#695 Owning $1B of Bitcoin w/ Anthony Scaramucci

Anthony Scaramucci is the founder of SkyBridge and the former White House director of communications. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin, institutional adoption, Skybridge going all in, ETF launch, regulation, sovereign wealth funds, and RIA interest. ======================= With 10M+ users, Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy, and sell 100+ cryptocurrencies. The Crypto.com Visa Card gives you up to 8% back instantly, and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, Crypto.com lets you earn up to 8.5% p.a. on BTC, and 14% p.a. on stablecoins. Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App with code "pomp". Download the App now: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/pomppodcast2021 ======================= Matrixport is Asia’s fastest-growing digital asset platform founded by crypto veterans Jihan Wu and John Ge. With $10 billion in assets under management and custody. Matrixport offers one-stop crypto-financial solutions including fixed income, Defi in 1-click, structured products, Cactus Custody™, spot OTC and lending. You can earn a high double-digit yield with the Dual Currency Product or opt for the lucrative potential of our new product, Range Sniper. If you hold crypto and are actively looking to do more with your precious asset, then this app is one you don’t want to miss. Download the Matrixport App and enjoy a welcome offer of 30% APY on Fixed Income for new users. Visit invest.matrixport.com/en today. ======================= Cosmos is building the Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. Dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Anthony Scaramucci is the founder of Skybridge and the former White House Director of Communications. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, institutional adoption, Skybridge going all in, ETF launch, regulation, sovereign wealth funds, and RIA interest. I really enjoyed this conversation with Anthony, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Crypto.com. They're helping to mainstream the crypto industry, signing major global partnerships with multiple sports, including Serie A, the Italian Football League, the

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  With $10 billion in assets under management and custody, Matrix Port offers one-stop crypto financial solutions including fixed income, DeFi in one-click, structured products, Cactus custody, Spot OTC, and lending. You can earn a high double-digit yield with a dual currency product, or opt for the lucrative potential of our new product range Sniper. If you hold crypto and are actively looking to do more with your precious assets, then this app is one you don't want to miss. Download the Matrix Port app and enjoy a welcome offer of high-yield on fixed income for new users. Again, go download the Matrix Port app or go to matrixport.com today. Last but not least is Cosmos. Cosmos is building the Internet of Blockchains,

• 2:54Anthony Pompliano?

  marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. Dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp. Again, if you want to check out the Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability, go visit them at cosmos.network/pomp. All right, let's get in this episode with Anthony Scaramucci. I hope you guys enjoyed this one.

• 3:25Speaker 01

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

• 3:48Anthony Pompliano?

  We have Anthony Scaramucci with us right now, the greatest show on turf. Anthony, are you there?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I am. I appreciate you including me, guys. I'm sorry I'm a couple of minutes late.

• 3:57Anthony Pompliano?

  You're not late. I already told him I screwed up. I screwed up. It's big to be on with you, as you know, and...

• 4:03Speaker 02

  I'm listening carefully to the conversation and I can just give my two cents. The people that don't understand it, they will trade it. And the people that understand it are going to hold on for dear life because they recognize that they've got waterfront property. They've got waterfront irreplaceable digital property. Uh, that's going to appreciate for generations and so they're not going to trade it. But I think your point is well taken that there will be professional traders that that trade this thing. Um, and they'll take their profits, you know, and even, you know, my close friend, uh, Jim Kramer. Several months ago, you may have remembered this, Pomp, you got him into Bitcoin. You helped me get into Bitcoin, which I want to thank you for. Uh, but you know, Jim said he sold it to pay down his mortgage.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  That's what old fogies like me and Jim Kramer do with money, you know? The, the, the mortgage is at 1.8, 1.9%. And the inflation rate is at 8%, but we're selling, we're buying down our mortgages because that's what our parents told us to do. Cause they lived through the depression, you know?

• 5:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  It's a new world.

• 5:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Now we're going to talk about Bitcoin. Actually, I'm glad that you're doing this from your office because the table right behind you is where you and I first talked about Bitcoin. So we'll get to that in a second.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  I'm going to grab that coffee now that I see the money.

• 5:16Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 5:18Anthony Pompliano?

  You got pants on?

• 5:19Speaker 02

  I'm going to caffeinate.

• 5:20Anthony Pompliano?

  You got pants on?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  And it looks like I got little pumps. I'm the only baby boomer here. You guys, I gotta get ready for Starbucks.

• 5:29Anthony Pompliano?

  The first question I see in the chat is, do you have pants on?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  I do, I swear to God, I do.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  I got a big meeting this afternoon with one of my clients and I'm in the office.

• 5:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Amazing.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  If this was my home office, I'd be wearing my 1981 Fizz Ed champion, Fizz Ed shorts. I'm actually, I'm actually in biony, which is a sign of how poor I am. It's only billionaires like you guys that dress like, are you allowed to curse on this, Pomp?

• 5:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you can say whatever you want.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, look at the way you guys dress. Miami, you know, this is a sign that you guys are billionaires and I'm out here, uh, you know, schlepping for a living.

• 6:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, my brother does have sandals on.

• 6:11Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's talk just kind of macro environment and kind of monetary policy. You said that the inflation rate is 8%. The Fed says that it's 5.4%. I tend to think you're closer. Explain why you think it's eight and they think it's five.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, the transitory number was eight. You know, let's give them whatever they want. You want to say it's five? That's a ridiculous number. That means you're in negative rate territory in the United States. That means you're in my intellectual mentor, Paul Tudor Jones, is reporting this morning. What you and I both know, the obituary for the 6040 portfolio has already been written. And now the question is, what are we going to do? Where are we going to go? And you discovered before I did that there are digital hard assets that are going to replace fiat assets. Because unfortunately, like Nakamoto said 11 or 12 years ago, we corrupt those assets.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  And so you caught me in this room on your earlier versions of your podcast, where we were talking about the history of money. I wasn't yet in Bitcoin, but I was indicating to you why I was moving that way. Because we've now jumped the shark, to use a Happy Days expression, on money. If you've made, and you know these numbers, Pom, because I follow you on Twitter, you know, you tell me, what's the M2 up, 40, 42%?

• 7:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, 40% or so.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's just call it 40 for the sake of this argument, okay? What amount of money's been printed? Well, if you look through the beige book, it was $592 billion at the end of May. I can only guess because I haven't seen the recent number, but I'm going to say it's close to, I don't know, $650 billion has been printed by the Federal Reserve this year. So that's going to show up in the inflation data. That That's killing the people in our family that didn't get educated or don't own Bitcoin. You know, I'm from a family of immigrants, as you know, Italian immigrants. My dad was a crane operator. A lot of my contemporaries, my cousins are clamming in Oyster Bay.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  They're cutting deli meat. They're installing Auto Glass. They can't catch up with this nonsense. You and I can own assets. Our assets are going to appreciate and our standard of living will be just fine. But if you're a wage holder and the Federal Reserve is printing $700 billion of money, you're screwed, Pom. And I, and I told you that when we first met, when they broke the contract with gold in 1971, they slowly eroded middle and lower middle-class living standards. And now we're living in an age of populism, economic desperation for a large group of people, which used to be economic aspiration, and we've weakened the society.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  So when you see something like Bitcoin, you're like, oh, my God, this is a technological innovation, which can actually be a store of value for those people, can help the underbanked, and could literally transform the world. And if we get this thing right and it exponentially networks to the billion-plus users that you and I both think we'll get to, well, then, hold on. It's going to check, it's going to hand check the bankers, the central bankers. They're going to be forced into a box of fiscal responsibility and conformity. Because if they don't do that, there's another option for human beings, AKA Bitcoin, or you pick one of the other cryptocurrencies that you like. But you get, you get the point that I'm making.

• 9:47Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And one of the things I don't think people really appreciate, well, there's two points with you, right? So one is you're a student of history. I remember when we did the podcast, you laid out the history of money better than anyone. I walked out of there and I said, I don't know how that guy remembers all that information, but he's like an encyclopedia. The second thing is that when you decided to actually enter the market, I believe you guys bought $400 million of Bitcoin was kind of the first foray.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  You have a very, you have a very good memory, yeah.

• 10:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that correct?

• 10:12Speaker 02

  All right. That is correct. And so we are sitting on a little over a billion dollars of Bitcoin. To your brother's comment, we've had to sell some because in our fund. Now, I have a core Bitcoin fund, the First Trust Skybridge Bitcoin Fund. That's a total hodling situation. I've got a lot of money in that personally. But in our flagship fund, sort of the $9 billion that we're running, we started with 400. Would have loved to have left it, but I can't be in a situation in the flagship fund where Bitcoin is eating up the whole fund. So I, I, I took some out of there. We sold some, uh, uh, but we're going to leave it for right now.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  It, it may trade back to 50,000. I don't know. What I do know though, is it's likely to get to 150,000 over the next 12 months. I'm going to stick with my earlier price target that I shared with you on our soft talk when you did my podcast. I think it's 100,000 by year end. Um, and I just think it's that because there's now a gateway opened, guys. You know this, Anthony, a gateway opened yesterday where an institution can now say, I can buy this. You know, if you're a vaxxer or an anti-vaxxer, some of my friends said, well, I'm not getting vaccinated

• 11:33Speaker 02

  until the FDA approves the vaccine. And so that sort of metaphorically happened for Bitcoin. You got an approval from the SEC. Bitcoin lives in the financial regulatory ecosystem. And it's not going anywhere. And now that portal has opened for a sophisticated, early adopting institution to say, it's okay for me to step in the water here. I'm not going to get fired if I own this thing.

• 12:02Anthony Pompliano?

  So one of the things that's really interesting is that you manage billions of dollars. You've been doing this for quite a long time, very successful at doing so. You don't normally strike people from the crypto community as why would Anthony Scaramucci and Skybridge be participating here? And when I talk to you, I think that you see kind of the writing on the wall, right? The world is shifting to this new digital economy. And it feels like, based on what I know, that you're taking Skybridge and kind of slowly starting to say, hey, look, we want to include this in kind of the aperture of what we look at. Is there a world where Skybridge ever goes all in on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies? Or do you think that having a parallel strategy is kind of the winning strategy?

• 12:39Speaker 02

  And I'm as in as you can be, you know, I'm going to be 58 years old in January. I'm pretty in, right? I mean, I got a billion dollars of this stuff. And I've lagged in, I've got a ETF. Those are for my fuddy duddy friends. You remember there's FUD, which is fear, uncertainty and doubt. And then you've got fuddy duddies, which are these old people that won't own Bitcoin. I created CRIPT for them, CRPT, trades on the New York Stock Exchange. It's a crypto proxy effectively. It's, you know, MicroStrategy and Coinbase and Marathon. And so it has unbelievable correlation to Bitcoin. I've raised an Ethereum fund. I think you know, I have an investment in Algorand, which I think is a fascinating

• 13:21Speaker 02

  technical property, but I'm all in. We've got almost a billion dollars in Bitcoin. I wrote a book. And again, Anthony, this is an international best seller. And if you don't believe me, you can come into my warehouse back here at Skybridge, where I've bought every share or every book to make sure it was.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  I mean, come on, no one's ever bought one of my books. So I'll tell your listeners my email, okay? Okay. It's [email protected]. If you want a copy of the book, you're listening to the POMS podcast, I'll mail you one. [email protected]. It's a short little pamphlet, but it'll explain it to your parents. Okay, it'll explain to your parents what it is. And the subtitle is how I stopped worrying about cryptocurrency and you should too. So I'm all in, Ant. It took me longer than you because I'm an institutionalist. I said to you in our first podcast, 100 million wallets. A place where I can store it and not worry about it. Yep. Because I'm going to be in deep, you know, with nine figures, if not 10 figures.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  And then the third thing is, what's the regulatory landscape? Is the United States going to accept this? And so last year, right around this time, all three of those things seemed like they were going to happen. And so then we started buying those coins and we're in. And I expect our business to continue to morph into more digital assets. But you asked me a really good question that I want to answer. How does an old fart like me see it? And the answer to that is I have to listen to young farts like the three of you. And, and I think we make a very big mistake generationally. If we're not listening to each other, like you guys could avail yourselves to my experience,

• 15:12Speaker 02

  dealing with volatile markets, dealing with the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, the humbling nature of life. Like if you're having a bad day, think of my ass getting fired from the White House in July of 19, you know, July of 2017, July 31st as an example, right? And so you can learn from me in terms of how to roll with the punches and bounce when you need to. But I can learn from you where the future is going. Because you and your team, the best business show, Anthony Pompliano, you guys are creating the future that my children and grandchildren are going to live in. And if I close my mind to that, if I act like the 97 year old Charlie Munger and I say, oh, it's the worst thing that's ever happened in civilization.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  That means I've lost my neuroplasticity and I've lost my ability to adapt and learn. So my message to everybody listening, everybody watching you, we can learn from each other. Let's not close our minds and reconfirm our biases. Let's open our minds and let's.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Test our theories on each other. And, you know, I want to say thank you to you. I was with Michael Saylor yesterday. I thanked him. I want to say thank you to you. You were very influential in helping me see what was going on in the blockchain and in Bitcoin.

• 16:35Anthony Pompliano?

  I appreciate it. You taught me plenty. Don't you worry. I should be thanking you, not me, not you thanking me. Talk to me about institutional interest and what you're seeing in terms of kind of your peers or colleagues and what they're thinking about the asset class.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  So people get mad at me, Pom, because they asked me honestly, and I say, I don't see it. I've got my, my guys out here said, yeah, what are you doing? Why are you telling people that there's no interest in the institutional community? And I'm like, because I don't see it. If I saw it, I would say it. I want to be straight up with people, you know? And, and I thought there was going to be way more institutional interest at the beginning of the year, January 2021, then manifested. But now I'll make a bold prediction, Anthony. I think there's going to be institutional interest over the next 12 to 18 months because you now have gotten the regulatory box checked. And that checking of that box is going to lead to

• 17:34Speaker 02

  institutions saying, hey, I got to get in this thing. I've got to own a piece of this. I've got to understand it. And what would George Soros say? He would say, invest and investigate later. You've heard that aphorism. And I think you're now going to start to see it, but I didn't see it over the last eight or nine months. And that's just me being straight up with you, Ant.

• 17:53Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about the ETF launch yesterday? It's got $570 million of assets at the end of the day yesterday. Did about a billion dollars in, you know, kind of on market and after hour trading. Does that start to signal that there's more institutional interest? Or would you be surprised if there wasn't more than that?

• 18:11Speaker 02

  So I think two things are happening. Okay. Number one, people are wading into the ETF. You know, it's a futures ETF. So there's some issues there. I don't want to bore everybody with the specifics there, but I would prefer a cash spot ETF over futures. I understand why Gary Gensler, Commissioner Gensler went in that direction. But there's two things going on. People are buying the ETF. But you've got institutions now calling Nided, calling Galaxy, calling Gemini and Fidelity and saying, okay, I want a wallet. I want to store some Bitcoin on your premises or Coinbase institutional, you know, and that's happening. My friends have said to me, where are your coins stored?

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Can you refer me to somebody where they want to buy the direct coin now? So you've got two things happening. Money's flowing into the ETF. That's fantastic. But money's also flowing into the asset directly in the cash market from these institutions.

• 19:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Joe, John, what questions you guys got? Hey, Anthony, thanks for doing this and nice to meet you.

• 19:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Was that a pause where you wanted him to say something? Yeah, I thought he was gonna say thanks.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Or the older pomp or the medium pomp?

• 19:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm the middle out of us three.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  All right. So you're the mama bear pomp.

• 19:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know if I like that, but we'll let it slide. As someone who, so Bitcoin historically has been a pretty volatile asset, obviously, right? As someone who has dealt more with maybe traditional equity markets or things like that and manages billions of dollars for clients, how do you get individual clients comfortable with that volatility?

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Well, you have to size it appropriately. So that's one of my issues. In my core fund, if I put a 4% position and it grows to 20%, I have to probably scale it back so that I can calm down my investors. So what I tell people, if you're a Bitcoin maximalist, come into my Bitcoin fund. If you're in my other fund, let me size it appropriately because it will be volatile. But you guys know this, and I think there's some historical perspective necessary to share here. All these Metcalfe law, network effect investments.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  They start out in the early adoption phase with mega volatility. Why? You've got all the fuddy duddies and the ancients shorting it, disbelieving it, shorting Tesla, shorting Amazon. Amazon's gonna miss its number. It's 1999. Let me short the goddamn thing. And they create the volatility. Same thing happens in Bitcoin. You know, we hit an air pocket with Elon Musk and China. Bitcoin's at 65,000. It's at 29,000. I've got clients lighting me up. And you guys know this. Everybody's a long-term investor until they have short-term losses. When they have short-term losses, they set their hair on fire. They run around in a circle.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  And so I, one of my jobs is to be the financial and psychological coach. I've got to tell people, calm down, stay the course. We have a five-year plan or a three-year plan. And I'll just point out, because I think it's worth mentioning, if you were an early investor in Amazon, you know, just think about this for a second. The IPO of Amazon, May 15, 1997, a $10,000 investment is now worth $21 million, $21,140,000. However, you would have had to subject yourself to eight periods of time where it dropped at least 50%. One period of time where it went down 85.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  And the Barron's newspaper had a front-page article, amazon.bomb. The age of this internet retailer is over. But the cat that made Amazon, Jeff Bezos, he shot himself into space in his own rocket. Okay, so what do you guys want to do? Do you want to be patient? And look at something like Bitcoin and see the exponential growth of wallets and the scale? And understand the value of the network effect of those properties associated therewith? And stay patient? And watch Bitcoin eclipse gold in terms of its market capitalization? Or do you want to trade it and get juke out of it at the wrong moment and do what

• 22:33Speaker 02

  non psychologically minded investors do is they sell lows and they buy highs? And so to me, I gotta get in the face, I gotta get in, I have to grab the face mask of my clients and pull them close to me like a good coach and say, stop it, get your emotions out of this thing. This is a revolutionary asset. This is digital waterfront property. This is digital energy that is going to transform the world and over the blockchain, we are going to delayer our society. We're going to take third party intermediaries out of the society. It'll be a cost savings, it'll be ecologically friendly, there'll be quantum benefits associated

• 23:17Speaker 02

  with this, and you can own a piece of this property today at a very attractive price. This is you and me, Pomp, going to Miami Beach in 1921 and buying oceanfront property.

• 23:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Facts. So I have one more question. It sounds, you mentioned that you think Bitcoin is going to overtake gold, right? So Bitcoin's market cap, I believe today is like 1.1 and 1/4 trillion, 1.25 trillion, and gold is around 11 trillion. So do you have any estimates or kind of, you know, how long you think that might take to happen?

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a very good question. I'm just checking markets right now. Yep, and you know, I would say realistically, if you've got to, in my opinion, you've got to get to a billion wallets. And so, you know, I'll go with Kathy Wood's estimate. Kathy is saying to people, end of 2024, mid 2025, you'll be at a billion wallets. And so if you think of the scarcity of Bitcoin. I think it would be worth probably five or $600,000 a coin by then. And, uh, you know, there you go. That's where it is.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  By the way, I'm sure you've had sale, Ron. If you haven't had him on, you can get him on. Yesterday, when I spoke to Michael, you know, he doesn't think this is a $10 trillion asset. He thinks it's a $100 trillion asset. He thinks this is at least 10 times more valuable than gold. And, you know, Anthony's heard me say this. One of my Saudi friends said to me, uh, Anthony, when people ask you, is this more valuable than gold or not? Tell them this story. I said, what is that, Sheikh? He said, well, right now, MBS loves me. But there may come a day where MBS doesn't love me. I have a USB with $200 million of Bitcoin. And since this is a family show, I won't tell you where the Sheikh suggested he was going to put the Bitcoin as he headed for the Yemeni border. Okay?

• 25:11Speaker 02

  But he can't put $200 million of gold in the place that he was describing to me.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  Up his ass.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  But he came with Bitcoin. Yeah, exactly. So you get the point I'm making. And so therefore, the technical properties of Bitcoin, the network effect, is actually way more valuable than gold. So I'm, I'm an institutionalist, guys. You guys are younger than me and smarter than me. I've got to get my clients over the hump of owning digital property. Okay, you guys are already living in that world. I've got to get the 60-year-old to say, whoa, whoa, whoa. I've got guys like Jamie Dimon telling these people it's worth this. You know, and that, that's not helping me in my, you know, Larry think, well, I'm sort of siding with Jamie Dimon. Okay, but then my attitude is, well, these guys obviously haven't done enough homework

• 26:01Speaker 02

  because somebody like Ray Dalio was a Bitcoin skeptic. He did the homework. He's bought Bitcoin. Uh, Paul Tudor Jones, a skeptic, bought Bitcoin after doing the homework. So I'm just telling people, do the homework, you know? And if you do the homework, you're going to want to get long some of this in your portfolio.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  John? Yeah, Anthony, thanks for doing this. Nice to, uh, nice to have you. So I love how you talk about the emotional side of things when stocks and assets are going up.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  John, I need, I need one of those hats, though. But I'm hoping that you mail me that had it. It says Bitcoin 150,000. But anyway, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, you're good. Uh, yeah, when assets are going up, people don't think it's going to stop. And when they're going down, they say they're never going to go back up again. So you got to take the emotional thing. That's why people hire you. So can you talk about the ETF stuff going on? When do you think a spot ETF will be approved? Do you think only one will be approved? Like, can you just talk about the regulations behind all that and what Gary you think is thinking?

• 26:57Speaker 02

  So I'm sort of not allowed to talk about it because I'm in the quiet period because I have filed. Okay. So what I can say is something I think Gary Gensler would appreciate is regulatory oversight on pricing and the surety and accuracy of pricing. And so as you guys know, one of the criteria for ETFs is that there really can't be any pricing manipulation or any securities in there that a whale can come in and, you know, force the thing down or force it up by reducing supply. And why Gary likes the futures

• 27:38Speaker 02

  market, he was the former chairman of the CFTC. Bitcoin futures have been around and regulated by the CFTC for many years and he's confident that you don't have any of that going on in the futures markets. So it's not to say that he's not confident about it in the cash markets, but I think he needs to figure out a way to have more regulatory oversight over the cash markets. And so when that actually happens, or when that step takes place in his mind, in the commission's mind, I'm not sure. But if you're asking me, do I think it will happen? I do think it will happen. I think Gary

• 28:17Speaker 02

  has signaled to people that he does not want the United States to lose its mantle of financial leadership. He doesn't want us to turn off the best ideas in fintech and DeFi. Just imagine the United States at the turn of the 20th century saying, oh, that combustion engine and that horseless carriage, we're not into that. Let's the, let the Europeans build those and let the Asians build those. We're going to stick with the horse and carriages. Okay. So what I applaud Gary Gensler in doing is saying, we're moving into the future. We're probably going to get dragged into the future

• 28:57Speaker 02

  by a younger generation of people. And I'm okay with that. I just got to make sure that the pricing mechanisms are fair and safe and market based. Does that make sense, Joe?

• 29:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Mooch, I got a question that I don't want to ask you something that you're not allowed to talk about, but what's going on with sovereign wealth funds? Any insights that you can share in terms of it feels like

• 29:19Speaker 02

  That's the non regulatory stuff I can totally

• 29:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so it feels like we had individuals, they front ran Wall Street institutions etc. Then we started to get the institutions, those institutions were financial institutions and corporations, but public and private.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Insurance companies, corporate balance sheets.

• 29:34Anthony Pompliano?

  That cohort base is now in and getting in. The last two are nation states and sovereign wealth funds. We know that El Salvador is obviously in, there's probably some other countries the United States doesn't like as much that are doing things, just not announcing it. The sovereign wealth funds, a lot of people haven't been talking about them. It's like, what's your thoughts there? Any insights that you can share?

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're coming. Sovereign wealth funds are on the way. Some of them have already established small stakes in them. I'm making a trip next week to the Middle East. I'll be speaking at the FII conference in Riyadh. I have a whole slate of meetings with different sovereign wealth funds related to this topic. I think, I think that they're open minded. You know, I will share this with you. I won't, I can't give you the name of the fund, but I have one Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund that's a big investor of mine, and they really wanted to redeem on me when I made the Bitcoin investment. And I begged them to be patient, I begged them not to. And then, of course, Anthony, what happened was Bitcoin went from

• 30:34Speaker 02

  65,000 to 29,000, and I have to confess to you that the heat was on me. And I went over there to see people, and I said, please, you know, you know, be patient. Here's how we're thinking about this. And yesterday, I got a call from the head guy, and he said, you know, I just want to thank you for bringing me into the future. I now see what you saw, and you were bold enough to, to, to do that for me. And he said something interesting, I'll share with you. He says, you know, you've got these art consultants, and Joan Whitney Payson, who owned the Mets, her daughter once said, well, God bless our art consultant,

• 31:15Speaker 02

  because there was a, there was an artist that cut his ear off named Vincent Van Gogh, and we bought the art for $300,000. And in 1987, we sold it for 41 million, which was a big number back in 1987. And she was like, well, thank God for that art consultant, because he saw something in that artist. That was going to manifest itself into the future. And that's what you're doing with the best business show, Ant. That's what you Pompliano's are doing. You're showing somebody something that's happening. And because it's hard to believe, and I'll say something to you that it sounds too good to be true, so they don't want to do it. And when you're an old guy like me, and somebody says, well, something is too good to be true,

• 32:00Speaker 02

  you run. You don't want to do something that's too good to be true. But let me show you something that's too good to be true. This. See it? This is too good to be true. Okay, that eats up the world. It takes all the books in my library, all the photographs. I've got access now to all the information. Let me ask you something. Would you like to roam the Library Congress? Or have my smartphone to do a research report? What would you like to do? Would you like to go to the Dewey Decimal System in the Library of Congress? Or would you like my smartphone fully charged for the day? What would you like?

• 32:34Anthony Pompliano?

  For years, I've always thought the Dewey Decimal System was stupid.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you know, the point I'm making is this phone is too good to be true. And the market capitalization of Amazon, or Apple, too good to be true. $10,000 going to $21 million in 24 years, too good to be true. So this is technical properties that are happening before our eyes. And we either have to accept it, embrace them, and be willing to propitiously allocate to them. So let's say you don't believe me, or you don't believe Anthony Pompliano. How about a half a percent of your portfolio? How about 1% of your portfolio? You know, Plan B, I think you've interviewed him, Pop. Plan B said to me on my podcast,

• 33:21Speaker 02

  if you took one cent, and you put it in Bitcoin 10 years ago, and you had 99 cents in cash, and that was your asset allocation, that was your tactical asset allocation model, it outperformed everything.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Everything. Okay, so guys, put a half a percent in, put, put a percent in. This is the early innings of a technological revolution where the blockchain and things like Bitcoin are going to delayer the society, you know? If I, if I were American Express or Visa, I'd be worried because the transaction speeds per minute over the blockchain are way faster, it's way cheaper.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Why do I have to, as a merchant, accept a 3% charge 10 years from now? Why will I have to do that? If everyone's got a smart wallet and a smartphone and some interoperability on the internet over the blockchain, why would I have to do that, guys?

• 34:21Anthony Pompliano?

  You're not gonna have to, obviously.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Right, well, no, no more, see, you don't remember this, you, you, you kids are Italian kids, but I'm gonna set you in 1985, probably before the three of you were born, I'm waiting in Rome at the post office to get to a phone booth to connect to an AT&T operator to call my mother. Okay, to let her know, because I could call her once a week, it was $3 a minute. I could get her on the phone to let her know I'm okay. So waited online, I got into the phone booth, AT&T operator, here's my credit card. Hi ma, I'm okay. $10 phone call for three minutes. Fast forward, we're doing this costless over the internet. Right, I can, I can log onto a wifi in an Italian cafe,

• 35:06Speaker 02

  make a internet phone call to my mother for no charge. That's what's gonna happen to financial services. It's happening right now. Okay, you just happen to be at the forefront of it. I'm a little bit farther behind from you, but trust me, I'm catching up. And I'm just trying to educate my clients that that's what's happening. Okay, yes, I made that phone call, because that's all we could do back in 1985. But today, I can, I can talk to her over Zoom costlessly.

• 35:40Anthony Pompliano?

  She loves you. I already know. I don't even have to talk to her. She's an Italian mom. She loves you.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Hope to God, man, I renovated the house.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  A good Italian son's supposed to do, you know what I mean? I pay for the Gucci, you know, shoes. I hope she loves me.

• 35:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Last group I want to talk to you about, and then I'll let you go, is RIAs. We saw Interactive Brokers just announced that they're going to start letting people buy it. There's companies like Onramp and a bunch of other options. The ETF now is available. Are RIAs, can we put them all in one big bucket? They're coming, they're in, they're not interested. You know, when you talk to that sector, what's their status?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  They're scared. They're scared. They don't want to miss it. They don't understand it.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  They are in the business of what I call it, the stay wealthy business pump. You know, somebody comes to me, I'm an RIA, they sold their business, they're wealthy. My job is to keep them wealthy, right? I've got to figure out a asset mixture that gets them ahead of inflation, and they can still buy art at Sotheby's, and I got to put them in some private equity and get them some growth. But what I don't want to do is make big mistakes and embarrass myself because then they'll fire me. If I make sure that they stay wealthy, I keep my job and I stay hired. You see what I'm saying? And so they're afraid. And so they are behind me because

• 37:11Speaker 02

  it's sort of like self-conscious embarrassment. If I put 3% of your portfolio in Bitcoin, it goes from 66,000 to 10,000, and you're going to look at me and say, well, why the hell did you do that? Because their clients don't really understand Bitcoin. And so they're afraid. So what happened yesterday is transformational because now they can go to clients and say, okay, listen, this is a technical asset. It is a technology that represents a networked value, and it's an evolution on money. You and I talked about that the first time we met. We had Wampum, we had seashells, we had cloth, you know, we had, you know,

• 37:53Speaker 02

  this money that we call paper money is actually not paper money pump. This is made out of linen. Okay, look at this. Okay, this is for your viewers. You know what this is? Those are Italian, those are Italian singles, Pomp. You see that? Those are Italian singles. See those? Right? And because I'm old fashioned, I always gotta have money on me. You never know when you're gonna need the money. Cut and run somewhere, right? So, look at this. This is a piece of fabric. It's 75% cotton. It's 25% linen. It's worthless, Pomp. You know that and I know that. But it's got numbers on it and it's got an old, dead, white person. We only have white males on our money, by the way. And we're gonna trade this with each other.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Why? We trust this. We trust that the next guy that takes it is going to be able to trade it for goods and services. You see what I'm saying? So now what you created, Satoshi Nakamoto created, is a trusted network where we don't even have to use this anymore. We don't even have to use the bank. We can use that trusted network, that decentralized internet highway system. Do you see how brilliant that is? Guys, I mean, I know you guys see it, but I'm trying to impress it upon the people that are listening to you because you got the best business show and they want to learn from you. So I'm trying to explain to them we're moving from this and we're moving from a magnetic strip

• 39:22Speaker 02

  known as a credit card in your wallet. And we're moving from those electronic digits. You know, if I want to buy a G-Wagon tonight, I call Chase. I say, "Wire 200 grand over to the Mercedes," and the G-Wagon shows up. But those electronic digits are worthless other than the fact that they're a ledger. They go down in my account, up in the Mercedes-Benz account. I got the G-Wagon. All right. How is the Bitcoin anything different from what I just said? In fact, if anything, my God, it's audited. It's audited by a decentralized nodal system.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  And it's airtight and it's a fixed supply. You tell me what I'm missing, Bob. You tell me what I'm missing. Invite somebody on like Peter Schiff, who's, you know, tutti pazzi, which for the non-Italians, that's like a chicken running in somebody's head. He doesn't even know what he's talking about. And I'm trying to be polite to the guy when I debate him, but what are you talking about, Peter?

• 40:19Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, before, I was gonna let you go, but I gotta ask one question. You're Bob and G-Way.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Anything, anything you want, anything you want. I'm, I'm, I'm finally caffeinating, so I'm, I know I felt like, I know you guys felt I was a little under energized for this thing.

• 40:30Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, no, you're, you're always bringing the energy. What's the craziest thing you've ever bought? Like, what, like you just, you look back and you're like, man, that was nuts.

• 40:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Whatever the thing you just thought of, that's what I wanna hear.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  You gotta understand this, so you gotta, let me stipulate. I'm nouveau riche Italian, right? My dad was a crane operator. My mother was a homemaker. When I got into Harvard Law School, Anthony, my mother thought it was Hartford Law School. She had no clue. You know, she was like, ready to take me to Hartford, Connecticut. I'm like, no, Ma, it's in Boston. But why the hell would they call it Hartford Law School if it's in Boston? Cause it's called Harvard, Ma, right? I mean, that's the family I grew up in, so I had no money as a kid. When I started making money, the stupidest thing I bought was the Batmobile from the 1992 Batman Returns movie, starring Michael Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Danny DeVito.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  And I owned that for about 10 years. And I used to put the bat outfit on and drive it around on Halloween with my kids, okay? And by the way, it wasn't, you couldn't drive the thing. There was no license plate or anything like that. It was a, it was a prop car. And I used to bottom out everywhere in Port Washington when I was driving around in it, but there was a propane tank in the back. You could flip the switch and the flames would shoot out of the back. It was, it was effing fantastic. Italians love cars, okay? So now, you know, now, now I have the garden variety Lamborghini because I love cars. I mean, what am I going to do? Of course, I'm going to have a Lamborghini. When I was, when I was a kid, I had a 1979 Camaro. And someday I said, yeah, I'm going to make some money and I want a Lamborghini.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  And so I eventually bought one, but about 15, 16 years ago, I sold that. It's now in a museum in Abu Dhabi at their automotive museum. But it was a lot of fun to own it for the years that I had it.

• 42:24Anthony Pompliano?

  That might be the best answer I've ever got to that question. To have the Batmobile that shoots out fire is incredible.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  It was, yeah, it was hooked up to, you had to make sure no one hit, anybody rear ended you. It was going to be a really bad accident.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  It was not road appropriate, but I did drive it around in my hometown on Halloween with the Batman outfit on.

• 42:46Anthony Pompliano?

  You, you gotta send me a picture of you in the Batman outfit.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  I gotta find, you know, I gotta find them. Back then, we didn't have smartphones, so I'd have no idea where the hell these pictures are. I'd have to find them.

• 42:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Uh, I've dropped your, uh, your Twitter account. Go follow Anthony on, uh, on Twitter. Absolute great follow. You got a million followers, by the way. That is a, a big feat. What, what did you start the year at?

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Well, no, look, I, you know, I think that was from the politics to be candid, you know? Um, but, uh, I don't even know what I started the year at. I don't look at it that carefully. Uh, but listen, you know, I think, uh, I think you're going to be, uh, the 10 million follower man before long. You know, you and Plan B are going to be the two, uh, Twitter heroes of, uh, of Bitcoin.

• 43:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Um, I'm a little bit too political, you know? I want people to get vaccinated. I, I think Donald Trump is completely nuts, you know? So I'm going to be a little bit more opinionated than you.

• 43:45Anthony Pompliano?

  You, you forget all the politics for a second in terms of the different parties. You, I, I do have to say, you gave the greatest press conference performance of all time when you hit everyone with the finger gun. When you were in the White House. I've told you this before.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  How about the kiss? I blew the kiss to everybody.

• 44:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like still to this day, I think of that and I'm like, he had on the finger guns.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  The point, the point is they're asking tough questions. I'm giving them tough answers. I'm not going to sit there and get rolled by anybody, you know, and you know, I, I know my facts and I'm coming to play. Um, and I could have helped Trump, but you know, I made a mistake. I got myself fired. That's another big lesson for people. I never blame my firing on anybody but me. I got myself fired. I said something which was really effing funny, but inappropriate and I got fired. Let's move on. General Kelly and I are great friends today. He fired me. He's been to my Saul conference three times. We've done public speeches around the country together and life moves on. When you make a mistake, the number one lesson as an investor or a person is forget it.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  What are you going to do? You're not going to walk around with a millstone of regret on your neck every morning. I don't wake up in the morning and say, let me kick myself in the pants. I did something stupid that got my ass fired at the White House four years ago. I said, today's a brand new day. Let's go. What do you say, Pom? Seize the day. Let's get after, whatever you say every morning. That's what we gotta do, right? Relentlessly get after things and be in love with life, you know? And if you're taking yourself too seriously, look in the mirror, relax, you know? What does Mel Brooks say? Relax. None of us are getting out of here alive. Okay? You're not living forever. I mean, you may end up in the singularity because you're younger than me, but I doubt it. You'll be in the grave. So go have a glass of scotch and relax a little too, you know?

• 45:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And buy some Bitcoin. Perfect.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  And buy some, but you gotta, you gotta own Bitcoin. Bitcoin is going to be a big part of the future. And I hope, I hope your, your people are listening to you, Pom and your brothers.

• 45:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I appreciate it very much. Where can, if people want to learn more about Skybridge, where, where should we send them?

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Well, you know, you can go obviously to skybridge.com. You can email me. I gave out my email, right? It's [email protected]. I'll send you a packet of information. We could set up a call. Whatever you guys want to do. I, I'm happy to get these books. My assistant's ready to kill me. I got all these books loaded up in our, our storage facility. I'm happy to send those out. You just let me know. I'll mail, I'll mail you one. If you're one of Pom's friends, you're one of my friends.

• 46:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Anthony Scaramucci, author of a New York Times, but not enough New York Times, but a bestselling book because he bought them all himself.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  Internet pump. You gotta get the verbiage right. This, these are international. I've written five books. They're all international bestsellers. But no one other than me has ever bought the book. So you go figure out that. Okay. You figure out how many books I've got in storage.

• 46:46Anthony Pompliano?

  You're doing a great job. All right. Listen, thank you for taking the time to do this. I know you're busy, so I appreciate it.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  It's a real pleasure to be on, and thank you. And, and guys, best of luck to you guys. And I, I need a hat that says Bitcoin 150, Joe.

• 46:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, we're on it. We're on it. All right. Thank you.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  All right.

• 47:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Bye.

• 47:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Thoughts? Well, he got our names mixed up, but outside of that, that was wild when he called me Mama Bear. Oh, yeah. Everyone in the chat loved that they called you Mama Bear. No, he's, he's great, though. I like him a lot. I'd never talked to him before. $400 million of Bitcoin they bought. Savage. Now worth over a billion. Worth a billion bucks now. Yeah. It's a good bet. All right. Ready? Cross over 5,000 likes. You know what that means? Giving out one more. Wait, before we get to that, can we just talk about the fact that he called $100 bills Italian singles? And pulled out, and pulled out about $10,000.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  You gotta keep a little bit of cash on you.

• 47:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Said, Casey, do you get out of here? What? When I heard him say Italian singles, I immediately looked over at John and John was like, I mean, that was all. He was in an F-14 fighter jet and they were taking off. That's an all time line. You gonna start calling them Italian singles too? No, I'm gonna call them $100 bills. I'm gonna call them Italian singles. That's right. That was pretty good. $1,000 of Bitcoin going to one person in the chat. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to take this, I'm gonna give you right now, this link. I want you to go tweet the link and tell people to come watch the show. Make sure they're subscribing. That's the key. Once you have done that, come back here and drop your Twitter account. We're gonna pick one person. They're gonna get $1,000 right now.

• 48:30Anthony Pompliano?

  By the way, while we're waiting for people to go do that,

• 48:35Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't want to say who it is, but somebody texted me in a group chat, Joe, I think you're in this group chat. And they said, Jack Mallers is the next Bill Gates.

• 48:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Hopefully without a couple of the, oh, I don't know if we're supposed to say. I don't want, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:54Anthony Pompliano?

  We go, we go, we go leave him where he is. I stopped myself, you know? Yeah. I like Jack. Yeah. Let's keep him out of that. Absolute nuts. But, all right, John, are you picking?

• 49:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'll pick someone.

• 49:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's getting a thousand dollars? Or, you know, 10 Italian singles?

• 49:14Speaker 03

  All right, let's, uh.

• 49:16Anthony Pompliano?

  That's why you don't do public math. What are you talking about? A hundred dollars times 10? Oh, oh, oh, I thought we were giving away, uh, more than that. Oh, yeah, you can give away money. No, I'm good with that. All right, 10, uh, thou- a thousand dollars in Bitcoin coming right now.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  I'm just making sure they tweet the link.

• 49:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Ooh, John doing due diligence.

• 49:35Anthony Pompliano?

  John, don't play.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  Liar.

• 49:37Anthony Pompliano?

  They lie.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  Liar.

• 49:38Anthony Pompliano?

  They lie. Get on playing games around here. My boy John's coming for you. He said you lied.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  All right, I'm gonna check one more and then if not, I'm just gonna pick someone just out of being a good guy.

• 49:50Anthony Pompliano?

  No, we're gonna check two.

• 49:54Anthony Pompliano?

  By the way.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Oh, we got someone.

• 49:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Robert Allingham. Robert Allingham, you win a thousand dollars in Bitcoin.

• 50:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's go.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  All right, I'm not gonna say the other person's name, but that's what happens when you lie. Karma gets you. I picked you, but you didn't do what we asked, so sorry about that. Try again.

• 50:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know if you should be sorry. I mean.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  No, I look sorry. You should be sorry as well for not doing it and saying that you did it.

• 50:25Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, any last words? Do we have all the information we need today? Make sure, please, hey, listen, you at home, right there, watching, listen, this is important, very important. Two things that I need from you. One, make sure you subscribe to the channel. If you subscribe to the channel, when we go live, you'll get a notification. You'll come in here to be great. We're gonna be doing this all through the end of the year. And Bitcoin's gonna keep going up through the end of the year. It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna have a lot of fun. We're gonna give out a lot of money. All this stuff. It's gonna be amazing. You're gonna learn a bunch. You're gonna laugh. You're gonna earn a bunch. Ooh, like that? Yep. Second thing I need you to do, I need you to go to sofi.com/pomp. When you go to sofi.com/pomp, you can sign up for their invest account. When you go there, you can buy stocks, buy commodities, you can buy all this stuff, or you can buy Bitcoin. If you go and you put $10 in of Bitcoin, or you buy $10 worth of Bitcoin, they'll give you

• 51:10Anthony Pompliano?

  $10 for free. If you put $2,000 in, then you'll join the Diamond Hands Club. You get to join calls with us. You get to go into a Slack. You get to do all this cool stuff. So go to sofi.com/pomp. Make sure you read the terms and conditions. I don't want to get any sort of problems, and we will keep going. Any last words from the two geniuses? It's gonna be a fun few months to end out the year. John?

• 51:35Speaker 03

  Scary Mooch is a legend. I appreciate all of you guys watching. Thanks for liking the video, subscribing to the channel. If you want to tweet at me, I'll respond and pay off your credit card.

• 51:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's it for the Best Business Show. We'll be back tomorrow. We got a big guest, big guest tomorrow. Big guest tomorrow. See you guys tomorrow.