#1488 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Bitcoin Falls As Elon Audits The Government

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 bitcoin, how DOGE is slashing government spending and how that could impact the economy, and the gold audit situation at Fort Knox. =========================Bitwise is one of the largest and fastest-growing crypto asset managers. As of December 31, 2021, the company managed over $1.3 billion across an expanding suite of investment solutions, which include the world's largest crypto index fund and other innovative products spanning Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, and crypto equities. Whether you’re an individual, advisor, or institution, Bitwise provides intelligent access to crypto with your unique circumstances in mind. Visit www.bitwiseinvestments.com to learn more. Certain of the Bitwise investment products may be subject to the extreme risks associated with investing in crypto assets. Visit www.bitwiseinvestments.com/disclosures/ to learn more.==========================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.=======================The future is being built today and the future of currency isn’t dollars, euros, pounds, or yen, it’s crypto. And Gemini thinks that’s a great thing. Because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that’s a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Go where dollars won’t. With Gemini. =======================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 we've got a great episode with Polina Pompliano. Polina is the founder and CEO of The Profile. You gotta go read it. Go to ReadTheProfile.com. Today, we talk about a couple of topics I think you're going to be interested in. Bitcoin, why is the price going down? What's going on? And should you be concerned? We also

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  talk about Doge and how they are slashing spending and some of the ripple effects, both in the local Washington economy, but also nationally, what that could mean for you as an investor. And then we also talk about Fort Knox and is the gold there? People want to know, where is the gold at? Fort Knox audit is all the rage and everyone wants to know what's going to happen there. This episode is full of insights. I hope you guys enjoy it. Here's my latest conversation with Polina Pompliano.

• 1:08Speaker 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.

• 1:32Anthony Pompliano?

  It's no secret that Bitcoin ETFs have taken Wall Street by storm. With over $35 billion in assets in just one year, it's become the most successful ETF launch in history. My partner, Bitwise, is the first and only Bitcoin ETF provider to openly publish its Bitcoin wallet addresses, allowing anyone to verify the fund's holdings. I believe this level of transparency is exactly the kind of innovation that only crypto makes possible. Bitwise is also the only ETF issuer that is a crypto specialist asset manager, meaning their team solely focuses on Bitcoin and they have the research, education, and support to help investors navigate the space with confidence. All of that is great, but what I love most about Bitwise is probably their commitment to developers. Bitwise donates 10% of their ETF's profits to Bitcoin open source developers.

• 2:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin developers are the unsung heroes, working tirelessly to maintain, improve, and innovate the blockchain. Their efforts ensure that Bitcoin remains true to its promise as a decentralized system that is built to last. Go to bitwisePOMP.com to learn more about their ETF and other services. Once again, that's bitwisePOMP.com. As always, remember investing is risky and carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before you invest. Today's episode is brought to you by Zappos. Picture this: every time you trade Bitcoin, the spread determines how much value stays with you. That's why securing top-tier Bitcoin trading fees is key to growing your Bitcoin wealth. But what if I told you that there's

• 3:00Anthony Pompliano?

  a platform that lets you save up to 90% on your Bitcoin trading fees? Now, here's the kicker: not only do they save that money, they also are dubbed the Fort Knox of Bitcoin: Zappobank. They're the world's first fully licensed and regulated Bitcoin and banking group, and they have been delivering a unique blend of physical and digital security for over a decade. From military-grade Swiss bunkers to cutting-edge digital protocols, they've got you covered. And now they're bringing you the kind of competitive Bitcoin trading fees typically reserved for institutional giants, right in the palm of your hand. With Zappobank's ultra-competitive spreads, more of your Bitcoin stays where it belongs: in your pocket. Whether you're trading big or small, every move you make is designed to

• 3:39Anthony Pompliano?

  boost your gains and fuel your financial future. Head to zappobank.com/pomp to join. That's X-A-P-O-B-A-N-K dot com slash pomp.

• 3:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Gemini. The future is being built today, and the future of currency isn't dollars, euros, pounds, or yen. It's crypto. And Gemini thinks that's a great thing, because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that's a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Gemini teamed up with futurists, technologists, and designers like award-winning artist Matt Griffin, known for his illustrations for Dune, to craft a vision of the future. With crypto at its core. The creative theme, go where dollars won't emphasizes exploration, growth and the crypto markets limitless potential. Whether it's going on that Martian safari to capture an unforgettable photo of a herd of woolly mammoths grazing the red planet, or using Bitcoin to pay for your lift pass

• 4:34Anthony Pompliano?

  to go strata skiing down the mountain peak of a breathtaking comet. Whatever adventures we'll be living, one thing is for sure. In a future this fantastic, the limits of traditional currency simply cannot keep up. Financial innovation will usher in this new frontier. And so go where dollars won't with Gemini. Go check them out at gemini.com/go where dollars won't. Again, go check it out at gemini.com/go where dollars won't.

• 5:04Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, Plin, what's the first topic?

• 5:05Speaker 02

  All right, so Bitcoin is down this morning. It's hovering around 95,500. I was reading some media reports that said that the reason it's dampening is because people aren't satisfied with what Trump has done.

• 5:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Stop, this is crazy. Listen, Bitcoin trades like a macro asset. Right now, there is increasing bearishness on stocks. Forty-seven percent of investors, based on the survey from last week, now think that stocks will be lower six months from now. So naturally, if people are bearish on stocks, they're getting bearish on cryptocurrency, etc. This is the exact moment where you gotta not only refuse to get lulled to sleep, do not get lulled to sleep. Because when Bitcoin gets you lulled to sleep, it then usually explodes in either direction. And so it's kind of like now's the time to pay attention.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  In either direction.

• 5:53Anthony Pompliano?

  It could go down, it could go up. But the second thing also is when everyone else is bearish, that's the time to actually be bullish, right? Is, oh, everyone else is scared, well, there's probably opportunity out there. And you see this in the stock market, you also see this, I think, in Bitcoin, etc. You know, you used to have to buy Bitcoin for $106,000, $107,000. Now you can buy it for $95,000. That's called discount, right? My buddy Mark Yusko always says that investing is the only place where when there's a discount, people run out of the store. Usually people run in the store, they're excited. So I think that's a big part of this. The second thing is Yes, uh, Trump on the campaign trail talked about how he's going to protect Bitcoin, do all this stuff. Bitcoin is up, I think it was like 70,000, $69,000 on, uh, November 1st.

• 6:37Anthony Pompliano?

  It's up to, you know, almost 100K. It is appreciated significantly, almost 50% since the election. So when you look at that, you're like, it's not that people are disappointed, it's actually that it ran up in anticipation and it's a natural cooling off period. And the last thing I would say is in prior bull markets, we saw multiple 30% drawdowns. So what you would see is, uh, 2017 Bitcoin went from 1,000 to 20,000, ran all the way up, it would cool off 20, uh, 30% drawdowns.

• 7:04Anthony Pompliano?

  We're not seeing that. We're seeing like 15% drawdowns, maybe max 20%. And so what that tells me is that there's a lot of buying demand. Every time Bitcoin gets to 90K, all of a sudden it's back to 95K. There's a ton of buying demand. And so what you're seeing, in my opinion, is you're seeing a compression of the volatility. And if you think about where did Bitcoin bottom in the last bear market? It bottomed around $16,000, $16,500, whatever. It's now at, you know, 100.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  That's a far cry from 95,000.

• 7:33Anthony Pompliano?

  People have asked me about price, you know, future performances. Look, I'm not predicting anything, but if you said to me, I had to pick a price that I think Bitcoin likely is, you know, directionally going to go towards, I've always said 150,000. And a lot of people are like, that's so bearish, that's so bearish. I see 200, 300, 500, like all these crazy numbers. I would love for it to go there. I'm in, I'm in the boat. Let's go. Let's go as far as you guys want. But in the last cycle, Bitcoin bottomed about 3,200 and went to 69,000. And so if you just kind of cut that in half, I don't know, it's like 10, 12%, you know, X from there. So I've just always thought like 10X off the bottom's about 150,000. Maybe, you know, maybe it's a little bit higher, whatever. But like, that is the dampening of volatility to the upside, and then you're not seeing the 30% drawdowns, you're kind of seeing these 15% drawdowns. And so you're getting the

• 8:18Anthony Pompliano?

  squeeze where it's trading more in kind of a band. Now, on one hand, there's a lot of Bitcoiners who are like, ah, I really want Bitcoin to go up. I want Bitcoin to go up, like, you know, let it go higher. On the other hand, there's a lot of people coming into Bitcoin, pushing the price higher, because now they're like, oh, it's unlikely that Bitcoin is going to have 50% drawdowns in a day. There is, again, that dampening of volatility. So as you get mass adoption, you're going to get less and less asymmetry to the asset. But that's how it should work. You get paid the reward for the risk you take. It was way riskier to buy Bitcoin in 2016 than it is to buy it today in 2025. And so I just think that people always want to kind of get into this game of I wanted to go up as much as it went up in the past, but you're not taking the same risk you took in the past. So you should expect it to go up less.

• 9:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, all that said, I think Bitcoin is very well positioned. We just saw Mubadala Abu Dhabi's Sovereign Wealth Fund and one of their funds come out and say that they now own about half a billion dollars worth of the Bitcoin ETF. Huge deal. They get the Wisconsin Investment Board. They just like tripled their position in the ETFs. You have Russia that's now come out and said that they're mining it. They're using it for transactions. You have El Salvador still buying Bitcoin. You have many other countries around the world that are all kind of playing and dabbling in different ways. I think if the UAE's got a partnership with publicly traded miner where they're mining Bitcoin, etc. So like this is happening. The number one question in the world is, is the United States going to buy? And I think if they do not buy, if they do not establish the strategic reserve, that's

• 9:46Anthony Pompliano?

  where you'll get that kind of letdown. People will be upset. They'll be like, hey, I was promised something. I didn't get it. If it happens, even though it doesn't happen in the first 30 days, it happens in the first 100 days or whatever, then people will be euphoric and excited. And so I'll be kind of a nothing burger.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Got it. Let's talk about Doge. The Department of Government Efficiency said that it has found $55 billion in savings through a combination of efforts, including a reduction in the federal workforce. It said it estimated it had realized $55 billion in savings by canceling or renegotiating leases and contracts, selling assets, canceling grants, finding regulatory savings, making programmatic changes to the government and reducing the workforce. I understand that this is very disruptive and they are able to save so much money of waste, but.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  When something is this disruptive, obviously it's gonna break some things. Do you think there's gonna be a downside to all these like radical changes?

• 10:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Any downside is worth it. Any downside is worth it because it is micro problems to solve a macro problem, which is a really important differentiation.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  It's like when you say, short term pain, long term.

• 10:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, it's like when you have a fat kid or a fat person. What do they have to do? They gotta first stop eating bad food. You gotta eat healthy. You gotta eat a clean diet. You gotta start to actually take care of yourself, right? All of a sudden, your physiological uh uh kind of metrics, etc. Start to improve a little bit, but it hurts. You, your body is starved for, it wants sugar. It wants Coca-Cola. It wants carbs. It wants all this stuff. At the same time, though, you can't just sit there and just uh say, hey, I'm gonna cut out all this and have a clean diet. You also then have to burn off the fat that you currently have. So you gotta start to work out. You gotta go, you gotta lift weights, you gotta run, you gotta do all this stuff. And so that's what we're going through is we gotta wake up at 6 a.m. We gotta go for a run before work. That's not fun.

• 11:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Nobody wants to do it at first, but over time you start to build that muscle memory. You start to get your body used to waking up early. You start to get used to working out. You start getting used to, hey, when it's time to eat, I don't reach for a cookie or ice cream. Instead, I reach for some healthy food, some maybe a chicken breast and some broccoli. And so that's what Doge is ultimately doing. And the problem is that he's getting yelled at and screamed at from the bag of cookies and from the ice cream and from all the people who are going to be on the opposite end of this. And so when I look at Doge, I simply say to myself, uh, people who are trying to stop their progress are likely the people who are most benefiting from the status quo. And so we just have to ask ourselves, do we want a small, efficient government? Or do we want a big bloated bureaucracy?

• 12:25Anthony Pompliano?

  It's very clear what the two differences are here. Now, to your point, there's going to be pain. There are going to be people that um uh, you know, can point to issues that get created, but those are micro problems. Do I hope that they happen? Of course not. I want there to be a, a, uh, no issues or anything. But if you're moving quickly and you're making radical change, then yes, there's gonna be issues, but those issues are worth it because they're micro problems in light of us solving this big macro problem, which is probably one of the single most important threats to the United States. What do you think?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  I don't know, nothing like this has ever been done before. So hopefully it's a good thing. Obviously, like tightening the budget is a good thing.

• 13:05Anthony Pompliano?

  What is your biggest concern about them doing this? I don't even know if you're actually concerned, but like, what, what, what is it like you think?

• 13:09Speaker 02

  No, I'm, I'm just, I think you don't know what you don't know. So going into the government and like, you know, firing all these people and like doing all this stuff. Yes, you're cutting out the bloat, but maybe you're also accidentally breaking some stuff that you don't even know that you're breaking.

• 13:26Anthony Pompliano?

  But I think that's the point is, um, it's not like, uh, they're shutting down, um, the payments to the federal employees. And all of a sudden the, the payroll system breaks, right? What they're doing is they're frankly, they're shutting down stuff that people are putting, it's like, ah, it's a problem. And you ask yourself, why are we sending money there? Right? Like, like the foreign aid stuff is a great example where, uh, should there be foreign aid? Of course there's situations where there should be foreign aid. Should we be handing out money like it's candy all around the world? Of course not. And so if you start with a zero based budget, that's the, that's the key thing here. If you go into a business, usually what most executives do is a very watered down version of, uh, kind of tightening your belt. So what do they say?

• 14:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Say, okay, give me the P and L from last year. I'm going to take that P and L. Okay. We spent $2 million on marketing. Could we get away with only spending 1.8 million? Okay. Oh, I saved 10%. Now that's 10% savings in our marketing budget. I saved 200K. That's, that's a good sign. Instead, what really radical executives do is they come in and they say, we're going zero based budget. We're going to start from zero. Bring to me any idea you have for a marketing budget, but we're going to start from zero. You don't get what you got last year. We're not going to do a 10% reduction. We're going to 100% reduction and we're going to build it back up from scratch. And then usually what you find is instead of having only 10% savings, now all of a sudden you have like a 60% savings.

• 14:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Because if you were trying to just cut, it's not nearly as effective as rebuilding from scratch. And so that would be nearly impossible for the government to do, but I actually think that would be the single best solution. Is take the annual budget and say, everyone goes to zero. Come and pitch on why you should get whatever money you think that you want. And my guess is that 50%.

• 15:13Anthony Pompliano?

  50% of the money that we spend on. Why 50%? Cause I figured that one out of every two things that we're spending money on, probably we don't need to spend money on. Is it nice that we spend money on it? Of course, the people who are involved think it's nice that we're spending money on, right? There's they'll they'll moralize and make these arguments and all this stuff. But at the end of the day, the true functions of the United States government, it seems like we've pursued all these other things, but we haven't provided the core functions. Homes are unaffordable. The border was unsecure. People, literally, if you go look at the surveys, feel like the past is brighter than the future.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:47Anthony Pompliano?

  They're losing hope. The dollar is being divested. All these problems, right? I think about veteran suicide. Think about the homelessness on the street. You know, things like the bridge in Baltimore is still not built. The permit issue in LA, Flint water. Remember that whole issue like like, how about the crumbling infrastructure of roads, bridges, trains, like you'd go through all this stuff. You're like, dude, we got a ton of things that we can improve here.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  The foundation, all things need to be improved.

• 16:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, again, it goes back to there's no right answer. If you go to the extreme on one end, everyone's mad. If you go to the extreme on the other end, everyone's mad.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  I just think it's going to be an interesting experiment of whether you can run a country like a business.

• 16:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, if you are optimizing to balance a budget, you have to run the country like a business.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  So is that Trump is aiming to balance the budget?

• 16:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Here's what's fascinating. I mean, I literally, I think we talked about on this episode every week. I definitely made a couple of videos. I was shocked that neither Harris, Biden, or Trump were promising to balance the budget. That was not a campaign promise.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:53Anthony Pompliano?

  But it feels like because of the momentum of this, now all of a sudden, I hear people talking about, are we going to balance the budget?

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Like, there's a path to that.

• 17:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, if you if that was your sole thing you're optimizing for, then what you would do is you would go in, you would slash government spending, you would drastically increase the you would drastically increase tariff revenue, right? You would also try to figure out other kind of monetary revenue sources. This whole like external revenue source, not only tariffs, but there's probably other things you can do. You could easily monetize the balance sheet, you could sell off. I mean, something like we have thousands of US government buildings that are unoccupied. Why is the government holding all those buildings? Just sell them. Let people build, build things with them. Right? So all of that, but here's the, the piece, and I think that probably you and I vehemently agree on, the government isn't just here to have a balanced budget.

• 17:45Anthony Pompliano?

  It also has certain services that it provides or, you know, other things that it looks at. And so balanced budget is really, really important, but it can't be, you know, fanatical pursuit of just a balanced budget without looking at other things. But I think I probably lean more towards a lot of the quote unquote, other things. It's like crazy nonsense. Right? You know, it, it's just like, why are we wasting money? Stop wasting money, not, don't cut the core services, but stop wasting money. And if you go and you look at some of these programs, I mean, Doge is tweeting this stuff publicly.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:18Anthony Pompliano?

  They're just saying, hey, look, here's the, the contracts that we're canceling. I've never seen that kind of transparency.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  And like I told you, I think this used to be the work of investigative journalists who specialize in political reporting, but a lot of those people have been cut. So now an entity like Doge is entering and quote unquote, exposing the, the.

• 18:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you want to know one of the things I think that could be really interesting?

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Why?

• 18:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there's been a lot of people who said, oh, these people tend to be more Republican leaning because of Republican administration. They should, um, uh, have a couple of Democrat, um, you know, kind of folks that go with them so that it's more bipartisan. I think I saw Mark Cuban and maybe Ro Khanna, I can't remember, but.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Go with the Doge team.

• 18:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So like when the Doge team goes in right now, a lot of people are painting it as like, here come the Republican, you know, government, uh, spending cutters or whatever. Well, what if you had a more bipartisan thing, like have some Democrats.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Great.

• 19:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, it may be great, but also it may slow down Doge because there becomes like the political, uh, kind of misalignment. But what I do think would be really interesting is if you could find a couple of these independent journalists, not mainstream journalists, right? Because there's too much bureaucracy inside of those organizations. But if you went and you found well-respected independent journalists and you said, come with us. Help us document this. We're gonna do the work. Your job is to document it. I think that you would have this massive explosion of interest because people would say, okay, hold on a second here. Now we're at least seeing what's happening, not just the end result of we canceled these contracts, but this person is able to constantly do that. So what does that look like? It's kind of like the White House press corps.

• 19:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Imagine if Doge had a press corps where they did two or three press conferences a day, where they basically said, hey, this morning, here's what we found. Okay, this afternoon, here's what we found. We're gonna come back tomorrow. Here's what we're gonna do. And they just kept doing that over and over and over again. They would dominate headlines. They would get people's support behind them. And then all of a sudden, you'd have these independent journalists that are actually covering, what are these contracts? Who's benefiting from this stuff? That is kind of the level two or level three of this whole work that I just don't think that they're there yet.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  I gotta say, I am no conspiracy theorist, but that is crazy that the web searches in DC are spiking for criminal defense attorneys.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  That's wild. Why are they doing that? I mean, I guess if you think that they're gonna come after you for something, you're being proactive.

• 20:41Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a couple of things in DC. 4,000 homes got listed for sale, which crashed the housing market. The average home in DC lost $130,000 to $140,000 worth of value, the average home. That's how much inventory got put on the market. So these are people who are taking severance payments, they're getting fired, etc. The second thing is unemployment is already spiking in DC. Obviously, people are losing their jobs. The increased search results for paper shredding, criminal defense attorneys, you know, all these things, whatever. The question is just like, what was the base? If it was like one person in DC was previously looking for a criminal defense attorney,

• 21:25Anthony Pompliano?

  and now there's five people, well, that huge increase obviously would lead to this massive increase on the charts. I don't think it was one, obviously. So there is a material increase. I wish that we knew how many more people, right? Is it being driven by because 100 people did it? Or is it being driven because, you know, 2,000 people are doing it? The kind of magnitude of the nominal number would be really important, but the trend don't lie. And so I think there's a lot of people who are just saying, hey, you know, maybe I should start paying attention here. It looks like they're pretty serious.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  It is, I think the the most shocking thing to every American is at the speed at which they are operating, I think normally we're used to a new president coming in, making a bunch of promises, and then things happen slowly. But I think with the the speed and decisiveness that this has happened is the most surprising thing. They're actually doing things. They're actually like going in and be like making changes.

• 22:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, so there was a um, there's a clip that just came uh, just came out. It's Elon Musk and he's talking about the fact that uh, they have now built uh, an XAI, uh, the single best AI model. And the results just came out in the last, you know, twenty four, forty eight hours. And uh, he's sitting there and he's talking about how they did it. Now, a huge part of AI models, not getting into all the nerd talk, just kind of generally, is uh, the more computing power that you have generally means that you can build a better model. But you gotta remember, this is hardware. It's not software. It's hardware. So you gotta be able to build a physical infrastructure. You gotta go get all these computers linked up, etc. And so what he says is, okay, well, we went to a bunch of data center, uh, and they didn't have enough space. Told us they're gonna take eighteen months. So we said, well, we gotta do it ourselves. So then we found a factory in Memphis, Tennessee. And then we realized that, okay, we're gonna put all these computers

• 23:13Anthony Pompliano?

  in there, but there's not enough power in the building. So we went and we leased a ton of generators and we lined them up outside. And then we were able to now generate. But now we need cooling because if it's hot, because of all the the generation of power, we gotta cool it off. So he says that they leased one fourth of all mobile cooling uh, technology in the United States and they brought it to this facility. And on the other side of the building, they lined all that up. So if you think about this, this is like classic Elon Musk, is figure out the problem, understand what the solution is, and then go execute. He has built what is believed to be the largest data center in terms of these AI training clusters. And he did it by frankly, doing things that other people weren't willing to do.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  I just don't understand how he has the time.

• 23:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, remember, he's got really good people around him.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And a huge part of it is these people are bringing to him, here is the problem and he's making decisions. Right? It's not like he's the one who's physically going and, you know, setting up the, the power or, or the liquid cooling or, or stuff like that.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  So tell me really quick about this Fort Knox thing that Elon Musk wants to go to.

• 24:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you know about Fort Knox?

• 24:20Speaker 02

  It's a military base.

• 24:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it used to be called Camp Knox.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Then eventually it became Fort Knox. Um, and the general idea was, uh, at some point, the United States believed in kind of the thirties that that was the best place to secure the gold. And so somewhere-

• 24:35Speaker 02

  The gold that the United States government holds.

• 24:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Correct. They, they put that into Fort Knox and, um, Fort Knox has never really been audited on a consistent basis. And so, uh, people have long thought, well, maybe the gold's not really there. And if you go and you look-

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Is this like a, like a conspiracy theory on the internet or is this like a wide-standing American belief of people?

• 24:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, most conspiracy theories are, uh, wide-standing American beliefs that just haven't become popular yet, uh, according to the last five or six years. But, uh, in this case, it is very quickly going from, you know, kind of conspiracy theory to wide-held question. I wouldn't say it's a belief, but a question. And the thought process is, uh, a senator recently tweeted and said that he called up Fort Knox and said, I want to come see Fort Knox. And they say, can't come. And he said, I'm Senator of the United States. I go to military bases all the time. Why can't I come? He said, can't come. He said, I want to see the gold. He said, can't come. So he said, that's weird. And so then Elon Musk quote retweeted it and he basically was like, well, we should just see the gold. I want to do a walking tour of it and I'm going to livestream it so the American people can see their gold.

• 25:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, my general thought process is, um, man, would it be interesting if, uh, everyone who's worried about there not being enough gold, what if there's more gold?

• 25:46Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 25:47Anthony Pompliano?

  What if we have more gold than they're telling everyone?

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Why would they not tell us?

• 25:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I saw somebody tweet this online. I thought it was very, very interesting. I was in Iraq. Many people who went to Iraq, Afghanistan, many other places around the world. Saddam Hussein had a lot of gold. Where'd that gold go? Who has that? I don't know. I have no clue. Did we sell it? We definitely confiscated it. How do I know? I have friends who have pictures literally sitting in his palace with their feet up on his desk, holding a bar of gold.

• 26:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Where'd all that stuff go? And so, again, I don't know. It could be that we sold it off. It could be that we left it in Iraq. It could be like, but there's a lot of gold. And that was just his palace. That doesn't include anything else. Where did the Iraq Central Bank? Where their assets go? Like, there's all this stuff, right? So maybe actually, we've been acquiring more assets than have been publicly revealed. And it's all sitting there. And so we went to audit it. We'd be like, hey, we thought we had, you know, $500 billion worth of gold. Actually, we've got, you know, so much more. I don't know. And so I think that, again, it goes back to this idea of, um, man, the conversation's changing really quick. All of a sudden, the world's richest man, who now is, you know, kind of like a special advisor or employer or whatever at the government,

• 27:03Anthony Pompliano?

  is saying, I'm just gonna walk through and livestream it. This is the age of the internet. Transparency rules the day.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  This is what I'm saying. I just, I think that every sector of the government just is not used to this.

• 27:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course not.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  And it worries me that, I don't know, I'm just, when something radical happens like this, people hate transparency. Why people hate the press, you know, usually if they're doing a good job, you don't like the media because they're doing a good job, but.

• 27:33Anthony Pompliano?

  You, when you're thinking about this, I think you probably got like butterflies in your stomach, right? You're like, ah, but I, I think you're thinking of those as, uh, you're nervous? You're, you're worried? I think that's excitement. I think you're actually saying to yourself, imagine if.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  No, no, it's, I'm all about more transparency. I'm saying that like I, it makes me nervous as to like the crazies that could come out from the shadows. If their stuff is now out in the open, you know?

• 28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, that's crazy. We haven't even, we're at the tip of the iceberg right now. He hasn't even gone into the real stuff, right? And, um, I don't know if you've seen that now they're having the big crackdown on the PPP loans?

• 28:13Speaker 02

  I need him to go investigate the aliens next.

• 28:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, listen.

• 28:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Should I give him the idea?

• 28:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, um, I do think that there is a pretty interesting thing happening where people are doing a lot of crazy stuff. They're taking advantage of the government, right? We're talking about other countries with tariffs and stuff taking advantage of the United States. American citizens were taking advantage of the government. And so PPP loans, all of a sudden, there's a huge crackdown and they're going to these companies and they're saying, dude, you got tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars. You didn't need that. You, you literally committed wire fraud, bank fraud, like all this stuff, crackdown. Same thing's happened at the national government level. And so let's pull this back real quick to just business and investing.

• 28:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Hopefully, what is going to happen is we're going to have more transparency of data, which will allow people to better understand what is the national debt? How, what are America's assets? What is going to be the inflation rate? What, what are all of these economic data points that are important? Let's make sure they're real. Make sure they're accurate. The second thing is that companies, both in the private sector and in the public sector, are going to start, or a public market are going to start being really on top of it. Right? I was listening to a podcast the other day with Terry Smith. Our friend William Green did it. And he said that at one point, I forget which company, I wish I remembered, but I want to say it was like IBM, don't hold me to that, but I think it was like IBM. He said that he was looking at their books and he called up the company and said, hey, we just can't make the math work.

• 29:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, it looks like there's like a $2 billion shortfall somewhere. What are we missing? And IBM called them back, or whatever the company was, and was like, oh yeah, sorry, we made a mistake. And they're public filing, nobody caught the math. And he was like, we just felt like maybe we're the only people who went and looked at the math.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And that's a publicly traded company. And so it just goes back to this idea of technology is going to solve a lot of this too. Right? If we can start to just use technology systems to talk to each other, to do this, like this is the messy middle that we've got to kind of work through. But I do think eventually that we're going to get to a place where this is going to end up being

• 30:19Anthony Pompliano?

  okay. It's just going to be a little painful on the way, a little bumpy of a ride. But if you arrive safe at your destination, all is good in the world.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Great. That's all we got for today.

• 30:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for doing this.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Thanks.