325: Michael Arrington On The Future Of Crypto

Michael Arrington is the founder of Arrington XRP Capital. He is also the founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities. In this conversation, we discuss the modern media landscape, what he learned from TechCrunch, how regulation is affecting crypto, what is happening in US politics, why the 2nd Amendment is important, and a conversation around Bitcoin, Ripple, and XRP. =============================== Blockset by BRD is your hosted blockchain infrastructure. Blockset enables enterprises and developers around the globe to deliver high-quality blockchain-based applications in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost. Using the services provided by Blockset, businesses can build professional custody solutions, accurate and near real-time portfolio management solutions, auditing platforms, commercial block explorers, and much more: https://www.blockset.com =============================== Crypto.com is the only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. Download and earn $50 USD using my code ‘pomp2020’, or use the link https://platinum.crypto.com/r/pomp2020 when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

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

• 0:00Anthony 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. Let's kick this thing off. Michael Arrington is the founder of Arrington XRP Capital. He's also the founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology startup communities. In this conversation, we discuss the modern media landscape, what he learned from TechCrunch, how regulation is affecting crypto, what is happening in US politics, why the Second Amendment is important, and a conversation around Bitcoin, Ripple, and XRP. I really enjoyed this conversation with Mike, and I hope you do as well.

• 0:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first is BlockSet by BRD, or BRD. BRD was one of the first Bitcoin wallets in the App Store in 2014, and they've now built BlockSet. It's a hosted blockchain infrastructure. BlockSet enables enterprises and developers around the globe to deliver high-quality blockchain-based applications in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost. Using the services provided by BlockSet, businesses can build professional custody solutions, accurate and near-real-time portfolio management solutions, auditing platforms, commercial block explorers, and much, much more. I highly suggest going to blockset.com if you're looking for hosted blockchain infrastructure.

• 1:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Just like Amazon has AWS that provides infrastructure to build on the internet, BlockSet provides blockchain infrastructure to help you build in the new digital world. Blockset.com. Our next sponsor is Crypto.com. They're an all-in-one platform that allows you to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, or invest crypto all from one place. They've got over a million users currently on their mobile app, Crypto.com app, and they've done a great job launching new products after new products. Again, Crypto.com is an all-in-one platform that allows you to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, or invest crypto all from one place. Head on over to Crypto.com.

• 1:59Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a great URL, and that's where mass adoption is happening. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. I break down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing my opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe. Subscribe at pompletter.com again pompletter.com alright let's get into this episode with Mike I hope you guys enjoy it.

• 2:22Speaker 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.

• 2:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright guys bang bang I've got Mike here. Thanks for doing this man.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  We live? We doing this?

• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, we're live. Let's go. Are you ready?

• 2:58Speaker 02

  I'm such a fangirl. I cannot believe I'm on your show. This is amazing. I remember I met you and you were just a little tiny little blogger and podcaster in my house and and you came by and you have just you're all grown up now and look at you now.

• 3:13Anthony Pompliano?

  So Mike knows that the secret to podcast success is just lay the bullshit on real early.

• 3:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so for like the three people who are listening.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  The ego.

• 3:22Anthony Pompliano?

  For the three people who are listening who don't know who you are, give us a quick rundown of what you did before getting into crypto and running Airy Capital.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna say for the three people watching this podcast and I was like wow that's I think you have a few more than that. How many people on average watch your podcast through all the different ways?

• 3:47Anthony Pompliano?

  In April's the last numbers I remember 2.5 million people, 2.6 million people. Total views and downloads. No, no, no, total for the month. So it varies like the episode I did with Chamot's got a million views just on YouTube alone.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  He knows how to do a fucking soundbite. Are we allowed to swear? Sorry. He knows how to do a soundbite, doesn't he?

• 4:09Anthony Pompliano?

  So of course.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  He's the rich man.

• 4:12Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a we tell the truth. People pay attention, right?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  They do, as long as you say it with the right way and the right way, and he has that down to a science. So yeah, he was a marketer originally. So anyway, so me, I, what do you, I mean, I'm known for TechCrunch, which I started in 2005 and sold in 2010. So I've been away from TechCrunch for longer than I was there. But luckily, the people that took over have kept it going strong. And so it's still a known brand, and that's great for me. And I go to the conferences and, and all that. Before that, I was an entrepreneur and I started, well, I started off as a lawyer and then I started companies and, first company failed, the second company was a mild success. It's actually a fascinating story about venture capital, which I'd be happy to talk about.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  And it was in the payment space. And then, and I started like company after company after company, it either failed or were mild successes. And then I started TechCrunch in 2005 because I was, I was living on the beach in Manhattan Beach. I was between jobs.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  And I'm like, I need to like, start researching more because I was sort of out of the loop. And I realized there was no website that like just talked about startups. You know, it was like, there were, there were tech sites like CNET that talked about startups with a lot of other stuff, but nobody was focused just on startups. And I thought this, this group of people needs a, needs a place to call home. And, and there was no real social media back then or anything like that. And so I just started TechCrunch on a, as a lark, in a lark as a hobby. And, and it took off. It was like the one startup I didn't intentionally start as a startup. And it was, it was the company that, that, that first made me some money. And so, and that's it. After that, I became a venture capitalist and I switched into crypto.

• 5:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you started TechCrunch, it was just you writing and it was basically like, almost like a, beefed up blog, really, right? And then it kind of grew from there into what we know it today?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can actually go back and find the first posts. They were terrible. And it was me sitting in my bathing suit, on the beach, in Manhattan Beach. I surfed every day. My life consisted of, getting up surfing, playing video games for like six hours or more. Girlfriend come home, yell at me for being a total slob and then I would, you know, start writing and uh and that was it. And so um I did that for a few months and then it took off, like I said, so I was able to start getting other writers, started getting some revenue. Um, we had some innovative ways of making money back then and uh at the end it was like forty something people. We were in a house in Atherton, which is in the middle of Silicon Valley and a crappy rental house in the, in the, in the richest zip code in America.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  It was a tear down house and we had interns in our backyard on Ikea desks. The first thing you had to do as an intern was build your own Ikea desk. And then they were in the backyard with extension cords running out and their laptops. And like they're trying to shade the sun and and look at their laptops and get work done. And finally the city came and shut us down. And after that we became more corporate, we got an office and started doing things normally.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  But the best thing I did, I did with TechCrunch is I never took venture capital.

• 7:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Like all of my competitors, the ones that did well and didn't do well, they all took venture capital. So even the ones that sold for a lot of money, the founders made nothing or next to nothing. Cause I had learned, I remember I told you I had this first startup, it was called HX. It was a payment startup and we sold it to First Data Corporation, twelve months after we founded it.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  For like thirty two or thirty three million dollars and you think, wow. I was, there were a couple of founders in me and we thought we'd make money, right? We didn't and here's why, we, we raised eighteen million in venture capital from Draper Fisher Jervetson. Back then, two X liquidation preferences were considered normal. Now it's one X. And so that meant that the VCs got two times their money back before anyone else took any money. And, and two times eighteen is more than the purchase price. So to not block it, they had to pay us off and I, I basically had enough money to buy a nice car and that was it. And I learned, being an entrepreneur is great, but being a VC is much better if you want to actually make money. So I didn't take money at TechCrunch.

• 8:22Anthony Pompliano?

  When you didn't take the money, how did that change the way you built the company?

• 8:27Speaker 02

  We had to run it from revenue. And so, you know, one of the things about venture capital is you can raise all this money. And you don't actually have to know if your product fits. You know, the idea is you're spending money to build a product and then hoping people will come. If you don't have that luxury or decide not to take it, you have to find other ways to fund that business. And generally, traditionally, that's through cash flow. And so we were constantly finding new ways to make money through ads at first and then eventually through conferences.

• 8:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And I believe I've heard stories of like literally founders trying to like show up to the office to get stories. Was that true?

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. By the way, one, just to go back to that, one of the really innovative ways we came up with making money is we had a webcam in the office. It was on all the time, or at least I think it was on 24/7. We had a whiteboard and Heather, our CEO, who's my partner now still,

• 9:21Speaker 02

  would write the name of a startup on the whiteboard and put the whiteboard like in front of the camera. And she charged like thousands of dollars for that for a day. And I mean, we did that for like months and made lots of money. Like it helped us get through a rough period, I think in 08 or whatever. But anyway, yeah, people would come. It was sort of a rite of passage to come and show up to TechCrunch and it was fine. Sometimes it got weird, like some Dutch guys, the founders of the NextWeb, which is now a pretty well-known website and nice enough guys, but they, they, they had a startup and they decided they had to get into TechCrunch. And so they, they broke into my house while I was sleeping. And they came and like opened my bedroom door and they had a video camera.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  And they filmed me and they had Starbucks, they got me a Starbucks and they filmed me like in bed waking up and boy, was I pissed. I mean, I was, I was very pissed. And I remember Wired Magazine wrote, wrote an article about it as if it was like the most hilarious thing in the world. Like it was just, I was thinking like, I mean, they committed a crime, right? But it was like, so I had, I had no privacy. And so sometimes I had to leave the TechCrunch house and go other places just so I could, you know, get away from it all.

• 10:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's absolutely nuts. If you were to start TechCrunch today and like really go hard into media as an entrepreneur, what would you do differently? Or how do you kind of see the difference?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Well, I, so.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  I mean, I know the answer. I'm trying to think of an interesting way of saying it. So again, when I started TechCrunch, there was no place for startups. They weren't very newsworthy.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Particularly very young startups got no, nothing, no news whatsoever until they raised money at least. And

• 11:01Speaker 02

  as TechCrunch grew, we still covered startups, but we found that like big store, like I broke the YouTube getting acquired by Google. I broke it before anyone else and I had the price. That actually put TechCrunch on the map. And then, you know, we started doing Google Stories and Facebook Stories and, and big company stories got a lot more traffic. And so you start to gravitate towards the big news and that's also why CNET and others did that. And so today TechCrunch is largely big company news. Sometimes it's regurgitating press releases and a lot of social justice stuff, some of which is awesome and some of which is just terrible. And so I actually think the original idea for TechCrunch is still needed and you've seen different companies and products like come into existence over the years to deal with. It's like Product Hunt was one. If you remember Product Hunt, which is still going.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  So I actually think the original thesis is actually still a good one. And I think if somebody wanted to do that, I think there would be an audience because there's a, there's an ecosystem of young founders who, who need press. And, and they have interesting stories to tell. I would never do it again. It was too, it was just too difficult. It's too much work for not enough money ultimately. But I think in crypto, which is the industry I'm in now, like we desperately need this. The crypto news, news ecosystem is not healthy. And, and I think that somebody, if they wanted to, could do this, but not me. So.

• 12:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think that it's a still a written thing where it's a kind of websites, mobile optimized, whatever, or do you think that there's video, audio, whatever other mediums make more sense?

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I think video makes a lot of sense. I think um video is hard, like, you know, as you know, you know, you can talk forever, but it's not necessarily interesting. You need to edit it, you need to produce it, you need to have studio, you need, it's just a lot of work. And some people don't want to consume content that way because they, it, it, it, you know, creates externalities around you, you've got noise and stuff like that. I like reading a good article. So I think text is always going to be very important. I think obviously videos and audio is hugely important as well.

• 13:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's interesting. And then when you started.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  As you've seen, you can build a like, you can, you can build an empire with, you know, just doing what you're doing. And you're, is it your kitchen? Where are you?

• 13:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I'm in my kitchen right now. We, we used to have a office and we basically just took one room and did it there. But I mean, look.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  So there's no, there's no one way to do it, right? It's just, you have to find interesting content and, and really love what you do. And I think you'll be successful then.

• 13:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I also think the, uh, the whole idea of venture capital, there's a lot of venture capitalists who are still confused that a pure play media company is going to be, you know, a billion dollar company. And I think what we're learning now, just like you figured out, hey, look, the conferences, you know, the webcam, like these other revenue sources can be highly profitable for what they are. Uh, now we're going to get into this world where like the media companies figure out other ways to monetize than just like, hey, pay me some advertising and I'll slap a, you know, banner ad somewhere or whatever. Um, and what I haven't seen yet that I think BuzzFeed maybe tried to do this is I'm shocked no one's built a media company and then went and built products and then use their distribution to pipe the products through. Uh, I think BuzzFeed

• 14:15Anthony Pompliano?

  tried it, but I don't know how successful it was.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  I'll tell you one thing. Ultimately, I don't care. Right? I mean, I, I don't think a lot about how to build the next media empire. And I think that's why I was successful. I truly loved like what I did. Like the very first few years, I, I didn't, I didn't think about the business Heather did. I mean, I talked about the business a little, that was all my CEO. So I hired a CEO because I'm terrible at managing people. She ran the business, she turned it into what it was. I, I was just, I mean, I want to say I'm the talent. It sounds like I'm boasting, but I was literally just a guy who.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  A very important call coming. I was literally just a guy who wrote content every day. And I loved meeting founders. I loved meeting or understanding what their new products were. And that's just what I love doing. And I think obviously you love what you're doing, right? I mean, you like talking to people.

• 15:08Anthony Pompliano?

  So you obviously spent a bunch of time interviewing founders, hundreds if not thousands of them. How'd that help you when you got to the investing side of the table?

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Um, a lot of people owed me favors, right? I mean, you know, for an entrepreneur, that first press is very important. It's, it can help you hire. It's, your parents get to see it. Your friends get to see it. Like it feels good. It feels more real. And I was often, if not usually, the first person to write about a startup. And so that generates a lot of camaraderie and goodwill. And, and so that definitely helped when we launched our venture fund. Get into some of the early, like really important deals that really helped our first venture fund, like hit it out of the park.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  And so, um, you know, it's, it's also just doing goodwill, like doing nice things for people without any kind of transactional hope for a payoff is actually like, really works out well in the end, right? You, you just do what you love. You help people and you're going to find a way to be successful from that. And, and if it's not a transactional, like some people are so obviously transactional in the, in the way they deal with people that you, you know what I mean by that? You just sort of end up being turned off by it all. Just help people like in a way that is fun to do and it'll all end up working out well.

• 16:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's funny too, because I think Silicon Valley, like literally the physical place, more so than probably anywhere else in the business world understands that. And I think it's like Naval talks about, you know, playing long-term games, long-term people or whatever the quote is. And it just feels like Silicon Valley has known this for decades and people know that they're going to run into each other again. And so people generally try to use that to their advantage.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  So let's just explore that for a minute because I think it's really important. So I realized once I got into crypto that that is not how the whole world works. So in Silicon Valley, we dealt with a lot of New York people and New York people have their own special way of dealing with people in business and not necessarily negative. You just had to be abrupt, direct, right? And you have to adjust to that and New York people adjust to Silicon Valley people. But generally speaking, like people find a way in Silicon Valley to work out their problems without like it getting ugly. I don't know if you know, Benchmark sued Uber a few years ago.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  That was like a sea change in Silicon Valley. Like you just didn't see that. I mean, you saw it very rarely with egregious examples of malfeasance, but like what Uber did, like it was, it was, it was interesting that Benchmark sued them because that reputational issue is important to them. When I got into crypto, I realized very suddenly that like a lot of players were not in Silicon Valley or New York. They were in Europe and they were in Asia and like completely different like cultures, right? And for anybody who spends a lot of time in Asia, you realize how different the cultures in Asia are. But like when you deal with people from China, Chinese nationals, you have to like worry about things in a certain way.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  When you deal with people from Singapore who are maybe Chinese, it's totally different. Hong Kong, again, totally different and Korea, totally different. And so I had to learn very quickly that people do business differently and you have to watch yourself because long-term reputations didn't matter as much, especially like 18, when we first started getting involved in this in 2017. And it's really a problem in crypto because I think a lot of people have almost like a Napoleon complex. I don't know how to put it, but like crypto was so hot in 2017 and it's become so mundane since then. And people like you and I believe it will become very, very hot again. But in the meantime, I think people with these very large egos aren't making any money

• 18:56Speaker 02

  and they act in a certain way. It's just been disappointing to me.

• 19:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And I think also you see this in finance, right? Et cetera. It's just like, it's a very binary game, kind of zero sum. I win, you... And I think also venture investing in general, like people who understand how it works realize it doesn't have to be zero sum, right? Yes, maybe you lose.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  No, it's not zero sum.

• 19:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  It's not zero sum. Yeah.

• 19:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so I think that like just the asset and the way that the investing is done definitely helps. But on top of that also, if you think of Silicon Valley, like there is a scarcity of great companies, right? And so everyone is going to, when they see great companies at whatever stack of the of the process, they're going to.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  I would not say, I'd say there's a surplus of capital.

• 19:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So either way, it's either surplus of capital or scarcity of companies. But there's a mismatch between the capital available and the number of companies that that they should probably get that capital.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And that's not, that's probably not necessarily as true in the finance world. Maybe there's individual deals, but it there's definitely a very different mindset without a doubt.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Well, and and the funny thing is you eventually gravitate to people you like doing businesses. So you, for example, uh, who's our sponsor today? Is it BlockFi?

• 20:14Anthony Pompliano?

  BlockFi is.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Both amazing companies. Yeah.

• 20:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Mike is obviously an expert in all things media and revenue.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  But BlockFi, a great company, you have been, you're an investor in, and you've been like from the beginning, right?

• 20:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty early. Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Your fund has put like a big bet on BlockFi over multiple rounds and and you introduced them to me and we invested because of you.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  And it wasn't you, for example, trying to resell your shares to me at triple the price that you bought them, which is a situation I recently came across with some Asian investors with a different company that I won't mention called Derabit. And it was just a wonderful, and I also, I assume you didn't get a kickback from BlockFi as part of that, which another company we just looked at, it turned out somebody else was getting, the person introduced to us was getting a kickback. Like all that stuff is just very alien and ugly to me. You simply liked the company. You thought I could add value. You thought it would be a good investment for us. You put us together. We made the investment and we love the company. And as far as I know, you got nothing out of that, I hope, except BlockFi was again even more appreciative to you.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  And I've never heard a company gush over someone the way they gushed over you when we first talked to them. So.

• 21:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, they're incredibly kind, but I think that your point about.

• 21:33Anthony Pompliano?

  It's this weird thing where you're lining up incentives, right? Like, I knew that we were super bullish on the company. We were literally making a very big investment. I knew that they were looking specifically for certain types of help that we said, look, we can help in one area, but there's other people who are much better than we are. Let's go get those people. You happen to be one of those people who brought very specific value to what they needed. And when you line that up, I think the point around, you know, one, you get to see a deal you didn't previously see or didn't spend much time on, right? And you like it, so you're going to go do the deal. They look and they say, hey, look, we've got this great investor being added to our cap table. And for us, it's one of these things where like, if you're not involved in the deal, like, I would argue that the deal's upside potential is not as high as it is with you in the deal, right?

• 22:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So like, you want people around the table who you know can help because those people will make everyone make more money.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  And also, not fair weather friends, because too many people are fair weather friends. And you see this in crypto as well. We're like, when everything's hot, everybody's your best friend. But companies, they really need their investors when times are bad. And if you stick through a company when times are bad, they remember that and they tell other people. And I'm not saying, as far as I know, BlockFi hasn't had a bad time yet. But when they do, you'll be there for them and I'll be there for them. And they'll remember that, so.

• 22:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Couldn't agree more. Speaking of crypto stuff, like, I know that you have, I think you still have it pinned to the top of your Twitter account, buying Bitcoin in 2014, which was not necessarily a popular thing to do. Remember the first time you ever came across Bitcoin or kind of what drove you to Bitcoin?

• 23:08Speaker 02

  When was the first time you bought Bitcoin?

• 23:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I think in early 16, I heard about it in 14 when at Facebook and I did nothing. I didn't even Google it. And then I think the first time I bought it was either end of 15 or beginning of 16.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  So I had heard about it earlier and obviously should have bought. In Silicon Valley, it was just known, right? It was known what it was, but no one really had gotten their arms around it or treated it very seriously. I say no one, some people have, but not me.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Coinbase, I think Coinbase was launched around then. I'm not sure.

• 23:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think it was like thirteen or fourteen.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  And, and it, obviously Silicon Valley startup. And so I think people started to understand it more. And, and I'm, I'm pretty sure the first crypto I bought was on Coinbase. So I started an account. And, um, and so it wasn't like some, and it was more just like, hey, let's see what this is, right? Then, hey, I'm going to go all in. So I bought some, and then I forgot about it. And, uh, I mean, I literally like probably didn't log into Coinbase for years. Um, except I had set up like an auto buy or something. I forgot what it was. Anyway. When I finally logged in, in like seventeen, I was looking at it again. I was like, holy shit. Like this is like, this is some incredible like amount of money, right?

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Compared to what I first put in. And so that was fun. And, uh, and I did that with a couple, like I bought Monero. I was doing dark web research and, um,

• 24:38Speaker 02

  ah, forgot why. It wasn't to buy guns or have someone killed, but I, I bought Monero to like buy something on the dark web. And I never bought anything in the Monero. Like I bought, I don't know. It was like a few hundred dollars of Monero. And, and at some point I looked in two thousand seventeen, it was like a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of Monero I had in a wallet. But like the only trace of it I had was a printed out like key. So, you know, that ended up in our fund too. But yeah, it was more just serendipity than anything else. So.

• 25:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, and I guess at what point did you realize like, hey, this isn't just, uh, buy a couple of tokens? And like, I came back a couple of years later and it's this huge thing and more so like there is a legitimate investment thesis that we can go build a fund around, uh, and deploy capital and, and kind of a sustainable, repeatable process.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  You want the truth or you want like the really awesome answer that sounds make me look smart? So.

• 25:26Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I want the truth.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  The truth is, I went on a date with a person who is currently my fiance. And she had a startup that was doing, it was heavy into crypto. And, and this is in like, uh, early 2017 and she was planning an ICO and she's talking about these ICOs. And I had heard of them, but I wasn't fully aware of like, exactly what was going on. And, uh, and I'm like, it sounds like a pyramid scheme to me. And she's like, no, no, like there's actual companies being built. And so I invested in a couple of, um, ICOs after that. And as you know, in 2017, you couldn't, I mean, it would be hard to not make money on ICOs in 2017. So, you know, I, I quickly made a lot of money on those ICOs. And, um, and I said, oh, I think I want to like, do this more full-time.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  So, um, I had a discussion with my partner at the venture fund and he was less interested in crypto. So I decided at that point to break away from the venture fund, let him continue to run that. And I would focus entirely on crypto. And, and then, you know, I, I knew the person I knew in crypto who had, you know, the most interesting things going on was, was Brad Garlandhouse at Ripple. And so we had discussions about how I could create a fund, um, a hedge fund. And he, he basically made it happen. Ripple didn't invest, they couldn't, uh, for tax reasons mostly, but he helped make it happen. And, and I'll be eternally grateful to him for that. So is that, is really because of a girl, I guess, is why I got really into crypto. So.

• 26:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Um, and, and so when you go and talk to Brad, uh, he's the CEO of Ripple at the time?

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of your guests, you had a, you strategically put a box of toilet paper behind his head when you had him on your podcast. Are you gonna photoshop something in?

• 27:05Anthony Pompliano?

  We talked about this already. God damn it, like, uh.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  But off air, but off air, I just wanted to make sure on air. Cause like, if you're a real fan, like if you're a super fan of, of Pomp, you know, that was one of the like, really cool moments was when you strategically purposely placed toilet paper behind the CEO of Ripple's head on your podcast. It was brilliant marketing. It was absolutely spectacular.

• 27:28Anthony Pompliano?

  All, all I will say is that is not true. I'll leave it at that. But you got it on air. Good job. No, so, so when, uh, when you go talk to him, uh, and you specifically said hedge fund, but you guys do trading and you also do venture-like investments? Or is it all more liquid trading?

• 27:45Speaker 02

  So we're a hedge fund and that's a structure. And the difference between a hedge fund and a venture fund is a venture fund gets a pile of money. And then spends it over four or five years, right? I think you guys are a venture fund, right?

• 27:56Anthony Pompliano?

  We are.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  And then you raise new funds every few years. A hedge fund takes a pile of money. And by the way, when you with a venture fund, when you have wins, you then give the money back to to investors. You don't reinvest it.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  With a hedge fund, you get a pile of money and you invest it over and over and over again until investors say, hey, I'd like to get my money back or part of it back. So it's more of a perpetual thing and you get paid out every year. That's a great thing in a bear market. Like I learned from a venture fund, you start a venture fund in seven to 10 years, you get back a lot of money. With a hedge fund, every year you get back a lot of money. Unless you start a hedge fund, the first week of 2018. And and you're basically buying Bitcoin at, you know, not 20,000, but I think 14,000. And you're buying, you know, ETH at 1,000, you know, you're going to see some losses that year. And with a hedge fund, the problem with losses is it's very hard to recover from them. So we lost 42% of our fund in 2018. But the market was down 90% in 2018.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  So we did okay, like we fought the market the whole way and we eked out enough gains, mostly in deals we did to do much better than the market. Even that, you have to make that 42% back before you can ever take profits. And the market still hasn't totally recovered from the highs of 2018. So all the hedge funds that started that year are in deep trouble. Some of them have gone under, some of them are actually have gone under, but they haven't officially. We were lucky enough that we had made, we had done better than the market so that we raised. So original funds like 100 million, we raised another $30 million in December of 2018 from our LPs. And and because they trusted us, they liked us and we had done well compared to the market.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  And these are XRP holders, so we had done spectacularly well against XRP. So they loved us and still love us, I hope. That money in 2018, we then bought Bitcoin at like 3,500. I mean, we had to buy something with it. We got a bunch of XRP as a contribution. We bought Bitcoin and then we just sat on that. So that ended up working out really well. So we had like a spectacular year last year, but we were very, very lucky because if we didn't have LPs. Ported us, we would be, I don't think we'd be dead, but we wouldn't be making any money. So.

• 30:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, and at the, I think like end of Q3, beginning of Q4, uh, I wrote a couple of times about this whole idea of like the high watermark in the hedge fund world. And I've actually been surprised how many hedge funds have survived, right? So you got, you basically explained like, there's two things you can do either. You can trade your way out of it, right? And that's really, really difficult to do, especially when it's, you know, double digit losses, uh, or two, you can raise new capital. And so I think that the raising new capital, uh, that isn't subject to.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Very hard.

• 30:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but, but more people have done it.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  That's right. That new capital has its own high watermark. So it's not, it doesn't go, yeah, it's, it's act, every time you raise new capital, it's like you're raising a new mini fund. Yeah, go ahead.

• 30:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, and so I think I was just surprised, uh, in a positive way, uh, how many people were either able to raise new capital or trade their way out of it, which I think is overall, you know, net positive for, uh, for the industry. But, uh, there was a point there in 2018 where people were down, you know, and I, I saw LP statements and people were down, you know, nine, more than the market, right? They're down literally 99%, 98%.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Well, it's, yeah, which is kind of the most you can lose, right? Like you can't lose a hundred and one percent of your fund. And so being down 99% is, um, I mean, it's almost epic. Like it's, it's, it's like, if you're gonna do it, do it right. Um.

• 31:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Cause you basically, what is it? You have to a hundred X your fund to get back to the high watermark?

• 31:23Speaker 02

  It, yeah, yeah. Well, you turn a million dollars into, you turn, uh, what is it? A million dollars into $10,000? Is that right? And, uh, if you've lost 99% of the fund, well, a hundred thousand turns into 1,000. That's math we can do. And then you actually have to 99, yeah.

• 31:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, 99X.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Which is difficult. So.

• 31:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Even in crypto, that's hard to do.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  It's, it's, uh, it's hard to do. Yeah.

• 31:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So obviously a big piece of the crypto industry is crypto regulation. Uh, I think it was back in 2018. Uh, there was, there was a moment where I saw you fire off a tweet and I said, look, I don't know Mike super, super well at the time. But I said, I know he's mad because you basically were like, look, like I can't invest in the US if everything.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm so far, I'm so pissed. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:07Anthony Pompliano?

  I could just tell. I knew, I knew that there was, uh, that, that tweet came with like smoke coming out of your ears as you sent it. Um, and now we're seeing conversations about, uh, Jay Clayton potentially not being SEC commissioner for, uh, for longer. He's going to get a kind of a promotion to, uh, to go be the US district attorney, uh, for the Southern District of New York, potentially.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Is that a promotion? Is it a promotion? I, I don't know.

• 32:28Anthony Pompliano?

  The articles I read positioned as a promotion, but that's a good point. Like, maybe that's just corporate.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 32:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I don't think.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:36Anthony Pompliano?

  But kind of how do you look at the regulatory front today where ICOs seem to kind of have dissipated in the US? Maybe we're seeing it more internationally, but just how do you look at the regulatory front?

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Well, I think the US, look, I'm older, right? I remember the internet and the internet was invented by America and spread first in America. And nobody messed around with it legally and it grew like crazy and now it drives a whole economy. These companies that were created in the nineties, right? Google, Amazon, et cetera.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Crypto is different, like crypto, I'm not exactly sure where crypto was invented. It doesn't matter like nobody knows, but wherever that was, it was invented on the internet. And the US has done like, it, it, it, sometimes it ignores it and sometimes it throws up roadblocks. But what it really needs to do is just get out of the way and like it did with the internet and it, it, it absolutely hasn't. And so, you know, there's so much innovation that wants to come in crypto in the US. And so many of these entrepreneurs leave the US or don't move here from wherever they live. And it's, it's just, I feel bad for the US, right? I feel bad because I'm an American. I want our country to succeed. And I believe crypto is the future. I believe Bitcoin is money and money is Bitcoin, period.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  And why would we not want to, you know, I know why we don't want to like be in the forefront of this. It threatens the dollar. It's confusing. And the SEC, you know, is always trying to protect people from, you know, schemes. But we need to let innovation blossom and we don't want that just to happen in China and Singapore and et cetera. Because ultimately it's bad for the US. So yeah, I was mad. I'm still mad. And I think that we need to get somebody in, in there. That at the very least provides regulations that are understandable so we can work through them as opposed to this great fucking unknown. Which means nobody does anything in crypto in the US anymore. And, you know, that worries me. So.

• 34:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And it feels like the proposed solution from what most people all consider have common sense. Just say, hey, look, tell us what the rules are. Like you're saying, it's the problem right now is like the rules are being written retroactively through enforcement. And not instead saying, hey, here's the rules. If entrepreneurs know the rules, they'll go play by the rules and, you know, for the good actors. It's just like, oh, I did this thing. Now you're going to come after me because but I also have like a letter from a lawyer that says that this was legal and you just get in this weird, weird world.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Doesn't matter. Yeah, you can hire. You can hire scat and arts and like try to work it all out in in Telegram's case and it doesn't work out. I don't know. Like if you like, I have somebody who does my taxes for me and he does a lot of tech people's taxes. And the crypto stuff is like, he's very, very good at what he does, but he's even he was making educated guesses on how I should pay taxes on my own crypto gains. Um, over the years and like, what's up with that? Like, you know, there's just, there's not even clarity at that level. And so, yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I, I hope at some point soon we get our act together. And, you know, recent news suggests we might have a hope of that. So.

• 35:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, going outside the US, where else have you guys spent a lot of time? I know you guys in Asia, but are there specific cities or countries that are interesting?

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, Singapore is like the meeting place in Asia. It's sort of the Silicon Valley of crypto in Asia. So Singapore is the easy place to go because everybody likes going to Singapore. It's, uh, for those of you haven't been, it's somewhere you definitely want to go. You know, at least once as an American, I value freedom, personal freedom. Singapore doesn't have that. And so I was expecting a kind of a Disneyland-esque police state, and that is kind of what it is. But it's pretty pleasant. Like if you just want a nice place to live that's safe, it's a great place to be. And it's interesting as an American to have my, some of my views challenged by just visiting, seeing how great it is. But Singapore is a place where a lot of people meet. We spent a lot of time in Japan and Hong Kong, Korea and China as well.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  And those different places, countries or cities become more interesting at different times. But Singapore is definitely sort of the place to go if you want to have a taste of crypto in Asia.

• 36:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you see like different types of companies or projects in Asia versus the United States? Or do you think that kind of? All of the variations you get are being built in both geographies?

• 36:57Speaker 02

  I think if you ask most crypto investors what they really think, they will tell you that most of the real science being done in crypto is in the US with caveats. There is stuff in Israel that's being done that's amazing, and there is actual science being done in Asia. But the US, I think, is still the leader in terms of where the actual work is being done. But a lot of these companies aren't based in the US. They have employees here, for example.

• 37:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And is that a function of the capital mostly being in the US? Or do you think that that's just literally like Silicon Valley has this institutional knowledge, they've got the muscle memory, and so people want to build companies in the US because there's where they've seen the most successful company come from?

• 37:41Speaker 02

  I don't know. I'm not sure I can give an answer to that. I mean, I mean, I could imagine all kinds of prejudices as well coming into like subconsciously. I don't know why. And there is definitely good stuff being done around the world. And it just might be that we have a, you know, we have a big tech, you know, infrastructure here for people to spring from, but China does as well. And it's just a little different there for people. So.

• 38:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so going outside of crypto, obviously, the political landscape is just pure chaos at the moment. We've got an autonomous zone in like six or seven blocks of Seattle, which I think you're actually from Seattle or from Washington?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  I'm near Seattle now. Yeah, it. Yeah, that's fun.

• 38:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And then we've got my favorite thing you've tweeted in a while is, please don't take the presidential debates from us because they would be hard to watch.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  You used to be a Marine, right?

• 38:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Army, yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Did you? Oh, so like Marines are, I won't get into that. But like, does the Army guy in you just want to like, like, break up CHAZ or CHOP and like, just create order from chaos? Or like, how do you view that?

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Do you laugh at it?

• 38:53Anthony Pompliano?

  This is gonna sound crazy, but I I am a big believer in life that people self-select into the communities they want to live. And so if people literally want to go live in a place where there's no police, they do, you know, self policing or whatever, and whatever kind of autonomous zone they have.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  They have police.

• 39:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  There was a video of a guy, of people being maced. Like, it's literally like, it's they're using, you know.

• 39:15Anthony Pompliano?

  It's the mafia.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's the mafia. It's literally what happens when you.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Purely organized mafia, but yeah.

• 39:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you have a power vacuum, what happens? Like, the, I think they were calling the one guy the warlord, but like, you know, the mafia, this different age for people, but like, somebody takes over and is a control.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, so like, I'm actually the belief, like, let people do whatever they want. Maybe don't do in the downtown Seattle. Like, that's seems kind of ridiculous. Um, where that's like, kind of taxpayers have paid for it, whatever. Uh, but if people want to go do that stuff, like, I'm sure there's other weird places in America that aren't on the front page of every news.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  No, you can do that. Well, look, I mean, the only problem I have with it really is that people who own or live there who didn't elect to become part of it were just subsumed into it. That's a problem. Otherwise, I just found it kind of entertaining, right? I mean, it was, it was, uh.

• 40:03Anthony Pompliano?

  It's the best marketing campaign someone could run for having police. Right? Like, like, that's the way I think about it. It's like, yeah, I I get the whole, like, people want to defund the police. But the the argument that I've heard actually, uh, to me, that seems more compelling. And and people freak out when when they hear this without the explanation. But it's like, no, actually, they should get more funding. And you should require, rather than like, six weeks of training to become a police officer, like, make them train for two years. Treat it like the Navy SEALs. You literally have to be the top one percent of one percent to get through this program. And then you get to, you know, you you have the pleasure of serving as a Navy SEAL. Well, same thing with the police. And also take that additional, you know, year and a half or more of training, and don't just treat,

• 40:45Anthony Pompliano?

  you know, teach them how to shoot guns. Like, teach them how to do social worker stuff, or, you know, all these other things that, uh, it it's bad because, like, the police are killing people. That is a problem. Right?

• 40:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:58Anthony Pompliano?

  We have to, we have to ask ourselves, like, how much of it is, like, police officers are bad people? And how much of it is, like, we've put them in a bad position in terms of the way that we train them?

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Or does the environment turn them into, like, you've actually been in combat, too, right?

• 41:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  I mean, my knowledge of combat is based on video games and movies, so I have no idea. But like being in an environment can change you after a while, right?

• 41:24Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  And I mean, and so, you know, being on like, being a police, like, I, I remember, take it away from the police. I remember what, reading some like article written by a fireman in San Francisco a couple of years ago. And his job was basically to, um, uh, basically try to resuscitate drug addicts who'd overdosed, right? I mean, that's it. He wasn't, they weren't putting out any fires. All night was spent trying to like, you know, revive these people who were dying on the streets. And, you know, his, his main goal was to not like to, to wear enough protective gear that he wouldn't get like accidentally stabbed with a needle. Right? And obvious problems around that. But they, he, how desensitized you get to human suffering when you're, when you're doing that.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  And so I assume police, you know, get desensitized to certain things after a while. And, and, and that's why in their mind, planting drugs, which you see more and more videos of that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Because they know that person's deep down is a bad person, so they're helping society by doing it. And, and I don't know if more training helps that or not. I, I have no idea what helps that. Um, so.

• 42:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, and I think also part of it is, um, in many cases, the police will explain away the behavior in their head, whether they're right or wrong.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 42:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Part of what I think, uh, I, I said this to somebody recently, and I think they were a little taken back that like this is the mentality. But like, for example, a lot of military members across all of the branches of the military, when they're at war, there's a saying that literally says, I would rather be judged by 12 than carried by six. Which essentially is, hey, look, I'm not gonna die, because then basically that is the judge and executioner, right?

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I think the same thing, uh, some of that mentality per, uh, is pervasive in the, um, in the police. But what we have to remember is like, I don't care what somebody does. Like, you as a police officer can't be the judge and executioner. Like, if you kill somebody, that is a finite thing. They don't ever get their like day in court. And when you lose that part of the social fabric or like the social contract of like innocent until proven guilty and, and kind of all of those things that I think Americans kind of hang our hats on.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  If no one's, well, no one reasonable is gonna disagree with anything you're saying. And, and I think most of America feels that way. Like, we can actually think police are sometimes way too brutal. And we can also think that a lot of this protesting and looting is absolutely ridiculous and has lost the plot, right? You can think two things at once, like you want to fix a problem, but you don't want to tear down Western civilization to solve that problem. And um, I don't know, I don't know how to fix it.

• 43:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's uh, look, there's

• 44:01Speaker 02

  But I agree with everything you're saying.

• 44:02Anthony Pompliano?

  There's people way smarter than you and I who hopefully uh, will will uh, will come up with the solutions. But I I think that people are starting to uh, to understand uh,

• 44:10Speaker 02

  I'm not sure, like I think part of the country wants a perpetual rev- revolution. Like they profit from it and they don't want anything fixed. And and look, I'm a libertarian, I'm not, I think Republicans and Democrats are almost equally like ridiculous. But these cities have been under Democrat control for decades. If they wanted something changed, they could have changed it at any time, including now. And yet you don't see a lot of actual change. So I'm not sure they want, I think that they, I think they being some in the political class, you know, want this to be perpetual. And on the other side, I think Chaz was probably like one of the greatest political assets for Trump that he had. I mean, the longer that went on, the more ridiculousness around it, the better for him.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Which is why I think you're seeing it just being disbanded now, is my understanding. Um, but I'm not sure our politicians want to fix anything in this country. I I I think they're all like getting their piece. I think they're all peeing in the flower bed. And at some point, the flowers die. And I'm not sure anybody's trying to save the flowers anymore.

• 45:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you, do you think that, um, I'll call it the Silicon Valley ticket. Who the people are probably don't matter nearly as much, but run through your favorite, you know, kind of best known, most memorable people in Silicon Valley. If they got together and said, hey, look, we're gonna put uh, not only a presidential candidate forward, but literally an entire government. So we're gonna pick president, vice president, you know, all the way down a cabinet. Like here is who you are going to vote all on one single ticket. Uh, and you know that going into it. And these are people who are entrepreneurs, they've solved problems, they know how to allocate capital, blah, blah, blah, all the way down line. Do you think that that has uh, receptivity in kind of uh, the non-tech world in America?

• 45:52Speaker 02

  I don't, I think it's a pointless question. I I believe, I voted for Obama and I believe Obama was gonna bring this country together and it did not. He did not bring this country together. And some people think he tried. I think he, I think evidence shows that he, he gave up on that. I think a lot of, I didn't vote for Trump, but I think a lot of people who did thought that he was going to be a certain way and he hasn't been. Like he just hasn't been, even the things he promised, he hasn't been able to get done. I'm not sure any politician can survive the political machine. So I, I think we need to rethink the whole way politics works in America. The power of the federal government is immense and unimaginable by, our founders cannot imagine the, the power of the federal government.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  The power of even the court system and activism of the courts. Like, we shouldn't care who the president is, right? And, and I'm not sure that like, we should be hoping the Supreme Court is going to solve every problem that Congress can't get their act together and work out. And, and so I don't know how to solve it with a group of different people being in power. I'm, I'm just, I'm just not sure that there are perfect people in, in this. And that's why, you know,

• 47:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you also?

• 47:04Speaker 02

  I'm starting to think about getting a place out of the U S. Like I, I, it sounds dramatic, but like I, I, I own a house outside of the U S and I'm, you know, I have plans to go there if things get bad enough here.

• 47:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Do you feel like the response to the pandemic was, uh, whether actually happened or the perception of like, hey, the federal government's going to turn to the states and the state governments, you solve this problem. And we kind of saw a lot of the state governments get exposed for having just as poor, uh, leadership and effectiveness as the federal government?

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Well, I, look, I think in, in February, it was pretty obvious we should have like told people to wear masks. And instead the government was telling me people the opposite, right? I mean, masks seem to be not the silver bullet, but darn close. If everybody wears masks, I think you, you, you, you really crushed the, the spread of the virus. And, and literally we, we lied to the American people and told them they were ineffective. Simply because we didn't want people to rush out and get all the masks. And it turns out that like any mask, a bandana actually provides you more protection than you could have imagined. And so, no, I don't think we handled it properly. And I think now it's just politics. People on the right don't want to wear masks, like why? And people on the left, like it's just, so no, and I don't think the federal government is really set up to handle these kinds of problems. I think.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  You know, they talk about the police don't prevent crime. I mean, they prevent crime for their existence, but they come in afterwards and clean up the mess, right? And so, you know, people who are Second Amendment advocates like myself say, you know, you you need to protect yourself because when the, you know, when seconds count, you know, the police are minutes away. And and the federal government also isn't good at preventing this kind of stuff. Like, they're good at it, like, the federal government is good at big monolithic responses to things after they've happened to try to stop it. But they're not good at like this upcoming problem and how do you deal with it? Part of the problem is it's just a big organization, right? It's hard to get pieces moving, turning a battleship. The other problem is if you do nothing, you're probably better off politically than if you do something and it's wrong. And so I I'm just not sure there's a there's a solution other than maybe don't lie to us, so.

• 49:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and and the Second Amendment thing, I think, uh, what blew me away was just gun sales went through the roof. Right? I mean, I I've got a funny.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  All of my liberal friends have asked, have they done with you? There are people, you know, who support every leftist cause imaginable, who have privately asked me for gun advice, at least five of them, and I've I've helped them get the right weapons. And I've also told them, like, if you can't find a way to take a class and use it safely, like, you know, you're probably worse off, right? Because they're so frightened of these things that they're probably going to end up hurting themselves or not knowing what to do with them. But yeah, no, it's, sorry, I interrupted you.

• 49:47Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I I I think that's dead on. My my buddy literally said that he went to the gun store and the line was legitimately out the door. And he said.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  And I love seeing minorities and women do it, too. I love I love seeing minorities like, because a lot of the original gun laws in the last century were put in place to stop blacks from getting guns. I mean, that's my understanding, right? And so I I think minorities being well armed is is wonderful, as long as they're responsible gun owners. So.

• 50:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Where where would you go outside the the US if if it came to that?

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Where would you go?

• 50:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, so I would say there's probably three places off the top of my head. One is Bulgaria, just given the fact that uh.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  We've both spent a lot of time in Bulgaria.

• 50:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So for those that don't know, both my fiance and Mike's fiance are uh, well, Polina is Bulgarian. Uh, Natalie is Bulgarian or just.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  She spent twenty year or like fifteen years there. Yeah.

• 50:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, lived there for a long time. Um, so that's one. Singapore would be another one that would be uh, it just.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Have you been to Singapore?

• 50:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I've been two or three times now. I think.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  You know, you can't bring your guns. You can't bring your weapons there.

• 50:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I I haven't looked at uh, Singapore in in any kind of real material way, or the third place I would go uh, is Italy.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  See, I see you more in Mexico, like central Mexico, setting up there like an autonomous zone of your own. Uh, I really do. I I think that you.

• 51:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Mike, that's what we call a cartel. I do not want to run a cartel.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  I didn't want to use that word, but I think, you know, you could do well. Um.

• 51:19Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, look, if if you look around the world, right, like.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  There's no perfect place, like America on paper is the place, and that's why people, that's another thing. You don't see millions of refugees fleeing the United States, right? Even in the worst of times, people flee their countries to come here. And so it is a little bit ridiculous of me to talk about like leaving the US. But I I I'm a little bit worried. And so I think.

• 51:47Anthony Pompliano?

  What would drive you leaving? Would it be a safety thing? Or is it more of just like a headache thing where regulation or or taxes or something like that?

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Taxes are, uh, you know, people don't talk about the tax situation, but the ta- the US is the only, effectively the only country in the world where you're taxed on worldwide income. And so you don't see a lot of Americans living in Singapore, Dubai for the tax benefits, because they still pay US taxes, right? But you see lots of like other nationalities living in these countries. And and so that's a real, that's a real pain in the butt, but I I don't see myself like. Giving up US citizenship. Like, I don't mind paying taxes, but that's a, that is an issue that you cannot get away from that. But I, I just think ultimately I would just want to be somewhere safe and civilized that like I could, you know, raise a family. And that's, that's, there's lots of places for that.

• 52:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I, I generally think of it as like, there's an overlap between a, a place that is

• 52:43Anthony Pompliano?

  fairly safe, mostly common sense, regulation, government, et cetera, and also a place where they just leave you alone.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  Right. Mexico is right for you, though. Like, it's not safe, but you can make it safe with your own paramilitary organization. I seriously think I see you as a, as a warlord in Mexico, like, doing quite well for yourself, so.

• 53:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I want nothing to do with that.

• 53:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Literally nothing to do with that. What, what, what types of things in crypto are you guys excited about that either you're looking for companies in the space or, or you guys have recently invested in that you think is exciting?

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Love Bitcoin. I'll tell you that. It's so funny. Everybody assumes I'm a big XRP shill. And we love, we love Ripple and we love what XRP is doing, but, but, you know, we own vastly more Bitcoin than any other asset and we always have in our fund. Bitcoin is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, and there's lots of other interesting things happening, but they haven't proven themselves yet. So, Layer One tokens are not hot right now. We've invested in a bunch of them. Algoran is one we still have high hopes for, as well as lots of others, but, you know, everybody's right now is focused on DeFi, and I think DeFi is interesting, but it has a lot of flaws.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  And a lot of people are very nervous about putting any real money into DeFi, because it's not, it just isn't secure. It's not stable. Like, it needs to mature. Also, the rates, the sort of margin farming going on right now is outlandish and is not sustainable. And so we're very shy, gun-shy around getting involved in that kind of fat as well. But there are coins out there that really do like really serve a purpose and I still think there's a lot of innovation happening around that. An example is in Korea, we invested in Terra. Now, we invested in Terra in like 2018. I don't know if you know them, but they're a, they're a, they're a stable coin in Korea and they're expanding to other countries that's used for e-commerce. And so if you go to an e-commerce site in Korea and you pay with their stable

• 54:44Speaker 02

  coin, you actually end up getting like a five or 10% discount. And stable coins that don't have to be 100% backed by currency, they do in the US. You have to have a dollar for every, you know, dollar stablecoin issued, but in other countries, that isn't necessarily the case. So you get seniorage and you get growth in the rate. The bigger your economy of usage of this coin goes, the more seniorage or inflation you get. They can actually use some of that inflation to pay back e-commerce sites. So the e-commerce sites get paid one to one. And so it's this virtuous cycle. More and more people use Terra in Korea to pay for stuff because of the discount and then it creates a bigger economy, which gives more money for them to give back to e-commerce sites. It's a beautiful system and it's worked out really well. And, and that's an example of like

• 55:26Speaker 02

  just a wonderful like invention of a coin that can work anywhere in the world that doesn't require one-to-one backing of a stable coin. And so we see stuff like that and we, you know, the venture capitalist to me comes out. You asked me earlier about the, the, you know, do we do venture or do we do trading? I didn't really answer, but I'm a venture capitalist. And so I like doing venture deals. I like groups of people, entrepreneurs, starting companies, going from zero to one. I like investing in that, the long shot where one in 10 pays off. But half of our team is purely trading and they're, you know, and they trade every day and they do a really good job. They, they do exotic derivative stuff. They're buying, they're selling, they're, they're shorting, they're longing. It's just, you know, they, I, I understand more of what they do than I let on, but I mean, right now I'm not that ignorant

• 56:11Speaker 02

  of it, but like they are experts and I let them run and they, you know, they've outperformed Bitcoin by like 30% last year and that was fantastic. And Bitcoin had a good year. So we do a little bit of both, but I, my heart is always in the venture, to do startups and the entrepreneurs starting something new. That's what I love.

• 56:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it feels to me like there's the combination of those two things, right? So like you're one of the only funds I know that kind of says, look, we're going to almost be like 50 50. We're going to do a bunch of trading and look at the liquid stuff, but we're also going to do.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  There are other funds, there are other funds.

• 56:42Anthony Pompliano?

  There's other ones that do it, but like the ones that I've seen, and maybe I just haven't seen others like you, but a lot of them have like a hedge fund or a liquid fund. And then they'll do like a sidecar or they'll somehow like carve out into a separate fund, the illiquid stuff. But it sounds like you guys are doing everything all in one fund.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  We're doing those two things. There's some stuff we don't do, but those are the two things we do. And I think that it's, it's good for us right now. Yeah.

• 57:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The other thing you talked about was DeFi. And the one thing for me is like, I was telling one of my partners that it feels like people are building technology. They're not yet building products there, right? It's a lot of things that it works. And like, if you're somewhat technical or you've got a lot of persistence and kind of self motivation, you can figure it out, you can use it. To your point, people are a little scared about putting really big dollars at play there. But if you compare it to a product like a BlockFi or a Robinhood, or you know, these other fintech like true products with slick UXs and things like that. It just feels like there's something very different there. Do you see the same thing or are you a little bit more bullish on kind of the user experiences and product side of it?

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Well, okay, I disagree somewhat. So first of all, there's people like Vinnie Lingam. Have you ever had Vinnie on your show?

• 57:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I have not, but I've talked to him before.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  His company is Civic and I, I don't think I'm saying something I shouldn't say. Like he has a, who I might be, Vinnie's working on some stuff that I think fixes a lot of the problems in DeFi. But I'll leave it at that in case, I don't know what's been announced. And we're not investors in that. He's a friend. I have no financial interest in what he's doing. I'd like, I wish I did. But I think that decentralization is, has many, many problems. And I talk about our first closing of our fund was, our very first closing was $50 million in XRP. And it was like literally two seconds to confirm the transaction and we paid tens of cents. I think it was 40 cents for the transaction.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  It blows Bitcoin out of the water, right? It blows anything in the world out of the water, other than maybe handing a bag of money to somebody. And you can't beat that with Bitcoin. And but Bitcoin is decentralized and there's reasons why all of the problems with Bitcoin are acceptable. And if you know, if you don't know what those reasons are, listen to your podcast or read the Bitcoin standard, right?

• 59:06Speaker 02

  But the problems of DeFi, it is the decentralized products. There's so many points of failure and so many points of risk and and it's hard and it's messy and it just it's too much friction and so it keeps people away. Those problems can be fixed and I think people like Vinny are doing it now. In the meantime, companies like like like BlockFi and other companies are doing amazing things, helping people in the meantime. In the meantime, might be 20 years, right? Get a lot of the same services in a much safer and easier and quicker way. And so we support both.

• 59:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  When it comes to actually moving our money, we use companies like BlockFi. Because when you're moving tens of millions of dollars, you need to know exactly what's going to happen to that money.

• 59:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, i- is it fair to say that DeFi? Is there correlations or comparisons to like early internet where things were hard, they were slow, they were messy, all that kind of stuff? And then it got over time, over time it got improved?

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's like homebrew stuff, right? And it's fun to do and it kind of works sometimes and when it does work, you're happy. But you know, you're dealing with money here and and I think people just want to make sure that they don't lose their money. And so, you know, it is what it is. We are, we're investing in these companies, but we are not margin farming. We are just not, we're not getting in that. That could end badly.

• 1:00:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Makes sense. Last question for you before I do the the rapid fire at the end. Do you miss traditional venture investing?

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  I do, but I don't necessarily miss Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley has become less interesting as a place over the last couple of years, and I think it'll cycle back and I'll be right back there. But I don't miss the the culture because I think the culture has changed. But I do always love meeting entrepreneurs and helping them and and I'll always love that.

• 1:01:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's awesome. I ask two questions to end each episode. First is, what is the most important book you've ever read?

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  You know, it's so funny.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  The Bitcoin standard has been formative and the author is such a dick, right? I mean, he's just personally, he's just, he's very intelligent, but he's just, I personally do not love him. But the Bitcoin standard in my current sort of life right now and in crypto is, is a book that, I mean, you, you really need to read the white, this toshie white paper, need to read the Bitcoin standard. If you want to really understand at a basic level why Bitcoin is important.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  Longer term, I think Guns, Germs and Steel, I don't know if you've ever read that, but that is a book that was formative to me in my younger years and I often go back to it and, and how I think about the world and why things are the way they are. And I'd recommend everybody read that as well.

• 1:01:58Anthony Pompliano?

  I actually have Guns, Germs and Steel on my top five. I always say, uh, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, uh, Thinking Girl Rich, Rich Is Made in Babylon and then Guns, Germs and Steel.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  But you told me before we got on that white fragility was the.

• 1:02:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Sold out on Amazon. I couldn't get my copy.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  You, um, it's funny. You said, you say different things off air than I'm just kidding.

• 1:02:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Uh, last question's more fun. Aliens believer or non-believer?

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  I just read a book called The Last Human. I tweeted about it. I, I don't, I don't know where, I, these books I read, I didn't just find it. Somebody recommended it on Twitter or something. So I bought it. It was super good.

• 1:02:36Anthony Pompliano?

  The Last Human?

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's a combination of interesting thesis. So it, one is, there's a guy named Ramaz Non. I'm actually looking at my bookshelf right now. He wrote a book called Nexus a few years ago and it was, it was a trilogy. And it was, it was sort of popular and it's a very good book, but it's about networked minds. And he was sort of the, the idea of using different technologies to actually network our minds in a way that I think we all understand what that means now. The Last Human is about networked minds, but it's also about aliens and what a galaxy might look for. And I love the book. Like I, I read a lot of nonfiction, but I reward myself often with a good fiction book. And, uh, the, the math.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  The math says there are aliens out there and and if there aren't, you know, it's a well, it's probably a hell of a piece of evidence of the existence of God, but um yeah, I think alien fuck. I mean, I I hope in our lifetime we get to meet them, right? So.

• 1:03:30Anthony Pompliano?

  It would be kind of boring not to, right? Like you spend so much time with people.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  Cold and lonely universe. Yeah.

• 1:03:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I'm with you. You could ask me one question to finish up. What's the one question that you have?

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Do you secretly love XRP? Because again, in our private conversations, you talk about it very bullishly and how much you you really have put most of your assets or intend to in it. And I'm just wondering, you know, what your real view on XRP is. So.

• 1:04:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Should have never asked you this question. Let you ask me this. Um.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Well, look, you asked yesterday, like what you asked your audience on Twitter, like what we're gonna talk about. A lot of the XRP guys came out and they said they really want to talk about it. And they know my opinion on it. I'm in love with XRP and I think it serves a very useful and important purpose. I just want you on the record saying what you think about XRP.

• 1:04:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So I I mean, Brad and I basically talked about it, but if you separate XRP and Ripple, Ripple has a software company that wants to build uh better software for banks. No brainer. Makes sense. Like venture capital bet. I'm jealous. I didn't invest in Ripple in the seed round and make a bunch of money with all the venture capitalists, right? So like that that makes sense. Uh, the Ripple XRP relationship, very weird to me. I've been on record a million times and saying like, I don't know what that relationship is or was or whatever. That's not my job. Like it is what it is and we are here today. Um, I think that XRP in a.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, there's a lot of hedging and hemming and hawing.

• 1:04:59Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, no, no, no. Hold on. XRP. Well, because you know that uh look, the XRP army, I look, I uh I nod my respect to them. They they don't fuck around. So I'm not a I I'm not going to mince words, but no, I I think that XRP as a part of the Ripple product, meaning like they use it inside the product. I understand why they do that and I see the advantages inside the Ripple ecosystem. What I don't understand and I think where uh I choose to not engage uh on the XRP side is I don't understand why people are buying it speculating on future price movements. Right? Like to me, if Ripple is successful, that doesn't mean that XRP has to be successful. And I think.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  You're talking Bitcoin now? You're talking Bitcoin now when you said speculate.

• 1:05:42Anthony Pompliano?

  No, of course, listen.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  I mean, none of us know, right? I mean, none of us know.

• 1:05:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  You know.

• 1:05:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, by the way, Bitcoin for sure, like I've said a million times, it is the most binary thing you could find. It is either going to be worth, you know, millions of dollars a coin, or it's going to be worth basically nothing.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  What do you think could crush? What do you think could hurt Bitcoin the most? What could make it worth nothing?

• 1:06:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Self-inflicted wound. Like, there's some, there's some code that's pushed that somehow does something detrimental in a material way. I think that's like the most likely thing.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  I disagree. I disagree with that.

• 1:06:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  What if the US government declared it, like, seriously declared it a national security threat? And, and did everything they could to shut it down? They could clearly kill the fiat on ramps and off ramps, right?

• 1:06:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that China.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  That's the biggest danger.

• 1:06:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that China and Russia would love that. They want to get off the US dollar so badly. And I think that what they would look at and say is, wait a second.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  Interesting. So you think Bitcoin is so large now that the US government cannot effectively take it down anymore? That's really interesting thought.

• 1:06:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, what I think they can do is I think that they can heavily discourage, if not cut off, the United States citizens from using it.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:06:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? So they ban ownership, do all that kind of stuff. What I think though is on a global basis, Russia and China both have publicly stated many times that the US dollar system is incredibly detrimental. It's expensive, it's costly to them, all that kind of stuff.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, then you look at places like, you know, Venezuela, all these places that are sanctioned. They would love nothing more than the US to openly say, we don't like something. And then they all run and go use it. And then they can basically have like the US system of the world. And then you have like the non-US system of the world. And I recently saw, uh, two data points that I thought were really interesting. I don't know how much volume's gone through either one of these, so take it for what it is. But in Venezuela, they are using BTC pay, uh, uh, BTC pay server, whatever it's called, to allow people to pay with Bitcoin for government services. So like, you want your driver's license? Normally you can go.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 1:07:37Anthony Pompliano?

  It, it just came out. Uh, Marty Bennett is the one who highlighted this, that, that I saw him talking about it. So he, he basically positioned it as like, the Venezuelan government is acquiring Bitcoin. I don't know if there's enough, you know, actual transactions to like, make that case. But the fact that they're willing to understand that this is possible and they're willing to actually allow people to pay with Bitcoin to the government, like that's interesting. The second thing is, uh, I know for a fact.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  You, the way you light up when you talk about Bitcoin, like your energy level just went through the roof. I love, I love watching you talk about this. This is what you look for in entrepreneurs is passion about whatever product they're, you know, interested in.

• 1:08:14Anthony Pompliano?

  It's the only piece of technology that I've ever seen that can, that has the addressable market of the world.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  Everyone.

• 1:08:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, like literally, it will touch seven billion people if it becomes like on the uppermost limit of what we think it can become. The other thing that, uh, I definitely think is more likely than not is that you, me and everybody else is underestimating how big it can get. So if you think of, you know, everyone always compares it to like, oh, the ninety trillion dollar monetary supply, whatever. Uh, Murad Mahabharad, uh, he recorded episode maybe a year and a half ago now. Uh, and he came in, he made an argument that Bitcoin's market cap is not comparable just to the global monetary supply at ninety trillion. He thought it was a hundred and fifty trillion and how he got there was a lot of the assets that you or I own. We own because we don't want to hold cash because of inflation. So we'll buy, you know, a house or, you know, whatever all this stuff is.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. Sure.

• 1:09:09Anthony Pompliano?

  And so instead, just like Uber was a market expanding piece of technology and it wasn't just against taxis, it ended up like some people don't own cars. Same thing here where now all of a sudden, maybe I don't put my wealth in store value assets. I can actually put that in quote unquote currency because it's a deflationary type currency. So I think that's interesting. But the other point is, uh, there's a number of countries that are now putting national resources towards mining. And so nefarious actors like North Korea are rumored to be doing it, right? And that's how they're driving some revenue. But then if you look at places like, uh, again, Iran, China, like these different countries. It's just, you're getting to a point now where the world's never had something that is truly not manipulated and not controlled by anybody.

• 1:09:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I fear that the US, uh, every time they've ever seen something like that, they just sort of like, no, if you go like deep enough down the stack, like you can find the point of failure. But if there actually is something that has no point of failure in terms of control or ownership, the countries that embrace it first end up winning. Right, it's the countries that fight it, like they get screwed, right? Because they end up being the ones without any.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  So I think that some of the most interesting content we've had in the last hour plus is in the last few minutes. You talk about Bitcoin, like I want more of the like, I like that you interview people and you're a very good interviewer. And I've interviewed a lot of people, so I understand what it takes to do that. But you, um, it's just fun listening to you, to you talk like you're, you're a true believer. I mean, you're like a Scientologist who you're, you're Tom Cruise jumping up and down on the couch. And I mean that in a positive, I mean, it's funny, but I also mean it like fairly positively like it's you. You, you believe this crazy stuff and I do too, but I will tell you this. I think that there are three interesting coin models out there. I think there's a lot more like the Terra one I talked about, but you've got Bitcoin, which is money. I think you and I agree on that and a lot of part of your audience agrees on that.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Ethereum is the worldwide computer and it's definitely interesting. Now, Ether may or may not end up being that or somebody else may be that, but I think that's an interesting model as well. The third one is, I don't want to call it a banker coin because the XRP army doesn't like that. But like what Ripple is doing can disrupt the banking system in a positive way. It can help them eventually move to a Bitcoin world. I think in a way that's like very important and Bitcoin, you know, in the Bitcoin standard, you talk a lot about how you get around the issues of this, the, the, how slow the inexpensive, the Bitcoin network is, you do it through banks, like individuals banks. What you're going to need, I mean, yes, you could have banks, but if they're not, if they're issuing artificial like fiat, basically like, you know, fractional reserve type banking, you're kind of back in the old world.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  And so I really think XRP has a chance to become like that, that coin that people use to actually move the money around when they need to do stuff fast. You need to be somewhat centralized and the downside of that centralization, I think is less than ultimately having very, very powerful banks control everything that there is to know about, to control about Bitcoin in the end.

• 1:12:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Do we, do those two things get mashed together in the sense of, uh, let's say the US, uh, issues a digital dollar or like JPM coin comes out or whatever. Do you think that that eats into the potential that, uh, XRP can have?

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  It definitely could. I mean, I mean, you know, there's an argument that XRP competes with Tether more than Bitcoin, right? And so if you look at how it's being used now, it's these cross-border payments where there's a lot of pain involved. And it's really helped MoneyGram, you know, with making these cross-border payments faster and cheaper. So I think there's a long-term play for XRP. We love it, especially at these prices. We look at the price of most coins and Bitcoin and SATs, right? We look at, we don't look at ETH as 230 bucks or whatever it is right now. We look at how many SATs it is. And we do that the same with XRP and XRP is, I haven't looked in the last couple of hours, but it's hovering on, you know, 2,000 SATs. That's very, very cheap for XRP. And so, and so we are more bullish on XRP than we otherwise would be.

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  And we think over the long run, it's part of the ecosystem. Just believe that. But you're a good sport about this because most Bitcoin maximalists cannot stomach even having a conversation beyond how great Bitcoin is. And I think that you are somebody that's helping bring this community together instead of helping rip it apart. And I think that you're an important asset because of that. So I'm glad you do what you do.

• 1:13:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, listen, I appreciate it. I also appreciate you taking the time to do this. We'll have to do it again.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  I've been begging to be on the show since I met you in 2018. So you finally let me on. Natalia was on.

• 1:13:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, I was scared. To be honest, I was scared that you were hanging out in Chaz and I was never going to get you on. Like you were beginning to become the mayor of Chaz.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  I did want to go. I could drive over there. I did want to go, but ultimately I was just a little bit afraid. Like I didn't know what happened.

• 1:13:45Anthony Pompliano?

  If you go, you have to livestream it. You just have to walk around with your phone and just film.

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  I think it's over now. Isn't it over? I saw that they're like, I don't know either. I hope it isn't.

• 1:13:56Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a great marketing, it's a great marketing tool for, for maybe some, you know, rule of law.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me on.

• 1:14:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for doing it. We'll do it again in the future.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  Bye.