#1153 Bill Perkins | Millionaire Talks Elon Musk, Dan Bilzerian, Dying With Zero, & SkyFi

Bill Perkins is one of the most well-known natural gas traders in the world, and the co-founder of multiple companies including satellite imagery provider SkyFi. In this conversation, we talk about Bill's philosophy around dying with zero, the book he wrote about it, natural gas, oil, energy markets, Elon Musk, Dan Bilzerian, & poker. ======================= Announcing LYCEUM | Miami, a day-long event on March 4th, 2023 in Miami hosted by Pomp. We’re gathering an explosive group of experts to engage in a series of fascinating discussions. We'll cover topics from investing, emerging tech, scientific research, sports, music and more. We have some massive names being announced via Twitter throughout January so stay tuned for details. This will not be your typical event and it certainly won’t be one you want to miss. We’re going to learn a lot, make some smart friends, and as always, we’re going to have fun. Spots are limited so head to lyceummiami.com to buy your ticket today. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 200,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. We have no advertisers on this podcast, so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Bill Perkins is one of the most well-known natural gas traders in the world, and he's also the co-founder of a number of companies, including satellite imagery provider, SkyFi.

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  In this conversation, we talk about a lot, including Bill's philosophy around dying with zero, the book he wrote about it, also what he thinks about various natural gas, oil, and energy markets, and then we even talk about fame and what it's like to be friends with famous people, why Bill decided he didn't necessarily want to be famous, and then we finish up with a little poker talk: cheating, winning, big hands, and why billionaires love to just fork over cash when they're playing various poker players. I always enjoy talking to Bill, and this conversation was no different. I hope you guys enjoy it, and once you get done listening, jump on Twitter and let us know what you think about the conversation, including what you liked and what you didn't like. I always appreciate the feedback. Here is my conversation with Bill Perkins.

• 1:29Speaker 01

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• 3:23Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:46Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Bill here with me. Every time that I see you on the internet, I talk to you, I see anything you're doing. It just looks like it's fucking fun. And part of that is in line with this book you wrote called Die With Zero, which I read and I was like, man, this is like the book that I would imagine you writing because it does feel like you authentically live your life that way. Where did this come from? Like, why, why is that the mentality of like, literally die with zero and have as much fun as you possibly can?

• 4:16Speaker 06

  I guess, um, I was just talking about last night, like, my greatest fear is not running out of money, or looking like an idiot. You can look at my Twitter and I'm an idiot, uh, often enough. It's actually wasting my life.

• 4:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:28Speaker 06

  Like, you get one ride, you know, and I don't want to be sixty, seventy, eighty, or even fifty-five, and look back and like, "Holy shit, I wasted this time period of my life. I wasted my ride." You know, I didn't say enough "I love yous," I didn't take enough vacations, I didn't take the trip, I didn't do my best at X, Y, and Z.

• 4:46Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of that is, though, because you've been skilled and fortunate enough to make money? And I think you have this confidence, like, you could continue to make money. If you weren't in that position, would you be more focused on not running out of money? Is it like a luxury?

• 4:58Speaker 06

  No, no. When I, I started thinking about this when I was broke, like, kind of what's the meaning of it all?

• 5:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 06

  You know, and it's like, the money is a tool, like hammers and saws, right? Like, I'm not there to get hammers and saws, I'm there to build houses. So I always wanted to build a life, right? And, and whether it be a hut or whatever, and it's kind of what life am I going to be able to build with the resources I have? Right? Obviously, I'd like a nicer hut, or a nicer life, but it was about not wasting those periods in my life, not wasting my time. Like, really, like, you get one ride, hit the grave with scars and bruises and, and a broken heart, and, and just really enjoy it, just enjoy the ride. And then it's like, well, what does enjoying the ride mean to you? You know, get off autopilot, like, really think about that, because for each person, that's totally different, right?

• 5:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Was there a moment in your life where it, like, opened your eyes and you were like, "I have to change something"? Or did it just kind of gradually happen over time?

• 5:53Speaker 06

  It was gradually. I read a book called "Your Money or Your Life." Uh, a lot of people, and that's kind of like the, the bible to the fire movement. And it really, uh, kind of hammered in the concept of, uh, your time and your money and, and life energy, and the concept of enough. And so I was like, what does enough mean for me? What are the things I'm working for? Right? Like, why do I go to work? Besides survival, right? Like, what does thrive mean to me? And so those concepts early, I didn't really have like diet zero ready to write in those ages at that age, but it was coming to me, you know? It was dripping in and like, I was thinking about the issues and what does it mean? And when do you spend the money? And when do you peak with your money? Is it a number or is it a date? Right?

• 6:39Speaker 06

  Right? Obviously, like, if you're at 80, it's like, you're not striving for the number. Right? So, you know, all the, all these things that are in the book, you know, kind of came to me over time. And I wrote the book to save my own life. Right? I was like, I need to get all this shit down in a mental model that I can use, that I can go and reference. And um,

• 7:00Anthony Pompliano?

  How old were you when you were thinking about this?

• 7:02Speaker 06

  Uh, I started it in my twenties and blathered and argued with my friends all the way through my forties. And then finally, you know, it was just like, I wanted to build an app to just like, here you go, Bill, spend this much this year, spend this much on charities, spend this much skiing, go do this, spin the wheel for potluck activities so you don't have a cookie cutter life based on your culture. Like, I wanted to just like, super app. There's not enough computing power in the world and too many variables. But what I could do is have the mental models on how to think about your life and your resources and how to use them up, use all your resources in order to get the maximum net fulfillment.

• 7:40Anthony Pompliano?

  What's fascinating to me about like, the number is when you're young, as I was asking about your age, um, you usually come up with a number. And if you're like, half as successful as you ever thought you would be, you hit that number pretty quickly. So I remember being in college and I started playing around with foreign currency trading. And I was just like, if I could make $2,000 a month. I could live forever.

• 8:00Speaker 06

  Right.

• 8:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, and I could like not work. And then you get on the real world, you're like $2,000 doesn't really, you know, buy you much. Uh, maybe the number should be a little bit bigger than that.

• 8:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And so at different points in your life, I think that you, one, you realize that like expenses change, uh, your lifestyle changes, things like that. But also two, you gain this, uh, I think some of this confidence, some of this is a skillset to actually hit higher numbers. And I do think that there's this element of like, some people, if there's a number they have in mind, it is very much limited by what they think is possible.

• 8:29Speaker 06

  Right.

• 8:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Few people are like, oh, I don't have any skills. I have no experience, but I want to be a billionaire or I want to be this and mean it. Now, some people just say it, but unless you have some path or you can see like the light at the end of the tunnel, it's hard for people to have high ambition because it just feels like they're like screwing around. They're wasting time. Whereas with this, it's not about a number. It's more of anyone can do it. Like you can go travel around the world on a budget.

• 8:53Speaker 06

  Right.

• 8:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And you don't necessarily have to be the richest person ever.

• 8:55Speaker 06

  No.

• 8:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And you can have the experiences. And so it, it is almost accessible to more people in the world than just, oh, you have to make money. And then you get to enjoy these things.

• 9:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, a lot of times people tell me like, oh, uh, it's easy for you to say when you're rich. And I could tell you every single place I've been in the world, there's been somebody doing it at one one thousandth of cost.

• 9:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:13Speaker 06

  Looking at the same thing. I'll be in Capri looking over and be like, this is beautiful and this is awesome. There'll be somebody who just backpacked over, took the ferry on a super saver. And they're having the same damn experience and enjoying life. I went to Thailand and I'm like, these people are happier than me. They're doing something right, you know?

• 9:32Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think they were doing?

• 9:33Speaker 06

  I, I think they were living in gratitude and they were appreciating things and they were more present. And they didn't have this concept of like, uh, uh, relative deprivation. You know, it's like you're rich and well, that guy's richer than me, so I gotta be rich. You know what I mean? That type of thing. And so. I think those things go a long way because it also cracks your head open to like what you really want based on your resources, not envying what somebody else has or this other life you should be living.

• 10:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it makes me think of two things. One is there's this whole idea of happiness being what are your expectations and then what are your results in relationship to the expectations?

• 10:13Speaker 06

  Right.

• 10:13Anthony Pompliano?

  So you like you become exponentially more happy if you just have very low expectations.

• 10:18Speaker 06

  Right.

• 10:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Because you just constantly achieve, you know, what the expectations were. So there's no letdown and that's like an interesting thing. But also, I was reading a book recently, 4000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman, and in it he has a quote from Scott Adams, the cartoonist.

• 10:31Speaker 06

  Right.

• 10:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And he says, "You can have all the money in the world, but if you don't have a flexible schedule, the person with a flexible schedule and less resources will actually be the happier person."

• 10:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think it's like, understanding what you want and actually doing that and being in gratitude.

• 10:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:52Speaker 06

  Right? And, and, you know, a lot of people, I speak to a lot of like very way richer than me people, whatever, who have been habituated into this rat wheel. And like I said, like the goal is to build houses and they're just collecting all these hammers and saws. They're like, "Look at all these hammers and saws I have." And I'm like, "That's not the goal. The goal is to build houses," you know, "and, and, you know, to build a life," right? And they're not, they're not using the tool, right? They're going into Chuck E. Cheese, getting all the tickets and then walking out. Like, and walking out mean dying with all these Chuck E. Cheese tickets. And I was like, "The purpose isn't the tickets. The purpose is all the prizes up there." Now, they're cheap prizes and stuff, but you get my analogy, right?

• 11:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, everyone's been, to some degree, around someone that they think is successful. It could be, "Hey, this person is, got a higher, you know, job role at a different company and is the same industry." Could be somebody who's been around a billionaire or some, you know, monetary achievement. But if you like go on a trip with them or around them while they're on a vacation, and if they're the person who's like walking around outside at dinner and they're on the phone the whole time, versus the people who are actually sitting at dinner enjoying it.

• 12:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I always think to myself like, "You can have all the money in the world, but if you gotta answer that phone call in the middle of dinner while you're on vacation..."

• 12:08Speaker 06

  Those guys are batteries. They're like working for you, right? Like, it's like, go make the product cheaper, faster, better, or whatever it is for me. Like, you don't really have a life. Like, and, and you've been habituated to think that this form of slavery that you've enslaved yourself, this addiction you have, is, is what's making you happy. And it's not, you know, but like, you can't argue with a heroin addict. Like, you have a problem with their heroin addiction, you know what I mean? They don't. They're like, "I'm happy as hell." Give me another hit, right? And so, and so it's kinda, you know, it's, it's, it's really a book about, like, when you dig into the book, right? It's really about, you know, taking your wealth, your health, and time and maximizing your fulfillment. But it's really about awareness and getting off autopilot.

• 12:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What is the path for you in terms of your balance between work and then that life enjoyment? Do you have, like, a schedule that you try to stick to? Do you have, like, a specific framework that you, like, have everyone around you be aware of? So that they know, "Oh, Bill's not here in the office right now," or "He's not doing this because he's off enjoying life?"

• 13:12Speaker 06

  I, I mean, I generally enjoy, my work kinda follows me, because, you know, thanks to technology, you can be anywhere. You, you have your phone, you have your work. At least in the fields that I'm working with, right? There's Slack for all the different companies, there's trading apps, and we built our own in-house thing that's on, on your phone. So the real thing for me is to realize, in this time period of my life, what experiences belong, how much, and am I getting that out, right? So like, if I'm not spending enough time with my, my wife, or my kids, or talking to them, or seeing these events, then I know I'm out of balance, right? It's really, really hard and takes, uh, being off autopilot and focusing to know what balance means for each person, right? For some person, it might be like, "I should be skiing my ass off, because I'm gonna win the ski nationals,

• 13:56Speaker 06

  and I should be training. I'm, I'm not training enough," right? But it's understanding what your goals are during that time period and making sure you're allocating your time to it, right?

• 14:06Anthony Pompliano?

  On the trading side, how much trading do you do on your phone?

• 14:09Speaker 06

  I would say from, 100%.

• 14:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 14:14Speaker 06

  100%. A lot, a lot of times, it's, it's a, it's a Slack message to my clerks going, "Hey, execute this," or "Do that." But there's a app called Ice Web Mobile. I can't recall the last time I put one on a desktop, and order it on a desktop.

• 14:32Speaker 06

  I mean, actually, I went in the office the other day and I was like, hey, can you guys set up the mobile, I mean, the application on my computer? And it's like, oh, forgot my password. You know what I mean? Because I'm always, you know what I mean? I'm always thumbprint logging in on my phone. Then 2FA and hassle. And then I still didn't use it. I went into the other room and I use, you know, I use my phone. And so I am so used to the phone being the source of all things work and play and Twitter battles and whatever, that I rarely use a desktop. And to the point where my wife was like, this is hurting your eyes. You need to start using the desktop.

• 15:13Speaker 06

  You can open up more windows, you'll be more productive or whatever. But it like, then it's like, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta be there. But she's right. Like, I'm, I am hurting my eyes and I should start using the computer more. So maybe that'll change a little bit when I travel.

• 15:27Anthony Pompliano?

  How big are the trades that you're doing off your phone? And like, how often? Is this like, you're like, doing multiple trades a day?

• 15:32Speaker 06

  No, I'm not like a stock day trader jamming. I'm a seasonal positional trader. So, you know, I manage and prune the position. But they can be extremely large. They can be like, oh, I gotta get out, sweep, you know, at least for, as a percentage of our fund.

• 15:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Like eight figures, nine figures?

• 15:50Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 15:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Six figures?

• 15:51Speaker 06

  Uh, I mean, our fund right now is a half a billion dollars. We're a very volatile fund, so we have a pretty large var. So, I mean, you know, our P and L swinging 10 to 10 to 6, 10 to 50 million, 60 million a day. So whatever that is.

• 16:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, the reason why it's interesting is there's a lot of tech CEOs, maybe not a lot, but a number of them that have publicly stated they don't use a laptop or desktop. They're doing things off of their phones, but they're usually doing email. They're doing Slack, many things you just described.

• 16:22Speaker 06

  No, no, I'm trading.

• 16:23Anthony Pompliano?

  But when you're trading, that most people, the, I think, external perception would be, oh, you gotta be in front. You gotta have the 17 screens, right?

• 16:31Speaker 06

  I have all my fundamentals on a, we have a in-house thing we call Skynet that, you know, has all the fundamentals. I can Slack and ask questions that are not there or particular graphs. I formulate my view and, you know, our positions are more like a supertanker. We're not a speedboat zipping in and out and day scalping, at least for me. There's other guys who go in the office and they may do that. And so. All my trades are mobile. And it's a blessing and a curse because you know, I'll be off the coast, the off the Malfe coast on a boat. And you know, my neurons are attached to and thinking about, hey, I gotta pay attention to the situation. Have the fundamentals change, have whatever, let me check the market. You could always check the market. It's, it's, it's a little annoying, you know?

• 17:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. But it's also like, it is a weird thing, right? Like you get more information when you're on the go. You get access to the markets because now you have the phone with you.

• 17:25Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 17:25Anthony Pompliano?

  But at the same time, uh, you probably have to be somewhat thoughtful about, hey, I'm about to make a decision. Am I even in like the right mindset, right? If you're kind of like, I'll just use an extreme example, like if you're like, I'm about to go drink. I'm about to, you know, go here, do this, whatever. I got my wife, like all these things are going on and oh, by the way, uh, and you make an offhand decision that could swing.

• 17:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's one thing like I do not, I do not, uh, trade when I've had alcohol or anything like that. And you know, some, you know, the market shuts down for a little bit and then it's overnight. And it's like, fuck, I can't, I cannot, I'm paralyzed from making the decision. I mean, I usually give the clerks and instructions, et cetera, like if this happens or whatever. But we're very, uh, like I said, we're, we don't have to make big decisions.

• 18:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 06

  The tanker doesn't turn bit, you know, quickly. It can, if it needs to, right? Something blows up, it's like, we know what to do. This is an emergency, but.

• 18:20Anthony Pompliano?

  What's always been interesting to me is you have, uh, almost multiple, uh, chapters of your life.

• 18:25Speaker 06

  Right.

• 18:25Anthony Pompliano?

  But you're living them at the same time. Most people are like, okay, I did the investing thing or I went and then I started a company. Or I went and I played poker, whatever. You're kind of doing them all at the same time, right? And like, that is your life. How did you get into starting the technology companies or investing in the technology companies? Because when you're doing like energy trading or the other types of trading, usually those are two distinct skillsets, different mentalities, different capital pools. But like trading energy or other types of financial assets and doing tech investing. Maybe there's some crossover hedge funds that are starting to do it. But outside of that, those are really been two different industries.

• 19:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think personally, I'm kind of curious, I, you know. Science and technology and in trading, you know, you're always, you know, we're fundamental shops. So we're value add on top of information, right? That's what we are, you know? And so you're just hoovering information, analyzing it, and then, you know, turning it into actionable intelligence. And so the more information you can have, the better. And sometimes, you know, you ask questions like, well, how could we know this? You know, one of my favorite things, starting back in the centaurus days was, why guess when you can know? We always say that, like my clerks, my research, like, why are you guys fucking guessing? Just call up the government and ask them a question. There's a, there should be a person there who's required to answer the phone and give you the information.

• 19:44Speaker 06

  And so that kind of mentality sticks with me and, which is like no big secret now because it's so long ago. And a lot of people left, but one of the things I did was like, why can't we run the weather models faster and know the weather? Faster than the National Weather Service comes out and they're like, oh, a bunch of people tried it and they failed. I'm like, whatever. Like I never let the failures of other big guys would ever stop me. Long story short, I bought a $6 million IBM supercomputer and heard some, you know, weather experts understood the models. And we did that.

• 20:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you guys were able to predict the weather better and faster?

• 20:26Speaker 06

  We're not able to predict it. We're able to run the model that everybody's looking at faster than the National Weather Service. So basically, the National Weather Service publishes its first day forecast and the initial conditions, right? That they started to run the model on. We come in, we pick up the initial conditions, we stick it in our computer, and then it runs it faster. So they get to day four, we catch up to them and then we run it faster. So we have the full forecast before everybody gets to like day six. And that had value for a while. And then everybody kind of knew something was going on because the market was moving, you know, quicker and. You know, technology like that, it's kind of like, how can I use technology to

• 21:09Speaker 06

  give me information that will give me some sort of alpha in the market? And one of the things I was getting frustrated with is, why are we guessing what the frac crews are, or the rig counts are? Like, they have this survey, and you guys do this statistical sampling.

• 21:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain what that is, by the way.

• 21:26Speaker 06

  Oh, so frac crews are what comes along to basically put explosive in the well they just drilled, right? The rig just came in and it drilled a well, and let's say it's 5,000 feet. They pour a line and it has concrete, but they put explosives to run crack to have the gas and oil seep into it. So, that's an indicator of what production is, future production is gonna be, right? And it's very important to kind of understand, you know, when you're trying to figure out supply and demand balances, what future production is gonna be. And it's kind of an area, I was like, why are we fucking guessing? You know what I mean?

• 22:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Because that's what people were doing previously. They would literally just try to guess.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're guessing, they're kind of, like, maybe they're making a good guess, maybe not. And I was just like, we can know exactly. Like, why don't we use satellite data and optical recognition and machine learning to track every single rig and frac crew in the United States of America? Like, we would know better than the actual operators. And we do. And so, and that was actually born out of another science project, I don't know, I bore you, but there was this, you might have seen me retweet at FromSlaves. So Cornell University had this thing called Freedom on the Move, where they were trying to crowdsource people to read these, like, old-time newspapers and turn them into plain texts, right?

• 22:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 22:51Speaker 06

  And I'm an impatient guy, as you probably know. And I was like, fuck that shit. Why don't we build an optical recognition thing, Hoover all these things, and kick it out? So I had my clerk do that. Boom.

• 23:05Speaker 06

  We trained it on 2,000 ads and then it's like, I got it, son. Then we fish, put 10,000, 50,000 ads in. It's like, boom, here's all the plain text. And then we're like, okay, it's all in plain text, but feature extraction. The computer doesn't know what that means. So we built a, a model to train it to understand like, what does height mean? What does scars mean? What does mulatto mean? What is, what is, what is job description? Trained it on 2,000 ads and then boom, it's like, I got it. So now you can feature extract any runaway slave ad. And you could do things like the seasonality of runaways. What was the number one job from runaways? What time? You know, you could search by name, sort, right? And so there was this buried history in the data.

• 23:47Speaker 06

  And so, once I did that, out of just plain curiosity, historical curiosity, right? Like, I'm not, I'm not social justering war, worrying. I'm just like, I want to understand our history. And I was like, why can't we do that for rigs and frac crews? Just get satellite data. So then we ran the experiment and we're like, okay, negotiated forever getting satellite data.

• 24:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Why is it so hard to negotiate it?

• 24:10Speaker 06

  Ah, we're about to get into SkyFi soon. Uh, so, uh, the satellite industry has long been a government focused business, right? It spooks, spies, very expensive systems going up. Uh, the government agencies are the customer. Long RFP, long sales process, et cetera. So all their systems, their salespeople, et cetera, are for that process. It's not geared for like, hey, I instantly want an image and I just want to, show me the price. I want to buy it, right? And so I went through this process, uh, almost pulling off my eyelashes to buy like 1.75 or $2 million worth of satellite data over two years.

• 24:55Speaker 06

  And I was like, shit, I'm trying to give these guys like almost $2 million. It's taken me three months to cut a deal. And you know, they were trying to region restrict me and all kinds of other crap. I'm like, no, my region is the globe, right? Sorry, hitting the mic here. Uh, and, and anyway, long story short. We we we got the deal, built the machine, uh, and we are, we don't guess, we know. We know what every single frac crew in America is doing. We know what every single rig is. And we can do it for Canada, or we can look anywhere.

• 25:25Anthony Pompliano?

  How much money can you make off that information? If you had no.

• 25:28Speaker 06

  So that's the question, right? Like, so you're looking at it, it's like, it depends, right? Like, this is the, this is the, the epiphany I had to, like, create one company. And then, and then, uh, cause one company gets created and then another company comes out of that. And so I was like, you know, at the time, I'm a small hedge fund, I'm like a hundred and something million dollars. I split the, the bill, like sixty forty, cause I'm smaller with another hedge fund, they're like, yeah, we can use it. But that information may not be the proximate cause or the leading indicator in a whole year, maybe once in a year, maybe not, right? It may give you an edge. So it's really a gamble on whether or not you'll be able to make a lot of money off of this, right?

• 26:10Speaker 06

  You could make ten million, hundred million, hundred and fifty million, right? If you're, if you have a view different from the market, because you have satellite understanding. Or even, even like, in a local region, like, hey, there's too much production getting hooked up into these gathering systems for this region. So this region's prices are going to crash, right? Uh, and so, but that may or may not happen, right? But it's kind of like a nuclear weapon, like, you just kind of got to have it, right? Just in case. And so I thought to myself, I was like, I'm building all these tools, right? I've built this supercomputer that, you know, we got rid of because, you know, NWS eventually went to,

• 26:54Speaker 06

  every time they switch computers, you have to switch computers, because that's the way it works. And they went to a model, and I was like, ah, the weather doesn't matter as much anymore. Actually, it started mattering again, and I'm actually looking at doing it again, but doesn't, doesn't matter as much. And, um, bottom line is, my AUM, my dollars at risk is not big enough to take advantage of the tools I'm building. And so, kind of kicked my CTO out and said, you know, we're digging for gold here and we have the best shovels, but we need to sell shovels, not dig for gold.

• 27:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm.

• 27:29Speaker 06

  And so.

• 27:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Because there might be other people who can use these tools with bigger hedge funds.

• 27:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like the gold rush, right? Like who got rich? The guys who sold jeans and shovels. You know what I mean? There were a couple of guys who were really good at finding the gold and I'm very good at finding the gold. But it's tiring and, and, and I, I don't have enough AUM to take advantage of the tools I have, right? Like I got this big giant shovel and it's just like just me and a couple of guys in a shop. It was like, this will be much more valuable selling to other people, right? And there's other industries that have more value at risk, like the insurance industry, right? Billions and billions of dollars at risk. They would like to learn things about what's the, what's at risk here? Whose house is going to burn down if there's a fire here?

• 28:17Speaker 06

  I have like, you know, $20 billion at risk here. I want to know which houses I should be insuring or not insuring, or what houses I should be notifying that, hey man, the defensible space around your house is, is not that great. Could you please move the Picasso out of your house while this fire is going on, right? Being proactive and warning people and just all kinds of ideas like that. And so, um, and I also thought, where, where is the most value at risk? And, and I came to the conclusion it's the ocean.

• 28:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 28:47Speaker 06

  Because like 90% of commerce is on the ocean.

• 28:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 28:52Speaker 06

  Right? And there's also military risk on the ocean, illegal migration, sanctions violation, illegal fishing, pollution, like, like most of the value risk in terms of either commerce or like environmental risk, et cetera, geopolitical risk, it's all on the ocean. And so I was like, well, if we can know where every single rig count is, why can't we know where every single ship is? Why can't we track and tag and know every single ship? And the ocean has a problem called dark ships. These are ships that turn off their automatic identification systems called AIS. And then, you know, they're off for many reasons. They're broken, or they're too small, or whatever.

• 29:34Speaker 06

  But a lot of times, people turn them off to do nefarious shit. Mainly illegal fishing, mainly sanctions violations, sometimes drug running, right? Whatever it is. And so.

• 29:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And for those that don't know, this AIS is like basically a GPS that Coast Guard, whoever, would basically track where they are, what they're doing.

• 29:53Speaker 06

  Right, it was originally built for collision avoidance, right? Like, so ships don't crash into each other. But it's grown into like, we, you know, insurance companies track them, like, hey, are you going off path? We didn't insure you for that. Or like, or what are you guys doing? And so, that's a, you know, knowing like, I didn't go into the details of the, you know, the satellite data, it's a data fusion product. There's other data, state data that gets built into it, but it is a direct measurement tool. So is tracking every single ship. And there's multiple problems you gotta solve. This is a massive metric fuck-ton of data that you're downloading to do it from multiple sensors, et cetera. But being a trader, you're trading is data fusion, right?

• 30:38Speaker 06

  There's a supply and demand issues, there's a demand side. You gotta get all these data sources and be like, okay, this is the data. This is the demand side, and then there's a supply side. And you gotta get all that, right? And then, and fuse the data and come up with your opinion, right? Of what's going on. And the same thing comes over the ocean, right? So we have this like, hey, we're fucking, you know, delusion that we can solve it while all these individual satellite operators were trying to solve it. And we realized that they never could. One, they don't have enough satellites up aboard. And two, it's a data fusion problem, so you have to work with everybody else. So SinMax was born. And I was like, here, you guys go sell shovels. Sell shovels and energy trading, so, and then go solve this dark ship problem,

• 31:22Speaker 06

  which we think is like the big, big, big cojona, okay? So, one thing when you're trying to build this, you know, that's gotta solve 10 problems at once. But one thing you have to do is buy satellite data and train your models, right? Some walking around with a sack of cash, trying to spend like quarter of a million dollars, half a million dollars, to buy satellite data imagery from operators.

• 31:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And these are people who already have the satellites in the air.

• 31:50Speaker 06

  So these are commercial operators up there.

• 31:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And there's a disconnect between how you wanna buy, which is basically like, here's my sack of cash.

• 31:56Speaker 06

  I just wanna call up, like buy it, fine, here you go, sir, here you sign up, here's your API, whatever.

• 32:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 06

  It wasn't like that.

• 32:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 32:04Speaker 06

  And I couldn't believe myself, cuz I was looking at like some of these guys' sales and their annual sales. I was like, how could they behave this way when somebody's walking in here, trying to give them a quarter of a million dollars, a half a million dollars on a fucking experiment? It's not even the real product, it's a fucking experiment to get to the real product, right? And so, in one meeting where I was trying to buy data, I kinda like, lost it, as I do.

• 32:36Speaker 06

  And I was like, look, I like you, but I don't understand why the fuck I'm sitting here talking to you. Like, I should be able to just call, I can order anything online, from cars, pizza, massage, you know what I mean? Groceries, you know? People buy, my friend bought a building on LoopNet eight years ago. He bought a doctor's office in Texas, never seeing it in New Jersey on a cap rate, right? Like, what the, this, like what the hell's going on here, you know? And so, I stopped myself, I was like, why am I ranting? I should just build it.

• 33:13Speaker 06

  Like, this is the time. And so, I called my editor from my movie making days, which we still have movie making capabilities, all this stuff. I was like, here, here's my idea, make a commercial. And he made a commercial, and I was like, yeah, this is it, this is what we're gonna do. And so, at the time, we were calling it Sat Bunny, you know what I mean? That was the name, Sat Bunny. And we were like, yeah, I'm gonna do this. And so...

• 33:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Why'd you make the commercial?

• 33:39Speaker 06

  You know, it's an easy way to visualize what it was, right? Like, we had this like, this is what it is. I should be able to order it on my phone, like I order a pizza or anything on Amazon. And like, you select your area, you task the sensor you want to do, it takes the picture, delivers it to your phone, right? Like, you're James Bond, like shit you see on movies, like, what does this sound like? Right? And so, it's easy to visualize, right? Pitch deck and papers, it's for me to visualize and for other people that I'm gonna align and just work on, right? Like, build that. See that commercial? Build that thing. Obviously, it's not gonna look exactly like that, but this is what we're gonna build. So, everybody got the Cinemax at the time, people got excited, whatever, but they're

• 34:24Speaker 06

  working on oil and gas products, etc. And I went to my friend Josh Baer at Capital Factory in Austin, and I was like, I'm working on a lot of shit, I'm probably gonna need to pass the hat around for some money, you know? Cinemax is doing this, and he goes, "Look, this may sound strange. You think you're offering a value play by just investing in Cinemax? You gotta split the two out."

• 34:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm.

• 34:48Speaker 06

  He's like, "They just like one thing," right? And so, Cinemax, or, anyway, that shit out, Skyfire, and it became its own company, right?

• 35:01Anthony Pompliano?

  People think you were crazy at first? Hey, guys, what's going on? I hope that you're enjoying this conversation, but I wanted to interrupt for a quick second and tell you about a brand-new conference that I'm hosting on March 4th at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The event is called Lyceum Miami, and tickets are completely free for anyone who wants to come. I'm bringing together many of the most popular guests from the podcast over the last couple of years. Some of the guest speakers that we've already announced are people like Vivek Ramaswamy from Strive Asset Management, or Delian and Mike Solana from Founder's Fund, Chris Williamson from the Modern Wisdom Podcast, Cody Sanchez from Contrarian Thinking, and billionaire Christian Augermeier, among many others.

• 35:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I've got a number of amazing surprise guests as well, some that you definitely will not expect, and others that come from walks of life that you will be scratching your head as to how I even got them to show up. But come check out Lyceum Miami on March 4th. The Lyceum was a public gym in Athens, Greece, where people used to come together, talk about ideas, and debate topics that were important to society. I want to meet people in person, in real life, once again, after three years of a hiatus from real-life events. And so, I'm hosting the event. And as I mentioned, anyone from anywhere can come to this event completely for free. All you need to do is go to lyceummiami.com,

• 36:29Anthony Pompliano?

  and you'll be able to pick up a free general admission ticket. Make sure you claim your ticket in order to get in through the doors. Lyceum Miami is gonna be a great time, so come check it out, come hang out with me, many of the popular guests from the podcast, and other like-minded individuals. Lyceum Miami, March 4th, Miami Beach Convention Center. I hope to see you there. All right, let's get back into this conversation.

• 36:53Speaker 06

  Um, no, they thought it was a good idea, but they were like, you know, Bill, you're doing a lot of things. You're playing poker, you're goofing off, you're wake surfing, blah, blah, blah. Like, how do we know you're not-

• 37:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I saw you on Instagram.

• 37:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man, you should hear the, oh, coming up, coming up. You should hear the, uh, the, the investor, like, our investors, the hedge fund, like, they think I'm a space alien. Like, they do not get it. They're like, how could you be this good at this thing? Blah, blah, blah. They expect to have a robot and a suit and a tie, and it's all I talk about is, you know, the fundamentals or whatever, and that's it. And then I go into a room, and then I trade. And I'm just like, you know, there's no amount of money you can pay me to give up my life.

• 37:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 06

  And that was coming in, before they even invested. So if you're upset about my Instagram, or me doing other things, that's fine, I'm not for you.

• 37:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:42Speaker 06

  Right? Um, just shut up.

• 37:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Do they even show, do they even show up and want to invest because of Instagram?

• 37:47Speaker 06

  Well, a lot, a lot of people have missed out on the returns that I've provided because of their stereotypical, typical, uh, ideas of what a hedge fund manager should be doing, what their public persona should be, et cetera. Right? They have an idea and a model, right? Of what that should be. Not this like guy who's like out there doing all these things, all these diverse interests, Twitter battling, you know what I mean, etcetera, right?

• 38:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 06

  And I was just kinda like, personally, you know, I'm like, fuck that shit dude, nobody's gonna pay me not to live my life, right? And that was the deal and, you know, they, they, you know, one very large investor came in, a bunch of other people who knew me, like, knew the story of me within Centaurus, were like, no, that's the guy, right, for at least trading gas. But the, the new people coming in, they're like, hey, uh, the SkyFi thing, they're like, look, you may be the Elon Musk, or there's one other guy who has two, uh, S and P 500 companies. But this is a lot, and I, I agree with them. I'm like, listen guys, one of my favorite things to do is fire myself. I can't wait to fire myself, right?

• 39:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 06

  I want somebody else to do the thing. I'm more a strategery, you know, have some expertise in a lot of areas, I have a lot of range, but I'm not necessarily the guy, so...

• 39:14Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you find the guy?

• 39:15Speaker 06

  Oh, network and friends, so like, for, for SkyFi, um, I was like, look, I gotta, I gotta get a CEO. And so I, I had, uh, my friend Vivek, uh, bumped into this guy Nikail, and he's all ex Uber mafia guys. They're like, what you're describing is exactly Uber. You know what I mean? Like, it's very Uber, large platform, data platform, data analytics, we see it, we get the vision. I had five guys interviewing for the CEO position already. And, you know, I went through it, uh, met Luke, uh, Luke Fisher, who's our, who's our CEO,

• 39:54Speaker 06

  ex badass, ex everything, military, was in, uh, Uber helicopter, AV8, Stanford guy, I mean, he's just...

• 40:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Checks all the boxes you were looking for.

• 40:03Speaker 06

  Way better human than I am, right? Like, it's like, this guy texts all the boxes, but also got the vision right away. Like, he got my mission, right? And the mission is, like, I don't necessarily care about slinging satellite images. I don't give a rat's ass. What I care about is having an impact on the planet. What I wanna do is make it easier for people to have this information. So that they can have a meaningful impact on the world.

• 40:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:31Speaker 06

  Right? Like, it's like when you look back at the internet, like, uh, uh, when people are talking about the internet, like, what, what are the use cases? And they would be like, oh, you can check your stock quotes and read newspapers, right? And it's kind of quaint, right? Like, you can do that.

• 40:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 40:43Speaker 06

  But if you look at the massive impact that democratization of that information's had and the easification of getting that information, it's been amazing.

• 40:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, of course.

• 40:54Speaker 06

  Um, it like, i- in ways that are still happening, right? Like, the discoveries and putting two to two together and the meetings and, and, and the doctors on demand and the health things and like the, and the, and then the applications on top of that, like, how? Everybody here is searching for monkeypox. Maybe there's a monkeypox outbreak, like, it's just amazing and nobody has a big enough brain to give you all the use cases of the internet when it came out, right? And so when people say, what are the use cases of Earth observation data? I'm like, look, everybody has access to all this other data. Governments, uh, or, or very rich corporations are now,

• 41:35Speaker 06

  are the only ones who have access to Earth observation data, right? And I'm not just talking optical imagery. I'm talking about things called synthetic aperture radar. This is a, a technology that uses radar to create images and gives you a lot more information. You can see through clouds, see through buildings, stuff like that. Uh, hyperspectral, that's, uh, basically looking at every single part, taking like a, uh, like a five to 10 nanometer gap and looking at how in that color spectrum, the object reflects it back. And when you have like, let's say, 200, uh, slices and you're looking at the reflection, you can chemically fingerprint the pixel.

• 42:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:20Speaker 06

  Right? That thing looks black because the chemicals on your shirt. Absorb all the other light and nothing else comes out, so it looks black. When you look at something green, the chemicals right there absorb all the other light wavelengths and reflect them back. But we can look at like green one, green two, green five, green six, green seven, and we can see the reflection pattern. And then we're like, you know what? That's a polyurethane sorbate eighty fifty, right? Like you can start doing that. And this is what like, you know, when, when scientists, it's, it's multispectral. When they're looking at a planet like, I don't know, some billion light years away, and it's like two pixels. And they use multispectral, like, oh, there's clouds and water and like, how the fuck did I know that?

• 43:05Speaker 06

  It's because they're using multispectral to do that. They're looking at the intensity of the reflection of that single fucking pixel. So imagine you can look down at the earth and chemically fingerprint everything.

• 43:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 06

  Right? And so you get amazing applications, like the big guys fly planes over and you use hyperspectral and go, oh, we got a worm infestation on this side of the crop. We're overwatered here, not enough nutrients here, blah, blah, blah, crop yields go up. But imagine you're a farmer in Africa who doesn't have access to that, but you can take a picture on your phone and then there's an application layer on top of it and it does it for you. Like, holy shit, we got a locust infestation, what do we do?

• 43:45Anthony Pompliano?

  How, how big of the like AI, machine learning, all of that stuff is going to end up being positively impacted, not through text only, but through computer vision, through some of these overlays, the machine learning in terms of like image recognition, like all of these other things that seem to kind of, with chat GPT and things coming and coming so fast and getting all the headlines, people kind of forgot about all the video stuff, all the image stuff.

• 44:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:14Anthony Pompliano?

  It seems like.

• 44:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And everyone's focused on the text, but is the, the image stuff actually more powerful and has more application?

• 44:22Speaker 06

  I, I, I think from a global impact standpoint, it's hard to say which will kind of have a bigger impact, especially since, you know, like I said, no one brain is, is, is big enough to think of all the use cases. But you know, Sky Vision like the first vision is first, we got to easeify it and make sure everybody can get access to it. Is it cheaper as well? Yes, it's cheaper. There's two things we we we simplify process, right? Like I used to say, if I offered somebody, I said, hey, go get a satellite image in three days of this, or else I'm going to kill you and your whole family. Most people will be dead.

• 44:57Speaker 06

  Like 99.999%. That's how hard the process was, right? So we easeified the process. And then the other part of easeification is the price. You know, satellite images are generally sold on like these like 500 square miles, you know, 100 square miles like most people. The thing they're interested in, the problem they're trying to solve is in 25 square kilometers or less. So, you know, we went out and battled the operators and said, hey, product market fit is not this thing you're doing. Like, I'm trying to drag you to the promised land of where the real market is and where the real applications are. So that's one one part of it. But if I handed you a phone, this new latest greatest phone with no applications on it.

• 45:37Speaker 06

  It's like, listen, man, it's got this processor and a serial bus and a GPS device, whatever. Here you go. Be useless to like 99% of the people, except coders and people how to do that. What really unlocks the value of your phone are the applications on top of it. Right? The extraction of the data on it. It's like, great. You got the signal coming from a GPS. What the fuck do I do with that signal? Right? And so with imagery, it's a signal. It's a bunch of data, right? Yeah, I can give you an optical image and it looks pretty and you can count cars manually, but a machine can do it better. Machine can do can extract things that you can't even count. A machine will tell you the canopy. A machine will look at slightly offset images and tell you the heights and everything like that.

• 46:19Speaker 06

  Right? And so the the the the vision of SkyFi is one, make the data available. But two, have an application layer, an application platform made by third parties, maybe one or two by us. But that unlock the information out of the data because people don't give a fuck about the image. Most of the time they want an answer. Right? Now, the social user like, hey, I want a picture of my wedding from space to memorialize it. I get it, right? Uh, but.

• 46:51Speaker 06

  Let's say you have a roofing business, right? And you want to prospect clients. You don't care about the image. You just care about how many roofs in this area are damaged or water damaged. So I can contact them and get a sale. Right? Well, they could take a nice image and they'd be like, well, is that roof damaged? I don't know. This is hyperspectral images. There's all these fucking things. I don't know. No, they just want a computer to be like this house, this house, this house, this house, this house. And this is a percent damage on the roofs. And then they send out the letters and be like, boom. Right? That's useful to them, right? People want an answer. Right? Now, there's certain people that, hey, I'll do it myself. I got my own analysis. But that is the true humanity unlock of the data. And that's all AI, machine learning, you know, all these tools that will come on top of the data. Right?

• 47:36Speaker 06

  And so that's part of the product roadmap of SkyFi. Easeify, easeify getting the answers. And then the third part is storage. Like, people don't want to be downloading gigabytes of files, et cetera. They just want to be able to move them, do the data, have a nice place to keep it. So we see that all is part of our vision on giving people the tools to have a meaningful impact on their world. And that is the mission. Like, my friend David Silverman, last night, he was like, so do you have a target price? You're going to exit this company? I'm like, target price? What the fuck are you talking about? Like, listen, I don't care. It's not about the money. It's about the mission. Mission comes first, right?

• 48:18Speaker 06

  And I tell people, mission, you got to identify what's your mission and then everything else comes second. Now, obviously, we have to make money in order to survive and grow. And when we have a mission as, as, as big and lofty as us, as entrepreneurs, we get a fraction of the value that we create for the world. And so if we create this thing where people can have a meaningful impact on their world, solve meaningful problems, you know? Deforestation, you know, endangered species, et cetera, we're going to get a fraction of the value that we create back. And that's a, in my words, you know, and in a professional term, a metric fuck ton of money. And so, so that's what I'm trying to do.

• 49:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there a plan or like a path to you vertically integrate eventually you have your own satellites up or do you just want to stay as a marketplace? And one of the reasons it becomes interesting is because the cost of actually launching these satellites is dropping pretty significantly over the last two decades or so. And so eventually, I don't know if it'll be like, you know, 20 bucks.

• 49:18Speaker 06

  Right, right.

• 49:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But for a business, not an individual, but a business, it will be pretty inexpensive to get satellites up into space. Is that part of it? Or do you think you can just stick with being the marketplace?

• 49:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I'd rather stay out of that, right? Like, I'm not trying to go and launch my own network or compete with my providers. But I'll take even one step further. It gets even cheaper to buy satellites already in orbit.

• 49:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm.

• 49:45Speaker 06

  You don't even have to take the launch risk, right? Like, you just buy them in orbit.

• 49:49Anthony Pompliano?

  How much does a satellite go for right now?

• 49:51Speaker 06

  I was told 5 million.

• 49:53Anthony Pompliano?

  5 million to buy a satellite already in orbit?

• 49:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. I was told, I'm not sure, don't quote me on that, I'm trying to stay away from that side of it. But like, listen, like, we're on mission, right? And we rely on our partners, our operators, to provide us data. The same way Netflix relies on, you know, the studio houses and the independents to provide content to give to the masses, right? Like, and what Netflix found out is like, hey, we got this buffet, and these people feed the buffet, but they're not creating enough content for me. So they were forced to go into the content creation business, right? Because, you know, they have their demand to fill, right?

• 50:41Speaker 06

  And so I don't want to be in that position, but if I am forced to be in that position, and our customers on this side, the demand side, are like, hey, I need these sensors or I need X, Y, and Z, then yeah, we'll put satellites in the sky.

• 50:57Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of the data is satellites versus other types of sensors? Or is it all satellites?

• 51:02Speaker 06

  Oh, it's a good question. So there's multiple different types of sensors on satellites, right? Like, a named if you synthetic aperture radar, hyperspectral, infrared. Uh, uh, you know, obviously the optical ones where everybody knows optical. But we, we're not, we're about earth observation. So we have partners that are balloons, right? They, they have balloons that are static and you get a higher resolution with a balloon. It's, it's long lead task and, and down. And sometimes it's just archive only, but you get balloons in major cities. We are partnered with a drone operator. Right? So you can be like, I need a drone of this and you go on the app, you task the drone operator. The drone operator goes and takes a drone around and you know, you don't need a big,

• 51:47Speaker 06

  you know, at scale image. You need a very sharp drone image.

• 51:52Speaker 06

  Plane, aerial, we, buoys, we don't care.

• 51:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So if you can get in, it's helpful, you'll, you'll take it.

• 51:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. Our, our, our, our thing is we're trying to unlock the information of earth observation data and get it to the geniuses of the world. So they have an impact on it, on it. So we are a data marketplace. Obviously we're starting with satellites, but in theory, you know, if our, if our, our balloon partners were ready to go, our, we already have taskings from one of our plane operators flying around Freeport LNG, uh, which is providing information to me. So I can understand when this LNG facility that blew up is going to come back online for natural gas trading. So that's already going manually, but sooner to be, you know, automatic, you know, running it to the pilot, get out there, take the photo, uh, whatever.

• 52:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I always think of satellites as like, uh, one of the bullshit detectors in the world.

• 52:43Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 52:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Because, um, if you go to the most extreme examples, like, uh, in China, they have these concentration camps, they say they don't have them. There's photos that appear to show something. If you go to Russia, Ukraine, uh, in Ukraine, there's, uh, accusations by both sides that the other side is doing something or somebody says that they're making progress in either direction. And then you go and you look, and I saw today, uh, I don't know if it was you guys or somebody on Twitter had, uh, taken a satellite image of what appeared to be a cemetery, you know, six months ago, and now it looks like it's like three times bigger. And they were basically trying to draw a line between the changes in the, in the satellite imagery to, hey, whichever side, uh, that's their cemetery, obviously people are dying.

• 53:22Speaker 06

  Right.

• 53:22Anthony Pompliano?

  The cemetery has grown. I saw one, I think it was you guys, uh, Sophia Bulgaria, and they were showing kind of like a, almost like a Google image or Google earth and then, uh, through you all. And so like, Very quickly, you can start to see that like satellites, again, they're just providing information, taking a picture.

• 53:41Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 53:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, those pictures sometimes don't exactly correlate to what is being said by people on the ground.

• 53:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, I think journalism is going to be a heavy user of satellite imagery to what's going on. It's also going to be a bullshit detector on green ass gas emissions. We got a lot of guys saying, hey, we did this and we have a carbon offset in this area because we planted this many trees or we shut this down. Then, you know, there's a long wave hyperspectral or green has gas monitoring satellites going up and be like, nah, that's bullshit. We can see the CO2, we can see the emissions, we see what's going on. Hey, we're a drug free zone. Nope, we can see the meth labs, we can chemically analyze the area and see the meth running down the street, you know? There's all kinds of things you can call bullshit on.

• 54:25Anthony Pompliano?

  That's crazy.

• 54:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, it's, that's the, that's the stuff that's coming and analysis that's coming, that's capable, like the capabilities are there. It's not science fiction.

• 54:34Anthony Pompliano?

  How quickly can you get the imagery? So let's say, um, use like a real time situation. Uh, everyone has seen, uh, footage of a police chase and they got the helicopter in the sky with the spotlight, right? Can you get imagery that updates fast enough for that type of stuff? Or like, what is, how do you think about?

• 54:52Speaker 06

  Let me tell you where, where we are right now and then where I think the world is going to go in, in with respect to satellite imagery latency. Latency is like, how long is it going to take me to like, get the order to the satellite? The satellite takes the picture and then the image comes back down. So right now you have to, um, you place an order, the satellite has to go over what's called a ground station. And that's where it shoots up the commands to the, to the satellite. Most of those, if not all of them are at the North Pole because they go this way and they, they go over the North Pole multiple times, right? And it gets, it gets its instructions there. Then, you know, you route it to the proper satellite that's actually going to go over

• 55:35Speaker 06

  the, the, the place you want to take in, in, in the time. It takes a picture, then it goes all the way back around, comes back on the North Pole, and then it downloads the data, right? So.

• 55:45Anthony Pompliano?

  So that could take like 24 hours?

• 55:47Speaker 06

  24 hours, 48 hours. We say 48 hours from task to get to get your order, right? Like if you're like, there's no clouds, high priority tasking, like within 48 hours. Technically, we could do it sooner, but the number of operators we currently have with APIs right now, we have a little buffer. We don't want people to piss you. Ted, it was gonna be within 24 hours, right? Like, it should be within 24 hours. There is going to be an internet of space.

• 56:16Speaker 06

  And there's going to be ways for these satellites to communicate each other, you know, instantaneously, through the ground station, through the other satellites, through the internet, boom, boom, boom. So then you're in a situation where, hey, the satellite's gonna be over in 10 minutes. I caught it. I got instructions. It took a picture, and then it shoots you the information back. So within the hour.

• 56:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's kind of like, um, uh, in the Bitcoin world, the Lightning Network is this like decentralized uh, network of nodes. The satellites essentially act like a node in that situation, and they're basically routing this information back and forth, and whoever's closest to the North Pole gets told, here's instructions to a satellite that's close to these GPS coordinates. Find the one that's closest and has a clear shot, take the photo, and then route it back to the ground.

• 56:58Speaker 06

  That's where I think it's going.

• 57:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It's fascinating if that works.

• 57:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, because, well, it does work for, you know, there are certain people, like, uh, I had, uh, we tested with one provider, and it was like, wow, we got an order back within an hour. Like, what the hell?

• 57:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 57:12Speaker 06

  We were like, what are you guys doing? And, you know, there's, there's, uh, there's, uh, some internet communication satellites that are like kind of low bandwidth that are already up there, so I don't know if they were using that or what they were doing, but...

• 57:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And also it'll be interesting, are they interoperable with other companies? Or do they try to keep these like close off?

• 57:28Speaker 06

  They don't play well with each other right now. They don't play, they do not play nice.

• 57:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you guys worry about any sort of like conflict in space? Like in terms of Chinese satellite and American satellite, or, you know, named two countries?

• 57:40Speaker 06

  So we have Chinese partners, we have Korean partners, we have Spanish partners, uh, we have all kinds of partners, American partners, depending on sensor, planes, drones, etc. And we do worry about... Geopolitics messing with our mission, right? Because mission comes first and that's what we're trying to do. And so we're definitely worried about that. We monitor it, we monitor sanctions lists, we're all on top of that. We'd like everybody to play nice because I'm about the masses and the businesses getting the information to make better decisions, right? And actually, hold governments accountable. Oh, you said you were cleaning up this area? Nah, you're not.

• 58:21Speaker 06

  Not only did I, I could see it optically, I looked at it hyperspectral, it's not cleaned up.

• 58:26Anthony Pompliano?

  How much does it cost? Let's say a journalist wants to write an article, somebody says they're cleaning up a space and the journalist says, I'd love to see, you know, a photo from six months ago and a photo today. Is that like a, I could spend 20 bucks and put it on my corporate card?

• 58:40Speaker 06

  So I say like a 40 centimeter, high resolution image, 25 square, 175 bucks?

• 58:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Also like pretty inexpensive, especially if it's like a single article.

• 58:47Speaker 06

  Less than a prom photo.

• 58:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 58:50Speaker 06

  I did it, sir, let's say your prom photo. How about that? And so, and then, you know, as the higher the resolution you go, uh, when we get our very high resolutions up there, we have a partner called Albedo that's going to 10 centimeter resolution. Now, let me explain what that means because a lot of people like, well, can I spy on a human? I'm like, no, you can't because the, the, the top of the line resolution that is going up optically is 10 centimeter, looking down from space. So that means a pixel is 10 by 10 centimeters, right? Like so, like that. You're not identifying a human from that space.

• 59:25Anthony Pompliano?

  You can see that it is a human, you just can't see that.

• 59:27Speaker 06

  Exactly. You can see cars, you can identify this, your computer can do that, but like, and then you have to know where the person is going to be. It is a horrible spy tool on a human being. It is a great tool on looking at data, buildings, uh, uh, trees, trucks, pollution. Are there counting walruses and seeing if they're endangered, you know, in places you can't get to? It's a great tool for that, but it is a horrible, horrible spy tool and I can track you much better with your, uh, ad tech on your phone.

• 59:59Anthony Pompliano?

  GPS or whatever.

• 1:00:00Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, ad tech on your phone or just a guy showing up.

• 1:00:03Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the things I always, uh, think about is, uh, when I was at Facebook in 2014, 2015, that's when, uh, it was like the heyday of internet.org, which was their big effort to bring internet to more people on the globe so that they could, uh, get internet access, but also obviously become Facebook users. And at the same time, you had Google was doing hot air balloons was like their big thing at the time. Facebook was trying to do like self propelled drones essentially. Like kind of like, you know, like the paper airplanes you do with like a kid. Like do that, but just like on a way bigger scale and beam the internet down. But SpaceX eventually is the one who seems to have backed into it, right? And so there's a couple of lessons. One is like, maybe the first people who try it, you know, they can't figure out the form factor or whatever.

• 1:00:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And somebody else does who's watched what they tried and didn't work and then they can kind of innovate. But also SpaceX obviously didn't start out like we're going to put internet satellites, you know, and beam it down. And so it became more of this idea of like, well, we know this is a problem. We have the capability. We've already got the launch cost down. Fuck it, right? Like just put the satellites up and we'll see what happens. Oh shit, it works. Well, how many could we put up there? How fast could the internet be? Like you very quickly start to do math and you realize like they built a pretty nice business already.

• 1:01:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, to me, it's kind of fascinating because everything Elon Musk is doing is to try and get to Mars. And they're like, it's going to cost a lot of money to get to Mars, you know? So guys are like, oh, we're, we're going to have this satellite and we're going to make a bunch of money. He's like, no, we're going to do that so we can get to Mars. You know, we're going to take that money and we get to Mars. It's like, oh, we're building up these launch costs, whatever, because we were bringing down launch costs or whatever. It's like, yeah, that's fine. That's a great value add to society. We saved NASA and the government a whole bunch of money and launch costs is down. And all these new satellite providers are proliferating, right? All these new startups are enabled because of launch costs. But it's really to get to Mars, like everything he's doing. You know, just backing in like, how could he use that to either get to Mars or make Mars habitable?

• 1:02:03Speaker 06

  Right? And that's kind of fascinating, right? Because he's on mission. And so it's like, oh, does SpaceX fit the mission? I mean, does the internet satellite fit the mission? Yeah, it fits the mission and this is why, right? And so, you know, when people like, oh, Elon Musk has like 18, you know, billion dollars or 300 billion dollars or whatever he has. You know, whatever his net worth is at the time, I'm like, nah, the guy's got about. Fifty million bucks because all that's spent to go to Mars. You know what I mean? Like this is his mission, his life's mission. And so I think.

• 1:02:36Anthony Pompliano?

  What always cracks me up too, like, yeah, he's worth that. But I think a lot of people don't realize that like Elon Musk does not have 200, 300 billion dollars sitting in cash in his bank account. He like calls up his bank and is like, hey, is it still there?

• 1:02:48Speaker 06

  I don't think, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even, I mean, I would guess, I have no clue. I don't think he has 200, 300 million dollars in his bank account.

• 1:02:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Why, why, why would he?

• 1:02:56Speaker 06

  No, no, he is fully vested in his mission and I really admire him for that. Really, really admire him for that.

• 1:03:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I also think that when you have the ambition he has, but also the capabilities he has. When you see lots of cash, he can quickly tie. If I have access to cash, here's a thing I could build.

• 1:03:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so like, it's like, um, kind of if you were to say to yourself, there's a lot of firewood. If you know how to make fires, right? And it's cold outside.

• 1:03:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Anthony Pompliano?

  You see the firewood for what it is, which is fuel for making the fire and keeping it warm.

• 1:03:31Speaker 06

  Let's go back to David Zero, right? Like the purpose of the money is to fulfill yourself, right? Like to convert it into the experiences you want to have. The purpose of money for him is the experience he wants to have is to get the fuck to Mars. And, and, and turn Mars habitable. So when he sees money, he's like, oh, who could I hire? That's genius, right? That, that, that, that will get me to Mars or make the planet a better place, right? So that's his mission, right? And so the money is converted into those experiences. Right? You know? And so if you look at kind of like, you listen to him, you know, I haven't listened to everything he said, or you, when you sit down and talk to him, it's like, this guy's on a mission. He's relentless about the mission, you know?

• 1:04:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I did a, uh, analysis, which is, uh, I Googled.

• 1:04:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And I, I looked at, uh, companies that he has started. Now, before everyone gets into the huge debate, let's just say the companies he's been involved with, he started. I know there's some people like to argue whatever people did on the internet. But if you go down the list, it was like, you have PayPal, then you have, uh, SpaceX, you have Tesla, you have Neuralink, you have Boring, uh, company. And then you have, um.

• 1:04:42Speaker 06

  OpenAI.

• 1:04:43Anthony Pompliano?

  OpenAI, right? So not including Twitter or anything, just, these are companies that he was around in the beginning, right? What, what, however you want to characterize it. And he's done that since he was basically 20 and he's like 52 or something.

• 1:04:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Anthony Pompliano?

  So the guy is averaging one multi-billion dollar company every five and a half years.

• 1:05:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's it's it's quite impressive.

• 1:05:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, I don't know if there's another person in the history who has been able to accomplish something like that.

• 1:05:12Speaker 06

  No, not not at the level. Maybe an investor has like invested in stuff like that.

• 1:05:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Like the John Rockefellers, maybe they had a lot of companies.

• 1:05:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But not each individual company was this big.

• 1:05:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, and and and the impact, right, is just amazing. Right? Like, I love when people are talking about Tesla in the beginning and, you know, people buy the stock, not buy the stock or whatever. But I was like, you know, if you if you listen to him, like I listen to what he says, he's like, the purpose of this company is not to make money or whatever, it's to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. What a wild fucking success that has been. Like, he fucking knocked it out of the park, like, with that mission, right?

• 1:05:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Go stand in any city in America that has any level of density and you will see a lot of Teslas.

• 1:06:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, but it's not even his car. He's like, I don't care if Ford or somebody else comes, like, I want to accelerate the adoption. I want to blow out the park. And now every single one is like, holy shit. Governments, everybody is like, this was a pipe dream and they poo-pooed them. Ford and GM CEOs were talking shit about Tesla. I remember like, is it like they they scoffed at this guy and it's like, he's like, it's just amazing that the impact he's had, whether you agree on the impact or not, right? Like, people like electric cars and the devil and Cobalt and whatever. It's just fucking amazing, the impact he's had on the world with respect to electric vehicles.

• 1:06:39Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think of somebody like that and other business leaders, I was at a dinner over the weekend and a friend threw out this idea, he said, What did Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos know as to why they sold a lot of stock at the end of 2021? Top of market, right? And we started to kind of talk through the details and debate a little bit in terms of kind of why those types of people were able to time markets when many hedge funds and others who are, that's their job, right? It's time market weren't necessarily successful. And one of the conclusions we came to is like, they have such an immense amount of information. Right? Now, some of that information is things like satellite imagery, different reports, all that.

• 1:07:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Also, some of that information is what I would consider more like human intelligence. Right. A lot of freaking people on the payroll who are really connected, who got tons and tons of conversations going on, and they're just understanding kind of what is actually happening, whether it's economically, geopolitically, or whatever.

• 1:07:36Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:07:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you start to say to yourself, like, I've always thought from an inflation standpoint, company like Square has access to way more information that's more accurate in real time than, let's say, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But also, these guys that everyone loves to yell and scream and hate on, like, actually, maybe we should be asking them for opinion about stuff.

• 1:07:53Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, they got a hell of a lot of information. They see a lot more than maybe other organizations.

• 1:07:57Speaker 06

  They see real time what the impact of raising rates are.

• 1:08:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, Amazon probably has a good sense of what the consumer demand is.

• 1:08:03Speaker 06

  A thousand percent. A thousand percent, right? Like, they understand what's going on. They have, they have, they have a pulse on, they have real time data, and they have real time trends, right? Fed's looking back, old reports, Clark's bringing in, looking through papers. They're like, oh, no, no, no, no, this is what's really going on, real time.

• 1:08:22Anthony Pompliano?

  The Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal, and I, I knew that they were doing this a couple of years ago, but I figured at some point they had solved the problem. But supposedly, it's still going on. I think they employ less than 500 people across the country that literally walk with a tablet into like the grocery store, and they're told very specific instructions, sometimes multiple pages to describe one product, to make sure that you go and you get the Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup with low sodium, like, it's gotta be the exact one. And then they are in the grocery store, and they type it into a tablet and manually input what the price of that item is. And then they go to their next, like, task, and they go find the next product in a different store or a different service or whatever.

• 1:09:03Speaker 06

  That just seems ludicrous, since they're all these prices online, you can just grab them, and then you can actually request the store to post. It just, it's just kind of, you know, there's, there's-

• 1:09:14Speaker 06

  The government is not designed to be fast. They don't have the accountability that a company does. A company is not fast and on top of it and getting the information. They don't exist, right? The BLS is gonna be there whether they fuck it up or not, whether they're slow or not. And so they're just like this, this kinda like, we need to innovate, we need to be fast, we should be doing this better. We should be saving money. That, that doesn't exist. As a matter of fact, I think there's actually a negative incentive because if you don't use your budget in a program, they just cut you.

• 1:09:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 1:09:47Speaker 06

  And so there is a perverse incentive to spend and need more, to request more budget the next year, right? Like, I think one of the welfare programs has more administrative, uh, straight of costs than the actual program, than the dollars they give out. I, I, I, I, I know this is true on one of them. I, I wish I had the name of it right now, but it actually-

• 1:10:10Anthony Pompliano?

  It's actually not that surprising, right? Like, if you have a small program and you just have people, you can't get-

• 1:10:14Speaker 06

  No, but it was, it was a fairly large one. It was a fairly large one. It was like SNAP or welfare or whatever. It was like, it's like the administrative costs exceeded the actual benefits they were doling out.

• 1:10:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Speaker 06

  Right? And so like, it's kinda like, supports are kinda like UBI, the UBI theory. It's just like, direct payments to the people and fuck all this bureaucracy. Whether you can spend it on this or that, people know how to spend it, but I don't wanna go into that tangent.

• 1:10:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I wanna ask you about, uh, oil prices and what's interesting to somebody like me who's very uneducated, but at least understands some of the, the milestones over the last three or four years is, uh, when we saw the oil futures price go negative.

• 1:10:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:10:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I think it was, right? Um, for kinda the forward delivery or whatever.

• 1:10:52Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:10:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, I think there's a lot of people like, what do you mean oil prices negative? Like, what does that mean?

• 1:10:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, that was crazy.

• 1:10:56Anthony Pompliano?

  So you kinda learn a little bit, right, in terms of storage and why somebody would sell a contract at a loss and, and all that. Okay, cool, got it. Then you fast forward to like Russia, Ukraine, and all these sanctions hit you, uh, Russia. And you're like, wow, that's probably gonna like really screw them up. And then like, at the end of last year, I saw a statistic that actually- Really trading with Russia on a dollar denominated basis was up because the prices of many of the commodities had skyrocketed. So while there may have been less trading based on other measurements in pure dollar denomination, it was actually up like 20, 30%.

• 1:11:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you hear these stories of like Germany still has to buy oil, so they're not going to buy it from Russia or name your country.

• 1:11:37Speaker 06

  They buy it from this guy who buys it from Russia.

• 1:11:39Anthony Pompliano?

  They buy it from China who bought it from Russia and just marks it up 2X and slaps the Chinese flag on it.

• 1:11:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you see countries like India who are like, I have shit what y'all are talking about. We need the oil. We need the wheat, right? We're going to still keep trading with these people and like, we're going to say how the politics of all this.

• 1:11:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you, as somebody who pays a hell of a lot of attention and actively trades this stuff? How do you process the information that goes on in something just like the oil market? And actually get a good handle on like, what is going to happen next?

• 1:12:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, so um, first I want to put a disclaimer. I'm a, I'm a, a leading expert on natural gas.

• 1:12:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Natural gas, I know.

• 1:12:15Speaker 06

  And oil, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm dangerous, right? Like, so, so put that down, but like, it's kind of interesting.

• 1:12:21Anthony Pompliano?

  For most people, those are the same thing, unfortunately.

• 1:12:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:24Anthony Pompliano?

  But go ahead.

• 1:12:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. So, uh, but yeah, it's true. It's like, um, you look at like pipeline flows into Germany, but you know, of natural gas. Cause they're like, oh, no, no, no Russian natural gas. But if you look at the LNG flows from Russia, like they're way up, right? So, oh wait, we put it on a ship, you take it. But if it's in a pipeline, a lot of it is, it's theater, right? And I don't even know if some of the politicians realize it's theater. And so, you know, we look at the supply and demand balances on global. We look at, we look at how they're hiding things, how they're moving things, how the flows are moving. You're just redirecting flows and making the system inefficient, which actually results in more demand.

• 1:13:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, it's actually fascinating.

• 1:13:06Speaker 06

  It's an environmental disaster, right? Like you're, Russia's right here, you're gonna, you know, you can take the crude oil this way, pipeline gas, no, we're gonna chill it first, then, you know, we're gonna put it on a ship, and then we're gonna liquefy it and put it here. And so it's like, it's a very, very weird relationship. Like, we're fighting here and giving these guys guns to shoot these guys, but we're buying oil and LNG from them here, but not through the pipeline, and we know it's going to China, and then they're, you know, putting it on a tanker, and then chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga, all the way around. It's like, I thought we cared about the environment, you know? I thought we cared about emissions, not just CO2, but PM10, particulate matter, SOx and NOx.

• 1:13:49Speaker 06

  And so, you know, as a trader, we're just like, you know, fuck the bullshit, let's just count. Right? I graduated eighth grade, I can count, or kindergarten, I can count, right? And so, we just count. And then like, some of us do some more interesting things, like, we call up our buddies in Sinmax and be like, "Show me the ships that are violating sanctions, pulling crude oil out of Iran and Russia, and loitering at sea and moving around, right? Which is, the tech is something they can do, right? And so-

• 1:14:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it big?

• 1:14:21Speaker 06

  It's a lot. It's a lot more than people think.

• 1:14:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:23Speaker 06

  And so, um, you know, and they, you know, I guess, you don't necessarily need to do that, you can just track all the oil in storage, right? And try and get an idea there, right? Like, you can use a sledgehammer, sometimes you wanna use tweezers. You know, it's a very nuanced position, and sometimes it's a sledgehammer position, where it's-

• 1:14:41Anthony Pompliano?

  What cracked me up on this is Singapore, I guess a lot of the storage, I don't know if it's natural gas or oil, or maybe both, uh, was drastically backing up, and they were very concerned. And I saw a piece, I think it was maybe in Bloomberg, they were talking about like, this is just Russian oil that is just being sat here for longer periods of time, uh, and they had a bunch of kind of opinions as to why they were doing it, or what they were doing with the oil, or whatever. And I was just like- Man, that's like, kinda crazy that specific areas in the world are backing up with the storage.

• 1:15:14Speaker 06

  Right, and the other guys don't have it, and etcetera.

• 1:15:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:17Speaker 06

  But like, you know, as an oil trader, you have so many different variables, right? Like, you got all these different areas, and you're just trying to look at global balances, and kinda that's what they're looking. But yes, you have these like, many distortions in storage, and price, etcetera, right? These governments create all these price distortions, and these incentives. Some of these incentives are terrible, right? For the environment, uh, just in general, and, and, and some may be good, but, like, that's what goes on, right? And some people, like, make money trading the spread, right? And, and, you know, you, you give people an incentive, right? Like, the behavior will happen.

• 1:15:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Speaker 06

  Right? Incentives work, and so, um...

• 1:15:58Anthony Pompliano?

  What about the incentives here? Like Keystone Pipeline, and all that stuff, that, to the average person, they will hear, "A pipeline got shut down, gasoline prices spiked, and whether true or not, they will connect, if we hadn't shut down a pipeline, prices would be lower." Like, how do you evaluate?

• 1:16:15Speaker 06

  I mean, people have a, like, it's like, it's like going into a doctor's office of a brain surgeon, and be like, you know, trying to like, guess, like, "Oh, because this happened, that happened." And you might get it right, or etcetera, but this, it's a little bit more complex than what people say, and, you know, the news is so, uh, you know, I go on CNBC, right? And, it's a good show, um, you've been on CNBC plenty of times. They don't give you that much time, right? Like, they'll ask you a question, and it's like, you gotta get the, the soundbite out, right? And, and, a lot of people also don't have a lot of, uh, time, or attention, to hear the long explanation, and truly understand what's going on. And so, it's like, you know, we don't have enough refineries. It doesn't matter how much crude is flowing around, we gotta have refineries here in the United States of America, right?

• 1:16:58Speaker 06

  We've lost refining capacity in the Northeast, right? California doesn't have any refineries, and it's like, they have all these taxes, that's why it's always super expensive in California, right? If a refinery goes down there, it's like, "Oh my god," right? And so... There's a multiple factors going on all the time and, and, and the news is like, oh, you know, they just want a simple answer that somebody, a layman will accept, right? Doesn't even have to be completely true.

• 1:17:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:26Speaker 06

  Right? It could be misleading and, and that's kind of the world we live in, right? Like, I think that's why, like, uh, somebody was telling me, like, uh, somebody actually sent me a message. It was like a long form answer I did on Peter Adia, and he has kind of like more of a, like a, a Joe Rogan style podcast, like three hours all over the fucking place, right? And it's like, you know, people, the people that really want to understand something, dig into a topic, that's great. You show up on CNBC, it's gonna be a five minute segment. There's always the hello, how are you, right? Couple of questions, you just gotta get it out, get it out, right?

• 1:18:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you're good at getting it out, you get invited back? If you try to have too much nuance?

• 1:18:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, they're like, wait, this guy fucking boring us with his nerdy ass experience on how refineries work.

• 1:18:10Anthony Pompliano?

  He pulled up a chart!

• 1:18:11Speaker 06

  Exactly. Get the fuck out of here, Bill Perkins. Just, you know what I mean? Tell me, is it up and down and what stocks do you pick? You know what I mean? Like, and that, that's kind of the show.

• 1:18:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I forget who it was. Uh, I always say that, uh, Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn yelling at each other a couple of years ago.

• 1:18:26Speaker 06

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:18:26Anthony Pompliano?

  CNBC, single best moment ever on.

• 1:18:28Speaker 06

  In the history of CNBC.

• 1:18:30Anthony Pompliano?

  But a very close second was, I can't remember if it was, um, uh, Leon Cooperman or Ken Langone, I think one of the, one of the two, uh, they had Senator Warren, Elizabeth Warren came on.

• 1:18:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, he was like, I'm a billionaire. How did I get a stimulus check?

• 1:18:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and he was like, actually like pretty complimentary about a bunch of stuff, but like, he had this one moment, right? And he was like asking a politician, like, how did I get a stimulus check? And I remember just thinking like, dude, where else are you ever gonna see?

• 1:19:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Politicians, billionaires, investors, like all, like they're interacting and I was just like, this is amazing.

• 1:19:23Anthony Pompliano?

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

• 1:19:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, they have a, they have a, they have a great show and they have great, great, uh, soundbites, but I, I, you know, I get, I get a little frustrated with the sloganeering. You know what I mean? Like even on Twitter and the, and the short cow, et cetera. It's like, people throw out a slogan, right? And, and it's like, oh, if I identify with that slogan, he's just right. I like it, you know, whatever, without really going into like the policy. Is it really effective, right? And so I think people have gone the opposite, right? They're like, party first, then policy, then people. And it's like, no, people first, then policy, then party.

• 1:20:29Anthony Pompliano?

  You're talking about the difference between rationality and TikTok brain.

• 1:20:32Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 1:20:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, like literally, I think that TikTok brain has like infected a very large portion of the audience and they literally cannot think.

• 1:20:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, it's like, yeah, every, every, you know, all these different, I'm not even going to say them because I don't want to get

• 1:20:46Speaker 06

  by the mob, but there's like all these slogans. I'm like, oh, really? Does that, is that, how does that work?

• 1:20:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 1:20:51Speaker 06

  Is that really effective? Does it really help the people you're talking about?

• 1:20:54Anthony Pompliano?

  But people use the slogans because they work, right? Like I, I'm a big believer that the market will ultimately find the things that work. And the reason why people keep using all these different slogans, whether it's for political reasons, for financial reasons, for social justice, like all across the whole spectrum of every single freaking topic in the world. They use the slogans because they work.

• 1:21:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, let me come up with the tribalist, what, what gets the tribe riled?

• 1:21:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. You draw a line in the sand and you say us first them.

• 1:21:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. And you just like say tribalist things, like, you know, whatever it is, you know? And so, and which, which then everybody starts to adopt that format and we don't get like deeper understandings of anything.

• 1:21:33Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, there's one more thing I wanted to talk to you about. So, uh, in fishing and in chess, there's been a bunch of fucking cheating scandals.

• 1:21:40Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:21:41Anthony Pompliano?

  The fish. The fish video is by far the craziest one. They're slicing open the fish. For those haven't seen it, there's a fishing tournament. There's these two guys who had, I guess, gone on like a pretty crazy run. They'd won a bunch of tournaments. And at the one fishing tournament, it's kind of like filmed on a phone from far away and then they get closer and they slice open the fish and there's weights. That have been put into the fish, which obviously make them way more and therefore add up to more weight that you have fished, which means you win the tournament.

• 1:22:08Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:22:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it comes out, these guys are like, yeah, we did that, uh, are bad, essentially. And they're like, no, that's cheating. I don't know kind of where it's gone from there, but like it was very obvious that there was cheating involved. In the chess world, there's talk of like anal beads or some sort of vibrating something, like whatever weird shit's going on in chess. But there was a lot of cheating scandals. There was some of the major players were like quitting matches because they thought there was cheating going on, whatever.

• 1:22:32Speaker 06

  Famously, uh,

• 1:22:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Like play one move and just left.

• 1:22:35Speaker 06

  Left.

• 1:22:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? What is going on in poker? There's no talk of any cheating in poker from what I've seen.

• 1:22:42Speaker 06

  Well, there's, there's,

• 1:22:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Or is there talk?

• 1:22:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's definitely talk. Uh, there, there's,

• 1:22:46Anthony Pompliano?

  What are the accusations or like the things that people think happen? And like, what is your analysis in terms of like, is there cheating to the degree that the fishing and chess people seem to think in their industries in poker? Or there's not as much of that?

• 1:22:59Speaker 06

  Definitely online. Uh, they're constantly rounding up cheats, people colluding, real time assistance. It's a problem because now that, you know, the computers, you know, Poker is a game of skill for all you congressmen lawyers out there. Otherwise we would be able to beat computers, right? Like the, you cannot beat the computer in poker, right? And heads up, right? Over time, like, and so, um, so people, people have real time assistance, et cetera, online and live poker.

• 1:23:25Anthony Pompliano?

  What is a real time assistant? Like what do they do?

• 1:23:27Speaker 06

  So that means basically a computer is helping you and telling you what to do.

• 1:23:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 1:23:31Speaker 06

  While you're playing.

• 1:23:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So you may have it on like a different computer.

• 1:23:33Speaker 06

  Computer or whatever.

• 1:23:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Feeding it.

• 1:23:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're just feeding it and you're, you're just doing that. Or you actually have it plugged in and it sees all the action and it just tells you what to do.

• 1:23:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Which if you were a cheater, that sounds like a pretty good way to cheat.

• 1:23:44Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:45Anthony Pompliano?

  As if the computer just tells you what to do.

• 1:23:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, your RT, RTA is, is a big problem in online, uh,

• 1:23:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:23:51Speaker 06

  Poker and they,

• 1:23:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And they're able to detect it?

• 1:23:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're starting to detect it. So, you know, it's like a arms race, right? Then these guys have these like poker detectors. It's like, you know, what's the odds that this person would actually make these correct plays at these frequencies, etc. Okay, you're out of here. You know what I mean? Like that type of thing.

• 1:24:07Anthony Pompliano?

  So they don't even have to prove it. It's more of a probability game for many times.

• 1:24:10Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, you can statistically prove it, right? Uh, what can a human do? And then you can look at them in different scenarios where they weren't cheating and be like, oh, this is how you played here versus a computer score. And then here you played in this, you know, in this scenario where it's, you know, you can use a computer and then you like.

• 1:24:29Anthony Pompliano?

  That's code for you sucked and now you don't suck.

• 1:24:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you're a piece of shit and then I look at you, a champion.

• 1:24:38Anthony Pompliano?

  No, dude, I read a poker book.

• 1:24:39Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then you have these live game cheatings where people like when you play a live game and they're being streamed, you know, the back has knows what cards you have.

• 1:24:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:24:51Speaker 06

  There's been accusations of people getting signaled of what people have cards from the back office or capturing the, you know, you know, these, these guys have Lucy Goosey security and, you know, there was a criminal who actually known felon who was in the back, one of these things. And this lady got accused of receiving signals on the stream. It looked like a chair was vibrating. There was all kind of, yeah, yeah. And it was like the weirdest, weirdest situation where it was like,

• 1:25:23Speaker 06

  you would never call, you would never ever know, ever play that way in a hand unless you were monkey tilted and you just didn't give a shit about money. Right? And, and even the words that she used, like, didn't make any sense, right? And so, and so there was this huge, like, you had to been cheating type thing. The guy who she beat in the hand, you know, freaked out and the whole community freaked out. And, you know, she's not that great of a poker player. Uh, she would admit that. I'm not dissing her, right? And, and so, and her story is like, you know, I was just nervous and whatever. It was a lot of, a lot of like things, like pressure and just goofing off. And, you know, on her side, like when you play TV poker, it's not real poker. I mean, it's real poker, but it's like, you know, you're being streamed.

• 1:26:08Speaker 06

  You know, you want to do some goofy shit, right? Cause you want to look like a badass on TV. Like the weirdest shit happens on TV poker that doesn't happen like, say, when the cameras aren't rolling, right? There's more of a performance. And so.

• 1:26:21Anthony Pompliano?

  You think she was cheating?

• 1:26:23Speaker 06

  I don't know, man. I went back and forth. I went like from like eighty, ninety percent she's cheating to like nah, it's just one of those weird things, you know? And so I don't know. And I, and I realized like it was, it was just taking too many, too many of my neurons. Like, why, why the fuck are my neurons here? I'm off mission. I'm definitely off life mission.

• 1:26:43Anthony Pompliano?

  If it came out and was proven without a shadow of a doubt that somebody was cheating, would it change anything that you did in poker?

• 1:26:50Speaker 06

  I mean, I'm very.

• 1:26:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Would you not play in certain tournaments?

• 1:26:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's certain things like they're like, oh, you gotta come play at this place where this cheating come up. I'm like, wait a minute. They, they, they fucked this up. They did this. They did that. All these weird things happen. Like, why am I gonna go sit and play there? And they're like, no, we have a lineup that we trust and it'll be people we know and I'm, we'll 100% correct it. But it, it, it's a turn off.

• 1:27:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Speaker 06

  It's a turn off. You know what I mean? Like it, it's, it's, it's not sexy, you know? It's not fun. And like, you know, I play poker to socialize and meet all kinds of interesting people, to test my skills against other people and then, um, and, and to win, right? And to realize like you take one of those away, I don't really wanna play.

• 1:27:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:35Speaker 06

  Right? So I don't wanna go play with uninteresting people, even if I'm gonna win. I don't care. I, you know, like, I don't wanna play in a lineup where I'm gonna get killed. So I had to get better and learn, right? And you know what I mean? And I don't wanna test my skill sets. So.

• 1:27:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Were you playing any game where there's good players or is there kind of like tiers where you're like, eh, I'm better than, you know, tiers five, four and three, but the tier one folks, eh, maybe I'll set those out and I'll just play tier two.

• 1:28:00Speaker 06

  I'm not afraid of any, I'm not afraid of any lineup.

• 1:28:02Anthony Pompliano?

  So you'll play them all?

• 1:28:02Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I, I, and honestly, I've always been that way. So before I was saying it's just like, ah, I don't give a fuck. I'm goofing off. It's a lot, you know, I'm playing, I'm trying to get lucky as opposed to win a skill. But I've gotten better in poker because it was becoming a very expensive hobby. And now I'm to the point where like, fuck you. Let's go. You know what I mean? Like I.

• 1:28:22Anthony Pompliano?

  How did you get better?

• 1:28:23Speaker 06

  Um, there's a company called Hybrid Poker.

• 1:28:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:28:25Speaker 06

  Uh, there's two founders called, uh, well, I'm a, I'm a co-founder, but I'm a small piece. Um, called Matthew Gonzalez and Matthew Boyd. And they trained me.

• 1:28:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 1:28:38Speaker 06

  I'm a very bad student because I got a thousand things going on and poker is not like the highest priority on my life.

• 1:28:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:43Speaker 06

  But uh, somebody challenged me online. And I was like, oh, you want to challenge me? You want to see what this old dog can do? So I actually went into the lab, studied, they trained me. Um, and you know, he would spot me some big blinds, but I was going to beat him outright anyway. And they quit. I won the challenge, right? Cause they quit. Cause I was a lot stronger than they thought I would be. Um, and

• 1:29:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And how long does it take to get better? Was this like a, an hour?

• 1:29:09Speaker 06

  It was, no, no, no, no, no. It was, at, at the time they were training me, it was like every day I had to play. Then there was hand analysis and then there was study. And you know, God bless my fiance, she was my fiance at that time. She was like, okay, you know, like at 10, 11 o'clock at night, I'm doing two hours of hand review. And then, you know, every time, you know, practice, play, study, practice, play, study. And I was like, this is a real fucking job.

• 1:29:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm.

• 1:29:33Speaker 06

  Um, but you know, my pride was on the line, my ego was on the line. So like, let's go. Uh, and so I told them, I was like, guys, everything you're teaching me should be codified and it should be a game. I should learn by playing.

• 1:29:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm.

• 1:29:48Speaker 06

  And so now they built this app where you can learn by playing. And it teaches you GTO and how to play a cash game or whatever. And they'll add stuff and it's a beautiful UI. It's, it's great. So hybridpoker.com for all you poker cash games. Like you want to crush your poker cash game? Go to hybridpoker.com, shameless plug. Uh, but that's, that's how I got better. And, and I'm, you know, I got better and I'm, I'm a shitty student. Like I am, I'm like just distracted, right? Like I had to, you know, I put my time in there, but over time, if I, if the incentive's not high, I'm like, eh, I'm not gonna go study, you know what I mean? Like, you know, people say, well, what's your hack?

• 1:30:30Speaker 06

  And I was like, uh, what's your, you know, when it comes to me with trading, this is, this is an example. I had a, a potential investor come in, come talk to me and they were like, well, what's your edge? And I was like, my edge is I fucking study. You know what I mean? Like I study every single thing. I obsess over this. It's like going to Harvard and be like, well, what's the edge of the kid who's an A student? He fucking studies. You know, when you came to engineering school in college, that guy got an A and I got a D, you know what I mean, barely, barely passed because I was running around chasing girls trying to play football, not trying to study, and he studied, right? And so now the game is gonna be amongst those who's, you know, the wizards are gonna be those who study and put the time and effort into it. Right? And, you know,

• 1:31:14Speaker 06

  I put in enough effort to be like a C student in poker now, C plus. If something's going on, you know, I'll jam it. And then you put the cameras on me and I can't help it. I love to goof off. I cannot help it. I cannot help myself. I love to do weird shit. So like I am a,

• 1:31:33Speaker 06

  I'm a, uh, I'm, I'm a, I'm a favorite to do some crazy shit and if it works, I'm gonna win big money. If not.

• 1:31:38Anthony Pompliano?

  How much money have you won, you think? Are you up?

• 1:31:41Speaker 06

  No, no, no. In tournaments, I'm up lifetime. Like tournaments, I take a little bit more seriously.

• 1:31:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:47Speaker 06

  Because the pain of spending two days in a tournament, not getting knocked out and not getting any money is just like enough negative incentive to be like, I'm going to take this seriously. And so, um, I actually have a very good ROI in these high rollers and, and, and these, uh, uh, tournaments. In cash games, uh, uh, I'm terrible. I mean, like my lifetime is negative, but I guess.

• 1:32:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause you're fucking around.

• 1:32:12Speaker 06

  I'm fucking around and, and you know, the worst game is Omaha. I don't know if people out there know Omaha.

• 1:32:19Speaker 06

  I love and hate that game. You know what I mean?

• 1:32:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I had a guy come on, uh, the show who I won't name, um, he played poker. I think he was like very good at poker, um, probably somebody you would know. And, uh, he, after the conversation, you know, cameras were off, everything. And, uh, uh, he says to me, uh, you play poker? I was like, not with you. And he goes, uh, no, no, no, we, we should, uh, play some time, you know, invite some of your friends. We'll go, it's a good time, you know, I'd be chill, whatever. And I thought for a second and I was like, that's what this, that's how this guy makes money. Is he not gonna play with professional players? He's gonna play with my friends.

• 1:32:54Speaker 06

  Games, in cash games, game selection is the, is the biggest part, right? Like it's not like, you know, my friend Dan, right? Dan Bilzerian, you know, everybody was like, you couldn't have made that much money playing poker, blah, blah, blah. You suck. And, and it's true. Dan is not a good poker player. Like I, I would destroy Dan playing poker. Like he's, he's not that good, but. He just played people worse and richer than him. Right, like, he's just gotta be better than the guys he's playing against, right? And so, he killed it, right? He killed it.

• 1:33:23Anthony Pompliano?

  How much you think he made? Or how much does he claim he made?

• 1:33:25Speaker 06

  Well, I know, I know, I know, I know he made fifty million dollars playing poker. I know that.

• 1:33:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Fifty million?

• 1:33:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know he made fifty million playing heads up against one guy.

• 1:33:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, against one guy in like one game?

• 1:33:34Speaker 06

  Against one guy, one guy, and then he, and I know he-

• 1:33:35Anthony Pompliano?

  In one game?

• 1:33:36Speaker 06

  Not one game, like, over a series of games. Uh, and then I know-

• 1:33:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, how much money does that guy have?

• 1:33:41Speaker 06

  He's a billionaire.

• 1:33:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, if you lose fifty million playing against one guy, you probably should stop playing that guy.

• 1:33:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, except, you know, these guys have cash flow of two hundred and fifty, three hundred million dollars a year, like, this is their, they're, they're old guys, they're gonna die, the money's gotta go somewhere, and they're entertained playing poker. There's guys who actually, literally, they think this whole living, there's people who were seventy-five, a hundred million dollars, multiple of them playing one guy who likes to play poker. There's one guy.

• 1:34:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 1:34:10Speaker 06

  And he likes his menagee, like, you know, there's certain people that like to have famous people around them, Pam, the come, and be on their yachts, and do shows, and sing, and there's certain people that like, like to play poker, and they wanna see if they can beat the best, or beat guys, and goof off, and, um-

• 1:34:28Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of like the professional players' lifetime earnings, whether known or unknown, do you think comes from playing like these whales that are not professional versus the tournaments?

• 1:34:36Speaker 06

  I would say very little, because the professional guys never get into those games.

• 1:34:41Speaker 06

  So if you become like the wizard, like, you're like a, uh, an Ike Haxton, or, or, or, or so-and-so, like, at that level, but you don't have any fame or cachet, they have no reason to sit down with you.

• 1:34:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting. So they know they're not gonna win, and it's not like a, a moment to flex?

• 1:35:00Speaker 06

  No, like, a Phil Ivey, or a Phil Hellmuth, or a Daniel Negron, you may be able to get in some of those games, maybe once or twice, because it's like, hey, I wanna meet the famous guy, and I wanna play poker with him, but they're not gonna be able to like, get, you know, two hundred million dollars, a hundred and fifty million dollars out of, uh, the billionaire class of poker, right? The guy who's like, very good, very solid, who's not a pro, right? That's willingness to stake, but interesting, right? They're gonna become- Centi millionaires or, or you know.

• 1:35:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And are they entering these games with their own money that they could lose or they getting staked by people?

• 1:35:40Speaker 06

  Uh, they, some of them are, are their own, uh, money that they can lose, but most of them are getting staked and selling off pieces. Like they used to say like, oh, when so and so wins, all of New York hurts, right? Cause sometimes they win and like, all of New York feels it, right? Like I felt it one where I, I, I had a piece of somebody that was going to play in one of these games and they, they happened to lose. And it was just like, shit, you know? Write a check. God damn you. You know what I mean? Like, but, but, uh, you know, and that's the game, right? Like the billionaires like, oh, I'm gonna put pressure, max pressure on you. Like I'm gonna hurt you guys, you know, like they're just having fun. You know what I mean? They're just having fun.

• 1:36:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And to them it's not nearly as high stakes.

• 1:36:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, no, no, it's small stakes. Like if it, it's like the easiest way to win money off of me in a poker game is put me in a low stakes poker game.

• 1:36:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause you don't care.

• 1:36:31Speaker 06

  And I'll lose like the most ever possible for the level of blinds. Like, like it's like, wait, we were only playing one, two. How did he lose $50,000? You know, it's like, cause you're goofing off, you're having fun, you're putting people in pressure and they're figuring you out, right? Like you're completely out of balance. You're not playing GTO. You're just having fun. And then next thing you know, you're like, oh, wow, I'm in the hole. I lost 50K, you know?

• 1:36:51Anthony Pompliano?

  In high school, I knew I was not good at poker, but a bunch of friends liked to play. And my only, uh, strategy to try to win, I'd tell my cards fucks with people. Like I would literally, of course, sometimes you lie.

• 1:37:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And then they would never know. They're like, you know, you tell them three, four times, you flip the cards over after the hand or you win whatever. And like, they're like, this dude really telling us his cards. And every once in a while you get them, right? And you probably don't win nearly as much as if you're just good at poker. But, uh, I used to enjoy the like mental fuckery.

• 1:37:22Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 1:37:22Anthony Pompliano?

  You could put on your friends, right?

• 1:37:23Speaker 06

  I know that feeling.

• 1:37:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Of them being like, wait a minute, this dude told me he had an ace when we started. He won't tell me what his second card was, you know? Okay, fine. I fold. He only flips over the ace, but he won't show me the other, like all that kind of stuff.

• 1:37:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And I used to enjoy it, but man, do your friends get pissed?

• 1:37:39Speaker 06

  I used to, I, yeah, you, you, you, I, I used to, when I was first playing and goofing off, guys would go all in. And I'd be like, look, if you don't have a pair.

• 1:37:51Speaker 06

  I don't have a pair, but I'll call you if you don't have a pair. So they have ace, king, right? Obviously, right?

• 1:37:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:56Speaker 06

  And I'll have like seven, eight, you know what I mean? Like I'll, I'll be like, fuck it, sixty, forty, let's go. You know what I mean? Like, let's, let's try and get lucky, you know? And they're just, they just be sitting there sweating like, holy shit, you know? Just because I like the, the, the pressure. I was just a degenerate.

• 1:38:11Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the biggest hand you've ever played?

• 1:38:13Speaker 06

  Uh, I don't know, like one, two million dollar pot, two point five million dollar pot, you know? So that's like a million of my money, a million of their money, you know what I mean?

• 1:38:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you win?

• 1:38:23Speaker 06

  No. Just recently happened in Omaha, motherfuckers.

• 1:38:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 1:38:26Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so like, uh, I mean, it's just a sick game, sick, sick game, but, uh...

• 1:38:31Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the biggest hand you've seen someone else play?

• 1:38:34Speaker 06

  Well, I, I was, so I was in, I was in London. This is a funny story. I can't tell the names.

• 1:38:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:38:41Speaker 06

  But I was in London playing Omaha. And I was like...

• 1:38:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm gonna check your Instagram. I'll know exactly who it was.

• 1:38:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, so these, so these degenerates are playing. I'm like, I wanna go to the box. I wanna be a real degenerate. Let's go to the box, London. It's a fun place. Like, how can you guys just sit here all day? It's like three days of playing cards. And I'm like, I'm going to the box. You guys come to boxing or not? So I go to the box. I come back. They're like, oh my God, you missed it. We had a ten million dollar pot.

• 1:39:07Speaker 06

  This guy, you know, they go through all the thing. They're like, the one guy goes, listen, don't put your money in. Okay, I have aces suited and a whatever. Like, don't put your money in. The person knows they have aces, at least aces, but not double suited. Knows they have aces, they go, put your fucking money in or fold, because they re-raised. And they re-raised, then they're like, put your fucking money in fold. I was like, I'm telling you, I have aces. I, they had, they showed them. They like literally told them, I have aces, right? Like a big pot, you're not fucking with somebody. And then the other guy has to call because the pot's a bit, so they have this like ten million dollar pot. The person who has said, put your money in fucking fold, to the guy who had aces, had kings, spiked the king on two boards.

• 1:39:46Speaker 06

  Almost scooped the whole fucking pot, but the other luck box guy over here, you know, rivered a fucking runner, runner straight and chopped it. So they, they've split like four point five million dollars. That's the, that's the biggest pot I've, I've, I've... Could have been part of, I wasn't there, glad I wasn't there, cuz I probably would, you know what I mean? Probably been like, well shit, I gotta call, there's too much money in my mind.

• 1:40:09Anthony Pompliano?

  It's for the story.

• 1:40:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. I gotta call, too much money syndrome, you know what I mean? So Omaha brings the sickest degenerates out, you know?

• 1:40:18Anthony Pompliano?

  But like, it's gotta be fun though, right? To like, sit there for three days and play.

• 1:40:21Speaker 06

  I mean, it's a lot of fun. I mean, I enjoy the people. You get to talk and have a lot of time with people that you like and love. But it also gets tiring, like, we can have fun doing other stuff. Let's go see some sick, twisted, demented shit at the Box London and then go out, or whatever. You know, I wanna go to Frameless and see this digital art museum, which is cool, you know what I mean? And so that's part of my whole, like, be balanced life, you know? Like, what experiences do I wanna be having? And like, yeah, playing poker with my friends and goofing off and trying to hurt them financially, you know? But not too hard, but not too hard, right? Is fun, but I also, you know, wanna have these experiences and these other experiences, you know, parties.

• 1:41:06Speaker 06

  As a matter of fact, one of the people was like, alright Perkins, next time, I promise you, we're gonna go out. We're gonna actually have this experience. I know what you want, we're gonna do it. I said, okay, we'll play poker, we're gonna do it, deal.

• 1:41:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Where can we send people to find you on the internet who don't already follow you on Instagram?

• 1:41:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, yes, oh gosh. So if you're not, gosh, if you guys like, want, you know, to, I'm on Twitter.

• 1:41:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Where's the professional Bill? And then where's the party Bill?

• 1:41:31Speaker 06

  Uh, Party Bill's on Instagram, I'm Bill Perkins. Um, I'm Less Party on Twitter.

• 1:41:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:38Speaker 06

  Uh, I'm at BP22. Um, and I'm more, I have another account, which is USA Energy Nat Gas. Which is all just natural gas talk, right? I had to separate them out, like, but what's this fucking hot take you have about libertarian politics and shit like that? Get the fuck outta here.

• 1:41:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I read through your Twitter account before you came this day, and it was like, normal, normal, whoa, okay. And I was like, I think I found some of the more hot takes than me.

• 1:42:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like he comes in, you know, getting out, you know, but one thing is good though about Twitter is like I will, people have changed my mind. Like I have conceded arguments. Like I'll be like, I concede, you're right, you know?

• 1:42:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:17Speaker 06

  And I get value out of that, but a lot of time.

• 1:42:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And that makes people want to engage the next time. Cause they're like, look, he's gonna fight like hell in this argument, but if I make a good point, he will change his mind. And I actually think people over time learn who does that on Twitter and who doesn't.

• 1:42:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:42:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And the people who don't eventually be just like, dude, fuck off. Like I just ain't worth it.

• 1:42:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. I use it for the exchange of ideas and I debate to come to an answer. Sometimes just debate to like, just be right. Right? Like I'm trying to get to an answer or a better solution. And a lot of times, you know, your biases or your entrenched beliefs or et cetera, like we're really just arguing some sort of philosophical belief that's probably not gonna change.

• 1:42:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:53Speaker 06

  But sometimes it's really like, oh no, you're right. This policy is a better policy. Or yeah, right. Like I have been swayed over here on this situation. Right? And so, um.

• 1:43:03Anthony Pompliano?

  That's why I write in the mornings and I get emails back and like, sometimes people send me an email and I'm like, wow, that was like very thoughtful. And like they included links.

• 1:43:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Whenever you see the hyperlink, you're like, oh, fuck.

• 1:43:13Speaker 06

  They got, they got receipts.

• 1:43:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, or at least like I didn't probably see that.

• 1:43:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so like, maybe it doesn't even prove what they're actually saying, but you just know that like they really care. Cause they took the time to go find the link and hyperlink you. You're like, all right, fine. I'll read it.

• 1:43:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, I've gone, I've gone through that and I actually, I purposely, I have a lot of accounts I follow that are completely way out of my political spectrum. Like I don't agree with like 80% or 70% say, or not that I don't agree what they say, like they correctly identify the problem. Or the issue, but their solution, I'm like 90% against it or whatever, but I don't want to be in an echo chamber.

• 1:43:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:43:54Speaker 06

  And Twitter allows me not to be an echo chamber. And I'm like, okay, I get this perspective. I know where they're coming from. I feel their pain. You know, you know, I just don't necessarily agree with their, their, their solution. And so I enjoy that aspect of it. Cause I link in, uh, Lincoln, I liken, um, uh, it's kind of like when you're a parent, you love the kid, but mom and dad have drastically different ways on waves. No, don't do that. He's gonna turn into a pussy. We gotta, we gotta, you know, like blah, blah, blah. You're, no, no, no, you have to do this way. Right? Like, and it's so, it's like. That's kinda like America, right? Like, like, we all, like, and you know, except on Twitter, we start to demonize each other, right? Like, no, you're just a fucking racist, blah, blah, blah. Oh, it's easy for you to say, you're a rich guy, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:44:39Speaker 06

  Like, no, no, no. I care about this kid, and I think this is the best way to raise, you know, to get things done in America. And so, you know, I think that understanding on Twitter is kinda missing.

• 1:44:53Anthony Pompliano?

  It's, I, I think that, uh...

• 1:44:55Speaker 06

  There are people that wanna burn, wanna burn it down.

• 1:44:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, of course. But I think it's missing, um, and so you end up valuing the people who you know are there for the same reasons.

• 1:45:05Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:45:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And those are the people you wanna read, those are the people you wanna engage with, those are, maybe if you don't even do it publicly, you may DM them, or whatever, right? But like, you very quickly over time realize like what's worth your time and what's not.

• 1:45:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, if you're new to Twitter, it's very hard to do that. And then also, like, I always see somebody will like join Twitter, who's like well-known or something. They'll tweet stuff, and immediately they're like responding to everyone, like, this is amazing, right? Like, I gotta like interact with those people, and then they have like a hater. And like, you see them respond, and you're like, oh, no, don't do this. And one of the, one of, one of the best ones that is similar to this, do you remember when, uh, Steve Cohen, uh, got on Twitter? And somehow he got in an argument with Dave Portnoy?

• 1:45:47Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 1:45:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Portnoy said something, and Cohen like responded, but like was kinda like going after him? Like kinda playing the card, like I'm a billionaire or whatever? And, and like said something like, let's take this offline? And Dave like quote tweeted him, and was like, uh, nah, that's where like shady shit happens. You wanna have a conversation like out here in public? And I was like, dude, Steve, put the phone down. Like, there's no bank account that's getting you out of this one.

• 1:46:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:46:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And next thing you know, like, he like deleted his account a couple days later, or that day, or whatever.

• 1:46:17Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:46:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And of course, like, the internet, you know, it's a fucking war when it comes to, it was like, you know, Portnoy and the Barstool guys, they came back with a billionaire's head. They were like, we like literally bodied him off the internet.

• 1:46:27Speaker 06

  Oh, how about when they tried to, uh, like, they sent the reporters out for Portnoy about like rape or sex or something, and he had receipts? You know what I mean? Like, they, and I was like, he was right, like, I think- Was in Business Insider that went after.

• 1:46:40Anthony Pompliano?

  There was a couple of them, but it it works in both directions because like you have that. And then on the other side, CNBC, they were standing outside the Twitter headquarters. And I don't know if you saw the two kids.

• 1:46:49Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, that was great.

• 1:46:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Or two guys or whatever.

• 1:46:51Speaker 06

  Ligma?

• 1:46:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, Ligma Johnson, like, I was like, the second you saw it, you're like, genius. Like, they got him. And the tweet, you like, check a couple of times throughout the day, like, is the tweet still up? Tweet's still up, they haven't realized it. And the internet is like on fire.

• 1:47:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, because they're like, I cannot believe someone tricked the reporters. And like, again, there's enough stories, like, eventually somebody will get tricked, whatever. But it does.

• 1:47:13Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, they get me sometimes. They got me. They're like, guys, they're like, this is a parody account. I was like, oh.

• 1:47:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah, see, that's how they get you, right?

• 1:47:20Speaker 06

  That was my, my prompt for quality time with my wife.

• 1:47:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, that's what we're doing right now.

• 1:47:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, we do. No, no, so, so, no, no, like, I generally, like, you know, it's a lot, a lot of life is behavior design. Like, people are like, how'd you lose all this weight, whatever? And I was like, you're just designed for success.

• 1:47:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 1:47:34Speaker 06

  And so, like, internal prompts or reminders are the worst.

• 1:47:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:47:38Speaker 06

  And so, just, a lot of it's just like, set a prompt, set an alarm.

• 1:47:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I also think, was it James Clear in Atomic Habits? He talks about, you can actually set the habit not by doing the full thing you want to do. But like, if you want to go to the gym, even if you just go for five minutes, and you do that every day, day after day after day after day, eventually you stay for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, like, and now you're a person who goes to the gym. And you don't have to invest two hours to get started. Whereas if you put the two hours in, like, you're probably not going to stick with it.

• 1:48:07Speaker 06

  I agree.

• 1:48:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, same thing here, right?

• 1:48:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, part, like, it's like, I'm so scheduled and I have a full life, like, I need, like, to design my life to have this level of productivity that I want and that I enjoy. I have to, one, I have to delegate and I have to hire smart people. I gotta fire myself all the time, like, you're fucking fired. And then I have to have prompts, I have to have a lot of prompts.

• 1:48:26Anthony Pompliano?

  What else do you have prompts for?

• 1:48:28Speaker 06

  Everything. I have prompts for, like, go work out, go do this, call my friend, you know what I mean? Check this. A lot of the prompts are, like, already on my phone. Fucking Twitter notifications. Must Twitter battle? No, I actually just decided.

• 1:48:44Speaker 06

  I actually just decided to delete my chess app.

• 1:48:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I saw you tweeted that.

• 1:48:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, because um, that's something I can do later in life and enjoy.

• 1:48:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:48:53Speaker 06

  And it's taking away from time for activities I should be doing now with friends, or whether it's poker or goofing off or etc.

• 1:48:59Anthony Pompliano?

  How many hours a week were you spending on the chess app?

• 1:49:02Speaker 06

  I I need to go do the analysis, but it was too much and it was like infrequent, like I'll have six or seven games going, you know, three day games, whatever. And then at late at night, I'd be up at night doing speed chess battles forever.

• 1:49:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:13Speaker 06

  Because speed chess is so goddamn addicting. And I was just like, I should be sleeping. I should be thinking about something else. These neurons should not be dedicated to this puzzle. It should be dedicated to some other puzzle.

• 1:49:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:23Speaker 06

  Right? Whether it's a social puzzle of like, how do I get closer to my daughters? Or uh, or like a business puzzle in SkyFi or SinMax at a very high strategic level? Or what do I think about supply and demand balance in October 23 for natural gas? Like, these neurons were getting sucked up and I'm like, they don't. I can play chess until I'm 95 online. Like, I do not need to do that. I need to be connecting with people and using these neurons for other things. So I'm just, uh, I'm gonna do, have the courtesy to finish the last three games. And then I'm gonna delete the app till for another 10 or 15 years.

• 1:49:58Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that.

• 1:49:59Speaker 06

  I mean, I will play live. Like, when I sit down with Dan, um, we play live. That's another social.

• 1:50:04Anthony Pompliano?

  You play chess or you play poker usually?

• 1:50:05Speaker 06

  We play chess. We just sit around. Honestly, like, people think when I like, uh, go to, go to his house, like, there's girls and there's orgies and whatever. It really is just playing chess and talking about life. Like, what is it? What is love? The difference between love and fear and connection?

• 1:50:19Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think you learned from Dan Bilzerian and what do you think he learned from you?

• 1:50:23Speaker 06

  Oh, wow. That's a good question. Um. Let me, uh, Dan, well, one thing is he taught me I did not want to be famous at his level. And so, right after I got divorced, right, there's this whole formula to getting famous in, in the way he was doing it, right? It's like, show your life, create a thirst trap, have all these girls around, people don't care about this, post that, blah, blah, blah. Then you can move on to other things and you have this big fame platform. And I was of the ilk that, once you have a fame platform, you can, you know. Natalie Portman is not the expert, but they have her speak in front of Congress, right? Like charities will be like, get the famous guy on, etc.

• 1:51:06Speaker 06

  And so I felt like it was powerful and monetizable. Right? Very monetizable at a very high level. And what I learned from Dan is, is that you can monetize it in sex. Like that is the number one monetization of fame is that you can have sex on demand everywhere and people will come to you.

• 1:51:25Speaker 06

  More powerful than money by a hundred x, okay? But the things I like to do, travel the world, walk around streets, etc. Would be taken away from me forever. Like when I'm hanging out with Dan, we go out, we're in Italy, we're traveling, we cannot walk anywhere. We're like, oh, look at this alley and these bars, whatever. He's like, I can't do it. Can I get a picture? Can I whatever? We're talking, whatever. We're like, we'll be having a conversation like, yeah, my dad died and I really didn't get along with him and blah, blah, blah. And just constantly harassed and it's like, and then not only did they want a picture, people naturally want to try and connect, so they want to tell a story about how they know you. And it's just like, oh my God, can we just enjoy ourselves?

• 1:52:09Speaker 06

  And it's like, famous people hide. Like they can't do the things I want to do. Like they can't go biking through Europe and they can't do that. And I was like, I would basically give up my entire fucking life to create this fame thing. And I was like, no fucking way, no fucking way. Like I just, I'm not that horny.

• 1:52:30Speaker 06

  I'm just not that horny. Like, and so I learned that.

• 1:52:37Speaker 06

  He ran that experiment and we learned that and a couple of other, a couple of other things, but I think-

• 1:52:42Anthony Pompliano?

  You think he regrets it? You think he regrets it?

• 1:52:45Speaker 06

  Oh, a thousand percent.

• 1:52:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 1:52:47Speaker 06

  He will tell you, he's miserable. It's a cage. You've literally become a boy in a bubble. Like you think J Lo can just go walk around Brickell and be like, look at the stops? No. Any famous person that you can think of, like of like that recognizable ability can like walk around, go in a restaurant without getting harassed. You know what I mean? They just surround themselves with the people they already knew from the hood or the boys or whatever. And then they hang out with other famous people because they know, well, you're not trying to get famous and you know, you're not gonna fanboy me, fangirl me, right? So they can just, that's it, right? So they have a way worse quality of life.

• 1:53:27Speaker 06

  Then somebody who makes like forty grand a year because they can't explore the planet and enjoy it. I mean, they can explore it, but they're in a bubble. They're on somebody's yacht and they can't go this way. There's security guards. They can't have these authentic experiences, you know, going here and going there. Like, yeah, they have these gilded, bubbled cookie cutter life that every single rich person can have, but they don't have the rich experiences of like the not being anonymous affords you, right?

• 1:53:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so I was like, oh, fuck, no.

• 1:53:59Speaker 06

  I dialed it back. There goes, you know, just my diary. Like, it's just my regular life, you know, my kids, my family, my dog. I'm traveling here, flying there, whatever. And so I learned that, like, that was like a hot stove.

• 1:54:14Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's helpful when you have famous friends because then you can like, you know, hey, let's go somewhere. I need the fame. Right? Or like the fame is going to be helpful.

• 1:54:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:54:22Anthony Pompliano?

  But your friend is.

• 1:54:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, you can, you can, you can like, they can help you or whatever, but it's like, it's, it's really not, it's really like, it's extremely hard to monetize the at the, the wealth I'm trying to create, right? Or I was trying to create.

• 1:54:38Speaker 06

  I didn't see the path. You know what I mean? Like, I, I look at like, you know, what did Tom Brady make last year? And what did Gisele make? Like, Gisele's way richer. You know what I mean? Like, did I look at, I look at like other famous people and it's like, oh, that's, that's nice. That's quaint. Like, I'm, I'm, I have bigger dreams than that, right? Like, and they had to go tap dance, whatever. And then now they can't walk around, like they're hiding from the crowd all the time. They can't have like, even like, think about Mike Phelps, right? That motherfucker was mobbed all the fucking time. We would walk around like I couldn't go anywhere. We sat down and we were literally having a deep emotional conversation. We constantly getting rough. And people, they, they think like, oh, it's only five seconds. It's only whatever.

• 1:55:21Speaker 06

  It's like every raindrop thing, because it's only raindrop, but it's a fucking tsunami out here. You know what I mean? Like, you're sick of the fucking raindrops, right? And so, and then if you don't take the picture or do the thing or pause, you're the asshole or whatever. You know what I mean? And so like, I was like, this is horrible. And like, like, how much could he possibly monetize that at the Olympics? And the Wheaties commercial, you know what I mean? Like, fuck that shit.

• 1:55:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. But I also think it's, um, uh, those individuals who end up obtaining fame, many of. Them, they were focused on something else and they get the fame. There are some people who they want the fame for the fame sake and they think they can monetize it and all that. Uh, but when you actually look at how much money you make, uh, one, it's not that much, but two is the people who do make a lot of money from the fame. Just end up doing the thing that the rich people who aren't famous do. Then the building companies or making investments.

• 1:56:13Speaker 06

  Well, it's, it's, yeah, like, it's like, it's like, I, I was like, wow, everybody became a rapper to become a VC. You know what I mean? Like.

• 1:56:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Just skip the rap.

• 1:56:21Speaker 06

  Like Nas is making all this money as a VC. Snoop is making all this money as a VC. Shaq is a VC. Like, I'm like. The, uh, uh, what's his name from, um, used to be married to Demi Moore. Has a VC company, um.

• 1:56:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Ashton Kutcher?

• 1:56:36Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:56:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:37Speaker 06

  I mean, like.

• 1:56:38Anthony Pompliano?

  He's like, actually pretty good.

• 1:56:39Speaker 06

  You know, so, so he, they are monetizing their fame correctly. They're using it to call up these hot VCs and like, hey, it's Ashton Kutcher. Well, guess what the, you know, computer nerd is going to do? He's going to take a phone call from Ashton Kutcher. Right? Like, everybody's trying to get into his company. You know, Beyonce calls him or so and so calls them, they're going to get in. So like Nas or whatever, like. Fucking Nas called me and then they can bring our brand out there on the platform. So we'll get like this free advertising. And so these guys get in equity in these companies and they kill it. Like 50 cent on vitamin water, you know, like. They realize like, oh, this is the real money, right? This is the real money. Like, I was actually, uh, basically an hourly employee.

• 1:57:23Speaker 06

  You know, being a singer, whatever, you know, I had a little piece of my record deal or whatever, but I can invest in a company. And it can, that was an exit, you know, that's the real money, right?

• 1:57:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Or, uh, I just read this book, uh, by Zach Greenberg about, uh, Jay-Z. And what he talks about is there's a number of products over the years that Jay-Z would rap about. And there was a bunch of controversy over whether he had relationships with the brands or not. And, uh, some of them, like, uh, the champagne, things like that. Eventually it did come out that he had the relationship, but for years people didn't know. And so what he would basically do, which I think he learned from Damon Dash is he would go and he would do the deal and then rap about them.

• 1:58:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:58:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And it would be kind of a nonchalant, you know, in a line or something, whatever. And then he would be sitting there just making money because he recorded one time. It's playing over and over and over again on the radio. That brand becomes a thing. And like, look at this genius. He's not just getting paid on the plays. He's also getting paid, not in like traditional advertising dollars. He's just getting the equity in companies that benefit from being included in the song, which then other rappers want to rap about and like, it's like a whole thing.

• 1:58:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, like, like, you know, this thing Adidas and Run DMC. But they already had the song, but they brought the Adidas executives and they saw my Adidas. And everybody takes their fucking Adidas shit and goes up. They're like, oh, fuck, we're in the rap game now.

• 1:58:41Speaker 06

  And so like, it's powerful, right? Because it's, it's culture, right? And, and people do that. And I just want to point out, like,

• 1:58:49Speaker 06

  when a company gets a 10x multiple, every extra dollar, you get 10x. So like, that's a big difference when you can move the needle with your fame. Like, so that's the proper monetization. You know, Dan is monetizing his fame in sex, pussy, right? Whatever. Can I say pussy on this show?

• 1:59:09Anthony Pompliano?

  You can say whatever you want.

• 1:59:10Speaker 06

  Okay, so he's monetizing it that way. And I'm just like, I don't have that type of sex drive. Like, I don't, this is like, this is like completely a disaster. And even if I could, you know, I'm, I'm fortunate enough to like, I have a skillset that I've developed to like trade and make money in other ways, right? So like, I can be Z level famous, which is perfect. Like, one in 300 people recognize me, right? Like, one in 400, right? Like, you know, people who, even before like poker or whatever, like the Nat Gas community, they, they know who I am, right? Yep. And, and then, you know, the poker community kind of knows who I am, right? Like, they know me. And so like, and now the Twitterverse and other reasons, some people, but it's, it's, it's, it's enough where it's like, get a little ego stroke, you know what I mean?

• 1:59:55Speaker 06

  Maybe you'll get a restaurant reservation, but like, I can actually go backpacking and walking around or enjoy, I can enjoy Planet Earth. Not where I can't walk around and enjoy Planet Earth. And I always have to be like, security guarded and hanging around only famous people and always. In a bubble and only go to these places.

• 2:00:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I also think about the thing you become famous for. So like, there's the, you're too famous, right? Messi, he can't, he's not going anywhere in the world, right? The Jay-Z's, the, you know, Dan's, whatever, like, like they're recognizable. And they're such a big audience and people want to talk to them. But also, there's a way that some people get famous, but they get famous in like kind of a cool way. So I heard Casey Ness that, I don't know if you know this guy, he's on YouTube, he's got a, you know, a couple million subscribers. Became like a pretty well-known documentarian and filmmaker and all this kind of stuff. And he was like, he loves New York, because he was like, in New York, his just like kind of vibe.

• 2:00:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:00:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Was super down to earth. So he'd be going down the street and people, yo, Casey, what's up? But they wouldn't mob him, they wouldn't, you know, like do all the crazy stuff. And so it was like, kind of the energy he was putting out in the world also set kind of the relationship with the audience, right? And so if you're the one who's walking around and you're getting driven around in all the cars and the security guards and all this. People are social animals, man. They're just like, oh, I guess I'm supposed to mob you.

• 2:01:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, we're social herd animals. And so, yeah, that, that, that goes on. But so.

• 2:01:25Speaker 06

  That's what I learned. Like, I do not, I was gonna get the PR machine and create the fame game and try and play that. And I realized.

• 2:01:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And you hit the eject.

• 2:01:34Speaker 06

  Need a fucking scratch. Like, need to completely change my mind about the fame.

• 2:01:40Speaker 06

  And then, I guess, you know, what Dan has been learning from me is that like love is the answer. You know, like, you know, like Dan.

• 2:01:53Speaker 06

  Not fear and like not control. You know what I mean? Like, I think like, you know, he's had a relationship where he, he's been hurt and you know, what I point out to him, like his wall is control. You know, not letting go, being in control, right? Which is fear-based, fear-based living.

• 2:02:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 2:02:11Speaker 06

  And, and. You know, trying to break down that wall and, and stop the circus, right? Like, just letting them know, like, the circus is robbing you of your life.

• 2:02:19Anthony Pompliano?

  So you said you'd smoke him in poker. Who wins in chess?

• 2:02:22Speaker 06

  Oh, he, he won't even play me in chess anymore.

• 2:02:26Anthony Pompliano?

  He's gonna listen to this and be like, fucking Bill, what on this podcast?

• 2:02:31Speaker 06

  He might, he might got, he might have got better. You know, he's, he's not terrible, but like, I, I actually had like two lessons. It's amazing, like, if you get like two lessons, uh, or three lessons, um, how you just like think a little bit differently about the game. And then like, he was just like, you're getting lessons and you're playing all the time. I'm not playing you anymore. Like, I beat him and I was just like, fuck this shit.

• 2:02:53Speaker 06

  He might play, but like, let's go play. Like, you know, we'll get out, hang out, uh, you know, do stuff and just talk, talk live, play games. Now, now he likes to play, you know, we'll play Mario Kart, because he can smoke me in Mario Kart and he can absolutely smoke me in, uh, like that zombie game where you're shit.

• 2:03:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Game selection.

• 2:03:09Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, he's game selection. And, and he's like, literally like, he, he's really, really, really good at paintball.

• 2:03:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 2:03:17Speaker 06

  Really good, like, it's like unfair if Dan's on your team.

• 2:03:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Where can we send people to find more about SkyFi too?

• 2:03:23Speaker 06

  SkyFi, so, yeah, we actually want to talk SkyFi, like, so SkyFi, you want to go to skyfi.com.

• 2:03:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 2:03:28Speaker 06

  That's it. S K Y F I dot com. There's skyfi.app on Twitter.

• 2:03:36Speaker 06

  That's where it's at, you know? And anybody, you know, I want to say like, plug, shameless plug. Everybody out there has, has value and has a problem that they can solve if given the information. Right? There's a lot of people, like, some of them have no interest, right? And, and there's cause they care about. And like, when I get the information and tools, uh, in your hands, you'll be able to make an impact, right? And so as we go down our product roadmap, not only would be like, cool, I can order satellite and go look at this, it's like, you know, I really care about pollution in this area. Or I really care about the Amazon. I'm going to monitor this area for illegal logging.

• 2:04:14Speaker 06

  And farming, you know, I'm actually going to document it and blah, blah, blah, and make a stir and, and do a GoFundMe or whatever it is you do. I'm making up a silly example, but not a silly example, a real example that, that you'll be able to have an impact there in the world. And so I'm really excited for not just the businesses, not the governments and the spooks who use spies to try and find, you know, use these satellites or targeting and bonding people, right? Uh, but for the people that are going to have a meaningful impact on our world and make it better for, you know, I'm old, so maybe not me, but for my children.

• 2:04:47Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. That's a great place for us then. Thank you so much for, for coming on and anyone who has not read the book or checked out Skyfire, I suggest that you do that and we'll definitely do this again in the future.

• 2:04:57Speaker 06

  Okay. I'd love to. Thanks.