#808 Beating The Corporate News w/ Saagar Enjeti

Saagar Enjeti is the Host of "Breaking Points with Krystaal and Saagar", a fully independent show focused on taking out cable news and bringing trust back to journalism. In this conversation, we discuss the broken cable news structure, the economy, Joe Rogan's popularity and why Saagar loves Bitcoin. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp ======================= Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide. Circle is also a principal developer of USD Coin (USDC), the fastest growing, fully reserved and regulated dollar stablecoin in the world. The free Circle Account and suite of platform API services bridge the gap between traditional payments and crypto for trading, DeFi, and NFT marketplaces. Create seamless, user-friendly, mainstream customer experiences with crypto-native infrastructure under the hood with Circle. Learn more at circle.com.

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. Now let's kick this thing off. Saghar Njeddy is the co-host of Breaking Points with Crystal and Saghar. He is one of the leading voices when it comes to the intersection of politics and media. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, media coverage of Bitcoin, the political arena, and also how the Bitcoin community can be thinking about legislation and politicians going into midterm elections. I really enjoyed this conversation with Saghar, and I hope that you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is BlockFi. BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Those products

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

  making it possible to invest in Bitcoin and 19 other digital assets inside your IRA. Right now, every time you make a trade, you have to pay capital gains taxes that can be as high as 37%. Choice enables you to trade real Bitcoin, other cryptos, and stocks without having to pay a dime in capital gains. The best part? They just released an iOS app, so you can open an account in less than 10 minutes and take control of your future from the palm of your hand. Join me and the 20,000 other Bitcoiners who have started their tax-efficient stack and open your Choice account today. Search "stack sats" in the App Store or visit choiceapp.io/pomp. Again, search "stack sats" in the App Store or visit choiceapp.io/pomp.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And one more thing, if you want to hold your private keys, Choice lets you do that too. Start stacking tax-efficient satoshis today and visit choiceapp.io/pomp.

• 2:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I O slash POM. Last but not least are my friends over at Circle. If you manage corporate or institutional funds, you're probably looking for ways to access opportunities in crypto. You see the growth and momentum and you want exposure. But a lot of institutions don't know how or aren't comfortable with the risks of Bitcoin or DeFi. Now there's a new investment that's built specifically to help institutions get into digital assets. It's called Circle Yield. It's a blockchain-based investment built with USDC, the leading dollar digital currency. Circle Yield is over collateralized and fully secured with Bitcoin collateral to protect your funds. This also makes it a great fit for crypto institutions who want to diversify

• 2:57Anthony Pompliano?

  their treasuries and reduce risks while staying all on chain. You get your choice of terms from one to 12 months in a fixed rate that's higher than what you'll get at a bank or in many fixed income markets. Visit circle.com/pomp to book a meeting with one of their experts. Again, circle.com/pomp and book a meeting with one of their experts. Big fan of Circle and I think you will be as well. All right, let's get into this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:23Speaker 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.

• 3:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Sagar, are you there? I'm here. Let's go. Let's go, dude. All right. First question. You guys have become, what I would argue, is the go-to source for people to find out about politics, news, breaking news, etc. People are done listening to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News. All these people are catering to the 60 and up crowd. What's the goal here? Like, what do you want breaking points to become and how do you think Like the journey that you guys are on.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  It's a great question, man. You know, to me.

• 4:23Anthony Pompliano?

  All we do is great questions here, just to be clear. That's all we do is good question. Well, all we do is great questions. So go ahead.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Right. That's always a tick, right? As an interviewer, I always notice that people always say that. So now I find myself in the same thing. But look, here's what it is, is that too many people have branded themselves outside of the mainstream. I don't think that that's the correct branding, what it is, or even the correct mission. The mission is to replace the mainstream. That's why I love what you guys do. That's why I ultimately love and have, I'll have a big, the, the, the message of Bitcoin and a lot of the crypto community, which resonates with me the most, is not necessarily the antagonism, although I think antagonism is important. It's simply to replace the existing centers of power.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  I can see with my own eyes, what's happening with CNN and the New York Times, what, you know, MSNBC, all these BS streaming services that they're launching. I can't wait. I want them to fail. I want them to actually compete in the free market. This is what's happening right now, is that the internet freed all of us from the chains of a rigged system.

• 5:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Facts.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  And I want to explain this to people, which is that these cable places, they don't make any money from actually your eyeballs. They make money because Cox Communications and Comcast pays them to be a part of the cable bundle. Now, old people like live news. And look, I gotta say, like, it is valuable, right? Turn the TV on on January 6th. Turn the TV on during these like BLM riots. Turn the TV on during 9/11. Live news is crazy, but the problem is it's not actually valuable. What, 99.9% of the time? So they fill it with BS. And this has gone to the heads of a lot of the idiots here in Washington who think that people actually want to watch them. But it was rigged. It was a completely rigged game.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  And so now out here in the YouTube ecosystem, in the internet, where you actually have to compete for eyeballs and attention, nobody cares. Absolutely no one. And this is what the new mainstream is going to be for people our age, for people who are younger. I have a big Gen Z fan base as well. They don't care about CNN. Like I am the news to them. People and I think that's the way it should be. I should have to compete, actually compete for not only for your attention, but to try and inform you on a level playing field.

• 6:37Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that you're hitting on a number of points here. First is they're all going to closed networks. You have to be on cable to watch them, right? If you don't watch it in the moment, then you're pretty much not going to see a majority of the content. All the issues that we know go on. And when you go to the open network, right? Open networks win. People in Bitcoin understand open networks win over closed. And so same thing here in the media. You're very interesting because you live in Washington DC. You're very plugged into what's going on there. How stupid are these people?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Oh, they're so dumb.

• 7:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, like, and just so everyone understands, right? My brothers and I are very clear. Like, I'm an independent. I think that both sides are, you know, absolutely ridiculous at the extremes. I frankly think most people my age and younger are just getting to the point where they're just like, look, enough is enough. This is absurd. Like, there's real things at play here and all of this kind of political divisiveness, etc. is really stupid. But like, you talk to a lot of these people on a daily basis. You don't need to give me names, but like, are they actually dumb? Or are they like so smart that they know what they're doing and they're just kind of leading the American public into like the slaughterhouse?

• 7:37Speaker 02

  No, 99.5% are just complete and utter morons. And it's really important to understand the pipeline through which that these people succeed, which is that you are in the district, you're a lawyer, the way that you want, or usually a lawyer or some like prominent businessman. Then you court the party elites. All you have to do is win the primary. Okay? That's it. The most of these elections, something like 90 something percent are not competitive. They're decided whether you have an R or a D next to your name. So the only thing that matters is the primary itself. So you have to cater to, let's say, 5 to 7% of the actual population of your district in order to represent the 99.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  It's actually not all that competitive and it's mostly rigged by either the party elites or, you know, you can have a stupid contest in terms of appealing to those 5 to 7% and then basically winning once you get here. Once you get here, you have zero incentive to inform yourself about the broader world at all. All of these people either spend their time fundraising. They don't actually spend that time engaging with the news or the broader public. I mean, I frankly think the crypto community found this out the hard way during all of the regulation during the infrastructure bill is, and I'd been telling people, you know, Pom, you know, I met in Miami and I was telling you a little bit about this, which is, I was like, you gotta be here. You gotta shove it in their face and say, hey, we matter, we're real. This is where the future is because they'll just wake up one day, decide that they need

• 9:04Speaker 02

  money for some BS part of their bill and then they'll tax the shit out of you and they'll do it either they'll tax it or they'll regulate it in a way that they don't understand. They have no actual expertise. They don't actually seek knowledge on anything. Almost all of them are concerned with becoming famous or becoming and winning their primary. That's it.

• 9:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Or becoming rich.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Curiosity, curiosity is not rewarded in Washington. In fact, it's punished. It's dramatically punished. Stepping outside of your box.

• 9:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's crazy to think about this. All right. So talk to me about breaking points real quick before we get into kind of Bitcoin and some of the other stuff. How big is this thing? And like, talk, you know, what it's seven, eight months old now and you guys are just taking the world by storm, literally going right at the throats of Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc. I see you smirk. So I know you're like, yeah, that's exactly what we're doing. How big is it? And like, how have you thought about the first seven or eight months?

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was stunned by it. You know, I mean, look, I was scared at the end of the day. Like I was worried about censorship. You guys have had to deal with this as well. But I was like, you know what? We put in two years, built the audience, built the Hill Channel from 6K subs to 1.34 million on the day that we left. So look, seven months in, we're at 700K subscribers on YouTube, but the daily numbers are well above an average CNN primetime broadcast, at least 1 million whenever it comes to the actual view or the, so whenever it comes to views and also within what really matters in news is something called the key demographic. So this is the BS part, like all of these Fox, CNN, all that, they may say 3 million. It doesn't

• 10:37Speaker 02

  matter. The only thing that actually matters are the key demo, the 18 to 54 demographic for even Tucker or Rachel Maddow, the highest paid people, the biggest news on broadcasting. They are one-fifth of what Breaking Points is actual key demo audiences. And that's not even including the millions of downloads a month that come on the podcast format from Spotify to iTunes. I mean, this is what you were saying. This is about the open ecosystem. You don't have to watch me live. You can watch it whenever you want, at your convenience. I actually noticed in my podcast downloads, there are some people who wait until the weekend and then listen to all three of the episodes. Not the way I would consume news, but hey, whatever. You know, it's up to you.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  And I think that that's the important thing. So, look, it's bigger than I ever imagined. Within seven months, we basically blew out all of our one-year goals within the first two weeks of launching and making sure that we were going to be sustainable. And it's only been, uh, it's only been up from there. So, look, I mean, people showed up for us in a big way and made it even possible. And now I'm just, you know, now I've got ideas. I'm like, okay, now we've actually got the ability in the base to upgrade. So we upgraded our studio, 4K cameras. I literally, I was telling you this, from what I understand, the engineers who helped build my studio told me that we have higher tech than CNN, MSNBC, and them. It's a level playing field now.

• 12:05Anthony Pompliano?

  How pissed are they? How pissed is like Fox, CNN, and MSNBC? Do they even know this is happening? Or are they like reaching out to you, kind of back channeling and being like, hey, this isn't cool?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  So, it's, it's really fast. You know, what's the thing? It's like first they ignore you, then they copy you, then, you know, it's like then you beat, something like that. Uh, the, at first, they just wanted to ignore us. They ignore, ignore, ignore for the first two years, not just Breaking Points, whenever we were over at the Hill. But here's what started happening. And Crystal and I, uh, would notice that those people, their friends and family members who aren't into politics at all, would say something like, hey, do you know those guys, Crystal and so on? And I would get texts and all those things, be like, oh, it seems like, you know, it seems like you're really working, that type of thing. Then what happened is now transitioned to anger and has been like a total blackout. But I'll be honest, like, I welcome their hatred. And frankly, like, I've even said this, the more you guys

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Ruin the country, the better I do. Like I'm, I'm doing better because you guys are so terrible at your job. So we are in a mutual kind of antagonism phase where, you know, they try, it's all very inside baseball and it sounds super petty. But because I speak Washington, like I know what's going on, like they try, they tried to leave us off of like the most influential people and media list. Um, even though they put people on there who are like junior correspondents or whatever, it's like ABC news. They try and black you out of any of the recognitions and the societies and the accrediting situations. But look, I don't care. Numbers speak for themselves. At the end of the day, they know when they go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas,

• 13:41Speaker 02

  and they talk to somebody who is not inside the Beltway at all. They're gonna be like, hey, I watch Breaking Points. That's how I get my news.

• 13:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Dude, forget their societies. Let's create our own society. Who wants to hang out with those losers anyways? Yeah, exactly. That's my, that's my approach in life. All right. Talk to us about another person who's done this really well, Joe Rogan. Why has Joe been so successful in building what now seems to be a dominant mainstream platform to help people learn and get the news out there?

• 14:08Speaker 02

  So you know, it's, it's, it's funny whenever people ask me about Rogan, uh, cause it's actually not ideological at all. Joe just monetized and built an audience around several different facets of his personality. And not enough people actually think about it like this. Joe, the Joe Rogan experience, and I know this, I've been listening to Joe way before I ever got on the podcast. I was a fan when I was like 23, riding the metro and I was broke as hell. Okay. So like I literally was in the actual demographic. Here's what Joe is. He is several different shows all in one. UFC, hunting, fitness, um, like alternative politics.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Now, alternative science, bro science, and also wacky conversations that you have when you smoke too much weed. Like, and, and comedy, obviously, being the core base of all of that. When you stack all of those together and you bundle it up into a single thing, you get the Joe Rogan experience. That's what I think that everybody misses whenever it comes. To Joe, which is Joe, I mean, if you actually listen to the show, there's not a lot of politics on it. Yesterday, he had on an MMA fighter, the time before the day, the episode before that was a woman who was a lawyer and now does spearfishing for a living. And I found it pretty interesting, but it's a lifestyle culture show.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  And the reason why he can sneak in dissonant voices and dissonant news and get the information out there is because he has built up trust over, over a decade. And that's what these CNN people don't have. I mean, how many times have you and I and everybody watched them lie in with our own eyes? And they never apologize. They never retract what they're saying. There's not even a mechanism to force it. I've seen Joe screw up pretty bad and he does a video which he posts out on his Instagram. He's like, hey, everybody, I screwed up. I shouldn't have said this X, Y, and Z, or apologize for it on a show. And you know, that's a lesson I've learned too. I do a segment almost every six months called Everything I Got Wrong. And I go over like, I'd be like, here's what I got wrong here. Here's what I got wrong here.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  I did a rapper on the election where I was like, here are my worst predictions on what would happen in November of 2020. People really appreciate that. But these people, they're too arrogant to ever even assume that, that you would even notice that they got something wrong.

• 16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  They've never been wrong. What are you talking about? It's never been wrong. All right. Talk to me. Last thing about Rogan is, uh, was it Neil Young versus, uh, versus Joe Rogan? Absolutely hysterical that he basically gave him an ultimatum. They just like, get your old ass out of here. Nobody's listening to your music anyways. No one podcasts in the world. We ain't giving up him. What's your take on Joe Rogan versus Neil Young and Spotify's decision?

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, look, props to Spotify, but dude, you know this, it shouldn't be up to Spotify. We got to build something so that these lever. What if it was Taylor Swift, man? Nobody can answer that question. What if it was, uh, I don't know, like Wiz Khalifa or like, uh, Lil Nas X? You know, people who bring in real money to Spotify. Then it could have been like a 50 50 decision. I don't think it should be up to anybody. This is why I'm a big supporter of the open system of the RSS feed. I always will be because when you have single points of failure. It can be a problem. Props to Spotify for standing up. Obviously Neil Young, like, sorry boomers, you'll have to go elsewhere. You can put your, put it in your CD player or whatever.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  But I also want to point this out. There's a, there's something bigger going on here. Dude, Neil Young sold his catalog to a big hedge fund, which is owned by Blackstone. And Blackstone, you know, there's, there's some shady stuff going on in terms of what they're invested in. And, you know, some people have sent me that they're even invested in some pharmatech. Now, look, I mean, I don't know if this has anything to do with it or not, but they spent $150 million. And when you have multi-billion dollar hedge funds, I know how dirty that these people play. I've seen it happen when it comes to mass censorship campaigns. These things are never organic, never. There's always something more going on here. I would not be surprised, given that Neil Young posted the letter and he deleted the letter. Was he even aware like

• 18:15Speaker 02

  what was happening? I think there's a lot more going on behind the scenes.

• 18:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think that these large players, they fear now what we'll call the new mainstream, more than they fear the old mainstream? Like, it feels like to some degree the hedge funds, all the insiders, they, they own CNN, they own Fox News, they own MSNBC. You, me, and a bunch of other people, ain't nobody telling me what to say. And if they came and told us about it, we'd literally make a video immediately, like, listen to what they just called me and said they to do, right? And basically, they're like, all right, well, that backfired. Like, do you, do they fear kind of this new wave of coverage, whether it's in the political arena, the business arena, just kind of more cultural things like Rogan? Is that kind of where we're at now?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  That's where we're at right now. So, like I said, first, they would ignore me. But then, all of a sudden, I would do videos exposing hedge fund corruption and their head of PR would reach out. Their, you know, heads, you know, I, I've told these stories publicly before, but I did an entire expose on TikTok and how they were hiring all of these lobbyists and throwing all this Chinese cash at people here in DC. And I exposed how the former head of cybersecurity under the Obama administration was now a TikTok lobbyist. It was all open public record. And they, I mean, they lost it, right? Like, they called my bosses, they tried to say, this is when I used to be at The Hill, this is part of why I'm independent. They were like, you know, like,

• 19:36Speaker 02

  he's threatening their lives, like exposing their identities, you know, I mean, call me, go ahead, try it, you know? I mean, I, they, their old tricks don't work anymore. Like you said. I've said this before too, um, what was her name? Uh, she was the chairwoman of the financial service at Maxine Waters. I, here's all I said. I said, Max, yeah, I said, Maxine Waters will be chairwoman of the financial service committee till the day she dies. I said it because I was making a commentary about geriatrics in Congress and the seniority system. Okay. That's all I said. Her communications director called my bosses at the Hill after I said this and said that I was inciting violence against her.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  And they implied that, but if I didn't issue an apology, that they would not, you know, participate in some event that the Hill was doing. And, you know, I was like, hey, fuck you. Like, try it now, you know? And at the time I had to keep my, like, my mouth shut, all that stuff. I dare, I dare you to try. I dare you to call me. Uh, and tell me that. This is why they're terrified. All their old tricks. I'm just giving people a little peek behind the curtain. Jeffrey Epstein and ABC News, you know, the palace calls the head of Disney, all this stuff. Doesn't work here. All of our power comes from the audience.

• 20:53Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm fearful that, uh, the more that we have to keep listening to their bullshit, the dumber we all get, right? Like, if you really think about it. All right, talk to me about Bitcoin. What, uh, you, uh, I get the sense that on breaking points, like, you want to keep talking about Bitcoin, kind of sliding it in there, like, let's get like a Bitcoin segment. What are your real beliefs about Bitcoin? What, what is it? You're, you're unshackled right now. You've got the floor. What, what do you think about Bitcoin?

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Look, I'm pro Bitcoin. I'm absolutely pro Bitcoin. I'm a little bit more skeptical of some of the other stuff that's going on. Um, and we could get into that if you want, but at the end of the day, I believe, and this, this pandemic really taught me, and may actually made me a lot more libertarian, which was, we have to have an alternative ecosystem monetarily, financially, societally, media, everything, in order to circumnavigate or circumvent and go around the mainstream. All the channels and the only way that that exists, at least from what I can tell, is Bitcoin, the original and the decentralized currency, the hedge against the current global financial system, because we just, I just did a whole thing about Blackstone and the hedge funds. I can't be reliant.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Ultimately on big tech and others in order to try and protect me. I'm grateful to them for not screwing with me yet. But that's not a viable system in the future. So, look, it's simple. I met Balaji Srinivasan like three years ago. He was the first person who ever truly redpilled me on what a crypto future could look like. And honestly, almost everything that he told me then, which I thought he was crazy, turned out to either not, to either be true or is happening like right now as we speak in terms, he was the first person who told me about, you know, people were going to, you know, geographically circum, you know, go around the United States, basically have regulatory arbitrage. I was like, I don't know, maybe, I mean, you're in Florida, you know, like, look at Austin, how business is booming. San Francisco is basically dead.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  So I think that the core of the Bitcoin future is a hedge against the most powerful people in the country. And ultimately, to me, the pandemic taught me more than ever before that we have to have the ability to amass alternative wealth from the mainstream in order to use as leverage to protect our interests. And to me, Bitcoin remains the number one way in order to do that. I've been, I've been a hodler for like three and a half years, something like that. I, I won't sell it. It's not about the price. Uh, to me, it's about the actual assurance for the future.

• 23:17Anthony Pompliano?

  The, uh, the part that's so crazy about it is like, it's a hedge against the rich people, but then the rich people, of course, economic incentives take over like, oh, wait, people are going to make money. I just always joke like, there's no way Wall Street is going to sit by and let a bunch of strangers on the internet make more money than them. Right? And so like, these idiots are going to go, they're going to buy Bitcoin, which then pushes the price up, right? And it's like this whole positive feedback loop, which Satoshi ended up calling out very early on, saying, listen, there is this like positive feedback loop to an asset like this. So it's fascinating to watch. Joe, what questions you got first? Cigar, thanks for coming on here and dropping bombs. I appreciate it.

• 23:52Anthony Pompliano?

  My question would just be about kind of what happens here with Fox, MSNBC, CNN, et cetera. What, what we've seen in my opinion, right, is that cable is obviously declining. People are losing, ditching their subscriptions every single year. Non-paid TV is increasing. Are they all just going to continue to try to transition? To these streaming services like we're seeing them launch and like what happens there in your opinion?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  So I've actually, I did a whole monologue on this. I predict a great war against your show, my show and others. And here's the reason why. These streaming services that they're launching are terrible. The CNN one, I'm not joking here, is some of their exclusive content is Jake Tapper's book club, parenting advice with Anderson Cooper and Fareed Zakaria's thoughts on geopolitics. Ain't no, oh, and Eva Longoria as well as Alison Roman's cooking show. Ain't nobody gonna pay for that. And the moment that they realize that and they know that they have poured a hundred million dollars down the drain. Same thing over happening over at Peacock. Nobody's watching Mahdi Hassan's crappy show or Zerlina Max.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  I don't even know her name, honestly. I think her name is Zelena Maxwell. Whatever. This is garbage. They are, they're pouring millions of dollars into these terrible products because they don't actually know how to program for something that people want. But when they find that out and you guys know this, what are they gonna do? They're gonna use the power that they still have in the mainstream to try to censor us. So this is gonna happen two to three years from now. It's really, it's gonna be one of the most brutal wars. This is also why I'm pro Bitcoin. We have to have the ability in order to make sure that we're competing on the level playing field. Right now, I'm sure you guys see this too. How does CNBC and all these places get all these views on YouTube?

• 25:37Speaker 02

  It's not real. It's like a fugazi. It's a, you know, it's like a ghost view. It's something that gets pumped out into the ecosystem and given preferential treatment over our show, even though people don't necessarily want to watch it. It's gonna be that times a thousand whenever they actually have to compete with you and I. When these cable contracts dry up in a decade from now, it's gonna be a bloody civil war.

• 26:00Anthony Pompliano?

  You're obviously building a platform within YouTube also, within the RSS feed and all of the other stuff ancillary to it. But like, are you actively thinking about how to defend yourself against this?

• 26:09Speaker 02

  So this is the thing, my revenue model, it don't, YouTube revenue is not something that I even think about. And here's the ride, because mine is direct subscription based and I It's a spy super cast. I own the customer relationship, Stripe data, email, that's it. So my business doesn't matter. If we got pulled off of YouTube tomorrow, I could still pay my bills. I could still produce a very high quality new show and I could post it, you know, wherever I needed to. If if necessary, I'm not saying it's necessarily going to come to that. And I'm not going to lie, like it'd still be a loss in terms of marketing and all that, but it's not existential. I built it from the ground way up with Crystal from day one with that in mind, which is we cannot be reliant on anyone.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  And we cannot have single points of failure. I've seen this happen too many times. I've seen people program for BS Facebook show. Some BS show on Twitter or whatever. And I was like, you're out of your minds. They could change their algorithm like this and you're dead and they are dead. I know people who lost their livelihoods as a result. So that was my plan. My plan was bet on the actual customer relationship between me and other people. And that was it. It's the purest form of support, the purest form of transaction. And ultimately it makes you uncancellable because they're the only people who I am ultimately accountable to.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Love it. John Cigard, has this shift, has this shift happened from independent creators kind of taking over the legacy in the mainstream? Has it happened yet? And if not, like, when does it happen? How does it happen?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Uh, it's one of those things where everything is happening until, or sorry, nothing is happening until it is. Uh, I'm forgetting the exact Lenin quote where it's like decades happen and weeks and weeks sometimes feel like decades. Some, it's something like that, but you know, not to quote Lenin, but you know, he was a smart guy sometimes. Uh, and what it came down to, which is that, look, it seems like it's immovable until it's not. And that's what's happening and where we are right now. The shift hasn't happened completely. Look, the legacy guys still control the big tech algorithms. Or if they don't control it, they can, you know, put their, put their, uh, put their, uh, foot on the scale or whatever. They can, they can move things in the way that they are, but this is something that happens day after day.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  You have to grind. You have to get more eyeballs, more attention. And the longer that you do that, soon you're gonna look at the numbers like Joe Rogan did, and you're gonna realize, holy shit, I'm beating CNN. I'll never forget the day that I looked at my numbers on YouTube, and I thought, this is like, you know, 2019, 2017, I think it was 2019, and I was like, holy shit, I was like, we just beat a CNN daily broadcast. I was like, this is crazy. Nobody realized it at the time. And then we would beat the Fox number, then we would beat the MSNBC number, and then you're talking millions and millions. If you would look at the cumulative, you're like, oh my God, hundreds of millions of views, you know, X million, tens of millions

• 29:05Speaker 02

  of unique viewers, and you look at podcast analytics, and it's hard to even fathom and comprehend how many people that is. I mean, I've been to rallies or to, you know, shows or whatever, with 40,000 people, and that's like, what, you know, one twentieth or whatever of somebody who will consume your content on a daily basis. Like, when you start to think of the scale, you can begin to understand how quickly that this can happen. And once you reach a critical mass, you just go like this. It just goes vertical.

• 29:35Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, before we let you go, I want to play a little game. I'm basically just gonna throw out names, topics, phrases, and you just tell me exactly what your unfiltered thoughts are. Ready?

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 29:45Anthony Pompliano?

  President Joe Biden.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Terrible.

• 29:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Ultimately, Biden just does not know how to meet the moment. He is a bad president because he is too old, he's out of touch, and he's just too much of an institutionalist. Look, Joe Biden, I've got some great books behind me. Great presidents made you feel as if they cared about the issues that matter most to your life. Honestly, you don't even really have to do anything about it. FDR didn't solve the Great Depression, ever, in his entire term of presidency, but he won three separate presidential elections because people felt like their life was being ruined, and at least the guy in power cared. Look, when you pursue Build Back Better and

• 30:31Speaker 02

  his voting rights, nobody cares. The price of gas is too expensive. My shit at the grocery store is too expensive. My kid has to wear a mask during school. I can go on. These are not even necessarily great. You know, I don't even have kids, but I'm verbalizing a problem that people have. The country is in chaos. People are miserable. The president is not even voicing a concern about that. And that's what makes him a bad leader. Okay, next one. President Donald Trump. Yeah, Trump, honestly, he had a lot of promise, but his problem at the end of the day was he just cared more about himself than he did about the country. I mean, I remember so many times in which Trump could have either tried to unite, tried to say something along

• 31:15Speaker 02

  the lines of better angels of our nature. But at the end of the day, he just cared about his own personal popularity and he cared more about, you know, his ego as opposed to the to the country. He had made a lot of big promises around building, bringing jobs back to America, about fixing trade with China. Almost none of that materialized. Most of it was just shitposting from behind the Oval Office. And so I would give him of, you know, as not as bad of a grade as Biden, but really up there. All right, next one. Federal Reserve and monetary policy. Ah, that's a good one. You know, it's fascinating. I'm sure that, God, I wish we could do this for like an hour because we could talk. I'm gonna bring you back like once a month, so don't worry.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do this. No, because this is actually something which requires a lot of nuanced discussion. What I would say the biggest failure is, is around the fact that quantitative easing and all of this was pursued without any democratic input whatsoever, and that the effects of quantitative easing have actually caused and created a system in which people no longer feel any agency in order to have input either both on their money, but also in how the broader economy runs. And so with the transfer of both wealth and power to just basically a very small group of people who are making all of the

• 32:37Speaker 02

  decisions which impact, what, 70, 85% of the global assets, it makes it so that people feel completely disconnected from the broader global economy. So on that, I have to give. Them a failing grade. Just, we will probably even disagree about like where, why, and all of that. But the key is this, which is that the actual legitimacy of Americans have and their faith, or have faith in the legitimacy of their economy is near zero. And honestly, it should be. The shit is fake. And so when you realize that, it's a deeply powerful thing, and I blame the Fed for a lot of that.

• 33:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Next one, politicians day trading stocks.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Oh, absolute ban. I'm very proud. Kristaline was some of the first people to draw attention to this with unusual whales. Shout out to that guy. Back, we've been doing this for over a year, reporting some of these trades. Absolute ban. We, I don't take their word for it. They want us to trust them. Do you trust Nancy Pelosi? Do you trust Dan Crenshaw? No. The answer to that is a flat no. My favorite was Crenshaw recently said that he needed to be able to trade to quote, better himself. Listen, bro, if you want to better yourself, come out here, play in the, actually start your own business. You can come and add economic activity. You're in Congress. Your job is to better the lives of your constituents of the American people. So screw you. That's really what I have to say to anybody who defends this stuff.

• 33:59Anthony Pompliano?

  True or false, breaking points will buy CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News one day?

• 34:06Speaker 02

  I would never buy those people.

• 34:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I knew it. All right. And then lastly is when you think of Bitcoin, what are the things that jump to mind in terms of why it's important for the world?

• 34:19Speaker 02

  I think I've, I've laid it out. We have to have an alternative controlled by nobody, which gives us power. The future of not just America, but the future of humanity is the ability to pursue individual actualization through your own power. Yes, with some assistance, family and all of that, but without reliance on broader essential authority. The Bitcoin is the most vital and centerpiece of that entire mission. And so I would say, and you know, this is originally why we even started talking. I'm so sick of the media coverage on all of this. They'll go Bitcoin crashed a half. Dude, I was shitposting moon memes at 15K. I literally remember that I was like going to the moon 15 I couldn't even imagine 35k and

• 35:03Speaker 02

  they'll go Bitcoin crash to 35 I'm like bro do you even know I mean I remember those roller coaster memes at like 8k then we go down to six and nine like man you know the way the way they cover this stuff they have no idea what some of us went through to even get here so I'm in for the long haul man

• 35:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I I think that uh uh the dream of Bitcoin crashing to 35k in the future like Bitcoin just crashed at $350,000 and we'll be like yes

• 35:30Speaker 02

  we'll be like yes dude yeah finally alright man I gotta jump off

• 35:36Anthony Pompliano?

  alright listen where should we send people to find you on the internet I just dropped the breaking points link in the chat everyone go subscribe if you're not a subscriber I'm not gonna say you're a loser but you should probably go subscribe what uh where can we send them on the internet

• 35:47Speaker 02

  breakingpoints.com breakingpoints on YouTube breakingpoints podcast esager on Twitter all of that

• 35:52Anthony Pompliano?

  yeah he has no hot takes zero hot takes on the internet definitely not show your mom his Twitter account awesome man thank you so much for coming on we'll do it again soon

• 36:03Speaker 02

  I would love to

• 36:03Anthony Pompliano?

  alright later thanks so much for listening to today's episode I really hope you guys enjoyed this one make sure you subscribed on Apple Spotify or your favorite podcast player and if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry we've got you covered head over to pompscryptocourse.com we've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry it's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode