#1101 Braeden Anderson On When Crypto Regulation Is Coming

Braeden Anderson is an Attorney at Kirkland & Ellis and Author of the book "Black Resilience". In this conversation, Braeden gives us the latest updates on regulation in the crypto space and when we might see progress on these important decisions. We also discuss Braeden's background and his tough upbringing that led him to become the success he is today. ======================= Arculus is the next generation crypto & NFT cold storage wallet that combines one of the world’s strongest security protocols with the easiest to use form factor and app. Arculus requires 3-Factor Authentication to ensure only you have access to your digital assets – something you know – a PIN, something you have – the Arculus Key Card, and biometrics. Learn more and buy it now on getarculus.com. Use promo code POMP to save 15%. Remember, with Arculus, it’s your keys, your crypto. ======================= The number one name in NFT domains and the world’s most powerful wallet are teaming up to bring something new to the crypto and Web3 world: That’s right, Unstoppable Domains and Blockchain.com partnered to create NFT domain names ending in . Blockchain. It’s the perfect ending to show that you’re a believer in a decentralized future. The Blockchain.com community can get one, for free by signing up for the waitlist here. Free NFT domains provide all the benefits of premium Unstoppable Domains, including fee-free, lifelong ownership. Don’t have a Blockchain.com wallet? No worries, these new domains are available to everyone for as low as $5. Either sign up for a free blockchain.wallet or visit Unstoppabledomains.com to buy your domain today. ================== Valour (formerly DeFi Technologies) represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U. S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at valour.com ======================= Amberdata provides the critical data infrastructure enabling financial institutions to participate in the digital asset class. We deliver comprehensive data and insights into blockchain networks, crypto markets, and decentralized finance. Download our Digital Asset Data Guide at https://www.amberdata.io/pomp ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/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. Braden Anderson is an attorney at Kirkland and Ellis, and he is the author of a brand new book called Black Resilience. In this conversation, we talk about a lot, everything from crypto regulation, legal frameworks, and then we talk about his background, many of the different difficult situations that he's navigated, including how he almost made it to the NBA, the different setbacks that made him go on a different path and eventually become an attorney at the world's largest law firm. In this conversation, I think you'll learn a lot, and I really enjoyed recording it with Braden. Before we get into this episode, though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Arculus. Arculus is the next generation crypto and

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  NFT cold storage wallet that combines one of the world's strongest security protocols with the easiest to use form factor and app. They have three factor authentication, and you can use your PIN and the Arculus key card along with biometrics. They don't compromise your holdings by requiring a USB port, charging, or browser connections. With Arculus, you're protected from hackers and institutions freezing your access. Learn more today and buy it now at getarculus.com. You can use promo code POMP to save 15%. Getarculus.com, use promo code POMP. And remember, with Arculus, it's your keys, your crypto. This episode is brought to you by Unstoppable Domains. They've partnered with blockchain.com to create NFT domain names ending in .blockchain. It's the perfect ending to show that you're

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

  a believer in a decentralized future. The blockchain.com community can join a short waitlist to get one for free at blockchain.com/weightlist/blockchaindomain. Free NFT domains provide all the benefits of premium unstoppable domains, including fee-free lifelong ownership. If you don't have a blockchain.com wallet, no worries, there's new free domains available to everyone. Either join the waitlist for a free blockchain.com domain, or visit unstoppabledomains.com to buy your domain today, starting as low as $5. UnstoppableDomains.com. This episode is brought to you by Valor, which represents what's next in the digital economy. They provide simplified trusted access in crypto. Decentralized finance and web three investment opportunities.

• 2:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry leading equity products and protocols all through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. They currently are listed in the U.S. under the D E F T F stock ticker and on the Canadian Neo Exchange under D E F I. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at valour.com. That's V A L O U R dot com.

• 2:42Speaker 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.

• 3:06Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Braden here with me. I thought a great place to start is you are a lawyer, so you can say, you can give legal advice to clients. What's going on with crypto regulation? Like, it feels the entire industry continues to ask, we want regulatory clarity, we want regulatory clarity. How do you underwrite where we are right now on that?

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I have to begin by saying I'm not giving legal advice today and that my views are my own and not necessarily the views of my firm. But with that, it's, we're in an interesting spot. I think if you look at 2017, what happened with the price of Bitcoin blowing up, a lot of folks had to start paying attention to this industry. I, at that time, started a task force that was trying to educate regulators. I was at FINRA at the time as an extern in law school and I was engaged in a bunch of different investigations of ICOs, right, that were coming in through the Jobs Act, right, crowdfunding regulation, right, that were raising money on Republic and whatnot.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  And if you look at where we started to where we are now, we have made progress, but a lot of the regulation that's coming down is through enforcement, right? And as a market participant, you don't love that because it's hard to have any certainty about what you can do and what you can't do because all that you can really do is see what the SEC is deciding to bring enforcement actions. And So I think it's it's difficult, but if you're somebody involved in the space right now, what you really need to be thinking about is how do I deliver value to the marketplace, right? There's a lot of different coins, a lot of tokens, a lot of projects.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  But I think you really need to think about how do I create a use case, right? Through this project, implement the technology, right? But focus on this idea of value and creating value for for the community.

• 5:04Anthony Pompliano?

  How do uh law law firms think about uh operating in environments where maybe it's not so clear exactly what the rules are? Right? And what I mean by that is like, uh obviously, law firms aren't going to talk to clients or even internally and say like, hey, we should go break rules. But if you don't know what the rules are, what's like the framework? What's the conversation inside of uh various large law firms that are trying to figure this out, I think alongside market participants, alongside regulators, like like there's a lot of different types of groups, but most people don't understand how law firms themselves think about kind of where we are in the market.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  I I think we we start with published guidance from the regulators and at this point, there there are a lot of statements that have been made by the SEC, by different governmental groups about, hey, we think about these sorts of products and these sorts of tokens or these sorts of issues in this way, and we start to put together a plan to help that startup or that project. Find out where the lines are, right? Because it's it's never gonna be perfect, right? Right now, depending on what you're what you're trying to do. But I think starting out with, hey, listen, you can't raise money to build a product product that doesn't exist

• 6:19Speaker 02

  using investor funds and then promise a bonus of tokens, right? We learn that the hard way over and over and over again. That's not gonna work. So I think building your project with, you know, if you can self-fund it, if you can get accredited investors to be involved and be part of the project and deliver something that has value and then sell that thing that has value, you want to be in that commodities. If you, unless you want to go the securities route. And I think, you know, if you're willing, if you have the funds to be able to just say, listen, this might be a security. Let's just go that route and try to register. You know, you, you may be able to avoid some of those issues, but most startups, that's.

• 7:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it a money thing? Is that why most of these projects, technologies, teams, whatever, are not just saying, hey, let me register as a security?

• 7:12Speaker 02

  So there's a couple of things. Money as a startup, as a new company is going to be a lot of what you're thinking about. Because it's not cheap to, to hire these big firms. And the, the issues are thorny, right? And then you think about disclosure and the burden of being a registered security with the SEC. And what that means in terms of ongoing governance. It's, it's showing your work every day, right? Everything that you're doing, everything that you're saying, you're always being asked questions. You, you ought to make sure everything you're saying is accurate. It's, it's difficult to do. Every public company has issues doing it with a ton of money. So you think about a startup trying to, trying to compete and play that game.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  It gets pretty, pretty hairy pretty quickly. But that being said, you can do it, right? And we have seen projects that have done that.

• 8:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And what is the current thought process around something like Bitcoin? Like, it feels like the SEC, the CFTC and most market participants all agree that this is not a security. Is that generally the, the kind of conclusion at the moment?

• 8:16Speaker 02

  So that's the other thing that's going on. So you also have this jurisdictional issue, right? Between the CFTC, which from the very beginning was like, listen, crypto, they're commodities unless they're not. Right? And they fall within our jurisdiction and it's really plain and simple. And then you have the SEC that's saying, yeah, sometimes, but we really need to be heavily involved. And evaluate each one and make sure that there's, there aren't factors. Cause the Howey test, right? It's, it's looking at investment of money, right? With this reliance on. Others.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Right to actually build the company and and generate profits and you're expecting to profit. Right as a result of those efforts. And when you you see these promoters, a lot of times with a lot of these coins, it gets pretty tricky. With Bitcoin, there's not this one person who is the the godfather, the promoter who's saying. Use Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin, and we're all saying, hey, we we're relying on you. We're relying on you to build the infrastructure to make sure that there's continuous value in Bitcoin. To make sure that you're making partnerships with big companies to accept Bitcoin.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  With a lot of these smaller tokens, if you look at Shiba Inu, you look at Doge, you look at Musk Gold, you look at a lot of these things. The the tricky aspect is that you're really are relying on the founders. To go and build the infrastructure and create the value for the coin as the community. And if you're the SEC, it's a little bit tricky because you're saying, well, a lot of people did buy this token. In order to make money, they wanted.

• 10:03Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a security.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:04Anthony Pompliano?

  What what percentage of the long tail of assets do you think are securities versus not? And again, uh, there is no right answer. It's just like, kind of given what we know now, do you think it's like over, under fifty percent?

• 10:16Speaker 02

  I think definitely under.

• 10:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Under fifty percent?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, wow, I would think uh that you would have thought over, so why why under?

• 10:22Speaker 02

  So I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that just because, because remember the Howie test, it these are all factors. Right if just because you have a promoter that's really active and you have this, you know, this expectation of profit. That doesn't mean it's an investment contract necessarily.

• 10:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Right, it's it's a you have to weigh all the different factors. So I would say under because it's really difficult to say as an investor. Or somebody who buys Doge or buys, you know, one of these meme coins. That there is a reasonable expectation of of profit. And that that is the same kind of investment contract that you enter into when you buy stock. In GME or or or whatever.

• 11:10Anthony Pompliano?

  So in some way, like, it's almost like it's such a joke and everyone's in on the joke that like it can't be taken seriously?

• 11:16Speaker 02

  It's it's for fun. It's a community in my it's my personal opinion, right? This is just my view.

• 11:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Is it's about this community and when you buy a token, you buy Doge, you buy Mus Gold, you're joining this community. You're saying I'm now part of this community and we're all kind of in it together. Where you run into issues is where you have one or two people or five people and or just the advisors who make all the decisions, right? They do everything and everyone's relying on them to do it. That's where you get into issues. Where you've seen it happen successfully is where the whole community and that's where it's powerful. That's the power of crypto. That's where it's everybody sits there and scratches their head and says, wow. Right? Because when you have a hundred thousand people in a community, two hundred thousand people in a community,

• 12:05Speaker 02

  all thinking about how do I create value for this token? That's where it gets special and it's not it's not it can't be a security at all because everybody's engaged. They're all part of the process. They're not relying on a promoter to do everything.

• 12:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so like, when we see this playing out, does it come into uh a is it a factor? If the team that created it ends up making money? Like, I understand the expectation from the audience or the the investor, the person buying the token or whatever, and they're relying on the team. But what happens if uh the team makes money? Does that have any contribution at all?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  I think that's where again, right? That's where if if you're a regulator and you're seeing that most people got the rug pulled.

• 12:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Right? And you see that the founders knew the right moment to sell, right? And and they made a buck and nobody else did. That becomes troublesome because again, it makes it look like you really are in control because you knew when to sell. You're an insider and you sold and the other folks in the community, they look like investors. They look like people who weren't fully in, they weren't fully insiders. That's why I think DAOs are really interesting and the more decentralized that you can build these projects, even if they're not. Technologically decentralized, even just literally having a voting system, just old school, old school, just putting questions out to the community. Hey, guys, what do you think?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Should we do this, or this, or this?

• 13:39Anthony Pompliano?

  So this is fascinating, because I think, I don't want to speak for, or over generalize all of the critiques, but I think one of the critiques that has a lot of nuance to it, so it's really hard to like talk on Twitter and stuff like that, is that there's a separation between like, is this valuable, is this interesting? Is this a way to interact with your customers, your partners, your community, whatever kind of group they fall into? With this, I'm gonna call it like democratic type approach, right? So posing a question, getting answers, then using that information to go change what you're doing. I think that like, I don't hear a lot of people being like, oh, that's dumb, right? Like, big companies run surveys, and like, that's a thing that has been around for a while. One of the critiques I hear that's like a nuanced, interesting one is like, okay,

• 14:25Anthony Pompliano?

  but there's a difference between saying, hey, we're going to work with the community, or work with the DAO, or survey, or do whatever, and then saying it's like decentralized. And like, you hit on this idea of like, technically decentralized versus like, a new type of mechanism of communicating. And I think right now, I don't think there's a lot of malicious actors, is my read, but they're all getting lumped together, and the term decentralized just becomes like a marketing term. So it's like, hey, it's decentralized, and then they'll point and be like, because we like talk to the community, and like, we get information. But will regulators actually peel those apart and say like, decentralization is like a technology measurement? And the reason why I separate those is like, is there like a number?

• 15:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it like, if you have three, then that's decentralized, or is it like thirty, or three thousand, or, you know, three million? Like, how do you measure that? And I don't know, maybe we just don't know the answers yet.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Well, so, I think you're hitting on all the right points, right? Part of, so the regulators are very interested in the definition of decentralized.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  And partly the reason why is because promoters of coins that they've come across, that's what they're saying, right? That's one of the things that they, that regulators. have had to field, right, is, well, this is decentralized. And they're like, well, what does that mean? Right? Is it really decentralized? And you have

• 15:44Anthony Pompliano?

  How do they evaluate that as of right now, or your

• 15:46Speaker 02

  So I think right now, the it's it's really technological, right? But

• 15:52Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like nodes or or

• 15:53Speaker 02

  But

• 15:54Anthony Pompliano?

  users or something like that.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  But here's the issue. So let's say it is completely technologically decentralized. Right? It literally on the blockchain, you have to have a certain amount of buy into for certain things to happen on the chain. And there's no one way for any individual to circumvent that or change that from happening. What about the the servers that everything's being run on? Is there any maintenance that has to happen? Who's in charge of that maintenance? If you're trying to get listed on an exchange, who is the individual who contacts that exchange and says, hey, we want to get listed?

• 16:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  If there is a deal, right, if there's a big deal with a company, a lot of times, big companies will buy huge amounts of different tokens and give them away or do different promos with them or accept those tokens after buying a bunch of them. Who are they interacting with? Are they only interacting with through the exchange to buy those tokens? Or is there someone, even if they're just a whale, right? That may be enough, right? So you have to think about that kind of stuff. If you're just a whale, you just own tons. But you you own so much that you're able to actually

• 17:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Your de facto customer service, your de facto BD, right?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Is it decentralized in that situation?

• 17:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  And that kind of stuff, I think, is just, it's tricky. And that's why I think you have to start, if you love crypto and you love blockchain, you love Bitcoin, and you want to develop a company in this space, you have to think about what is a real world problem? What's a real world problem? You got to come back to square one. And you talk a lot about this, about building shit that people want. Right? You have to do that. You got to start with, it's not just, it's not going to do it anymore. It's not twenty seventeen. You can't just throw together a meme coin and think it's going to go to the moon. That's investors do deserve more. The community deserves more. So whether you're gonna go the Security route, or whether you think you've built a commodity.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Bitcoin is a commodity. It's proven, right? It's it's not a meme coin, right? It really does have value because there's a tremendous infrastructure by being the first major coin out.

• 18:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Right? And so I think folks need to stop trying to be the next Bitcoin. And they need to start thinking about, how can I leverage blockchain to build something that people fucking want?

• 18:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What what's fascinating about it is, uh, there's this weird, um, maybe dichotomy is the right word. Where, uh, a blockchain's entire purpose is to get to decentralization because that leads to security. There are very few things that in the legacy world, uh, have decentralization. Or this, uh, kind of robust, resilient security. That also are efficient, almost nothing, right? It's like Amazon is super centralized hierarchical structure. Like they stamp out all the bureaucracy, all of the the kind of wastefulness, uh, and they just go for efficiency. How do we get something from point A to point B as fast as possible, as cheap as possible, and like deliver value to the customer?

• 18:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And what's fascinating about that is, uh, could there be a decentralized Amazon? Like, I'm unconvinced of that specific business because the whole business around efficiency. And the trade off between like high security versus high efficiency seems to be like a big question people have to make a decision on. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is super decentralized, super secure. But plenty of cr- uh, critics would argue, oh, it has a 10 minute block time. Or the fees, uh, did spike, uh, uh, in past bull markets before the invention, uh, and kind of, uh, operationalization. Of, uh, Lightning Network and things like that. And so what you saw was like layer one, super secure. And if you want to be scalable, if you want to be efficient, you have to then move to these kind of upper layers. And so one of my big questions, I don't I don't know what the answer to this is.

• 19:39Anthony Pompliano?

  But one of my big questions is what is the real world use case where there's a solution to a real problem like you're describing? But can still be decentralized and solve the efficiency problem? And it's like, that's asking a lot of people to do. And so it's fascinating because, uh, it also gets at the heart of what the regulators, I think, are asking themselves, which is like decentralization is important. But there's a lot of use cases where actually probably it shouldn't be decentralized, which then leads to this whole idea of like, well, then I think people may have to register them as securities. And like, how do you do that?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Well, there will almost, so that's why it becomes interesting to think about what does decentral, what does decentralization mean?

• 20:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Right? Because in most cases, there will always be stakeholders. There will always be people who regardless of the general landscape, are more well positioned to benefit from the project service company, whatever it is than others, right? And I think when you talk about Bitcoin and the criticism of efficiencies in Bitcoin relative to to other things, I don't think that that criticism is fair.

• 20:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  I think realistically, there's always a fee to use any service. You look at PayPal, they charge fees, right? And so Bitcoin is mostly free, but you may have to pay fees and transaction costs to actually keep the train moving. And that to me is just fair, it makes sense. I think it's almost inconceivable that you would have a product or a service or a technology that was completely frictionless, right? That didn't have any fees associated with it. Because things that have value, they, there's something there.

• 21:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Right?

• 21:31Anthony Pompliano?

  In your entire time in what I'll call kind of the legal regulatory part of this industry, whether it was FINRA, law firms, the whole thing. Was there ever a time where like somebody did something and you all just looked around the room and started laughing? Like, that can't be real. Because sometimes I see things, right? And like, I'm not looking at it through the legal or the regulatory lens, but I see something and I'm like, that literally cannot be real. Like, somebody has to be joking, somebody has to, because there's just crazy shit that happens. And when there's like less rules, there's more a kind of a wild, wild west aspect to it. Is that also happening to like law firms and the regulatory bodies where like sometimes they're just shocked at like what somebody attempts to do?

• 22:09Speaker 02

  I would say that the the kinds of of clients that approach big law firms typically are a little bit more mature. They have a little bit more money. They're thinking about things in a different way, right? Things are obviously moving at rapid pace and something that seemed insane to do, right? In twenty fifteen, now you might be looking at it a little bit differently because there might be new guidance in that area. So, I mean, there's so many different projects out there. There's literally thousands and thousands. I thought for sure we were at the end in twenty eighteen. I was like, wow, how many more projects can there be? How many more coins can there possibly be? And of course, it's just continued to increase.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Um, and of course, there can't be value in all of them. And some of them are, I mean, is it ridiculous to just put a coin out there on the Ethereum blockchain? You know, an ETH coin and just throw it out there and tell people to buy it? I think so, right? I think you need to think about how you're generating value for that end user. The person who is adding that that commodity, it's not always a securities thing. It's just about doing the right thing and building something that's gonna last, right? Your, if your goal is to send something to the moon for five minutes and pull the rug, maybe it'll work if you build, if you send a bunch of memes out there.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  But if you wanna build something that's gonna last, something like Bitcoin, something like gold, you have to start with infrastructure and start with value.

• 23:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's fascinating. What's your background? Like, you you have a a pretty interesting story, and I think that most people who see your story would be like, how do you go from where you start to inside of a major law firm and kind of on the cutting edge of these technologies and these markets and all of that? Like, like, walk me through how that happened.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I grew up in Okatoks, Alberta, a small town outside of Calgary in western Canada. About twenty thousand people in my town at the time, um, not a very diverse place. Um, only one of like three black families in in the town. And and so I I dealt with a lot of racism, a lot of bias. Um, but I think my perspective on these issues is is colored a little bit differently because I came from that environment. Um, I grew up in an abusive household. Um, things weren't great at home.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  But and you know, I was I was homeless for periods of time. Um, lived on people's couches, right? But I think what that created was a different sense of how I evaluate opportunity, right? I I look at opportunity and I think of it like a damp rag, right? And opportunity and value is like is moisture, it's water. And we all grow up and we're given a rag. And we can get more and we may be able to add moisture and add value to our rag. But we don't necessarily control how we start. And I started out growing up homeless, growing up in an abusive household. I was homeless at twelve years old, bouncing around, living on different friends' couches.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  There wasn't a ton of moisture in my in my rag. But when things started to kind of shift for me, I wrote, I I read a book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

• 25:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  And like that book saved my life, right? So for me, I read that book at twelve years old. Um, and I started to think about my life and my damp rag. In a different way. And it started with gratitude.

• 25:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  It started with, instead of looking at everybody else, oil is big in Alberta, Canada. Huge. And so I had a lot of friends who were very wealthy. It was odd to grow up how I did. We were very, very poor. I had a lot of challenges, but many of my close friends and teammates on the football team and basketball team were extremely wealthy. And so it was thrown in my face, right? In a very interesting way that I don't think happens a lot in in America. Cause I was able to live in an area that was very wealthy, but have absolutely no money at all. And not actually have the the same benefits as everybody else, right? And so when I started to kind of just be grateful for everything that I did have.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  That's when things started to really take shape for me. So I got a call from a coach in North Carolina. This is where things started to kind of shift for me. Um, his name's Ro Russell. And he was responsible for sending a bunch of guys to the NBA. Tristan Thompson, Corey Joseph, right? Helped identify Andrew Wiggins. Um, and me and Andrew Wiggins and a bunch of other folks. Um, were got the call to join this school in North Carolina.

• 26:53Anthony Pompliano?

  What was it called?

• 26:54Speaker 02

  It was called Christian Faith Center Academy. And it was for me as I was homeless at the time. So like this was like the best opportunity ever. Right? And because I didn't have that dynamic with my parents where they were gonna say, hey, we gotta ask all the questions about this. Hey, I don't know if this is the right thing. That wasn't the situation for me. I didn't ask my mom. I told my mom, right? See you later. I'm going to North Carolina. We ended up, there was, there was a couple different, there was like a couple different apartments. And there were sixteen of us, jam packed into these, these little apartments where it's kinda all on top of each other. Living situation.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  There, uh, well, so there we, the basketball team was like part of a separate portion of the school. Maybe there was a couple hundred people total in the school.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Was had like its own curriculum.

• 27:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, what was it? Um, I think Tracy McGrady went to Mount Zion.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  We played against that school. We're, we're in that league.

• 27:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So, uh, Tracy McGrady, I think there's twelve people on the team and there was twelve kids at the school at the time and like they got in some trouble later.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Similar deal.

• 28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, okay.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Similar deal, cause our school was type, it was technically separate. Than the rest of school. But like, big picture, is Row Russell a bad guy? No, he's not a bad guy, right? He's trying to hustle and, and squeeze his rag like everybody else is, trying to give opportunities to kids. He didn't cross all of his Ts and dot all of his Is.

• 28:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Did he get in trouble?

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Uh, in terms of how much trouble he actually got in, I'm not, I'm not sure. Certainly, he has remorse about how it went down. I ended up like, I ended up becoming an All-American. I ended up playing on the Canadian national team. I ended up got, getting scouted to play for, you know, better prep schools that were established and different things. There did end up being an issue with my transcripts from that school, so I had to redo that year, right? It's all water in the, under the bridge now, but part of it comes down to that's issue of resilience and how you internalize things that happen to you. I didn't ever see myself as a victim at that school, even though we were literally, we got in fistfights over food.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Right? Cause they would drop over, think about it. You have sixteen boys between the ages of like thirteen and nineteen. You drop off groceries once a week. What do you think kids are doing? They're storing it under their mattress, they're taking it to their room, right? The biggest kids are like, nah, man, that's all mine. And you got it like, but I, that's how I had to come up. Right? And so when I think about opportunity. I see what's there when a lot of folks don't see what's there.

• 29:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  So I saw that opportunity as my my chance to get to a better school. So I was like, the basketball piece of this is real deal. We got Andrew Wiggins here, we're playing, we played Mount Zion and I dropped a thirty piece on Mount Zion. Right, there's coaches in the stands.

• 29:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  I'm not going anywhere.

• 29:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  I was like, I got this, I can fight for food.

• 29:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  I can sleep in a in a room with four boys, I don't care.

• 29:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  I'm gonna leverage this. And I did, and the next year I went to Wilbraham and Munson, which is a really, really good private school outside of Boston. And from there, right, got the scholarship to Kansas. And then, but you always have to be prepared for a punch in the mouth.

• 30:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  So I signed with Kansas, which was the number one school in the country at that time.

• 30:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Dream come true for me.

• 30:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  At that point, a total crazy story, from homelessness to where I was in North Carolina. Now I've signed with the number one school in the country.

• 30:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  I, everyone thought I was going to the league right away.

• 30:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  And I spent the whole summer there.

• 30:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  And what happens, NCAA rules me a partial qualifier.

• 30:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Because they don't accept the transfers from that school in North Carolina.

• 30:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Right, and so it's a big punch in the mouth, it's like, literally, I'm at the precipice of everything I've ever wanted.

• 30:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Of course, I gotta make it to the league now, look at who I'm around, I'm I'm training with Thomas Robinson. I'm the, Ben Mclemore was in my class.

• 30:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  All Leaguers, everybody, right? And so from there, it's like, well, what do I do? And I had learned, though, through my life up until that point.

• 30:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  This isn't a time to internalize my victim.

• 30:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  This isn't a time for that, what do I do? They were trying to get me to go to a Juco.

• 31:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Cause that's the easiest way to get people qualified.

• 31:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Send this kid to Juco. Get him back, and I was like, as it, in terms of academically, I was a fourteen fifty SAT, so I was like, I'm a better student than than that, there's gotta be a better way. Right, all due respect to going the Juco route.

• 31:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  There's gotta be a better way, and so I decided to go to Fresno State.

• 31:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Right, I got going there, the deal, the goal was to do like a one and done, right? Two and done, what have you. Literally a month before my first season where I was gonna be eligible to play. I break my neck in a car accident.

• 31:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Holy shit, yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  C five, C six, totally destroyed. They had to airlift me out of there in a helicopter. I had a zero point zero six percent chance of making a full recovery. The, the surgeon, I actually had the same neck surgeon as Peyton Manning. Um, Gene Kerrigie. He said, if I would have taken my jacket off, if I would have ta- tried to take my shirt off, adjusted anything. I would be a quadriplegic. Right? Because any little move. If you play football growing up, you learn, if you, if your neck hurts, don't move. You lay back straight and it doesn't matter what anybody tells you to do. You don't move. Um, but I spent a, a- almost a month in the hospital, lost. Almost forty percent of my body weight, had to learn how to walk again.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Right? And this is again, it's a punch in the mouth. As soon as I clawed my way back to the, to the mat again. And I'm gonna have a chance to play. It's at Fresno State, it's not Kansas, but it's okay. I'm gonna leverage this opportunity. Doesn't matter. Paul George just came out of here. I got this, right? But, and Tyler Johnson came out of there too and, and did great, former teammate. But it's all about mentality. At that point, I've now broken my neck and you already know what's going on in the coaches' minds. They're like, okay. I don't know if, like.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  It's tough. We, we love you, buddy, but I think we gotta start recruiting. You know, and so of course, they're thinking, I don't know what's gonna happen with this guy. And I don't know what's gonna happen to me. It's like the Friday Night Lights, Booby Miles. Hey, doc, am I gonna be able to play again? It's like, I don't know, man. Right? And he told me that and I had that moment where you're seeing in the doctor's eyes. He's, he's, he's not pulling your leg. He really doesn't know. And from there, I came up with a new game plan. Right? It's again, okay, so how do I leverage this opportunity? How do I leverage the opportunity? It's just mindset of being a.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Gravely injured, may not make a full recovery, but still on full academic scholarship as of right now. How do I take advantage of that? And literally, the only answer is, okay, right now, you're still being paid. You don't get paid in dollars as a student athlete, but you get paid in education. So my goal at that moment was, I want to become the highest paid college athlete of all time. Right? In education. And how do you do that? Max out credits. I took thirty two credits that next semester. The next semester, another plus thirty. The next semester, almost thirty, twenty seven. Right? I had to write letters to the president of the university to get permission, because fifteen is usually the max. Right?

• 34:13Speaker 02

  But that, it's dollars. Every credit was dollars. So I graduated early. And then from there, again, if your goal is to become the highest paid basketball player in college of all time, I always wanted to go to law school. Let's make basketball pay for it. I graduated early. I had two years of eligibility left. Right? So I'm just, I'm scheming. Because so many people get taken advantage of by the amateur system in the NCAA. I was the perfect candidate for somebody to get taken advantage of. Somebody who was supposed to be this great player, who gets in a terrible car accident. And now, what am I gonna do? Go back to Canada and sleep on my mom's couch? Until I'm homeless again? Right? It's like, no, I don't have that opportunity to be average.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Or to internalize this as, wow, I'm a victim again. Can you believe it? Everything bad keeps happening to me. Everything bad did keep happening to me, but it didn't matter. Right? And so from that moment, it's, again, I remember talking to my coaches at Fresno. I was like, hey, I want to graduate early. I want to be the first person to ever play NCAA ball while in law school full time.

• 35:20Anthony Pompliano?

  That's awesome.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  And the dude, I mean, not gonna name names, he laughed in my face. And like, I have to share that, because it was one of the most pivotal moments for me again. When someone laughs in your face, man, and like, truly, from a position of experience, thinks it's funny, what you think that you can achieve.

• 35:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, they're laughing at your ambition.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Dude, it it's testing. Yeah. And it it it absolutely is the measure of a human being. Mm hmm. What you do next. Mm hmm. And how you respond. And I was like, okay, this is gonna be harder than I thought. Mm hmm. Right? Because if he thinks that it's that funny. Mm hmm. I have to think about objectively and pragmatically what that means. It means that it really is gonna be hard. Mm hmm. Cause no one's ever done it. Why is that? Mm hmm. So I had to put more time and effort into my game plan to make that happen. Mm hmm. And how I did that was I started to think about what is the value? Why would anybody let someone do that? Mm hmm. Right? Cause there's a lot of downsides. If you let someone do something that's never been done. Mm hmm. If you fail, you look stupid. You look silly. The whole university, the athletic program, the you're gonna say, why'd you let this kid do this?

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Of course, it's not gonna work. That's why it's never been done. Because whatever you're gonna say, athletes aren't cut out for. Mm hmm. Law school or whatever you're gonna say. Yeah, yeah. Or it's too much of a burden. Mm hmm. To play eight hours of basketball and be a full-time law student. Mm hmm. It was ridiculous. It it was truly an absurd. Um, an absurd ju- journey to to go through. Um, but I pitched it as, well, the value in doing it is that what if I succeed? What if I, what if I do succeed and maybe I'm the guy to do it? Mm hmm. Right? And I had to just kind of pitch them on, listen, Seton Hall, I've been through a lot.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  And I've overcome a lot and I don't lose. I may fail in the me- like. Failure isn't gonna stop me. Mm hmm. Right? If I get punched in the mouth, I'm gonna keep going and I'm not gonna make you look bad. And I promise you, I'm the guy who's not gonna make you look bad. Mm hmm. And I'm gonna leverage all of the possible value out of this law school education and being a student athlete. That I possibly can to make the university look good. Mm hmm. And to make myself look good and to make the basketball team look good. Mm hmm. And the law school look good, right? And you just gotta take this chance on me. I'm the guy. And luckily, they saw in me, they're like, listen, I don't wanna get in your way. Mm hmm. Right? You may be right, you may be wrong, but you seem really sure about this. Mm hmm.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna get in your way. I I hope it works out. Mm hmm. And I think a lot of times in life.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  People are afraid to put their greatest ambitions out there. There's a lot of people who say, you know, what you do in the dark shines in the light and stuff like that. I totally disagree with that. The universe works in a way that when you put out there your greatest hopes and dreams and desires, and you work as hard as you possibly can, and you tell others, all volunteer information, here's all the things I'm doing to make this happen. I'm not asking you for anything, but are you gonna get in my way? Are you gonna try to stop me? Right? And that mentality, I think, is something that's missing a lot from the narrative around a lot of different issues that have to do with resilience, particularly black resilience and black empowerment. That's not something that's been focused on, right?

• 38:40Speaker 02

  So if you think about Black Lives Matter, it's it's polarizing. There's a lot of people who have a lot of different things to say on both sides, and it it's divided a lot of people.

• 38:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  It's been important in terms of awareness, right? I think that's really one of the only things that it's done, is driven awareness, and there's just a flip side to that coin. But without undermining what Black Lives Matter has done, let's think about what it hasn't done. Sixty-four percent of black Americans in this country say that Black Lives Matter and the increased attention on on racism over the last couple of years hasn't led to any meaningful change in their life, which is pretty profound.

• 39:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's a pretty crazy stat.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  It's like, and I think it's very surprising when I, especially with folks that I speak to, um, both sympathizers and people who have, you know, their own opinions about it. It's that's surprising. And the reason why is celebrating victimhood

• 39:43Speaker 02

  creates more learned helplessness, right? So when you celebrate and and focus your attention on victimhood and pain and trauma, and you think about millions and millions of black Americans and white Americans for three years, being locked in their house, watching videos of black people getting killed every day, that doesn't build up a strong narrative and a Strong idea about black people as strong, powerful, capable, skilled, excellent people in our society, right? That doesn't necessarily in- inure itself to the, the right approach in terms of hiring, right? If you're hiring a black person because you feel sympathy

• 40:26Speaker 02

  or because you, you know, you feel guilty, that's not why you should be hiring black people or anybody in, in, you know, in a diverse group. Right? If you think about the feminist movement and what made it really, really

• 40:42Speaker 02

  successful was it was the celebration of excellent women. It was excellent, excellent women who were geniuses, who were really great at what they did. And the whole world was like, wow, I need to hire a woman right now. Right? If you're head of a company, you're like-

• 40:59Anthony Pompliano?

  It's basically pattern recognition. Like it's the, it's, it's the creation of a new pattern to recognize, right? This episode is brought to you by Amber Data. If you're a financial institution entering the digital asset class, you'll need access to granular on-chain and market data from multiple venues to power research, trading, risk management and compliance. Amber Data delivers comprehensive data and insights into blockchain networks, crypto markets and decentralized finance, empowering financial institutions to apply traditional finance methods to digital assets. Amber Data eliminates the infrastructure setup, integrated challenges and maintenance headaches to access digital assets data, reducing cost and time to market to enter the digital asset class. Learn more and download their digital asset data guide

• 41:41Anthony Pompliano?

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• 42:20Anthony Pompliano?

  They offer clients the deepest pool of liquidity and they have 100% uptime track record through all the volatility spikes. LMAX Group's liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology means that LMAX Digital is the market-leading solution for institutions across crypto trading and custodial services. LMAX Digital, secure, liquid, and trusted. Go learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Again, that's LMAXdigital.com/pomp. It's fascinating because I think a friend of mine said this to me one time, they're immigrant. And we were talking about, I think a report had come out and it was all about percentage of employees that were born in the United States versus immigrants and all stuff.

• 43:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And he said it to me in just like such a blunt way. He's like, I don't want to be hired because I'm an immigrant. I want to be hired because I did a great job. And I just was like, I've never heard anyone just explicitly say it in that manner. And his point was, I don't want to say where he's from because it would give it away, but like, he was like, where I'm from, no one expects them to be able to go from there to a highly successful job in tech. If I do it, maybe actually people will then say, maybe I should go find another person who is an immigrant from that place, right? And you create this new pattern to recognize. And in some way, like, there's a lot of patterns. Like, one of the things that is like very weird is like the autistic pattern

• 43:43Anthony Pompliano?

  of somehow in tech, people are like, oh, if there's like an element of like being on the autism spectrum, there's value that is assigned to that because of past patterns that they have identified. And so you like start to see this and I think what you're describing is less like the sympathy component and more of like, it takes somebody to be the first data point in the trend that then creates the pattern, which then people use to recognize over and over and over again, right?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  And to enrich and grow yourself, right? So I think about-

• 44:19Anthony Pompliano?

  The pioneer definitely benefits from being the pioneer.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And everybody watching the pioneer. Who came from that same environment.

• 44:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  I grew up not ever, I I never saw a black doctor, a black lawyer, a black investor, a black entrepreneur, just didn't see it, right? And that does a lot, that does a lot to you in terms of what you think you can achieve. A lot of folks growing up in black communities see black athletes, they see black entertainers. And there's no question, if you ask folks in those communities, do you think you could become a rapper or an athlete? Most people say, yeah, I could do that, right? And but if you ask them, could you become, and you know, a billion dollar investor? Do you think you could create a startup that ten X's and gets, you know, listed um on the New York Stock Exchange? Or do you think you could become an attorney at the biggest law firm in the world? It's a little bit like, oh, I don't know, right?

• 45:10Speaker 02

  And some of my teammates and some folks along the way have told me about my aspirations, that that's white shit. That's white, right? Me focusing on school, me wanting to become an attorney, that's white, I'm trying to succeed in the white world. And that's bullshit, right? Just plain and simple, that's bullshit. But that kind of narrative gets, that narrative is created from the celebration of victimhood. And the focus on it without

• 45:41Speaker 02

  putting the focus on folks who actually are succeeding. Cause there's actually a lot of black entrepreneurs and a lot of black achievers and lawyers and and doctors.

• 45:50Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm fascinated with uh Jay-Z, uh mainly because um obviously he he comes from where he comes from, his kind of early career is very well documented.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh now, I think is very well respected in uh the business community and the investment community. People realize like, hey, this guy like understands what he's doing and and they respect him for the skills and experiences that he's acquired. Uh but then he still will turn around and he'll use the music to basically talk about it.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh and in the new DJ Khalid song, uh he basically talks about like, he says something like, you know, uh there's three billionaires that come from uh kind of his uh group of friends, um him, Kanye, Rihanna. And then he's like, oh, by the way, LeBron is also a rock boy, right? So that's four. Then he uh explains something, he's like from corner boys, uh we're corner boys with corner. Offices and this idea of like, he still has a very similar mentality of just like, get up every day, work your ass off, like do the things necessary to be successful. But he's been able to transcend into like a different world. And I think that he probably more so than anyone else I've seen in music or entertainers or anything. Maybe you could put like a Michael Jordan LeBron up there as well, but like Jay-Z specifically has been able to do it.

• 46:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And then talk about it in a way that I think resonates with tons and tons of young people and it's pretty powerful.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  He's a, he's a perfect example, right of, of black resilience, of like excellence. It's, and again, it, it starts with whatever you have. For Jay-Z, it started with music and he was a very talented musician and artist and he leveraged that to create an empire. And to become a businessman, right? That is really, really important because for me, all that I had, I was homeless. I literally needed basketball. Like it's okay. I needed it.

• 47:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, take it out.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  It was my ticket to get an education. I would never have gotten an education what, without basketball, but that doesn't matter. Doesn't matter now, right? I'm going to turn you at the biggest firm in the world. Doesn't matter that I, that the only reason that I got.

• 47:44Anthony Pompliano?

  No one asks you that when you walk in the room.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Right? It doesn't matter, right? You're all, you're in the same room as everybody else and Jay-Z is a perfect example of that.

• 47:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Tell me about the book. You, you wrote a book on a lot of these topics, which I think is fascinating because it's not just like you understand them and, and kind of live your own life that way. You also took the time to write them down so that other people could read them as well.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I thought about how can I best leverage my story and what I've been through to help other people and help as many other people as, as possible. And I think there's, there's a lot of stories from my background and my experiences that have to do with racism and overcoming bias. Some of them have to do with other things too, but black resilience is, is really about. Celebrating and focusing on how black people in troubled environments in, you know, against all odds have become successful anyway. Mm hmm. And it's not about saying that racism doesn't exist and that it's not a problem.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  It's about focusing the narrative on what we can control. Mm hmm. Right? And I think about when I break it down in terms of what I've done and what many other, you know, black successful people have done is they've taken inventory of the things that they that they can control. Mm hmm. Right? Every one of those times that I told you earlier in the podcast that I got punched in the mouth. Mm hmm. I took inventory of, okay, this happened. I can feel sorry for myself. Mm hmm. Or I can start taking inventory of the things that I can actually control or influence. Yep. And putting together a plan of attack to seize every single one of those. Mm hmm. And and I think that message needs to be relayed to more people. Mm hmm.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  There's too many black Americans in this country who have seen nothing but a narrative of white people preaching at white people. Mm hmm. Black people preaching at white people. If you look at most books about race and blackness, they're written to a white audience. That's crazy. Mm hmm. Leave white people alone for a minute. Mm hmm. Right? White people need to have their own conversations. Black people need to have their own conversations. Mm hmm. And to the extent that white and black people are having conversations, let's not have every focus conversation be on the focus of racism and making the other person feel guilty. Mm hmm. That's not how you're gonna build a bridge. Mm hmm. That's not how you're gonna build one community. Mm hmm. Racism is an issue. How do we solve that issue? Cause for thirty years, all we've done is preach at white people to tell them that they're

• 50:12Speaker 02

  racist and it's not working. So even if you thought that that might work, it's not working. We have the data. It's not working. Mm hmm. So I wanted to make sure that I was putting on a message that just takes a different approach. Mm hmm. Right? It's not that, I'm not gonna say that it hasn't solved anything, what we've done over the last thirty years, but it's it's certainly not carrying us over the goal line. Mm hmm. And. To me, I think focusing on the black empowerment and a huddle, right? I think about the book as really a huddle. It's a black huddle where anybody can pull up a chair. Black, white, doesn't matter. Pull up a chair, right? But this is a black conversation. I'm talking to black people the whole time, right? And we're talking about the issues that are, that are, that are facing us in our communities

• 50:57Speaker 02

  and the challenges and the obstacles that we're gonna have to be overcome. And how you might be able to go about overcoming those things and be grateful for the opportunities that you do have and how you might be able to leverage your career as a musician to turn that into something else. Leverage your career as an athlete to turn that into something else. But bias is nothing but somebody else not understanding who you are. They just don't get it. They're not from that position. As somebody who's involved in Bitcoin and crypto, you know, there's a ton of people who are biased against Bitcoin. They don't know really anything about it, right? Except for a bunch of propaganda that they've heard. And so you say, oh, yeah, I'm Anthony Pompliano. I'm a, I'm a Bitcoin guy, right?

• 51:40Speaker 02

  There's a lot of things that go, that run through their mind about what that means. A lot of those things completely inaccurate because they're ignorant, right? They don't actually understand it.

• 51:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Education is the great equalizer.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Right? And so the question, right, for you would be, well, how can I make sure that I build a bridge to more people so that they're not just writing me off? So I can actually add value to their lives and educate them? Is it gonna be to say to every person, you're ignorant, you're biased, you're a jerk? Probably won't work, right? And so similarly, if somebody is biased and maybe a little racist, whether they know it or not, is the best way to build value for myself and my brand and what I'm trying to accomplish to say, you're racist, you suck, you're a jerk? Probably not. It's about tact, right? It's about building a bridge, trying to help that person understand who it is that you are, right?

• 52:35Speaker 02

  With my professors in college and in law school, on the first day of school, I'd always give them like a little mini speech. I'd be like, listen, my name's Braden. I play basketball, but I care about this class so much. I wanna be a lawyer, right? I read X and Y studies that you did. I read your paper on Y. I'm super interested in Z. Make sure that they understand.

• 52:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, okay. He's not like the other basketball players.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Whatever it is that they got going on, I just assume they have something going on.

• 53:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Right? Because I'm not gonna let some, I'm not gonna let bias stop me from getting a good grade in this class. And if I have to, you know, if I have to kind of swallow my pride for a moment and give you a little mini speech and make the first effort to get to know you, I'm gonna do that. Because my career and my life is important.

• 53:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's powerful, right? Absolutely. Where can people find the book?

• 53:25Speaker 02

  So it's available almost anywhere, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, right? You can, you can find it on through the Simon and Schuster website. If you just Google Black Resilience, Braeden Anderson, you should be able to find it pretty easily.

• 53:38Anthony Pompliano?

  And what about yourself in terms of people want to, to follow up with you or kind of discuss some of the ideas you've mentioned today?

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best way to get in touch with me. Yeah, a big LinkedIn guy. That's how we got connected. It's, it's a great tool to, to connect with like-minded individuals and people who are trying to build, build great things that are gonna help people.

• 53:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. And just Braeden Anderson there as well?

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Yep, absolutely.

• 53:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. I really enjoyed today. I, I, I think that you have a unique perspective on, on a number of different things, obviously crypto regulation, but, but also just kind of the different points in your life. And I, I have often joked, but also dead serious of like, we have a mental toughness crisis in America, probably globally. And I, I think the, the ideas that are in your book are, are quite powerful for people and a lot of people would benefit from just, just hearing them, right? You, you don't even necessarily have to embody all of them. You don't have to say, yes, this is the only solution, but, but I do think it's, it's quite powerful. So I suggest people go get it.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's about starting the discussion, right? It's just about having, not everyone has to agree with every single thing in my book or everything I've said today, but I think it starts a conversation and it's a conversation that we need to have in this country.

• 54:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. We'll definitely do this again. And I appreciate you coming today.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Awesome, man. Thanks for having me.

• 54:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break Into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to the cryptoacademy.io to learn more. Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with your friends and I'll see you all for the next episode.