#485 Neil Sheppard on the Future of Derivatives

Neil Sheppard is the COO of Financial Services at Diginex, where he oversees capital markets, trading, exchange and trading products. Previously, he spent 13 years at Nomura in various roles across equity products in London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. In this conversation, we discuss Diginex, derivatives, risk management, capital efficiency, and the crypto exchange Equos. ======================= Exodus is an absolute game changer in the crypto wallet space, and we’ve teamed up to offer an exclusive discount for you, as listeners of the podcast. Sign up for Exodus today using my promo code Exodus.io/pomp. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today. ======================= With over 5 Million users, Crypto.com is the easiest way to buy, and sell over 90 cryptocurrencies. Download the app at Crypto.com and get $25 with my code: POMP. When it’s time to spend your crypto, nothing beats the Crypto.com Visa Card, which pays you up to 8% back instantly, with no annual, or monthly fees to worry about! Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App today using the code “POMP” ======================= Download the top-rated DraftKings Sportsbook app NOW and use promo code POMP when you sign up to get one hundred to one odds on any football game THIS WEEKEND. That’s code POMP for new players to get a shot at one hundred dollars on any football action this weekend.… for a limited time, only at DraftKings Sportsbook! =======================

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. Neil Sheppard is the COO of Financial Services at Digenex, where he oversees capital markets, trading, exchange and trading products. Previously, he spent 13 years at New Mora in various roles across equity products in London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. In this conversation, we discuss Digenex, derivatives, risk management, capital efficiency and the crypto exchange Equus. I really enjoyed this conversation with Neil and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Exodus.

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• 2:51Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:36Anthony Pompliano?

  for details. If you've got a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, or in Indiana, 1-800-9-WITHIT, or in Colorado, 1-800-522-4700. Okay, go get the DraftKings app. Let's get into this with Neil. I hope you guys enjoy it.

• 3:52Speaker 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.

• 4:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright guys, bang, bang, Neil is here. How are you doing sir? Thank you so much for doing this.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Thanks very much for having me on.

• 4:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. You work at DigiNext, which is the first company with a crypto exchange that is publicly traded in the United States, which is on the NASDAQ, under the Equus ticker there. Talk a little bit just about your background and how do you get to DigiNext? How do you guys get listed, etc.?

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Sure, happy to. My background, I'm an engineer by academic training, so I'm an aeronautical engineer. I blame Tom Cruise for that, anyone who's seen Top Gun. That was really my introduction to aircraft and planes and everything about aircraft. They really wanted me to be a pilot and an engineer and everything and how that works.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  But I was graduating university, so I grew up in the northern part of the UK, went to university in the UK and I graduated university around the time of the dot com bubble. And then a lot of investment banks at the time, spending a lot of time at university, coming and trying to attract talent and bring people not just necessarily with a financial background, you know, into the industry.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  And I sat through a couple of these milk rounds, as they were called, and listened and got interested and thought, maybe that was actually the career I wanted. And before I knew it, I'd done an internship in the city in London and then graduated, took a job, a company called Kazno, which is now quality take immortal, and spent a number of years working there.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  So I've been in sort of traditional finance, if you like, for about 20 years prior to crypto and prior to joining DigiNext. And that's taken me from London to Tokyo, to Hong Kong, to where I can be best.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  So that's sort of, that time within the industry, within the more sort of financial services industry, I've had the pleasure of,

• 6:22Speaker 02

  being involved in the sales and distribution process, wanting... Research teams, particularly around the derivatives products and then most recently running trading desks, trading risk and managing capital, you know, with the perspective of trying to use these products to generate returns. But in reality, you know, two decades is quite a long time and you start to see things change and you start to see, you know, what's having an impact in the world and how you can make an impact and particularly how you can make an impact within an institution and within an industry that really has so much inertia against change, despite it having

• 7:04Speaker 02

  a lot of the brightest minds around, there really is a large inertia. And also sort of post, you know, the global financial crisis, a slight stigma attached to it, you know, with regards to how banks were operating during that time and what was being done. And really that gave me an opportunity to sort of step back, think and address the issues that were not being able to change in the financial services industry and then see this sort of new growth of a product and a new asset class come out and say, okay, how can I take what I've learned in the last two decades and then apply to this new asset class that you could see was having some teething problems and still does? And how can we try and find that middle ground between what traditional finance is doing it and then what's available in crypto?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  So the opportunity presented itself to move into the crypto space. And I know that you've met Richard and he's been on your show and he's done a great job, you know, speaking with him and he and I had worked together. So Richard and I are the former founder of DigiNext itself, all worked together in Tokyo. We kind of grew up in finance together there. And he'd often talked to me about coming to join him because he'd left and sort of been at the genesis of DigiNext ahead of me and talked to me about it and got me interested in it. And then finally, when I decided that the... The sort of the risk reward was was strong enough and risk reward is something that we're thinking about all the time. When when that balance tipped, it it became natural for me to go and work with people I knew, I trusted.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  And people that I who understood the deficiencies in in crypto and the deficiencies in in traditional finance and how we can work to to offset both of those to to bring, you know, some some real rigidity and and infrastructure to a a business that kind of needed it. But at the same time, understand where the um the incumbency in in traditional finance was really holding it back.

• 8:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think through kind of uh DigiNext today, um how did you kind of outline the business, right? You you guys have done so much. You have so many different products. Um just walk us through what the kind of structure of the product suite is.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Sure. I mean, when you think about products and you, you know, we think about cryptocurrencies, it's quite easy to sort of say. Okay, we'll start with with one central piece, an exchange. There's a number of them around and, you know, I'm sure your listeners are aware of so many of them. But to us, it wasn't just having an exchange. It's it's all the other pieces of the ecosystem you need to build into that exchange to allow people to say, not only can I come here and trade and transact, but how can I do that safely? How can I do that securely? So I need a I need a custody solution. So we naturally need to have a custody solution and Digivolt is our custody solution that we're extremely proud of, you know, is um is being recognized and and this week was recognized as, you know, one of the best

• 9:55Speaker 02

  uh custody offerings, you know, that's out there on the street. Um so we we have to add that to it. Then we need to think about, okay, you know, how do people actually want to transact? Yes, we have a UI and and API fees for people to be able to trade on the platform. But also they want to do a little bit more than that. So we have, you know, access product, which is effectively a an order and execution management system that not just interacts with our exchange, but a whole um number of other exchanges. And one of the points I'll I'll make later is we're not so um arrogant to assume that ours is the only exchange out there and ours is the only one we should look at. Extremely proud of it and we believe what we're doing is the right thing. But we also recognize that people know what they like.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Or people are used to things. So getting them to move is sometimes quite difficult. So rather than ignore all of those people, we want to enable them to trade better too. And that's what we've done with with DigiNext Access, which is our, which is our order management and trading system. And then also around that, we see cryptocurrencies as a subset of the larger digital assets piece. And so looking ahead at where we could go with digital assets and effectively, you know, capital structures, looking at how they can use the blockchain technology to do something truly innovative in the future is what we're doing with with our capital or Ecos Capital business, which is effectively our

• 11:19Speaker 02

  our equivalent to an investment banking or corporate advisory firm. And putting all of that together then sort of gives you an understanding that really what we're looking at is the whole ecosystem. And really what we're trying to solve for is that liquidity issue. And how can we bring people together to transact with each other in a safe, secure way, you know, in a liquid way? And something that gives true transparency around pricing execution.

• 11:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what I want to spend today talking about is the derivatives business that you guys are building. And you have a very unique view, I think, of derivatives. One, from just the importance that it will hold in the industry, but also kind of how to address it as an institutional product and infrastructure. So maybe let's just start with for like the people who don't know, let's just start one on one. Like what is a derivative and why is it important?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Sure. And I think it just the concept of derivatives scare people a lot. And we want to dispel that myth. You know, regulators are often concerned about them and that talk about the risks that they bring. But to us, in many ways, it's a lot about risk management. And actually, what derivatives allow is your ability to reduce risk. So essentially, derivative is is getting economic exposure to an underlying asset class without actually having to own that asset class. And the most common ones you'll come across will be futures and options. Now, every day in traditional finance, these trade in in in ordinate amounts of size and are being used by retail and institutions across the board.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  I think what where we've looked at it is you can't really build an institutional asset class business without understanding that you need the derivatives fits. And and really, it's about educating not just our customers on the platform, but also working with the regulators to ensure that they're comfortable with the way we're doing it, to draw those parallels with the derivatives worlds that's used or the derivatives methods that are used in traditional finance, but also understanding where the benefits for specifically, in this case, cryptocurrency derivatives, you know, could really play out. So really, that's that's that's the ethos, that's the thinking.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Kind of the key piece for us is really, okay, how do we how do we give access to all of our customers for that product because there are a number of other derivatives exchanges out there and we are going to and we're doing it differently from them. You know, and we're trying to find that bridge between the two. So we have currently futures live on our platform, you know, we will have options trading, you know, in the coming months and quarters. But we're going to do them slightly differently to some of the other platforms you might know in the derivative space, but also slightly differently from how you might have seen options trade in the in in traditional finance.

• 14:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So talk through a little bit about that nuance in terms of how you guys view it differently than other people in the industry.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Sure. I I think this, the key element for us is is how we manage customers' risk on the platform. So as most people are aware, you can come and trade the most simple derivative value is a future. And people will talk about leverage. It's a fairly common phrase. You can go on to a crypto exchange and trade 100 leverage future. The reality is that futures not leveraged at all. It's the platform that gives you leverage. And understanding that subtle difference might not impact most people on a day to day basis because they see them as one and the same. But there's a very specific difference between a leveraged product and getting leveraged on a product.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  And what we want to do is make sure people understand that difference. So you don't, you're not buying a product that's inherently leveraged. You're using your capital to allow you to buy more of a product with less money. And your leverage is in, is in the way you use your capital, not in the way the product itself is structured. And I think that's important that people understand that because you're not forced to take risks you don't want to take. You can go and buy a three or four or 10 times levered ETF, for example, on, on an index. Every unit of that you buy, you have 10 times as much exposure. Now, you can roughly do the same thing by buying 10 times as many futures, you know, with the same amount of capital. But at any point, you could reduce that number.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  So I might not want to have 10 times as much exposure. I could, you know, buy five or two or whatever it might be. And so understanding that you're really in control of, of, of how you get exposure and how you take risks is a key thing. And then understanding how we help you manage that in a fair and transparent way. And I think that's one of the fundamental differences. In, in terms of allowing our customers to get access to these products, we're not trying. Equus, we see ourselves as a platform, it's a utility. We're here to provide people a safe place to transact. We're not here to make money from people who don't understand necessarily the risks that they're taking. And so we want to make sure that the processes that we've put in place that, that mitigate your risk on that platform are done fairly. They're done transparently.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  We're not actually trying to make money from other people's misfortune or misunderstanding of products. We don't want that. What we want to do is make sure, what we want to do is, is provide that marketplace and, and a utility. And really it's about how we educate people to use these products properly. But then also how we ensure that when they are using them, they're doing it in a safe way.

• 17:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk through kind of why somebody would use this. I know that you guys think a lot about risk management. You think a lot about capital efficiency, but just explain those a little bit more and kind of just walk me through somebody coming to your platform that wants to use these derivatives, kind of what they can expect in both the risk management bucket and the capital efficiency side.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Sure. So if you imagine, there's probably a lot of people for whom owning and maintaining a balance of Bitcoin is a key part of their own personal balance sheet. That's becoming a more prevalent view. And we all understand a lot of the fundamental economic reasons as to why that view is becoming more and more mainstream. Now, you can go onto a number of different exchanges and buy some Bitcoin. You could do it even off an exchange. You can hold it in a wallet. And we've already talked a little bit about the custody piece. So that piece is already in place. Now, I guess the difference that we want to talk about is when you combine both derivatives exchange and a spot exchange together, and you understand that people are looking at that holistically,

• 18:06Speaker 02

  I might own some Bitcoin, but I might have the view that in the short term, as we're seeing right now, you might get a small correction in the price. I might say, look, I'm okay. I'm happy with that. I can I can live with that sort of P and L fluctuation in my life. Or I might say, look, you know, I can feel the supply demand dynamic, because, you know, we might have gone a little bit ahead of ourselves too quickly, or we've not pulled back enough yet for people to start again. And I'd like to protect myself for that. So what I can do then is sit with my core Bitcoin holding, and maybe I want to sell some futures against it. So my exposure to Bitcoin reduces.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  But it doesn't cost me. I don't ever sell my actual Bitcoin. I just sell some of my exposure to my Bitcoin. But what happened is because we understand that you have some Bitcoin, and you sold some exposure to Bitcoin, you don't have any risk to us. So we're not going to charge you to do that. So we won't charge you margin on your short position, because we know you have a long Now ironically, if you've done that on two different platforms, platform A doesn't know what platform B is doing. So they will charge you because they don't understand your whole risk. So again, it's about building that ecosystem, understanding that we want to look at risk holistically, we want to look at your whole portfolio. And if you show us your whole portfolio, we'll allow you to manage your risk so much more effectively. Because we won't charge you anything to be able to do that from a from a risk management

• 19:27Speaker 02

  perspective. So in its kind of simplest sense, that's where we're really trying to get to with that. You know, we we offer derivatives, you know, across a range of different functions. If we look just at that sort of perpetual futures piece, we will have dated futures as well. But if we use that perpetual futures piece, which is the common products, you know, across the crypto space, it's it's using that product against your your core position that we that we really think will benefit. But also, you understand that if you have that position, how are we going to manage that through time? You know, if you if you use a lot of capital by trading futures, we're not going to, we're not going

• 20:11Speaker 02

  to try and benefit from you if you if you if you run up against, you know, a headwind that you really weren't predicting. And so the liquidation process that we run is extremely fair, extremely transparent. We don't, we're not taking positions off you that we would then try and benefit from by selling those out in the market at a different price. We actually make the whole liquidation process transparent and clear. And we make it a we make it a competitive process. You know, prices are deemed by supply and demand. You can't have a fair price for an asset unless there's supply and demand, you know, vying to to create that equilibrium price. So at the same point, we don't want to take positions off customers if if there isn't a competitive price to do it. So even through our liquidation

• 20:52Speaker 02

  process, we use a competitive price model to ensure that any any position that's taken off you because you can no longer afford to keep it is also done in a completely fair way. And we actually, we make no money from any of the liquidation process. You know, that's actually managed by effectively external people. And to that point, actually, as it as in as a platform itself, and I talked earlier about us being utility, you know, we we have a hard and fast rule, and we've made it public in our statements to the SEC and as part of our process for getting listed. We don't market make on our own exchange. So we are never counterpart to any of your trades. On our on our public exchange, we don't, we can't see it.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Anyone who's on the platform has no informational advantage or disadvantage compared to ourselves. It's, we're trying to create that that fair marketplace and that runs right the way through from the products we put on there to the way those products are traded. And if unfortunately at any point a customer can no longer afford to keep a position open, then the process for which that position is closed is again a fair and transparent one that we try and ensure. And and that's, that's really the whole ethos behind, behind this setup that we've got.

• 22:06Anthony Pompliano?

  So one of the things that's interesting to me is basically as you build out a product suite, you get access to more information. As you get access to more information, you're able to de-risk in some of these situations. You're able to have better clarity about who the customer is, what their portfolio is, what their risk exposure is. And so not only can you make one sounder decisions, but also too, it changes the cost structure, right? In terms of you actually aren't kind of flying blind. And so I guess the question then becomes, as you build out that product suite, how important is it to really explain the ecosystem to a prospective customer or user rather than just say, hey, come use our exchange or our custody, kind of a one-off product, right?

• 22:46Anthony Pompliano?

  It really is, there's this value add almost or kind of lock-in in the product suite that allows you to be better and better serve the customer if they use all of the products, right?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that that's a really important point. You know, when you have your own custodian, our ability to consider our counterparty risks to a custodian is completely different to if we're using a third-party custodian. You know, we acutely understand the way in which we've built that product, how that product is insured, for example, how that process happens, what the costs are for actually running and managing that process, like the true costs, not what we charge people, but the genuine true costs and being able to see that there's efficiencies that can be gained. But also thinking about the fact that, you know, if you've bought, if someone comes to us with crypto, they've bought it somewhere. Um. So they've had an experience of buying.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Um. Now, that means that they will probably at some point want to buy some more or possibly sell it. So they they need, you know, a venue for doing that. But also they need a venue for storing it whilst they're waiting to do that. Now, one of the areas that we're extremely interested in, um, and we had an announcement earlier this, you know, beginning of this year, is around what you can do within the lending borrowing space, how you can be more efficient. Not just how we can be efficient with your assets, but how you can be efficient with your assets. Um. The concept of of lending assets and borrowing assets and traditional finances is um is well known and fairly well understood. Um. Even within the traditional retail bank, that's effectively the model. You know, your net interest margin for a bank is effectively where they take money off.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  People like you and I and to their accounts and where they lend it out to other people, you know, to, uh, for whatever reasons it might be, finances, um, or corporate debt. Um. The the interesting thing that's at the moment is a lot of people sit and hold crypto for the fundamental reasons that that we mentioned earlier. But it's sort of sitting as a dead asset. And that's something that we also want to change. So how can how can you earn by just holding crypto? Um. And how can we do that again in a safe way that allows people to understand what we're doing with their products? Um. But at the same time allows them to to generate a return on a product that doesn't naturally or inherently have.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Unlike, say, you know, a fiat currency, which is really just trying to run to stand still a lot of the time when it comes to to, um. You know, to inflation rates and interest. So for us, you know, we're in the process of rolling out a product that allows people to earn whilst they do nothing. But at the same time have access to all of that ecosystem that we talked about, the custody piece, the trading piece, um, you know. Even some more complex trading strategies that we make available for people through algorithms or or sort of automated trading processes. Um. And and bring all that together so that really you're you're comfortable that your assets are held in a safe and secure manner. You have access to liquidity as and when you want it. Your assets are working for you even when you're not touching them.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Um. And you're doing that all in a system that all understands each other, can all speak to each other. Um. But as I mentioned before, we're not ignorant to the fact that there are other venues out there. And so, you know, we're comfortable as well that you say, you know, I've traded on another platform for a long time. I'm comfortable there. Have a look at what you guys can do and we hope the experience you have with us and what you see the way we do things, we do things differently. We'll slowly see you migrate your business over, but we understand that those currently exist. And we're not saying, you know, okay, because you want to use another venue, we're now going to exclude you from everything we do. So it's, it's take as much as you can and take as much as you want because you'll feel, you'll truly feel a benefit for it or from doing so. But we're

• 26:33Speaker 02

  not going to cast you aside because you say, actually, you know, I still use a custodian here or I still use a trading system there, you know, that, that's, you know, that, that would be a path to disaster for us.

• 26:44Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. How do you think being based in Asia is an advantage, helps you think differently than maybe some of the other products that, that people are used to using? Is there anything that kind of sticks out in your mind about the geographic location, either of you and other people on the team's experience over the years in finance, kind of working in various cities across Asia, or also just living there now and kind of spending day to day?

• 27:13Speaker 02

  I love living in Asia. I've lived there for the last 15 years and thoroughly enjoyed my entire time. I think there's definitely some experiences that, that we use and in particular around that derivative space. So as I mentioned earlier, you know, you, you need that derivative space to really offer the entire spectrum of risk control, risk management and exposure. But building, you know, if I build it, will they come? That, that concept doesn't work so well. Now, you need to understand why people are coming. And in Asia, there's the traditional finance, there's an extremely prevalent structured products market. And that's primarily driven by retail investors

• 27:58Speaker 02

  effectively using structured products to get exposure that they, they want in traditional financial markets, be it through FX or equities or, or other products. And knowing to them that, you know, that they're generating a return and they're giving themselves certain pathways structured through that product. But that really is being off the side of the volatility market, which is the measure of, you know, how options are priced. And it's extremely

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Interesting, there is that it's actually the almost a tail that wags the dog in Asia when it comes to the volatility markets, what prices options, it's the retail guys who are selling are actually determining the price which futures trade volatility all the way up to index

• 28:49Speaker 02

  and we've seen that and we've experienced that we've sat there on derivatives trading desks in Asia and watched as this wire of retail capital infrastructure products that is driven used to people trading through this.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  And so what we're doing with our investment products division, which is again a kind of key part of this building, is putting together those those structured products that can be distributed via the wealth management platforms and private banks to those same investors. And and what that will do is bring back into the exchange all of the volatility that they're selling, the offer side of those options. And so we understand you need both sides, you can't just build an exchange and expect people to trade, you need someone to buy and someone to sell. And really that that experience in Asia, the structured product market and having hired a great team to build that for us, that's where we think we're going to differentiate

• 29:49Speaker 02

  ourselves in in the options market because we know how to bring both sides to trade there. There's plenty of people who want to trade volatility, trade options on crypto, one of buy calls, on ipods, want to get that sort of exposure. Finding the other side of that a little bit more difficult, understanding that that comes from the retail pace, packaged and restructured through the structured product market is, I think, a key difference and one of the key things that we've all experienced from our time in Asia.

• 30:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's a really unique insight, I think, and one that obviously has played well for you guys. Before we go to wrap up, I want to quickly just talk to people about where they can find you on the internet and where they can find Diginex, the products, go learn more about them or sign up if they'd like.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Actually, yeah, I mean, one of the things that's interesting for us, we're after talent, we're after great people and we want people to come and join us, we want people to want to come and join us. And I know that it's something you just started, you know, looking at in terms of that talent acquisition. The financial services industry suffered a huge brain drain attack. You know, particularly post-GFC, what we want to do is start to let people see that tech and financial services aren't mutually exclusive. And if you want to do something right and you want to do it differently, you can still do that in a financial services company. And you can still, you know, be the best at that and do it in a way that is, you know, that is pleasing to yourself and the satisfaction, everything that that brings.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  And so really for us, talent acquisition right now is a key thing for us. You can come and see our products, equus.io, diginex.com. Everything's available there. We're on LinkedIn, we're on social media, you know, there's, there's opportunities to get to us. We have a Telegram channel that everyone's welcome to look at and see some of the conversations that we're having there. But we really do want to talk and engage with people and particularly those people who feel that they've got something to add in this space. And we are, we are genuinely open to having a lot of conversations with people about how we can, you know, continue to build out the product suite, the offering, you know, the platform, you know, to, to really establish ourselves as that, that core provider of a quality platform, a quality product within the industry.

• 32:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I highly suggest people go check it out. So I, I love that perspective. I always ask everyone the same three questions and then you'll get to ask me one to finish up. First is what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Good question. I had a, I personally, I thoroughly enjoy reading biographies, autobiographies or memoirs and fiction. And I've just recently finished one based on the Diaries of Winston Churchill during the Blitz. And looking at how people reacted to what he was saying and how he was working with, you know, the American government at the time to try and encourage them to help the British join, join the war, how his speeches were being met both in Parliament and by individuals within the.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Within the UK and how they're responding to that and also then how that had an effect on on the UK's ability to sort of manage its way through that. He to me is one of the most interesting artists out there and extremely naturally gifted communicator. And so to read how that process went through and and the way he thought about it and how much time and effort went into thinking about those things at a time when the whole world was under such duress is extremely interesting for me and has had a reasonably profound impact.

• 33:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I am the same way. I love reading biographies of successful people. So I fully understand that. Second question is a little bit more personal, sleep schedule. And this is brought to you by our friends at Eight Sleep. They've got this like thermal regulation bed that I sleep on every night, which basically just makes it really, really cold, which helps you sleep deeper. And all of a sudden, I start sleeping eight hours a night and feel amazing compared to when I used to sleep five or six. Are you a three or four hour sleeper or more like a nine or 10 hour sleeper?

• 34:00Speaker 02

  I'm one of those people who looks at my watch when I go to bed and panics if there's not eight hours before I need to get up.

• 34:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Amazing.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  I'm also one of those people who wants it to be extremely cold. So I am a huge fan of any any thermal regulated bed. Sadly, my wife is operates on a completely different scale than I do. And I think we're one of the people, you know, there's an electric blanket in our room and my side's never even had the plug attached to it and hers is on nine months of the year. And we operate it a very different way in that sense. So I'm definitely eight hours. I think I can't, to my kids, you know, sleep's the most important thing, really, because without enough sleep, you really can't operate. So, yeah, I'm always amazed at those people who can get by on three or four hours because that's not me, unfortunately.

• 34:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I used to try, but not anymore. I'm a full on convert to the sleep religion, for sure. Last question is more fun. Aliens, are you a believer or a non believer?

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Look, based on the laws of probability, I have to be a believer. Um, you know, for me, everything's about, you know, the chance of things happening and probability. And everything I do in work every day is looking at the probability of an event happening and whether or not, you know, the expected result is positive or negative off the back of that. So just based on the sheer scale and scope of of what's beyond just this planet, I I I would have to say I believe. Um, I don't know. I don't have a strong view on the form or the process. Um, but absolutely, it'd be one of those things where you'd have to say, I'm completely not surprised at one point when this happens because, you know, the the scale to which um to which the whole universe operates means it it has to be there.

• 35:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I I I'm a uh your spirit animal on the other side of the world because I I completely agree. It's just not from a probability standpoint. I don't know how anyone thinks uh they don't exist. And I don't know if they've shown up. I don't know if they're little green men that get out of UFOs, but uh but definitely there's got to be life somewhere, right?

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Absolutely. You know, we were having a conversation with my kids about how life started and um indigenous people on different lands. And we were sort of trying to go through this process and, you know, and how it got there. And and the fact that even just in the world, you know, on one side of the world versus the other, how these events sparked. And now, you know, expand that not just within the galaxy, but the universe and beyond that, you suddenly realize that um, you know, it it's just impossible for it not to be the case.

• 36:37Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. What uh what's the one question you got for me to finish up?

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Um, so I probably embarrassed myself slightly earlier with Tom Cruise. And believe me, it's more Maverick than than Tom Cruise per se. So um in the similar vein to your books, but what's the movie that got you to where you are? Because for most people these days, it is a film or a movie.

• 37:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I don't know if I've got like one movie where it was like, hey, here's the thing. And you know, I'm going to go pursue that. I think that I probably have a couple of different movies that people might not have ever heard of, or may not have put as much importance on them as I did. But the two that immediately popped to mind are, there's this movie called Four Brothers. It's got Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese, a bunch of kind of actors. And the whole idea is basically they're four orphans, right? Or kind of adopted kids that end up in the same house. They go off in the kind of pretty hard life in Detroit.

• 37:43Anthony Pompliano?

  They all kind of disperse and they come back and basically they're just kicking ass together. Right. And it's like, look, we're not brothers actually, but they call each other brothers. And I grew up in a family with five boys. So that movie always kind of was cool to watch with with my actual brothers. And then the other movie, and probably my favorite movie ever is this movie called In Time. It's got a Justin Timberlake in it, which immediately is like a polarizing 50 50, whether people like it or not, just because he's involved. But I think that the message behind the movie, it's basically everyone has a clock in their forearm. And when you go to work, you don't get paid in money, you get paid in time. And so literally as you leave the factory, they like put more time on your clock. If your clock ever hit zero, you die.

• 38:28Anthony Pompliano?

  But if you are quote unquote, rich, you have unlimited amount of time. And so it's got all these like metaphors for life. Like one of the things is there's zones or neighborhoods. And based on how much time you have, you can go in between the zones or you cannot. And so he has no time, he gets a bunch of time, he goes to the rich area. And the first thing he realizes is in the poor area where people don't have any time, they run everywhere. Nobody walks, everyone runs. But when he gets to the rich area, nobody runs, everybody walks. And so he's like, huh. And then he realized, oh, because I run everywhere because I'm always trying to save time. Right. I'm always trying to like get to the job, get more work and stuff. So I think like a movie like that, which frankly, nobody even really knows about.

• 39:11Anthony Pompliano?

  It's just really got a great message and kind of reminds you that like time is the most scarce asset. And so it kind of just centers you back on like what's important.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  That's oddly enough, I've seen both of those films.

• 39:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Amazing.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, amazing. And I particularly, the process of transferring time with that arms, like sort of handshake that they have in movies, is quite an interesting one. And how it all works too. But I'm one of those people who, as we talked about, see that efficiency and inefficiency is so key to me. I like to be on time. I don't like to be early, I don't like to be late. I like to be just on time. I like to try and do as many things as I can at the same time. I reduce the amount of times I have to do something with the way in which I work, which sometimes sort of frustrates my wife if I leave things in a pile because I'm going to move them all in one go rather than taking one at a time for the day. But yeah, to me, it's a really scarce commodity and don't put off to tomorrow what you can do today.

• 40:10Anthony Pompliano?

  I could not agree more, my friend. All right, we will send people, go check out DigiNext, go look at the stock. What's the ticker on NASDAQ?

• 40:20Speaker 02

  EQOS on NASDAQ.

• 40:22Anthony Pompliano?

  EQOS or EQOS.com as well. So thank you so much for doing this, Neil. I really appreciate it. We'll do it again in the future.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Thanks very much.