#1364 Jack Mallers | Bitcoin Could Hit $1 Million This Cycle

Jack Mallers is the Founder & CEO of Strike. In this conversation, we talk about the macro environment, the edge case, use case, investment case for bitcoin, bitcoin vs shitcoins, politics, regulation, and why he believes Wall Street will capitulate and all become bitcoiners. ======================= BetOnline.ag is a proud sponsor of the the Pomp Podcast. Use crypto to bet on sports, play poker and enjoy casino games at BetOnline. Visit https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp and use promo code POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline boasts no crypto transaction fees, and processing is anonymous, instantaneous and secure. ======================= Bitcoin builders, apply for Supra’s Million Dollar Bitcoin DeFi Accelerator dedicated to Bitcoin L2 ecosystem dApps, and get their powerful price feeds and verifiable randomness services for free too. Not a builder? Earn $1,500 by referring Web3 projects to apply for the accelerator. The projects can get financial support while you get $1,500 for every referral. Learn more and apply for the accelerator: https://supra.com/pomp-btc/ ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ 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/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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. 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. What's up guys? Bang bang. Today's episode is with Jack Mallers, the founder and CEO of Strike. In this conversation, we talk about the macro environment, the edge case, and the use case, and the investment case for Bitcoin, how he thinks about Bitcoin versus shitcoins, what he thinks about politics, where regulation is going, and why he believes

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  that ultimately Wall Street will capitulate and they will all become Bitcoiners. I really enjoyed this conversation. I learned a ton. Jack is always in top form, and this one is no different. So here's my conversation with Jack Mahlers.

• 0:59Speaker 01

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

• 1:23Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:08Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:50Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:26Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Jack here. Maybe let's just start with the easy stuff. What's going on in the macro environment? Why do all these people on Wall Street want to buy Bitcoin? Like, is the legacy system broken?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Uh, I think so. I think we're probably nearing the end of the geopolitical setup that we have today. My favorite way to think about it is through global debt to GDP. So I think of money as our time and energy in an abstracted form. What I mean by that is you do this podcast, in exchange for this podcast, you get money, right? I work on strike. In exchange for that, I get money. So my collective contributions to society and what I wake up and do every day, I get money. So money's an abstraction of our time and energy. I think governments being able to borrow their

• 4:18Speaker 02

  own currency is as close to time travel as we've ever come to. And what I, here's why I mean, what I mean by that is that I'm effectively allowed to borrow the time and energy from the future, right? So if money is our extracted time and energy and as a government, I have my own currency that I can borrow against. That means I'm borrowing time and energy from the future. And so when I look at global debt to GDP at something well over 300%, that means that they've borrowed a lot of time and energy from our future with no growth to pay it back. And that's a huge problem and that loss has to be realized. And I'm not a macroeconomist. I don't have a college degree. That's as simple as I think about it.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  I think it's helpful to think about money in the form of time and energy because then it becomes real. People are always like, well, why don't you carry the debt forward? Why don't you print the money? It's like, well, no, no, no, it's not a piece of paper. It's all of our time, energy, our contributions to this world, all of our lives. And so who's going to realize that loss? If we're entering the future with a hole in our balance sheet of time and energy, whose time and energy is going to pay that back? And I think they have two options. Either they can let the banking system fail, the bond market fail, and that's whose time and energy will be making us all whole. So Jamie Dimon's time and energy, all the bondholders' time and energy, all the banking system's time and energy, or they have to debase the currency and take the time and energy of the collective populace.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  And everyone, the market is now starting to lean towards the fact that they're going to weaken the currency to make whole on the time and energy they borrowed that they can't pay back. So that is how I think about it. That is why I think it's terrifying as an investor. And then that's why I think Bitcoin is the best thing you can own.

• 6:04Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's say that they're going to debase the currency, which I think a lot of people agree with that. Maybe people debate how fast they're going to do it, how catastrophic could they make it? But what's interesting is that people now are running out of the dollar, kind of in a systematic way. But they're buying stocks, they're buying real estate, they're buying Bitcoin, they're buying gold. Like, there's many things that they can buy to get out of it. And each one of those assets is denominated in dollars. So on a nominal basis, if you buy a stock that's worth a hundred dollars today and you sell it later for 120, you quote unquote made money. Right, each asset. Why Bitcoin over those other assets, do you think specifically now Wall Street? Right? And kind of the the traditional finance world, why are they buying it?

• 6:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it just it's new to them and they have access to the ETFs? Or is there something else driving it?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  No, I think it's the best expression of fiat debasement. It is the antithesis of fiat currency. It has no central bank, it has no government, its monetary policy is fixed, its supply is capped. It's everything that fiat isn't. And so if your problem is fiat debasement, then it's best expressed through Bitcoin. So you're taking the opposite. It's a put option on the existing system. It's long vol, right? Like, I don't know, I'm talking traders speak, but that's what you want. And traditionally, you try and find that through something, right? Gold, here's this collection of chemicals that like, kind of gets me close. Real estate, in theory, they can't print any more land. Does that mean they can't print any more real estate? No, of course. I mean, I'm sitting here in fucking New York City.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  They could build pretty high buildings, but like, I don't know, I'm kind of close. Bitcoin is the only instrument in your portfolio that we humans created to solve this exact problem. Everyone has their own interpretation of the white paper, but I mean, come on, give me a break. Satoshi, right after 08, 09, created it and said, central bankers, I can't trust them. And so this is the best expression of the problem at hand. And so, and in more plain speak, what that means is that it goes up the most. So for those that, you know, need to put two and two together, that means it's going to be the most performant. So why does Wall Street want it? I have been more performant than Ken Griffin for 10 years.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  That's why they want it. People aren't stupid, right? You either have to work 10 times as hard to outperform a Bitcoin holder, or you just own Bitcoin.

• 8:21Anthony Pompliano?

  But does that mean that you're not going to outperform Ken Griffin for the next 10 years?

• 8:25Speaker 02

  It depends. If he owns Bitcoin, then no.

• 8:28Anthony Pompliano?

  But even, let's say he doesn't buy Bitcoin, right? If the contrarian trade led to the asymmetry, like basically, I think of it as like, the risk you take is the return that you should get in return, right? And so to buy Bitcoin in 2015, or even 2020, frankly, was high risk in most people's eyes. And so you got this insane return compared to historical, you know, asset price returns. Today, it feels more consensus. And so let's just use easy numbers. Let's say it was compounding at 100% a year, you know, for a decade or whatever. Going forward, I think most people would say it'll be lower. But the question becomes, is that like 10% a

• 9:09Anthony Pompliano?

  year, 50% a year? If it's 75% a year, sure, it's down from 100, but 75% a year compound growth rates are still pretty damn attractive compared to almost any other asset in the world.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not, I call bullshit. I think we're still so early in the Bitcoin story. I don't see, I'm public on record saying, I think Bitcoin hits 250 to a million in this cycle. So now I'm speaking the next like 10 to 18 months. And that's not, what did you say, 70%? I mean, that's a lot of percent. So.

• 9:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you think it's going to go up so fast, so high?

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Um, because, so I think it's the best expression of currency debasement. I think it's the best expression of the problem at hand. Right? So it's a mirror. Bitcoin's a mirror. I look in the mirror, what do I see? Some ugly fucked up shit. That's why. And so I think it's going to reflect the issues. And that's the reason Wall Street wants all these ETFs too, is Bitcoin is the only free market in the world. It's the only like pure human. It's volatile. It reacts to the world we actually live in. It makes moves. It makes noise. It makes stories. It makes headlines. And that's life. And that's why they want that. I mean, banks are making money on these ETFs. They're not making money owning bonds. And so I think for all those reasons, it will directly reflect

• 10:25Speaker 02

  the world that we're living in today. And I think that world's very, very banged up. I think central banks have gone through progressively trying to fix, price fix markets to keep everything together. And what market is up next? The all mother of all markets, the bond market, the sovereign debt market. And so how much money is that? We're looking at the, the dollar yen swap line that just opened. How, if, if, if the US government, if the treasury is going to be giving unlimited dollars to Japan and China to protect their currencies, you're going to get two, three covids in this cycle as far as stimulus and printing. People are too fixated on the cost of capital as far as rates. They need to be more fixated on the amount of capital, which is they're still printing dollars. It

• 11:08Speaker 02

  doesn't matter that rates are at five and a half percent. It's still inflationary. And so for those reasons, I think, how am I supposed to predict the, the most fixed asset in the history of mankind against the biggest fucked up problem that central banks have ever had to try and solve? I don't, I mean, come on, 250 to a million. I feel super confident about that.

• 11:28Anthony Pompliano?

  So I'll agree with some of it. I'll disagree with some of it, which is the banks are definitely making money on bonds on five and a half percent rates. I think over a longer period of time, the depreciation of like the value of the bond is going down. So if you look at like TLT, it's down, you know, 20% over the last five years or something. So I think that what becomes interesting is some of the banks, or maybe use like the stablecoin issuers, like they're probably the better example. So they're buying treasuries and they're basically rotating through them, right? And they're driving, I think the numbers for tether are like a billion dollars a quarter or something, right? So like that, when people evaluate it, they're like, oh my God, look at this cash flow. This is amazing. I think you're arguing is yes, but you're getting it in a depreciating fiat currency. So unless you convert it to something else, actually you may be better off just buying Bitcoin and holding it for the long term.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, but your real return. So, you know, just dissecting what you said a little bit, banks right now are making a lot of money on whatever they're getting five and a quarter, five and a half back. But they're not going to go lend real money to real businesses right now. So the value, the actual denominated value of the bonds are getting absolutely obliterated. And that's putting their, their balance sheet underwater. They're functionally insolvent. So they aren't actually stimulating the economy. So right now, banks, there's like $3 trillion of banking reserves on the Fed's balance sheet and they're just collecting. If I'm a bank executive, I'm not doing jack fuck all. I'm going to just sit on my hands, never lend any real money and just collect payment.

• 12:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. Because also they, they have the benefit because of the accounting rules where they don't have to mark the bond to market.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 12:58Anthony Pompliano?

  So even though they're losing, if you think of it as like the capital value, right? Enterprise values being destroyed. They get a market is just at cost.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 13:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And then they're getting the cash flow. So it makes them look much better than it actually is.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Correct. But this is unsustainable economic activity. And so to me, that doesn't count. Like the US government part loves tether, hates tether. They hate tether because they don't love fully reserve systems that just take advantage of rates. Like they're willing to give you these rates and these accounting tricks so that you play the game. And so Diamond's playing the game and like that business is screwed. Because you're also not getting the growth that the government is producing with the capital you're lending them. They're not paying you the full growth of the economy. The economy is growing 10% or whatever. They're paying you five. It's like, well, I'm going to go put my capital to where I can realize the growth that's actually happening in something like Bitcoin. Why would I lend you the money? You're giving me half.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  You know, you should only be spending on things that you can afford through my taxes and you're debasing the currency. So you want to debase the currency, tax the living shit out of me and not pay me in full when I lend you money? Fuck off. And so that, that therein lies the problem. Here comes this industry where like these guys traders want volatility. Traders want life. There's natural entropy in the universe and central banks try and control it and suffocate it. And here comes a totally independent market that has every, it feel, you feel alive being part of this industry. And so, yeah, that's why I think banks and Wall Street wants to be in the business of, so they're like strike.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  They're in the business of financial services in the space. And then why would you want to own it? Is because it's in the direct reflection of all the problems. It's taking the other side of the fact that governments have borrowed so much from our future with no way to pay it back. Owning Bitcoin to me is saying, I don't know how you guys are going to solve this one, but it's not going to be my time and energy. And that's a very popular vote. The fact that you can cast that from your phone by downloading an app like Strike. I mean, who wouldn't do that?

• 15:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I agree. Uh, I don't agree that Bitcoin is going to go to a million dollars this cycle.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  So 250 to a million and, and the reason that's a large delta, but you're

• 15:10Anthony Pompliano?

  That's why I'm laughing.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. But, but people, it's like, how do you, how do you price predict a piece of paper that, you know, is being debased aggressively?

• 15:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  So

• 15:20Anthony Pompliano?

  But I don't even think 250, I mean, barring some event that we don't see. I think one of the pieces that I keep coming back to, and I could be wrong on this, right? But, but, uh, I've been thinking about two different components as to like, the price will go up, right? Obviously I'm excited about that. I'm incentivized for that to happen. But, um, one, we have a new type of holder. Five years ago, you, me and everybody else, like, we're idiots. We would just buy Bitcoin, hold it. Literally, there was nothing you could do to convince us to sell it.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 15:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Wall Street buys the ETF. They're not even buying real Bitcoin, right? They buy the ETF. If they put a 1% allocation and it doubles, they're gonna sell half because they're gonna rebalance, right? Like, that's just their whole game is basically just like, do this rebalance game. Also, it's like, as the price increases, again, it's a variable. We don't know how much sell pressure that is, but it's a new type of sell pressure that previously wasn't there, because Bitcoiners never rebalanced. So you get like weird dynamics where like, as you add in these people who are basically, I'll say it lovingly, like nerds.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And they have all these like portfolio theories and rebalancing and like all this stuff. It's just not the like hardcore Bitcoiner who buys, holds, and like that illiquid market, every net new dollar has such upward movement.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  I, so, I just think that that's overcomplicating something super simple. When I say 250 to a million, I'm effectively saying Bitcoin's mispriced. And so if someone who's an ETF holder is going to constantly rebalance their portfolio, I still think it's mispriced. I think that that's going to be met with market demand and that market demand is then going to say, hey, thanks for your ETF flow. I'm gonna take it into physical Bitcoins on my cold card at home. So I, I think that-

• 16:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Why is it mispriced? Like, how do you think about where it should be priced today?

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Um, against the, the debasement that's upcoming, is what I think. So I think-

• 17:04Anthony Pompliano?

  It's forward looking to the debasement?

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Correct. Yeah. So I, I think, you know, I don't think that Bitcoins price as a reflection of the upcoming debasement is dependent on how some asset manager plans on rebalancing, right? It's, it's the, you know, same as like, you know, if asset managers rebalanced Lamborghinis, then like they'd actually be worth 50 grand instead of 200 grand. No, they're worth 200 grand because people are willing to pay 200 grand for them. So I think people will be willing to pay $250,000 for a Bitcoin based on the mess that I think, I mean, there's a massive hole and there's a loss that has to be realized. That loss is gonna come through debasing the currency. Asset prices are gonna go up and what is the best asset and the most performant asset was the best money in human history. And so I think that has

• 17:50Speaker 02

  to be accurately priced and it doesn't really matter what some guy on Wall Street thinks in regard to his own portfolio. It's his loss if he sells it.

• 17:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, let's take a step further, which you understand probably better than most in terms of the world of trading. What happens when you can short the ETFs, right? Will people step in? Like, you introduced derivatives. You start to introduce these things that in markets historically, it has dampened volatility because now people can go both directions. We don't even know, will they get approved? You know, are they coming in the next six months or whatever, right? But like, at some point, you have to assume that we will see those vehicles. I think people have now at least put in applications for like 2X, you know, lever long Bitcoin. I'm sure people will come, you know, the other way, whatever. Does that play into also changing the price dynamics?

• 18:35Speaker 02

  No. I think the more financial products, the better, because what we want is true price discovery. The problem, like, the idea that derivatives can suffocate Bitcoin and manipulate the spot is demons that people feel from gold. Gold naturally centralizes, right? Like, gold holders all don't have a cold card in their room with their physical gold on it. They can't take a physical instrument like gold and put it in their brain like they can with Bitcoin. And so, I mean, the physical Bitcoin on exchanges right now is at an all-time low, but the supply goes up every single day. And so that means that more Bitcoin is held with the individual. That's the logical conclusion. So the idea

• 19:17Speaker 02

  that Bitcoin would fall victim to concentration and manipulation through derivatives, I think is a fallacy. And it actually goes to Satoshi launching a bottoms-up movement. Satoshi did not go to Goldman Sachs and say, "I would like to list this thing publicly, and I'd like you guys to own 25% of it." He put it on a mailing list, and he walked away. And for that reason, it'd be nearly impossible for someone to own a concentrated amount of this asset class, in my opinion. I mean, Sailor's on a warpath, and he's barely eclipsing 1%. Is anyone ever going to own 40, 50% of Bitcoin? No. So I-

• 19:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think it's a problem that he owns 1%?

• 19:54Speaker 02

  No. I mean, it would be if it was Ethereum with proof of stake, right? But no, his ownership over the physical Bitcoins has no influence over the consensus rules, the protocol- The monetary policy, that's the whole point. Sailor, Trump, I have the same influence over Bitcoin by running a node. And it's effectively no influence if I want to change it. But it's all the influence if I want to verify and be a part of it in a self sovereign way. So I don't, I don't, I think derivative products just enhance and increase price discovery. What we want is accurate discovery, highly liquid markets for something that's as free and global as Bitcoin. So it's great. I mean, we should have a way more like robust options market in Bitcoin.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  I think all these things are phenomenal, but no, don't take gold shortcomings and put them on Bitcoin. I mean, Bitcoin doesn't concentrate like gold does. That's a problem with, I mean, gold's a deadbeat commodity. It's not a competitor, in my opinion.

• 20:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I do enjoy the gold bugs when it goes up like 5%, it's like $25 and they take a victory lap. It always cracks me up like new all time high, like you made $25.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, like there's a, I mean, there's a reason the same thing that is in theory being manipulated by derivative markets. And, you know, the CME and all these big exchanges shorting gold without having physical. That's the same thing that was concentrated enough for the US government to create fiat. If gold was good enough, I wouldn't be born into the dollar system we are today. So, you know, part of my childhood being fucked up and being debased in constant American war is the fact that gold wasn't sufficient enough to solve the world's monetary problems. So don't, don't give me a history lesson on gold. I mean, that's the reason Satoshi built a better one, you know? So I don't think that these are problems at all.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  And I think the fact that Larry Fink is a Bitcoiner and Jamie Dimon, whether he wants to admit it or not, is a Bitcoiner. According to his revenues and growth and activity and reports. That's a good thing for, you know, everything's good for Bitcoin, right? That's what I, I think wholeheartedly, every single thing is good for Bitcoin.

• 22:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Is an Ethereum ETF good for Bitcoin?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Sure. I, I mean, I think it's more funny than it is good. I think it's so funny that. I mean, let's like walk through the game theory flywheel of we're rapidly debasing the currency that's causing inflation. So we're going now 2020 COVID. We're debasing the currency. We have rates at zero. That's causing inflation. Inflation causes us to rise rates faster than we've ever risen them before. That causes bonds to fall. That causes banks to become insolvent, which causes the market, Wall Street banks, like where can we find some activity? Where can we find some life? Which causes all of a sudden, and a fear for future debasement, which causes Bitcoin ETF approval, which causes them to

• 22:49Speaker 02

  have the most successful financial product they've ever had, which causes them to go, you know what? Gensler, you're not in charge anymore. I'm in charge. How many of these pieces of shit do they want ETFs for? We're accepting all of them. So all of a sudden, you go diamond going from a Bitcoin skeptic to a cheerleader. And now you've got both political parties supporting Bitcoin. You've got Wall Street supporting Bitcoin. You've got Jamie Dimon's lip service bad boy diamond. He's supporting Bitcoin. And that's the game theory of what I think is something that's just so pure human. It's a free market. It's honest. It's integral. And that is what, at the end of the day, you can try and fight natural human behavior all you want. You land, we all land in the same place. We all

• 23:29Speaker 02

  land on hard money, integrity, ethics, morality, global, love, freedom. Those are all things Bitcoin represents. You can walk your little death spiral all the way. Come to daddy. Come to daddy. So I think it's just funny. I don't think it's good, bad. It's for my business, it's a distraction. I don't give a shit. But I think it's comical.

• 23:49Anthony Pompliano?

  So when people always ask me, am I a Bitcoin maximalist? I always tell them,

• 23:55Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 23:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm a Bitcoin maximalist in the sense that monetary assets end in maximalism, right? So if you live in the United States, you're a dollar maximalist. You get paid in dollars, you save in dollars, you buy assets in dollars, you pay your taxes in dollars, etc. But you're not a maximalist in the sense of Google, Facebook stock, oil, real estate, whatever, right? In crypto, I do think that there's a lot of people that call themselves Bitcoin maximalist. And it's not just like, I think Bitcoin is the best money and will be the winner in the money. It's and everything else will die. With the, what appears to be the ETF approval for Ethereum that's incoming here in a day or so.

• 24:40Anthony Pompliano?

  It feels like tho- that subset of Bitcoin maximalists are gonna have a hard time saying everything else is gonna be a zero, or everything else is a security, etc. I don't think we have enough information, maybe you have a different opinion, but I don't think we have enough information to say, what is actually gonna happen there? But like, the game changed in the last week or so? And so, how do you think about, like, what is Bitcoin maximalism today? Does it change to like, hey Bitcoin is the winner in money? And like, you said, like, everything else is just a distraction? But not necessarily take a position on like, is it gonna have value in the future or not? Or like, like, how do you evaluate?

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Okay, big question. So, allow me to take one quick step back, like, what is money? Money is the market good in the economy that you buy not to consume. You buy to exchange later or to save. So, it's, I take my time and energy, I mow lawns, I run a podcast, I run companies, I make burgers, and I take that time and energy and I exchange it for money, and then I either save that money or exchange that money later. That's very different than a market good in the economy that is a cheeseburger, cuz I don't buy the cheeseburger to save it or to exchange it for something later, I buy it to consume it. Okay. Money tends to concentrate, a natural market wants one money, right?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  We don't want all of our time and energy being priced in various different goods and services. The point of a money is so that we can all understand and how to value our collective time and energy and price the goods and services that we have in the economy. So, I think what a Bitcoin maximalist believes is that Bitcoin is the best money. It's the best tool and technology to solve that particular problem. Well, then, what is Ethereum? What is Solana? What is Dogecoin? I make the argument that they're technologies. Ethereum very clearly made that point with the DAO hack. Ethereum had developers get hacked, they could've said, the monetary policy is the monetary policy, code is law, all that shit that they were saying back in the day, they didn't. They changed it. Why did they do that?

• 26:35Speaker 02

  They wanted to appeal to the developers, to the growth, to the computer, decentralized computer for the world. Okay. So, a technology is a market good in the economy that you consume. When I am using Facebook, I'm consuming Facebook, I'm not using Facebook as money. Real estate, whatever you said, art, fine art, I'm consuming the art, it goes on my wall. So I just don't find them directly competitive at all. And so I think a Bitcoin maximalist is saying Bitcoin is money. It's the best money. We believe there should be one money. All these other things aren't money. Now, do I have a problem with technologies and securities? No. In fact, I'm the founder of Strike. I own a lot of a valuable security and we build technology. So of course I'm not against that.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  What I'm against or what bothers me is the intentional conflation. Ethereum was founded to be the better Bitcoin and it often rides the coattails of Bitcoin. And it often conflates itself with Bitcoin's story. And a lot of these things, it's the faster Bitcoin, the nimbler Bitcoin, the lighter Bitcoin.

• 27:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that that's a losing strategy for Ethereum in the like, even in a story standpoint, right? So it's confusing, which I think is upsetting to people in Bitcoin. But there's not very many products who are not the first mover and do not have technical superiority that end up actually surpassing the first mover or the thing with technical superiority. So if you kind of think about like Uber and Lyft, right? Lyft, no matter how hard they try, it's just that they're not going to pass Uber, right?

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Barring some external event or whatever. And so if I was like in charge of Ethereum marketing for the day, I think attaching to Bitcoin is actually guaranteeing loss.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  But that's what, so what I, I think.

• 28:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Where I don't think they think that. I think they actually think tying themselves to Bitcoin to some degree, like ultrasound money, all this stuff.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Is a winning strategy.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Well, but I, so I, I call these things an arbitrage on the trend. So an arbitrage trade, can a camera see this? This is a spin drift sparkling water. An arbitrage trade would be the one in my left hand is a dollar, the one in my right hand is $10. I can buy the one in my left all day at a buck, sell on my right at 10 and I'm netting nine all day. That's an arbitrage. That's not a business. That's not a movement. That's not innovation. That's a trade. I consider these things an arbitrage on the trend. What's the trend? You have an independent financial system that is a reflection of the problems in the financial system we have today. It's a new movement. It's freedom. It's global. It's all this stuff. And I'm finding a less legally accountable way to be like a central bank.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  An arb that movement. I'm basically monetizing the fact that there's a lot of people that are exiting the financial system, want something more fair and new, don't totally understand what the fuck is going on. And what's the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin? But it's, it's, it's, it acts as a free market, but it's not. It has a founder. It makes business like decisions. Why did it go from proof of work to proof of stake? Why did it fork and rewind transactions in the Dow hack? So I think something that has a founder, that has direction, that has outside influence, that has a roadmap, that makes politically driven decisions, there's no problem with that. But that's a company that's more like strike than it is Bitcoin. But I think they want to be thought of as a commodity and as a freer market, because they get when Bitcoin goes up, Ethereum

• 29:50Speaker 02

  goes up, right? It's an index basket of this independent, different financial system. And that's the only real issue. And I mean, to be honest, like, I don't really give a shit about shitcoins, to be totally candid, like, they don't, it's, it is what it is. I'm, I'm much more free market. I don't advocate for Gensler to do anything, really. But that's the problem. I think that if I were to speak on behalf of maximalism is, is, you know, there is this one thing that we think does a phenomenal job at money, which is the most important technology in human history. I mean, without money, we'd be bartering. Like, you know, you'd say, you'd go to Whole Foods and say, hey, guys, I recorded a podcast today. I'll take two steaks. They'd be like, oh, the fuck? I don't give, I don't value your podcast at all. But they value the money you got for the podcast.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  So it allows all of us humans to hyper specialize and be amazing at little things and grow an economy to eight billion people. Money's that important. And we think we came across the best one ever, which should allow us to enter one of the most flourishing chapters of human history. And then you have someone who creates something in their basement that's intentionally conflating it with the general public to take advantage of a momentous opportunity for our species. And that's where it's like, yo, if you guys want to create technologies and print money and stuff, I'd find it incredibly unethical, but like, get out of my way. And, and that's like, the issue I have with these things. And I, the one last point I'll say is that for the people that say, well, you know, if they weren't worth anything, then if they had no value, they'd be worth zero,

• 31:17Speaker 02

  right? The fact that Ethereum has value.

• 31:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think that initially has to be worth zero. I think that maybe the best argument for the Bitcoin community to make is like Bitcoin ETH, you know, kind of like pair continues to fall.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it's like, it's less about the aggregate dollar amount as much as it is like the trend. And so far, like I'm actually not very bullish on Ethereum at all.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, but I would argue that the use case of building on top of all these technologies, these applications, like it's easy to see that people are going to use this stuff, whether we thought they should it or not. Um, and then you look at things like stable coins, et cetera. Right? And so really what I think I get at is like, are the other use cases in crypto going to be bigger than the gold use case, like the Bitcoin use case? And if you look to the traditional market, Facebook, Google, Amazon, all these guys are way bigger than the gold market. The promise of the digital version of gold is more globally accessible, right? It's got, you know, all these components to it. Um, and so if you strip away all the bullshit of like all these tribes arguing with each

• 32:28Anthony Pompliano?

  other, it's like, all right, today Bitcoin is, I don't know, trillion and a half or something. Total crypto markets like 2.6, 2.7 trillion. So Bitcoin is the dominant more than 50%. Um, 10 years from now, not because they go launch literally 10,000 coins a day, right? But like, is Bitcoin able to grow big enough and outpace these other things? Or should we actually expect Bitcoin will continue to grow? And maybe it's worth 100 trillion in the future. But these other things, just by the nature of what they do, will end up being bigger as a total market cap.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I've two, two answers to that. One is gold is, is defective money. It's money that isn't good at being money because we have dollars and pounds. If it was good at being money, it would remain money. So it's like a defunct defective, not so great money that has a market cap of what 12 trillion or whatever that number is. If you want to compare Bitcoin to money, what's the size of capital markets overall? So currency markets, uh, markets valued in currency.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Cash flows, real estate, gold, precious metals. I mean, that's like hundreds of trillions of dollars. That's where I think Bitcoin's on its way to comparing it to a defunct money that isn't that good at being money versus something that wants to be the king of money, I think is like a bad comparison. So I think Bitcoin has the biggest target audience. It has the biggest opportunity set by a long mile. The problem with saying something like Ethereum is like Facebook is Facebook is valued based on its cash flow, based on its business assets. Ethereum's valued based on this thing that is supposedly supposed to be a commodity, but like changes all the time, right? Like, how am I supposed to value it? So if I like, what, what is, what am I looking at?

• 34:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So I disagree with the Ethereum folks on this, but I was recently talking to somebody and they were like, oh, it has cash flow, so they're going to be able to model because they're going to look at the staking or transaction fees or whatever. And I actually do think that Wall Street is going to do that. That's not how I would evaluate it because I don't think it's cash flow in the same sense. But I do think that in a weird way, these assets now are going to get like, you know, it's like the, the square trying to fit in the, in the round hole, right? Is Wall Street is going to look at these assets. They're going to be like, okay, well, is it undervalued or overvalued? And I've always said to people like Bitcoin, as an example, the transaction fees are a great way to look at, what is the quote, quote cash flow of the system? If you just centralized Bitcoin and you could look at what are all the miners making?

• 34:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, that would be the revenue and it would be pretty impressive.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Right. But I think so, kind of, I, I think Bitcoin isn't a technology in the sense that it isn't optimizing for cash flows. Like everyone can be sitting on their Bitcoin, holding it in their basement. It's a perfectly fine use for money. You don't have to spend your money. You can save your money and hodling Bitcoins, fine.

• 35:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you can save your Bitcoin.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Right, but.

• 35:19Anthony Pompliano?

  You can save your Fiat.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Of course not. But if, if Ethereum is a technology. And Bitcoin is money and you want to have distributed technology. Why do we need an actual monetary instrument in that system in the first place? Right? If it isn't a money. My point is if we want to distributed, I don't know. What's your favorite DeFi use case? They're all fucking stupid. Distributed medical. Well, fine. Everyone runs their own medical note at home and will use Bitcoin as the money to talk between the distributed network. Right? Why do I need? The problem with shitcoins is the first step they go, I, I changed the world. I created this new technology that advanced humanity. I go, really? Wow. What's the first step? Buy my shitcoin. I was like, wait, hold on. The, the moment that you create your own money. You know what Satoshi did?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Created it, gave it away, walked away.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  You want to be like Bitcoin? Invent it, give it away, walk away.

• 36:14Anthony Pompliano?

  So.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  So you want to be like a shitcoin? Invent it, sell it, hoard it and continue to change the rules that benefit you.

• 36:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  So like.

• 36:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's go.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  That's a huge problem though.

• 36:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Just go one step down.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  If Ethereum was like, you know what? We're not going to have an actual Ethereum token anymore. We're going to have this DeFi infrastructure, but Bitcoin is digital money. So we'll just use the actual money that we have. Then I'd say, fine. Now I would say the technology is dog shit. I'd rather use AWS. No, but I'm being serious. I'm not trying to make anyone laugh. It's like, think about it. AWS is faster, cheaper, everything about it is better. Right? So, so this is where you get into the arbitraging of the trend where they've kind of nestled themselves in into a, a less legally accountable way to print their own money. So it's like, I changed the world. Oh, really? Man, how can I, how can my life benefit? Buy my shitcoin. Like, well.

• 37:01Anthony Pompliano?

  So hold on, but let's take, let's go down that step further. Cause I think what we started to see is there was a cat and mouse game between regulators and the people doing all these blockchains and coins and stuff. Right? So one of the things that I've seen people do recently is, uh, they create, usually not even technology, like a coin. They quote, quote, fair launch it, meaning they don't keep any for themselves. They put it all out there. Anyone can go buy it. They obviously buy some, right? But they buy it on the free market at the price, whatever. And then they end up just being meme coins. Like they're not even building technology. They're not, they're not doing whatever. You could argue that it's the equivalent of sports gambling or whatever nonsense. But this mechanism of, oh, the regulators actually looked at what you just said too. And they're like, hey, wait a second.

• 37:45Anthony Pompliano?

  If you create a coin, you hold some for yourself and then the price goes up because of shit you're doing. That sounds a lot like a security, right?

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And they have a lot of questions there. So the quote, quote entrepreneur, and I'll put that in quotes because you know, if you just launched the meme coin, I don't know if you get to put on your LinkedIn, you're an entrepreneur. But when they launch them, they essentially are trying to accommodate for this regulations thing, but they are changing the mechanisms. And so what is the critique, I guess, of like that part of the industry where now it's not like I'm going to enrich myself. It's almost like a, I'm going to create this game, which anyone who's rational looks at. And it's like, this is not a long-term sustainable game.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, the critique is it's still like highly unethical. So let me think of a, the analogy that comes to mind is like fentanyl. Is that like, you know, people can do what they want, but if you're lacing someone's drugs with something that's going to kill them, then I find that highly unethical and unfair, right? You, people do what they want. They, if we're in such a chapter where currency debasement is causing everyone to be a speculator, and everyone's just starved for an opportunity to persist wealth and achieve a lifestyle that they actually want,

• 39:06Speaker 02

  that they're buying shit like GameStop and Dogecoin, that's unfortunate. And I just find that like, you know, we have something like Bitcoin and you're like, you know, logging into Robinhood and Robinhood's laced with a bunch of fentanyl. That's how I like to think about it. And so then the question is, well, you know, if fentanyl was that lethal, no one would take it. So free market, right? Well, People are lacing the like real medicine with fucking fentanyl and murdering people. And so that my, my thing is like, in that sense, I just find it highly unethical is that someone's like, wow, I understand I can't save in dollars. Wow. I understand that there's an independent financial system and they log into an app that claims to serve that and they're getting laced with something lethal.

• 39:49Anthony Pompliano?

  So, um, how long would the data have to persist where the shitcoins outperformed Bitcoin? Where you would change your mind? And I'll use a direct example. So when MicroStrategy announced the Bitcoin strategy, um, on that day Bitcoin till today Ethereum has outperformed. So in one argument, undeniably objectively, MicroStrategy has done a fantastic job of creating shareholder value, done all this stuff. If you go back and you look at it historically, they would have billions of dollars more, right? Or hundreds of millions of dollars more, whatever their exact numbers are, uh, on their balance sheet if they had bought Ethereum

• 40:31Anthony Pompliano?

  instead of Bitcoin. Now, five or 10 years from now, if Ethereum's were zero, then obviously that was a bad strategy.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 40:38Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I always go back to it as like, I think that, um, the reason why the Bitcoin community holds Bitcoin and doesn't trade it 75% is illiquid, all stuff, is because there's this deep conviction it's going to be around in 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, right? The other stuff, I don't think actually people have that much conviction of 10, 15, 25 years.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 40:56Anthony Pompliano?

  But it does introduce this very interesting dynamic of if you are making a five-year decision versus a 50-year decision, right? You may actually buy different assets. And I think Michael Saylor is unique in that he actually is thinking in 50-year timeframes, right? I don't think the average public company CEO thinks in 50-year timeframes. I think they think like 90-day timeframes.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  They don't control their company like Saylor does. It's a very unique situation. But again, I think it's, uh, you know, we're complicating a game of musical chairs. It's really thought simply, if I have one user on my platform and I grow to two users, that's 100% year-over-year growth. If Facebook goes from four billion users to four and a half billion users, I'm outperforming Facebook. So according to like your logic, like my company is more impressive than Facebook. It's kind of like the law of large numbers.

• 41:48Anthony Pompliano?

  But if Sailor could have Sailor could have put, right, and again, I'm not advocating he should have done this, but I'm just saying, if he had put, whatever, the first purchase was like $500 million in Ethereum, he could have done that, right? It's not like it was a $5 market cap.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  You're extrapolating things that I don't think are as safe to extrapolate. You know, his shareholders have a lot of confidence in the strategy. The confidence comes from Bitcoin. No one actually tru- now people trust Michael. Michael's also a good friend of mine. So I'm, I'm saying though, he, he joined a network of trust that had dependable trust over a decade.

• 42:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, he leveraged, people trust Bitcoin. That's where I go back to like, I think Bitcoin is the only thing in the market where people, like it's the way I think about it. I'm going to give my Bitcoin to my grandkids.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't care, literally no price is going to make me sell.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And it's this belief that 50 to 100 years from now Bitcoin's still going to be around. I don't think that there's a single other asset in the market where people believe 50 to 100 years from now.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 42:42Anthony Pompliano?

  It's just that humans, it is unique for people to think long-term. We live in this short-term optimized world. And so it's, it seems easy to see how people are going to go and buy all these other assets and try to outperform in the short term. Friendly, look, some people are good traders, like they, they may actually outperform, right? The average person probably is not a good trader and won't outperform. And so like, how do you start to think through where capital will flow in this industry? If, let's say, the top 10 coins all get ETFs, right? Like, are these guys eating into the Bitcoin capital flow? Because people are saying, oh, I think Ethereum is going to go up more. I think Solana is going to go up more for six months or 12 months.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  I, I think it all ends, I don't think of it that, I have such a low time preference. I think all roads lead to Bitcoin. I don't stress about like next quarter's capital inflows and what that's going to do to the BTC USD spot price. I just don't care. And I, I, I do question, you know, if I'm an asset manager that's deploying hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of my clients, am I really going to put it into a Solana ETF? Because the other point about Sailor is if he was Would have done an Ethereum strategy, how much confidence would existing shareholders and future shareholders would have had in the future of the business? Because Ethereum, in my opinion, is a startup. It's very unclear. Are they going to change directions again? What do regulators think about them?

• 44:03Speaker 02

  What if Vitalik gets hit by a bus? I mean, these are real risks that something like Bitcoin doesn't have because it's a technology versus Bitcoin as a money. And so how much, I, I, I just think that fiat to basement is what's driving all of this stuff. This mic is going to be more expensive next year. My house is going to be more expensive next year. This hat is going to be more expensive next year. So is Bitcoin. So is anything. And so it's not that impressive to me that they're going to see capital flows because everything's seeing capital flows. When there's an excess of fiat currency, everything sees capital. That's the definition of inflation. And so everything's going to inflate. I just don't value that story that much in the near term. And again, I can create Jack Bucks right now and I can say, I'll give you a million of them for a buck.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  And I print 10 billion of them. All of a sudden I have.

• 44:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I would do it to support you.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd have an egregious egregiously high market cap. The growth in the last 24% would be insane and we'd sit on a podcast and be like, what's Bitcoin going to do about that? It sure did not perform Jack Bucks today. It's like, well, fuck Jack Bucks. Like, what are we talking about here? We're trying to like actually do productive good for society.

• 45:06Anthony Pompliano?

  But I, so this is one thing that maybe I disagree with, like the most hardcore Bitcoiners on, which is 50%, more than 50% of all Bitcoiners came into the market after 2020, right? So like today, if you look at, I don't know how many.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Well, like any growing network has like.

• 45:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, you're going to get the compound. And so like 50% of Bitcoiners in the future are going to come from here on out. Right? Like type thing. So more and more users come in and the numbers will get bigger. For you or I, or anyone who bought Bitcoin before 2020, even if you continue to dollar cost average or whatever, like it has appreciated a lot.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so a low cost basis, up large. I think it's easier for that cohort of people, kind of like 2009 to 2020 to stomach. Oh, if Bitcoin goes from 100% compound annual growth rate down to 30 or 40, eh, fuck it. Like, you know, it's already appreciated so much. Like it's compounding on a larger number, not that big of a deal. But if you're the average American and you come in and for example, last year, the QQQ NASDAQ was up 50%.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:11Anthony Pompliano?

  It's not going to do that every year, right? But like now all of a sudden, if you're like, oh, this asset compounds at 30%, there's other assets that go 50. It changes the like capital allocation, I think. And part of what, where I think that it is important is Bitcoiners are almost backing themselves into this bet on like a binary hyper Bitcoinization or not. Because in my mind, through the different cycles, we've seen volatility dampen. We've seen price appreciation right on a percentage basis go down. And so if that continues, at some point, the like, the greatest meme in the world was number go up. It still is, right? You played a human emotion and all stuff.

• 46:53Anthony Pompliano?

  If number go up becomes stock market returns, right? And extreme example, are people excited about that? I don't know. Like, maybe they actually understand it's not just about the number, and it is Bitcoin and kind of the decentralization and all this. But like, how many people bought Bitcoin initially because they just thought the number was going to skyrocket, right? It's kind of like, the price is the marketing campaign. People come in, they learn about Bitcoin, they stick around afterwards.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Well, so again, let's go back to what is money? Is I, I live life. I expend energy into the universe. I spend time here, and I want to be able to capture that because I want other goods and services like food and housing and family. Or I want to be able to take the time I've spent on this world and save it through time because I might want stuff later. Okay, so I think what Bitcoiners, Bitcoiners think of Bitcoin is money. So while Ethereum outperformed Bitcoin over this certain, if you look at the chart this way, okay, yeah, but Solana outperformed Ethereum. Okay, yeah, but that shitcoin outperformed that. Okay, what about QQQ that year? Well, if I stand on my hands, and I'm a little dizzy, and I've had a beer, well, then maybe I think my name's Rob. It's like, well, what are

• 48:02Speaker 02

  we doing? You've turned yourself into a gambler. I don't want to take my time and energy and gamble it. That's, so the whole point of Bitcoin is removing money as a speculative idea. I don't need to go to work every day and then speculate. I don't need to be an expert in Japanese central bank monetary policy in order to persist my wealth, grow a family, inevitably own a home. So I think a Bitcoiner's position is this is money, good money. That I can put under the mattress and it'll be worth more tomorrow than it is today. Cause it's hard. It cannot be debased and all of our contributions to the economy and to the world are going to produce goods and services that actually decline in price against this hard asset. And that's the point is like.

• 48:45Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's a savings technology.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what we're talking about right now because you're comparing it to the last four years of ETH returns. Right. It's the equivalent of like, well, you know, Steph Curry, you know, he's so good. Well, what about um this G League player? He scored 60 points that one night.

• 49:05Anthony Pompliano?

  But here's the other thing is I think that Bitcoiners, um, they discount what happens in the traditional market. So for example, uh, I'd argue the S and P is actually the savings technology of like Wall Street.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  It's become the savings technology.

• 49:19Anthony Pompliano?

  They're treating it that way. There's a monetary premium that's now being assigned to it where people are basically saying like, okay, the dollar is going to be debased. What is the thing that I have the highest confidence and that's going to be around in 20 years? And it's going to go up every year at some rate. S and P, right? Or name whatever index, but let's use S and P. Six to eight percent, seven to nine percent, whatever the number is like to them, like to the boomers. That's awesome. Right? Just said it, forget it, dollar cost average, et cetera. What I actually think is interesting about Bitcoin is when people ask me like, what's the rate of return I needed to drive? It's like, we got to beat Bitcoin for me to not want to buy Bitcoin.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. It's the cost of capital. Yeah. And so like.

• 49:56Anthony Pompliano?

  It is the S and P, I think for a whole generation of people is now like Bitcoin has become the thing.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  It's going to become the S and P for boomers too. I mean, inflation can't be measured as one basket metric. Inflation is measured on a per service or good instance. So seven or eight percent isn't making you progress towards owning a home. If the dream US home is inflating at 20% year over year, unless you're getting a 20% raise every single year or your S and P is appreciating 20% every single year, you're not making progress. You're walking backwards. And so when I look at a Bitcoin chart, so let's say Bitcoin's up 160% year over year. Everyone's like, that's such a massive number. To me, that's not massive at all because what is it? One, a reflection of the debasement of the currency. So it's outperforming it the actual dollar.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  And then it's also a reflection of all the innovation and progress that humanity is making, right? Why was gold 2% inflation okay? 2% inflation on net is dog shit. It has a 30, 30 year half life. In 30 years, half my wealth is gone at 2% inflation. The average American lives 75 years. Well over half my money's gone with 2% inflation, which is gold, the gold standard, right? Why was that okay? It's because all of us humans were producing more growth than 2% every single year. So when something goes up 160%, the way I look at Bitcoin is not only is it protecting me against the debasement of fiat, but it's allowing me to capture all the innovation and amazing things that humans are creating. And so 7%, we're like innovating on AI, bro.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  7%? You're not giving me any returns at all. 160% means I'm living in the year 2024. There are computers that are solving insane problems. I'm able to fly from Chicago to New York to hang out with you. And the fact that central banks have never had a bigger problem. That's what 160% tells me. So I think that slowly but surely, people will realize that. The last thing I'll say on this is that people aren't stupid, right? Is that you see another guy get 160% and you get seven, you're like, ah, man, wasn't my year. But 15 years in a row, people aren't dumb. And, you know, if you do think of money as extracted time and energy and not like, well, you know, I don't care about money. I'm altruistic. I'm gonna donate it all anyway.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, but think about a time and energy. You know, the guy that owns the better money gets more time with their family, gets more housing, gets more space, gets more opportunity. And that's things that we all, I don't give a fuck how altruistic you are. That's, that's life. That's human. That's family. That's relationships. That's love. That's hope, right? And so if I get more of that because I own a better instrument than you, you know, get your S and P. I, I think it's just only a matter of time before the law of capitalism, the law of being human and logical is like, well, I should probably own that one.

• 52:44Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the things I think Bitcoiners should talk about more that they don't is gold is actually down in purchasing power terms over the last five years.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so it is up in nominal terms, but just given the inflation, like even gold hasn't kept up. Whereas Bitcoin obviously has outperformed. So I think that it goes back to, uh, there's this like religious.

• 53:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Kind of like, people want to call it cold. I think it's just more of like a religious view on it. It's actually incredibly valuable. If you look at Bitcoin from a like, non-economic standpoint, because the price doesn't matter then. You're just like, I'm buying it, dollar-cost averaging, I'm never gonna sell it. Like, there's nothing better than like, true, un-filtered conviction in an asset that's 80 vol. Right? Like, if you just know I'm not selling it, great. You can think of all the great stocks, all the stuff over time. Like, there's very few people who held them, and it was usually people with very deep conviction. So there is benefits to it. But I do think also, when people talk about it, they almost are using that as the, they lead with that.

• 53:46Anthony Pompliano?

  But now that Wall Street's showing up, I actually think that we're gonna have to convince them of more of the economic arguments, than just like, hey, just buy it, hold it, it's gonna be around in 20 years. Because that's the language they speak.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 53:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And they're gonna go back to like, the water cooler, and they're gonna like, hey, did you DCF it? Right? And you're just like, not the way to think about it, but they're gonna do it anyways.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's the, again, like, pure humanity is amazing. Like, everyone shows up at the water cooler and gives their opinion about a tool. Well, this guy thinks it's for drugs. This guy thinks it's for savings. This guy thinks it's for cross-border payments. This guy thinks it's for wrapping his ETF instruments in. And it's like, wow, that's all of us being unique and special and contributing to the world in our own way. That's a free market, a permissionless system, an open network that we all can participate and collaborate within trustlessly. Like, that's fucking awesome. Right? Like, my, how I look at Bitcoin's different than how Larry looks at Bitcoin. Think. It's beautiful. I think no one is there to tell us that one of us isn't following the rules.

• 54:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Does it water down Larry Fink's message if, you know, when he came out at Bitcoin, I mean, I think I went on television, I was like, he's the CMO of Bitcoin right now, this is awesome. Larry Fink talking about Bitcoin, and at one point, people were buying Bitcoin, it was going up, and he was like, it's a flight to quality.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, it's not a better guy to say something like that, right? And kind of Bitcoin story. If he then shows up with like, the second one, you know, I almost feel like, in one way, it's like, if somebody shows up and they got a really nice watch, and they're just selling you this one thing, like, this is the greatest watch in the world. Really, cool. But then if all of a sudden, somebody shows up and they're like, let me open my trench coat, and I got 20 watches? You're kind of like, uh, is it the same thing? So like, How does the narrative change? Because if there's an ETH ETF that's approved, we got to assume that the same organizations that were just out pimping Bitcoin, they're going to do the same thing with these other assets.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  That's his problem to solve, not mine. I mean, I don't have that problem, right? I only sell Bitcoin on my platform. And my approach is if you want a high-quality Bitcoin experience and customer support that'll pick up the phone and experts that build the best technology in the world, then that's what I sell. I don't sell Ethereum. So I don't know how he's going to manage to sell 1,000 different shitcoins. And I do think, though, like if I were to forward project, how does this cycle end? Because by the way, I'm not saying we're going into hyper Bitcoinization. I do think this cycle will end, we'll have some crash. I mean, there's a hangover to all the debasement that has to happen. I mean, you're getting drunk, everyone's rich, everything's up, right? And so where would I think it turns around? Well, all of a sudden, when some shitcoin gets rugged and Larry Fink has a basket in

• 56:24Speaker 02

  it, then all of these people are going to go to their local politicians and say, hey, I bought a BlackRock instrument, those things can't rug me, you shouldn't have let me invest in that, I'm safe, right? And people are going to get rugged, Larry Fink's going to get shit on. So but between now and then, he's going to create a carnival bonanza of like the dollars being debased here, run into this fucking arcade bar and get drunk and buy stupid shit? I don't know. I wonder how Larry's going to pitch that, I have no idea. Because again, it's like Ethereum's the world computer. If I were a traditional investor, I'd say, interesting, why is that better than AWS? What's the cash flow? And you say, no, no, no, stupid, you just buy the coin.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  He's going to be like, what? Why? What? Based on what value? Like, what's going on? So again, who knows?

• 57:20Speaker 02

  But what I do know is that they're making a lot of money and banks are starved for business, for revenue, for activity. They're not, again, like, the, the bond, the problem with the bond mark is not that they're getting paid out five and a half percent, it's the fact that they're not actively lending and loaning, right? So they want revenue, they want action, they want flow. These bankers want big bonuses at the end of the year, right? So like, these, these instruments that have real life in them, which are these crypto ETFs, they're gonna want, they're gonna list like, doggy coins, as, as long as they think that there's gonna be inflows for them.

• 57:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, it definitely will be inflows whether we think that there should be or not, right?

• 57:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, it listens.

• 58:00Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like, one of the secrets of finance is there's more degens on Wall Street than in crypto?

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, in, we're all-

• 58:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Like crypto couldn't dream up-

• 58:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I-

• 58:09Anthony Pompliano?

  The mortgage crisis.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  I, dude, I think-

• 58:11Anthony Pompliano?

  They couldn't, there's no way that they could pull that off.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  But I think, here's the thing, I think we're all speculators in nature. So, what floor are we on? Are you, are you in a doc's cell?

• 58:22Anthony Pompliano?

  We're on the forty-seventh floor.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Four, is that, is that real? Okay, so the forty-seventh floor. So, I had, I had a decision to make between taking the stairs, or taking the elevator. And I gambled, I took the elevator. It's a man-made machine that could have not gone well and put me in danger. It probably would have been safer to take the stairs. The stairs would have taken more time and energy from me. So I optimized for time and energy, and I took the elevator, but that was an in-real-time speculative gamble that I made. So I think all of us humans are speculative gamblers. One of the things that makes life what it is, is that the future is permanently unknown. Okay, so all of us are speculative gamblers. So don't ever let anyone sell you that Wall Street isn't a

• 59:04Speaker 02

  speculative gambler, or that this guy's not. Everyone in nature is, the future is permanently uncertain. That's just a fact. The problem is, we don't want our money to be that way. Our money is the market good in the economy that's not supposed to be that. That's why gold was money, is because it was the most certain thing we can find. And so the problem, everyone, of course, everyone's a gambler, everyone's a speculator, everyone's gonna wanna go into the casino and put it all on red. But the problem with society is, we shouldn't be forced to speculate on our time and our energy. That's the issue. So like, we need to reverse course there. Like, the money should be pure, sound, hard, and real. And then humans speculate on the future innately, naturally. Like, after

• 59:47Speaker 02

  this, I'm gonna eat some food from some restaurant. I'm speculating, and I have some risk-based approach in my brain of like, if they spit in it, right? Like, maybe I think the odds are low, maybe I think the odds are high because I saw something, right? Like, constantly speculating. So, anyway, no one's more ethical and pure. Like, fuck Wall Street guys. Like, they're just as much a speculator as the guys that are on Robinhood, that we all are. But, you know, that shouldn't be the money we use. We shouldn't be forced to speculate. We should be able to save money.

• 1:00:17Anthony Pompliano?

  How is Strike helping people buy Bitcoin?

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  I think we're just better at providing Bitcoin financial services than everyone else.

• 1:00:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Um, it's a higher-quality service. Our technology's better. We're licensed, regulated, in all the major markets in the world. Uh, we, our customer support, like, call us, we'll answer the phone, hand-hold you through it. I mean, when we were founded, it was along a Lightning Network thesis, but we kind of grew into a lifestyle brand for Bitcoin with high-quality financial services for everything you need. I mean, our biggest business line by far is selling Bitcoin, and it's because we have, for example, free on-chain Bitcoin withdrawals. We have Lightning Network support. Our technology's faster, quicker, stronger, better. We have better customer support. We're more available and more accessible in more currencies. And I

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  think also people resonate with our mission and our brand. And so, in a business, I think, if you compare us to someone like Coinbase, I think, I don't think Brian would necessarily take offense to me saying, "We're better at Bitcoin than you guys," because they don't focus on Bitcoin. They don't care as much about Bitcoin. They don't have free on-chain withdrawals that uses fancy batching technology and fee estimation technology, because they, they build base instead. And so, we see a world where there's an industry of folks that are going to continue to focus on crypto, and when we focus on Bitcoin, like, those products and services and the quality for the customer begins to delineate. And we've seen, like, the growth we've seen and, and where we, like, lay our, our head at night

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  is the fact that we're just, pound for pound, one of the best in the world at Bitcoin, and that's turned into a phenomenal business.

• 1:01:59Anthony Pompliano?

  The best.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Not one of.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't like speaking in definitives, so I, like... When it, when it comes to talking about shitcoins, I'll be aggressive, but like as a CEO of Strike, you know, like, and you're a shareholder, right? Like the future of the business is being one of the best in the world in the next year, decade, century, and that's going to be an incredible business. And so we never, never too high, never too low as a startup, you know, you, you know what I'm talking about. So we keep an even head and we just try and do well by customers.

• 1:02:32Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think about Trump and Biden now all like trying to position themselves to embrace all this stuff?

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  It's awesome. I mean, boy, did we go quick from they're going to ban it to they support it and endorse it. I think one of my favorite takeaways is the fact that it is a grounds up movement. They're not doing this necessarily for donations, although they seem to be getting donations. They're doing it because they want votes. That means that it's empowered and supported by the people, right? You want donations, you go to a Bloomberg cocktail hour and you say, okay, like, I'll take your $20 million. What do you want me to advocate for? If you want the collective populace, the open public to vote for you, I mean, the fact that it's a voter issue means that it's power to the people, which was the intention of the technology. It's a grounds up movement.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  That's the coolest thing for me is Biden, all of a sudden went from fuck your industry to oh shit, Trump's supporting it and he seems to be getting a lot of momentum from his support. Okay, fine. I support it too. That means that voters care. That means a lot of individuals subscribe to this idea. That's my biggest takeaway is, you know, politicians are going to be politicians. They're all going to make promises that they probably can't keep, but the fact that they recognize that the power is in the individual's hands with this one. I mean, Satoshi would be proud of that for sure is that he, he gave us a lot of leverage, right? We're able to move election years by running nodes and owning our assets in this Bitcoin thing. That's individual power

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  that I don't know we've had in quite some, I mean, what other type election topic? I mean, this is real power the individual has saying, no, you're going to support us, motherfucker. That's just so cool.

• 1:04:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that the national politics, and I've talked about this before, but like at the city and state level, we had, you know, Texas, Florida, New York, they were all arguing over who's going to take more of their paycheck or who's, you know, Bitcoin capital, whatever.

• 1:04:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Now the national political level is a whole different ballgame, right? And it's in the face of some pretty well-known politicians who were saying, I don't want this. And people broke from them. And so to have the two major candidates basically coming out now and being like, we like it.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:04:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty hard to say it's going to get banned. But the more interesting part to me is like what I call the domino effect. You know, all the other countries that not even the ones who banned it, just like the ones who were kind of like, eh, I don't really, we don't have an opinion, kind of what the US was doing, like we're kind of abrasive, but like we're not, we're going to like clamp down on it, whatever. They probably got to embrace it now.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:05:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Like you're not going to let the US do stuff.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:05:09Anthony Pompliano?

  And you not follow.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, the way I think about it is maybe slightly different. It's that you don't want to be the guy that's on the wrong side of it at this point. Because now I think that the US was going to have an issue if ETFs got approved. All of a sudden, this thing goes to trillions of dollars in market cap, maybe $10 trillion in market cap in this cycle. And you're going to get civil unrest of people saying, hey, inflation, debasement of the currency. This Bitcoin thing seems to be the escape hatch. What the hell is going on now? Trump, Biden, they can say, I acknowledge it. I support it. It's technology, it's innovation. It's the fact that we have it here in America, people are mining.

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  So I think that's also a very slight pivot that they now can err on the side of if this thing does blow, that they acknowledged it and they weren't on the wrong side. So I think what you'll start to see is politicians just positioning themselves to make sure they're not on the wrong side. And like, I think it's a great thing about El Salvador. All of a sudden naive is a forward-thinking genius, right? When it comes to Bitcoin. So I think it has extrapolating effects when it comes to geopolitical relationships and stuff. But what I think we'll continue to see is what you don't want to be is the politician or the president that opposes it. Because if it does go to $250,000 a coin and Trump supported and everyone supported and you didn't, I mean, you're going to get ousted, right?

• 1:06:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's like the momentum now, the only way you get hurt, you don't get hurt by supporting, you get hurt by not supporting it.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Correct. That's the game theory.

• 1:06:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And it used to be the opposite.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that by supporting it, you could get hurt, but if you just stayed with the pack.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Anthony Pompliano?

  But the consensus has now switched.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  The game theory of Bitcoin has always been you're better on its team than not. You're better an ally than an enemy. And so you're seeing that now play out with presidents, the most powerful in the United States of America. But that's the game theory is you don't have to like, I don't own dollars. I only own Bitcoin. I founded a Bitcoin business, right? I'm so long Bitcoin, no one's more long than I am. But you don't have to be that, but you better not stand in its way. And it is like acid in that way where everything it touches, it just seeps through and dominates and eviscerates. And you just don't want to stand against that thing. And so, yeah, it it seeped its way into an election cycle and everyone, you know what?

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  Bitcoin is like hands where I can see him. You on our team or do I have to put a bullet through your chest? And everyone said, no, no, no, no, no, no, we support. We're going to accept donations, all the regulatory changes. So, but we've seen it time and time and time and time and time again, right?

• 1:07:43Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm on team Bitcoin and team Strike.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. Those are good teams.

• 1:07:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people to find you and team Strike?

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  Oh, uh, Jack is my real name. So I'm not a, I'm not a nim. So, uh, I'm, I'm not anonymous. I'm not, I'm sure you interview a bunch of guys that are like, you know, crypto eggnog is like, well, how do I actually find you? Jack Mallers is how you find me. So I'm Jack Mallers on Twitter, everywhere else. And, uh, we're strike.me. You can download the app. We probably sell Bitcoin for some of the cheapest fees in the world. So try us.

• 1:08:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Next time.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Next again. Appreciate you, brother.