean, I think I talked about this on the show last time, too. You want to identify the jurisdictions where there's much higher structural levels of penetration. It's places like Nigeria, India, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, obviously parts of Latin America, certain African countries, Eastern Europe, no question. All of those are probably ranking above the US in terms of crypto penetration. And so there, it's, it might just be a matter of actual necessity. Here in the US, we have sort of the luxury of like, well, you know, maybe Bitcoin's an interesting technology. Let me position myself as pro Bitcoin. In other countries, it might be a genuine necessity.

• 10:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, no, I completely agree. All right, let's switch gears. We're going to talk about Russia and Ukraine. I want to do, I want to separate out this conversation. First, let's talk about the Russia-Ukraine situation itself. And then we'll talk about how the media is covering it here in the United States. But when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, there's a lot of geopolitical complexity. I don't understand all of it. I don't think most people understand all of it. But I do think that we have seen, as you mentioned earlier, maybe not a 180, but definitely a move to become much more pro Bitcoin, pro cryptocurrency, pro decentralized technology, censorship resistant technology over the last maybe four months or so from Russia.

• 11:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that directly kind of connected to sanctioned threats and all that? Or is this just no, as Bill's got, you know, kind of to this point, it happens to be coincidence?

• 11:28Speaker 02

  It's definitely not a coincidence.

• 11:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  I mean, look at the chronologists. The Russian central bank says, we're anti Bitcoin, we're going to ban Bitcoin usage. Then they do almost a 180, or rather they get overruled as the exclusion from SWIFT becomes a more material threat. The US is already, I believe, leveling sanctions on certain Russian banks. If Russia invades Ukraine, there will likely be a full financial deplatforming of Russian banks from the financial system. How that's going to work, I don't know, because Russia is a huge trade partner with Europe, as we know.

• 12:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, how does that, like, what happens?

• 12:06Speaker 02

  I mean, the amount of natural gas they're piping into Turkey, Germany, Italy, the EU. So someone, you know, the financial exchange has to occur there. I don't know what happens in that situation. But if the US deplatforms Russia from SWIFT, that's going to be the last time they're going to get a chance to do sanctions like that. Because Russia has prepared themselves for that eventuality. They've, I believe they built an alternative to SWIFT. I think China built one as well. Russia's increased their bilateral trade with China. It's small but growing. And Russia has adopted this at the sort of federal level, somewhat of a pro Bitcoin stance. They have welcomed Bitcoin mining.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  After, you know, a few months ago, making noises about being contrary to Bitcoin mining. And the ban that the Central Bank of Russia was trying to promote on Bitcoin has been overruled. So this, to me, looks like an energy-rich nation with a lot of stranded energy, of course, where Bitcoin mining already occurs, and a nation facing potential exclusion from the financial system, from the US-dominated financial system, from SWIFT, and a nation that is de-dollarizing. I mean, if you look at their US Treasuries held is declining, they're de-dollarizing in terms of their, you know, foreign exchange reserves, they're

• 13:27Speaker 02

  increasing the amount of gold they hold. So they're actively de-dollarizing. The conditions are perfect for them to embrace Bitcoin at the state level. Now, individual Russians, it might be much more questionable and difficult in terms of them getting access to Bitcoin. It looks like legally, there's going to be barriers to that. But at the state level, it looks like their interests are aligned with Bitcoin.

• 13:47Anthony Pompliano?

  So there's a couple of things that I'm going to throw out there, and then we can talk about them. One, Russia is 12% of global oil production, right? So huge in terms of potentially being cut off from exporting that. What is the impacts? How does that play out? What is the impact of oil prices and gasoline, etc.? The second is, obviously, they've been de-dollarizing. There's literally articles, for example, Russia and China, partners in de-dollarization. And so this isn't a new idea. They've been doing this for some time. There was a article, let's see, in CNN yesterday, that said Russian banks imported $5 billion in foreign cash in December. So it's not just gold, it's

• 14:32Anthony Pompliano?

  not just Bitcoin, right? It's very obvious that they're saying, hey, let's get diversification here in these various currencies, and so that we can have that. And then I think that the other component of this is this increasing relationship with China. And I was talking to a group yesterday, and somebody asked me about the sanctions. And I posed the question, which I said, I don't know what the right answer is. But if you're Russia, over the next 10 years, who would you rather have? You have to pick one or other. It's a binary decision. Would you rather have the United States as your trade partner or China? Right? And like, just from a pure economic consumption standpoint, like China has four times more people than us. Now, that isn't the only thing that matters in terms of total

• 15:16Anthony Pompliano?

  people. But when you start to unpack some of this, like, the answer isn't as clear as it used to be. Right? And it feels like then when you layer in, kind of this dependency on a dollar-based system where sanctions are obviously on the table at all times, it's almost like they're playing defense more so than they're playing offense, right?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look, we've, we've employed sanctions as our primary offensive weapon as a substitute for kinetic warfare in this country for, I don't know, 20 years now, probably. Financial sanctions were the first thing we used, you know, instead of going to war. And, okay, maybe that was, you know, that saved some American lives. But the thing about sanctions is they grow blunt with overuse. Right? It's like a video game where you can only swing your sword so many times before it breaks. And that's what's happening here. Russia has been preparing for this. They knew that sanctions were on the table. And they've been actively preparing themselves for a long period of time. So if we go for the nuclear option, kick them off swift, kick their banks out of the financial system,

• 16:19Speaker 02

  at least the one we control, they'll, you know, that weapon won't work again. Right? At that point, they'll have become anti-fragile. They'll, they'll be more resilient. And we'll never be able to use it again.

• 16:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Does this, there's a couple other components here, which, again, I don't know the answers, I have opinions, but let's kind of talk through it. So, one, we obviously saw the Afghanistan withdrawal happen in August, September of last year. There was a lot of talk at that point of, oh, this kind of got botched, it didn't look so great. Is, did the US lose the war in Afghanistan? Therefore, will China become much more, kind of, offensively postured for something like Taiwan, etc. Well, actually, we're seeing Russia be a little bit more aggressive and kind of posturing in an offensive way. And so like, did that play into it at all? Or is there a change

• 17:08Anthony Pompliano?

  in their viewpoint? The second thing is obviously, Biden, he tweeted, I believe, when he was, before he was elected, but going into the election, basically like Vladimir Putin won't mess with me. He knows I'm tough. He doesn't want me to be president. He wants Trump to be president because Trump will listen to him or whatever. Now here we find ourselves of like, maybe that wasn't true. How much of these like, what seemingly were unconnected or unrelated situations that really rely on like, who our leadership is, or how our military operates in other parts of the world, do you think play into these types of situations? Or is it just like, people are pulling at straws and pride doesn't matter?

• 17:48Speaker 02

  No, what's happening is there is a structural, long-term shift of the US going from being a global hegemon, from projecting power to every corner of the globe, to turning its focus inward. And that's where we are. That's where we find ourselves. We are withdrawing militarily from the rest of the world. And that might work out fine for the US, actually. Probably work out badly for everybody else. Because we're not going to be protecting those trade routes, for instance. We're not going to have our blue water navy and have nook and cranny of the oceans protecting shipping lanes. We're not going to be ensuring energy security or food security for the entire globe. We're turning our gaze inwards. We've clearly got our own issues to resolve here domestically. And there's just less

• 18:33Speaker 02

  of an interest in projecting power abroad. That does mean forsaking former allies. That is what's happening. That's just me describing the situation, not saying it's good or bad. And so we see this in Taiwan, we see this in Eastern Europe, and ultimately, the US is probably going to back down in both places. And we're going to focus inward. We've been underinvesting in our military. We're saddled with debt. We can't really maintain the similar level of spending. And yeah, our focus is inward now for better for us.

• 19:03Anthony Pompliano?

  John and I were joking a couple of weeks ago of like, oh, there's a talk that the economy is going to slow down, a potential recession, interest rates, all this stuff. Like, what's the chess move? Right? It's like, let's go to war, right? Like, just crank up the economic growth by basically spending on, you know, let's go take over a country, let's go whatever. I don't think anyone was like, oh, Russia is going to be the the target, right? There's a bunch of other countries that I think people would have put on that list. Is does that play into it at all of like, we need economic growth and so like, let's fire up the war engine and and at least the threat of it means that we can spend money without people freaking out?

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if you look at, you know, the previous time government spending is the share of GDP was this high, it was in World War II, right? But we've entered that level of structurally elevated spending without a war. I don't know how we can layer on a war on top of that. I don't know if we can afford that, frankly. The other thing that wars do is they make the price of oil spike. I don't know about you guys, but like pumping gas is pretty expensive these days, right?

• 20:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  If oil goes high enough, that also kind of pushes us towards a recession because energy is sort of the most fundamental commodity. That means food is more expensive, transport is more expensive, logistics, everything, supply chain. So we can't really actually afford oil to go that much higher. Europe can't afford to have Russia cut off all their gas exports. There's a lot of reasons why a war wouldn't make sense here, not to mention, obviously, the fact that it's between two nuclear powers.

• 20:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So before we talk about more on the gasoline part, John, what do you think about the whole Russia situation in terms of what appears to be posturing and potential invasion? Like, what do you think the US does?

• 20:50Speaker 03

  I mean, they're open about their playbook, it sounds like, right? Like, we're going to impose sanctions on you if you go ahead and invade the Ukraine. It's now coming to fruition that I don't think Putin really cares. I think he's like, we're going to do it if we want to do it. And if not, like, he's toed the line, right? He moved troops near the border. Everyone's like, oh, you're not going to invade. It's training exercise. And then continuously has gone down the line where it looks like he is going to invade. He has moved troops into the Ukraine. With the military. So it's really just depends. I think Putin and Russia would love to get off the dollar. They would love to price oil in something other than the US dollar, whether that's Bitcoin, whether that's another currency, whatever it is, is just they would love to get off the dollar because it it kind of straps them into, hey, you have to use this

• 21:33Speaker 03

  and you have to be intertwined with the United States and other foreign countries and allies with the United States. But yeah, I agree with Nick's point is we have a lot of problems on our own soil and going to war with Russia, another massive nuclear country, that's not good for the US. It will increase spending. It will give the US an excuse to kind of raise the debt ceiling again and everything that goes along with war. But no, I don't think we should be going to war with Russia. Unfortunately, we're kind of playing 911 for the entire world right now. But that is a, that is like it's a catalyst of we have a massive military and everyone knows it, right? So traditionally, we have used that military to kind of flex our muscles around the world.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  And I don't know if we can continuously do that with how much money we spend on our military every year. I mean, our Pentagon has never passed an audit. We don't even know the location of some buildings, right? Plains, we left a bunch of stuff in Afghanistan. So yeah, we'll see how it plays out. But it's, it's kind of like a gray area what Russia is doing right now.

• 22:34Anthony Pompliano?

  So here's a crazy thing for you. I couldn't find, I couldn't remember if I tweeted it or wrote about it.

• 22:41Anthony Pompliano?

  In November of 2018, I wrote this after seeing a, I think he was speaking at an event. And this is Vladimir Putin openly talking about this. He basically said that the days of the US dollars are global reserve currency are numbered. And at the conference, he basically said what everyone thought he thought, right? And he said, we don't have a goal to shift away from the dollar. The dollar is moving away from us. The volatile dollar transactions make many economies around the world want to find alternative reserve currencies and create payment systems that are not dependent on the dollar. It's not just our problem. We see what is going on in the world. Just look at how the gold reserves of countries are dwindling, including those closely allied to the States. Dollar assets are decreasing even among the largest holders of dollar assets.

• 23:24Anthony Pompliano?

  This is the result of imposing sanctions, including connected with the dollar. I think this realization will come sooner or later, and the world will look for alternative savings and transaction methods. And so obviously in 2018, Bitcoin wasn't like, oh, Bitcoin is going to be the solution, right? I think there's people who thought, hey, maybe one day. But this was noteworthy enough where I was like, He's saying it out loud, right? And that was surprising to me. And so when you start to look at this, like, that's four years ago, three and a half years ago, right? Like, they've been thinking about this for a while, and they've been preparing for this type of stuff. And so I don't think that, like, we're catching them by surprise, right?

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Not remotely. And we've also been threatening sanctions on Russian banks for years and years and years, right? Since, I think, probably 2016, when, you know, the Russia scandals were breaking. So they are aware that they're facing imminent exclusion from the dollar system. Of course, they've been preparing themselves for that. Now, they're pretty well positioned to deal with it, right? They have a low debt to GDP. They have, you know, bountiful energy reserves that the rest of the world needs. They're de-dollarizing. They have tons of gold. You know, so they're, I'm, you know, they're, I'm not going to say they're ready or they want all their banking, their banks to be kicked off of Swift and become somewhat cut off from the rest of the world. But they've been aware this is a possibility.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  And this is a problem with sanctions is sanctions make the dollar network bad, right? They put holes in the dollar network. The money is the ultimate network, right? If you want your monetary unit to be ubiquitous and work for everyone, you can't impair the, you can't put barriers inside of the network. But sanctions put political gating factors in terms of who can have access to the world's reserve. So by being so aggressive with sanctions, the US is accelerating the move away from the dollar as a global reserve. That's just a fact. Even the Europeans have been trying to get off it. When we sanctioned Iran, the Europeans went and built this Instax vehicle so that they could try and end around the

• 25:26Speaker 02

  sanctions. Those are our allies. Our allies got so fed up with our sanctions regime that they tried to build an alternative. Didn't work. It'll probably work the next time.

• 25:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Do they go back to gold or Bitcoin? Like, is that what they run to?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 25:40Anthony Pompliano?

  If they move away from the dollar?

• 25:41Speaker 02

  I, I think they'll have to, well, there's the reserve component, and they're going for non-dollar assets, clearly. But there's also the transactional component. And I think that's more challenging. It's unclear what they would do. But yeah, they'd have to build some sort of messaging system for banks to communicate.

• 25:57Anthony Pompliano?

  So another piece of this is how it's being covered. And there was obviously this tweet from CBS News that everyone's just laughing at, right? Which says, "The US economy has been hit with increased gas prices, inflation, and supply chain issues." All true. Due to the Ukraine crisis, not true. And so John went and pulled a bunch of information today. So this is the tweet that everyone obviously is laughing at on the internet. And if we go ahead and we look at gas prices, obviously it's up. But you can see here on the far right that since the beginning of 2020, it's up right after that that drawdown. And then if we go and we look, there's the RSM chief economist who basically said, you

• 26:39Anthony Pompliano?

  know, look, war is incredibly bad from a human and economic standpoint, but the economic burden is going to fall the hardest on the middle and working class, right? Which I agree with, I think most people will agree with. If we look at inflation, right? It's hard to claim that the Ukraine crisis is the cause of inflation, given that inflation has been above 5% since the middle of 2021. And then if we look at, I think this again is gasoline prices, there has been some impact, right? Given kind of the Russia, Ukraine, Russia and Saudi Arabia kind of linking up rather than Saudi Arabia back in the US. But the impact is like, we've gone from like, let's call it $3.40 to like $3.50, right?

• 27:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like it's a somewhat immaterial increase when you go all the way back to, well, there's been a $1.50 increase since the beginning of 2021. Right? And so like, is this just like a media outlet being stupid? Or like, should we expect more of kind of this like gaslighting and the use of current conflict to explain economic problems at home going into like a midterm election?

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course, they want to explain away the fact that there is enormous inflation, the highest generational levels of inflation anyone living has seen. And they want to ascribe it to a single culprit. A few weeks ago, it was corporate greed. A few weeks before that, it was antitrust.

• 28:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Price gouging.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 28:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Grocery stores, they make 3% profit.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  I mean, the corporate greed thing was just so preposterous. It's like, all right, so corporations are super greedy now. They were super generous in 2008.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  They are greedy in the 70s. They were less greedy in the early 2000s. Like, come on, guys. Like antitrust, oh, it's monopolistic, you know, it's concentration of power. It's like, come on, these are-

• 28:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, Mark Zuckerberg obviously is making your food prices go up.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's like, oh, you know, Kroger, they've got, they're a 4% margin business, you know, they're engaging in price gouging in the most competitive industry, which is groceries. I mean, it's just crazy stuff. And so now, now we have a new pretext for inflation domestically or our energy crisis, which is preposterous. Like, the reason that energy is expensive in this country, the reason that, you know, we're paying the highest energy prices we've paid this winter in decades is because we've de-emphasized the extraction of hydrocarbons. We've made it politically difficult and expensive to extract the core fundamental energy source we need, right? New England, states like Massachusetts, they're right

• 29:15Speaker 02

  next to some of the biggest natural gas deposits on the planet. They're importing natural gas from places like Africa.

• 29:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, why are they doing that? Why is that now politically like taboo subject?

• 29:25Speaker 02

  It's just part of-

• 29:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it the environmentalist type argument is like, hey, we don't need to do this here. Let's go take it from somewhere else, even though it costs more?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  There is a utopian belief that we can substitute all hydrocarbons for wind and solar, which isn't possible on this timeline. And you can't do that in full. There is a political rejection of building pipeline infrastructure so that you can transport gas cheaply. The consequence is you have states like Massachusetts burning oil this winter, which is the worst in terms of, you know, carbon intensity, importing gas from abroad, even though there's gas right in our backyard, because we do things like ban fracking, because we do things like prohibit these pipelines from getting built. That means

• 30:14Speaker 02

  that we now have an energy crisis brewing here at home. And America is a, is a resource-rich nation. There's no reason whatsoever for us to have an energy crisis. But we've inserted political gating factors to actually extracting energy that we need. And we've tried for this accelerated transition away from hydrocarbons too fast, and now we're sort of burying the brunt of that.

• 30:37Anthony Pompliano?

  It's wild to think about how important energy, oil production, natural gas, etc. is in the world. And people who don't pay attention to that stuff are like, oh, yeah, gasoline. That's basically their interaction is the gasoline they put in their car or their electric bill. Right. But this is probably the most geopolitically important asset or commodity in the world, which

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Number one, you know what happens when energy prices get expensive? People starve because fertilizer is made from energy and fertilizer is what allows us to feed human beings, you know, eight billion humans on the planet, high yields, relatively scarce arable land. So there's a genuine, significant human cost to allowing energy prices to skyrocket like we're seeing.

• 31:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And the thought process right now, again, my kind of elementary understanding is the United States has gone to Saudi Arabia, Russia, and many others and said, produce more oil. We, we need to basically in a marketplace where there's an imbalance of supply and demand. We need more supply coming out of the ground so we can drive these prices down and we can kind of correct the problem. Saudi Arabia and Russia, a couple of years ago, came together and said, you know, basically we're going to be buddies. And they've decided they're not going to do that. And that's a pretty big deal because they produce a lot of oil. And so naturally what it does, it puts a strain on US-based assets or other types of allies that we have to be able to get that oil.

• 32:02Anthony Pompliano?

  But once those two decided they weren't going to do this, and if you then overlay the whole idea of like, maybe we're actually going to prevent Russia from exporting oil, or maybe they just decide to stop exporting oil. It feels like this is not going to be solved anytime soon. And actually, we may see higher prices before we see it correct back lower, right?

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I mean, the geopolitics of energy are just stunning. So we're now in the position where we're begging OPEC to reduce prices. You know, why the heck would you want to put yourself in that position? We used to be a net energy exporter, right? We used to produce all the energy we needed and then some. And then because we de-emphasize the ability to produce energy domestically, we're now re-dependent on foreign nations abroad. Not only that, we could be exporting plenty of liquefied natural gas to Europe so that they're not dependent on Russia. Right? They're wholly dependent on Russia, Germany in particular. And so they are politically beholden to them because they need gas to heat their homes

• 32:59Speaker 02

  this winter. And so we could be alleviating the European political crisis if we just exported more natural gas to Europe, which we were totally able to do. But the last decade has seen a total de-emphasizing of local energy production. And so now we're in this terrible position.

• 33:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's play a hypothetical situation. And the last thing we'll talk about with Russia, 12% of global oil production in the country, and they just decide, we're not going to sell it in dollars anymore. We're going to price it in Bitcoin. What happens? Are we like literally dropping bombs in Moscow tomorrow? Like, what do we do?

• 33:39Speaker 02

  I think Bitcoiners would become extremely reviled in this country, more so than we are already. We'd be accused of being Russian stooges, probably. I mean,

• 33:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And by the way, we're laughing, but literally online, people who are saying, hey, hold on a second and questioning or asking for more thoughtful analysis of the situation. I've already seen people being accused of being Russian assets, etc.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  I saw a take today saying like Bitcoin facilitates war or encourages war. It's like, what kind of world are these people in?

• 34:10Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So if that was to occur, there would obviously be some portion of the political regime in the United States who would say, you're holding an asset that they're pricing their assets and their oil in. We don't like you. Fine. What's the geopolitical ramifications?

• 34:27Speaker 02

  I mean, all the times the US has gone after some dictator militarily in the last 20, 30 years has been because they've tried to price their commodities in something other than US dollars, whether it's Saddam, whether it's Gaddafi.

• 34:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I always use those two as the example. Like, there's two guys recently who tried to do it, and they're dead.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, they buy up by US hands. Yeah, Chavez tried. We didn't succeed there. But yeah, I mean, it's not a coincidence, right? There's no other real explanation for the Iraq war, frankly.

• 34:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there, is it fair to compare?

• 35:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Those three that you just mentioned with Putin.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  They didn't have the leverage that he has.

• 35:07Anthony Pompliano?

  He feels like he has leverage, but he also feels.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Well, he does have leverage.

• 35:11Anthony Pompliano?

  That's what I'm saying. He feels like he has more leverage, but but also it feels like it's a different type of country.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  He's more.

• 35:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Defense mechanisms, nuclear weapons, like, like, it's just very different scenario.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  He's more deliberate. And yeah, they are a nuclear nation. They have more nuclear warheads than the US does. We don't really have an ability to interfere with them that much. I mean, we haven't for, you know, what, 70, 80 years now.

• 35:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think it's likely they do this?

• 35:41Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I think there's a lot of brinksmanship here, and I think people are addicted to the soap opera and, you know, they just see life through like as if it's like an HBO series or something. But, you know, and maybe Putin will extract some some territorial gains from the Ukraine. But no, I do not think we see full fledged warfare here. I'll put that on the record.

• 36:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I tend to agree with you that that's very hard. Both. It's hard to see from a US citizen's appetite for that, right? Just in terms of like the, especially again, there's an election coming up, right? And so that feels, in the past, maybe going to war would provide for an ability to rally and unite citizens and use that as a leverage point for an election. It feels like it would have the opposite effect now and would almost guarantee that the current administration would lose control. But also, it feels like Syria is always like one of my favorite ones to point out, like, are we at war with Syria?

• 36:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Because we keep dropping bombs over there and killing people and doing all stuff. And like, by the way, there's some bad people, right? And like, so it's not discounting what some people have done, etc. But like, why do we do that? Why can we do that? Well, it's because like, what are they gonna do? It's kind of the the response, right? There's like an American imperialism or arrogance that comes with it. I don't think you can do that in Russia. Like, if we go and we drop bombs in Russia, like, I would be worried.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't. Not against a nuclear, you know, regional power like that. And a lot of people think this can be like Iraq, where Bush's approval rating skyrocketed 95% after that. No, this is going to be like the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan to try and regain some credibility as the regime was crumbling. That's the equivalent of this.

• 37:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I tend to agree. So. I think we see eye to eye, John, do you think there's gonna be war? Like, actual violent?

• 37:35Speaker 03

  No, I, no, I don't think so. It's on the table for sure, but I think it's gonna be a lot of bark, no bite. And if the bite is, they're gonna annex part of the Ukraine a little bit, take some territorial stuff, but I don't think they're gonna like, get off the US dollar within the next year.

• 37:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I think that there's a higher probability of them pricing oil in something other than the dollar, not necessarily Bitcoin, but something other than the dollar. But what I don't think is gonna happen is it's gonna be like, uh, press a button, 100% of all of our oil, all in this new currency that we've chosen, uh, and we're never gonna use dollar again. I actually think what becomes, it's kind of the El Salvador strategy, like, oh, we're pricing dollars and, right? It's not an either or, it's an and type situation. And it just normalizes. And like to your point about the deliberate nature, how do you get mad? Well, it's priced in dollars and rubles. Yeah, you want, you know, whatever currency Bitcoin, whatever. But that does feel like that

• 38:37Anthony Pompliano?

  would be another kind of milestone moment of the geopolitical, you know, kind of chess match of like, I think every political leader around the world knows, like, that's the thing that the, that, that when you poke the bear, all hell comes down, right? And we've seen example after example of it. And if you really, if you really want to take a, you know, kind of move your chess piece forward, like, there's, what, you go into Ukraine, right? You stop exporting your oil and kind of cause chaos around the world. You price your oil in a different currency, there's maybe like six or seven things we'd come up with that you could do. They're already doing some of them, right? So like, what else is left? Uh, I don't know.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  It's a gradual thing. You don't exit, um, you know, a global reserve currency immediately, you can't do that. They are very sticky. You know, for instance, the UK stopped being a global power capable of projecting power. And, you know, after World War I, the British pound was a global reserve currency until around the 40s. So the currency is often the last thing that exits, stage left, after an empire has lost power and control. So it might be the case of the dollar outlast, outlast the US empire, right? The dollar might be the stickiest thing. Yeah. But yeah, you can't get rid of it overnight.

• 39:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Before, uh, before we finish, we've got another 15 minutes or so, uh, I want to make sure to talk about Canada. And, uh,

• 40:07Anthony Pompliano?

  I think the best way to summarize it is, uh, we went from zero to a hundred real fast. In a place of the world where if you had said, you know, stack rank the authoritarian dictatorships, uh, or those likely to become one, um, Canada's, I might not even think to put them on the list, right? Like, forget where they're ranked. Like, it's just like, it like, an afterthought in any sort of violation of democratic ideals or ethos or any of that stuff.

• 40:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, all of a sudden, it's like, everyone pointing and being like, this is the example of like, what to expect in the future. Like, what's your read on it?

• 40:43Speaker 02

  I'm shocked by it. I'm shocked and scandalized, honestly. Uh, this kind of behavior we're seeing from Trudeau is the kind of panicky, uh, you know, counter to human rights, counter to civil liberties behavior that we see from despots in places like Venezuela, uh, Egypt, you know, like from places with no political legitimacy. I mean, you can get rid of trucks parked in the street without engaging in wholesale financial sanctions uh, against your own people. It's not that hard to get rid of trucks in the street. You can tell them, that's what they did, right? That, quote unquote, emergency ended, right? They cleared the streets, they ended the protest. That's completely within their rights.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  But then going 12 steps further and saying, we are going to enact financial sanctions against everyone that participated in this protest in every financial dimension. You know, banks, brokerages, securities, exchanges.

• 41:42Anthony Pompliano?

  We're gonna erase you from the financial system.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  We're gonna cut you off from all of that, every possible conceivable dimension of your financial life. We're gonna do that extrajudicially. Right? We're not gonna, you know, get a court order. We're just gonna go ahead and preemptively do that. And then we're also gonna target everyone that's supported you and retroactively make them effectively criminal and treat them like some sort of hostile foreign combatant. I mean, what Canada is doing to, you know, these truckers, you know, these protesters is what the US did to like Al Qaeda after 9/11. It's that level of aggression in terms of financial sanctions. It's something that I would never, never have expected.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  They're sending tweets from the Coinbase and Kraken CEOs to have them investigated. And you had a funny tweet about you like, "Canada appears to be determined to become Venezuela."

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and that's, you know, that might be tough on Venezuela, right?

• 42:41Anthony Pompliano?

  The part to me that, uh, it just caught my, like, I don't know if it was just, uh, I hadn't thought about it, or like, it just all hit me yesterday. I tweeted this thing and I was like, "The United States is sanctioning Russia. China is sanctioning US defense contractors for selling equipment to Taiwan. And Canada's sanctioning its own citizens." Like, sanctions were, to your point, a tool in your toolbox reserved for enemies of war. Right? And to do it to your own citizens, I think just like, one, people are like, "Wait a minute. This is like insane." But two, is to do it with almost spite.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, it's one thing if you said, "Hey, we're going to, uh, you know, Nick, you're a bad person because we disagree with you and you're funding, uh, this protest and that protest killed a police officer." Right? And, uh, even in that situation, I think most people would have a problem with you going after the financial assets, etc. But you could see how it would be easy for them to present a case of like, there's money being, uh, used for funding of a violent situation.

• 43:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, we've all seen videos like there's, you know, the quintessential example is like there's a bouncy house, right? That the kids are jumping up and down. They're handing out flowers to the police officer. You know what I mean? Like,

• 44:08Speaker 02

  It was disruptive for sure, but it was not violent. I mean, you can always like cherry pick one or two instances, but yeah, I mean, the civil liberties being violated here, due process, forget about it. Not imposing criminal sanctions on people on an ex post facto basis, right? Because that's one of the most startling things is when the donations happen to these crowdfunding events.

• 44:29Anthony Pompliano?

  It was not illegal.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  It wasn't illegal. And now retroactively, they're going back and saying, because you did this, we are going to criminalize that and target you for financial sanctions. I mean, it's absolutely preposterous. It feels like we're at a nexus of history right now. It really feels like it. I think a lot of people that were not Bitcoiners woke up over the last week. I really think that. I think they realized, wow, this can happen in the West. And, you know, I was poking fun at them a little bit because it's like, okay, so the example of Turkey didn't compel you. Lebanon didn't compel you. Venezuela didn't compel you. You know, places where financial repression was very explicit and

• 45:13Speaker 02

  direct and happened in the last couple of years. That didn't compel you, but Canada does. It's like, okay, it has to strike close to home. But, you know, I guess that's how humans reason, right? You always put more credit and things happen to close to home. The United States believes Canada is like its little brother, right? Like, it's like, oh, like one day, Canada wants to be like us, which again, isn't necessarily true. But that's, I think, how a lot of Americans have always looked at Canada. It's like, oh, there are nice North neighbors and, you know, basically they do what we say. They want to be like us and, and we're good. And then this happens and they're like, holy shit, this could happen in the United States. Well, Bitcoiners woke up to the, uh, to, to Bitcoin with inflation at first, and now they're seeing the censorship and, um, the, kind of the financial freedom that it gives you over time.

• 45:57Anthony Pompliano?

  This has to be the biggest, uh, marketing and awareness moment for Bitcoin in years.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, I jokingly said yesterday, but not really joking, Justin Trudeau's the CMO of Bitcoin right now.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 46:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, I mean, he's just literally out here like, hey, this is why you guys need this. And so if you go back, a lot of people forget, and I've seen, uh, I've seen you talk about WikiLeaks was one of the early kind of moments of awareness globally. And it's actually, uh, if my memory serves me correct, uh, was one of the reasons why Satoshi actually walked away.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 46:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Was because he, uh, basically said like, listen, we've kicked the hornet's nest. Uh, I think it was the, the terminology he used and, uh, this is too early. The infrastructure's not in place. I don't want to be the person.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  And the swarm is headed towards us.

• 46:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  The swarm is upon us right now. Let me tell you. Bitcoiners, this is a time to stand up and, uh, and stick up for, for yourselves.

• 46:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Have you done anything differently after this in terms of taking Bitcoin off an exchange, move money, or like, are you doing anything from an individual basis that you're like, eh, this is probably, uh, a good idea, even if you don't feel like you personally are in the crosshairs or, or whatever?

• 47:09Speaker 02

  I think we'll all be politically exposed here. I think Bitcoiners need to prepare themselves for that. I haven't changed anything. I did have a moment of introspection where I thought to myself, all right, you know, I have some resources and some ability to, you know, change things in the world. Have I done enough to protect the next Canadian trucker? Have I done enough to empower these people to, uh, you know, take financial sovereignty? And honestly, the answer I came up with was no. And I thought to myself, okay, I need to start using my resources to actually, you know, empower people who are Bitcoiners, who are facing some sort of tyrannical panopticon surveillance state that's intent on politicizing all money. I don't think I've done enough. So yeah, I had that come to Jesus moment

• 47:54Speaker 02

  last week. It was a tough realization, honestly.

• 47:58Anthony Pompliano?

  It's one that I think is becoming more real and more people are like realizing like, oh, these people are literally going to push the pace of overreach as fast as they can.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we have people that I know in the Bitcoin community that I've met, you know, been following them on Twitter for years, literally hung out with them at conferences that are now being considered terrorists by the country of Canada officially. They're named in injunctions and it's like, wow, this got real really quick. You know, I don't know if it's going to happen to us here in the US. We're in the great state of Florida. You know, we're doing good. We're politically, you know, probably a little more protected, but wow, this got real really quick.

• 48:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. One of the things that we've seen in Canada as well is that a number of crypto exchanges, their CEOs were advocating for self custody and those who are now being looked at for potentially violating sanctions put in place to curb trucker protest. And so as a recap, Canadian police ordered all regulated financial institutions, including crypto exchanges, cease trading, freeze assets of designated persons that were involved. There's these 34 wallet addresses that were identified. And so according to reports, what's happened so far is 219 financial products were frozen, 57 entities have disclosures with them, 253 Bitcoin were shared with virtual currency exchangers or addresses, and then

• 49:18Anthony Pompliano?

  there's proactive freezing of the account of a payment processor that had about $3 million. So this is all the stuff that's already occurred. And what we're starting to see now is we have this tweet from Brian Armstrong, which basically says, "Concerned to see stuff like this happening in any country, especially in an economically free place like Canada. Self custodial wallets are important," and he puts a link to Coinbase. Now, from there, we have the Ontario Securities Commission, which has sent those tweets from Brian Armstrong and others to police because they believe this offered advice on how to evade the sanctions on funds. And you, as John mentioned, Canada appears to be determined to become Venezuela.

• 50:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Is this, are we literally in a world where saying, hey, you should put cash in your pocket, right? Like, one of the best examples that I saw was somebody said, the equivalent of the government trying to tell self custodial wallets to freeze users' assets is like telling Louis Vuitton, "Find all the Louis bags in the world and go in those bags and freeze the cash. Don't let anyone spend the cash in the bag." Like, people are like, "Wait, what?" But that's the equivalent, in a software standpoint, to what's happening here. Are we now going to criminalize or attack people who are saying you should use a self custodial wallet? Like, what's going on?

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a naked act of aggression against US firms. I mean, Brian Armstrong, I don't believe he's Canadian. I mean, Coinbase is a US firm, and the government of Canada is coming in and saying it's criminal to suggest that people take ownership of their own funds, which has been the default forever. I mean, that's almost unbelievable. And, you know, even this framing of custodial, non custodial, non custodial is the default. That just means having funds in your own possession. Custodial is the aberration. Non custodial is just the normal thing. So even the linguistic reframing that's occurring is very sinister. But then, literally going after Jesse Powell and Brian Armstrong here is obscene. Honestly,

• 51:28Speaker 02

  I think, like, it should be treated as an international incident, the fact that Canada is investigating American companies here.

• 51:36Anthony Pompliano?

  They're investigating for saying self custodial wallets are important. That's it. He just said, "It's important." He didn't say, "Go ahead and get around these sanctions if you go get a wallet," like...

• 51:48Speaker 02

  This is the kind of thing where, if it was any other dictator doing this, it would be like, the international community would be condemning them, and, you know, the UN would be passing resolutions saying, "This is crazy. We're, you know, we're officially condemning this behavior." You know, if it was, you know, the president of some oil-rich nation, you know, in the Middle East, or something that was harassing dissidents like this, and doing extrajudicial sanctions on them, and harassing foreign companies, it would be universally condemned. Because it's Trudeau, he gets a pass, apparently? I don't think so. I don't think he deserves a pass.

• 52:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm taking the stand. I'm not going to Canada until the situation's resolved.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Same. I mean, I didn't have anything there urgently to do.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, you guys are big talkers. You guys have something to get doing.

• 52:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, if anyone's gonna invite us, we're not going.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Well, I think it was Bukele that said, like, if I was doing this, there would literally be an all-out war.

• 52:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so let's talk about Bukele for a second.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  And we have Bukele, the president of El Salvador, lecturing Canada on what it means to, you know, celebrities.

• 52:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, he's had a number of tweets where he essentially is insinuating, if I did, he never actually said, if I did this, you guys would be all over me.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:55Anthony Pompliano?

  But he's

• 52:55Speaker 02

  That's the point.

• 52:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, he's basically insinuating that you guys always are pointing and saying, I'm the dictator, I'm the bad person, you know, all this stuff, but like, this is way worse. And I think that that's part of this, which is like, again, people may not like it, but like, he's got a point.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  He's got the moral high ground here.

• 53:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Which

• 53:13Speaker 02

  President of El Salvador is the moral high ground.

• 53:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, which also, uh, you know, look, he's playing with fire a little bit, right? Of like, again, you can keep poking the bear. Poking Canada is one thing. I saw he was also, uh, you know, going at the United States, he's going at a number of these countries. And, uh, it's very clear what he's doing, what his strategy is.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  But it is an incredible inversion that a small country like El Salvador on the fringes of the international community is now taking the moral high ground against Canada, which is, you know, you're just, you know, your classic member nation of all these international organizations.

• 53:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  He said, they're taking, they're directly threatening journalists with arrests, talking about Canada and the Ottawa police. Aren't they the ones lecturing other countries about freedom of the press?

• 53:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so he's had like a number of these, where he's, which by the way, like, that is a fair point.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, yeah, I mean, I think the, like, this neoliberal institutional order that, you know, Canada and the US and like UN, World Bank, IMF, like this whole order that we've been promoting since World War II, since Bretton Woods, it has ended, right? We, we in the West don't have the moral high ground if we're gonna behave this way towards protesters.

• 54:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  We have no moral high ground whatsoever.

• 54:26Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, my last question on Canada. Marty Bent was in here yesterday. He wrote a, an exquisite piece on the, uh, uh, Canadian nipple crisis? Have you heard this, uh, this theory?

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I'm quite familiar.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  I buy it.

• 54:43Anthony Pompliano?

  What? You buy it?

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:45Anthony Pompliano?

  So you think that Trudeau's mother has a high probability of actually having,

• 54:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I guess, becoming pregnant via Fidel Castro, not via Justin Trudeau, or I'm sorry, Pierre Trudeau, who is.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  You think Justin Trudeau is the son of Castro?

• 55:03Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, look, you know, consult the evidence for yourselves, fellas. Look at the color of the nipples. It's quite telling. You know, draw your own conclusions, fellas.

• 55:13Anthony Pompliano?

  People yesterday, we brought up the photos. We did the whole thing, side by side comparison. Brown nipples confirmed. We saw the photos.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, brown, not pink. I mean, there's something there.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  He does look a lot like Castro.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  He looks like him. He behaves like him.

• 55:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And I gotta say that yesterday, people, the Canadians loved it. They were like, wow. Not exactly the conversation that the American, the Americans have, but it,

• 55:39Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, listen, I think that who your father is doesn't necessarily mean that that's who you genetically are, you know, predisposed to follow from your political leanings, but it does feel like

• 55:54Anthony Pompliano?

  your mother, who likely had a big part of raising you and is sympathetic to certain views, just naturally it shapes.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  She unquestionably palled around with Castro. Yeah. And look, you don't inherit the sense of your ancestors, but you should probably seek to not behave like Fidel Castro, regardless of who your father is.

• 56:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I mean, that would be a, that's a good life rule. Don't become the, the modern version. All right. We'll finish up with the US. What's your general take right now? It feels like there's this executive order that everyone keeps talking about that is likely probably going to come at some point. My guess is that, you know, there's a couple of distractions in the administration of like, you know, Ukraine, Russia, et cetera. Seems like more politicians are coming out in favor of Bitcoin. We've seen what I think is maybe a little bit gimmicky at the state level in terms of this legal tender stuff, but still, you know, kind of normalizing it, pushing it forward.

• 56:55Anthony Pompliano?

  We have Kanoko Phillips, I think, is how you pronounce it, now being more public about the fact that they are having minors go ahead and monetize and gas flaring like. It just feels like we're at a point now where like this is a thing in the United States. Is that kind of your read?

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, the full normalization of Bitcoin has is well underway in the US. I think I talked about this last time when I came on the show. The energy sector is becoming integrated with Bitcoin mining. All of these energy firms, the super majors are mining Bitcoin directly or indirectly. Whether they admit it is a different thing. Kenoko Phillips, I think it might have even been a leaked slide from one of their decks. I don't even know if they went out and admitted it really. So keep an eye out, right? Keep an eye out. The energies and once these it's the largest energy firms in the world that all admit that they're mining Bitcoin. The questions around Bitcoin mining kind of melt away a little bit because it's like, no, like I'm a renewable energy firm and Bitcoin is helping me salvage these energy assets or it's helping me bring more renewable assets to market.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Like those stories are true. It's just a matter of servicing them. So the energy side, not worried about it. Politically, we see so many candidates coming out and being pro Bitcoin and demonstrating deep understanding. My guess is probably Congress flips in the midterms. And then we get, you know, Republicans on the Financial Services Committee in both the House and the Senate that are explicitly pro Bitcoin, some of whom have been on this show. So a lot of the legislative losses we've taken will erase them. And yeah, so I think we're seeing a full normalization. The one thing that I'm concerned about is probably stable coins. The stablecoin discourse is very hostile in this country. There's a faction that wants to promote a CBDC and wants to regulate away stablecoins,

• 58:40Speaker 02

  to force them to get banking charters, force them back into the regulated, highly regulated, you know, banking system. That can't be allowed to happen. We have to push back against that. And so it's just, I think it's a race against time to get the stablecoin sector sufficiently large that we can survive any of those state level assaults on it.

• 58:59Anthony Pompliano?

  What are your thoughts on CBDCs?

• 59:01Speaker 02

  I'm incredibly against them. I think I've never seen a CBDC proposal from any Western central bank, which protects the right to privacy, transactional freedom, transactional autonomy. I've never seen that.

• 59:13Anthony Pompliano?

  It actually takes that away.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, CBDCs are not going to be the digital equivalent of cash in your wallet. They won't give you the free choice of who to transact with, where and when. They are always, the discussions are always around embedding AML, embedding surveillance, embedding control into them. And I think they are one of the most centralizing forces in world history. I mean, you know, the dustpots of, the great dustpots of history did not have access to the CBDCs. Can you imagine what they would have done if they'd had them? They would have just unpersoned millions of people at the stroke of a button. We've seen what governments can do, including nominally liberal democracies up, up north. We've seen what they can do when they're vindictive and spiteful. If there'd been a CBDC in Canada, they wouldn't have had

• 59:58Speaker 02

  to go through the motions with all these orders and injunctions. They would have just turned off everyone's cash. I don't think we can allow CBDCs to happen, certainly not in the US.

• 1:00:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it, it's, it's fascinating because I think in 2018, 2019, I went on, on television and they asked me, you know, if you're the United States, what would you do? And I said, the number one thing the United States should do in terms of increasing the accessibility of the US dollar globally is they should digitize the currency and make it so that anyone with an internet connection can immediately get dollars in a safe, secure way, without having to go to a black market, without having to worry about their local bank confiscating their funds. You know, all these things that I think would be the, the pro argument for accessibility on a global basis. I think as we've seen more and more of the proposals, the pilots, the, the testing, all this stuff, it's like, dude, there's no positive impact that you're going to tell me now

• 1:00:53Anthony Pompliano?

  that overrides the nasty stuff. And like, I actually think the scariest part about it is that we only have our imaginations to fear. So like, if you said to me, like, what's the bad stuff? Personalized inflation rates, expiration of monies, financial censorship, you know, social credit system, like, all that, and we're already like, dude, we're out. These people have all day for decades to think about what to do. They're going to come up with way worse stuff.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  And you know what's crazy is talk about exporting the dollar globally, giving regular folks access to US bank system assurances, dollars, which everybody wants, especially if you have a hyperinflationary currency. Stablecoins accomplish that. You know, look at, you know, talk to any of your portfolio companies, active exchanges globally, what do people want? They want stablecoins. They want to engage in currency substitution and move from the Niger and

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  You know, to dollars, they want to move to dollars. Stablecoins accomplished that. The private sector accomplished that. CBDCs won't do the same.

• 1:01:58Anthony Pompliano?

  So if I look.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  There's 155 billion dollars of stablecoins floating around.

• 1:02:03Anthony Pompliano?

  We've looked, the private sector is normally pretty, uh, they're more efficient and they're quicker and they're smarter about accomplishing these things than the public government.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  And they, they give you a, um, a product which is fundamentally more private and respects individual liberty much more so than your public sector alternative to a stablecoin.

• 1:02:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I, um, uh, I just looked and of the 155, 160 billion dollars of stablecoins, 130 of it is just in Tether and USDC. Right? So about 80 billion is in Tether, uh, and 52 billion or so is in, uh, is in USDC. So it's very obvious people want this stuff.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  And what's, yeah, I mean, you know, look at, there's a Wall Street Journal article about Turks, uh, engaging in crypto dollarization. They were, you know, buying gold and they were buying, uh, Tether, right? And, you know, a lot of people, uh, talk about Tether like, oh, you know, we don't trust Tether, whatever. If your alternative is holding, cause you can hold dollar deposits in the Turkish banking system if you want, but that's just not a safe way to hold dollars, right? Because there's a chance that the equivalent of the quara lito occurs and your, your dollars are forcibly converted back into liras and devalued, right? So if you want genuine property rights associated with your digital dollars, you want a stablecoin. And in that case, Tether was, uh, what people were going for in Turkey.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  And that's probably part of the reason Turkey was so hostile on crypto because the lira was being, uh, de-emphasized, uh, and, and, you know, people were spontaneously moving to stablecoins. So this stuff is like geopolitically incredibly significant, totally overlooked.

• 1:03:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I like to just throw my hands up sometimes and say like the world's gone mad and like, we're not going to change anything. But I think if there's one thing that we are seeing is, uh, there's an entire generation of people who, uh, really thought of themselves, let's just call it the Bitcoin community, the crypto community, however you want to label them. They're realizing technology alone is not going to get this done. We're going to need to drive awareness. We're going to need to put the right candidates into political seats. We're going to need to make sure that elected leaders are educated on these things. We're going to need to build technology. We're going to need to make sure that various jurisdictions understand there's a global

• 1:04:18Anthony Pompliano?

  competition underway for assets, individual citizenship, kind of where places, businesses are domiciled, all this stuff.

• 1:04:30Anthony Pompliano?

  And so there's a light at the end of the tunnel. It's just a lot of work to do.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, I don't actually see this political technology distinction. Like, the technology is political, right? Like Bitcoin is imbued with certain political ideas, right? So are stablecoins. So is neutral financial infrastructure. Obviously, I think the ideas are good, but when they collide with the real world, they have a political impact, right? Because the real world is premised on politicized financial infrastructure, fiat standards, constant monetary debasement, debt monetization, right? So it is political, working on Bitcoin or crypto technology. It's a political idea. But yeah, we have now, we need to broaden our mandate and our focus because the rest of the world is interested in us now.

• 1:05:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It's crazy how far this has come.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, this week, I mean, you know, we've been around in sort of Bitcoin land for a while now. This week has felt like one of the most critical in my entire sort of career in this industry.

• 1:05:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think I have a better way to put it. I literally think, I've been saying it behind closed doors, that I wasn't into Bitcoin when the WikiLeaks stuff happened. So I don't know what that felt like or kind of how people thought about it. It feels like the West specifically woke up. And was like, oh shit. And the citizens woke up, the politicians woke up, like everyone was awoken as to what we are talking about historically around all these problems, you know, globally, they're not just in the developed world or a developing world. They're now here in the developed world.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. But how many people are actually go out and educate themselves on Bitcoin and actually go buy some?

• 1:06:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I've long said that people, you know, everyone who's in this industry, who has any sort of public facing, you know, under their real name, has a friend, a friend of a friend, a family member, somebody comes to them at some point is like, explain Bitcoin to me. And frankly, when I probably wasn't as experienced, didn't have as much of a kind of knowledge base, I would start with like Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, but whatever. Now somebody asks me about Bitcoin, I don't even talk about Bitcoin. I literally just explain the problem. Right? And I explain, hey, did you know that that money you saved in your bank account two years ago is literally worth less now? And like, what? And like, let's just start, you know what I mean? Like the basic understandings

• 1:06:53Anthony Pompliano?

  of like, what money is, how it works, you know, what those issues are. Once you explain that stuff, the next question is like, what's the solution? Like Bitcoin? Like, why? And you just say 180 degree difference. Like, okay, how do I get some? And so it's, you know, in some way, it's like, uh, understanding that people have to recognize the problem to get the solution. But I think that that's what Canada just did. Like, Canada just literally just said, let's open the kimono, let's bring it as close to home as possible. And here is, you know, the financial censorship problem. And I think there's a lot of people who just are like, what do you mean that I donated? Like the donate, the truckers is one thing is like, oh, you participated?

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:33Anthony Pompliano?

  I think the actual like milestone moment was going after the donators.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And that felt like the overreach.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Ex post facto, right? The ex post facto criminalization plus broad based financial sanctioning of donors to a cause. We've seen plenty of crowdsourced donations for protests in the last two years. But this is the first one where you're sanctioning more people than the US sanctioned after nine 11. Right?

• 1:08:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Crazy.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  This is a nation against its own people.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  It's crazy.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Before we end, you guys raised a new fund. What type of founders are you guys looking for? And what can we do to help you? Where should we send people on the internet?

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Castleion.vc.victorcharlie, that's our website. Same same story as the previous two funds, just bigger, more dry powder and seed stage and series A.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  You know. No pre-seed?

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  We're a little too big for that, probably. And, you know, crypto financial infrastructure, that's our number one thing. We do all kinds of stuff. You can see our portfolio on our website. But also broadening our focus to decentralized internet infrastructure and applications, which I think is tremendously important, you know, spanning the whole crypto space. Yeah, so we're ready, ready to blast.

• 1:08:49Speaker 03

  If you have an idea, DM Nick on Twitter.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  DMs are open.

• 1:08:52Speaker 03

  DMs are open.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  DMs are open.

• 1:08:53Anthony Pompliano?

  I just dropped Nick's Twitter account.

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  You gotta have traction too.

• 1:08:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Make sure that you you follow him. You can't miss him. He's Nick Cartel.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  GM.

• 1:09:05Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the, give us the quick two seconds on why? Why is your name Nick Cartel now?

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  People are making fun of me for moving to Miami and like looking Cuban or whatever. And someone like made the pun that is Nick Cartel instead of Nic Carter. So gotta recognize a good pun.

• 1:09:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's pretty good. Did you watch the documentary on the on the 80s in Miami?

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  No, I gotta learn about the history.

• 1:09:29Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the name of, huh?

• 1:09:34Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  I watched a documentary called Miami Vice the other day. It's a joke, it's not a documentary.

• 1:09:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I know, I know. Hold on. What is it called? Oh, yeah. I think it's called Cocaine Cowboys, Kings of Miami. Right? Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. I thought for some reason Cocaine Cowboys was like an older movie. Yeah, there's two of them. So I'm sorry, there's two of them. There's one in 2006 called Cocaine Cowboys. That's not the one. There's a brand new one that just came out. So that's why I was confused. And I guess technically this is all part of one series that this guy's been doing for like 15 years. But this one is called The Kings of Miami and it's on Netflix. I mean, just you just gotta watch it.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  I think the third one's gonna be called Blockchain Cowboys.

• 1:10:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm not going to go there, so I'll just let Billy Corbin, if you want to co-producer, Nick Cartel will be there ready to go. All right, buddy. Thank you so much for coming in and doing this. We had fun. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.