#1485 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Buy Bitcoin, Eliminate Pennies, & Add Tariffs!

Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin, tariffs, Trump’s plan to stop production of pennies, and what’s going on with OpenAI, Elon Musk, Sam Altman. =======================Consensus is where the industry does business. Join global leaders, innovators, investors, founders and brands in Hong Kong from Feb. 18-20, 2025. Curated by CoinDesk, Consensus Hong Kong offers unparalleled networking opportunities, exclusive access to top decision-makers and the chance to secure deals that will shape the future of Web3 and digital assets. Take 15% off registration with the code POMP. Register now atcoindeskpomp.com=======================Ledger has been trusted for 10 years to secure 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management. Go toledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future.=======================The future is being built today and the future of currency isn’t dollars, euros, pounds, or yen, it’s crypto. And Gemini thinks that’s a great thing. Because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that’s a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Go where dollars won’t. WithGemini.=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's going on guys? Today we've got a great episode with Polina Pompliano. Polina is the founder and CEO of The Profile. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, we talk about tariffs, we talk about the production of the production of pennies, and then we also talk about OpenAI and what's going on with Elon Musk and Sam Altman.

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  In this conversation, we do our best to try to unpack what's going on in the economy, what it means for you, and also what you should be paying attention to. I really hope you guys enjoy this. And here's my latest conversation with Polina Pompliano.

• 0:58Speaker 01

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

• 1:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Consensus. Crypto's most influential event is coming to Asia. Consensus Hong Kong. It's happening on February 18th through the 20th of 2025. It's where the industry does business. From Bitcoin's expanding role in global finance to the latest innovations in Web 3, connect with global leaders, innovators, and investors to forge partnerships, secure deals, and drive the future of digital assets. With unmatched networking opportunities and exclusive access to top decision makers, this is the event you can't afford to miss. And because you listen to this podcast and watch this show, you get 15% off registration if you use the code Pomp, P-O-M-P, Pomp. You can register now at CoinDeskPomp.com. Again, CoinDeskPomp.com. Use code Pomp and you'll get 15% off.

• 2:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Ledger. They're celebrating 10 years since the most trusted name in crypto security. With over 7 million users and 20% of the world's digital assets secured, Ledger continues to lead the way in protecting your crypto and digital ownership. Their latest devices, Ledger Stacks and Ledger Flex, feature the world's first secure touchscreens, making managing your assets easier and safer than ever. Plus, the new Ledger Security Key App offers a secure alternative to traditional passwords, enhancing your digital security. Go to ledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future. That's ledgerpomp.com. L-E-D-G-E-R-pomp.com.

• 2:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Gemini. The future is being built today, and the future of currency isn't dollars, euros, pounds, or yen. It's crypto. And Gemini thinks that's a great thing, because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that's a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Gemini teamed up with futurists, technologists, and designers, like award-winning artist Matt Griffin, known for his illustrations for Dune, to craft a vision of the future with crypto at its core. The creative theme "Go Where Dollars Won't" emphasizes exploration, growth, and the crypto market's limitless potential. Whether it's going on that Martian safari to capture an unforgettable photo of a herd of woolly mammoths grazing the red planet, or using Bitcoin to pay for your Lyft pass

• 3:30Anthony Pompliano?

  to go strata skiing down the mountain peak of a breathtaking comet. Whatever adventures we'll be living, one thing is for sure: In a future this fantastic, the limits of traditional currencies simply cannot keep up. Financial innovation will usher in this new frontier, and so go where dollars won't with Gemini. Go check them out at gemini.com/go-were-dollars-won't. Again, go check it out at gemini.com/go-were-dollars-won't.

• 3:59Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, Plin, what's the first topic?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  All right, Bitcoin has dropped back below 100,000. At the time of recording, the price of Bitcoin is 97,000. On February 4th, crypto czar David Sacks said that the White House was going to explore a Bitcoin strategic reserve. What are the reasons for the drop in price recently?

• 4:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I think that Bitcoin is highly sensitive to global liquidity. It's also highly sensitive to what I will call kind of the animal spirits of the macro environment. And then also, I think that Bitcoin is a leading indicator of many things that are happening. So let's first analyze what's going on with the economy, right? You have a stock market that obviously has liked that Donald Trump was elected. It went up quite a bit. You have a national debt that is exploding higher, adding a trillion dollars to the debt every 100 days or so. Just recently, it came out that actually the annual deficit, which previously was a trillion, then it was 1.5 trillion.

• 5:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Most recently, people have been saying it is a $2 trillion annual deficit, meaning we spend 2 trillion more than we take in. Well, we just got numbers over the last couple of days, and for the first four months of fiscal year 2025, we actually have a deficit of closer to like 840 billion dollars, which means we're not running a $2 trillion deficit, we're running a $2.5 trillion deficit. So if our annual deficit is growing at 25% year over year, that's a big problem. And so what you have seen is Bitcoin's price started 2024 around $40,000, ran all the way up to almost $110,000. It's now sitting kind of just below 100,000. So why is we get a little bit of a pullback? First of all, it's natural.

• 5:47Anthony Pompliano?

  It's good to have a little bit of these kind of cooling off periods. It allows for people to kind of accumulate at a lower price than all time highs. But on top of that, the market right now is trying to figure out what is going on with the Trump administration. And the previous thought process was that Donald Trump was going to just be up only. I want to only do things that are Good for the stock market. What I find most interesting is it seems like he has kind of shown his cards a little bit and he's saying, listen, I'm actually okay with some short term pain. If it means over the long run, we're going to be in a better spot. And I don't think a lot of people thought that he was actually going to do that. So one of the areas where we see this showing up most recently is in tariffs.

• 6:29Anthony Pompliano?

  He knows that tariffs are going to scare the market. Now, I have talked that nauseam about the fact that tariffs are actually a good thing. They lead to lower prices, they drive government revenue, they create jobs, like all of the things that people think are bad about tariffs, they're actually just wrong on. But the market doesn't care. The market believes something, the market is going to price that in. And so when the tariffs got announced, then naturally you see kind of stock market come down, Bitcoin come down. Now, one of the areas that I think is most fascinating about this is that gold and Bitcoin have actually separated. Gold continues to hit new all time highs and Bitcoin has kind of been in this cooling off sideways period.

• 7:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And so historically, you've said, hey, if gold's going up, Bitcoin goes up, but Bitcoin just goes up more than gold does. And so it begs the question of, well, why is gold going up? And so when you go and you dig into the numbers, gold is actually not going up because of the Western world. Gold is going up because of Asian investors. And so you can see these charts of like gold trading activity in China, as an example, just exploded in the last six months or so. And so naturally, what you're seeing is you're seeing a bifurcation even in kind of these stores of value where gold is going up and Bitcoin's not. And really what that is showing is that Bitcoin is being treated much more by Wall Street as a risk on asset. And so when stocks are trading down, Bitcoin is trading down.

• 7:53Anthony Pompliano?

  When stocks are trading up, Bitcoin is trading up and usually at a higher percentage than than the average stock. And so the question just becomes, what is the correlation going to end up being between Bitcoin and these other assets? It has waffled over the years. At times it's been, you know, a very, very low, you know, no correlation. At other times, like in during COVID, all asset correlations spiked towards one. And so right now, we're kind of sitting, you know, in the middle. And I think for Bitcoin's sake, it would be great if Bitcoin ends up being a non-correlated asymmetric asset. But naturally, as you get more and more Wall Street, large institutions, nation states buying this asset,

• 8:34Anthony Pompliano?

  you would expect the correlation to kind of creep up because now you have Bitcoin in the hands of people who are going to look at it and say, am I risk on, am I risk off? If I'm risk off, they're not running to Bitcoin, they're running to things like treasuries, et cetera. So I think that's a huge, huge question mark right now.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Got it. And a subtopic, Michael Saylor has not stopped buying more Bitcoin. He just bought, there's, well, his company just bought another 742.4 million of Bitcoin. And also, the company, MicroStrategy, has rebranded to be called Just Strategy. And this is how it is described in the press release. "Strategy is the world's first and largest Bitcoin treasury company, the largest independent publicly traded business intelligence company, and a NASDAQ 100 stock. This brand's simplification is natural evolution of the company, reflecting its focus and broad appeal.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  The new logo includes a stylized B, and it is the Bitcoin's logo, signifying the company's Bitcoin strategy."

• 9:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, all that's noise. It just matters. How many Bitcoin do they have? And what's the premium?

• 9:47Speaker 02

  But do you think, I mean, that now cements MicroStrategy as like a Bitcoin company?

• 9:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, all the brand, the storytelling, it's all noise.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Why?

• 9:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's true of every company, not just MicroStrategy, but it's just, hey, show me the numbers.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And so for MicroStrategy, if you said to me, what really matters here? There's two numbers that matter. How many Bitcoin do they own? What is the multiple or the premium that's being assigned to that? Right? And there are a lot of factors that go into that stuff. You know, how are they going to raise capital? What is the dilution? All that kind of stuff is, you know, again, kind of the second order analysis. But really, the entire value of the business, just how much do they own and what is that premium? Now, the good news for micro strategy holders is, or strategy holders, is they got a lot of Bitcoin. They are the largest publicly traded entity in terms of the number of Bitcoin. So that's good. And then the premium at times has expanded and contracted, but still is pretty healthy.

• 10:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you you look at that, you say to yourself, that to me is not so much like a premium on NAV. I think a lot of people look at it almost like it's like a fund. Instead, what I think that is, is that is the market pricing in kind of future purchases of Bitcoin. And they almost look at it as like it's a revenue multiple or a profit multiple on the business. And so, you know, if they continue to acquire Bitcoin, especially at the rate that they're doing, they're going to own a lot of Bitcoin, company's going to be worth more, and that premium is going to stay healthy. If for some reason they stop acquiring Bitcoin, or they can't acquire more Bitcoin for some reason, then you're going to see that kind of premium or that multiple collapse. And it'll trade much closer to, you know, how much Bitcoin they actually have.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 11:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So I think that's like one of the big questions is just how much Bitcoin can they get while this window is open? Where people are willing to do this? And my answer to that is like, a lot. I mean, they, you know, I expect micro strategy to end up with more than 500,000 Bitcoin. If there's only 21 million ever going to be, you know, in existence, that's a pretty good, pretty good spot to be in.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Wow, okay. All right. Let's talk about balancing the budget. While America watched the second half of the Super Bowl, Donald Trump decided it was time to eliminate the penny. He's gonna take our pennies from our cold, dead hands.

• 12:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Kind of.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Kidding. So Trump ordered the Treasury to stop minting new pennies. He said, "For far too long, the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than two cents to produce one penny." He said, "This is so wasteful." Um, okay. So you wrote about this in your newsletter and you said it costs 0.03 cents to produce one penny, which is three times more than the face value of the coin in circulation. There are more than 13 billion pennies produced each year. It is estimated that 400 million to 500 million annually could be saved by stopping production of new pennies.

• 12:48Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a lot of stuff that goes into this, right? So first of all, both the pennies and nickels cost more to produce.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Oh, and the nickels.

• 12:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, the nickel. So nickel got away. They must be lobbying somebody because the nickels escaped the wrath of stopping production. But they both cost more than their face value. Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that you should 100% stop. But when you go and you look at this, you say to yourself, okay, the penny and physical change in general is actually quite detrimental to society. There's been studies that have shown like, hey, by using these small denominations of coins, it's really, it takes up time, right? And it eats into productivity and things like that. And so people are like, what do you mean? It only takes me an extra, you know, 10 seconds to count the change or whatever.

• 13:38Anthony Pompliano?

  But but there really is this big issue. Another thing people don't know about pennies in particular is if I forget all the exact numbers, but it's something like 250 to 300 billion pennies exist in the world. Only about 150 billion of them are so. So let's say, you know, kind of half to slightly more than half are in what they would consider like transactional use.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Circulate or.

• 14:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, it's technically in circulation, right? But but transactional use. The rest of them are sitting in people's jars, like people are collecting the pennies.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:09Anthony Pompliano?

  They are at the bottom of fountains. People throw the pennies into the fountain, or they are held somewhere. They're in your couch cushions. There's like all these things that people have tried to really estimate. No one's ever going to get the exact number, but it's only about half of the pennies actually in circulation are used for transaction use. They're being used for these other things in society.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  He's not saying, he's just saying, we're going to stop future production.

• 14:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Correct.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  We're gonna keep.

• 14:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Because ultimately.

• 14:37Anthony Pompliano?

  You could phase it out and there's immense precedent. You know, in the thing I wrote, I listed out maybe eight, nine, 10 different countries that have gone to the lowest denomination coin and gotten rid of it. Their societies operate perfectly fine. So I think that's kind of one component. The second thing that I think is pretty important here is the cost savings. People look at it and they say, oh, we're only going to save $500 million. Well, it's $500 million every single year. And so what you do is you start to divert that time and attention to other things. But then people forget as a third point that the pennies are made of zinc and copper.

• 15:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And actually zinc, or I'm sorry, copper in particular is really important for things like water infrastructure, national security, you know, other types of government activities. And so we're able to divert that copper usage from pennies to things that may be higher production value. That would be kind of an unseen, you know, benefit to doing this. And so I go and I look at this and I say to myself, getting rid of the penny, not getting rid of it, stopping production, whatever, that to me is actually not the story. The story here is there are no sacred cows. Right? I mean, think about past administrations going and saying, we're going to get, stop production of the penny. They would never do that.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Well, Obama apparently has floated that idea, did float that idea.

• 16:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, talk versus action.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? They just, they would never do it because it requires a propensity for action. It requires some tough skin because you know, you're going to get criticized. Right? It's kind of almost like, it sounds weird to talk about it like from a perspective of courage, but to do things that are kind of outside the bounds of the norm, to do things that are changing.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Rather than just keeping the status quo.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Okay, but a lot of people.

• 16:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Are pretty difficult.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  A lot of people would argue like the whole like Gulf of Mexico versus Gulf of America, like those kinds of things, they argue are more of like a distraction.

• 16:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Because it's, what's the point?

• 16:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, renaming something is actually, in that particular case, really important. And there's things that, as a nation, you need to have an identity. You need to have a culture. You need to have a national pride, right? And so I think that's kind of one component of it. But there's also very strategic reasons. One of the arguments that people are making is the reason why they renamed the Gulf of Mexico is because as Biden left, he put into effect a number of legislative pieces, and I believe executive orders as well, that impacted drilling of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. But if you change the name, now all of a sudden, some of that stuff is actually inert. It doesn't have the same impact, right?

• 17:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Because now you can argue, well, that's the Gulf of Mexico. This is Gulf of America. And so, again, is that why they did it or not? It remains to be debated. But there's always kind of the public story. And then there is like the real reason why some of these things get done. I think the public story right now is like, oh, this is just, you know, some huge distraction. Look, we've been watching this guy operate in the political environment now for almost 10 years. Has he ever done anything that he didn't have an angle on? Right? Like, he have some reason? You may disagree with the reason. You may disagree with the

• 18:05Speaker 02

  I'm sure he has a reason.

• 18:06Anthony Pompliano?

  With the impact.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:07Anthony Pompliano?

  But there's always some, you know, kind of a game of chess that he's trying to play. He's trying to get leverage. He's trying to whatever. And so, again, a lot of people disagree with certain things that he does. But I just think that taking things as, you know, face value, oh, this is some stupid distraction, is probably not the way to analyze a lot of stuff coming out of the White House.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  All right. So Trump is set to impose 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum, up from his previous 10% rate. This is a big deal, making America rich again, Trump said in announcing the tariffs. Do you think this will work?

• 18:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes, it's going to work because ultimately what it's going to do is think of the rubric or the framework as to what is success. Do we get more American jobs? Do we get American production? Do we actually see a penalty against the foreign producers of this stuff? And do we see a continued usage of these products? Right? If we continue having people use it and American production goes up and American jobs get created, that's success. That's exactly what we saw in 2018. On top of that, we actually saw that the price of US steel came down in 2019. And so, why is that? Well, when you put a tariff, you're penalizing the foreign producer, you're incentivizing the domestic producer. If you incentivize the domestic producer, what do they do? They produce more.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  How long do you think it'll take the domestic producers to produce more in a meaningful way for prices to come down?

• 19:32Anthony Pompliano?

  It took less than 12 months in 2018.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  For washing machines?

• 19:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Washing machines was different, but steel, steel in particular. We saw in both 2018 and 2019, the production of steel was higher than it was in 2017. And so, one of the things that people don't realize is about the steel producers. I don't know what the number is right now, but before the 2018 tariffs, US steel producers were only operating at like, I don't know, 60% of capacity or something. And so, the whole reason that they put the tariffs in place was the goal was to get the US steel manufacturers to produce at more than 80% capacity. And so, after those tariffs were implemented, that's what happened is they went to over 80% capacity. So, it's not even so much you got to build more manufacturing capabilities, it is how much of the capabilities you have are you actually using?

• 20:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, I think that's a huge thing is like, we have a lot of this productivity that is kind of sitting there waiting to be used. Tariffs will help with that. The other thing is China has flooded the global market with cheap steel.

• 20:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And you could argue that that is a national security kind of move where what they really are doing is they are trying to intentionally torpedo certain industries. So, okay, well, how do we combat them flooding the market with cheap steel? You put a tariff on it so it's not cheap anymore, right? And so that that is the kind of game that's getting played here. Again, where I think we're going to end up is, or where I'd like to see us end up, I think that it'd be really interesting if we implement a five or 10% flat tariff on every import. 100%

• 21:12Speaker 02

  You're saying, don't just, don't choose and be selective?

• 21:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't choose by country, don't choose by goods. Everything gets, let's say, a 10% tariff. And then what you do is you then go country by country, product by product, and you remove the tariff for things you want to incentivize. So right now, the default is no tariff, and we pick the products we want to add tariffs to. I think it should be the opposite. I think it should be flat tariff, and then for the things we want to incentivize, we drop the tariff to either, you know, 5% or zero to allow the incentivization of those things to come to the to the market. And so what you would end up doing is, you know, let's say it was a 5% blanket tariff. 5% is not going to change any consumption patterns. 25% for certain goods could change

• 21:58Anthony Pompliano?

  consumption patterns. And so I think that is really what we're trying to get at here is like, are we trying to raise more capital? Are we trying to create incentives? Or are we punitively running around trying to punish people?

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Well, Trump said that he would announce reciprocal tariffs on Tuesday and Wednesday, meaning that the US would impose import duties on products and cases where another country has levied duties on US goods. So he said, if they charge us, we charge them, every country. If they are charging us 130% and we're charging them nothing, it's not going to stay that way. So you're saying like, basically, we've been a good actor and not charging or not tariffing, tariffing, imposing tariffs on other countries, but now he's gonna...

• 22:43Anthony Pompliano?

  I read a book recently that I highly suggest everyone goes and reads, it's called Twilight of the Elite, and it's about France, but it's a lesson that can be taken across the, across the globe. And what it basically argues is that over the last 70 years or so, we have pursued globalization to the detriment of our citizens.

• 23:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And the reason why globalization got pushed so heavy is because the modern bourgeoisie or the elites, they benefit from it.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 23:17Anthony Pompliano?

  But it is actually the lower economic workers, the working class, they're the ones who have been absolutely blindsided by this. And so if you, if you think about what ultimately tariffs do, is it levels the playing ground or the playing field between the modern bourgeoisie and the working class? Because what it essentially does is it says, hey, you rich, wealthy people who live in urban areas, you actually are going to, because capital is a source of power for you, you're going to have to expend more power, more capital to continue to benefit from this

• 24:00Anthony Pompliano?

  system via these tariffs. But what we are going to do for the average working class person is we are going to bring back opportunity, we're going to bring back jobs, we're going to bring back, you know, economic activity to these cities all across the country.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 24:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, again, I will do a bad job, there's an entire book written about it that I highly suggest people go read, it's called Twilight of the Elites. And what it essentially explains is the reason why we have seen this bifurcation where cities and economic activity have exploded and these rural areas haven't, is a huge kind of result of this globalization. And so when you look at that, you say tariffs, as somebody who believes in the free market, make no sense if there's a free market. But the reason why I changed my mind on tariffs is because I realized that no free market exists. So this is a good example you're talking about.

• 25:01Anthony Pompliano?

  If there's a product or a good that we manufacture and we send to another country and they have 130% tariff on us, but then they manufacture the same product and when they send it to us, there's no tariff? People are like, oh, the free market. There's no free market. They're literally penalizing us. So the only way that you can even it out is you do the reciprocal tariff. Say, cool, if we send it to you, we pay 130%. Now, if you send it to us, you pay 130%.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Why do you think it became like that? Why do you think we didn't have a tariff for them, yet they're allowed?

• 25:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Because the US pursued globalization.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 25:32Anthony Pompliano?

  The US said, we want as many trading partners as possible, blah, blah, whatever. And countries knew they could take advantage. And so they started with little and then took more and then more products, you know, and they kept expanding. But I think we're now at a point where it is pretty obvious that we can't keep operating the way that we're operating. And so are we going to agree with all the tactics? No. And look, this is the thing, again, you know, as somebody who's an independent, I think a lot of people, because I am supportive of these specific policies with the Trump administration, I think that we should give Joe Biden credit. Joe Biden actually took a number of tariffs that Trump had originally put in place and made them more severe.

• 26:14Anthony Pompliano?

  So solar panels, as an example, Trump in 2018 put a 25% tariff on solar panels coming out of China. Biden in 2024 took it from 25% to 50%. He doubled it. And so this is not a right or left thing to me. This is a, what is good economic policy? And how do we think about the United States economy, what we want to incentivize here? And so, you know, if the next president is a Democrat and they continue with these policies, we should give them just as much support as we're giving to Trump in pursuing this stuff. But it really comes back to this idea of, do you want your country to be a leader?

• 26:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Or do you want your country to be taken advantage of by people flooding it with cheap products? That sounds good in the short term for the consumer. But if you actually look at it,

• 27:09Anthony Pompliano?

  There's two sides to a consumer. What are my economic opportunities? How much money can I make? Where can I live? What things can I buy, et cetera? And then there's the cost of items that they buy. What do you think has a bigger impact? A reduction in some of the costs of the cheap one-off goods that they buy? Or a massive increase in their economic opportunity? The pay that they can make, the productivity in their town, et cetera? It's actually the productivity of the worker, the wages, those things.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Not, hey, can we get Alibaba to send over whatever crazy product that they're building, you know, for a cheaper cost?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  It does feel like with the tariffs in particular, the US is much more on offense than they are on defense as they have been.

• 28:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I agree with that.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  All right. Elon Musk is leading a group of investors and offering to buy control of OpenAI for $97.4 billion. The offer is to purchase all assets of OpenAI Inc. with funds to be used exclusively to further operate. Wait, sorry. Use exclusively to further OpenAI, OpenAI's original charitable mission. So Sam Altman saw this tweet and he tweeted on Monday, "No, thank you, but we'll buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want." And then Elon responded with, "Swindler." What is this beef?

• 28:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Everyone's right. So OpenAI trying to sell into this for-profit entity at like a less than $40 billion valuation? Eh, that seems kind of questionable. Now they have a fair market offer, something much higher. And therefore, if it's going to pay the nonprofit, now there's kind of a floor. So is this Elon messing with Sam? Probably. But it's going to be pretty hard for them to, you know, move around this now.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Because they have to like entertain the offer for?

• 29:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, if I, if I go to, you know, the government and I say, hey, I have this nonprofit thing. I'm going to spin it out into a for-profit entity.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 29:22Anthony Pompliano?

  They say, okay, well, the charity has to get a commensurate value. So for example, I think Rolex is owned, like the company Rolex is owned by a nonprofit.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 29:33Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm pretty sure. And so if Rolex, or if the nonprofit is going to sell Rolex, they would have to sell it for an amount that is equal to the value of the business. Begs the question, well, what's the business worth? Well, there's a couple of different ways you can do it. You can come up with like a discounted cash flow model and whatever. But a much easier way to determine the value of something was what are other people willing to pay for it? And so if you go to the government, you say, well, I think that people are willing to pay $40 billion. And then all of a sudden, somebody shows up and says, well, I'll pay 98 billion. It's gonna be pretty hard for you to argue that it's only worth 40 if you got somebody who's a credible buyer, who says that it's worth 98.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I think that's kind of this, you know, game that's getting played here.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 30:10Anthony Pompliano?

  So that's first. Second of all is,

• 30:17Anthony Pompliano?

  do I think that Elon probably knows it's, you know, it could be worth more? Absolutely, right? Kind of the Warren Buffett, like buy things for less than they're worth is why 98 billion dollars. So I don't know if Elon thinks it's worth 150 or 200 or, you know, 125 or whatever. But the reason why he's, you know, giving the offer he's giving is because it is, so if he gets stuck buying it, it's a great deal. And so I think Sam's right on that. I do think that there's a lot of people I talk to on a day to day basis that feel like the whole OpenAI, but it's a closed model, the charity, the nonprofit going to for-profit, all that stuff.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Is kind of weird.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Is that why Sam and Elon have beef now? I thought they were like on good terms, but then.

• 31:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Elon was, I believe, one of the first and possibly the largest donor to OpenAI when it was a nonprofit.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And.

• 31:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know if I remember this correctly. I think Elon maybe even came up with a name OpenAI, possibly. And now you go and you look and he's like, hey, this thing that you told me that was going to get built, you're trying to do something different. So there's probably some buyer's remorse on that. And I think at some point Elon tried to take control and that didn't happen or something.

• 31:43Anthony Pompliano?

  But it goes back to the idea of like, whenever you see two intelligent people arguing about something, usually they both have hints of truth to their argument.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And they just are seeing past each other. And I think that's what's happening here is that Elon's got a very strong argument against Sam. And then Sam also is smart and knows what Elon's doing and the claims he's making, etc. And so he has strong arguments back.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And so that's how you get, you know, two billionaires fighting with each other is if you were to go and listen to either one of them, they're highly persuasive and have truth to what they're saying.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Somebody on Twitter said, this is the nerd version of Kendrick and Drake beef.

• 32:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, to a degree, yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. That was great.

• 32:35Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Thanks for doing this.