Bitcoin Is Waiting On One Thing Before Institutions Go All-In | Ron Biscardi

Ron Biscardi is the CEO and co-founder of iConnections, one of the largest platforms connecting institutional investors with fund managers. In this conversation, we break down how pensions, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds are thinking about AI, data centers, Anthropic, and the venture comeback. We also discuss what’s holding back institutional bitcoin adoption, and private credit. ===================== TomorrowX Summit | November 17–18 | Moody Center, Austin, TX. Hear from Jensen Huang, David Solomon, Jon Gray, Marc Rowan and more of the top CEOs and investors in AI, in a banking-conference-style event open to retail investors. Hosted by Ron Biscardi, Gavin Baker, and Antonio Gracias. Use code SYLVIA for 20% off tickets. 👉 https://tomorrowxsummit.com https://tomorrowxsummit.com/ ===================== Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates investment strategies across Stocks, Commodities, ETFs and Crypto. Whether you’re rotating into AI & Gold, allocating to the S&P 500, or accumulating Bitcoin, Arch Public executes your plan 24/7 without ever taking custody of your assets or funds. Sign up today at ⁠https://www.archpublic.com⁠ https://www.archpublic.com, and start your FREE automated trading strategy! ======================= This episode is brought to you by Investor Health — clinician-prescribed protocols for weight, metabolism, energy, and longevity, delivered to your door in 48–72 hours. No office visits, no referrals. Plans start at $149/mo. Learn more at ⁠http://www. InvestorHealth.com/pomp⁠ http://www. InvestorHealth.com/pomp. Investor Health is a telehealth platform, not a medical provider. Compounded medications are not FDA-approved. Individual results may vary and treatment requires evaluation by a licensed provider. ======================= 0:00 - Intro1:29 - How institutional money is reacting to the midterms4:44 - Texas data center slowdown8:51 - SpaceX orbital data centers12:02 - Anthropic, OpenAI & the venture comeback19:45 - What institutions really think of bitcoin23:32 - Regulation, custody & the Binance hack27:08 - Is private credit fear overblown?32:35 - Why institutions move slower34:50 - TomorrowX Summit in Austin

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:28Speaker 02

  Digital currencies have been a wild ride in my world for like five years now. I would say institutions have been curious about this for a long, long time. I think generally speaking where, you know, five or six years ago, there was a huge percentage of them who just thought Bitcoin is snake oil. Like this is not real. This is never really going to be an investable asset class. That has completely changed. I would, I don't really know anyone who says anything like that anymore. I think people now see that it is a completely legitimate asset class.

• 2:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's going on, guys? Today we have an excellent conversation with Ron Biscardi. Ron is the CEO and co-founder of Eye Connections. It's one of the largest platforms in the world where institutional investors come and talk to fund managers. The reason why that's interesting is Ron has got his ear to the ground when it comes to what is going on with this dark money, the institutional capital? How are they thinking about Bitcoin, artificial intelligence? What's going on with things like SpaceX, Anthropic? Are they excited or are they not? How about private equity, private venture capital? What about private credit? All of these things Ron has unique insights into and he shares it with us today. And then we talk about this massive event that Ron is putting on in Austin, Texas. He's got Jensen Huang, David Solomon, Mark Rowan, and a ton of other great investors that are all going to show up. I think you guys are going to learn a lot from this conversation. It's going to get you excited because this is one of those rare moments where we pull

• 2:47Anthony Pompliano?

  back the curtain, we get you in the room with people who have a lot of capital and you usually don't get to hear about, and Ron's going to tell it all to you in this conversation. Here's my conversation with Ron Biscardi. All right, Ron, I think the first place that we should start is you've got a very unique seat in the industry. You get to see what is going on with the institutional capital. This is kind of the dark money behind the investors that people see on TV every single day. Not dark in the sense of nefarious, it's just that they are putting their capital into the hands of these investors. The investors are then going and they're allocating to venture capital funds, private equity, or excuse me, venture capital companies or private equity companies. And so what are those people talking about right now with the impact of the midterms? We're hearing what the investors are saying, but like what is the people who actually control the money? How are they thinking about this?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  So it's interesting you said dark money and I agree with you. It is, it's incredibly opaque, right? The average American doesn't really have any idea what goes on in the world of institutional investors who, by the way, are mostly focused on some level of either philanthropy or retirement savings, right? You have sovereign wealth funds that are built to benefit countries. You have pension plans that are obviously benefiting people in their retirement. You have endowments, foundations, and honestly, even in the family office category, which are individuals who've had a lot of success and are now managing their wealth.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  The vast majority of those also are primarily focused on whatever their legacy is going to be, and that always involves a lot of philanthropy. And, you know, it gets to things like the, the giving pledge and things like that. So that whole universe deploys capital into the funds that we hear about occasionally, right? You'll see them on CNBC, venture funds, private equity funds, private credit, real estate, all of those things. Those, those groups manage the capital for that first group I mentioned and generate investment returns so that they can do frankly, a lot of good in the world. What's the impact and what am I hearing?

• 4:55Speaker 02

  You know, it's obviously early, but the general chatter I've heard is a lot of anxiety. First, no one's surprised because, you know, I think pretty much everyone saw this coming. The polls were, I think the polls this time were actually right.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  There is a lot of anxiety about what it will mean for AI. AI is the engine that has been powering the stock market. It's the, many people believe the future of America is now really connected directly to the success of our AI industry. And what powers AI are data centers. And to the degree this result results in a lack of data center construction, most of the people in my world believe that would be very, very bad for the country. Data centers are the heart of what makes AI possible.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  And any slowing down of that, of the construction of these facilities, it just gives China and frankly, you know, any, any other country who wants to be competitive in this space, a huge advantage over us, which, you know, in my opinion, would be a really bad thing for the future of the country.

• 6:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when we go and we look, I think Texas maybe is the area that people spend the most time on. You've got a Democrat governor who is now the elect. She has been pretty open about wanting to create this moratorium. What's interesting to me is there's nuance here, right? We obviously have the outgoing governor. There is like maybe a pause. It's not like a true moratorium where they're not going to go and create more, but there's this like slowdown intentionally being done by the government. And Texas is important because there's a lot of data centers that are supposed to be built there. I think something like 13% of all data centers planned in the United States, just in the state of Texas. And so when I look at that, it almost feels like less of like a zero to one, hey, we were building tons and now we're going to a complete moratorium and more of this like, okay, there was already a slowdown happening and now we're going to get an extension from

• 6:57Anthony Pompliano?

  a timeline perspective. And that continued slowdown or like the belief that there is going to be a longer pause or slowdown is really what's giving people some heartburn. Now, do you think that those data center providers or builders that maybe don't yet have broken ground or haven't actually gone and started, they're just like, well, let me pick up from Texas and let me go to, you know, some other state where maybe there's a little bit more open to these data centers? Or does it feel like they're just going to wait it out? And they say, hey, maybe it's going to take three, six, nine, 12 months, but I'll still build the data center. I'll do it in Texas. It's just going to take a little bit longer.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a great question. I feel like the, you know, if you're in the data center construction business, it's like your options just keep shrinking, right? There were, there were, I mean, the biggest cluster of data centers is actually Northern Virginia, where, you know, for years, data centers have been built there and really successfully, it's actually been a huge benefit to the counties in Virginia. You know, they've, it's one of the few spots in the country where they were able to lower real estate taxes because the data centers have provided such huge tax revenue. So my guess is, I mean, look, this AI thing is moving at an incredible pace, right? I mean, every, you know, we've been watching for the last two or three years, every time

• 8:13Speaker 02

  a new model comes out, it leapfrogs the, the capabilities of the model that came out a month or six weeks earlier, you know? So it's an industry that has to move really, really fast to remain competitive. So my hope is that at least the data centers that have already been permitted are not going to be slowed down, right? If they've already gotten governmental approval, let those move forward. And by the way, Texas is an enormous state with a tremendous amount of real estate and it's the center of our energy industry. So what do you need to run a data center successfully? Lots of energy. So here you have the center of the oil and gas industry for our country.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Putting the data centers there makes complete sense. There's a tremendous amount of open land. So, you know, it's one thing if you said, hey, I want to start dropping data centers into metropolitan areas. That I totally understand can create a whole bunch of issues that people don't want to deal with. But if we're going to start slowing down data centers in, you know, vast open areas of the country, I just don't understand the logic behind that. So I hope that the, that the way the incoming administration in Texas will approach it is to make good logical decisions for the industry and for the good of the state and the country versus just capitalizing on what has become a political issue.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  I suspect that the folks who have not been permitted yet are absolutely going to start looking at alternatives. I'm not really sure what the best alternatives are. I guess we'll start to see what shakes out and which states kind of raise their hand and say, hey, we'd love for you to put your data center here.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  But yeah, my guess is if they drag their feet, I think that this industry is just moving entirely too fast. They're not going to, they're not going to sit around for 12 months to wait and see what happens. I think, I think in AI years, that's like an eternity.

• 10:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you know, it's funny is obviously Elon Musk, SpaceX has talked about doing these orbital data centers. I think at first it was kind of a joke, then all of a sudden it's like, well, maybe we can do this. Now they are betting a portion of their company on being able to actually build, launch and operate these. But when you see this, it kind of almost feels like that's the natural conclusion. Well, like if the people on earth are going to give us a hard time, we'll do it off the earth, right?

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 10:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, I don't know. Maybe it's better, maybe it's worse. You know, there's all kinds of trade-offs in terms of the latency or, you know, all of a sudden there becomes a lot of space traffic, you know, which is something that people don't yet talk about, but I think will become a big, big issue. But from that perspective, like, is that kind of what happens? It's just entrepreneurs figure out a solution regardless of what the politicians do?

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Oh, I have no doubt that, that the engineers at SpaceX are working triple time to figure out how to get data centers like working in orbit as fast as possible because

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Tesla and SpaceX, their entire future is tied into the success of AI. I mean, in a major way. I mean, I own a Tesla, I own a Model Y. I absolutely love this car because I don't really drive anymore. The self-driving is so amazing. I literally get in the car, I hit the self-drive button, it takes me where I need to go. It's definitely a better driver than me. It has 360 vision. All of that's happening because of AI. And as more and more people use these tools, it just creates greater and greater demand. So I'm sure that SpaceX is going to do that. By the way, there's really not a latency issue. There's actually much more of a latency issue in the terrestrial.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Like, if you think about the cellphone system, the number of hops that your call has to get through and the number of devices is enormous compared to what it would be if you were end-to-end through the SpaceX network that they've talked about building. So, you know, especially with the laser technology, they've already demonstrated they can, they know how to do in the current Starlink network. I don't think latency will be a problem at all. There's a bunch of other engineering issues they have to figure out. But I suspect if they can get that working in the next three years, call it, I think it becomes a serious competitor. Because once you get it working, now it's just a matter of how fast can we build these satellites

• 12:46Speaker 02

  and launch them into space? And with the Starship platform getting closer to becoming a production vehicle, they'll be able to launch. I think one Starship can put up the equivalent of like three Falcons worth of satellites. You know, they'll be deploying, I think it's around 100 satellites per launch. And if he can get Starship launching as frequently as Falcon, which is right now, I want to say they're doing about 100, 110 launches a year. Tripling the capacity on each one of those launches would really make SpaceX a serious competitor in that space. So I have no doubt that they are working over time to solve that problem.

• 13:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's keep talking about these institutional investors and kind of how they're feeling about the market. If we stay on the AI theme before we get to maybe crypto or other things, what about Anthropic? Anthropic was supposed to come out at 2 billion, or excuse me, 2 trillion with a T. And now they're going to come out at 1.5 trillion or so. We saw OpenAI, they were going to raise 30 billion. Now it looks like they're going to try to raise 20 billion. Are these companies kind of cooling off a little bit? Are institutional investors souring on them in any way? Or are they just as excited about, you know, the leading large language model labs?

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Well, I'll say this, the, you know, the market is moving so fast. It's always hard to know where, exactly where the sentiment is. And, you know, you've seen a little bit, I would say, more concern in the market as to whether or not we're in a bubble and how close to the bubble bursting if we are in a bubble. But then this election result, I think primarily as a result of what will now be divided government,

• 14:23Speaker 02

  sent the stock market, you know, on a tear yesterday. So it is hard to really know. But I can tell you this, venture investing, which is where Anthropic sits, right? They were a venture-funded company. Venture funds have had an incredibly hard time. The top, top funds, this doesn't apply to the top funds, can pretty much always raise money. But as an asset class, venture has had a really hard time raising money for really the last three or four years. And it's primarily because their funds couldn't achieve liquidity on the investments that they made, even the ones that were really successful. I mean, SpaceX is actually a great example of this.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  SpaceX is about 20 years old. So here you have this company that in any other era of our stock market over the last 100 years, would have gone public like 15 years ago, probably. Didn't go public because of the change in our public markets and this whole process. And also the availability of capital in the private markets has been so much larger. Companies are just staying private much, much longer. But what it's created is a lot of anxiety for the institutional investors who are used to. You know, if you're an institutional investor and you like your venture fund and you generally invest, call it $10 million per fund.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  What you're counting on by Fund 3 and Fund 4 is that Funds 1 and 2 are starting to exit their investments. And you're taking the cash flows from those investments and you're recycling them back into the future funds. Well, if those cash flows don't materialize, you know, now you need to find other sources of cash. You know, if you're a pension fund, it's the retirees, or not the retirees, it's the future retirees who are paying into the plan. Wherever your cash flows are coming from, they're not coming from your investment portfolio. That has been a huge issue, which really hurt the ability of, I would say, illiquid funds, private equity, private credit,

• 16:32Speaker 02

  and maybe not private credit as much because they do cash flow more. But venture, I think, was the most hurt by this dynamic. And we saw at our CAP intro events over the last three years, venture funds had the hardest time even getting meetings with institutional investors because they felt like, I can't keep putting as much capital into this illiquid asset class that doesn't return money fast enough to me. Well, with the year we've had in the IPO market with SpaceX obviously leading the way, that whole dynamic shifted dramatically. And I saw it literally across two events. One I held in late February, where venture funds really, really struggled to even get meetings.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Then I had another event in New York in June, completely different scenario. Venture funds were the belle of the ball. They got a ton of meetings and we saw, wow, there's this huge renewed interest. Obviously, very much tied to the timing of the SpaceX IPO, I'm sure. So I think with Anthropic going public, my expectation is that that momentum that started mid-year should absolutely carry through. And we are seeing it in another event that we're throwing in Austin in a couple of weeks, where we've got thousands of people coming in to meet with tech CEOs. So I do think there is still tremendous interest in, look, if you want the best investment returns, you have to be a tech investor, generally speaking.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  There are pockets where, you know, really smart investors create other strategies that may perform for a period of time. But generally speaking, the best investments in history have come from technological innovations driven by companies like SpaceX and Anthropic. So my expectation is that this is, this is going to run a fair amount longer. Another, I'd say, difference in the, in this particular era of tech investing is that these AI companies are generating tremendous amounts of cash flow, or I should say revenue. Anthropic's revenue growth is like nothing we have ever seen

• 18:48Speaker 02

  from any company in the history of business.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  That's really, really unique. You know, I'm a, I'm a business guy who grew up in the dot-com era. And I remember, you know, to this day, how we would meet companies that had no revenue, really no customers, but they had a ton of eyeballs hitting their website. And they were raising, you know, millions and millions of dollars. You, in the midst of that, a lot of us were looking at it saying like, this is crazy. Like, this has to be a bubble. This can't go on forever because sooner or later, you have to generate revenue to survive as a business. That's not the case in this AI era. You know, these companies are incredible revenue generators. So it's a real, it's a really interesting twist to figure out, well, is it really a bubble?

• 19:36Speaker 02

  You know, if you go from 0 to 16 billion a year in revenue in four years or five years, whatever it's been, that, that company should be worth a lot of money. Now, I don't know if it should be worth 2 trillion, but, but it is certainly an incredibly valuable asset. So investors, I think, are trying to figure out all of these, you know, different dynamics. And it's, my guess is that venture is going to be a really strong asset class for at least a few more years.

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• 20:52Anthony Pompliano?

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• 21:35Anthony Pompliano?

  But in recent months, maybe the last year or so Bitcoin has not been, you know, the hot kind of commodity. It hasn't been the asset that everyone is talking about. AI sucked a lot of the air out of the room. What are you hearing from these institutional investors when it comes to Bitcoin?

• 21:48Speaker 02

  So I will say like digital currencies have been a wild ride in my world for like five years now. We saw the, you know, the huge spike that happened and then the nuclear winter of crypto. I would say institutions have been curious about this for a long, long time. I think generally speaking, where, you know, five or six years ago. There was a huge percentage of them who just thought Bitcoin is snake oil. Like this is not real. This is never really going to be an investable asset class. That has completely changed. I would, I don't really know anyone who says anything like that anymore.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  I think people now see that it is a completely legitimate asset class. But I, I think a huge disappointment frankly, of the Trump administration has been the inability to get regulations passed to make it institutional grade. You know, if you're, if you're a portfolio manager for a sovereign wealth fund or for, you know, a multi billion dollar endowment or foundation, you need guardrails. You know, you're, you don't want to put certainly a large amount of capital at risk into an asset class that you don't know has the proper guardrails. Like our, our public markets are incredibly well functioning.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  They're the best public markets in the world, largely because, I mean, obviously capitalism at the core of our system is the main driver. But you, they wouldn't be as successful as they are if it wasn't for the regulatory infrastructure that also protects investors. And that sets up, you know, it's like, you can't have a football game with no referees on the field. You know, you need rules and you need a system for all the players to play within. It needs to be fair. And we thought the Trump administration was going to make more progress, I think, in this regard to, to create that for the crypto industry. It hasn't happened. I think if it did happen, you would see a massive influx of institutional money come into this asset class.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  That frankly, I, will they dabble in it and throw small, small checks, you know, small percentages of their overall portfolio into it? Sure. To like get more familiar with it. But, and it is popular at our cap intro events, you know, we'll have 50 to 100 funds that are in crypto or at least have a significant amount of their investment strategy in crypto. And they get a lot of meetings with investors, but I don't hear the next step, which is stories of how those investors are writing billion dollar checks to go into those funds. There are some funds who have reached scale like that.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  But I think most of their capital is coming from family offices and individuals more so than pension funds and foundations, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, you know, groups like that, you know, we, we just need that regulatory infrastructure. And if we could do it, I think the asset class would absolutely explode.

• 24:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when you think about unlocking that capital, is it just a matter of like regulation and kind of government related things? Or there are other aspects that are important for, for that capital to flow?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  I, I think that is the number one issue right now. I think, you know, five years ago, they had, there was just a lack of information and education and understanding of the space. I think that has largely changed. I mean, I'll tell you in, I think it was in our 2022 event. We had, it was only 16 or 17 digital asset funds in our event. They got 800 meetings among them. That's when it really kind of hit my radar. And I said, wow, there is a tremendous amount of interest in this particular space. And what we, we went to the investors who were in these meetings and said, what was your interest there?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  And across the board, they were using these meetings to bring themselves up to speed. You know, everyone was curious about it. Everyone wanted to get educated on it. They still get, I'd say like their fair share of meetings in our events. But, but I think the number one thing investors are waiting for are these guardrails to give them comfort that they can invest safely. And then of course, you know, like the recent Binance news is not doing the industry any favors. You know, it's, it's, you've got to, you've got to set up a system where things like that just can't happen.

• 26:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What I find interesting is on the retail side, the inflows to Binance have been higher than the outflows post event, which normally you wouldn't expect. But I do think that there is a reinstilled confidence because Binance backstopped all the losses. So in a weird way, it's like, by backstopping the losses, it's almost like Binance has like a self insured, you know, kind of fund that is going to go in. And now, wait a minute, well, if somebody else got hacked, they might not have backstopped the losses, but Binance is going to do it. You know, there's precedent for that. And so maybe I'm safer trading on Binance because they're going to backstop losses. It's a very weird psychological thing for the retail investor community. I don't think the institutions think that way though, right?

• 27:10Speaker 02

  No, I think if you're an institution and you see that headline, that's terrifying. I mean, I have, like, I can't think of an equivalent event in our mainstream markets, right? Like has a bank or a brokerage firm?

• 27:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Silicon Valley Bank, like going under or something?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Going under, yes.

• 27:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? The government stepping in maybe?

• 27:30Speaker 02

  I think you always have the risk that a business can be mismanaged and, and go out of business, right? Like bankruptcy is, is a possibility. Whenever you're making an investment, you're, you're underwriting that risk to some degree. But I don't, I can't think of a scenario where like a major investment firm or bank was hacked and money was literally stolen out of their accounts. Like I, I can't think of any scenario where that's happened. So I think if you're an institutional investor, you've got to report to an investment committee, you know, a CIO. Then the overall board has to approve it.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  It's, I just think it's incredibly hard to do if you can't say, well, my assets are going to be custodied at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan, you know, when, when those guys are in the space in a big way. Then I think you're going to see the institutional investors have a much higher degree of comfort. But you're not going to get those guys in the space in a big way until this other problem is solved.

• 28:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think that, I think that makes sense. Let's talk about private credit. Private credit obviously had some negative headlines. People were worried there for a little bit, but seems to have kind of cooled off and some of that concern. What do you see in there?

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Totally overblown and, and I kind of said it as it was happening. There, there, so what I like about private credit is that there's not a tremendous amount of leverage in the private credit funds. You know, they may have two or three to one leverage. But where you see real like systemic level blowups is when an asset class starts levering 30 to one, 40 to one, 50 to one, right? Like in the, in the financial crisis in 08, you had, a lot of these banks were levered at those kinds of numbers. That's when you can take down the system. Private credit funds are making loans to operating businesses.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  They're filling in a void that exists where, where banks are not servicing various segments of the, of the middle market in particular, very effectively. And private credit has stepped in to fill in that void and they've done a great job of it. As investments, I think they're pretty great. You know, you put money into these funds, they make loans to operating businesses and those operating businesses make payments on those loans, which result in cash flow back to you as an investor in the fund.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  There were a few funds who probably got a little bit too aggressive in their lending practices. And they, you know, had too many, too many failures in the portfolio. And that started to impact their ability to, to hit the investment returns that were targeted. I, most of the stories that I've heard is that a lot of those funds were able to sell their portfolios ranging from 60 cents on the dollar to 90 cents on the dollar. You know, that is far from a major crash. And it wasn't even really industry wide. It was, it was a handful of the biggest players who experienced it.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  But I can tell you that my institutional investors are still completely focused on the asset class. Like the whole Blue Owl thing was playing out in Q1 of this year. At my event in Miami in late February. Private credit funds had 3,000 meetings out of a total. We ran about 20,000 meetings in the event this year. So for one asset class to have 3,000 meetings, I mean, I think it was the, it was in the top three, I would say, asset classes in terms of meeting performance at the event. So I haven't seen any real slowdown. I think it has become a huge part of investor

• 31:25Speaker 02

  portfolios. It became a huge part, by the way, because, you know, your traditional bond portfolio couldn't generate the returns that it used to. And that also made private credit a really interesting alternative to a bond portfolio when, you know, when we were still in a ZIRP world. And I think investors got used to the returns. They got comfortable with the fund managers. They got comfortable with the strategy. So we still see a ton of interest in private credit. Our big event in Miami this upcoming February, you know, we probably have 700 funds signed up for that. And the, you know, we have the same percentage of private credit funds

• 32:09Speaker 02

  signed up for that event this year as we did last year. So I haven't seen any, I will say this, it was definitely getting maybe a little bit overheated, right? There were a lot of new funds coming out. Some of that has slowed, but it is still a completely viable asset class with a ton of interest.

• 32:31Anthony Pompliano?

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• 33:15Anthony Pompliano?

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• 34:00Anthony Pompliano?

  investorhealth.com. When you think about the waning of interest or the acceleration of interest, it does feel like the institutions are a little bit slower to cool off on things and a little bit less, you know, quick to get excited about the thing. Is that true?

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah. You know, these are, these are organizations that have, you know, like for you and I as individuals, we're thinking in terms of maybe decades, right? Like, I know I'm going to be in an earning period in my life, you know, from my early twenties to, I don't know, God willing, maybe my late seventies. But somewhere in there, I need to start shifting my investment strategy to be more risk averse, to be focused more on providing cash flow in my retirement years. These big organizations have a time horizon of infinity. You know, if you're an endowment, or a foundation, or sovereign

• 35:01Speaker 02

  wealth fund, you're really thinking in terms of, I need to provide a certain amount of cash flow. And as long as I can, you know, build my fixed income side of my book to provide that cash flow, all of the other stuff I'm looking at, I can take a very, very long-term view. And I think, I think that leads you to be, you just don't experience the same volatility in your decision-making. You know, when, when you have a long-term view, you can ride out bad markets, you know, you can hang on to things a lot longer and wait till they come back if you believe the core investment thesis hasn't changed,

• 35:44Speaker 02

  and we're just in, you know, a moment of, you know, market panic for whatever reason. So for sure, they, they are, they're very, they're much more slow-moving than family offices and then individual investors, for sure. You know, individual investors are the ones who probably are the worst at panicking, and you know, they buy at the top, and they sell at the bottom. You know, they're, they're definitely much more subject to like the emotional swings of the business.

• 36:13Anthony Pompliano?

  But they have more fun, Ron. They have more fun. Speaking of individual investors, you've got this conference going on in Austin, Texas called Tomorrow X. And when I first saw you guys talking about this, I was like, ah, it's a good idea. I looked at the lineup. This thing is A++. I mean, you guys crushed it in terms of who is speaking. Just give us an overview, who the speakers are, why are you doing it? And, you know, for the individuals who want to manage their own money and go learn from some of these folks, why they should go?

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I have to say, you are right. The lineup is incredibly good. I think it is literally the best AI conference in the country as it, as the lineup stands right now. And I have to give my partners Gavin Baker and Antonio Grossius all the credit. These are two of the best tech investors in the world, and they have built incredible networks and an incredible amount of goodwill. Like, they are just great humans that lots of people have done business with. And like, it was really fascinating to be on the email chains as they're inviting people to the event. Basically, everyone loves these guys,

• 37:21Speaker 02

  and everyone said yes. The, the hit rate was, you know, was like 90% on this one. We have just an epic lineup of speakers. Jensen Huang, David Solomon, John Gray, Mark Rowan. I mean, the, we actually have had to shrink a lot of the sessions down to 20-minute timeframes just to give more of these amazing CEOs a chance to come and speak. But yeah, if you go to tomorrowxsummit.com, you can check out the speaker lineup. It's November 17th and 18th in Austin at the Moody Center. We'll probably have somewhere between 5,000 and

• 38:04Speaker 02

  6,000 people by the time it's done. But it is an incredible lineup. And I'll also say, the thing that I love about this event, and the reason we actually put it in an arena like the size of the Moody Center, was we wanted to democratize access to these banking conferences that are incredibly valuable if you're an investor, but are largely unavailable to retail investors, right? If you're, even if you're like a small fund, a retail investor, you're generally speaking, you're not going to get invited to a JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley banking conference. You know, those, those spots are reserved for, generally

• 38:45Speaker 02

  speaking, the biggest funds in the space. Well, we thought, you know, X has been an incredible platform for smaller investors to do their analysis and express their opinion and engage in dialogue about, you know, whatever, whatever stock it is they're focused on. And it's incredibly useful, right? It's like that, that kind of, that access wasn't available before the dawn of platforms like X and Substack. Well, now what we're seeing is analysts who post primarily to platforms like this are getting just as much attention from public

• 39:24Speaker 02

  company CEOs as the bank analysts have gotten historically. And in some cases, maybe even more so. So we thought, why don't we do an event that gives retail investors and these contributors on X in particular, a banking experience that you could really only get at one of the major banks. So Gavin and Antonio reached out to the best CEOs in the world. They agreed to speak. And now what we'll have is actually a main stage. So if you're a retail investor, you'll get to be in the room and hear firsthand some of the best CEOs in the AI ecosystem answer hard questions delivered by buy-side analysts about the

• 40:08Speaker 02

  future of the space, the future of their business. And also, a theme, the theme of the event, and something that we will talk to every CEO on that stage about, is how AI can and should revitalize the American dream. This is an incredible technology which can create capabilities. I mean, it's, it's in essence, democratizing intelligence. You know, it gives every, every person who has access to it, the ability to get answers to questions that you, you know, you'd have to be a PhD in physics, or finance, or whatever area, you know, to, to be able to answer these things. Now that kind of intelligence

• 40:51Speaker 02

  is available to anyone. It can go in so many amazing directions for the world. We wanted the event to focus on what do all of these brilliant CEOs who are creating these amazing businesses, how do they see whatever it is they do being applied for the American people and for the American workers to help make their lives better and to make the country a better place? You know, obviously, there's been, it's very sad to me how there's been just such a negative tone to so much of what's written about AI, as it's doing such incredible things for the world already. We thought, okay, there's plenty of that. Why don't we

• 41:36Speaker 02

  create a conference to tell the other side of the story? Because the other side of the story, I believe, is the side that's going to win. And, and we're going to give all these CEOs a chance to talk about what they can do to really create a positive impact for the world and the country.

• 41:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Made it make sense to me and the lineup is very high quality, but my guess is that the insights, the information that is shared during the conversations is going to be an even bigger deal. And then, you know, the other part of these conferences that I've always found valuable, which no one ever really kind of hangs their hat on, but it's like, the people who go to them are high quality. It's not just people on stage, but then like the other attendees and you end up, you know, meeting folks that maybe you only have a Twitter relationship with for a long time, or you end up, you know, finding folks who are experts in certain fields or interested from an investment standpoint. And so generally, these events are, you know, very, very valuable and it's pretty cool to see you guys putting this together.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, we're so excited about it. I think, I think the market really, well, obviously the market's embracing it because we did this event, I mean, really last minute, you know, we, we secured the facility in Q2 and then we didn't even announce it until close to 4th of July weekend, you know, in, when you're doing events of this scale, generally speaking, you start 18 months before the event date and then you give yourself at least a full year to really market it and spread the word. So I very much appreciate you bringing me on your show to talk about this because that's exactly what we're trying to do right now is just give people a chance to see the lineup and it's definitely working.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  Like our signups on a day-to-day basis now are off the charts. It's like people are coming in in droves as we get closer to the dates. So.

• 43:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Can you sell out? Like, like, is there not, like, at some point, is there like a cap that you can't take more people?

• 43:34Speaker 02

  You know, it's, it's in the Moody's Center, which is where the UT basketball team plays. So it's a pretty big place. We would have to probably like reconfigure the stages, but we would, you know, to accommodate a bigger crowd. But I'd say a sellout is probably around 10,000. For a first time, I've never seen a first time event in finance get anywhere near that number. Honestly, where we are right now, I mean, we're like in the 4,000s and I can't, you know, our event in Miami got to that after, you know, a decade. So it's pretty uncommon for an investment event to hit numbers like this, especially in year one. My guess is as people start to see what this is and who's attending, and by the way,

• 44:18Speaker 02

  the attendees are, it is a rock star lineup of the best venture funds, private equity funds, some private credit funds, you know, anyone who's touching the AI ecosystem and is prominent in the investing world pretty much is represented in this event. And then we have, you know, the big mutual fund companies like T. Rowe Price and Fidelity, they're sending teams, like multiple teams from each of those firms are coming. So it's, we're really excited about it. I think it's going to be an amazing event. And if you're, if you're a retail investor who's interested in this space, you know, the entry level price is $500, like, you're not going to get into a finance event of this caliber for anywhere near that price

• 45:00Speaker 02

  point. So I encourage everyone to check it out. And actually, I think we're giving you guys a discount code, Anthony, which.

• 45:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you? Do you know what it is?

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's actually, any of your listeners can go to tomorrowxsummit.com and enter the discount code Sylvia, S Y L V I A, and that comes with a 20% discount. So you actually can get in for $400. Total steal.

• 45:27Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, we'll put the, we'll put the link and all the details down in the description for, for people if they want to check it out. But, Ron, man, thank you so much. I'm very impressed with the business that you've built. You obviously have very unique insights into, you know, the institutional side, but also the, the fund managers and what they're doing. And now as you push more and more into the self-directed or independent investors, I think people are, it's pretty obvious that that's going to be a big part of the market as well. So thanks for all your hard work and your team's doing a great job and we'll do this again in the future.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Awesome, Anthony. Thanks so much for having me. It was great to be here.