353: Peter McCormack on Bitcoin, Podcasting, and The World

Peter McCormack is a journalist who hosts two popular podcasts, What Bitcoin Did and Defiance. He previously ran an advertising agency and has grown to be one of the most recognizable people in the Bitcoin industry. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, Roger Ver, podcasting, the pandemic, the recession, the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing response, and the US election. =============================== When the New Yorker magazine asked Mark Zuckerberg how he gets his news he said the one news source he definitely follows is Techmeme. For more than two years and nearly 700 episodes, The Techmeme Ride Home has been Silicon Valley’s favorite tech news podcast. The Techmeme Ride Home is a daily podcast, only fifteen to twenty minutes long, and every day by 5pm eastern its ALL the latest tech news. =============================== The World Series of Trading (WSOT) is the first of its kind to bring the exhilaration of crypto trading competition to the global stage. WSOT believes in the importance of empowering traders who embody the passion and power for crypto trading. This bi-annual event aims to champion the spirit of competition, fair play, and cultivate camaraderie among crypto derivatives traders from around the world with the ultimate goal of creating positive change in the crypto space. This year’s prize pool is a whopping 200 BTC. Sign up here: http://www.bybit.com/wsot_warmup? =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 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://www.pompletter.com

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

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Peter McCormick is a journalist who hosts two popular podcasts, What Bitcoin Did and Defiance. He previously ran an advertising agency and has grown to be one of the most recognizable people in the Bitcoin industry. Peter's also one of my good friends. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, Roger Ver, podcasting, the pandemic, the recession, the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing response, and the US election. This episode was a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy it. Before we get into the episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors.

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  I've been telling you for weeks now about the Tech Meme Ride Home Podcast. It's a daily tech news podcast that anyone who is anyone in Silicon Valley listens to every day. But did you know that the Tech Meme Ride Home also has bonus interview episodes on the weekend? They talk to newsmakers that hit the headlines of that very week. Past and future guests include Howard Lindzen, AOL founder Steve Case on investing outside of the valley, Andreessen Horowitz's Connie Chan on super apps, Andreessen Horowitz's Angela Strange on why every company will be a fintech company, Mark Gurman on Apple rumors, Jay Yarrow of CNBC, Eric Jackson on the streaming wars, Matt Stoller on Silicon Valley monopolies,

• 1:24Anthony Pompliano?

  and Gary Marcus on building AI we can trust. The Tech Meme Ride Home Podcast gives you the headlines, context, and conversation around the world of tech every single weekday. And on the weekends, it sets the conversation with great interviews with Silicon Valley luminaries. Search your podcast app now and subscribe to the Tech Meme Ride Home Podcast. Our next sponsor is the World Series of Trading from Bybit. It's a first of its kind to bring the exhilaration of crypto trading competition to the global stage. The World Series of Trading believes in empowering traders who embody the passion and power for crypto trading. It's a biannual event that aims to champion the spirit of competition, fair play, and cultivate camaraderie among crypto-derived traders from around the world with the ultimate goal of

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Creating positive change in the crypto space. This year's prize pool is a whopping 200 Bitcoin. That's right, the World Series of Trading from Bybit is a crypto trading biannual event with a whopping 200 Bitcoin as the prize pool. You can go in the description of this podcast and click on the link there to get signed up. World Series of Trading, if you think you're a good crypto trader, go join the biannual event and have a shot at winning 200 Bitcoin from their prize pool. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry.

• 2:51Anthony Pompliano?

  You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, that's it for the sponsors today. Let's get into the episode with Peter. I enjoyed it and I hope you do as well.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  So what's up, Pomp?

• 3:31Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. What's up, man? Peter. What's going on, dude?

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Dude, what's going on with you? Hey, this is the first time I've seen you since you've been married, dude.

• 3:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, no, thank you.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  How did that go?

• 3:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, it was fascinating. I enjoyed it. I'm excited. We got married in the middle of the pandemic in New York City and it was just plain and I, my brother was the minister or the officiant or whatever it's called. And he started off the ceremony, if you want to call it that, with family, friends. Thank you so much for coming and making the long trek to this momentous occasion.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Hey, well, you saved a shit ton of money.

• 4:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Oh, trust me, we're we're still gonna have like a a real um kind of bigger uh celebration. Oh, yeah, it was gonna be small to begin with, only fifty people, so um not a not not a a huge operation. I've been to weddings that are like, you know, four hundred people, and you're just like, dude, are you are you doing this for yourself? Or are you doing this for the four hundred people who are here?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think they're usually doing it for the girl they're marrying.

• 4:40Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a that's a whole nother thing, right?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Because you were married before, right?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, for for three months.

• 4:48Anthony Pompliano?

  How how did you do the wedding?

• 4:50Speaker 02

  We had a we had a big wedding in London. Well, not huge, like eight eighty people. Uh, we got married at Westminster Registry Office, where Paul McCartney got married, like a really cool place. And then we had the reception at, what was it called? Um, St. Pankras Hotel, which is uh King's Cross Station, beautiful place. But yeah, that that did really work out for me.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Hey, you might you might even be longer married longer married now than I was.

• 5:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, only three weeks, only three weeks so far. Uh, what what uh what what are your thoughts on Bitcoin so far? La- last night, we're recording this on Sunday, uh, I think we're gonna release in a couple of days. But uh, last night Bitcoin just absolutely ripping people's faces off and then dumping.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I thought it would at twelve. I didn't know. I've kind of stopped that whole play playing the kind of market thing and trying to tell tops and bottoms. My my Bitcoin investment strategy right now is accumulate, hold. And I've said, I I wasn't gonna sell any for unless I had to, right, dude? But I wasn't gonna sell any for three halvings. We've had one recently. So I've got two more halvings I'm not gonna sell any for. So I've got like quite a long time horizon. I thought it might dump at twelve. Listen, I you there was a time where I had a fair amount of Bitcoin back in two thousand seventeen, and I fucked up and lost like eighty percent just by buying mining equipment and trading shitcoins and just being a moron. And then, like, I stopped all that. I sold all my shitcoins. I went Bitcoin only. And then, in the last year, I've

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Grow my Bitcoin stack by like forty percent.

• 6:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and and that means like I've got more than I had. I I can't have less. I'm not gonna lose any. And therefore, let's see where we are in ten years. So like, even though it did dump, I'm cool with that. What about you?

• 6:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I I'm the exact same way. I I only accumulate. I've been saying for a long time, it's just a game of accumulation. It's a fixed supply asset. Uh, how do you think about, like, not necessarily portfolio construction, but just like when you're buying Bitcoin? Do you, are you obsessive about like, hey, every two weeks on this day at this time, I put a certain amount of money in? Or do you just kind of opportunistically acquire more Bitcoin?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  So I only earn it now.

• 7:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Ooh.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I did.

• 7:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain that.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Well, Andreas talked about it. He said the best Bitcoin you get is the one you earn, right? It's the one you earn. So a couple of things happen. You'll you'll find this quite interesting. So what I do is like with my sponsors. I've always got at least one sponsor wants to pay in Bitcoin. And what I used to do is I used to convert seventy-five percent to cash to run my business. Pay my team and then keep twenty-five percent in Bitcoin. And that's why I was able to accumulate some. Then about a week and a half ago, when Bitcoin was like nine-three, one of my clients paid their bill and it was a quarterly bill. And paid in Bitcoin. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna leave this time for a couple of weeks. I'm gonna see what happens. And then obviously we shot up now. So. Strangely, I I'm not like thinking, oh, I'm gonna sell that seventy-five percent now.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Because I'm in profit on that Bitcoin, I just leave it on my balance sheet. So as I manage my business, I have my my cash in the bank. Cash out on invoice and then I have my Bitcoin, right? And I might as well just leave that Bitcoin on the balance sheet. If that never goes below nine thousand three hundred, it doesn't matter what happens.

• 8:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  We're always at a nine thousand three hundred. That stays on the balance sheet. And whether that goes to twenty, thirty, forty K Bitcoin, it doesn't matter. So so, yeah, so I only earn Bitcoin and I also, I've I've heard some playing poker this last few weeks. Yeah. Have you seen this poker game?

• 8:20Anthony Pompliano?

  No, what is it?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  It's Chris organizes, like a bunch of Bitcoiners playing poker. Like Charlie Lee's there. Who else comes to play? His brother Bobby's there sometimes. Luke Martin's there. So we play every Thursday, we play. And I think I've earned like three Bitcoin.

• 8:35Anthony Pompliano?

  What are the buy-ins?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  It's like 0.3 Bitcoin. Like it's 0.1, but you need to have 0.3. It's a 0.1 sit down. And then you can you can you can rebuy. So everyone says to have like 0.3. We've been paying for like, I think 13, 14 weeks. I'm like three Bitcoin up.

• 8:52Anthony Pompliano?

  That's not bad.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's all earned Bitcoin. I only I only earned Bitcoin now. And like I say, I've done about 40% up this year. And that's what I'll continue to do. And like, I thought it would dump at 12. The 12 seemed like a number it would. And also, we went up, we went from nine, two to 12 pretty quick. Like, we were overbought, right?

• 9:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, I don't really pay attention so much to all of like the underlying daily metrics. I sometimes even watch like RSI and kind of all that stuff. So I don't know kind of what all that was showing. But we definitely went up very quickly from, you know, nine, 9,500 to 12,000. But I mean, look, it's one of these things where there's only so many assets in the world that go up 20, 30% in, you know, a week. Literally dump $1,500 in seconds and then recover $700 in, you know, a minute later. Like, it's just, you know, Bitcoin is Bitcoin.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  You can't play that shit. Anyway, listen, I got a question for you. There's something else we should have done before that.

• 9:48Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  I want to talk to you about Roger Ver.

• 9:50Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's do it.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Of course I want to talk to you about that. Okay, so firstly, I didn't listen to all of it. And what I did listen to, actually, it seemed okay. It was better than I expected. The reason I didn't listen to all of it is because it was nothing new. What every time, so I had it on and I kept going back. I was like, I've heard all this before. So I will give it 10 minutes, come back. And I was like, like, I've heard it all before from him. So I didn't listen to like the last half. What did you get out of it?

• 10:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So, obviously, uh, when Obviously. I agreed to, uh, to do this, uh, and Roger agreed to do this. It's not a secret to him or I that it would be, uh, heavily scrutinized, right? And because of that, I took it, you know, overly serious, right? More serious than I normally take things, uh, when I do these types of interviews. And, uh, I reached out to some people. I got some ideas in terms of what I should, uh, should ask about. On top of that, I also got, you know, quite a bit of feedback from the audience on Twitter, uh, et cetera. And frankly, eighty, ninety percent of the comments were very much like scammer, right?

• 10:58Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like, oh, okay, like, fine, if that's your opinion, whatever, but like, why? Right? And that's what I was trying to get at was like, kind of get to layers two, three, four, five of the argument. And some people were able to clearly articulate that. And so, first of all, to Roger's credit, like, I asked him a lot of questions I think people want answers to. And he didn't not answer them, really, he, he answered the questions. And so, um, things like, you know, uh, his portfolio construction, his thought process behind why he did certain things. Uh, what it would take for him to come back to Bitcoin and, and kind of, you know, identify or admit that Bitcoin Cash, uh, didn't work. And, and things that, you know, it, it's very hard to have a conversation with somebody about what is obviously sensitive topics.

• 11:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, when you're being combative with somebody, right? And so, you know, you and I have talked about it a bunch of times before. It's just like, that's not my style, right? Is I'll, I'll bring people on, I'm gonna be respectful, hopefully they'll be respectful back. And are there times where people say things and maybe I don't push back as much as somebody who, who wants to be combative will be sure. But at the same time, you know, that's kind of what the audience is there for, right? Is that they let people know on Twitter, whatever. And so, I actually think that my biggest takeaways were, one, you can't deny what Roger did in the early days of Bitcoin, right? And for Bitcoin, uh, two, he has a very rational thought process behind a number of decisions he made.

• 12:25Anthony Pompliano?

  What I do think, and I said it to him, is we just have a difference of opinion as to whether that was a good thought process and decision making or not. And the part that, again, you got to give him credit for is like, at the end, we kind of wrapped it up and said, all right, there's two views of the world. Here's why I believe my view, here's why you believe yours. Ultimately, neither one of our opinions matter, the market will decide. And so far, the market is deciding that Bitcoin is the winner and will be the winner. And Roger is basically betting on the fact that that's going to change in the future, but understands, you know, that that may not happen. And so if that is kind of the path we go down, then I think at some point, he would, he would come back to Bitcoin.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of, I, I, yeah, I'm not sure if he'll come back to Bitcoin, I'm not sure.

• 13:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I think he will.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Hmm, I asked him that before, and he said, he said he'd probably go off and do something else. I'm not sure he will, I'm not su- but you know, I have, um, let me go, let me go back a step. There's always nuance to some of this stuff, right?

• 13:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  And especially when you're doing an interview, and I know what you mean about the combative stuff. When I did the Brian Armstrong interview, I knew there were a group of people who wouldn't like it, and they made the decision to dislike it before it happened. And the reason I knew that is like, there was some really good progress in that interview, yet what they did is they found the bits they didn't like, picked it out, and just complained about it. So I know, I knew those fuckers wouldn't like it beforehand, and you know, whatever to them. But, but you have to construct an interview in a respectful way, and you want it bitter to and fro, you know it, I know it, right? But the thing about, about Roger is like, I actually have some sympathies for him, for some old stuff, right? So I have some sympathies for him. Bitcoin became something that was different from what he expected.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  But that does that all the time. Bitcoin does that all the time to a bunch of different people, right? And you just have to accept that, and he couldn't accept that. But he was so sold on this idea that Bitcoin is kind of cash, cheap, fast payments, and it just became something else, something possibly far more valuable. Now, some people will always say it's that, I, I think it's disingenuous. If you look at the Bitcoin white paper, if you're gonna scream about how great Satoshi is, and this gif he gave to the world, I think you have to be honest and look at the white paper, he talked about online commerce, he talked about cash. So I think, I, I think you have to understand that some people believe that's what they were building, and then perhaps it was both things, perhaps it was something else. So I had some sympathy about that. My biggest issue, and this is actually more towards Roger, is kind of like... When do you move on from this dude?

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Like, when do you accept what's happened and just move on, like, focus on Bitcoin Cash? Stop fighting, you're not, you're not gonna change Bitcoin by shouting at it anymore.

• 15:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but, but I think that, that, that was kind of like, when I went into the interview and, um, yeah, I talked to him beforehand, before we even did the interview and, and I think both of us, because we knew it would be so heavily scrutinized and, and all this stuff, like, we both kind of just wanted to feel it, feel it out of like, are we both going to be respectful here, you know, kind of where, where do our differences lie? And, and really just make sure that it would be frankly worth our time to record it and also too for the audience to, to listen. Um, and I think the piece that was very clear was, it's kind of like when you're a kid and let's say you've got a sibling. If you're nice to them, for the majority, they're gonna be nice back, right? If you go over there and, you know, with a wiffle ball bat and whack them in the head, like, you're gonna end up on the ground brawling, right?

• 15:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like, it's kind of like, you know, you, you, especially if you're the older person, right? Or, or you're the person who, who's kind of, um, initiating something. And so the same thing with an interview, right? If you get on and all of a sudden you're just, you know, trying to get somebody with gotcha questions and, and poke them and, and catch them doing things, whatever. It's like, yeah, sure, of course they're gonna be on edge, of course they're gonna be overly defensive, of course they're gonna, uh, be a little bit more aggressive back. But if instead you just say, look, I just want to go through all of, all of this and, uh, I actually want you to walk away from this saying, I was able to put my thoughts and ideas on the record and also be able to hear the other side. And so a couple of times during the interview, I literally asked him, I said, hey, okay, you just described what you believe.

• 16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, and you just described, you know, for the, let's say the block, uh, dispute. You just described why it, something else happened. What is the argument of the other side of the table? Like, can you flip around and basically tell me the people you disagree with, what's their argument? And to his credit, like, yeah, he, he can actually very, in, in great detail, explain not only his argument, but also he could explain the argument of the people that, uh, he disagrees with. And I think that is a sign of not only one, intelligence and, and kind of emotional intelligence, but also, three is just like, he understands the problem. Right? And that's kind of where I think, you know, when people who listen to it, they're like, wait a second. Like, this is a conversation that Roger hasn't had before of just, he's showing that he understands there's two sides to this argument.

• 17:10Anthony Pompliano?

  He's betting on one side, there's people betting on the other side, and the market's going to decide. Right? And so far, the market has leaned not in Roger's favor. But I think the other piece that people have to walk away from this, and, you know, he talks about it, but doesn't quantify it. Is he says he's a bad trader, right? And so if you kind of back out of that, like, he lost a lot of money doing this. Right? So kind of his belief in something came with upside and downside. And so far, he's experienced the downside. And, you know, to his credit, like, he talks about that, right? And he was very kind of transparent about it and forthcoming. And so it's, you know, one of these things where people are complicated, you know, creatures, right?

• 17:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, we're just human. And so there's things that you can like about somebody. There's things that you can disagree with or not like. And in Roger's case, I think that there's a lot of people who are trying to put a binary, you know, good or bad label on. But if you look at it from the historical context, you know, there's a lot of people who wouldn't be here without Roger's work in Bitcoin. And then on the same side, there's a lot of things that, you know, I asked him about specifically, like, using bitcoin.com, but people buying Bitcoin Cash. And, you know, again, he described his thought process as to, you know, what they're doing or the logic there. And people can decide whether they think that's an acceptable answer or not. But I think that's the key is just people are complicated figures, right?

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder how it plays out for him. Like I said, I had a lot of sympathy for, for early, the early things he did. He did a lot of things to help Bitcoin, and I had some sympathies for, for things not going his way. But obviously, a lot of that gets eroded away over time, where you just see somebody repeating the same arguments. Yeah. Causing a bit of trouble, a bit of mischief, etc. Um, but I'm not like the type of person who's just gonna sit there and just be like, hate you, I fuck you, I want everything to go to shit for you. You know, so and I understand why some people have, they've got, you know, real PTSD around what happened with uh, secret two acts. You know, there's a real fear of a takeover of Bitcoin and, and, you know, Roger's involvement in, in certain things around that period of time.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  But I just wonder how it'll play out for him, because I don't think Bitcoin Cash has much of a future. Has a, I think it has a future of something that can be traded. But, you know, I think it's very hard to build a cryptocurrency that lots of people use regularly. You know, Bitcoin is kind of amazing that it is used so regularly. You know, I actually, strangely enough, I actually do use Bitcoin quite a bit now. I probably do, in terms of send and receive, fifteen to twenty transactions a month now. And that's actually just, yeah, using Bitcoin because it makes sense in all of those occasions. But I don't use anything else. I don't have a need for anything else. I could imagine a very rare scenario where I may use Monero, but just because I'm too much of a moron to use Bitcoin in a private way.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  But I don't really use other cryptocurrencies and I wonder if people are using perhaps Bitcoin Cash a bit out of a desire to keep it going, right? Give it some kind of energy. But ultimately, I just kind of, I, I think it's, do you know, let me add another thing in there, Pom, as well. I just did, um, a guest on a show today, they want to do a Bitcoin segment. And they said, try to explain Bitcoin and I, you know, I did the whole, it's just like gold but digital. If I'd have been trying to explain it as a way of doing payments and censorship resistant payments, I think I would have struggled. Because everyone right now can benefit from a digital code, especially with all the money printing. But do, do people really care about censorship resistant payments? I don't, I don't think, I don't, I think in an ideal world they would have it, but they don't really care. I mean, day to day, everyone is just spending money normally, so.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  I just, I think the project screwed long term.

• 20:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, look, I, you know, and I told Roger on it that obviously we have a difference of opinion as to the future outlook of that. And frankly, it's something the market's going to decide. So, you know, it is what it is. The part that I think people have to remember is one of the mistakes that many investors or, you know, market participants will make is they look at something as a snapshot today. Right? And so, you know, this is the Paul Krugman, the internet will be never be more important than the fax machine type stuff, right? This is looking at, you know, Bitcoin in 2014 in a single point of time. And what I think that technology folks are very good at doing because they've seen the pattern

• 21:31Anthony Pompliano?

  so many times is they're able to understand what this thing is today, what are the structural components of it, and what foundation does that lay for it to evolve over the coming, you know, 10, 20, 30 years. And to me, we all like to debate the merits of what can it do right now, this second. But when you kind of say, hey, look, that's not the right conversation. Instead, it is the structural components. There is nothing, you know, more powerful, valuable, and exciting, in my opinion, than that structural component of Bitcoin. And it really just comes down to three things, right? One is it has a fixed supply, which,

• 22:12Anthony Pompliano?

  you know, as we talked about, the money printing. Two is it's fully decentralized. So, the decentralization is actually the, you know, then kind of the ramification of that is censorship resistant payments and kind of all that stuff. But decentralization is the structural piece. And then the third thing, and probably the most important in my mind, is it has market adoption. And I think one of the key pieces that those who are not students of history on a technology front miss is The best technology does not win, right? That is a complete fallacy. It is what gets adoption. And you can go back to the VHS first Betamax. You can go, you know, all through history, you can go through all these different things. But money specifically is a belief system.

• 22:57Anthony Pompliano?

  It is a network effect business, right? And it's very viral in the sense of you send it to people and kind of do all this stuff. And because of that, I think that Bitcoin actually has a much bigger advantage than people realize. Nothing to do with the technology. It is simply the market adoption, right? And that's frankly, one of the things that Roger and I kind of came to an agreement in terms of where our difference of opinion lies, right? He believes that technology is important. I believe that market adoption is important in the early days and we'll see how it plays out. But, you know, that's kind of one of the key differences in opinion.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Do you think he got anything out of it? Do you think, because I might go and watch the rest of it now, but do you think by the end of it, he left with any, you know, a change of opinion of his? Any potential insights into where he should look at things differently? Or do you think he just came to replay his message and will have left exactly the same?

• 23:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, I don't think that, again, I didn't approach it as like, let me try to convince you. Like, we were pretty clear during it in terms of, I didn't want to get into some, you know, argument or even really debate. It was more of just like, let's outline, you know, quote unquote, the facts. And there were people who scoff at the idea of facts, right? But just like, what do you believe? What do other people believe? Why? Here is the, you know, kind of different options somebody has. And why do you believe you're right? And why do you believe, you know, why do other people believe they're right? And I think we did that. Hopefully what he got out of it is, one, I think that somebody who is in the position

• 24:30Anthony Pompliano?

  that Roger is in, he really believes in the ultimate goal of a digital decentralized currency being adopted globally, right? The disagreement is on the path to get there, but the kind of the finish line, I actually think that Bitcoiners, Roger, and many other people all agree on that. And I think that people who are Seen as either controversial or, you know, just there's a lot of backlash, right? And kind of negative feedback. They just want to be heard, right? And I think that in many cases, Roger, when he's been asked to do interviews or whatever, because of the environment in which the interview gets done, it's just turns into this argument and kind of is very unproductive

• 25:14Anthony Pompliano?

  and he's actually not able to articulate why. And so that's my biggest hope is that everyone was able to just clearly understand like, hey, here's why. And, you know, look, frankly, when I was going into the interview, you know, I even told Pauline, I was like, this either goes one of two ways. Either this is going to turn out great, or this is going to be an absolute train wreck in terms of people are going to listen to this and, you know, be mad at me and kind of do all this stuff. But you kind of know that going into it, right? So you kind of act accordingly and, you know.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Well, the ones who are mad at you, though, they're mad at you before it's done. And that's the point of this stuff. And also, it's the difference between what is an interview and a debate. They are two entirely different things. Some people want a debate, but they don't understand an interview is about constructing a series of questions to take you through almost like a timeline of a discussion. And it's constructed very differently from a debate. But the ones who didn't like it made that decision because you did the interview.

• 26:09Anthony Pompliano?

  So that was my whole point upfront, was there was a bunch of people, when I said the day before I was going to do it, all, you know, upset and freaking out stuff. And I just responded to a couple of them and said, hey, just wait till you hear it. And then if you don't like it, knock yourself out, right? Then like, yeah, all of your criticism is fair. And again, to some of those people's credit, you know, after they listened to it, they actually were like, you know what? This is actually pretty good. Like, I actually thought it was, you know, valuable and I haven't heard Roger articulate ideas in this way, but whatever. So to me, like, that's a win, right? And I'm sure there's some people who don't agree with that, but that's fine. You know, you obviously can't please everybody and move on, right?

• 26:48Speaker 02

  I mean, there's times I've I've thought about interviewing Roger again, and people listen to this like, oh, you're just turning back into a shitcoin podcast. You just and the point is, is that like, I would interview, I like interviewing a range of people. I like interviewing challenger people. I like interviewing different, you know, I just interviewed Stephanie Kelton, who wrote a book about MMT, and she is a proponent of MMT. And that's not a pro Bitcoin idea. And a lot of people disagree with that. But I really enjoy doing that. And there are times I've thought of doing the Roger interview again. Well, I did a second one once. But sometimes I'm like, I just can't be bothered to deal with the backlash at times. And I know I should. And most of the time I'm all right. But sometimes I'm just like, I just can't be bothered to deal with the backlash.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  But me as an interviewer, like, I don't know if you think like this. I try to explain to people sometimes, whilst this a Bitcoin podcast, it's not a podcast just to cheerlead Bitcoin. It's to provide content, entertainment, to challenge, to critique, it's to do a bunch of things, right? And sometimes, you almost want to get on what is considered, I'm going to say quote or quote, the villain. Because the villain sometimes offer a different perspective.

• 27:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, it goes back to some of my favorite questions to ask people are, what would it take to change to change your mind on X? Right? So you just articulated why you believe X. What would it take to change your mind? And it literally comes out, do they understand the the opposite argument? And so I think you're right in that when you bring somebody on who has that opposite argument, you're exposing people to a more holistic picture. That doesn't mean necessarily that they're going to change their mind. But they're now better informed to understand the counter argument. Right? And we live in a society that's so like divisive, right? And it's just like, hey, let me go my echo chamber and just kind of yell and scream, that I fear people actually don't have the intellectual

• 28:38Anthony Pompliano?

  rigor to analyze situations, because they're not used to understanding the counter argument. And I think that's a crucial, crucial part of really making any kind of analysis or argument.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and also, you just doesn't matter what medium you're following content on, it can be YouTube, it can be the news on TV, it can be the radio. The journalists out there aren't just interviewing the good guys. Sometimes they're interviewing the villains, the bad guys, the enemies. You know, I think a lot of people would like to hear an interview right now with Ghislaine Maxwell. I think she's a bad human being. She's most likely an enabler of paedophiles, possibly a paedophile herself. But I think some people would like to hear an interview with her. She's a bad human, but they want to hear her side. So, but it seems we get into this like world of Bitcoin and people don't want to hear from the bad dudes or the people they perceive as bad dudes.

• 29:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Completely agree. What have you seen with the podcast during kind of this whole virus situation? Have downloads gone up, gone down? Have the guests changed? What's been different for you?

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Good question. So they dropped it first. I had a big drop at the, I think it was like, yeah, I can tell you, I think it was like at the end of February, just when it started to kick off, when it just started to get a bit weird. I, yeah, end of February, I had a big drop. And February and March were, you know, just levels I'd seen like a year ago. But then, because I couldn't travel, I focused on the podcast, focused on the guests, and then I've seen growth again. I don't know if the growth is, I think a couple of things went on. I think people weren't going to the gym, they weren't commuting, and they'll sit and watch in Netflix and just kind of like, just not consuming podcasts as much. And then I think what happened was life got a little bit back to normal. And then I think we got some new people come in who are kind of interested in Bitcoin because of all the

• 30:28Speaker 02

  crazy shit going on. And then also I've just like focused on trying to get like, you know, top guests on as well. So now I got back in growth. I've just done the numbers for last month is another record month. I don't know if I'm anywhere near you at the moment because you've been absolutely flying, dude.

• 30:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, we also have different strategies, right? I, you know, I make no secret about it. Mine is a volume game and I try to have as many conversations as I possibly can. Because to me, the podcast, I think some people take the approach of like, I'm going to make sure that every single episode I do is a hit and meets, you know, kind of the standard of, in terms of the guest and the depth of the conversation, whatever. I think my promise to the audience is a little bit different, which is I'm trying to learn as much as I possibly can. And so my, you know, quality bar in terms of maybe audio or some other things may be a little bit lower than others.

• 31:27Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's because I'm replacing with volume, right? So whereas if I record an episode and it takes, you know, two or three days to edit and get perfect. And if I wanted to do transcripts and show notes and kind of all that stuff, I just couldn't do the volume that I did, right? Or I'd have to have a massive team to kind of crank all that out. I think there's other people who say, well, I want that stuff and therefore I'm only going to do one or two conversations per week. And so, you know, ultimately like you kind of find the audience that wants what you want, right?

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 31:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that's the beauty of of podcasts is that there's so many different styles. There's so many different show formats. People will basically just go where they want.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  So when you rebranded, you started doing a little bit more, you started getting some guests on who weren't even like anything to do. I'd say even finest, did you have like a sommelier on?

• 32:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh yeah, my friend Dustin. Yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:20Anthony Pompliano?

  So, I mean, look, but part of this is, you know, again, I want to learn, right? And now take Dustin's a good example. So Dustin is a guy who literally got interested in wine as a server at Ruth Chris Steakhouse, you know, 20 years ago or whatever. Ends up going through the entire process, becomes a master sommelier, works at a number of the best restaurants in the world. And then becomes the wine director at 11 Madison, which was voted the number one restaurant in the world. And then he left and he started a retail wine business called Verve Wine. And now he's working on a restaurant and kind of all these other things. But a lot of people are like, well, what the hell could you learn from that guy if you're not interested in wine?

• 33:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that there's kind of a couple of key pieces, which is one, every single place that guy's worked for the last 15 years, there's been this obsession with perfection, right? And just absolute, everything has to be perfect all the time. And so there's this like rigorous process and the way. They think about the customer experience and like all of that stuff. Two is he's a highly successful person, right? He literally has built a business, right? He's worked at some of the most successful businesses. And so I think you can learn from that. And then the third thing is he's just got a very unique view of the world, right? He's interested in finance and technology and all this stuff, but he operates in a world that many of us don't know. And then you kind of overlay on top of all of it, he's one of 200 of the best people at his craft in the world.

• 33:49Anthony Pompliano?

  There's only like 200 master Somalis in the world. And so you look at that and you're just like, yeah, I want to talk to that guy. Like, and, you know, I cheat because I know him pretty well and talk to him regularly. But when he comes on the podcast, my hope that people take away is not like, you know, what's his favorite wine? It's all those other lessons. And so I won't have those people on every day. But to have one on every once in a while, I think provides value and, you know, between you and I and the, uh, the five people listening to this. I don't care if they don't like it, right? Like, like this is for me to learn and people just get to listen.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  What's your, have you, what's your like big plan? Like, cause I know I'm, I know exactly where I'm going. I know my strategy. I know what I want.

• 34:31Anthony Pompliano?

  What's your strategy?

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Well, my end goal is just to be able to make any content I want any day and not give a fuck if anyone wants to listen. You know, a bit like how Rogan does comedians, he does MMA, but then he'll just do random people like he. But like MMA and comedians is his thing and he does the other stuff and he just does what the hell he wants. Uh, I kind of want to get to that point. I want to do, I want to interview rock stars, basically people who play the kind of music I listen to. I've been interviewing a few porn stars recently. They're always entertaining. I want to do more of that. I want to do finance and corruption, really. They're just every day, just make whatever show I want. Now I'm making enough money and not give a fuck about what anyone says on Twitter. Like, that's the goal and that's what I'm trying to build towards.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  And I'm gradually getting to, you know, I do the Bitcoin and the finance and the corruption stuff through Bitcoin and defiance. I am about to do my first, I'm doing a four part documentary about a rock band called The Ghost Inside. Starts next week. They had this crash. It's a cool story, actually. In 2015, they're screaming heavy metal band, Pomp, right? And they just released their album and they broke out into the Billboard charts, which is unheard of for that type of band. Then a year later, they're in a fatal bus crash. And it takes four years for them to get back to play their next concert because they're so fucked from it. So I'm doing a four part thing about that. But like I am, I'm, I'm putting these like little markers around of the things I want to do and then trying to get it to all kind of converge. Like, but I know I'm, I'm, I know exactly where I'm going with it and what I want to do.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  And Bitcoin is one of those things, but like, I'm wondering what for you, what is your goal?

• 36:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know if I necessarily have a, a master plan. I think the kind of guiding light, if you will, is, uh, I'm just going to do the things that I enjoy and that I find fun. Um, and I, I joke all the time, but it's not really a joke where I just say, look, I create a lot of content. I enjoy doing it. If one day I wake up and it's not fun anymore, I will stop that day. Like I will not spend a single day doing this if I'm not enjoying it. And so there could be a day in the future where I wake up and I go, I'm not writing the, uh, the email anymore. I'm not recording another podcast. See you guys later. It was a great run, you know, I'm out. And, uh, you know, look, I hope that doesn't happen, right? Cause I genuinely do enjoy this stuff. I've learned a lot.

• 36:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, I've met some amazing people, but, uh, but, but I think that's kind of like my first rule is I don't want to spend a minute doing something I don't want to do. The second piece is, uh, I, I think that the world is changing, right? And, and that change, uh, I think I am one of many people that are kind of living that. You're another where the brand or the thing that people want to pay attention to is an individual, not an organization. And so if you kind of see that play out, you know, is that starting companies? Of course, is that creating content? Of course, um, is that, uh, kind of doing other things that, uh, individuals used to do? I think so.

• 37:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I, I just don't have some like master plan. I just know that, you know, we're moving to a world where people want to subscribe to individuals, right? And, uh, all the content stuff definitely helps with that. Uh, all the social media stuff helps with that. Um, but, but ultimately. You know, I don't look at this as a content game. I very much look at it as building a massive, massive audience. And then when you have the audience, you can figure out what are the things they want, right? And how do you solve problems for them and do things like that? So, you know, I'm pretty transparent about the fact that like, there will be companies that we create in the future and things like that. I have no clue what those are today. But I'm not really worried about it until,

• 38:13Anthony Pompliano?

  you know, some idea comes around or somebody writes to me and says, hey, I really want you to do X, and I can't stop thinking about it. And then we'll go do it.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  All right, let's get into that weird world stuff, because that's an interesting point. Because I think, I think it's, I think we could say we're all,

• 38:31Speaker 02

  let's go five, six months back, we're all kind of on autopilot prior to the pandemic, right? You know, the world's ticking along, we're all doing our thing. We know there's like some problems in the economy, the likes of yourself and Caitlyn Long and Travis Kling and Rao Pao, all been saying the same thing. But I, you know, always believe we'll just kind of be okay. And now we're at this moment in time, which is like history's being rewritten. I told my son, I said, look, there's going to come a time when you have kids, and you're going to tell them about what happened in 2020 and the pandemic, how the world shut down, because it's completely unprecedented in our time. But I kind of get this feeling, we're not going to come out the end of this pandemic,

• 39:12Speaker 02

  and it's back to normal. I think there's going to be a lot of expectations for a different kind of world. And maybe it will be, maybe it will be a normal world, or maybe we'll go to a more authoritarian world, or maybe we'll go to a world of more liberty. And that, that I don't know. But I feel like we're living through that moment now. And I, I don't think it's going to be a smooth path. I think a lot of weird and scary shit's going to happen over the next few years. And I've got like a mixture of fear and excitement about it all. A bit more on the fear side, because revolutions are always bloody. But also a bit more excitement, because hopefully we can dismantle, well, not we, I mean, hopefully some of the, the bullshit stuff around government

• 39:56Speaker 02

  and finance and central banking begins to be dismantled. But it's a weird time, dude.

• 40:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, it really depends on your perspective. And the thing I keep telling myself is we live in the safest, most prosperous time in human history, right? And generally, the trend is that that will continue. And are there short periods in certain geographic locations where that's not true? Or you kind of reverse course? Of course. But overall, humanity continues to get better, continues to get safer, continues to get more prosperous. And I think that that's like one thing in the back of my head that always just like, yeah, just chill out. Like, well, it's gonna, the world's gonna keep spinning. At the same time, I do think that in these moments of uncertainty and chaos, there are

• 40:48Anthony Pompliano?

  things that happened in history that are not just in history books. And what I mean by that is, you know, I always ask people, like, you've read about the American Revolution, right? As an example, like, there was a bloody war, and that set up America and kind of freedom, and everyone knows the whole story. What makes you think that there won't be more American revolutions in the future, not necessarily involving America, but that type of situation all around the world? And again, doesn't mean that they're all gonna happen tomorrow, all at the same time, and, you know, there's gonna be mass chaos, and it's gonna look like The Purge. But it does mean that, you know, history repeats itself. And so, do you think currencies are gonna fail in the future? Of course, we're gonna have currencies. Which ones? When?

• 41:33Anthony Pompliano?

  All that stuff is hard to tell. Is there gonna be violent conflict? Of course. Where? With who? When? That's all up for debate. It's all up for a lot of kind of people smarter than I. But I think that even with those things happening, we will continue to live in a better and better world. Technology's a big piece of that. And so, it's one of these weird situations where I don't worry so much about kind of the big picture stuff. I'm aware of it. I obviously talk about it a lot. But when I go to sleep at night, I just worry about myself, right? And when you do that, I think that is a very kind of sobering, calming effect of like, Am I good? If I'm good, alright, like I'll, I'll keep figuring it out for me.

• 42:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And I can't, you know, affect what a central bank does, or what a country does, or, um, you know, prevent a war from occurring. Like if those things happen, they happen and, and I'll respond along with everybody else accordingly. But, but it ultimately is just like, you're only in control yourself, right? And so just worry about that.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  I think there's a slight, I think I've got a slightly different outlook and I tell you why. Because when I go to bed, I have to think about two little people as well. So I've got a 16 year old, got two years of school left, and he has a choice of kind of university, which I for obvious reasons don't want him to go to. Because, yeah, he's not going to be a doctor. He's not going to be a lawyer. So he doesn't need to. He's got creative skills. And I've got a daughter who's 10. And so I have to go, I go to bed worrying about the world where they're going to be in, in say, you know, five to 10 years' time. So, yeah.

• 43:13Anthony Pompliano?

  But can you change it? Like that's, like, and, and when I say I worry about myself, like obviously I worry about myself, Polina, you know, my brothers, my parents, like, you know, there's a small group of people that I include in worry about me. But like, can you change the world, uh, in the sense of, uh, reverse course from any of that happening?

• 43:31Speaker 02

  No, no, of, of, of course not. But there's that, there is that point, like, I don't vote, right? Just, I just got no interest anymore. But people say, well, people say, well, if you don't vote, you can't influence. And, and democracy is based on the fact that enough people do go and vote and you get that kind of consensus from it. You know, for, if we look at something like global warming, if, and I'm, you know, a huge hypocrite because of my fly, etc. But if we all do nothing, and if you believe global warming is caused by humans, then it will get a lot worse. If you think I can't individually make a difference. So you have to do a little bit. And I just think. I think the thing with kids is not that I think can I change the world and make it a better place. I I obviously I can't, but are there little things I can do to make the part of the world I live in a better place?

• 44:15Speaker 02

  And maybe that's maybe that's first starting with the the boundaries of my house. Can I do things in that to make the world a better place for my children? Can I, you know, then outside that boundary around my friends and social communities? And then, you know, so what are the things we can do better? But I just I do worry, I do worry for what kind of world we're heading towards and what opportunity they will have. And it's multiple things, like it's not just, you know, it's you've got to think about opportunities because of AI and automation. You know, what kind of what kind of career should I be kind of nudging them towards so they have opportunity? What kind of things should I be exposing to them in the world and telling them not to worry about? I mean, maybe just tell them to avoid politics.

• 44:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but I but I think that like this is a perfect example, right? So take global warming as a as kind of a talking point, right?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:05Anthony Pompliano?

  We don't know what's true, right? And and people get very sensitive about this, but I can show you studies on both sides of the argument. And also I can show you studies that are very compelling from very well respected people that would disprove the other argument, right? So kind of there's tons and tons of data, tons of studies, and ultimately I'm not a scientist, right? And so my ability to sit through all that and find quote unquote, the truth is, you know, little to none. What I do think is you can simply say, well, if it's true or it's not, is my life going to change?

• 45:46Anthony Pompliano?

  If I basically default to it's true and I act accordingly? I don't think that that's going to necessarily be a bad thing, right? So I can basically act as if it's true, even if it's not, my life isn't going to materially change. And if it happens to be true, then I kind of did my part. Now, what is doing your part? And I think that this is the the kind of.

• 46:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe not inaccurate thinking, but it's where people, because we're human, they want to feel like they have something to do, right? And so, one of the most popular things around global warming is, I'm not gonna fly. Okay, if you don't fly, do you think the plane's still gonna fly? Of course it is, right? And so, unless you're going to get enough drop in demand to remove 20% of flights for an airline company, you choosing to fly or not is not gonna change anything, right? And people don't like that answer because it feels like, no, I can have, you know, I can have an impact, right? Like where they were constantly told, you can have an impact, you can do something.

• 46:54Anthony Pompliano?

  But I think that where you can have an impact is, it's less about on the micro level for a lot of these world problems, like, no, you actually can't change an election as an individual, right? You're part of a much bigger thing. You can't change global warming as an individual, right? By just simply not flying or something like that. Where if you want to have an impact, I always tell people, stop being on the defensive side and go play offense. And so if you want to change global warming, like, go build a company where you can get access to lots of resources to actually have a material impact on a macro level, right? If you want to change politics, voting is something that you are one of millions that are gonna do, right?

• 47:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So actually, if you go vote or you don't, it's not gonna change the election, right? In many, many cases. But if you want to change the political thing, then go run to be or go work on a campaign, right? Like, there's almost this feeling of, you've got to be much more strategic and I think intelligent about the impact that you want to have. It's not, you know, did I put things in the recycling bin or not? Because the dent that you can make in the problem is so small. If that's the thing that you really care about, then like, then go actually work on it. And the problem with that is, one, you find out that if there's more friction, now all of a sudden, people don't really care, right? Like, it's easy to like, hey, yeah, like, okay, cool, I'll put it in the recycling bin.

• 48:21Anthony Pompliano?

  You want me to like go somewhere on Saturday and like actually do something that really matters like oh I don't care about the problem that much. And the second thing is, uh, there's only so many problems you can focus on. Right? So if you sit somebody down, you say, what are all the issues you care about? Like they'll have this laundry list of things, everything from, you know, social justice issues to environmental issues to whatever. And then you say, okay, but you can only work on one. What's the one issue? And you find like they actually probably do have the one thing they care about more than everything else. But it's like, all right, then go devote your time, energy and resources to that one thing. And actually make an impact rather than trick yourself into having, you know, little to no impact on a whole bunch of things. Right? So I think that the focus is a really big piece of it.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, look, I, I know you're right. I, I know you're right. And it's just, I don't know, I just think about it differently. Like we've lived through ourselves. Like we're a similar age. We've lived through probably the best time ever, right? As you said, more prosperous, more opportunity. It's cheap to travel the world. Like I, I think I went to 18 countries last year. We've lived in such an amazing time where technology is incredible, relatively safe in the countries we're in. I just feel very lucky to do that, but I, I've got a feeling like definitely the next decade is not going to be as good. There is going to be this sharp economic impact. I mean, what was that? What was the GDP for like nine percent, 11% in the US?

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Like annualized?

• 49:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, oh, uh, the drop in GDP for Q2 was negative nine point five, which is thirty two, thirty two point nine percent, uh, annualized.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what was it? The great recession was six point five percent.

• 50:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but, but, but here's the thing, right? So like, and, and again, this is where you start getting into the nuances of the, of this stuff is we had a nine point five percent drop in actual Q2 GDP. Yet billionaires made over half a trillion dollars in the same time, right?

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we know why.

• 50:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, well, but, but here's the whole thing is you can't stick a black and white label on the situation. Because if we keep heading in the direction we're heading, it actually will be a fantastic decade for a lot of people. Right? And it'll be a horrible decade for another big part of the population. And so let's just say for, you know, the basis of this conversation, it's 50 50. Right? 50% of people are going to do fantastic because they're the ones that own investment assets. You know, they have, they know how money works, all that kind of stuff. And the 50% that live paycheck to paycheck, having like cash savings, no investment assets, they're going to suffer. Like, you can't say, oh, it's going to be a bad decade.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Because I don't think that's going to happen.

• 51:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you mean?

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Well, I don't think 50% of people are, I know you said for the sake of conversation, but I don't think 50% of people over the next decade are going to have a great time. At 50%, they're going to struggle. I just think, I think it's going to be an aggregate drop for most people. Like, it's going to be, so we're going to have a lot of people out of work, a lot of people struggling to get by. You know, we live in a country where, whatever you think of socialism or social safety nets, we have them. We have people who rely on welfare programs. More people are going to rely on that, but the government's going to have less money. And I think we're going to see a lot of social unrest. Well, I mean, we're already seeing that, especially in the US. So I don't see it playing out like that. That's the point. Like, I am prepared now for a, for a tough decade coming.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  But in my mind.

• 51:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think that that's different, right? Like, like, that's just a natural progression of a society. Which is, so in the United States, for example, 40% of government spending is on people over the age of 65. Right? So kind of a lot of money is spent on an older population. Obviously, the baby boomer generation is going to continue to feed into that. And there's many people who think by 2030, the amount of money spent on people over the age of 65 out of the government budget would be 50%. So, you know, kind of 25% increase over the next 10 years. That is just natural in terms of your demographics get older, right? You're a big part of your population. Now, with that said, you kind of have two options, right?

• 52:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Is either one, if you want to continue to have the, the economic boom that, let's say, over the last, you know, 10, 12 years, you just move to a different country, right? So, so if you get really scared, like, you Can move to a country where the economic prosperity shifts, right? And people will debate what that country would be, but that's fine. Or what you can do is you can understand structurally how it works. And if you understand structurally how it works, there are going to be people who do really, really well. If you're right in the scenario that you described. And I think that's the key piece is this is not a access type situation. This is simply an education problem, right?

• 53:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Which is people don't understand what is happening. And because they don't understand, they're going to get hurt. If they understand what's happening, they can make very easy decisions to actually benefit from the situation rather than be hurt by it. And so if we can change that education, you know, what percentage of the population is educated on this stuff? If you can increase that percentage, you can actually shift it from a negative situation to a positive situation. That's just very hard to do.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I get it. I don't know. Perhaps I'm just seeing it differently from you. Because it's little things like I said about the kids, like I'm thinking. I remember I had this company, I had this agency in London, Pomp, and we used to put out a. And this was, we're talking seven years ago, we'd put out a new job position and it'd be, say, a junior. And we get eighty to ninety applications for one role. And it'll be people with degrees and a first and second and third. And I'll tell you a funny story, actually. One guy who got one of the jobs just came and knocked on the door and just said, look, I've seen the jobs up. Can I just talk to you about it? And I was like, yeah, of course. And he got the job there and then. And another one guy did an application as an infographic who got a job. But the point being is we got a lot of applications.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  We just had a thing in the UK, there was a role for a receptionist, they had a thousand applications. Like, there's gonna be fewer jobs available, a lot more people going for those jobs. So I'm in that place, I'm thinking, right, I've got kids leaving school in two years and in eight years. You know, if they're not going into higher education, what are the skills they need? What are the skills they're going to need to be have an opportunity to get an interesting job? You know, a well compensated job or even a job they just enjoy? Because it is going to be competitive and the workplace is changing.

• 54:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes and no, right, which is, I think that there's going to be less of the same type of jobs, but there's going to be much more of the new type of jobs. And what I mean by that is, so, so think back, there's a point in time in, in the United States where 98% of people were farmers, right? Obviously, that's not true anymore. And so I, I don't know what the number is, 2%, 5%, you know, whatever it is now. But that's not like all the jobs went away. It's just that those people went and found different types of jobs. And so if you look, you know, again, let's call it 20, 30 years out, what are the things that are going to be in high demand? Well, obviously, anything around technology will, will be incredibly important. And so you can kind of just go through everything from design to computer science to, you know,

• 55:41Anthony Pompliano?

  analytics, like all of that type of stuff. Those jobs, if you go and you talk to companies, many of them will say, we can't find enough people, right? And that's why they're paying them so much money and they're doing all this kind of stuff. And so I think that it's very vertical specific. And unfortunately, and kind of what you're highlighting is the people who are out of work right now tend to be service hospitality, you know, kind of lower socioeconomic status, you know, kind of the, the people at the lowest end of a corporate ladder. And those jobs are heavily commoditized because there's a million other people who can do the same job. And so you put out a receptionist and you get a thousand applications. If you put out, you know, I need a self-driving autonomous vehicle engineer, right?

• 56:24Anthony Pompliano?

  You actually don't get any applications and you got to go try to find somebody at another company and recruit them to leave.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Right, okay.

• 56:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, it, it's, it's not fair to say, you know, hey, Peter, your 16-year-old should learn how to be a, you know, autonomous driving engineer in the next two years. If he's not one interested in it to, you know, hasn't already spent time doing it, like all, that there's challenges here. But I do think what it hints at is, as a society, we are going to have to retrain entire generations with new skills for those new jobs. It will happen. It's just how quickly does it happen? And who are the people who get retrained versus the people who get left behind? Again, like these transitions, they, they just happen over and over again in history. Sounds pretty, you know, bleak, but that's just what happens.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess, I guess you're... I'm not even saying optimistic versus pessimistic, although I'm being pessimistic. I think you're just saying it's just the way it is. Shit will figure it out. Shit will figure out.

• 57:20Anthony Pompliano?

  It it's a thing where I generally believe humans solve the problems that they face. Right? And that's part of the beauty of the human race. But also, I think that we have a lot of recency bias, right? We always think that like what we're going through is different than what's ever happened before. And there are differences, right, for sure. We've never had a global pandemic when the internet allowed information to, you know, kind of be disseminated so quickly and then have a federal government willing to step in and respond with quantitative easing. So there are nuances in there that are different than any global pandemic in the past.

• 58:00Anthony Pompliano?

  But at the same time, like, there's been plenty of civilizations that have dealt with some sort of, you know, massive public health crisis. And so what we need to be smart about is learning from history. At the same time, understanding what are the unique advantages we have today in a situation? I actually think one of the crazy things is in past retrainings of a society, we didn't have the internet. Right? And so like, it's a massive advantage for us. Now, are people going to be self-starters? How do we deal with the cost structure for that? You know, how do you get certification if you're not going to a university? Like, there's things that need to be figured out in there. But I generally believe that entrepreneurs will figure that stuff out.

• 58:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, they're the people who solve the problems in society. And so we should encourage as many of those people to step up and do that as possible. Everything from, you know, just emotional support to capital to other things as well.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  All right, man, we need to do some Bitcoin in before we finish this.

• 59:02Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, what do you got?

• 59:03Speaker 02

  You started there, but I wanted to talk about Roger. Now, you tell me, what do you think's going on right now? Like, we had a 2017, 2018. We went through some good times then, then we had this bear market that seemed to go on forever. Now, like, we seem to be back on the rise. The timing seems right in that we seem to be coming out of a bear market. And also, you know, there's there's definite signals within the market for why people should be investing in scarce assets. Well, I'll say that broadly because I still believe gold has a role to play despite what other people think. But like, what do you make of what's going on?

• 59:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Before I answer that and I forget, if you listen to my podcast, you should go subscribe to Peter's podcast, What Bitcoin Did. He has awesome guests and he's awesome, as you can tell. So please go subscribe. And vice versa, if you listen to Peter's podcast, go subscribe to mine. That's the whole point of us doing a joint podcast.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  No, no, once you subscribe to mine, you don't need pumps anymore.

• 1:00:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Fair, fair, fair.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  It's so funny. You know I troll, you know I troll the fuck out of you.

• 1:00:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like, some people don't get it. They like, think, they think it's real.

• 1:00:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you know, you know what you have to say to those people? Oh, we're having fun. You won't like it. Right? Like.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  All right, come on, tell me about Bitcoin. What do you make, what do you make of going on that?

• 1:00:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, this was the easiest call in history. And, and I say that half joking, but last year, I wrote multiple times in May, June, and July about we are ending, we're getting near the end of an economic cycle, where we'd been in this long 10-year bull market, all this stuff. And at the end, central banks only have two tools to deal with that downturn. They can manipulate rates, so they can print money. And I said, look, I think that they're gonna have to do that at some point in the coming months. It is likely that it is going to coincide within a 90-day window of the Bitcoin habit. And so, one of the things

• 1:01:04Anthony Pompliano?

  that I wrote was dropping rates, printing money, and the having all occurring around the same time will serve as rocket fuel for Bitcoin. Now, there are plenty of people who are gonna hear me say this, and they're gonna be like, well, how did you know a global pandemic was gonna happen? I didn't, obviously, right? Nobody knew. But that simply served as the catalyst to drive the end of the bull market. So there was already a bunch of issues. You had inverted yield curves, you had all the repo market gyrations and kind of structural issues. You had an all-time record high of CEOs leaving their roles. Like, there was a bunch of these issues or alarm bells going off all through the end of last year and into the beginning of this year. So we were getting towards the end. It was just a matter of what was gonna be the thing that accelerated that or caused it to happen. And so.

• 1:01:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, what we see is a world where gold, Bitcoin, real estate are all going to do really well, right? Because you simply can't print trillions of dollars of a currency and have no impact on that currency. And so, guess what? We're literally seeing the exact theoretical kind of impact of quantitative easing become reality. They printed trillions, the dollar got weakened, and when the dollar weakens, asset prices all explode. It's not because all of a sudden the business is worth more money, it's literally because the dollar is being devalued. Same with Bitcoin or gold. There's not much that's changed from June 1st to July 31st with Bitcoin,

• 1:02:31Anthony Pompliano?

  right? The halving had already occurred, it's pretty much doing exactly what it's supposed to do. What's changing is, one, demand, right? So there is some change in demand because of what's going on in the macro environment, but also the dollar's being devalued. And that's where you get an explosion in price. And so I tend to think that that thesis from 2019 of they're going to continue to keep rates low, they're going to print money, and having occurred, I think that 2021 is going to be absolute chaos in terms of a very high volatile upward price movement of Bitcoin. But ultimately, it doesn't matter, right? The US dollar value of Bitcoin doesn't matter. This is a game of accumulation, and it's going to end up being, what percent of the 21 million Bitcoins do you own? Right? Like, that's what I think of.

• 1:03:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't worry about the US dollar value. All I continue to think about is, what is the number of Bitcoin I own divided by 21 million? And when you think of it that way, all of a sudden, you start to realize, do I own more or less than I did yesterday, or the day before, or the week before, or whatever? And if you have that mentality, kind of a Bitcoin-denominated mentality, I think you'll end up doing pretty well.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean, I never think that I've actually got particularly a large amount of Bitcoin, but if I looked at the gold market, and my percentage of Bitcoin was in the gold market, I'd be like, fucking hell, I mean, I'm good here, right? So this is a bell knot.

• 1:03:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And look, here's what I continue to tell people. Name to me a business that was analog and got digitized, and the digital version is smaller than the analog version.

• 1:04:06Anthony Pompliano?

  It doesn't happen, right? And it's because digitization brings all kinds of advantages. It's a market expanding technology. And so, you know, there are people will debate what the size of the gold market is, but let's just use easy numbers. Let's say that it's eight, eight trillion dollars. That puts Bitcoin at, depending on how many are lost or stolen or whatever, you know, four hundred, four hundred and fifty thousand US dollars today. Do you think that Bitcoin's only going to be the equivalent of the gold market? I don't.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:04:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? It, it, it's better. It's gonna capture more market. Now, when does that happen? I don't, that might take fifty years to happen. Right? But when you think of it that way, you're like, okay, again, don't worry about the individual day-to-day price movements or any of that stuff. Just look at the underlying structural kind of foundation and then look at how does technology evolve, right? This is a, a, a technology evolution story in terms of market adoption and things. And we've seen it play out over and over and over again. Airbnb, biggest hotel, doesn't own any hotels, right? Uber, biggest taxi company, but doesn't own any taxi, like, we've seen it happen so many times, and I don't think it's different this time.

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  What, what's the equivalent? Like Bitcoin, biggest bank, doesn't own any branches?

• 1:05:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, or, or, or, in the sense of, if you think of Bitcoin as, one day, I believe, we will say Bitcoin is the largest currency in the world in terms of market cap, and it will have no one controlling it. Right? Like, I fundamentally believe, I, my worry is, I won't be alive to see that day, because it may take that long, right?

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  That's annoying.

• 1:05:54Anthony Pompliano?

  At, at, in my early thirties, let's say that I live a great life, I got fifty years, right? Is Bitcoin going to end up, uh, kind of ascending to the global reserve currency status in the next fifty years? And will we see it eclipse a eighty, ninety trillion dollar market cap? I don't know. But if you said to me, between now and the rest of human his, uh, you know, humans' future potential or, you know, future years? Absolutely no question in my mind that's gonna happen. It's just will it happen in my lifetime or not? And so by the way, if it doesn't happen in my lifetime, still being along for the ride is gonna end up being pretty good, I think.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz it's like we're along for half the lifetime, right? Like of getting there, of getting there. Like the next, you know, I'm pretty sure with my 10-year thesis, in 10 years' time, I'm gonna be very happy with my investments. I think my kids are gonna be even happier and want me to die because they're gonna have all my Bitcoin, but I think we're gonna be happy. Alright, man. Well, listen, look, what will it take to change your mind? You said this at the start. What's it gonna take to change your mind? Are you following the DeFi stuff? Are you like, fuck that?

• 1:07:10Anthony Pompliano?

  No. Alright, so hold on. We need to settle this for a second. I'm not against DeFi at all. I actually think it's gonna be super, super valuable. Again, it's like when Roger and I talk about a digital decentralized currency ended up being adopted globally. Super important thing. It's gonna happen. That's, you know, quote-unquote, the finish line of the goal or milestone or whatever. It's just how do we get there? That's how I feel about the DeFi stuff. DeFi, and I think part of my issue with how it's being categorized right now, is the Ethereum community thinks that they have a monopoly on that terminology, right? They're using DeFi as a synonym for Ethereum.

• 1:07:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's not, right? And it's why I say things like Bitcoin is the most valuable DeFi application. And they all freak out, "What do you mean, Bo?" whatever. Decentralized finance, right? The core of finance is money. And the most decentralized, most valuable application that is decentralized is Bitcoin. So it's intellectually dishonest when they say, "No, it's not." And ultimately, what they're saying is that they're upset, right? That they don't want DeFi to actually be successful anywhere else other than Ethereum. And so we've made plenty of investments in companies that are building on top of Ethereum, that support Ether, that use some version of a decentralized application or do something, right?

• 1:08:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, don't listen to what I say, just watch what we do with the money. And we're making investments. So we obviously think that there's value there. But I'm not convinced that DeFi is an Ethereum only thing, right? Obviously Bitcoin, it proves that. And so what you end up getting is you end up getting this religiousness about DeFi that completely ignores reality and also is intellectually dishonest when talking about it. And so what I think is going to end up happening is that is going to be detrimental to that entire space. What I hope occurs is that there's enough people who are rational and who kind of understand the structural pieces and that it ends up not actually mattering, right?

• 1:09:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But if you literally, you can go, I tweeted the other day and said Bitcoin is the most valuable DeFi application. And literally it was like a bunch of ETH trolls just being like, you're an idiot. You don't know what you're talking about, whatever. Do you understand what the definition of decentralized finance is?

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  Are you triggering Bitcoiners and ETH heads at the same time now?

• 1:09:38Anthony Pompliano?

  No, because I think that I think that Bitcoin people have this belief that if something came along that had more market adoption and had better core kind of aspects to it than Bitcoin, they they want to see a digital currency succeed, right? And so I don't think actually that Bitcoiners for the most part are married to the idea of Bitcoin or nothing, right? I just think that they're very, very convinced that Bitcoin is the solution. And by the way, the market has validated that.

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:10:18Anthony Pompliano?

  On the DeFi side, many of those people I do not believe actually are DeFi or bust. I think that they're Ethereum or bust, and I think that's very dangerous.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  So what would it take to change your mind that Bitcoin is the only?

• 1:10:35Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I think that there's three key, yeah, there's three key, key things. So one is a self, like a very serious self-inflicted wound in terms of some sort of bug or something introduced in the development process of Bitcoin, right? So

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  No, no, I'm like, I'm like the other way. I'm saying, what do we take to change your mind that like Bitcoin is the only thing you should focus on and put money into?

• 1:10:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Me, meaning, what would it take to convince me to do something else?

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, just for, forget all these shitcoins and

• 1:11:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you're, you're saying, what would it take to convince me that Bitcoin is the only thing worth putting money into?

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, I mean, look, that's what basically what we do. We, we hold no tokens in, uh, from an investment standpoint, uh, other than Bitcoin, right? The, the actual investments that we make are Bitcoin. I, I own nothing other than Bitcoin. And so it's

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  I thought you were putting money into Devi stuff. You put it into companies building on it.

• 1:11:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Into companies, yeah, into companies, right? So like that, that's my whole thesis, uh, is Bitcoin will be the next global reserve currency. Don't know how long it takes, but that's going to happen. And then what actually the value that accrues is into the infrastructure, right? And, and so it goes back to the same example of like, if you invested in the seed round of Kraken or Coinbase or any of these companies and bought Bitcoin on the same day, the equity investment actually has outperformed the just holding Bitcoin.

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:11:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you look at it from that standpoint, it's like, okay, hold on a second here. Now, you can invest in 10 early-stage startups and nine go to zero and you gotta make sure you're in the one that actually does that, right? So there, there's some nuance to, to it, but it, it's just a belief that infrastructure is always, uh, a much, a very valuable kind of profitable strategy. And then Bitcoin is going to be more valuable in the future than it is today. That's my belief, right? And so are other things gonna go up? Of course. Like it, take Ethereum, for example, right? Or Ether. Everyone's yelling and screaming about how it's going up in value so much. Well, yeah, of course, because Bitcoin is going to lead in terms of Bitcoin having

• 1:12:37Anthony Pompliano?

  and the money printing and all this stuff will move. And then the

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  Move the whole market.

• 1:12:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, the, the smaller market cap assets will just move more in US dollar terms. But I think that, that like what it shows is those people are looking at this from an investment return perspective. I think that the Bitcoin community, like you said, they're not gonna sell. Right, the the a number of Bitcoins that have not moved in over a year is like sixty four, sixty five percent, it's the highest it's ever been. They're not going to sell. And so it doesn't matter what the percentage changes if you're not going to sell. Because ultimately, what you're doing is you're denominating, how many Bitcoin do I have? I don't hear a lot of people in other assets in the crypto world talking like that. Right?

• 1:13:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what what ultimately ends up occurring here, and I think is very important, is when you look at a market, when things go down, the the the blue chip, large market cap assets move down the least. Right? And all the small caps, they, you know, fall really fast. When you then go into a bull market, the large caps, they move the least, right? And the small caps explode up in value. It's a market cap thing. And I think that's what we're seeing in crypto. So if you said to me, you know, uh, am I surprised that whether, or I'm not even gonna name some of the other ones, but there's plenty of them that that are, you know, exploding? It's of course, because if I took a million dollars and I put it in that versus a million dollars in Bitcoin, of course, I'm gonna move the market much more of the small cap asset because it's simply got a smaller market cap.

• 1:14:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that's what we're seeing play out. Again, not a bad thing, it's just that i- i- if you're a student of history and understand how markets work, like, not surprising.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  I I think we get a new all time high this year.

• 1:14:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I I could see that. I I don't know if it's gonna happen, like, uh, you know, look, the the only thing, have you said any sort of, uh, anything around price other than all time high by the end of this year?

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  N- no, because it's so difficult, you know, I was having this conversation with my son yesterday, he was like, like, I said, look, there's people who think the price can go to, you know, thirty, fifty, even a hundred thousand dollars. He's like, he was like, would you sell some? I said, well, that's a really tough thing, because you could sell at fifty and it goes to a hundred. So I just don't sell. I just, I just know that I, a bit like you said, you you know, what's your percentage? I just need, no, I need to have as much of it a- as I need, and then I'll sell it when I have to sell it. And that's what I'll do. Because I have to sell at that point. Until then, I I I won't. But I I think we're going to a new all time high this year. But I think if it happens, I think it probably happens before the election, which I know

• 1:15:12Speaker 02

  sounds soon, but to be honest, based on the previous time, we went from 12 to 20K, it was pretty easy. But I think it happens before the US election because I think, I think the stock market has to stay at a high value for Donald Trump, which means, yes, and I mean, they're negotiating another stimulus package, right? So I just think there's going to be a lot more money, trillions more printed before the US election. And then I think we'll get a new all time high before the election because of that. And I think people are very aware now. I think the gold price has been very helpful because I've been telling people about the Bitcoin price, they don't care. Tell them about the gold price, they understand. And then you talk to them about Bitcoin being digital gold. In terms of where it can go, I've got no idea. I don't know what like happens to liquidity. So say if Bitcoin's

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  at like 100K and somebody thinks, shit, I've got one Bitcoin, I'm on 100K and they might want to sell it. I don't know if that people have that kind of like psychological reaction to it. And therefore you've got a lot of selling pressure. I don't understand all that stuff. All I do think is I think we get a new all time high before the election. I could be wrong. And I think next year is going to be fucking crazy. What about you?

• 1:16:17Anthony Pompliano?

  So the short term stuff is much harder, obviously. The only number that I've said is I do think we'll hit 100,000 US exchange, you know, price or value by the end of 2021. So December 31st, 2021, we'll have hit 100K. We'll still be above it. I have no clue, but like that will have happened beforehand. I definitely can see a world where the current administration, essentially, you know, people hate when I describe it this way, buys votes by continuing to pump the, the equity markets. Cause it's not really pumping the economy. It's the easiest thing they can do. It's the best campaign that they can do, right?

• 1:16:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Is if you're sitting there and 50 plus percent of the country says, I'm getting rich, right? Of course, I like this guy, right? Like, I don't care about all the other dumb things or whatever everyone's complaining about. Like my, my portfolio keeps going up. So this guy is good for me. Right? Um, you know? I think there's a lot of people who disagree with that. They're not happy that people think that way, but at the same time, I think generally people are very kind of self-centered and they say, who's going to do the best for me? And the crazy part of all of that is there's a scenario. Again, I'm not necessarily convinced that this is the scenario, but one of the possibilities is they absolutely pump the asset prices going into the election. And as soon as the reelection

• 1:17:41Anthony Pompliano?

  happens, they basically take their foot off the gas and there's some sort of crash, right?

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And asset prices. Possible, but but who knows what's going to happen? I think that the beauty here is the one thing we know for sure is that they are only making 900 Bitcoin a day right now. And

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:17:58Anthony Pompliano?

  six months ago, they were making 1800. And so if demand just stays the same, naturally, the price has to go up. If demand increases, the US dollar price has got to go up. And if they're going to print money, I think demand's going to continue to increase.

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  Who wins the election?

• 1:18:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I think Trump wins in a landslide.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:18:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, yeah, I don't think it's close. Two reasons. If you turn on American television right now, nobody's talking about anything but Trump. It's the exact same thing that he did before, right? He's just dominating headlines. And the second thing is, I think that the current Democratic nominee is one of the worst people they could have put forward.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  Oh, he's terrible. You know, I've got half a Bitcoin on him losing.

• 1:18:42Anthony Pompliano?

  On Trump losing. What's your argument for why he loses?

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  So I had it on, I've got it like about threefold, right? I think the timing of the pandemic second wave is terrible for him. I think that's really bad for him. I assumed, I thought the Democratic Party would replace Biden. I just assumed they would because it's so obvious he's not the right candidate for the job. I mean, you know, as everyone has pointed out, he can barely talk sometimes. He's obviously got cognitive issues. So I assumed they would replace him. I kind of thought Cuomo would get it. And I'm not, it's not that I'm a fan of the guy. That's the other thing I have to be, say to people is like, I'm not a fan of the Democratic Party.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  I thought Trump was losing. That's why my bet was, I'm betting on Trump losing it. So I thought, I, I thought it was, um, I thought it would be mainly down to a better candidate coming in. Trump kind of having his meltdown and basically the pandemic being very bad timing. I'm not as confident as I was because it feels like Biden's going to get the nod. But I just assumed they would be replacing him.

• 1:19:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I completely agree. I mean, imagine, imagine a debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. You'd have, you'd have to get out, you'd have to get out the crime scene tape, like.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, he kills it.

• 1:20:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and by the way, that's not necessarily me saying that he's even going to say anything of substance, right? It's just he'd just literally bully the hell out of them. Uh, and, and he, he understands how to get the, uh, the soundbite. Right? And people I think are confused in like the debates or things. They think that it's about who has the better policy. That's not what it's about, right? It's, it's basically who can literally overpower the other person and can get the soundbite and, and can make people laugh and be, you know, likeable, all this kind of stuff. It's cra- absolutely crazy, but that's just the world we live in.

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  I, I think there's another thing that doesn't work in Trump's favor and I'm not into this whole like election manipulation and, uh, voter fraud. I think there's, from when I looked at it, when I did my Mnuchin work, there's things going on on both sides. I just think, I think people being able to, or choosing to vote from home or, or having to vote from home because of the pandemic. That really suits the Democratic Party over the Republican Party. From everything I've seen, Republicans want to get out and vote in person. And Democrats are more likely to, you're going to see a higher voter turnout on mail-in votes with, uh, Democrats. And that's why I think Trump's scared of that. So that's another thing I could throw in there, but look, it's fascinating. It's like.

• 1:21:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I actually think that you're right in the sense of yes, getting more democratic votes is bad for Trump. I think that I would argue more people will not vote. So here's one of the things that I think people, I think the argument is that if you have mail-in voting, more people will vote. I actually think it's the opposite, which is although we all think it's easier to get the piece of paper, fill it out, mail it in, I think there's a lot of people who just want to tell me where to go. Right?

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I'm with you on that. But I think whilst you might get a lower turnout, you get a bigger drop off with Democratic, sorry, Republican voters.

• 1:22:05Anthony Pompliano?

  If there's a lower turnout.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  If it's mail-in voting, it's worse for the Democrats, it's worse for the Republicans because Democrats are more likely to still use the mail-in vote.

• 1:22:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes, yeah, completely agree. Yeah. So there's a lower voter turnout, but it's skewed in one way. But here's the crazy part is Biden hasn't chosen a VP yet.

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 1:22:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what I'm wondering is, I don't think it's over yet in terms of their ability to switch him out or to make him the VP. I think Cuomo would be a natural potential person for them to put in. I think that he's got a very, very big problem on his hands, though, in terms of there's tens of thousands of people that died in New York because of his decision to send COVID patients back into the nursing homes. And I think that the Republican Party is sitting on that. They have not hammered him on it yet. And I think that if he gets put forward, you're going to see, I mean, they're going to absolutely eviscerate him and say, you know, there's blood on your hands and kind of like go after

• 1:23:10Anthony Pompliano?

  him. And the sad part is like, why do I think that? Because I think that we haven't seen the mud throwing yet. And like, this is going to get really nasty. And when it gets nasty, there's going to be all kinds of accusations. Like, you haven't seen the Bill Clinton-Epstein stuff yet. You haven't seen, like, all of this is just kind of waiting out there. You could see the ingredients. And like, starting in September, it's gonna be like game on. They're gonna throw everything at the wall, both parties. It's gonna be nasty. And then we'll get to the election.

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  Well, I do hope the planes are flying because I want to be in the US election night. I think it's be, I want to be there for a few days. I think it's going to be fascinating to watch. I don't really have Like, I've got a bet, but in terms of if I wasn't having a bet, I couldn't honestly tell you who I would prefer. I don't, I'm not a fan of either. I probably, I mean, I naturally feel like I swing Republican just because, you know, I like, I like Republican states a lot. When I've been to places like Texas or when I went up to Wyoming, I just really liked it. I kind of felt, felt really at home in those kind of places. But, look, I don't know, dude. It'd be what it'd be.

• 1:24:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I think they're all the same.

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, but I also-

• 1:24:19Anthony Pompliano?

  I literally think they're all the same. What's the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump?

• 1:24:24Speaker 02

  I, well, it's not in terms of him. I think the politicians are all the same, but I like, in terms of kind of like Republican ideals, it's a little bit more like, leave me the fuck alone, let me get on with work.

• 1:24:35Anthony Pompliano?

  But, okay, so I agree that, idealistically, that, that is what is happening. But, a perfect example is, uh, right now, we're looking at a situation where the Republicans and Democrats both want to print trillions of dollars in the next stimulus package, right?

• 1:24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, on that, I think it more like, if you ask me, do you want to go and live in Portland, Oregon? Or do you want to go and live in, I don't know?

• 1:24:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Austin, Texas.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  Well, no, Austin's, Austin's got the same problems. Dallas, Texas, I'll go to Dallas right now. Uh, but maybe like, I don't know, like, Jackson Hole.

• 1:25:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:11Speaker 02

  Like, I, I, I would not want to go to any of these places where these crazy people are losing their shit and rioting every day at the moment. It just, it's a real turn off. And I, I like Portland. I had a, I've had a great time in Portland. Uh, I like Austin a lot, but I just don't want to be around these places.

• 1:25:27Anthony Pompliano?

  It, it's surreal in the, in the sense of, you know, being a white dude who was born in America, grew up here, uh, was in the army, the whole thing, and then you kind of see the videos, you know, I told Pauline at one point, like, it's almost like you can't believe that that is America, right? Like, you used to see those videos, uh, I think I saw one, uh, from Portland, right? And I'm not an expert by any means on kind of what's happening there, so, so, you know, kind of no, no judgment in that sense, but, uh, what they showed in the video, if it was real and all those things, you would expect to see in, like, a war-torn country, you know, somewhere else, right? They didn't have democracy and kind of all this crazy stuff, and you're just like, man, what is going on?

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  Well, at least in the, in, I guess in those places, you think you, you would understand what they want or what they're fighting about. I've got no idea what they, what the hell they want there, so. Anyway, bro, listen, look, I gotta go and, I gotta go and make dinner for these kids.

• 1:26:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, well, tell them I say hello. You should do an episode with your kids.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  I did a little one on, um, did a little one on YouTube once. My son the other day asked to buy some Bitcoin.

• 1:26:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  Cause he's been, yeah, cause he's 16, he's been working, he's earning a bit of money. And I was like, no, he don't need to do that. You, you get all my Bitcoin. But, uh, yeah, no, he's interested. They underst- they understand a few things. They, um, they know who Satoshi is. They know there's 21 million. They're interested, dude. So, they need some dinner.

• 1:26:46Anthony Pompliano?

  That, that's, that's pretty good that they know all that. Alright, my friend. If you listen to the Pomp Podcast, go subscribe to what Bitcoin did. If you listen to what Bitcoin did, go subscribe to the Pomp Podcast. Peter's a legend. Thanks for having me, man.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  Pomp, always good to see you, man. Hopefully see you in New York at some time soon. And say hello to that lovely wife of yours, man. And yeah, go listen to Pomp. But just, if you don't want to listen to Pomp, just stick with mine, cause mine's a bit better.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  See you later, bro. Take care.