#1152 Julian Dorey | Inside The FBI, CIA, & Criminal Minds

Julian Dorey is the host of the TRENDIFIER podcast. In this conversation, we talk about many of the different episodes that he has recorded. Episodes include a CIA spy, FBI integrator, and many criminals. We discuss what criminals Julian believes and which ones he does not believe. We also talk about FTX and bitcoin. ======================= Announcing LYCEUM | Miami, a day-long event on March 4th, 2023 in Miami hosted by Pomp. We’re gathering an explosive group of experts to engage in a series of fascinating discussions. We'll cover topics from investing, emerging tech, scientific research, sports, music and more. We have some massive names being announced via Twitter throughout January so stay tuned for details. This will not be your typical event and it certainly won’t be one you want to miss. We’re going to learn a lot, make some smart friends, and as always, we’re going to have fun. Spots are limited so head to lyceummiami.com to buy your ticket today. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 200,000+ 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/ =======================

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. We have no advertisers on this podcast, 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. Julian Dory is the host of the Trendifier Podcast. In this conversation, we talk about many of the different episodes that he's recorded, including with a CIA spy, an FBI

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  interrogator. We talk about FTX, Bitcoin, and many of the criminals that Julian has sat down with, who he believes, who he doesn't, and what the hell they all think about their previous indiscretions. I really enjoyed this conversation with Julian, and I hope that you guys enjoy it as well. Once you get done listening, jump onto Twitter and let us know what you agree with, what you disagree with, what you thought was correct, and what you thought we got completely wrong. I always appreciate the feedback and it helps make these episodes much, much better. Here is my conversation with Julian Dory.

• 1:13Speaker 01

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• 2:34Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:58Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Julian here with me. You have interviewed a ton of fascinating people from the FBI, CIA, and many, many other walks of life. What is it that draws you to talking to these people who come from just these different organizations who all seem to be somewhat critical of their past organizations, but also seem to be really prideful in the work that they did while they were within that organization?

• 3:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it's a great question, starting things off heavy here. But, I mean, yeah, there's definitely been an angle of my podcast where we talk with, say, like, government agencies. It's a piece of it. I talk with all different types of people, and they all interest me in different ways. But the rude answer is that, like everyone else, if I'm interested in it, I'll talk with them. And then, as far as, like, what criticism they're willing to give, that kind of blows me away sometimes. You could get a guy in there like Andy Bustamante, who is really, really impressive, and he's not allowed to say yet publicly where he was stationed, but I think when he went, he's on, like, every podcast now, but I think when he went on Patrick B.

• 4:06Speaker 05

  David, the way he put it was, "I'm not allowed to say where I was stationed, but I am allowed to say it was Asia. I speak Chinese and Thai, so you do the math." Right? So you can kind of figure out this guy was in an important part of the world. And he is very, very...

• 4:22Speaker 05

  Like some commenters will joke like this guy's the fucking PR man for the CIA or something. So he's very, he speaks up to the organization in a lot of ways. But even he will come in and say some things about like his own life and his own priorities for his family. Where it's like, well, that's definitely not a part of the old playbook here. And I think really what it boils down to is, I mean, you know it well. You've sat down with, what, over a thousand people now overall? It's like, you sit with people for a long time especially, like maybe not some of the earlier ones you did, where it was only 20 minutes or something like that. But as you went along and started doing long form, people will open up, you know? And I always want to make sure that, like, I'm protective of my guests.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  I don't want them ever feeling like, oh, I went into stuff I didn't want to go into. But we really haven't had that problem. What I find is that people like Andy, people like Jim, when they give some of that criticism, they'll, afterwards, they're like, you know what, that was fair. And they're cool with it.

• 5:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Andy is a former CIA spy, essentially.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Yes, he was a covert spy, was allegedly.

• 5:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Was. And Jim is a former FBI agent, right?

• 5:33Speaker 05

  Among other, Jim has a really interesting resume, Jim DiOrio. He was West Point Army Ranger. As an Army Ranger, he did a lot of undercover work, which is, as he explains it, very different in the Army, where you go undercover, you're going there to kill the people. It's not like, oh, get an asset or whatever. And so he did that for eight years and then went to the FBI, where he was 11 years on and off undercover, some really long jobs, some quick jobs. But became also a case officer through that time. And then ended up being one of the Bureau's lead international interrogators. So when they had a serious problem somewhere around the world, they'd call in Jim and he'd be the guy. So like when the Captain Phillips thing was going down,

• 6:19Speaker 05

  he was brought in to be on the other boat if needed, things like that. But he's just got a very, he's had quite of a ride over the last 30 years or so.

• 6:28Anthony Pompliano?

  What are the commonalities between somebody like a CIA spy, somebody who is an FBI negotiator, and then like, I'll call like an average citizen, right? After you sit down and you talk to these people, like, can you identify things that they actually share as qualities?

• 6:41Speaker 05

  Well, let's start with the FBI CIA thing. So there's a lot of differences that I've read about over the years before I knew a lot of these guys between, not that I know like a lot of them at this point, but you know, the ones that I do know. It's like, there are differences between CIA and FBI. And if you really want to start with it, it's the fact that there's longstanding rivalries between the two. FBI historically were the cops, CIA historically were the spies. Makes sense. Post 9/11 started to change that. So what I find is you're more likely to find now CIA agents and FBI agents who will speak highly of the other organization, still plenty who don't. But they're kind of working on

• 7:23Speaker 05

  a lot of the same things. That's not, let me say that better. It's not that they're working on the same thing all the time, but you see the CIA start to put more of an emphasis on China per se. You'll see the FBI start doing that too. Because the FBI looks at, you know, policing interests here, but our interests are also affected in other places. So it's like a really, it's a, it's a fine line. But, you know, the, the cultures I'm sure are different. And they're also both, from what I understand and been told, they're kind of changing at both of those places too. The FBI is the one where it really depends who you talk to. My, my takeaway there from, from what people told me is that it really

• 8:04Speaker 05

  depends on the office you're in at the FBI. There's different offices that have different philosophies. I don't really know. But it's hard to explain, but once you sit down with them, you can see the things that drew these guys to say the CIA and the FBI. But you also see how like their general demeanor and approach is different. Jim and Andy are interesting because they now work together a little bit. That was kind of cool. What do they do together? So Andy does

• 8:33Speaker 05

  For lack of a better way of putting it, he does like high level executive coaching and consulting for like Fortune 100s and Fortune 500s, as well as some stuff for like private high net worth individuals. Jim does a lot of security stuff. He's kind of like a glue guy. He says, "My only rule is I don't kill if it's on American soil. If it's somewhere else, we'll figure that out." I don't know if he's serious about that, but you never know.

• 8:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe.

• 8:57Speaker 05

  But he and Andy obviously have a lot of circles where it's like Andy could be running with this company and want to do jobs A and B, but he doesn't want to do C and D, and Jim wants to do C and D. And now like, "Oh, we got FBI, CIA, say less." That's kind of how people are. But yeah, like they work really well together, and I think that's because, you know, without them telling me this, just my takeaway, they both have had to... They both have done serious covert work in different settings, and they both have had to

• 9:35Speaker 05

  take some lives. And they don't take that lightly at all. And that's, you know, it's not something I've ever had to do. I can't really relate to that other than what they try to tell me.

• 9:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What's fascinating about many of the conversations you've had is that you had FBI and CIA agents, and not just any, I mean, these are covert operators and interrogators and things like that. But you also have had people who have been on the other side of maybe the battle, the good guys versus bad guys, the cops versus the robbers.

• 10:06Speaker 05

  What is good and bad though, too, you know?

• 10:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes. So Matthew Cox is one of, at one point, he was one of the FBI's most wanted fraud suspects. And then also you had a guy who was a billionaire at the time during the 2008, 2009 financial crisis. And I think he actually is the only person to come out of the financial crisis that actually went to jail for a period of time.

• 10:28Speaker 05

  So the better way to say it is that really no one who perpetuated that fraud in 2008 ever went to jail.

• 10:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  Because by the, and I'll explain the background of Raj Rajaratnam, who you're talking about, but he had nothing to do with that. And that's not what he was charged with.

• 10:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 10:43Speaker 05

  Raj is actually a guy that you need to sit with.

• 10:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  Because there's some language there that, you know, I worked on Wall Street, you and I both know that, but like, you know, you're a lot longer in the tooth as far as like knowledge of this stuff than I ever got a chance to be. And Raj was, to put it mildly, you know, he's probably one of the 10 best investors to ever live. And he was charged in the end of 2009 with insider trading. He ran a hedge fund in New York. And for all the guys you know, who were on Wall Street during that period, I'm sure they say a lot of the same things that the guys I know say to me. And that is that especially whether it be in hedge funds or in some of the, on the trading floors and stuff like that, there's always some things that come through.

• 11:29Speaker 05

  You're doing your job every day, things slip on the phone, whatever. That's not what they accused this guy of. They accused Raj Rajaratnam of being in charge of this mass conspiracy on Wall Street. Like, you know, the show Billions?

• 11:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  It's basically what they were saying he was doing. Like where you're meeting people in a back alley or a pizza place and be like, give me the fucking numbers on, on this company. That's not at all what he did. And I had, the funny thing is, I had followed that case. I was like a freshman in high school or something, or maybe not even in high school yet. But I was interested in, in that case because it was such a big deal at the time. And he got found guilty. He got the longest sentence, I believe, still to this day ever for insider trading. And I thought he was guilty because, you know, I read the news, I read the Wall Street Journal, all this stuff.

• 12:17Anthony Pompliano?

  How long was the sentence?

• 12:19Speaker 05

  The sentence was for 11 years. He ended up doing seven and a half. Kim Kardashian got him out of prison. For like, the last half a year he was gonna do pre-parole, he got to do it home because of Kim Kardashian. Really? Shout out to Kim. But I got connected to him through a fan of my show who reached out and said, "Do you know who Raj is?" I said, "Fuck yeah, I know who Raj is." He's like, "What do you think of that?" I'm like, "Yeah, I thought he was guilty, but I thought, you know, I think insider trading is not a good thing. I just thought it was kinda crazy like how much they played this up." And he goes, "Okay, okay, that's fair or whatever, but I think you'd be really good to do a podcast with him." And then we started talking about, I said, "Well, what's your opinion?"

• 13:00Speaker 05

  And he went through the whole thing and he's like, "You know, I'm a friend, so I'm obviously like, I'm a little biased, but..." "No, I think he was innocent as all hell." And this really got my brain turning because I'm like, "We should, this was like a big case. Like, I'm sure this guy was like innocent." But what had happened was, and part of what you brought this up for was, the Southern District of New York didn't want to go after the cases for the 2008 crisis, like the actual fraud on the mortgages and everything, because they were complex and they were not guaranteed wins. So they said, "We need something to make it a guaranteed win." And they hired a PR department. They had like, I forget the exact number, so I won't say it,

• 13:44Speaker 05

  but they had more than several people whose sole job was media relations, working for the Southern District of New York. And they went after hedge funds to sell the hedge funds as cracking down on Wall Street. Now, is there some bad shit that happens to hedge funds? Absolutely. Should they go after that? Absolutely. But they sold it as, "We're getting all the crooks who did it in 08." And that's not what they were doing. So when I was talking with Raj's friend, I said, "You know, I want to talk to him first as well, like meet him on Zoom or something quickly, but, you know, let's wait a few weeks on this. I want to do a deep dive on this whole thing." And so I started going through everything.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  And I read his book that he wrote by hand in prison as well, which of course is biased towards him. You have to take that into account. But then I started looking at some of the court documents. My dad, who's a civil litigator, not a criminal attorney, but I had him look at a couple of things too. And it started to kinda click to me with some of the stuff they did in the Southern District of New York during that era. And I'm like, "Holy shit, like..."

• 14:52Speaker 05

  I don't think this guy did this. You know, do I think that there was probably something somewhere where there were some trades, where there were information? Sure. But there was, one thing I was damn sure of was, I'm like, I don't think there was any criminal intent here. But I want to know that when I sit down with him. So, we, we sat down and did a podcast. He came down, like, for the day. You know, he was there, like, the whole day. Awesome dude. One of the most humble people I've ever met. You know, you've sat with a lot of people who have a lot of money, right? You've sat with some serious billionaires and stuff. Through my last job, I did sit with a lot of people who have a lot of money. And plenty of them were good people, but, you know, my experience is that

• 15:34Speaker 05

  there's kind of a thing, when you're sitting across from someone who maybe is worth a billion, or 600 million, something like that. Where, when you look them in the eyes, it's like, you're you and I'm me. You know what I mean? Like, this little thing there. And there was none of that with him. He was as cool as a cucumber, and what really did it for me was, one of the many things wrong with his case was the government had to rely on witnesses, which, to an extent, like, I understand, this is a part of the process. You, you have to do that. But it's a tough thing, when you have to turn people who are corrupt. And the main witness, who is, for all intents and purposes, responsible for him being behind bars.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  That witness, in addition to actually being like, a really bad dude, for reasons that didn't have to do with insider trading, or anything like that. That guy was called to testify two and a half years later in Raj's brother's trial. So, the last day of the statute of limitations, Raj's brother, who was not, like, the number two, or, you know, he was like, a VP, or something. Raj's brother is in Brazil, and the Southern District decides, we're gonna charge him, because he won't come back to America now, because they're originally from Sri Lanka. He's like, hopefully, we'll get a W. This'll be great. Dude goes, fuck that. Gets on the first flight back to New York.

• 16:59Speaker 05

  So, the brother lands in New York. Now, mind you, Raj has now been in prison for almost two years, at this point, guilty of the 14 counts. They charged the brother with, I think, I want to say it was eight counts, but maybe we can check that. It was, you know, it was a number of counts. And they were all the same trades that Raj was charged with. This time, that witness, though, comes into court and he testifies the opposite. Because his probation was over, the government had already paraded him out there as like, Anil, I think his name was Anil Kumar. Anil Kumar was one of the best witnesses we've ever dealt with, whatever. And this was a much smaller case because the brother was smaller potatoes. And so, the prosecution was like stunned when he testifies the opposite.

• 17:44Speaker 05

  Like, oh no, they didn't know about this, they didn't know about that. And they just, they didn't charge the guy with perjury, nothing. They quietly let it go. His brother was found not guilty in three hours. Which means the jury didn't even order pizza. Right? I mean, this is a financials case. You usually spend like two days as a jury just looking at the trades before you even start talking about the case. And so Raj, I saw this online while we're researching this, and my dad was like, what the fuck, looking at it. Raj then files an appeal, obviously, like, hey, your witness just testified the opposite in court, they found me guilty, think I need a new case here. Tossed out. And I just watched the system. Then I find the same year, his driver, who'd been the driver for the family

• 18:29Speaker 05

  for a few years, who would drive his wife to prison to visit him. There's a big story in the New York Post that says the driver is given the details on like Raj living as king in prison and all this, and how he smuggles in stuff for Raj to get favors. They don't report the fact that that, and because he filed a lawsuit. They don't report that fact as coming three weeks after the driver beat the shit out of his wife, almost to death. And of course, got fired by Raj's wife. So now, suddenly, you know, he claims all this stuff. And they just, I watched how they painted this guy. And then I met him. And now I know him. Now he's a friend, too. And of course, I may be a little biased on the

• 19:11Speaker 05

  situation, but I wasn't when I started. I mean, when I talked to him on Zoom, before we ever like, he came down and did the podcast, he asked me point blank. He said, well, I heard you had followed the case, what'd you think? And I said, I thought you were guilty. Like, I was very upfront about it, and he was like, "No problem, you know, whatever." But afterwards, you know, I was like, "There's probably a few things that literally every hedge fund was technically guilty of." Front-running trades, abso-fucking-lutely, you know, stuff like that, that happened. But when it comes to like, what he was accused of and all that, I was like, "Wow."

• 19:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Did he ever admit to doing any of it?

• 19:48Speaker 05

  Not only did he not admit it, the second, to show billions, to bring that up again, to be very specific, that is, as it's been alleged, and I think maybe Andrew Ross Sorkin has confirmed this, but I'm not positive, that's based on the Southern District's chasing of Steve Cohen. Steve Cohen is probably the best investor ever on Wall Street, and, you know, Raj was one of the best, he obviously ran in circles with Steve. The Southern District never wanted Raj, they wanted Steve. And if Steve did anything wrong, Raj didn't know about it. That's what he says, at least.

• 20:28Speaker 05

  And so, when he was taken down for questioning, when he was first arrested, they made, they spent like, over, it was in seven figures, they spent to arrest him. Like, they had duck boats in the river, on the East River in New York. This guy's like, you know, a 50-year-old Wall Street guy, he's not exactly running 12 miles away from cops, right?

• 20:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Or swimming across the river.

• 20:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think Raj is like, a great swimmer, that's just, I don't know, just how I look at it.

• 20:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Doesn't have a secret submarine ready?

• 20:58Speaker 05

  No, no, so, you know, they have the cameras out there, everything. And they take him downtown, the guy answered questions with them without a lawyer. He was so perplexed by this, like, he legitimately was like, "What? What do you mean?" Didn't know what he was arrested for until they took him down, which is perfectly legal, they don't have to Mirandaize you until you get down there, and all that. But, he answered questions without a lawyer, and he was like, they said, "Listen, we got you on these wiretaps and everything," because he was the first wiretap case in Wall Street history. And, they're like...

• 21:38Speaker 05

  If you talk to us now, like, you know, this isn't good for you, but you won't go to prison. You do the right thing. You answer on some other guys. You can go home to your wife. You're worth billions of dollars. Like, you're still gonna be worth billions of dollars. Like, call it a day. We got you. And he said, "No, I'm innocent. I don't, and I don't know anything about other people. I run one company." He didn't even know a defense attorney. Never met one. Didn't know anyone who was a criminal. Didn't know anyone who might be a criminal. Like, he had no con- he was definitely, like, a little naive with this whole thing, which I'm not even blaming him, but call it what it is. He definitely was. And he, you know, he's an immigrant from Sri Lanka. He had

• 22:18Speaker 05

  always believed in everything about America. And so he thought out the justice system. This is how it's supposed to work. I've been accused of something. I think this is totally wrong, but you go into court, you argue the point, and they're gonna see it. Because, you know, guilty people get found guilty, innocent people don't, right?

• 22:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Especially rich ones.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  Right. And that's not really, especially at that time, you know, you had like the, the, what was it? The-

• 22:42Anthony Pompliano?

  The mob.

• 22:43Speaker 05

  Not just the mob. What was the, why am I blanking on this right now? There was Occupy Wall Street. They were like outside his trial in 2011. So, wasn't exactly a great time for him, and obviously the media was completely against him. But he, he said, "No, I'm not gonna inform on anything." So then, they keep offering it. And he's, and, and they're like, "You don't understand. We have like a 98% conviction rate. Like, you're fucked." They never wanted him. But he keeps saying no. And so then, he gets found guilty on all 14 counts, which, right before it went to the jury, his lawyer looked at him and said, "We just won 14 to nothing." So, you know, that was quite a shock when suddenly, you know, he's actually convicted.

• 23:27Speaker 05

  He's facing 25 years in prison.

• 23:31Speaker 05

  Again, they go to him and they say, "Well, now you're gonna go to prison." "But like, you know, you can make this a year or something and work for us." "Fuck you, I'll go to prison." And you can ask Jim DiOrio, you can ask these other guys. That doesn't happen, and that doesn't happen in white collar, ever, either. But to put it full circle with this guy, you know, he did all his time. He wrote that book by hand in prison. And he has, instead of, you know, the guy's, he has not told me his net worth, but I can kinda do math, talking with him. The guy's worth five, six billion dollars. And he was, I think he was like trading Ethereum from his jail cell in 2016. I mean, the guy's a fucking genius.

• 24:17Speaker 05

  And he could just go off into the sunset now with his money, his family. He's got his total freedom at this point. And call it a day after all the shit that happened to him. But he is making it a life calling to help out people who are abused by the system. He said, "When you go into prison, it's not like, oh, everybody's innocent. There's a lot of very guilty people in there." But he said, "The numbers probably," I think he had an exact number based on his estimations, "but it's closer to like 80% are fully guilty. And then 90% are maybe a little guilty or something, but maybe are doing a lot more because they didn't, you know, they got bowled over. And then 10% are not guilty and they just got bowled over."

• 25:02Speaker 05

  He said, "I could have outspent the government six ways to Sunday for the rest of my life, every single day. That's how much money I had. And they did this to me. What does that say about everybody else?" So he fights for it. And probably one of the cooler, heavier moments I had in 2022 didn't, for me personally, like, didn't come on the podcast. It was up in New York in November. I was up there on some business and we had a meeting at Raj's office. And it was me, Raj, my friend Ryan Tate, who runs VetPaul, another guy I think you'd really like, Mark McCrane, who's the original guy who hooked me up with Raj, really good

• 25:43Speaker 05

  friend at this point, Jim DiOrio was there, and then another guy, Jason Flom, who is one of the co-founding board members of the Innocence Project. And we're sitting in a room and Jason and Raj are going back and forth because obviously they have a similar passion here. And what would happen is Jason's talking about a lot of cases he works with guys who were put on death row and they're innocent and DNA can prove it and all that. And then he would ask Raj about his case to kind of relate it back in and they're just having this back and forth about that for a long time. And maybe like an hour in, Raj is bringing up something from his case to answer a question where you can tell like, because you know, every time you do this, you still relive it.

• 26:28Speaker 05

  And you could see like, he's frustrated because he has to remember this thing that happened and like they did this and you know, this is, this was his life. And he like stopped himself. He said, you know, I thank God every day that I live in this country. It is the best country on planet Earth. You don't see people going to Russia. You don't see people going to China. They come here. And you know what? This is the best part. He goes, "This country has been so good to me and my family." Now, is he worth five, six billion? Yes. Is that good?

• 27:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would say it's pretty good. Guy had 10 years of his life taken from him. He had his reputation, which was impeccable, taken from him. He has his name plastered everywhere in a negative light, taken from him and frankly, and I'll add in my color commentary, taken from him in corruption. And he still says that. And I'm telling you, Jim DiOrio and Ryan Tate, two veterans, you're a veteran, I'm watching them across the room. Ryan's almost got a tear in his eye listening to it. And Jim, who, you know, Jim's a, that's not a dude who reacts to a lot of things, but I see him, you know, ex FBI too, by the way, who's the people

• 27:52Speaker 05

  who ran this case on Raj. I see him like backing up. And then he actually apologized to Raj on behalf of the FBI too. It was really, that was something. And so when I'm sitting in there, I'm like, wow, this all came from like a, one fucking podcast that I did, just getting these people in the room. That's kind of cool, you know?

• 28:11Anthony Pompliano?

  When you have a conversation with a guy like that, how do you try to determine like whether you believe them or not? Right? I've had people who I've spoken to over the years who

• 28:20Speaker 05

  Great question.

• 28:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Go on to be accused and arrested of things, especially in the crypto industry. I've had people who have come on and underplayed things that were way more heroic than they let on, right? Like, everyone's got an angle. So how do you kind of unpack that? Hey guys, what's going on? I hope that you're enjoying this conversation, but I wanted to interrupt for a quick second and tell you about a brand new conference that I'm hosting on March 4th at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The event is called Lyceum Miami, and tickets are completely free for anyone who wants to come. I'm bringing together many of the most popular guests from the podcast over the last couple of years. Some of the guest speakers that we've already announced are people like Vivek Ramaswamy

• 29:06Anthony Pompliano?

  from Strive Asset Management, or Delian and Mike Solana from Founder's Fund, Chris Williamson from the Modern Wisdom Podcast, Cody Sanchez from Contrarian Thinking, and billionaire Christian Aggermeyer, among many others. I've got a number of amazing surprise guests as well, some that you definitely will not expect, and others that come from walks of life that you will be scratching your head as to how I even got them to show up. But come check out Lyceum Miami on March 4th. The Lyceum was a public gym in Athens, Greece, where people used to come together Talk about ideas and debate topics that were important to society. I want to meet people in person, in real life.

• 29:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Once again, after three years of a hiatus from real life events. And so I'm hosting the event. And as I mentioned, anyone from anywhere can come to this event completely for free. All you need to do is go to lyceummiami.com and you'll be able to pick up a free general admission ticket. Make sure you claim your ticket in order to get in through the doors. Lyceum Miami is going to be a great time. So come check it out. Come hang out with me, many of the popular guests from the podcast and other like-minded individuals. Lyceum Miami, March 4th, Miami Beach Convention Center. I hope to see you there. All right, let's get back into this conversation.

• 30:29Speaker 05

  Well, to be clear, I've had on a lot of guys who are very guilty of what they did. We're very open about that. So I've had a couple situations. I'm trying to, there was one other where I was pretty, pretty certain that the dude hadn't really done it. I can't, I'll remember it later, but for the most part, like as far as big ones, it was Raj. And part of that is I don't have time to prepare for podcasts. I don't do it ever. Like I sit there, we kind of like you, you know, we just turn on the cameras and mics and start going. Raj was one podcast. I think there's two I've ever prepared for. The other one, a little.

• 31:12Speaker 05

  Raj, I spent a month on that case before he came in there. I mean, I knew everything about that case and it's also not my favorite podcast because it was an important one to do. But when I do a second podcast with him down the line, that will be a hundred times better. Because in the first one, all I could think about was I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And I had a dude in front of me who's a billionaire hedge fund guy. This is not a popular guy. To say like, "Ooh, I think this guy was innocent," or whatever. And all I could picture was every hole that someone could poke into his arguments. So that podcast was very different than other podcasts like that wherein I was extremely active.

• 31:57Speaker 05

  Because my goal for that one wasn't like, "Ooh, let's have the most entertaining thing today," or like, "Let Raj talk for three hours." My goal was, any asshole who can go into the comments and say, "But you didn't address this thing." They wouldn't be able to do that. We have this one on the record, and it's there. And I do think, knock on wood, I think we accomplished that with that one. But to answer your question, number one, you don't know for sure. You can feel things in your heart, but like, I think you have to listen to your gut, too, with things.

• 32:31Speaker 05

  I would also never be able to be a defense attorney, for sure, because you know, you know with some people. I had Bill Cosby's lawyer in. He ain't gonna tell you this, but I'll bet Brian knew that Cosby did that, right? You know, it's tough, whether you're just sitting in a podcast seat or just a regular person listening to a story as a listener on the show. It's tough to know if people are telling the truth. So all my goal is, is to put all of the information as best as we can get it out there. And then trust my intuition and my gut, but there's never a guarantee. Like I said, though, I really, as a human, I really like Raj a lot.

• 33:14Anthony Pompliano?

  It makes me think of Jose Baez. I don't know if you know who that is? He's the guy who represented Casey Anthony, Aaron Hernandez, Harvey Weinstein, a number of other very high-profile cases.

• 33:25Speaker 05

  Isn't he doing... Is he doing Sam?

• 33:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I believe that he is doing Tory Lanez. That's the big one, yeah. And so when you think about these situations, like you build a reputation on taking on high-profile clients and defending them. And I always think about like in the movies, they're like, you gotta tell me, did you do it or not, right? Like, that's the way I'm gonna be able to defend you. And so I've always thought one of the most entertaining slash like, kind of gripping content that ever could be captured would be something that legally is not allowed to be captured, which is the private conversations between high-profile attorneys and their

• 34:13Anthony Pompliano?

  celebrity clients. So like, imagine a documentary where like Jose Baez, right? If he somehow could get the approval and had documented his conversations with Casey Anthony, with Harvey Weinstein, with Aaron Hernandez, with Tory Lanez, right? It would be a fascinating insight into the psyche of people who are facing, in many cases, many years in prison, potential death penalties, like all these things. And did they do it? Did they not do it? What are the details? What are they thinking? How do they think about risk and reward and reputation? And, you know, all these different components. It is one of the most complex, you know, scenarios that a human can be put into. And that guy does it every day.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  Can't imagine it.

• 34:58Anthony Pompliano?

  That's his living.

• 34:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a great point you bring up. And like I said, like with Brian, that was a big part of my conversation with Brian McMonigal, the Cosby guy, because, you know, I've actually known him throughout my whole life, because he grew up in, or he was from the town I grew up in. And I've always said this to people, especially after like the Cosby thing happened, it's like, who would ever defend that guy, right? But... He is probably one of the most moral, great human beings I've ever known. And not only that, I've never heard someone say a bad word about Brian McMonigal. It doesn't have to do with, "I can't believe he's repping Cosby," or something like that. You know, something professional in that way. As far as like as a person, I mean, people speak of him in the highest regard.

• 35:45Speaker 05

  And it's always fascinated me, and I asked him about exactly what you were just saying. Probably spent like a half hour around that topic, like, "How do you do it? How do you leave that at home?" And he said, he's an extremely humble guy, but he's like, "There are certain cases that are not for me." So I think he might have used the example, like, "If you blew up people and you're a terrorist or something, look for a different attorney." I'm not doing that. But there's still some crazy line there, where behind that line is still some wild shit.

• 36:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 36:18Speaker 05

  And, you know, I asked him, "Would you let Bill Cosby around your daughters? You have three daughters." Like, "How do you feel about that?" And he said, "I don't have to answer that question. Because that's not my job. My job is to put the government to the test." And he told stories about, he said, "Look, don't get it twisted. When you go in there, you are going in there to win. You ain't going in there to lose. That is the game, because that's the game you're playing against," which is a whole separate argument we could talk about with prosecutors and things like that. But, you know, are there times where perhaps

• 36:56Speaker 05

  somebody got off who did it that I represented? Sure. And do I maybe know it in my heart if they hadn't told me? Maybe. But I'm there to do that for the guys who didn't. And when I win those cases, there's a balance in there that sets the world straight. And my job is to make sure the government does their job, because the Constitution says it has to be their burden of proof. And again, I could never do that. I'm glad someone like him does. I know there's some scumbags who do it, but there's also a lot of good people who do that. And maybe guys like me don't do a good enough job highlighting that. So it's nice to have him in as like a...

• 37:38Speaker 05

  Living, breathing person who can highlight that a little bit just by people listening to them. I mean, it's really impressive stuff.

• 37:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, I've talked to a lot of people who, both on the podcast and off, various law enforcement agencies, various, you know, kind of organizations that look at a lot of this stuff. And I will say the one thing that if you talk to somebody who's new in their career versus somebody who's been doing it for a while, people who've been doing it for a while, they're like, listen, this has to be buttoned up. This has to be done the right way. This has to have every single T cross and I dotted and all these things. And a lot of times, if you ask them, hey, unpack that. Why are you so caught up on like this standard of excellence or getting things right? Do you know, it's like, because I actually had, and they'll name a case, or they'll say, my, you know, my colleague had a case and somebody came in and basically exposed that they hadn't done their work, right?

• 38:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Or hadn't actually put the time, the effort, the care into doing it. And so it, in some ways, is also a check on power that I think, you know, he's kind of highlighting. But it then forces law enforcement to do the right job, right? Not necessarily always better job, right? But it's just like, do the things that will get to a burden of proof. And if you can meet that, then that's what the court is there for. Now, are there crazy shit that happened with courts all over the place? Of course. But it's a pretty interesting dynamic between, you know, they're meeting in a courtroom to basically argue over ideas, definitions, evidence, and ultimately determine, you know, kind of outcomes, right?

• 39:08Speaker 05

  And you're determining people's freedom too. That's the crazy thing. Like, we don't think enough. I'm not one of these people who's like, no one should go to prison and stuff like that. Like, I, that shit's there for a reason. And, you know, when people do awful things, like, no, they should not be a part of society. I understand that completely. And I will constantly remind people that to not get out of control with this stuff. But you are dealing with years or totality of people's lives. And I do often wonder about, you know, how

• 39:42Speaker 05

  What's that balance of like deterrence and punishment? And then also accounting for the built in statistical percentage of we got it wrong, but we don't know we got it wrong.

• 39:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:54Speaker 05

  You know, like, how do you? What about those people like at the Innocence Project who, you know, they they get out of prison, who there was a guy that got out, I think Jason just finished a case a few weeks ago, a guy did 32 years, was proven that he didn't do it. It's 32 years of his life. You know, it's like, if you're in court and you're not entirely sure, it's a slippery slope to say that things can be like really, really subjective.

• 40:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:26Speaker 05

  Because the law is supposed to have some sort of balance, some like rules on the tablet that we can follow, right? And this is what happens if you don't follow it. But like you did an amazing job in the podcast you recorded before this, bringing up the Kane Velazquez thing. I love that. I saw you right before you did that, I saw you put up his picture, I'm like, oh shit, this is perfect. Because for people that aren't familiar with that, as you outlined, he he's a great UFC fighter and all timer who attempted to kill a man very publicly, like wasn't wasn't trying to hide it.

• 41:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Literally tried to gun him down in the street.

• 41:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think he like hit the guy's dad in the arm or something, which, you know, not a great shot, apparently, but.

• 41:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And didn't kill the guy.

• 41:10Speaker 05

  Didn't and didn't kill him, not not talented at killing, that's actually probably a bonus, but yeah, he he did that and you could just read that and be like, wow, well, that guy's got to get off the street. Or you could read about the fact that the dude who he was trying to gun down had just been let out on bail after being accused of raping his his four year old son.

• 41:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Young relative.

• 41:31Speaker 05

  Hundreds of times.

• 41:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 05

  I believe it was his his son, because his daughter's like 13, check that, but I believe it was his son. And they had let the guy out on bail and he was driving home and Kane Velazquez saw red and decided that that was not okay. And actually, small world, but my friend Johnny Drinks was in Dana White's office when this news was breaking. And Dana gets the gets the call and like, he's like upset, you know, like.

• 42:07Speaker 05

  In a weird mood, obviously, about it, but I think he may have even said this publicly later, but he looked right at John, because they were talking about it and they were just stunned at what had just gone down, because people are hearing about it. And he said, you know, we all say, if this happened, we would do this. Well, he fucking did it.

• 42:29Speaker 05

  You know? Am I gonna judge that? Like, I would wanna do the same thing. I don't know if I'd have the guts to try to do what he did. But it's like breaking a law, you know? So, that's where it gets really weird. But I think in any system, I mean, I'm not smart enough to figure it out for sure. I don't think any one person is at all, but in any system, there's always outliers with stuff. And how do you deal with those outliers?

• 42:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:54Speaker 05

  And it's tough, because, you know, people get one life. And if you're the one caught in the middle of it, well, too fucking bad, man.

• 43:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 05

  And that's a bad answer, but...

• 43:02Anthony Pompliano?

  He didn't ask to be put in that situation.

• 43:04Speaker 05

  No, no, he didn't.

• 43:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Right.

• 43:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, and you're correct, this is four-year-old son, and so, uh, four-year-old can't fight back?

• 43:13Speaker 05

  No. And that's, that's like the worst thing you can do, besides killing a kid, like...

• 43:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 05

  I don't have kids, you do, right? You're like, I, I know from talking to a lot of people, your life changes when that happens. I'm sure you can imagine, well, you don't wanna imagine, but I'm sure you could use very quick imagination what you would wanna do.

• 43:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:35Speaker 05

  If something like that happened, and, and I think that's a really human thing. And I don't, I, no, I don't think that makes him a bad person in the slightest. And I wouldn't have, like, part of my whole thing with, especially locking people up, is, would I be in any way even thinking twice if I were standing next to this guy in line at the 7-Eleven? And the answer with a guy like that is absolutely not.

• 43:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, actually, it's even, uh, further than that, which is, in many ancient societies, uh, even some that aren't that far past where we live today, he would have actually, uh, been looked down upon if he didn't.

• 44:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Go after the individual, right?

• 44:16Speaker 05

  You're right.

• 44:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And so the societal norm, the societal expectation changes.

• 44:22Speaker 05

  Doesn't take long either.

• 44:24Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 44:24Speaker 05

  You know?

• 44:25Anthony Pompliano?

  In the 1920s, if you had that happen to you, and you went out in the street and you shot someone, I don't know if there's that many people who are saying, hey, he shouldn't have done that. Right? Now, part of it is society definitely advances. It improves, it becomes less barbaric, more comfortable, right? All these things.

• 44:49Anthony Pompliano?

  But I just think that there's a lot of folks who look at that situation and they say, hey, it is what it is, kind of Dana White, right?

• 44:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:58Anthony Pompliano?

  They ask themselves, what would I do in that situation?

• 45:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, but now we, that's an interesting point you bring up too, like thinking, putting a year mark on it too, like even as early as, or late, I should say, as the 1920s. That's not that long ago, especially in the context of time. It's like, you know, the internet was still a far off thing. TV was still not a thing. This mass communication wasn't there. We hadn't fought World War II yet. You know, there wasn't, the life expectancy, I don't know what the exact life expectancy was, but I would imagine, you know, it certainly wasn't 77. And I think one of the patterns over time is that we take life and the value of life

• 45:40Speaker 05

  so much more seriously as like a human culture as time progresses. And yet, there's things that then we don't take seriously about it when we're thinking about, oh yeah, they just locked that guy up for a hundred years. Okay, go about my day. Or we take it so seriously that we inject like safety into everything. And you can suddenly make an argument that, you know what? It's not safe for us to cross the street anymore. It's like, who do I gotta fuck for some middle ground here? I think we should absolutely take life seriously, but let's do it on all levels and let's also allow people to have, you know, make decisions. And so, guess what? Sometimes people make bad decisions and the worst thing happens and that sucks and I'm not.

• 46:26Speaker 05

  Unempathetic to that, but statistically speaking, it happens.

• 46:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 05

  You know?

• 46:31Anthony Pompliano?

  We talked about someone like Raj, who kind of you get through it and your opinion is, hey, he, you know, didn't kind of do the things that they accused him of doing. Uh, and then you said that you've had people on who, uh, definitely did what they were accused of doing. Um, I'm wondering, uh, the bit, another big one that I remember, uh, is you talked to this guy, Matthew Cox.

• 46:49Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 46:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Who did, uh, I think the FBI, uh, had him as one of the most wanted people, uh, on their list.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  He's the G-boat. You know about that?

• 46:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Explain this.

• 46:59Speaker 05

  He's the greatest fraud of all time.

• 47:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes. Explain it.

• 47:02Speaker 05

  So he, you seen the movie Catch Me If You Can?

• 47:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes. Which now supposedly Frank Abagnale, uh, made up the whole story?

• 47:11Speaker 05

  Apparently he was a fraud of a fraud. So he didn't actually do these things. And there's very good evidence to point that out, which I immediately took a picture. I can give it to you too, if you want to stick it on the screen. But when I found out that news, I sent Matt like, where I do this thing where I'll send those three red lights. I'll send three at a time, really big, like 47 times. So people's phones blow up. And then I sent him a picture of Michael Jordan with his face on it, with Matt's face on it. And I wrote, G-boat, you're officially the greatest fraud of all time. But yeah, you, you started to say, right. He, he was, and it didn't take long. I mean, the guy never committed a crime until he was 30 years old. And it only took five, six years before he was locked up.

• 47:54Speaker 05

  But the dude was in modern history, like the biggest con man the FBI dealt with. I mean, he was, he was wild and, and he is a, like, I, I like Matt. I, I call him a friend. I text Matt a lot. He's been on a couple of times. He's really tight with Danny Jones, whose podcasts with him were fucking amazing. And he has him on all the time. It's like, you know, it's kind of funny sometimes when I get along with him. But I, I look at Matt as like, almost like a science experiment a little bit. Cause he's so, it's like, he's now so hyper aware of the shit he did. Whereas when he did it, no awareness. You're just doing it.

• 48:38Speaker 05

  Fuck you. You know, he, he's a, he's a natural narcissist. Everything's about him. That has to do a lot with his childhood and stuff like that. But, you know, it, it made him like the first crime that he ever committed.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  Technic, I don't know. It was a crime, but I don't even know if they, it was so small, I don't know if they charged it in court.

• 48:58Anthony Pompliano?

  I think it was 2002 with the mortgage fraud.

• 49:01Speaker 05

  I think it was like 2000, but yeah.

• 49:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and, and he didn't, uh, he didn't go to jail or anything. They just like probation and then he got fired as a mortgage broker.

• 49:09Speaker 05

  I'm talking even before then.

• 49:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 49:11Speaker 05

  The very first time anything happened, he was late on his bills. Like he had, you know, his car bills. He had a young son, which was an accident. And a wife who, it's hilarious when he talks about his first wife, because they like talk all the time today, but they like rib each other. It's very funny. But he couldn't close a mortgage. And he finally closes one. And so he goes back to his manager's office. He hands all the documents over. And this is, you know, this is 2000. This is back in the wild, wild west where anything passed. But she starts going through the files and he's just standing there and she goes, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And she's putting everything like it's a yes, like over here on the side. Okay.

• 49:56Speaker 05

  Puts that paper off to the side, one off to the right side, keeps going, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, everything's good. And at the end, he's like, oh, we only got one over there. This is a full stack. We must be good. And she looks up and she goes, unfortunately, we can't do it. He's like, what the fuck? Like, what do you mean we can't do this? And she says, well, I think it was, he wrote his income is 62,000. It needs to be at least 69. And Matt's like, oh my God. I can't close a deal. They're gonna take my car, like all this shit. And she goes, don't worry about it. Pulls the desk out, takes out white out, whites out the two, makes it a nine. She goes, all better. And gives it to him and he looks at her like she just invented fire.

• 50:38Speaker 05

  And he's just like, what, you can, she's like, don't worry about it. He's like, oh, I'm gonna do that again. And he just started, that's where it started. And then a lot, very, you know, skipping everything, it runs into, you know, he's the greatest identity thief to ever live. You know, I got him in my dad's house and my dad's like, how easily could you take this? He goes, Dave, I could have taken the whole fucking neighborhood in the last 10 minutes. This is not hard. You know, like the things he would do, you really have to listen to him tell the stories, because I won't do it any justice. He's so, another guy you should have in, he's so entertaining. But he, like, he's been in twice. And like I said, I do it, just, we go with the flow and I didn't plan this, but it worked perfectly.

• 51:18Speaker 05

  The first time, we covered his life of crime, all the way up to when he went on to the run from the FBI. Cause it was three and a half hours in, I'm like, we gotta, we gotta stop, right? Second time, I'm thinking, okay, now we'll finish the story. No, we covered three and a half hours, his whole life on the run, and cut off right when he got arrested. And now the third time, I'm gonna bring him in, we're gonna cover prison and hopefully get through it. But the guy is so entertaining, like, the way he tells a story, but as he'll say, guilty as sin, in fact, for all the things they charged him with, and it was a lot. Like, they probably missed some things. Like, he's so open about it. And we've had plenty of guys like that, Tim McBride's another one.

• 52:02Speaker 05

  And his wasn't, like, you know, he was just like a huge pot smuggler. No guns, no nothing, like, perfectly safe, like, the DA liked him, you know, they didn't go too hard on him. But, you know, guys like that were guilty of what they did, and, and I've had plenty where it's like, there's not really a question here. The only, I remember the other one, the only other one I had where he actually was guilty, but the law was fucked, was my friend Nick Castellucci came on, and he was one of the original Xbox Underground hackers. And so, I was, explained his case incorrectly before he came in. So I really kinda fucked up, but he was great, and like, walked it, walked me through it like six times. Cause I kept, I kept thinking in my head, I'm like, there's no way I'm hearing this, right?

• 52:45Speaker 05

  Cause I heard this guy stole money, and that's not what I'm hearing. But essentially, there was a really broad law, I forget what it's called, that lets you, it gives the government the leeway to charge almost anyone

• 53:00Speaker 05

  selling some sort of second-party service with a felony. As an example, what Nick did, to put it very simply, there's things called FIFA coins that you earn playing the game FIFA. And when you take those coins, you get them for like, like you finished playing a game against the computer, they give you coins. And they're not worth any money, but you can like, get a messy jersey or something in the game.

• 53:27Speaker 05

  So it's not like, they don't, there's never a point where FIFA sells those coins for a dollar value. They are worth nothing. But people go online and on the second market for people who are like trying to get clout in FIFA, they sell them. So Nick and Xbox Underground figured out, they broke the terms of service, absolutely. So like, of course FIFA had every right to kick them out of the game forever. Like, it was not ethical. But they broke the terms of service and figured out how to earn points like immediately. So they were printing millions of coins. The coin market, I think it was something like they were selling a million coins for $65 was the market rate. These guys got involved, suddenly

• 54:08Speaker 05

  it became $8. And they were making seven figures on the secondary market, selling it around the world to people who just like playing FIFA. The government goes in and paints this whole fraud case out of it. And by the letter of this law, and I've talked to lawyers on this, they can do it. Like, they can convict you, like, according to the law, he broke it. But for people at home wondering like, well, how easy is this to break? As an example, you ever get those texts from the guys who are selling you the idea of growing your Instagram following? Of course. Every single one of them is breaking the same exact law. That is the exact same thing. If you are taking something from the terms of service of some

• 54:50Speaker 05

  private entity and using some sort of hacking mechanism to break that and then monetizing that, and I'm explaining, lawyers are gonna yell at me for not explaining this all the way. But like, that's what he was charged with. And so what's really sad about his case is, there were four of them charged, and it was a slam dunk case, right? And so the agents wouldn't allow them to talk to each other. And they told all the guys that everyone, you know, pleaded guilty and whatever. Turns out, one of them, they didn't offer that too. And he had to go to trial. And he got found guilty, and he killed himself. Wow. And so Nick, who is like the nicest, this was when he was 19 years old, he didn't

• 55:31Speaker 05

  know like what was going on. Nicest dude ever. You know, we didn't really talk about it on the podcast. Cause he-

• 55:40Speaker 05

  Asked not to, and so I didn't get to ask a lot of questions, but that's fine. But that's something he now lives with forever. And yet, you know, he handles this so professionally and so well. And like, his career's worked out because he's a brilliant coder and hacker. So he's okay, but you know, you think about stuff like that and you're like, there's, you know, there's some real downstream consequences to these things. So when people do things where maybe the law actually is fucked up, maybe you should think about that. Maybe you should think about what that means. You know, like in Australia, I had Australian lawyers hit me up like, oh dude, we study some of your tech laws, or however they say, I don't know how they say it. But we study some of your laws here and how fucking crazy they are. I'm like, that's rich.

• 56:25Speaker 05

  Australia's telling us we're crazy. Like something's, you know, we're a little backwards here based on the last couple of years. But that's, I think you can do that with any country, you know? There's some, some sort of hole in the system. So I happened to walk into one there where the guy was in the hole. But all the other ones, Louisa, he was an original cocaine cowboy, guilty as sin, did 13. Uh, who else about it then?

• 56:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I always find that the people who are guilty, they just say it. Yes, they just talk about like, they're just like, look, yeah, I did it. You, you got me. Cool. I did my time. Thank you. I'll move on with my life.

• 56:58Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 56:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. Like they're, they're actually like pretty honest about, uh, and, and again, maybe they're exaggerating. Maybe they're leaving things out, whatever, but like they're not usually trying to, uh, downplay or hide it. In some ways, uh, they're almost proud of it.

• 57:13Speaker 05

  Some of them are.

• 57:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Like there's like a pride to it.

• 57:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And it, and it's easier, I think, once they've left that life behind to talk about it with nostalgia to some degree.

• 57:22Speaker 05

  Think it depends on what it is, but like a guy like Tim McBride, bless you, who was, you know, moving weed.

• 57:32Speaker 05

  He never did it again. He left the game behind. And this is back in the, you know, he was part of Chuck Aluski Island down in Florida. And they basically, like, this is when cocaine was huge. And so the Cubans, they didn't even, they didn't know how to bring it in through the Everglades, like the weed. They were worried about the coke and all that. So they just had these regular Floridians living down in this little place in the southern Everglades on the west coast of Florida, running all the weed. Like, they were like the biggest ones, one of the biggest ones ever in this country. And, you know, once he was done, he was like the godfather when he was like 25, doing that. Gets caught when he's 29. This is late 80s.

• 58:14Speaker 05

  Never did it again. Left the game. But he does speak about it with some nostalgia because to this day, like, he's friends with, I think it was like the Secretary of Homeland Security for Florida, who calls him a legend. Right? And he's like, that was the biggest mistake we ever, the guy who ran the whole case against him, who there were every agency was on it, but I think this guy was Secret Service. They're really good friends today because he's like, I can't believe we wasted all our money on this. It was weed. You guys had no guns. Like, it's way worse now. Because now the people who do it, it's all the cartels. It's a mess. But, you know, it was breaking the law. And he knows that. So he never did it again. And so he can wax poetic, you know, and not necessarily feel bad about it.

• 58:56Speaker 05

  Neither do I on that one. But, you know, he's still like very upfront, like, yeah, I went to prison. I broke federal law. It's kind of what it is.

• 59:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, probably shouldn't have done that.

• 59:07Speaker 05

  Technically, yes. Whereas Matt Cox, it's like, I should have never, like, he knows. He should have never done that.

• 59:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What, um, what makes a good conversation? Like, that you enjoy? Forget, like, the audience, forget numbers on YouTube or podcast downloads. Like, what makes a good conversation for you?

• 59:23Speaker 05

  Well, I gotta be interested in it. Sometimes if I'm just having, you know, I still do episodes and I always will, and hopefully I'll do, like, even more moving forward. But I have episodes where we're just talking, right? It's not like some feature story or something. And those are fun. Because if they're lively, if you're trying to make sense of this big fucking confusing world we have these days, and all the goddamn opinions out there, which I always tell people, please, for the love of God, don't take my opinion seriously. Like, I'm just like you, trying to figure it out. You know, I think when you go about it that way, and the other person is kind of like your dance partner in that. The only difference between that and a regular conversation, having whiskey at the bar is the fact that we have cameras up and we're in a studio.

• 1:00:07Speaker 05

  And you forget that, like, maybe the real best way to answer that question is, the thing that makes a great conversation is when you forget the cameras are there within five minutes. And I can honestly say, you know, that has been, I can't remember the last time, because, you know, I produce everything myself still, unfortunately and all that, but I can't remember the last time I didn't forget about the cameras five minutes in, in a podcast. And I think that's a real testament to the people who have come through there. Obviously, that means we're hitting on people who, of course, know how to talk and communicate, but are bringing a lot to the table. If it's a crazy story, enough said, right? If I brought in someone like you, there's a lot there.

• 1:00:50Speaker 05

  Like, I don't really have to do anything, I just gotta keep you fucking moving. But, you know, other ones where there's more back and forth or whatever, you obviously have people who are great conversationalists themselves, and that just, it's a, it's a good feeling. I mean, like, why do, why do you, you, you were obviously already an extremely successful guy, worked and earned your way and everything, why did you get into content when you didn't have to at all?

• 1:01:16Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a cheat code, I gotta talk to anyone I want.

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  There you go. And why do you like talking to anyone you want?

• 1:01:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Because I learn.

• 1:01:23Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 1:01:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It is, uh, it's the single easiest way to get people, uh, to have a conversation with me, is, by the way, I'll do something in return for you, I'll blast it out to this big audience, and you can get all the value, you can talk about whatever you want, you got a, uh, you know, something you're working on, you got a book coming out, whatever, like, whatever you need, however I can make you successful, I'll do it.

• 1:01:48Speaker 05

  Hey, guys, I hope that you're enjoying this conversation. As you probably realize, we don't run any ads on this show. That's right, all the other podcasts, all the other YouTube shows that you watch, they have advertisers. We don't have any direct relationships with advertisers, and we simply create this because we enjoy doing it. Now that we do that, though, we have a team, and if you'd like to support us...

• 1:02:09Anthony Pompliano?

  One way you can do that is to go subscribe to the Pomp Letter. It's a daily letter that I write to about 235,000 people about my personal opinion on financial markets, business, technology, and Bitcoin. Just go to pompletter.com and you can sign up there. I'd love to have you join us and it's a great, easy way to support the work that the team and I are doing on a daily basis. All right, let's get back into this conversation.

• 1:02:33Speaker 05

  Well, what I like about you is, and for people listening out there, I'll say this.

• 1:02:42Speaker 05

  You and I have mutual friends. My older friends at college were your younger friends when you were there. And so, back in 2018, unrelated, this other kid, Cole Cannelli, shout out Cole. He had connected with you and I, Cole was my boy and I was talking with him all the time, like, wait, you met with Pomp? I'm like, I know people who know Pomp. I never fucking met this guy. And so my little idiot self was like, I'd love to go, I love sitting with people. So I'm like, I'd love to go sit with Pomp. So when, when my guys got in touch with you to ask that, because I asked them, you were like, fuck yeah. And I didn't, I didn't think about this at all, right? I'm still working as a banker at the time.

• 1:03:23Speaker 05

  You're like, literally the guy trying to end the banks here. Never entered my lexicon. But I go in to meet you and it was, it was the end of December 2018 in New York.

• 1:03:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin's at $3,000.

• 1:03:40Speaker 05

  Do you remember what you did in that meeting?

• 1:03:42Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 1:03:43Speaker 05

  I'm gonna tell this story too, because you want to talk about conviction. Let's do a little great PR for you right now. And we met for, you gave me an hour, more than an hour of your time on a Monday. I was some fucking 24-year-old in a suit who works at a bank. I'm the last person that you should be giving any time to and you never, like I, my idiot self realized that later. But would have never thought that way, like it was just great for me to learn from someone who was out there killing it and doing really cool shit. And, you know, I was so impressed with that and, and I had nothing to offer you, but you made a point of keeping in touch with me and everything. So I just thought that was like the coolest thing and I really appreciated it.

• 1:04:22Speaker 05

  But in the middle of that meeting, we're, I was just asking you all kinds of questions about markets and technology with markets and this and that. And at some point, like the price of Bitcoin came up. As I asked it, and it was the only time you whipped out your phone the entire meeting and like real fast, you like reached out, pull it out, flip it over, you're like, okay, let's see, Bitcoin, uh, 3387, it's never gonna go lower than that. I would take every dollar I have and put it in Bitcoin. And I want you, now Bitcoin's having a tough time right now, but it's a lot higher than that. And I want people to go look at a chart of Monday, December 17th, 2018 of Bitcoin.

• 1:05:05Speaker 05

  And you're gonna see a bottom tick, the 15th through the 17th, right there. This guy then gets in the elevator afterwards. I go to take a piss when we're done, say goodbye. I go to the elevator, Pomp gets in the elevator and rides it down with me. I'm like, where are you going? Guy went home and bought Bitcoin. He didn't just tell me to go buy Bitcoin. He went and did it his damn self. And he called the bottom of the market. So that was, that was, I tell some people that story. I don't know if I told that ever like publicly, but that was, I still think, even when Bitcoin's like struggling and stuff, I still think about that a lot because, you know, I have been, I think a lot of the criticism that you've been getting since this FTX thing,

• 1:05:46Speaker 05

  which I would love to talk with you about, has been very, very unfair. And it's not just you. You know, there's, there's other people getting it too, but it, it feels like an attack on the system and, and people, you know, when things go bad, they're always looking for people they can blame. And I see some of the other people in the Bitcoin community who are a little bit over maxi, I guess, or whatever, who come at you. And I think that's just like kinda gross, but you know, I had asked you in that meeting, and I'm gonna mess up exactly how you said it, cause you said it really profoundly, but I'm gonna get the point across. I'd asked you in that meeting, something to the effect of, you know, Pomp, What if you're wrong about this stuff? Now, I'm sitting there as a believer, like I own this shit.

• 1:06:30Speaker 05

  I still have never sold a dime of any crypto I've ever bought. You know, some of it that I'm like, I don't know about that, but other stuff, I'm like, okay, I see it. But I asked you that and you were a real matter of fact, you're like, look, I believe that you have to go search for great evidence on things that are, you know, towards innovation or something to that effect. And when you have great evidence, if you believe it can stand up against the counter evidence in a good way, you should put your heart and your mind behind it and you should be willing to say that shit publicly and say it to anyone who would listen. And if you're wrong, you need to figure out afterwards why you're wrong and that's how life goes. And then you gotta move to the next thing and build better evidence. But it wasn't like, oh, I'm just gonna go to something and see if I'm right. It was like, look, this is, I've made this my life.

• 1:07:15Speaker 05

  This, you know, obviously you were a part of, what's, what's Yasko's company called?

• 1:07:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Morgan Creek.

• 1:07:19Speaker 05

  Right, so you've been a part of Morgan Creek at that point for a while. You'd done full tilt, I guess like two, three years earlier. You worked your way up through Silicon Valley, like, it's not like you were hopping on this on a Monday and you and I are talking on Tuesday. This is a very different thing and, and, you know, I knew, like anyone would know, that the criticism that comes with putting yourself in the middle of those bullets to say nothing of like building your following on Twitter, which I'm not jealous that you did that. Like, I, I think Twitter's the weirdest place to build a following, it's very hard. But like, you know, to put yourself out there like that requires a lot of bravery. And how many tweets do you have now? Like a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand?

• 1:08:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, number of tweets?

• 1:08:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Probably sixty, seventy thousand.

• 1:08:03Speaker 05

  Whatever, same shit. You know, I could go find two hundred tweets in there that are probably horrible. That you, like, I, I was watching you before this, when we were in your office and you were talking to me about something and you flipped up Twitter. And I watched how fast you did stuff that you were not thinking about, which is perfectly fine. But I'm thinking like, what if one of those likes he just gave, that there's no way he read that tweet, says like, you know, Sam Bankman's a great guy? Like, someone can go run that screenshot three years from now and people will be like, fuck this guy, or whatever. And so, you know, seeing you deal with the things that have come your way in light of this FTX thing that we're gonna talk about, like...

• 1:08:45Speaker 05

  I found a lot of it to be pretty gross. I think if there's one thing, though, that is kind of one of those like criticism compliments, it's that you are interested in a lot of shit and you're also really smart. So you want to do a lot of different things. And from the outside, you probably try to do too much.

• 1:09:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:09:04Speaker 05

  Right?

• 1:09:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I get one life, though.

• 1:09:06Speaker 05

  That's true. But like, I want to do a lot too. I know a lot of other people want to do a lot. We're not doing as much as you are. Maybe we could be doing more. You know, I think when you're talking about shit where it's like people are investing their money and you're not telling them to do it on a lot of this stuff. That was another misconception people had. They'll find a way to paint you with that. So I, I, I like your decision to remove the advertisers and stuff and, and kind of get past that because I, I do think it was pretty much a perfect storm to come at you with all this. But I gotta, I gotta ask after all that, like what? Not that you saw it coming or anything. I don't think anyone did, but when you first get the whiff of, of that FTX news,

• 1:09:50Speaker 05

  when it was first like, oh, maybe something's wrong here. What's going through your mind?

• 1:09:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Nothing.

• 1:09:56Speaker 05

  Nothing?

• 1:09:58Anthony Pompliano?

  You have to remember, uh, across business, um, across a lot of this stuff,

• 1:10:07Anthony Pompliano?

  most of the people that you see yelling and screaming, they're not professionals. Right? And so like, the amount of money that was lost in some of these companies, some of them I was an investor in, some of them I wasn't.

• 1:10:23Anthony Pompliano?

  People would like jump off bridges, literally, right? In, in terms of, uh, this stuff. And by the way, also, you have to think not just about the aggregate dollar amounts lost, but the percentage of money that some people lost. Right? Some people had $5, but that $5 meant a hell of a lot to them.

• 1:10:47Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:10:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Or 500 or 5,000 or 50,000, right? Um, and so it's not to say that any one person feels more or less pain or anything like that, but it's.

• 1:10:58Anthony Pompliano?

  The professional knows that they're taking risk. The professional knows that it could not work. And so, you know, if you think of value lost in all of this, yeah, we're up there for sure in terms of probably taking some of the biggest L's in all of it. But also, we took a lot of W's along the way. And you don't hear me complaining about it, right? And it's because you can't change the past. You can only go forward. And it's also a thing of like, even though many people would look at like the quote unquote,

• 1:11:42Anthony Pompliano?

  risk management that take me personally, me as an individual that I overlay on my life. They'd be like, that's crazy.

• 1:11:49Speaker 05

  Wait, what do you back up?

• 1:11:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Risk management just means, take the simple example of how much of my net worth I put in Bitcoin.

• 1:11:58Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:11:58Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a lot of people who would say, oh, why would you ever put more than 5%?

• 1:12:01Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 1:12:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And usually when I would ask people, I'd say, put 2 to 3%, right?

• 1:12:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:12:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And the part that's hilarious to me about the entire situation is I'm probably the most conservative person or one of the most conservative people. Most of the people I know in the Bitcoin community say, go put all of your money in Bitcoin. Why do you have any dollars, right?

• 1:12:22Speaker 05

  I think the speech you were giving me, this is back in 2018, but I think you were saying you were running around the companies, saying, get off zero.

• 1:12:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, just literally get off zero, get 1%.

• 1:12:32Speaker 05

  It wasn't like, put 50% of Bitcoin right fucking now.

• 1:12:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Like literally, I'm the, I am for better or worse, the person who started saying, get off zero and get to 1%, right? And so like, not really that risky.

• 1:12:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Anthony Pompliano?

  On top of that, for every person who has, you know, said all this stuff about these advertisers, it's like, listen. If regulators and other people were all deceived, tricked, whatever, I'm not gonna, no one person is gonna like figure it out, right? And then on top of that, uh, nobody ever talks about all of the advertisers that did custody solutions, or had self custody, or private key management, right?

• 1:13:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, it's only-

• 1:13:19Speaker 05

  They talk about the losers.

• 1:13:20Anthony Pompliano?

  They, well, not even just the losers, it's the ones that fit their narrative.

• 1:13:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 1:13:24Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:13:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And so like, you know, look, I, uh, uh, the problem for a lot of the individuals who are yelling and screaming, is that I've been doing this longer than them, for many of them. And I've actually been on the inside. I'm not an idiot on the internet who comes from the traditional financial world and is like, oh, I don't understand Bitcoin.

• 1:13:44Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:13:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 1:13:45Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:13:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I know all the players. I know who is ethical and who's not. I know which companies are completely full of shit and run, and using the name Bitcoin to actually mislead their audience. And I know who the good players are. And I've just held my tongue. And at some point, maybe I won't. I haven't decided yet how, how I would, you know, kind of move forward. But what I can say is that there's a lot of people who are yelling and screaming and beating their chest. And that long list of people doing that are the exact people that they're all hiding something. They're trying to distract from the things that they're doing. And what I always, you know, there's a, there's something I learned in my life

• 1:14:29Anthony Pompliano?

  over the years, that the more somebody yells about something, the more likely it is that they're actually trying to hide something. And you see this with like politicians, you know, that they'll be, uh, pushing all this like anti-gay legislation. And then it turns out that they have like, uh, you know, it's a man who's a male lover or something, right? Like, like, there's always like something, right? And so the second that I see someone beating their chest, talking about how they're virtuous, or they're ethical, or they're honest- I immediately just red flags go up, right? Alarms go off. And what's crazy to me is that regardless of all this nonsense, Bitcoin just doesn't care, right?

• 1:15:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Like block after block after block. Bitcoin doesn't even know Twitter exists, right? It just continues to produce blocks of transactions. And most Bitcoiners aren't on Twitter.

• 1:15:26Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:15:28Anthony Pompliano?

  No. There are probably more people who hold Bitcoin at this point than monthly active users of Twitter on the entire platform.

• 1:15:39Speaker 05

  What's the market cap at this moment? Like five, it's back above 20, so like 500?

• 1:15:46Anthony Pompliano?

  The total market cap of Bitcoin right now is 400 billion, right, almost exactly.

• 1:15:51Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:15:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's estimated that there's anywhere between 150 and 250 million people who hold Bitcoin, any amount of Bitcoin, right?

• 1:16:01Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:16:03Anthony Pompliano?

  What is Twitter's monthly active user number? Probably 200 million, 250, maybe 300 million. Like, it's not a billion.

• 1:16:11Speaker 05

  Here's a better question then. How many people own Bitcoin and actively recognize the fact that they own Bitcoin and pay any attention to it? That might be, that's because of course, that makes a ton of sense. Like, you know, Twitter doesn't have anywhere near those numbers. But as far as like people who, even if they don't own a fuck ton, like I'm, I'm pretty poor, like I don't own a fuck ton, but it's my money, right? So.

• 1:16:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I think most people who have Bitcoin know they own Bitcoin and they pay attention.

• 1:16:38Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:16:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Now, is it, let's say it's 200 million people who own Bitcoin, maybe 98% of them, you know, know it and 2% don't or something? But like, most people who hold Bitcoin know they have Bitcoin?

• 1:16:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:16:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's because there's high friction to getting it still.

• 1:16:54Speaker 05

  Can you, can you explain that? As far as like, are you just saying like it's you have to go through a process to get it? You have to be able to store on a cold wallet?

• 1:17:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't pick it up on the ground. It's not like, oh, I found $5. I put it in my pocket. I forgot I had it. Right? Like, you have to have done something to get it usually, in terms of signed up, gone through KYC process, gone and bought something, talked to a financial advisor. Like, there's multiple ways you could get it. Bought a miner to actually mine Bitcoin. You had to go through some kind of friction. And so it's like a conscious opt-in decision to get it. Now, you may forget where it is. You may forget how much you have, you know, whatever. But you know that you got some Bitcoin, right? For the most part. And people who may even know, I had Bitcoin, but I think I lost it. They still know I had Bitcoin, right?

• 1:17:41Speaker 05

  I do know that. Those stories give me ajna.

• 1:17:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so I think the biggest lesson, frankly, over the last year is like, don't have heroes. Right? And what I think that we are watching is like, that's true outside of the Bitcoin ecosystem. That's also true inside the Bitcoin ecosystem, right? And like, that's just a great thing in life, is like, don't put people on a pedestal. Don't have these heroes. It's also a lot of hypocrisy. A lot of hypocrisy. And my approach to this stuff usually is just like, look, I just kind of take the high road. There's people who literally spent, there's literal accounts that have been dedicated to just attacking me relentlessly, over and over and over.

• 1:18:26Speaker 05

  Some of them are straight up spam accounts, obviously, right?

• 1:18:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, they, I mean, we haven't even gotten into like, the whole, there's definitely entire bot networks that are created. I probably blocked hundreds, if not thousands of accounts that were created in November 2022. And all they did was tweet at me.

• 1:18:40Speaker 05

  Did you see the one, this one was kind of funny? That there was like, five Pakistani dudes who were doing the, I start cracking up. They were doing the, block five rocket ship to the moon. It's like, all right, well, at least that one's real. Because you see these accounts and it looks like, it says they're created in November 2022 or whatever. And it's just like,

• 1:19:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, I have a pumpliano is the devil. Or it just, you know, people should be able to know that. But they don't sometimes. Well, and also, you have to remember that you'll never be attacked by someone who's doing more than you.

• 1:19:18Speaker 05

  Probably true.

• 1:19:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 1:19:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Never.

• 1:19:21Speaker 05

  Unless it's like you're like Sam Bankman or something, then you might get attacked by people doing more.

• 1:19:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Did anyone else who's attacking him build a $40 billion company?

• 1:19:30Speaker 05

  I'm not so sure he did.

• 1:19:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So that it begs the question, right?

• 1:19:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:35Anthony Pompliano?

  But like you start to look at it and you're like, who is attacking him? Now, again, I don't want to defend him whatsoever, or I don't think anything that he is alleged of doing is good should have been done, all this stuff.

• 1:19:47Speaker 05

  How long have you known him, by the way?

• 1:19:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I didn't, I don't know him super well. I interviewed him once. I think we talked one other time. That's pretty much it. But if you look at, you know, look, he really kind of only came on the scene in 2019, 2020 ish time, right? So he hasn't even been around really for that long, two, three years, right?

• 1:20:06Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:20:09Anthony Pompliano?

  But yeah, I just think that a lot of times when you see people attacking others on the internet,

• 1:20:14Anthony Pompliano?

  almost never is the attacker doing more than the attackee. And that's true, forget like all the Bitcoin crypto stuff, right? Like that's just like in general politics, like all this stuff. And so I think it surprises us when somebody does do it, right? Like if Elon Musk punches down on someone, I think that's why people are so offended.

• 1:20:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Cause they're like, wait a minute, dude, you're like one of the richest people in the world. Like, why, like, like this is beneath you.

• 1:20:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? It's also why we see politicians, like if a politician ever goes after like a private citizen, like dude, this is like, this is like beneath you, like, like as a society, we're thrown off, right? But man, are we really acceptable of the opposite.

• 1:20:54Speaker 05

  We are. That's what the, you know, that's, there's a lot of positives and negatives with everything, obviously. But that is to be the total captain obvious point, the, one of the huge downsides of the internet and the instant connectivity is the ability of, of not proper criticism, that's always good. But you, what you're talking about, which is where, you know, people create fake people and do it. And, and they, they create, I mean, look at. I think the whole XRP movement happened because bots were created. You know, I talked to the guy who took that down. He'll never come on the podcast, but it's like, that involves like moving financial markets. So where does this shit end?

• 1:21:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Twenty years, twenty years, Skip Bayless has attacked LeBron James. For twenty years.

• 1:21:37Speaker 05

  LeBron's never responded?

• 1:21:38Anthony Pompliano?

  LeBron's never responded. Now, I won't, I won't say who it is, but I know someone very close to LeBron, who has literally wrestled his phone out of his hand to get him from responding. So don't think that he's immune, he doesn't read it, he isn't upset, pissed, frustrated, all those things. He's a human. For twenty years.

• 1:21:58Speaker 05

  That's a good friend.

• 1:22:00Anthony Pompliano?

  He just said, hey.

• 1:22:01Speaker 05

  Taking the phone.

• 1:22:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Just get to practice, man.

• 1:22:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Go win championships.

• 1:22:05Speaker 05

  The fact is, that definitely means he usually does completely ignore him, which is very impressive, because I think, you know, I don't like criticizing people unless, you know, it's like Sam Bankman or something obvious where it's like they did a lot of shit wrong. But Skip Bayless is everything that is wrong with media. Like if you want to point it out, and he's not even in politics, like which is really crazy to think about. But I don't know.

• 1:22:34Speaker 05

  That dude has monetized bullshit. Like he's monetized bullshit hate of specific people, or bullshit love. I mean, we all remember the Thibault movement and shit like that. Nothing against him, but like obviously wasn't a great NFL quarterback at all. Skip Bayless thought he was Jesus Christ, literally, in a football uniform. And it's like, you know, people like that, if they, the point you're making here that's interesting is like, they've always existed in the mainstream narrative before we had all this stuff, where the critics rose to the top, right? So what makes you think that once you give people a keyboard and an account, they're not gonna, they're not gonna spread that as much as they can?

• 1:23:16Speaker 05

  Because they just, that person, that Skip, just represents a lot of other people who would be the same way.

• 1:23:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Most of the people who are yelling and screaming at strangers on the internet are just unhappy people with themselves.

• 1:23:26Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:23:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? They're deeply unhappy in it, and actually if you can take the approach as somebody who's usually on the other end of it, and be compassionate.

• 1:23:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And can be empathetic and could say, man, how bad of a day do you have to be going through?

• 1:23:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:42Anthony Pompliano?

  To say that? I've had death threats. I've had people say all kinds of crazy insane things. And I always think like the things that people say, if I took what they said, and I've made them put it on a T-shirt and walk around for a day, they'd be embarrassed.

• 1:23:59Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But guess what? They probably going through some shit.

• 1:24:06Speaker 05

  Most likely. And I do, I share your sentiment in dealing with a lot of it. I mean, I have fun with most of it. Like, I consider it engagement. It's huge help. So, you know, I'll fuck with them. But, you know, I've also never had to deal with, like, the only thing I've ever done is make some content. It's only so much that, you know, you get people who disagree with opinions, but like, so what? When you're dealing with movements like you have, I mean, that's, that's where you've been. You've been on the forefront of like, crypto or Bitcoin and things that affect people's future viewpoint of like the world and how it impacts geopolitics and shit. That's a whole nother realm.

• 1:24:48Speaker 05

  And the criticism that you open yourself up to there, in my opinion, is on a whole, like, I can't, can't relate to that. I don't know what that is. I'm glad I don't know what that is. But I think, I, I do think you've really dealt with the stuff that's been coming your way well by taking the high road. And it's nice to hear you seem to, like, sitting across from me right now, you, you seem to really

• 1:25:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I read all of it.

• 1:25:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:12Anthony Pompliano?

  That's what people don't understand. Most people just shut off their phone. I read every single comment. Every single thing somebody said to me. I loved it.

• 1:25:19Speaker 05

  You loved it.

• 1:25:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Because it just fired me up. I literally, I'll never forget, I was sitting on the couch one day and Plina walked into the room. She was, "What are you doing?" And I was like, "I'm reading everything." This is like, one of the bad days. And she's like, "Stop doing that."

• 1:25:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And I was like, "I want to remember every single thing these people are saying." I read every single comment. And, and by the way, like, you're not supposed to do that. Right? Like, rule number one of the internet, don't read the comments. But I read every single comment.

• 1:25:45Speaker 05

  I read all of them.

• 1:25:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And- My takeaway from it was I learned a lot, but I learned a lot. People want someone to yell at.

• 1:25:54Speaker 05

  Right, what you're saying.

• 1:25:55Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the conclusions I came to is like when you get praise on the way up, you gotta basically just be a man and eat the fucking hate on the chin on the way down.

• 1:26:05Speaker 05

  Hundred percent.

• 1:26:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Sure, right? But you also have to find a balance between uh, these people are using you as a cheap option for engagement for themselves.

• 1:26:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so if you can just remember who you are and what you do, whatever. Somebody said it to me, um, I won't say who it is. But he said, Pop, while they're yelling at you, you gave a presentation to a central bank about Bitcoin.

• 1:26:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Right? So like, again, super fortunate of the opportunities to do stuff like that. But like how disjointed, right? Of reality from all this stuff.

• 1:26:52Speaker 05

  No, because people take themselves too seriously and they take every single little thing too seriously. And then when you add their money into it, all bets are off. But you know, the other thing about you is like, you like to just like have fun. You know, you're like almost in like a fun, corny way too. Like always just trying, like I always see you with a smile. Your content kind of comes across that way too. And God knows you're on Twitter all the fucking time typing shit out. I know some of it's gotta be boring, but still, you know, like there's a lot of it where, you know, you're a cheerleader with stuff that's going on and that's an easy target for these cynics to go after. Like, oh, Pop, you're not putting the Bitcoin price on there on the way down and shit. And I ain't gonna lie, on the way up, I was thinking like, ugh,

• 1:27:36Speaker 05

  might eat some of this on the way down, but you know, like that's, that's exactly, it's genuinely you, so I'm all right with that. But you know, also people gotta do what they're gonna do. The way I do something is totally different from, you know, the way other people do it. So I really try not to judge that too much. But you know, for all the people who are trying, even before the FTX thing, who were like trying to levy criticism against you for like,

• 1:28:04Speaker 05

  Sleuthing your activity online, like people would be like, oh, he got rid of the laser eyes. Or like, oh my God, he hasn't tweeted about Bitcoin since 3:23 PM.

• 1:28:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Laser eyes was my favorite thing. I literally took the laser eyes off like three months before anyone said anything.

• 1:28:21Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:28:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And literally, the first one that tweeted me, I almost responded. It was like, glad to see y'all are paying attention.

• 1:28:29Speaker 05

  But like, do you think, because when you go to put shit like that on, like, that's the kind of stuff, even if I were involved with this, like, I just wouldn't do. Cause I'd, I'd, I'd try to keep like a, as much as I can, like, just level, kind of the same shit, give my opinions, whatever, call it a day. But you know, when you start to get caught up in, in the fact that, yeah, people are having fun with things, there's little movements that happen. Like when you go to put laser eyes on your profile for the first time, like, is there the thought, like, uh, maybe it's gonna be awkward if I ever have to take these off?

• 1:28:59Anthony Pompliano?

  No, fuck no.

• 1:29:00Speaker 05

  No? You just fucking do it?

• 1:29:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Who cares? Who cares if I take them off? If you're so butthurt-

• 1:29:06Speaker 05

  They shouldn't, I agree.

• 1:29:07Anthony Pompliano?

  That I put laser eyes on, or took them off, or whatever, then you need a new hobby.

• 1:29:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:29:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, you're a loser for caring about what other people on the internet do with their profile pictures, or their bios, or whatever. Like, I said to somebody who is very well known in the space, he DM'd me privately, and he was like, hey, hey, hey, man, uh, did you sell your Bitcoin?

• 1:29:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I was like, what? He's like, I saw you taking down your laser eyes. I said, bro, you're a grown ass man, dude's worth billions of dollars. I was like, and you're fucking on the internet right now, worried about what people do with their profile pictures? I was like, dude, go hang out your family, right? Like, go, like, what are you talking about? And we had a good laugh about it, like, he was, it was, whatever, but like, I think that also, uh-

• 1:29:59Anthony Pompliano?

  The risk is, you can't turn Bitcoin into a religion. And there's some people who are trying to do that. And I think it's a real dangerous thing.

• 1:30:07Speaker 05

  And I think, and in all fairness and honesty, like I think sometimes it's people who have been associated with you, or that may even be friends of yours and whatever. And I see some of this stuff, and it gets cringe. It's one thing when you're kind of joking about it. Like my friend Matt Kemenash, we always have fun with that. He's like a long-term Bitcoin guy, knows so much shit, like has, we joke, like the religious experience. I call him Bitcoin Jesus, but like, he pulls it back to earth. And he's like, all right, look, this is why I believe in it. Like, I speak in this way.

• 1:30:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Once it crossed into, oh shit, these people actually want this to be a religion, I was out. Like in terms of like the public coalescing of that message. It's not why, that's not why I ever came here. That's not why I am here. And that's frankly, not why I'll be here years and years and years from now.

• 1:30:59Speaker 05

  So how do you view yourself right now? Like you wouldn't, it seems to me, and I think this is probably a good thing, but you wouldn't call yourself like a Bitcoin maxi?

• 1:31:08Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I don't even know, like that term now has been so co-opted. And like, there are people use it as a negative, as a positive, whatever. Like, I think Bitcoin is the most important idea of our generation. And if it ends up being successful on a global scale, as Bitcoiners and myself believe it will be, it will probably have the root solution, the first principle solution to so many problems in society, because it ultimately brings uncorrupted money to the world. Like it is so undervalued as an idea.

• 1:31:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Some of it's because people don't understand it. Some of it's because that like scares the shit out of people. Some of it's because like, oh, there's no way in my lifetime like that would be built, whatever.

• 1:31:55Anthony Pompliano?

  But like, that's what I'm interested in. Like, basically all the like, toxicity, all this shit. It's just like peer pressure shit.

• 1:32:02Speaker 05

  Yes, that's exactly what it is.

• 1:32:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, yo, y'all don't know me. I've never been peer pressured to do shit. I don't give a fuck, right? And if you need that to be happy, more power to you. Like, be happy. And so I have friends who, uh, very, very good friends, who like, wouldn't even be considered leaders in that group.

• 1:32:25Anthony Pompliano?

  But they are not the type of people who go and attack people, right? They're not the type of people who go and put people down. They, it's not a zero-sum game to them. It's not, "I put you down so I feel better about myself." What they look at is, I'm really convicted in this idea, how can I help you learn? How can I bring you in here?

• 1:32:41Speaker 05

  Well, that's the attitude people, that's the positive attitude people want. But you haven't, and it's nice to hear you lay it out simply like that, but, you know, to be clear, what I'm hearing is, from my end over here, it's like, I don't hear any difference in your belief than what I heard in 2018. Or what I've been, you know, when I talk with you on the phone, or, you know, just follow your Twitter, or the things you're saying. Like, it seems to me like you're still in this low moment, so to speak, of crypto. You're still every bit as passionate about the innovation. Forget price, forget all that shit.

• 1:33:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm more convicted today than I've ever been. Because when we talked in 2018, there's now four years of continued progress, growth, adoption, and it's been de-risked by four years of progress. It was riskier in 2018 than it is now, and that's reflected in the price, right?

• 1:33:42Speaker 05

  Yes, that makes sense.

• 1:33:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it's less risky today than it was in 2018, in my opinion. I'm also, one of the things, I tweeted this back in November, and I don't think people really understood it. I said, "I think I may be one of the only people to publicly interview Michael Saylor, Beeple, Do Kwon, SBF, Saifedine, CZ", and I said, "and many others, including the people from Ripple and all these other places, right?"

• 1:34:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're garling, you were, you had an early Garland House one that was really good.

• 1:34:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And here's the thing is...

• 1:34:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Many people who have this strong opinion about Bitcoin, they haven't done the work to talk to the other people. Right? They haven't actually gone and had it. There is no, "Show me the work that you did."

• 1:34:28Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:34:29Anthony Pompliano?

  You can look at mine. I talked to 1,200 people.

• 1:34:32Speaker 05

  And you also get hit for having an open mind to other innovations, say, in the space. And by the way, it doesn't mean you're going to be right about it, as we've seen with some of the things that have blown up. That, in my opinion, I don't think you can look at any period in, say, modern history of technology, where smart people didn't, like, go towards things that didn't hit, right? Like, when you did all your investments in full tilt, some of those didn't work, right?

• 1:34:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, some of the people on that list, I'm the one who taught them about Bitcoin. I'm the one who orange-pilled them.

• 1:35:05Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 1:35:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Some of them. Some of them I learned from. But that's how the world works, right? Is there's people who came before us, like, in terms of, I think it was like, my class of people who came into Bitcoin, that I learned an immense amount from. I had to study them. I had to pick up and read the books, listen to the podcasts, read the articles, call them, interview them, ask them questions, like, all of that stuff. I started at zero. I knew nothing. And I built a base of knowledge from all of the people who came before me. And then, as time progressed, new people come in, and they read, and they listen, and they watch, and they talk to people, and they do all this stuff. And so, my contribution is like, literally, like, non-material to Bitcoin.

• 1:35:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's the way that it should be, for every single person. Because that's the beauty of a decentralized network. Because I don't matter to Bitcoin. Right? And you don't, and nobody does either.

• 1:36:01Speaker 05

  Because no one, yeah, everything comes back, and it's the best part about it, like, the idea that, like, no one controls it.

• 1:36:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And nobody can be influential over a long period of time, or it introduces risk.

• 1:36:15Speaker 05

  So, that's actually a great question, then, too, because I think about this a lot. Because I'm, like, I root for Bitcoin. It's, I'm so interested, as an innovation, I agree with you. Even if, like, the conspiracy theory were true, and, like, the NSA made it, yo, shout out to the NSA, that shit's fire. But, you know...

• 1:36:34Speaker 05

  And full disclosure, like, like I said, I don't really have money, but my money for crypto has been in Bitcoin and I have a nice position in Ethereum, but Bitcoin's my main and that's all I own, except Chris Ibrahim made me buy like $20 of Polkadot when I was like hammered one night and so, other than that, but I pretty much have Bitcoin.

• 1:36:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So now you have $2 of it?

• 1:36:56Speaker 05

  Right, exactly. I, I send him a chart on our group text, me, Chris and Dylan, like every month, where it just, I have the line on the date that he bought, it was Polkadot and I don't even remember the other two, that he had me buy and it's just like, like straight down, but it was funny. Anyway, so, you know, I want to see this do well and I have my money where my mouth is in that as well, but I'm also constantly questioning and I'm a realist about things and I'm never gonna get religious about stuff, just like you said, you're not. And my, my biggest issue, let's focus on Bitcoin, but I could say this about all of crypto, I just wanna keep it on Bitcoin, cause it's the one that is not

• 1:37:39Speaker 05

  controlled, you know, there's not a company, there's not any of that shit. When you have every government around the world, from fascist to communist, democratic, everything in between, there's plenty of them that hate each other, some are at war, but if there's one thing that all of them have in common, it's this, if they do not have control over the money, what the fuck do they control? What, how can they be the arbiter of rules if they don't even control the thing that we trade? And so I've always looked at that as the bear case for crypto, that's always in the back of my mind where it's like.

• 1:38:20Anthony Pompliano?

  It's the bull case.

• 1:38:21Speaker 05

  All, alright, I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna ask about that in a second, but I wanna paint this picture. All of those governments.

• 1:38:30Speaker 05

  Whether you like them or not, they have power, right? And if they are incentivized to try to take something down, I do question, if they're all incentivized to do it, I do question, minus that guy in El Salvador, I do question our ability to fight City Hall in that way. And I wonder, it's like, you know, I look at Bitcoin, you said the market cap right now is 400 billion. That's nothing. And that's a bull case, right? But also, like, who's to say that they don't own 60% of it at this point?

• 1:39:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you can see online, you know, on chain, via the explorers and stuff, that nobody owns 60%.

• 1:39:13Speaker 05

  No, but in all different, like, someone owns a half a percent, someone owns 0.2, you know what I mean?

• 1:39:19Anthony Pompliano?

  They, there's probably more governments than that have publicly acknowledged that own it. But I don't think it's a material percent right now, could change. Governments are made up of people, and people need Bitcoin. Because ultimately, the corruption of money hurts people over the long run. It also hurts corporations, and it also hurts governments. But it's a self-inflicted wound that is necessary for the short to medium term. And so, you need a first-principle solution to the problem. And that's why you see countries that don't have their own native currency, like El Salvador, adopting it first,

• 1:40:01Anthony Pompliano?

  because they have the least to lose by adopting this, right? Because there's no innovator's dilemma, if you will. Because they don't have their own currency.

• 1:40:09Speaker 05

  He's like the cool dictator, or something, so to speak.

• 1:40:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, I think that every government eventually is going to have to participate, because they're going to need it, just like the people need it, just like the companies need it. Just it's going to take way longer than people think.

• 1:40:29Speaker 05

  Do you think that a lot of this stuff that we're seeing right now, like, with Sam Bankman, it's ironic. I think in August or September, I went, I didn't even realize you had done one with him. I don't remember how I found it, but I saw it, and I went to watch it. And I think I got through about 25, 30 minutes of it. And this was my conclusion. I said, either I'm really, really dumb, or this guy's really, really dumb. And at the time, I figured, I must be really, really dumb, like, you know, whatever. And then you see all this happen, and hindsight's always 2020, but, you know, there's not a ton of, like, functioning brain cells upstairs.

• 1:41:11Speaker 05

  That kid can probably do a calculus problem here and there, but that's about it. You know, there's not... He would speak, and like, going back and looking at before all this happened, it seems like he would just speak in circles, and a lot of, some of the most brilliant people in the world would kind of be like, "Well, he's got a $40 billion company." And, yeah, they are custoding assets for people, so, okay, all right, cool. But then it blows up, and to me, you know, you don't want to go down the rabbit holes that people run to with every goddamn thing as a conspiracy and all right away, but I do wonder about where there are some potentially weird connections that have to do with, you know, the overall goal being to instill a lack of confidence in the entire space,

• 1:41:56Speaker 05

  and therefore infect things like Bitcoin as well from parties who are interested in not seeing it succeed.

• 1:42:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin doesn't care. We're 45 days, 60 days after, Bitcoin's right back to the same price it was before.

• 1:42:12Speaker 05

  True.

• 1:42:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, just like, use the price, it's a free market asset, price is truth. Price is express buyers and seller demand.

• 1:42:22Speaker 05

  And once again, it bottomed at basically, for all intents and purposes, like, the same level where it topped the last run, which is a weird pattern that Bitcoin has, where it just, the last, the new bottom is the last top, and the new top then becomes the next bottom, or what, very weird, but, kind of cool, you know? It's, again, hindsight's 2020, but you look at the last, what, four or five permutations? That's literally what it is. So, you know, in a way, you could say it was exactly what you're getting at. It's like, agnostic to it. What already was happening was happening, and the price was already way down when this went down. I do wonder, though, what else was behind that kid, and obviously...

• 1:43:08Speaker 05

  Andy Bustamante was talking about CZ, obviously knows a thing or 10 about China over there, and that seems to be a little questionable, but you know, that's someone operating outside the system that you're talking about too. It's not like we're talking about, ooh, Bitcoiners that went down here. That's not what it is. These are guys who were, you know, they had every fucking coin known to man, including their own shitcoin on there, and they just pulled people down with it. But, you know, I think it wasn't the best look to see some probably good companies that maybe just got a little bit complacent in, I guess, like custing their assets because this thing was quote unquote "too big to fail." And again,

• 1:43:49Speaker 05

  like I said a million times, hindsight 2020, but still, it's like, you know, maybe some signs were there with that kid.

• 1:43:59Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that's what people think now.

• 1:44:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:44:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people to find the podcast?

• 1:44:04Speaker 05

  Trendifier. You can go to my page, TRENDIFIER on YouTube.

• 1:44:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Trendifier?

• 1:44:11Speaker 05

  Yep. Name's gonna be changing to something simpler soon. It's a long story. But you can also send people to my TikTok, which is @trendifier, and Spotify.

• 1:44:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Instagram?

• 1:44:24Speaker 05

  And Instagram's @JulianDdory.

• 1:44:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright.

• 1:44:27Speaker 05

  And that's it.

• 1:44:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I highly suggest people go watch. I love every episode. You have an eclectic group of people who just fire truth, which I think is like the key component to a great conversation.

• 1:44:40Speaker 05

  It's a lot of that. I really appreciate that, man. I really admire what you're doing here as well. I've admired from afar what you built. So, you know, I've seen you obviously doing this for several years now. It's really cool to see where you've gotten. Glad to be here.

• 1:44:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, everyone. Thank you.

• 1:44:58Speaker 05

  Thanks, man.