#513: JP Richardson on Exiting The Traditional Financial System

JP Richardson is the founder and CEO of Exodus, one of the most popular crypto applications and blockchain wallets. In this conversation, we discuss distrust in institutions, defi maturation, improving user experiences, the Exodus product suite, and their recent tokenized shares and fundraise. ======================= Public Rec is the first to bring tailored sizing to leisurewear so that you don’t have to choose between comfort and style. They make leisurewear in waist and inseam sizes because they believe comfort starts with a better fit. And when things fit better, they look better. No tailors. No settling. No stress. Comfort and style, all in one. Check out publicrec.com/pomp and use POMP10 at checkout for 10% off your order. Step into a better fit today with Public Rec. ======================= As one of the largest and oldest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, Kraken is consistently named one of the best places to buy and sell crypto online, thanks to our excellent service, low fees, versatile funding options and rigorous security standards -- but this is only part of the story. We’ve been on the forefront of the blockchain revolution since 2011: http://www.kraken.com ======================= Coinbase Wallets are adding support for .crypto and .zil domains through their partnership with Unstoppable Domains. Unstoppable Domains provides an all-in-one solution for blockchain domains. You can send money using these new domains instead of long Bitcoin wallet addresses, while also storing your domain in Coinbase's collectibles section. Go to unstoppabledomains.com in the dapp browser to register and manage your domains.

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. Let's kick this thing off. JP Richardson is the founder and CEO of Exodus, one of the most popular crypto applications in blockchain wallets. In this conversation, we discuss distrust in institutions, DeFi maturation, improving user experiences, the Exodus product suite, and their recent tokenized shares and fundraises. I really enjoyed this conversation with JP, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Public Rec. They're the first company to bring tailored sizing to leisure wear,

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:26Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:50Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:33Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's get into this episode with JP. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:37Speaker 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.

• 4:08Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. Got JP here with me. Thank you so much for doing this, man.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks a lot, Tom, for having me on.

• 4:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. I'm super excited to go over all this stuff. Let's just start with your background. Before you ever knew what Bitcoin cryptocurrencies were, where were you born? Where'd you grow up and kind of what you do?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Yes, let me just start with our with our name Exodus. I think it's really important for the listeners is that our name Exodus is an escape from the traditional financial system. And the reason that that is so important is because money, the most important commodity, is controlled by centralized institutions. And so we felt the need to build software to empower people to control their own wealth. And to date, we have a million customers and we're on track to do $100 million in revenue this year. And if you contrast that to where I was in 2015, I was broke. I only had a few thousand dollars in my checking account. There's kind of a little funny story surrounding this

• 5:10Speaker 02

  that I had this old shitty Toyota Camry. Her name was Goldie and she was sitting outside the front of my house and the car got hit twice in the same day and the insurance company didn't love Goldie as much as I love Goldie. And, you know, I was fortunate enough that that money that the insurance company paid out gave me a little bit of fuel to survive, to actually raise money for Exodus. But before all that, my background is I'm a software engineer, born and raised in Nebraska. And, you know, I witnessed what happened with the financial crisis and, you know, in the transition there and then into Mt. Gox and the failures with Mt. Gox and how it was difficult to use

• 5:54Speaker 02

  and it wasn't safe or secure. And so this is kind of the origin of how this all got started.

• 5:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and so let's talk a little bit about kind of growing up in the Midwest. Most people who listen to this are going to be either international or live on one of the coast. But when you think about the Midwest kind of childhood, what were some of the things that stick out to you as advantages having grown up there?

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the Midwest is really known for having a strong work ethic. And that's how a lot of people around here are, people work really hard. But we knew that to build a company that has a decentralized future, that we were going to have to build a company that is 100% remote and pays salaries 100% in Bitcoin. And that was one of our secret weapons early on is that we were allowed, we were able to, despite the fact that my co-founder, Daniel, who is the design guru early on, he's got design experiences from Disney, Apple, BMW, Nike, and Louis Vuitton, to name a few. And knowing that early on that we wanted to build a tech company quickly.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  And so we're like, let's pay salaries in Bitcoin and 100% of the salaries and we could recruit from all of the world. And that's how we got started and that's how we were able to move so quickly.

• 7:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and so what was the original impetus for Exodus? What was the idea? How did you come up with it and how did you get started?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so with watching, again with like Mt. Gox and how difficult it was to use and knowing that it's not safe because of, you know, the hacks. And then seeing that, you know, the biggest companies, Coinbase, Finance, they're all centralized. And we saw, we see a future where it's completely decentralized. And so that's where this this really started. I actually built a Bitcoin wallet called Coin Bolt. And it was in the early days back in 2014, I quit my day job at a biotech company. And I was pitching Coin Bolt and somebody told me that it looked like basically a five-year-old designed it. And I knew that I needed to to improve my my design abilities.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  And again, that's when I met Daniel and he had that same shared ethos of let's build something that people can control their own wealth. And we did something different because Coin Bolt was originally just on the mobile phone. And we thought, well, let's actually build Exodus. We know that people love to manage a portfolio of cryptocurrency. People love to trade cryptocurrency. Let's build it on the desktop because in this moment in time, about 2015 is when most people were trading on the desktop. And so that's where we got started. Our first investor, Eric Voorhees, a lot of people don't know this at this moment in time, but they've been in Denver, Colorado, which is right next to Nebraska.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  And it's about a, you know, seven or eight hour drive. So my co-founder, Daniel and I, we would get in the car, we would drive out to Denver. And we would sit with Eric and then we'd drive back in the same day because we didn't have the money to stay in a hotel. And so that's, that's how we, we got started here.

• 9:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Love it. And so when you started, you guys wanted to build this desktop wallet. What, what did you build for? Was it just Bitcoin? Was it for kind of all different types of assets? How were you thinking about?

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the early version was just Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin. And that's it. And then, because that's really all there. I mean, there was a few other ones like named coin and maybe just a few other ones. Uh, but I remember one, when Dash was released, Dash was started to become popular. And then of course Ethereum. That was one of the biggest. So we brought in Ethereum and Dash real quickly. And those were the two assets in 2017. It was actually February of 2017. It was just Daniel, myself, and then a couple of other engineers. And we made $3,000 that, that month, February 2017. And we're like, eh, we might have a business.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  But it was then March of 2017 where we made $70,000 and we're like, oh yeah, we got a business. And it was because of people's interest in, in Dash and Ethereum.

• 10:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And when you think through kind of the product suite today, so you go from a kind of a single wallet type functionality on desktop. Uh, that supports your career for different cryptocurrencies to today, you've got an entire.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Ecosystem that you're building out. Walk us through kind of that product suite and what users can do with the product. Yeah, so desktop is was the where it all started. It's just simply to send, receive and exchange cryptocurrency. And of course, early on, as you would expect, we got so much demand for a mobile app. And and we knew we would always build a mobile app, but we we thought let's build desktop as a stable base because that's where people are trading. But over time, after we stabilized the backend infrastructure, we got through the 2017 bull run. We stabilized the infrastructure. We knew that we had to bring in additional features. And and two of the biggest ones is, first of all, we brought in Tracer support.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  We knew that there were a lot of people out there that wanted to secure their cryptocurrency in a way where they didn't have a worry and they were very comfortable with a hardware wallet. So we brought in Tracer support. And then around that same time, we also we also released the the mobile app. And so this way allows people to view their portfolio on the go. And and today, the the product suite has really evolved out into, we started thinking about, how can we make it easy for people to buy cryptocurrency? And so we we introduced Apple Pay support inside the mobile wallet. And so a person can download Exodus on the iPhone.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  And then they can have Bitcoin in their wallet in less than two minutes. And so that was that's a very big popular feature for people. And then in addition to that, there's a lot of small things that people aren't thinking about that we we brought into Exodus that are really useful once people start using it. So a recent recent feature that was introduced is the the notion of having multiple portfolios on on the desktop and then actually have it magically sync with with the mobile. And you could name a portfolio on on the desktop and it magically shows up with the same name on on the the mobile and desktop. And so. That's kind of what we brought in and beyond that, we really are passionate about

• 12:26Speaker 02

  eventually making DeFi easy to use. That's going to be really important for the ecosystem, you know, making NFTs easy. I mean, NFTs are really hot and popular right now, but there's it's so on all these different websites and still with the Ethereum gas fees, it's still, there's a lot of complications. That's how we're thinking about making it easy to use.

• 12:45Anthony Pompliano?

  So JP, one of the things I want to talk about is you guys have kind of three core ideas, kind of as you guys keep pushing forward. And one of them is that there's going to be continued distrust in these centralized institutions. Maybe help us understand kind of what you mean by that and how you see that playing out.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, if you go back to the 2008 financial crisis, you had a majority of Americans saying, let them fail, let them fail. And both political parties went against the American populace and were in support of bailouts for these banks. And so I think that's where the origin really started. And then if you look at the presidential election of 2016 and the presidential election of 2020, doesn't matter which side you're on, either side thought the other side stole the election. And so now you have a majority of people in America who are starting to think, is the electoral process in favor of

• 13:42Speaker 02

  me as an American? I just saw a statistic yesterday that said, the first time more than 50% of people identify as independent, not either party. And so then if we look at kind of what happened with AWS and some of the issues with Parler, and if we look at Robinhood and GameStop, I mean, that was the most recent one where people were just like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me that Robinhood is doing this? And so I think these sorts of things are going to continue. And it's only going to cause more distrust for people. And not to mention that the biggest and most obvious one is the Federal Reserve saying, hey, we're going to print 1.9 trillion dollars, whether you like it or not. And so people

• 14:26Speaker 02

  are starting to look for alternatives, and rightfully so.

• 14:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it feels like a lot of those centralized entities, part of the problem is that they are human led, there's, you know, emotion, there's greed, there's fear, there's just mismanagement. And so, and a lot of these decentralized products, what you get is you just get algorithmic governance, right? Or you get true governance by the people. And it feels like that's just a solution that people People are getting more and more comfortable with.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah, I completely agree with that. With the rise of DeFi right now, it's still very complicated, but there's so much interest in these systems and protocols because of the promise that they offer. If we take a look at, you know, like the lending platforms, whether it's Compound or AVE, you know, these things, you know, taking a loan out on the blockchain is really cool. It's just difficult to use today.

• 15:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then when you start to think through kind of DeFi in general, I know another theme that you're really focused on is the idea that more and more people are going to flock to decentralized financial applications. Sounds like you're probably less religious about where exactly that's going to happen from the kind of the tribal wars of different blockchains, but more so just like decentralized financial applications will be the standard. They will become more popular over time. And so you at Exodus want to figure out how to kind of serve as an interface and a connectivity point to wherever the market adopts those applications?

• 15:48Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. So this last summer, we were, we had an integration with Compound Finance and then SportX. A lot of people haven't heard the name SportX, but it's a really cool decentralized betting platform, sports betting platform. And so we had integrations with both these platforms and they're both, both built on Ethereum. And so we all know what's happened with Ethereum and the rise of the gas prices. And it started to make, if you're going to put a $40 or $50 bet down in a game and you've got to pay $30 or $40 on gas fees, you're just not going to do it. And so for us, you know, we don't have a horse in the race, whether it's Ethereum or some other blockchain,

• 16:28Speaker 02

  but we just want a blockchain that people find useful and it's cost efficient and it just works for, for the average person.

• 16:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. One of the things that really stands out about your product, and I know it's a third focus for you, is the user experience, right? With the user interface, it's absolutely Gorgeous, and I think that it rivals what people would expect in a non-crypto product. Right? So if you had a consumer product in the traditional world that you looked at, you said, wow, that's really pretty. I really like the way that it's so intuitive and the way that it just works. It seems like you guys have been able to take the best of that design world and bring it into crypto and the Bitcoin ecosystem, where frankly, a lot of the design leaves a lot to be desired in many cases.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So everything that we do, we do with the product and customer experience in mind. In fact, there's a little story here that kind of represents this. We call this the bar test or the pub test. And I remember back in, it was, I think around 2017 or so, a friend asked me like, hey JP, I want to get into cryptocurrency. Which wallet should I use? And so at this moment in time, we didn't have a mobile wallet, but you know, we're sitting in a bar and we're having some drinks. And I'm like, okay, let's start downloading mobile. So we started going one by one through all of them. And all of them required a major ceremony at the beginning to get started. Write down your 12-word phrase and do all kinds of things that a person in a bar shouldn't have to do.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  And so we're thinking like, okay, let's think about the product's experience. Let's think about the customer experience. How can we get a person to get started as soon as possible? And how, beyond that, how does a person feel when they use the product? And that's what we call emotionally driven design. When we think about feelings, how a person feels when they use the product, and you can see that everywhere in the product.

• 18:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And so when you start thinking through that product iteration moving forward, what are the things that you want to add to it or improve over time?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. So one of the things that we've done recently is that we, this was just announced on Friday. We filed with the SEC so that we could offer our common stock on the blockchain directly inside of Exodus. And so this allows a person to download Exodus, share in our success and use and buy our stock only with cryptocurrency, whether it's Bitcoin, Ethereum, or USDC, and do this all within Exodus. And so why this is so cool is that we'll show the world that this works well. I mean, if you look at like the old ICO crowdfunding days, like EOS raised $4 billion

• 19:06Speaker 02

  on a website, right? And so if we can do this in an app that already has, you know, presumably billions of dollars in it, then we should be able to be really successful. And then other companies can come inside and do a crowdfunding option right inside of Exodus. And then everybody can trade their stock. We're going to do an integration with T zero and merge. And this will allow us to effectively have a global IPO throughout the course of 2021.

• 19:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so talk through a little bit more about this, right? You have a business that was quite attractive through 2020. This year, you're on track to do about $100 million in revenue. I'm assuming there will be profit there off of that. And you're choosing to basically go to your user base and say, hey, you as users, you should invest rather than go to traditional venture capitalists. And so walk through kind of the logic as to why go to the user base, kind of what the philosophical belief that you have as to not go to venture capitalists and kind of just turn to the community.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So venture capital is a fine, it's a fine way to raise money. But in reality, it's only reserved for the privileged few who are accredited investors or venture capitalists. And so we wanted to create a future where anyone can participate, whether you're a credit investor or not a credit investor. And beyond that, we see a world where a situation like what happened with Robinhood and GameStop, we see a world where that can't happen. If you have stock in an application and you're not happy with how that application is working, you can just take your stock and go to another platform. Much like how crypto works today, we want to bring that same world to the world of securities and exchanges. Now, we understand

• 20:56Speaker 02

  it's going to be difficult because there are so much regulations surrounding here and we have to follow all the regulations. But we believe by working with our partners, we can build a system and where it's on smart contracts on the blockchain, and we can give the same benefits for customers to have that control.

• 21:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you start to think through kind of implications of this, right? Obviously, one, it provides a lot more access to both accredited and non-accredited investors. But well, Every company go do this, is there some obstacle or barrier that makes it hard for them to do it? Like, how do you just think of other companies and whether they should pursue this?

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so in the the 2012 Jobs Act, there are two provisions that make this really lucrative for customers, companies. So one of them is the Regulation A plus offering. That's what we're doing. It's a little more of an involved process and it costs about a million dollars or so, give or take, to actually make this a reality. And there's also the Regulation CF process that allows smaller companies to get started even sooner, and it's much cheaper. Now, the Regulation A process allows a company to raise up to seventy five million dollars. And the Regulation CF process allows a company to raise up to five million dollars through through pure crowdfunding.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  So we see a world where a lot of companies are going to start doing this.

• 22:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you look at this, the Regulation A plus allows seventy five million dollars to accredited and non-accredited investors. But there's a couple of maybe kind of safeguards, if you will, put on these investors. Talk through for those that are listening that may be interested. What exactly are the kind of requirements or safeguards for those two investor types?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so as as a person would expect, for accredited investors, an accredited investor can invest as much as they want. Now, the SEC or non-accredited investors has said that they have a maximum, non-accredited investors are allowed only to invest a maximum of ten percent of their net worth or ten percent of their income. And so that's one of the safeguards that the SEC has put in place.

• 23:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Amazing. And so as we kind of continue to see this, talk about the tokenization of the shares as well, right? Because one piece of this is, hey, I'm going to use existing regulations that are in place, and I'm going to use it to my advantage. I'm going to go out and raise capital. But now what you're talking about is you're basically talking about on the back end, tokenizing the shares rather than having them done kind of the more traditional way. What is the advantage to you to do this and what's the advantage to the investor?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the advantage to the investor, again, for the future is is control. And that in having those stocks to actually not have to worry if the system goes down, can take the stocks and go. Go anywhere else. It doesn't exist right this moment, but that's an advantage in the future. In the short term, one of the other big advantages is transparency. So the cap table becomes completely transparent, at least in how it's distributed amongst people. But one of the things that we're facing with tokenizing on the blockchain is that we were originally looking at Ethereum and we were settled with Ethereum. And then we just found out a couple of weeks ago that it was going to cost up to $9 million

• 24:17Speaker 02

  to issue our stock on Ethereum, and that's due to the high gas prices. And so we're currently shopping around for other blockchains to do this.

• 24:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you think about kind of the tokenization component, are there issues there on the regulatory front or still obstacles and complexities that you need to work through? Or is it pretty straightforward in terms of how regulators think about this and kind of what they'll allow and they won't allow?

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are definitely obstacles, but we're working with a great partner over at Securitize. And what they've done is they are a registered transfer agent within license with the SEC. So that means that they have the ability to do this. And they have blend through a world of smart contracts. And so there are challenges. It's not as easy as just, I'm going to send my shares to somebody else that's not registered in the Securitize smart contract. So there's definitely challenges. And then it gets even more challenging when we have to integrate this technology with other third parties like T zero, which is a trading system, or Merge, which is a trading system for people outside the United States.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  And so we have to integrate all three of these systems together while following the regulations and use the smart contracts.

• 25:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you think about the $75 million that's coming in, there's advantages to both you and to the investor in terms of the way you're doing it. So both Reg A plus and then tokenization. But you're still getting seventy five million dollars, right, of equity capital. What are you gonna do with the money?

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the biggest thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna, we're gonna reinvest in the product with like everything that we do. And so we're gonna make the product so that a person can buy cryptocurrency anywhere in the world. Because if our, you know, as our mission is, is to exit the traditional financial system and help the world do that. We have to make it easy for a person in any country in the world to actually buy cryptocurrency. Whether that's with a bank account, whether that's with a credit card, and a lot of people don't have bank accounts or credit cards. And so we have to find ways to actually make it legal and accessible for them to, to do this with cash. And so that's where a, a big use of the money is gonna go to. And then in addition to that, you know, DeFi and making DeFi really simple to use.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  And, uh, you know, making NFTs simple to use, that's gonna be a, a big component. And then, of course, marketing. And then finally, uh, there's gonna be, I think you'll see some strategic acquisitions that we'll be interested in at, at some point in time.

• 26:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so as you think, uh, kind of moving forward, how big is the team today? What will that, how will that change as, uh, as you continue to invest in the product?

• 26:59Speaker 02

  So today, the team is one hundred and sixteen people. And it was, I think, back in December where we were at just about seventy people. And so it's just, we've, I mean, we've just grown so fast and we anticipate that this thing is gonna continue throughout, throughout twenty, twenty twenty one. And all the objectives that we're gonna do with the secondary trading systems and, uh, making DeFi easy and all these sorts of things. We anticipate by the end of the year, it's, it's very conceivably that we could be well over two hundred and fifty people. And so this thing feels like a rocket ship and we're just, we're, we're, we're along for the ride and it's been, it's been a lot of fun.

• 27:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Love it. What's the biggest obstacle, um, that you're gonna face? Like, what's the thing that keeps you awake at night as you continue to build the company, even though you've had all the success? And, uh, things look very, you know, positive looking forward. What's the thing that keeps?

• 27:49Speaker 02

  The biggest thing right now is working with the regulators to make sure that we have a framework that allows people to use these systems and allows people to actually own equity in companies. That's the biggest obstacle right now and and we're you know we've been working with the SEC on this and we're going to continue to work with the SEC on this and and fortunately it seems that as time goes on, the regulators have held much more of an open mind about things and so that's that's been great to see but that's by far the biggest obstacle is making sure the regulators are comfortable with what we're doing and how this is all going to work is the biggest obstacle.

• 28:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, no, it makes sense and then talk to me about kind of the team in general. Is it, I know it's remote, but is it mostly US? Is it international? How is the kind of team broken down?

• 28:42Speaker 02

  So, most of the team is actually international. We have forty, I think forty some people in the United States and the rest is is completely international. But the cool thing is is that we pay US salaries no matter where you live. It doesn't matter if you live in a in a country with the lowest cost of standard of living. We still pay US salaries everywhere. In fact, we we anchor our salaries to the Denver, Colorado market and that and so we anchor it no matter where you live because we don't want somebody to get paid more whether you live in San Francisco or New York or get paid less. Again, if you live in in a very cheap place, you should be paid a a fair wage wherever you live and and another cool thing is we have 100% transparent salaries and 100%

• 29:26Speaker 02

  transparent cap table. So, everybody in the company can see what everybody else is making and so what that does is that allows or that that forces us as a company to be aggressive and ensuring that our people are happy and not, you know, having to feel the need to go get a job offer somewhere else and then get some counter offer from us because every single person's salary is transparent.

• 29:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and how do you keep track of that? Like, is it just posted on like an Excel sheet somewhere? Is there a dashboard? Like, that's a really fascinating way to look at kind of, you know, eliminating internal politics.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  It's just on an Excel spreadsheet, but one of our visions is to actually become the most transparent company in the world. And so what that means to us is that, you know, when we, when we have this Regulation A public offering and we become effectively a public company, we don't want there to be any difference between, you know, insider trading or not. We want everything to be public. So the moment an event happens, it goes up on a website, everything that we're doing, it goes up on our website so that we can be transparent about everything. And we've always found that transparency is a part of our ethos. Transparency really brings in trust. And I think that's really important to building a company.

• 30:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I think it's very important. So I tend to, tend to agree with you. Before we get into the rapid fire questions, when people ask you, what is Exodus? Just give us kind of the one or two sentence pitch and then tell us where people can go to download the product.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Exodus is the easiest to use cryptocurrency wallet that allows you to send, receive, and exchange cryptocurrency. You go to exodus.com to view more or exodus underscore io at Twitter.

• 31:08Anthony Pompliano?

  That is a pretty concise elevator pitch. Tells me that's the first time you've ever done that. I've got three questions for you and you get to ask me one to finish up. The first question is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Most important book I've ever read is How to Win Friends and Influence People. That, that book was definitely transformative in how I approached relationships in both professional realm and in the personal realm. There's some outdated lines in that book about, you know, addressing people like mister or misses or whatever, but overall, there's still some really great content in that book.

• 31:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Next question is a little bit more personal. Sleep schedule. I used to sleep five, six hours, but now I sleep like eight or nine. And a huge part of it comes from our friends over at Eight Sleep. And so their question is, what is your sleep schedule? They've got this thermo regulated bed, which just means you can make it really hot, you can make it really cold. I sleep on literally an ice cube and sleep like a baby and my Apple Watch tells me, you know, good job every morning after I started using this thing. I feel like I'm cheating the system. But what's your sleep schedule and how's that changed over the years?

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I used to be one of those guys that I'd stay up till five, six, seven AM in the morning. In fact, my wife would come to my office and she'd like, you know, my hair is all messed up. I was wearing sweatpants and a big furry sweater. And she was like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm married to this guy. But over the years, and especially with COVID, around the COVID time, I started like, I've got to, you know, I gotta fix my sleep. And so I have started religiously going to bed between 10:00 PM and 10:30 PM. And then I get up religiously between 4:30 AM and 5:00 AM every single day.

• 32:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, they say that is one of the biggest things, even though you're not sleeping eight hours, we'll work on that part of it. Uh, the whole idea of going to sleep at the same time every night is a, is a major, major factor of, of make sure you get great sleep.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Oh, and it helps with clear thinking, you know, as, as the running a company, you really gotta be thinking clearly. And so having good sleep helps with that, absolutely.

• 33:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, makes, makes sense. Last question that you get to ask me, one to wrap us up is aliens. Are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. When I, when I was a kid, I got so wrapped up into, you remember that show Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack? You remember that show? Oh my gosh, I would watch, you know, all the stuff about the UFOs and I was, I was really, I actually got scared of UFOs as a kid. Uh, but, but these days I'm no longer scared of UFOs. But yeah, I think it's pretty improbable to think that in the entire universe that alien life does not exist.

• 33:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I'm there with you. I think it's very unlikely, but who knows? Uh, just the big question is whether we'll ever come in contact with them or not. Uh, what's the one question you have for me to, to wrap us up?

• 33:49Speaker 02

  So back in, in the summer, I think I remember on one of the podcasts, you said that you owned, I think Bitcoin only. So since then, what are your top four assets that you hold now?

• 34:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin and Bitcoin.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Oh, come on, you don't, you don't hold anything else, so it's still only Bitcoin?

• 34:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Only Bitcoin.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Wow, wow, okay, alright.

• 34:14Anthony Pompliano?

  And look, and part of it is like, I'm not a, I'm not a trader, right? I am not looking for the greatest financial return, right? You know, so it's kind of like you gotta ask somebody like, why? Right? And to me, it's just, it's the simplest thing. Right? And it's still gonna be pretty attractive in terms of how it plays out. Now, in terms of investing, right? And usually from my professional standpoint, I'm investing all kinds of stuff, right? And so, you know, really, really fascinated with decentralized open protocols, really interested in a lot of kind of the governance things. There's a whole new kind of body of work around merge mining on Bitcoin. I'm spending a lot of time paying attention to that, right? And so like, there's all this kind of innovation that's occurring.

• 34:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And so intellectually, I'm really, really curious and I'm really kind of kind of intrigued by it. And so spending a lot of time, you know, understanding it, learning, meeting all the people who are kind of driving this. But really personally, the only thing that I own is Bitcoin. It's the simplest, easiest thing. I actually suggest that for most people. And then the other thing is, that's kind of tangentially related, is I own a lot of digital art, right? And I'm probably, you know, quickly becoming, you know, one of the larger holders of digital art in the world. And the thought process there is just like, I enjoy it, right? It's more of a game to me. It's less of like an investment. It's more of a game. And so it's just, you know, at this point in my life, it's just, I just wanna do the things that make me happy, right? And you're happy, then like, whatever.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Do you anticipate buying any, any other crypto assets other than Bitcoin or digital art?

• 35:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, I never wanna say never, right? Just, just because it's like, you know, it'd be pretty stupid to say no for forever. And, you know, there's things that I'm really, really intrigued by. So like, I'll give you a perfect example. Uniswap is a perfect example, right? Uniswap today is, based on current numbers, a little bit smaller than Coinbase, right? Coinbase last year did 1.3 billion in revenue. Uniswap is somewhere between like 800 million and a billion. So even if you discount a little bit, let's say Uniswap's gonna be like 50% of Coinbase. Well, like, there's probably a pretty strong argument that the decentralized product is gonna be bigger than the centralized product. Now, is the decentralized product going to be Uniswap is going to be something else. Who knows who, you know, we'll see kind of all that stuff. But I do think that like that stuff is really fascinating.

• 36:29Anthony Pompliano?

  The part that I keep going back to is it seems like there's a lot of innovation and really experimentation happening around how do you do governance? How do you do like on-chain cash flow? Do you need a token? Do you not need a token? Like all these different components to it. And so, you know, the beauty of this industry is just we're all figuring it out. Like no one has the answer yet. Everyone's got an opinion. And so when I worked at Facebook, we used to have the saying, you know, code wins arguments. That's what we're watching play out here in real life, right? It's like code is going to win the argument.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Love it. Yes, I love it.

• 36:59Anthony Pompliano?

  So I think that that's kind of how I look at it. And, you know, I'm open to other things. It's just like, I'm just learning right now. And then once I've got a kind of a deep conviction like I do with Bitcoin, then we'll go from there.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think a student mentality makes a lot of sense.

• 37:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm not the smartest guy, but I like to think that I am intellectually curious enough to learn from everybody else. So we'll see how that plays out.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 37:22Anthony Pompliano?

  JP, before I let you go, where can people go if they want to participate in the in the reggae offering that you're doing?

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Exodus.com forward slash invest. But if you just go to Exodus.com, you'll figure out the rest from there. But Exodus.com.

• 37:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, man. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this. I really enjoyed it and I think people will learn a lot. And I highly suggest people go check out Exodus.com or search in the app stores for Exodus. It's a beautiful cryptocurrency wallet. And I think that JP and his team have done a great job. And then, you know, when you add in the Bitcoin ethos of paying everyone in Bitcoin, being decentralized, all that stuff. It's just kind of icing on the cake. So thanks so much, man. We'll have to do it again in the future.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Thanks, Pop.