#1460 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Bitcoin Will SHOCK People In 2025

Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss what is going with bitcoin, potential threats to bitcoin, market manipulation, why the stock market should be open 24/7, immigration, and 2025 predictions. ======================= Ledger has been trusted for 10 years to secure 20% of the world’s digital assets. For a limited time, upgrade to the Ledger Flex and get $70 of bitcoin. Go to ledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future. ======================= 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 going on guys? Today I've got Polina Pompliano. This is the last episode of 2024 and we discuss a ton. We get into what's going on with Bitcoin. What are the big threats? Are they real or are they not? How I think about 2024? What transpired? And what's going to happen in 2025 when it comes to Bitcoin?

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  We then talk about the market closing for Jimmy Carter's death and why I disagree, think it's market manipulation, and why they should open the market 24/7. We then get into a number of controversial topics, things like immigration, and also understanding why nuance is so powerful in a world that only wants things to be black and white. This conversation touches on tons of topics and I promise if you watch the whole thing, you're going to learn a lot, you're going to understand my opinion, and you probably are going to walk away from this having your own thoughts. And so I'd love to hear them. Please get on Twitter and let me know what you think. What do you agree with? What do you disagree with? Let me know and then we can have a conversation. That's the beauty of this type of episode is that I get to learn from all of you. So please, please, please reach out once you've actually listened to the whole thing and I'd love to learn from you just as much as you hopefully learn from me.

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So here's my latest conversation with Polina Pompliano.

• 1:34Speaker 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.

• 1:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Ledger. They're celebrating 10 years as the most trusted name in crypto security. With over 7 million users and 20% of the world's digital assets secured, Ledger continues to lead the way in protecting your crypto and digital ownership. Their latest devices, Ledger Stacks and Ledger Flex, feature the world's first secure touchscreens, making managing your assets easier and safer than ever. Plus, the new Ledger Security Key app offers a secure alternative to traditional passwords, enhancing your digital security. Go to ledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future. That's ledgerpomp.com. Go check them out today. All right, Plana, what's the first topic?

• 2:33Speaker 02

  All right, we got Bitcoin at $95,000 at the current time of recording. So what is the status of Bitcoin going into 2025? What, where are we at?

• 2:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin in 2024 went from a contrarian idea to consensus idea, which is very important because that meant that Larry Fink and the rest of Wall Street, they said, you know what? These Bitcoiners, they may be insane, they may have been early, but they are right, and we're going to get in the game. And now, the reason why that's so important is that once Larry Fink and the rest of Wall Street says, "We want this," they don't stop. And so, we've seen $50 billion flow into the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF. We have seen tens of billions of dollars flow into the other ETFs. And all of a sudden, all of the career risk around Bitcoin on Wall Street got removed, and that has opened the floodgates. And so, if you see the corporations, why are they raising so much money to go buy Bitcoin? It's because all the fixed income or all the debt funds,

• 3:26Anthony Pompliano?

  they now are allowed to go and buy these bonds that are backed by Bitcoin. The ETFs, why are they raising so much money? Because all that career risk has been removed. So, the story of 2024 is that we successfully went from it being an individual-driven market to now it is fully an organization, an institution-driven market. And I think that that transition really, really changed a lot of the market structure. When the market structure changes, you can see price has changed. We'd never gone into a halving at a new all-time high price. And so, when you see that, you say to yourself, wait a second. There's a lot of things that changed in 2024 that will forever have moved Bitcoin to grow up. And so, Bitcoin was basically, it was like an adolescent-type, you know, technology.

• 4:11Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a full grown adult now. And what I think we will see in 2025 is we're gonna see the countries start to participate as well. And we're gonna have gone from individuals to institutions to countries, all within the span of, call it 24 to 36 months.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  And you went on Fox talking about how Trump should buy Bitcoin in the Strategic Reserve, Strategic Bitcoin Reserve? Yeah. Well, what do you, why?

• 4:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, if we're gonna go and we're gonna buy Greenland, which is a national strategic purchase, if we're gonna go and take back the Panama Canal, which 36,000 Americans died building, and Panama, all of a sudden is playing games, and they are trying to use this as a bargaining chip. Well, wouldn't it make sense for us to spend a little bit of money to also get digital real estate, to go and get these digital assets? There's only 21 million that will ever exist. And we know, we can count, I can get up to 5, 6, 7, 8% of all Bitcoin that will ever be in circulation that's in the hands of individuals and companies. Then you add in the ETFs, then you add in the masses of people, there's

• 5:18Anthony Pompliano?

  not a lot of Bitcoin that trades. And so if the United States wants to be a leader, then they are going to have to go and they're gonna have to buy Bitcoin. And if we don't, it isn't a game of, oh, El Salvador, that's a small little country, nobody cares. Or, oh, Bhutan, I can't point it out on a map, don't worry about them. Russia has now come out and said, both Putin and other people in the government, we are mining Bitcoin, and we are going to use Bitcoin for transactions because it cannot be censored. And so, if you go back, check the receipts, I said that when the United States sanctioned Russia in the way that it did, and went after all the oligarchs in the way that it did, and then when it took Russian assets, and it said, we are going to lick our fingers, stick it in the air, and we're gonna decide that these assets are now gonna be the Ukrainian people's

• 6:03Anthony Pompliano?

  assets. You've weaponized the US financial system, and you are going to push people off of that system, who are your adversaries, and/or think that they may become one of your adversaries in the future. And so now we are seeing it. Of course, a country like Russia, which is under these immense sanctions, which- I'm not making judgment on whether we should have put them, we shouldn't have put them from a kind of strategic standpoint, a geopolitical negotiating standpoint, I'm putting all that aside. I'm merely looking at it from what are the incentives now that it's been done? You are going to push them off of it and they are saying that they are mining Bitcoin, they're going to use it for transactions. Now, a lot of people will say, oh, that's a great reason why Bitcoin shouldn't be valuable. It doesn't matter. Every single technology

• 6:46Anthony Pompliano?

  that I can think of was first adopted by people on the fringes of society. They were the nerds, they were the weirdos, they were the criminals, they were the people who had some specific use case, some edge case that they needed to use the technology. Beepers, if you go back and remember, there was only two types of people pretty much using beepers early on, drug dealers and business executives. If you go back and you remember, why did people have phones in their cars? A lot of young people will forget that there was literally phones that had a wire in a car. Well, who was using that? Business executives and drug dealers. And so you can go through all these technologies and you start to realize that technology is usually adopted at the fringes and then gets pulled into the mass adoption,

• 7:30Anthony Pompliano?

  right? The stay-at-home soccer mom is not using a beeper first, they're not using a laptop first, they're not using the internet first. They only get it once there is true mass adoption. And so Bitcoin being adopted by a country that is under these adverse kind of pressures from the United States makes a lot of sense. Why did El Salvador do it? All of a sudden, El Salvador showing up to the IMF and they're doing a bunch of negotiating and Bitcoin gave them immense negotiating leverage with the IMF that they previously didn't have.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:59Anthony Pompliano?

  So you see this and you say to yourself, okay, obviously other countries are doing it too. We also all kind of wash over the fact that there are countries in the Middle East that have joint ventures, publicly announced joint ventures with US-based publicly traded mining companies. And so you say to yourself, okay, hold on a second here. Countries are mining Bitcoin. Some countries are even now saying that they are using it for transactions to avoid censorship. Just extrapolate out what's going to happen. Of course, these countries are going to end up adopting this asset. I'm not saying it's going to replace fiat currencies. What I am saying, though, is that it is going to have a place in their portfolio of strategic reserve assets. If you can see the writing on the wall and you're the United States, you already have 200,000 Bitcoin in your control, don't sell them. Commit to never

• 8:44Anthony Pompliano?

  selling them. Then go and buy more. And the beauty of this is we're not talking about a lot of money. If we went and we took $100 billion and we bought Bitcoin, that would be, I can't remember if it's 10 or 20% of all the money we've sent to Ukraine. It's nothing. It's a rounding error, right? And so if we have a $2 trillion annual deficit and we spend $100 billion, it's nothing.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Literally, your life will not change. Nothing will change. And so if you said to me, hey, what should we do? I've previously said, look, just print it, right? They're gonna print it anyways. But actually, if we had intelligent people who were gonna do this, you wouldn't print it. The better thing to do would be, let's find $100 billion of savings. Let's take that money and divert it to go and buy the Bitcoin. I just don't think that we have enough time for people to go and get $100 billion of savings. Because when we started talking about this, Bitcoin was at $70,000. Right? It was, I think, $69,000 on November 1st, 2024. 60 days later, Bitcoin is near $100,000.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:47Anthony Pompliano?

  So every day you wait is max pain from a financial standpoint. It's more expensive for you to go and buy the Bitcoin. So you can keep waiting, that's fine. But everyone gets Bitcoin at the price they deserve. Let's hope that our country isn't buying it at $1 million a coin because they were so kind of dumb and slow to act on us.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, let me ask you about two potential threats that have been circulating in the news lately. The first being that BlackRock has come out with this explainer video about Bitcoin, saying that there's no guarantee that Bitcoin's 21 million supply cap won't be changed in the future.

• 10:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Stop it.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  What do they know?

• 10:31Anthony Pompliano?

  BlackRock doesn't, listen, this is lawyer.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Okay, but again, Michael Saylor retweeted it and...

• 10:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Hold on, let's back up.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:37Anthony Pompliano?

  This is classic, like, people who don't understand how companies work on the internet, yelling and screaming because they wanna hate BlackRock. There's plenty of things that BlackRock does that you can critique. There's a lot of things that BlackRock does that you should sit there and say, hey, I like this. That's true of all these financial organizations, right?

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:55Anthony Pompliano?

  It cracked me up at one point. Everyone was yelling and screaming because there was Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds that were doing things like live golf, right? And then you're like, okay, we don't like that they're going into golf. But then you look and you say, well, what else do they own? They're like the largest shareholder of Starbucks.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. So BlackRock, what ends up happening is they say, hey, we're gonna make an educational video about Bitcoin.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Great. And then somebody says to them, you know what? We're a publicly traded company. We better be careful that if we do not say all of the risks, that we could be sued by shareholders.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:30Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it becomes a disclosure game. The United States is full of all these like gotcha legal leaks.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And so some lawyer or somebody in the compliance department said, well, we know that the code says there can only be 21 million, but there's no guarantee. You could change the code sometime. We better put the disclaimer there to cover our ass. Again, that's fine. Go, you want to see the disclosures? Go read the Coinbase S1 when they went public. Look at all the things that they put as potential risks.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  But is that, but is that a realistic risk?

• 12:03Anthony Pompliano?

  No, because the way that Bitcoin is governed, it's a very important point. It mimics very closely the United States government. And what I mean by that is in the United States government, there are three branches. There are checks and balances on each other. And so if, uh, people have probably heard me talk about this before, but, uh, Justice Scalia one time was asked, what did he think was the superpower of the United States? Whatever the phrasing was. And he said deadlock. And everyone was like, wait, what? Like, that is a crazy answer. And he said, part of the governance beauty of the United States is those checks and balances don't allow anyone to come in and make radical changes.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  And.

• 12:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And so the United States system grinds itself forward with lots of abrasiveness and friction, et cetera. And so that deadlock actually prevents damage from being done. So if you look at Bitcoin, there's three branches, if you will. There's the software developers, there's the miners, and then there's the node operators, the people. In order to make changes to the code, you need those three groups to all get on board. And so we saw in 2017, there was a group of people that came together. They were all miners and they said, we have more than 50% of the hash rate. We are going to change a very technical component of Bitcoin. We're gonna make the blocks bigger because we think that's how Bitcoin is gonna scale.

• 13:25Anthony Pompliano?

  More than 50% of all the miners hash rate got together and they tried to do that. And they got a middle finger from the node operators. They said, we're not going to accept this. And it was, it literally was called the block size war.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Is that when they forked?

• 13:37Anthony Pompliano?

  It was all out war intellectually, online, et cetera. So when you try to make a change and you can't do it, the beauty of open source software is you can fork it.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. I was right.

• 13:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin was the same Bitcoin that it's been. The miners said, hey, we want to make this change. And so what do they do? They forked the code from the, from the beginning of Bitcoin until that point. The two chains look identical, but they went and they changed the block sizes and they went and they created Bitcoin cash.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  I remember this. Wow.

• 14:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin cash has done nothing but go down compared to Bitcoin. And so it didn't work, but that's the beauty of free markets, right? That's the beauty of this is, hey, you can try to change the code.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But if nobody wants to do it, or you don't get enough people on all three of those parties to do it. Then guess what? You can go play with your ball somewhere else on the playground. And nobody went to play that game. Everyone stayed with this game. And so the same thing here, somebody could show up today and say, you know what? I'm actually going to create a Bitcoin fork and I'm not going to have 21 coins. I'm going to have 42 million coins. Go do it. The market's going to decide, but guess what? The market's going to stay with the 21 million Bitcoin because that is the code that everyone has rallied around and said, this is Bitcoin. And so I just think that this idea of BlackRock putting it in the video is much more of a legalese. And, and you know, again, it goes back to there are different people in the market today.

• 15:04Anthony Pompliano?

  BlackRock and what they have to address is very different when it's me or individuals. I have no lawyer up my ass telling me, oh, when you tweet, you should put this huge disclaimer because you said Bitcoin is good.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  But, but also, also, I didn't know this, but earlier this year, Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan CEO, said he believed Bitcoin supply could be changed in the future. He said, how the hell do you know that it's going to stop at 21 million? He said at Davos. I've never met one person who told me that they know for a fact.

• 15:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. How do you know Jamie Dimon is going to be the CEO of JP Morgan in 10 years? Right? Again, I actually think that Jamie Dimon is incredibly intelligent person. He's definitely the best banker of our generation. I don't even think that he hates Bitcoin. Right? I think that he enjoys playing the contrarian on Bitcoin. Right? Um, but that's fine. Like, whatever. That, that, put him aside for a second. My thought process is, uh, you don't know.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:03Anthony Pompliano?

  But you can check every day. That's the difference is that if a change is going to be made, you need all three branches of Bitcoin to come together and make that decision. And then you can audit the code every single day. I can't tell you what's going to happen in the future for anything. But what I can tell you is today, what happened on Bitcoin, I can show you on chain. And then I could tell you, what does the code say is going to happen tomorrow?

• 16:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And when that code changes, I can tell you in real time, this is the change that's being hap- that's going to be implemented. And so if it ever changes, you're going to know immediately. But as of right now, that's what the code says. The code has continued to execute exactly as it's been implemented. And I don't foresee that changing anytime in the future. If it does, tune in. I'll be the first one to tell you. But right now, I don't see that happen.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  As an aside, it's great news that BlackRock is, uh, making Bitcoin explainer videos. This would have never happened four years ago.

• 17:00Anthony Pompliano?

  BlackRock is the chief marketing department of Bitcoin. I've been saying for months now, Larry Fink is the CMO of Bitcoin. He doesn't even have to try. All he has to do is go on TV. They ask him about it. If he says anything positive, he is the chief marketing officer of Bitcoin. Because the messenger matters more than the message. The fact that he likes Bitcoin now is incredibly important. And I think that he continues to go on TV and not only just say positive things, but say things like, oh, Bitcoin's going up because it's a flight to quality. That was unfathomable five years ago, coming out of his mouth. And so he's done a fantastic job, BlackRock, uh, the entire team over there, uh, Robbie Mitchnick, et cetera. They've done a great, great job of putting that product out in the market and definitely becoming the winner.

• 17:43Anthony Pompliano?

  But there are a number of other very successful launches as well. You can go and you can look at Fidelity, Bitwise, 21Shares, et cetera. They're all doing a, a very good job, I think, of getting these assets into these funds.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, okay, there's a Forbes article that came out. This is the second kind of risk that people are talking about for Bitcoin.

• 18:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Not a risk.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  It says, "In recent days, there has been a mini-media firestorm surrounding Google's announcement about Willow, its new quantum computer, at a perceived threat to Bitcoin. Most of the analysis reveals a remarkably surface-level understanding of how quantum computing will change cryptography, as well as how Bitcoin remains resilient to these kinds of technological advancements." What do we need to worry about with the quantum computers now?

• 18:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Right now, nothing.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Why?

• 18:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Nobody has a quantum computer.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 18:30Anthony Pompliano?

  They have a chip that shows promise that maybe in the future, in like a decade, could become a quantum computer.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Okay. So, but what is the risk?

• 18:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, the whole idea of cryptography is you could brute force it. If you have a computer that could do, you know, if it took 50 years to do a calculation, right? And now you can do it in five minutes. Well, maybe you could actually violate the encryption. Well, guess what? Encryption has gone through a ton of new technology advancements throughout the years. And every time that a new technology is coming out, that the bad guys want to use, the good guys are right there to increase the defenses. And so, should we pay attention to this? Absolutely. Could quantum computing be a big problem in the future? Absolutely. Is it a problem today? No. I know of very specific companies that are already working to go and try to increase the quantum protection of these blockchains, etc.

• 19:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, I think that's really where you can see people are thinking about, okay, there's quantum computer. What I always tell people is you want to know what the risk is? The risk no one's talking about. If it's written in the headlines of Forbes, it ain't a risk. Just think about that, right?

• 19:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 19:40Anthony Pompliano?

  The reporters are telling you it's a risk? It's not a risk.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  This article actually makes a pretty good point that, you know, quantum computing is not an existential threat to Bitcoin, because just like the Y2K computer upgrades that things had to go through, it's likely, you know, when this comes about, like Bitcoin will have a similar upgrade. But it says, "It's not an existential threat to Bitcoin itself, and it won't only be Bitcoin that's affected, since what we're really dealing with is the ability of quantum computers to crack every kind of cryptography we use today across finance, commerce, banking."

• 20:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, that's the whole other argument, is like, hey, if I had a quantum computer that could crack encryption, if I go and I steal the Bitcoin, now the Bitcoin's worthless. So what about state secrets? What about the nuclear codes? What about, you know, all these other things that are out there that are quote unquote encrypted? Wouldn't you love for, if you're a bad guy, to get the communications between world leaders and supposedly encrypted communication, or military communications, or state secrets? You know, all these different things. And so it just comes back to this idea of-

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Don't be a bad guy.

• 20:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, obviously, don't be a bad guy. Bad guys are bad. That's in their name. But-

• 20:54Speaker 02

  You've been spending too much time with our three-year-old.

• 20:56Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I mean, you've got to explain it sometimes to people.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Bad guys are bad.

• 20:59Anthony Pompliano?

  It's kind of like the Luigi guy. Like, murder is bad. You shouldn't do that. If he did it, I don't know, like supposedly, allegedly, you're supposed to say that. But he seems to be the one who probably did it. And so I don't know why we're celebrating a guy like that, right? And so it's like, when you get into these conversations, it's like society's lost its mind. And so bad guys are bad. If you murder people, you're bad. If you do things you're not supposed to do, you should get in trouble. Like, pretty simple. And if you come back to this encryption thing, encryption is there because it is increasing privacy. It's increasing security. And so think of all of the banks, right? Would you rather steal Bitcoin? Or would you rather go break into a bank electronically? Right? That all

• 21:43Anthony Pompliano?

  these things that I think are much bigger targets than Bitcoin at just, you know, a trillion and a half dollars or so.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  This, I think this is an op-ed. This isn't a real, like, article by Forbes, but it's really good. It says, "Critics who have long criticized Bitcoin are seizing on Google's quantum computing news to predict Bitcoin's downfall. These reactions often say more about the biases of the skeptics than the vulnerabilities of Bitcoin itself."

• 22:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Show me one critic, show me one critic that can talk about Bitcoin in greater detail with more depth of understanding than the best Bitcoiners.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:19Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know one. And there are people who will say, hey, look, and the people I probably respect the most are the critics. I understand why people like this. I understand how it works. I understand why it has value. I just don't like it.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Which is a fair point.

• 22:37Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fine. There's plenty of assets that I see that, you know, I've talked ad nauseam about the fact that somebody pitched me early on, AI porn company.

• 22:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Going to be a home run, grand slam. I don't want to be involved.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so it goes back to, I understand exactly why they're doing it. I could actually argue the pros and cons of the company, right? And I could see exactly how they're going to month. Like, it was a grand slam.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:07Anthony Pompliano?

  As long as they execute, that company is going to be a massive company. I don't want to be involved. And so if you go and you look, there's a lot of people, I think, who look at Bitcoin and they say, hey, look, I've done the work. I understand how it works. I can argue the pros and cons with all this stuff. I actually think it's going to work. I just don't want to be involved. And so having that approach, I think, is a much more intellectually honest approach than the people who are like, the quantum computer is coming. You know, oh, my God, everyone saw your bit. Like, shut up. Just shut up.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  It's kind of like when you don't like something, you just look for, it's a confirmation bias of things you don't like about it.

• 23:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, they're not sending their best to critique Bitcoin, that's for sure. Nassim Taleb is still tweeting out into the ether after he blocked everybody about how Bitcoin's going to zero. And Nassim Taleb's, his portfolio just looks like a bag of trash compared to Bitcoin's return.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Clip that.

• 23:59Anthony Pompliano?

  No, clip nothing. Listen, Taleb is the perfect example, right? He's the perfect example. He is an intellectual who, I mean, read the books, they're incredible. He nails it. He is incredibly smart. But he thinks that he's even smarter than he actually is. And so whenever things come out, he actually is not as much of a practitioner as he is an academic. And so he sees something and he comes up with all these academic theories as to why something's not going to work. Dude, egg on your face, man. Like, just give it up. Like, you think you're smarter than Larry Fink now. You think you're smarter than Paul Tudor Jones. You think you're smarter than Stanley Druckenmiller. You think you're smarter. And then you realize, you're like, wait a second, this guy thinks he's smarter than everybody.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  I do think, I mean, I witnessed this in 2022, I believe it was, when all the crypto companies came crashing down, the price, everything. The haters were taking a lap.

• 24:55Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fine. Knock yourself out.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  But guess what? It's probably gonna happen again because it's cyclical, right?

• 25:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, but like, who cares? Because at the end of the day, it comes back to this idea of a broken clock is right twice a day.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:10Anthony Pompliano?

  The critics will sit there and they were yelling at a thousand, it's going to zero. And then it'll go to 20,000. And they're still yelling, it's going to zero. And then it drops to 3,000. I see, I told you. And then it goes to 69,000. Like, it's going to zero. And then it drops to 17,000. I told you. Bro, what are you talking about? This thing is up 100X. Since you were yelling at a thousand that it was going to zero.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 25:39Anthony Pompliano?

  So it comes back to, at what point would they change their mind? And that's my favorite question as a critics. At what point would you change your mind? What has to be true for you to change your mind? By the way, I could rattle off 10, 15 things. If it came to Bitcoin, what would change my mind? Right? One obviously is if the price broke below some level. If Bitcoin, all of a sudden, we woke up tomorrow and it had dropped and it was 50 bucks. That would cause a lot of people to change their mind. They'd be like, wait a minute. Like, that is such a serious drop. What happened? If all of a sudden, 90% of Bitcoin's hash rate went offline, it became unsecure. I would have a lot of questions.

• 26:19Anthony Pompliano?

  If somehow somebody got centralized control of it, all of a sudden, a lot of the value proposition goes away. Right? You can go through these different things. The things I just mentioned have like a 0.0001% probability of happening. But again, if they happened, I would probably change my mind, or at least I'd be very focused on trying to understand why did this happen? And should I change my mind? If you ask critics, they'll literally tell you, nothing. So what would change your mind? They say, nothing.

• 26:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so you're just an idiot.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Wait, I just have a quick question. Is it possible if countries start buying Bitcoin for somebody to spend enough money to have the majority or no?

• 26:58Anthony Pompliano?

  To of Bitcoin?

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, Bitcoiners aren't going to sell their Bitcoin, so.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Or not.

• 27:02Anthony Pompliano?

  No, so the price, if a country had to buy 51%, which even if they own 51%, they have no extra control over Bitcoin than anyone else, but even if they spent all the money they had, Bitcoin would be at $50 million for a country to be able to buy all the Bitcoin, right? I mean, they would spend such an enormous amount of money and the price would just keep skyrocketing because all that capital coming in with a fixed supply asset. And so go back to Taleb just for one last second.

• 27:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I got a personal thing with Taleb because he also violates the second rule in my book of being a critic. When you're a contrarian, you can't also be an asshole. Right? Because if you're going against the grain, you have to understand that if you're right, that means that there's a whole hell of a lot of people who their worldview, their portfolios, like there's going to be a lot of damage and negative impact.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  You should be gracious in your victory. But if you're wrong, then literally you're just standing on a soapbox proving that you're the idiot in the corner because you're the one who believes something and everyone else doesn't believe it. So if you're a contrarian, you can't be an asshole.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Why not?

• 28:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Because it ultimately goes back to this idea of if you have true intellectual humility, you say to yourself, I know everyone believes A, I believe B, here's my reasons why I may be wrong.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, he doesn't do that. I just went on his Twitter, the latest is how.

• 28:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I can't go on his Twitter because he blocked me.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  I'm not blocked.

• 28:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and I was super nice to him, but he did one time here that the very first fund that I ever had, me and Jason Williams started the fund and we didn't have an office and we would go to a Starbucks and we would work out of the Starbucks together. Some of the most fun I've ever had in my life, right? Also, early investor in four unicorns in that fund, thank you. But. He tweeted at us and was like, go back to the Starbucks bathroom or something. And I was like, see, like, again, if you're a contrarian, you can't be an asshole.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And so.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  But some people just enjoy the fun of Twitter's.

• 29:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I have tried to get Taleb to come on the podcast. I've tried to get him to go to lunch. I've tried to get him to do all, like, I wouldn't even need to record it.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I would just like to have a conversation with them and sit down and say, listen, like, give me the best argument as to why I'm wrong.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe he could convince me. I don't know. I, a lot of people know this, Mark Spitznagel, who is one of Taleb's partners, is probably one of my favorite investors. I think incredibly highly of him. I love their strategy. I think that they're very smart. I love his approach to life, his ethos, his values, all that kind of stuff.

• 29:41Anthony Pompliano?

  In some of the books that Spitznagel has written, or there's been other books written, they used to go on these long walks in New York City, like in the middle of the day, and just talk. I would love to go on a three-hour walk with Nassim Taleb and just talk about the world and markets. Also, I actually don't even think we need to talk about Bitcoin.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:00Anthony Pompliano?

  But I don't think he's interested.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  All right, well.

• 30:05Anthony Pompliano?

  So Nassim, if you see this, call me.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Wow. Okay.

• 30:12Anthony Pompliano?

  If not, you're wrong.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Talk about, the man does not hold a grudge, I promise.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  So the markets. So the markets, sorry, I'm just still thinking about it. So former President Jimmy Carter passed away at 100 years old this week. The New York Stock Exchange announced that the markets will close on January 9th to commemorate the loss of an American president. It is customary for the exchange to close trading to honor the passing of a president. The last such occasion was in December 2018 for the death of former President George H. W. Bush. Oh, what do you think?

• 30:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Market manipulation should be outlawed.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  But, but why?

• 30:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Outlawed.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  But why? It's a nice commemorative thing.

• 30:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  I'm going to argue on behalf of the presidents.

• 31:00Anthony Pompliano?

  If you want to honor a former president,

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Which is a noble cause.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:06Anthony Pompliano?

  There are many ways to do it without locking millions of people out of accessing their financial assets. They cannot access their financial assets. You are hurting, you're taking away access from millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people, many of which are not even American, to honor a former president.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Oh, the NASDAQ will also close trading that day.

• 31:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Fly the flag at half staff, hold an event, have a moment of silence when the market opens. There's all kinds of stuff you can do. But closing the market is woke capitalism.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this was

• 31:49Anthony Pompliano?

  It's virtue signaling.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  This was founded in the 1700s. They were not woke then.

• 31:53Anthony Pompliano?

  It's virtue signaling.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  A nice tradition.

• 31:56Anthony Pompliano?

  It's virtue signaling.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 31:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And as I continue to say, having hours of operations is market manipulation. Let the market be free. If you close the market, it is not a free market. Open the market 24/7, 365, and allow assets to trade.

• 32:15Anthony Pompliano?

  The machines are trading. Let them trade.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  It says it is rare for the exchange to close on non-holidays since it is a symbol of America's leading capital markets position in the world.

• 32:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Let me take a step further. You want to honor real heroes? Why don't they shut the stock market when soldiers die overseas?

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Well.

• 32:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Why is it just for the president?

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Well, now you want it closed all the time.

• 32:39Anthony Pompliano?

  But let's just extrapolate this out, right?

• 32:42Speaker 02

  I see what you're saying.

• 32:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, do they not meet your standard? Are they not heroes? Are they not part of the American fabric? Do they not meet the criteria that you have? If we're gonna shut the market, when Martin Luther King Jr. died, why didn't we shut the market?

• 32:58Speaker 02

  They did. They actually did for that one.

• 33:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, okay, perfect example. Why Martin Luther King Jr.? He's not a president.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  That was an exception.

• 33:08Anthony Pompliano?

  But here we go. Now, now we're playing a game. So now you're gonna say, this is the craziest part. Ready? Is you say, oh, it's for presidents. Oh, but Martin Luther King Jr. Okay, so what's the next one? The next person that dies, who gets to decide? The point goes back to this is not actually conducive to a free market. And so even crazier than the presidents is when you start to pick and choose. You say, oh, Martin Luther King Jr., we're gonna shut it for him. That's even if I had known that, that would I would have even went even crazier with my tweet.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 33:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Because it comes back to the idea of

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Human bias.

• 33:45Anthony Pompliano?

  How are you honoring someone by shutting down the most American thing we have, which is capitalism?

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:54Anthony Pompliano?

  It makes no sense. And so it goes back to the American people don't want this. They didn't ask for this. Just open the markets.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 34:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, it'd be real nice. Go, go out on the mark on the stock market floor, have a moment of silence, do a little ceremony. All great. But shutting down the stock market makes no sense. And so if you say, oh, we always do it for presidents, great. Well, what category did Martin Luther King Jr. fall into? Is that just world leaders? When Gandhi died?

• 34:25Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 34:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Did we do it?

• 34:26Speaker 02

  I don't know what the criteria is, but they probably should have a better criteria if they're gonna shut it.

• 34:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you have a list of when else for whatever their events?

• 34:35Speaker 02

  I still think

• 34:35Anthony Pompliano?

  They have shut the market for?

• 34:37Speaker 02

  I don't have a list. Do I need a list?

• 34:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I'm just wondering. So if you do Martin Luther King Jr., when Jackie Robinson died.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Okay, hold on.

• 34:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Did they shut the market?

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Let's ask Chad GPT, what non-holiday times has?

• 34:50Anthony Pompliano?

  For death, when, when, when else did they do it?

• 34:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I love a little live chat GPT.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Oh, they did it following September 11.

• 35:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  They did it for Hurricane Sandy. That was the first weather related closure of this length for like

• 35:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Two days. There was a technical glitch in 2015. Oh, and then in response to the pandemic, the New York Stock Exchange temporarily moved to all exchange, closing its trading floor.

• 35:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's

• 35:23Anthony Pompliano?

  But they did it for Martin Luther King Jr., you said?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  That's what the CNBC article said, yeah.

• 35:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Did they list anybody else?

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Um, hold on.

• 35:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's just, let's use a hypothetical situation. If they close the stock market because Martin Luther King Jr. Died, but not for Jackie Robinson?

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Okay, they do have a few. Okay, so MLK, um, President John F. K assassination, FDR, World War One in response to outbreak was shut down for nearly four months, but that's different. Uh, Wall Street bombing in 1920, stock market crash. Yeah. I mean, again, but like that's some of those were-

• 35:58Anthony Pompliano?

  It, it comes back to the idea that if you're gonna start playing the game of we're gonna pick and choose, then why don't we just every single day? Cause that, cause that, that is how this works, right? Is you just extrapolate out every day, we should just shut the stock market because somebody somewhere died.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do think that there's like different ways to honor them, but I just think this is like a 1700, 1700s tradition that has been-

• 36:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Just because you've been wrong, doesn't mean you should continue to be wrong.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Um.

• 36:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And the only thing worse than being wrong today is committing to continuing to being wrong in the future.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 36:35Anthony Pompliano?

  We live in a global, digital, real time, 24/7 market. And you're gonna shut the stock market. By the way, we haven't even talked about for holidays. It's the biggest joke in the world. They have half days in preparation for holidays.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:55Anthony Pompliano?

  The machines don't take a break. That's the world we're headed towards. And you, everyone who says, oh, it's honoring this, it's honoring that, whatever, right?

• 37:02Speaker 02

  It's gonna be closed tomorrow.

• 37:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin trades 24/7, 365. The entire crypto market, a multi-trillion dollar market, trades 24/7, 365. There are no hours of operations. You can't shut it off.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So why is it that the digital native world says, we just are always on? But the dinosaurs of Wall Street- Or picking and choosing when to shut the market.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Cause they're.

• 37:31Anthony Pompliano?

  No, because it's market manipulation. You're manipulating a free market. You're preventing the trading of assets. And so it comes back to very easy solution. Don't shut the market. The technology is there. Robin Hood has pioneered this. They've introduced all this overnight trading, all these after hours trading. And so how is it that a technology company is able to affect change here? But the existing exchanges won't.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And my guess is, and I only say this because I've talked to some of the people. The people at the exchanges actually want to change some of this stuff. They would like it there to be 24/7 trading. They would like for there to be more volume trading. They would like to not have to shut down the market. But there's always the balance between how do you disrupt the status quo and the incumbents and kind of the tradition, et cetera, with adapting for the new world.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:23Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's very hard for the people in charge of these roles to do it. Open the market. That that's the overarching message. Open the market. And if it takes Congress to step in and create legislation that says you cannot shut down the American market, then so be it.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Okay. Okay.

• 38:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I can't believe they shut it for MLK and not for somebody like Jackie Robinson.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  I don't know what to tell you.

• 38:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Go ahead.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Okay. So let's talk about the H1B visa saga.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  First, let me just tell you what the H1B visa is very quickly. And then we can talk about the drama. The H1B visa is a US work visa that allows employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations requiring theoretical or technical expertise like IT, engineering, finance, et cetera. The eligibility requires a bachelor's degree or higher in a related field. It's initially valid for three years, extendable for six. The cap, they limit, it's limited to 85,000 visas annually. 65,000 for general applicants, 20,000 for those with US masters degrees. So that's not a lot of people, to be honest. 85,000 visas a year is not a lot.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  Employers file a petition on behalf of the employee and it can lead to permanent residency. It's a popular visa for tech companies and fills critical skill gaps in the US workforce. Tell us what the drama is.

• 39:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Everyone has a hint of being right.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's what makes these so controversial is that multiple things can be true at the same time, but everyone wants to hold on to the part that matters the most to them and then extrapolate that out and yell and scream about it and not listen to the other side.

• 40:11Anthony Pompliano?

  It is true that there is abuse in the H1B system.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  But we're talking about 85,000.

• 40:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Doesn't matter what the number is.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 40:21Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a system that brings in non-Americans to work in the United States where an American could get the job and it is not being used for the reason that it was originally created. That is true. Is it as big of a abuse system as people want to make it out to be? Well, if every single H1B was abused, they were all fraudulent in terms of it.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  They're not. I know a few.

• 40:50Anthony Pompliano?

  But let's just

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:51Anthony Pompliano?

  cede the point, right? For the argument's sake, 100% of H1Bs that are created in 2024 were abused.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 40:59Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the total number? You say 85,000?

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so 85,000 out of a country of 330 million Americans, right? It's a very, very small number. That's if 100% of them. So again, is there abuse? 100%. Should we stop the abuse? Absolutely. How do we do that? Somebody smarter than me will figure that out, right? But is there abuse? Yes. The second thing is if you are a company that is competing on the global stage, you need the best people regardless of what language they speak, what their religion, their wealth status, their sex, their income level, whatever. You just need the best people. And usually in these debates, the people who are building and running those companies, that's their position. I need the best people. It's the people who don't run the companies who are yelling and screaming about all this other stuff.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:45Anthony Pompliano?

  But the people who are actually on the ground closest to the problem say, I need the best people. So again, there's abuse, but also true. You need the best people and the United States has a monopoly on great talent, but that doesn't mean there's not great talent elsewhere.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 42:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 42:01Speaker 02

  That that would want to come here.

• 42:03Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a line out the door. I mean, look at our southern border. There's people who are literally just walking for hundreds of miles to walk into our country.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 42:10Anthony Pompliano?

  So the people who don't like our country, you can leave. You'll easily have somebody who wants to take your spot.

• 42:17Anthony Pompliano?

  There are a lot of workers who want to come here because they want opportunity. They want higher pay. They want social mobility.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Freedom.

• 42:26Anthony Pompliano?

  There are people who want freedom. There are people who want to come here and arbitrage. They want to make more money and send it home to their families. There's a bunch of reasons why people want to come here. There are people who moved to the United States through these programs simply because they watched a movie when they were a kid.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Wait, just, just really, really quick on our prior point. In 2024, there, there were 780,884 applications for those 85,000 slots.

• 42:50Anthony Pompliano?

  So.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Line out the door.

• 42:52Anthony Pompliano?

  So one in 10?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? You know, 15% gets, uh, gets approved? Now, if we understand that there's abuse in the system, we understand that the companies want the best people.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 43:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, we also have something called country caps or, or country, uh, components, which my understanding, and I'm not an expert, not a lawyer, definitely not an immigration expert. But my understanding, doing some reading, is that country like India gets as many slots as a much smaller country like, uh, maybe Sweden or whatever. And so what ends up happening is, uh, you get these really long backed up lines in countries that have a billion people. And then other countries, obviously there's a much slower line or a much faster line because there's not as many people applying. So again, there's probably some things to do there.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:50Anthony Pompliano?

  On that.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  It does not prioritize or limit applicant, applicants by country. Everyone competes equally for the same pool of 85,000.

• 43:58Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, the H1Bs, my understanding is that each country is allocated a certain number of H1Bs and it creates this huge backlog. So like a country like India, it can be like a 10 year wait.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Wait, wait. If you apply for permanent residency, like a green card after getting an H1B, country specific quotas can create significant delays, but to apply, there's no country quotas.

• 44:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, applications, but I think the acceptance. Well, we'll have to, again, we're not experts. We'll have to check.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  For example, an Indian H1B holder may wait decades for a green card. Applicants from smaller countries may get a green card within a few years. It's because if you want a green card, not if you want the visa.

• 44:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, fair. So.

• 44:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Another component of this is that what it means to be American is actually a paradox. America is a country that was built by immigrants.

• 44:53Anthony Pompliano?

  If you look around a room, go to anywhere, go to Times Square, go to Grand Central, go to the middle of Iowa, and you look at those people and you say, where did your family come from? They can tell you, my grandfather grew up on this land, my grandfather did this, my grandmother did this. But if you keep going far enough back, they came from somewhere. Most people in this country, their families did not originate in the United, you know, what is today the United States?

• 45:24Speaker 02

  The other day, we were talking about how with me, the same, this, it was me, my generation, but with you, it was like two generations ago. And it's like, how quickly you can go from not speaking a word of English to like, your children or your grandchildren achieving these amazing things.

• 45:42Anthony Pompliano?

  The reason why that, Plin and I had this conversation is it never hit me until I started thinking about my grandparents and great grandparents, or some came, they went back, they came, et cetera. The amount of social mobility

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:58Anthony Pompliano?

  that is available in this country in two or three generations is absurd. And so you look at it and you say, how would you not have some portion of your population that wants to go to the United States if that's possible? Of course. So again, these families came from somewhere. At the same time, it is incredibly important to protect what it means to be an American. And so there are people, especially online, who continue to say, we should prioritize American citizens, we should prioritize training, American citizens. 100% sure, you're right, we should do that. The best example that I heard of this is, I can't remember who tweeted it, but somebody

• 46:42Anthony Pompliano?

  said, it's kind of like the NBA. You have a team, and on that team, 90 plus percent of them are American. But you might go get one star player from somewhere else and put them on your team.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 46:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And now you have a better team because you got the one star player from the international market. But the majority of your team is American.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And they're working here. They're creating value. They're, you know, paying taxes, et cetera. So again, it goes back to this idea that like each side of the debate, if you put all the people at a round table and you said, what do you believe? Each one of them has at least a hint of being right.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:22Anthony Pompliano?

  But the problem is when you put them all together, everyone is looking in the rear view mirror and they're saying, look at the problems.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:29Anthony Pompliano?

  My challenge to everyone is look forward, look through the windshield. What is the solution?

• 47:35Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't have some perfect plan, but what I do know is that if someone could create a plan that says, we only want the best of the best. It has to be a meritocratic system where we have some way to prove that they're the best. We have to somehow disincentivize American companies from so easily importing people from other countries to replace American workers. So they're only incentivized to do the absolute best, people who are better than Americans, take a software engineer or whatever. And we have to end the abuse of the system. And we have to figure out a way to make this sustainable over the long run.

• 48:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And we have to figure out how to better train and educate American workers. That would be the plan.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  To me, it's like, I, I take issue with the people, the extremists on the right who say that there is, it, it should be American only. We should train the people here. There shouldn't be any immigrants hired for these roles. But like, Again, it's been a long time coming. This country does not prioritize STEM education like other countries do. I've told you in Bulgaria, we were solving for X in second grade. Like, it's definitely, they put a premium on it over there. The other thing is that immigrants, like you say, it's a perfect paradox. A, immigrants, I think, tend to love

• 49:06Speaker 02

  America more even, and I think that they are even more proud to be American than people who are born here. But also-

• 49:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Generally, yes, there are those exceptions, but yes.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Of course, of course. But like, my dad is so proud to have like, the American flag hang in his house.

• 49:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And there's a hell of a lot of Americans that think the American flag is a signal that you're a far-right extremist.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Right. And they're actually, they're a naturalized citizen, many of them, so they had to like, pass a test and like, know the history. Two, questions that a lot of Americans born here maybe would not. And it's important to note that a lot of economic, like, immigrants add a lot of positive things to the economy, such as jobs. As of 2024, 46% of Fortune 500 companies, 230 firms, were founded by immigrants or their children. This marks the highest percentage recorded in the history of such reports. These companies collectively generated 8.6 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2023, and employed over 15.5 million people worldwide.

• 50:12Anthony Pompliano?

  This is where being an independent becomes a superpower. When the far-left implemented their dumb DEI nonsense-

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And they said, "We should pick people for jobs based on things other than who's the best person for the job."

• 50:29Speaker 02

  America.

• 50:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I yelled and I screamed. And I said, "This is dumb, this is bad, these people are idiots, and this is not gonna work."

• 50:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when the right has their own version, where they say, "We should pick people for jobs for reasons other than they're the best person for the job," I'm yelling, I'm screaming, I'm saying they're dumb and they're wrong, and it's not gonna work.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 50:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Because what we are figuring out in society is that

• 50:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Marjorie Greene and AOC are the same person.

• 51:04Anthony Pompliano?

  The far right and the far left are the same extremist.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:09Anthony Pompliano?

  What you are watching is not a swing solely from left to right in the country. You are actually seeing a swing back to a more centrist, common sense, et cetera. And

• 51:23Speaker 02

  It's a rejection of extremism.

• 51:25Anthony Pompliano?

  That is why Donald Trump won is because Donald Trump actually softened on some of his most controversial opinions. Look at IVF. Look at some of the things that people really said, hey,

• 51:41Anthony Pompliano?

  he's, he's too far.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:43Anthony Pompliano?

  He softened, he came back a little bit more to the center. Now, he still has very, very strong views. Secure the border, build more housing, get inflation down, have a, a strong national defense, all these things, right? Those aren't extreme views. Those are actually views held by the majority of Americans. They don't want a porous border. They want to have housing that is affordable. They don't want high inflation. They believe that America is strong and that strength is a deterrent, all these things. When it comes to things like immigration,

• 52:18Anthony Pompliano?

  the problem is it's not a widely held opinion to be anti-immigration, to be anti-skilled labor because the country is made up of so many people who are immigrants.

• 52:35Anthony Pompliano?

  So what you are basically doing is you're advocating to a group of people to be against themselves, which is a losing strategy.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it comes back to this idea. If America wants to be the best, we need the best. Option one, let's create the best here. We should do that.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  We can do both.

• 52:56Anthony Pompliano?

  We do an okay, we, we do an okay job, but we can do much better.

• 53:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Option two, go find the best and bring them here. There's a reason why I say that's option two. And option one is to build them here.

• 53:12Anthony Pompliano?

  We can create the greatest number of highly skilled labor in the world. But we ain't gonna do it with the current Department of Education. We ain't gonna do it with the current school system. We're definitely not gonna do it with teacher unions, holding these schools hostage. And we're definitely not gonna do it in a world where our children are being taught nonsense.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Rather than math and science.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Yep. I gotta say though, back to this. So people were very worked up about this H1B issue. Elon Musk was going on tirades on Twitter, supporting it. Vivek Ramaswamy was getting heat because he said that American children were watching or prioritizing the wrong things. All this stuff happened and Trump didn't say anything. And my bet was that Trump would side with the people who were saying, you know what, this immigration thing sucks. It's broken. We need to fix it, which I mean, yes, it's a fair point. But he said, he came out in support of the H1B program. He said, I've always liked the visas. I have always been in favor of the visas. This is why we have them. I have many H1B visas on my properties.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  I've been a believer in H1B. I've used it many times. It's a great program. So.

• 54:26Anthony Pompliano?

  That is Trump moving more back to the center. That is Trump rejecting the extreme views of a party.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:35Anthony Pompliano?

  The reason why Trump won and was able to get so many undecided voters and people who are center left to move over. One, he had the blessing of running against a very weak candidate. But two is he actually softened a lot of his positions. Not maybe a lot is even an exaggeration. Maybe he softened a number of his positions. And he didn't go left. What he did was he just came back a little bit to the center. And I think that's where people said to themselves, you know what? That that's where I am.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Is I think we should go get the best people, but we should also stop the abuse. And so my message to a lot of people is the following.

• 55:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Your view has truth to it.

• 55:19Anthony Pompliano?

  The only way this gets solved, the only way we look through the windshield rather than the rearview mirror is we gotta work together. And so the same person who says there's abuse has to work with the person who says, I need the best people, who has to work with the person that says, we must preserve the American values and a society and the things that are important to America, who also has to work with the person who sits there and says, we need to train American people. All that is true.

• 55:44Speaker 02

  Because there's power and nuance. And I think over the last few years, that's what we've lost. It's either you're here or you're here. There's no nuance.

• 55:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I'm gonna dunk on you on Twitter. It needs to be black and white.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But if you go and you sit these people down and you say, hey, look, here's where the conversation is. And so, in a hilarious way, I actually think this whole kerfuffle.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Kerfuffle.

• 56:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Has created more strength.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 56:13Anthony Pompliano?

  In all of these people, because they realize, we're gonna get in the shit. You want to create change? You really want to go in there? You want to rip out spending? You want to secure the board? You want to do? It's gonna be some hard stuff.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:24Anthony Pompliano?

  This is not gonna be like, hey, let me, here's my stump speech and let's go get things done.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  But it's also surprising. I had no idea that so many people felt so strongly about H1B visas.

• 56:35Anthony Pompliano?

  It is this undertone of people are upset because there's illegal immigration.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And so then they extrapolate that and they say, all immigration is bad.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 56:46Anthony Pompliano?

  But it goes back to, you want nuance? Well, there's a difference between illegal immigration and legal immigration. There's a difference between people who are coming here and they become a drain on the system versus people who come here and they contribute to the system.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And there's a hell of a lot of examples of people who are here, who we did not work to keep here, and they left. TSMC is one of the best examples. Probably one of the single most important companies from a national strategic standpoint was not built in the United States.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  TSMC? I don't know this one.

• 57:18Anthony Pompliano?

  In Taiwan.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 57:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And so if you go and you look at TSMC.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Oh, semiconductor.

• 57:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, they create all the chips.

• 57:28Anthony Pompliano?

  He was here.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 57:30Anthony Pompliano?

  But he couldn't build it here. Now, all of a sudden, there is debate as to whether the United States should step in from a military standpoint if China was to try to take Taiwan because TSMC is such an important part of America's strength and national defense.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 57:50Anthony Pompliano?

  So for all the people who are yelling and screaming about immigration, well, hold on a second. We may get pulled into a war decades later because we took a certain stance. It's a stuff super complex. It's all interrelated. I don't think there's easy answers. I actually think there are things that I said today that I will learn more about over the next couple of years.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 58:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And I would change my mind on.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  That won't prevent people from clipping these.

• 58:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Fine.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  Clips and say.

• 58:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Whatever. You want to clip something, go get Taleb to come on the podcast.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Just please make sure like I'm not in the video. Feel like getting, um, okay. Last prediction or sorry, last topic. What is your 2025 prediction today? We are filming. It is the last day of 2024. What is your hot take for the year?

• 58:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Everyone is underestimating AI and everyone is underestimating Bitcoin. For all the hype, for all the bullishness, for all the excitement, we are all underestimating how big those two trends will be.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 59:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And it is not just a 2025 thing. It is a, the next two decades, we will look back and we will be shocked at how big, how important, how integral they are to American life.

• 59:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And so the people who are excited today, it's really hard for them to fathom how it could actually be even bigger.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Hmm hmm.

• 59:28Anthony Pompliano?

  But I think that that is likely to be the scenario. How many people saw Bitcoin in 2010, 11, 12, 13? And we're like, within 15 years, I think it'll be $100,000.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that countries will be buying it. It sounded like a psychopath. Here we are.

• 59:50Anthony Pompliano?

  AI is moving at a pace that is just hard to comprehend. Right? I could sit all day, do no work, just read about all the advancements and I couldn't keep up. That's how fast it's moving. And so if the trend is likely to lead to explosions of adoption and advancement that are bigger than what you're expecting today. You really, really have to focus and take seriously. If I want to be in the business or investing world,

• 1:00:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I have to become an expert, which means that I need to treat this like I was studying for an exam. Go and do the work. And so in 2025, I think there's going to be a great separation of people. The people who take this seriously and who say, hey, look, I'm going to go and I'm going to do the work and I'm going to learn about this stuff and I'm going to, you know, make sure that I'm understanding as much as I can. And the people who say, eh, I think it's all hype. It's not going to be around. I'm not worried about it. But that bifurcation, that decision that individuals make, I think will drastically determine outcomes over the next decade or so. And so I'm going to be in the camp of, let's go get the books. Let's go read, let's go learn, let's go get prepared. Cause if this can be big, I want to be there.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think what I was going to say is similar. I was going to say it. I think 2025 will be the year of the Bitcoiner. I think that up until now Bitcoin has been kind of.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  On the fringes of society, but also the internet. So I think this year is like, like you said, like kind of when it grows up, but also it becomes serious. You know what I mean? Like it's no longer just like, oh, they made money in Bitcoin. And now it's like, it's like a serious thing where financial institutions are taking it seriously. Countries are taking it seriously. So we'll see what happens.

• 1:01:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for doing this. Hope you guys all have a great new year. See you guys in 2025.