#407: Alexander Leishman On Building A Bitcoin Company

Alexander Leishman is a Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of River Financial. Prior to that, he was the Engineer and Investor at Polychain Capital and the Security Software Engineer at Airbnb. In this conversation, we discuss what River Financial does, why they only focus on Bitcoin, how it is going so far, why so many boomers are using their service to buy Bitcoin, what self-custody products they offer, and how he sees the current economic situation. ============================== Want to sell your wonderful internet business? Tiny partners with founders to give them quick, straightforward exits that protect their team and culture. We’ll make an offer within a week, close the deal within a month, and keep your business operating for the long term. Get in touch at tinycapital.com and we’ll let you know within a couple of days. ============================== Masterworks.io is an exclusive platform that makes it as easy as trading stocks online. And the best part is: you don’t need to know anything about art. Their experts will create a custom portfolio to meet your investment needs. With Masterworks.io you don’t have to choose between big risks and big returns. Sign up today, select PODCAST and you can skip the 70,000 waitlist to get first dibs. Just go to www.masterworks.io and use code "POMP" ============================== 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. Alexander Leichman is the CEO and co-founder of River Financial. Prior to that, he was the engineer and an investor at Polychain Capital and the security software engineer at Airbnb. In this conversation, we discuss what River Financial does, why they only focus on Bitcoin, how it is going so far, why so many boomers are using their servers to buy Bitcoin, what self custody products they offer, and how he sees the current economic situation. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do as well.

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:23Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:06Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:51Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Pompletter.com. That's it. If you want to sell your business, go check out tiny, tinycapital.com. If you want to own fractional shares of expensive art, go to masterworks.io. And if you want the daily letter that I send, go to pompletter.com. Let's get into the episode with Alexander. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:57Speaker 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.

• 4:22Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. Super excited to have Alex here. Thanks so much for doing this, man.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, POMP.

• 4:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. So you built one of the most fascinating companies in crypto. You're a Bitcoin-only business. We'll get to that in a second. But before we kind of jump into River Financial, talk to us a little bit about your background, kind of what you did before you started the company.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  So I got into Bitcoin because of an interest I had as an undergraduate in university. I studied aerospace engineering at University of Maryland, but was really interested in economics. Eventually I read a paper called "The Denationalization of Money" by Friedrich Hayek, and got really obsessed with this idea of building a financial institution that offered private money. I thought I would make my own money someday, backed by commodities or something like that. But then I started going down that rabbit hole and realized that there's a lot of challenges trying to do it yourself. I saw what happened to Liberty Dollar, Liberty Reserve. It didn't end too well for them. So when I discovered Bitcoin, I was like, "Holy cow, you know, this fulfills the prophecy. It's neither private nor government-controlled.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  It's this new system, new paradigm we've never seen before, but it's fascinating." And I became instantly obsessed. And so I moved to Silicon Valley at the end of 2013 and been out there pretty much ever since, working mostly in the Bitcoin space. And then started River about a year and a half ago. Before that was working, I went to actually, I went to grad school out there. I helped TA the first Bitcoin class at Stanford. I also worked at an investment fund called Polychain Capital, helping them lead some of their Bitcoin investments and also helping them build some of the technical infrastructure to help them manage their assets. And so, yeah, I've had quite a fun time out there.

• 6:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And so when you left Polychain and you decided to go and build River, what was the general impetus for wanting to start a company? And what was that initial idea as to, "Hey, this is what I'm going to go build"?

• 6:18Speaker 02

  So the initial impetus was kind of the itch I had back as an undergrad to build this financial institution. I had seen a lot of people in the space build exchanges and focus on offering access to multitudes of cryptocurrencies, you know, the big long tail. Coinbase had started with Bitcoin and then expanded very quickly, you know, to supporting as many coins as possible. And I had never seen anyone go down the route of actually focusing only on Bitcoin and building more of a bank-looking institution around it and going deep on Bitcoin and brought a Financial services. I felt like the exchange business was really cool, but it's really, I see it as a local maximum. And the global maximum is building a Bitcoin financial institution.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  And so I, you know, all these other companies went right and no one went left and I, you know, I saw that as a big opportunity. And that's the whole hypothesis behind River.

• 7:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so what did you build first and kind of also talk a little bit about like why Bitcoin only?

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so right now we're a Bitcoin brokerage and custodian in 31 states. So we focus on the higher end of the market, the mass affluent to the ultra high net worth individuals. And we make it really, really easy for people to buy Bitcoin and securely custody that Bitcoin. Over the next year, we'll be expanding across financial services, providing things like, well, we already provide access to self custody services. And then other things like tax advantaged accounts, lending and other financial services that banks offer.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  So, you know, starting, starting the company in 2019 was a very interesting experience. And then the transition between the 2019 era to the 2020 era into the COVID era has been very fascinating. And it's been a pretty crazy ride.

• 8:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Talk a little bit about maybe other companies in the space. They've gone on to add other assets than just Bitcoin. You guys have kind of held steady on Bitcoin only. How do you look at those other businesses? Do you think that those are kind of, hey, that's for each company to kind of make their own decision? Do you think that that's a bad strategy? Just talk through that a little bit.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  So the way we view this is that being Bitcoin only is economically in our interest and allows us to move much faster than the competition. Because we focus on Bitcoin only, we can provide unique features that our competitors can't. For example, we offer access to the Lightning Network. We have this cool feature where you can connect a harbor wallet and see all your Bitcoin that you self custody. And then when you buy Bitcoin in River, you can easily transfer it to your harbor. Wallet and see all the tax plot information transferred as well. All these little things that we do would be orders of magnitude more complicated to do if we supported multiple cryptocurrencies. Just adding one more cryptocurrency to a product like ours. Four to 10 Xs, the complexity of the systems on the backend that we have. And so we see it as a massive competitive advantage.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  We see this long tail of assets that these other companies are focused on. Kind of just providing trading services for as kind of interesting things to, you know, bet on or gamble on, but really. We don't see it as money. We see Bitcoin as money. And so if Bitcoin is the next money of the world, somebody needs to build the next banking services around Bitcoin. And that's why we're focused on Bitcoin because we don't see any other asset that sits at that level.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Additionally, as a business, our goal is do one thing and do it well, right? And why spread ourselves thin across 100 different cryptocurrencies when the vast majority of people only really want Bitcoin? And that's what we rarely get asked by our customers even to support other cryptocurrencies. So that wouldn't really make sense for us.

• 10:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. One of the things that you've been able to kind of build out is this white glove service, right? It really makes people feel special. It really kind of seems like, hey, River cares. Talk a little bit about that process and kind of how that came to fruition and how you guys executed. Cause I've seen people posting the photos online and it just looks, you know, really cool. It is kind of a short way to say it.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  So one of the biggest shortcomings we saw from existing cryptocurrency companies before starting River was the client services and the client experience. I knew of people with lots of money on Coinbase who couldn't even get anybody on the phone. Can you imagine, you know, wiring millions of dollars to a financial institution before ever talking to somebody that works there? And yet that's what a lot of these Silicon Valley kind of startups expect people to do. So we saw that and saw that one of the biggest barriers preventing people from buying Bitcoin. Was the fact that there wasn't a company out there that just had really. Service because Bitcoin is very intimidating.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  And from a business perspective, the way we view our client services is if we can make Bitcoin much less intimidating for people, we can grow our business really well. And so that's really the goal with our client services is to take away the intimidation from Bitcoin, make people feel appreciated and that we don't take their business for granted and earn their business.

• 11:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so talk through kind of who's buying now and how's it going so far? You've been at it for 18 months and any metrics you can share or kind of any updates in terms of how it's actually going?

• 11:52Speaker 02

  So we see the full spectrum of clients at River. However, most of our volume, in fact, probably I'd say 70% or so of our volume comes from people over the age of 50. A lot of people, a lot of older people are buying Bitcoin right now in significant sums. In absolute terms, significant sums, they typically start with a small percentage of their own assets. But if you look at the wealth in the United States and the wealth in the world, you know, most of it is held by older people, which is kind of natural because older people have had longer to accumulate wealth. So as COVID and the subsequent social instability and economic uncertainty

• 12:36Speaker 02

  that has come from that has really been a big catalyst for a lot of these older people deciding to finally buy Bitcoin. And it's for a number of different reasons. Some of them, their own family has been through wealth confiscation, you know, in other parts of the world. And they viscerally understand how important it is to have assets that they can completely control and, you know, get out quickly if something were to really go south fast. Other people who have significant amounts of assets, kind of, they ask themselves, well, let's see, you know, 99% of my wealth is tied to assets that, you know, are real estate, equities, things that are very locked down to the United States.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  And if something did happen in the United States, God forbid, you know, what could I get out so that me and my family would have something? And, and you know, there's gold in Bitcoin and gold has its own set of challenges, like good luck getting a lot of that out. So and then, and then third, the third category is really people who just see it as an uncorrelated asset. In a world where it's unclear where your money should be, I mean, stocks are at all time highs, but it's unclear why, because the markets, I mean, there's, look at all the unemployment and the economic, you know, uncertainty that we face, that's not really justified. They're printing trillions of dollars every year now. So where do they, where do I put my money? I mean, there's only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoin. That's pretty simple.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  And so, you know, we see a lot of different, you know, paths people take towards Bitcoin, but all of them kind of are around this idea of like increasing instability.

• 14:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And when the people come in, it sounds like they're making kind of a small purchase and they kind of crank up in terms of larger and larger purchases. Any idea from the clients that you guys have where they're getting to from a portfolio percentage standpoint? Are we talking about getting to 1% allocations, 5%? Are people of the age of 50 going to 25%? Like, like any ideas there where they're actually getting?

• 14:35Speaker 02

  I think they're typically starting around 1% and then going anywhere between 5 to 10% is what we've seen largely. There are, there are the unique people who do go further, the ones who are really into Bitcoin. But we're also in the very early innings here. So it, and, and, and all of our clients are, are on a, on a journey and they're all on different steps of the journey. So that's what we've seen so far. But who knows where that will go longer term? So, but, but so far we don't see most older people going all in.

• 15:12Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think it'll take to change that, right? Like, what will it take to get the older people to go all in?

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Well, I don't think, I think most of them, I doubt most of them will ever be 100% in Bitcoin. I mean, they own properties and businesses. Those are big parts of their net worth and those aren't things that they would necessarily replace with Bitcoin. I think really the, the bigger question is, you know,

• 15:37Speaker 02

  How will more older people or more people in general get exposed initially exposed to Bitcoin? And why aren't people buying Bitcoin today who, you know, who otherwise might? If you look at the numbers, you know, about especially in the older demographic, only about 10% of the people who are interested in buying Bitcoin actually have it. And so an interesting question is like, well, why haven't they bought it? And I think it's really, it's just very intimidating. Younger people have internet communities that they have access to, to ask questions and socialize. If you think about the average older person, you know, they're not on Twitter every day. They're not on Reddit every day. So they're, they have this curiosity in Bitcoin, but none of their friends know anything about it. No one they know knows anything about it.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  So they're kind of just on their own island. And I think the question is, how do you reach them on that island? And that's what we try and do. And I think that's also, there's a big opportunity for, you know, content creators like yourself to, to reach these folks because we've noticed a lot of them, when they find a podcast, they also really love listening to podcasts.

• 16:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I guess as you guys kind of see these people trickle in, it feels like there's an entire demographic of people who they know they should own Bitcoin. Like they've already decided, yes, this would be a good idea. But the action of going to buy it, it's almost like they've mentally convinced themselves, oh, that's the decision I should make, but they don't execute. Do you see kind of the service-based approach that you guys have taken? Does that break down that barrier? Does that make it easier for people? Or do they kind of look at it as, hey, this is no different than an exchange. I just happen to have a phone number attached that I can call.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  The human element 100% breaks down the barrier. At the end of the day, everyone, I think, really appreciates human engagement with the business, especially when it's positive, a positive experience. And we just, we see our goal as educating our prospective clients, whether or not they decide to buy Bitcoin or not. We don't give them, we don't give financial advice. We don't tell people you should buy Bitcoin. Our, our job is to educate people about Bitcoin and make it as easy as possible for them to do so if they wanted to buy it. And so I think 100% though, the human element that we add to the experience is the game changer.

• 17:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. You guys also have a self custody product from what I understand. Talk a little bit about what you guys are doing on the custody side.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  So one of the things that is big in the Bitcoin ethos is having the ability to fully control your own wealth. And our motto here at River is we want to be the company that you can trust, but you don't have to trust. So our goal is to make it as easy as possible for our clients to self custody their own Bitcoin if they ever wanted to. And removing the barriers to self custody that are there. Right now, it's very challenging to do so. So one of the products we built out was a deep harbor wallet integration with River. So when you set up your River account and you buy Bitcoin, you can actually connect a hardware wallet and pull in all of the information from that hardware wallet

• 18:48Speaker 02

  into your River account. So you can see all of the coins that you custody yourself and all the coins that River custody is on your behalf. And so then when you buy Bitcoin in River, you can actually transfer over the Bitcoin to your harbor wallet with a click of a button, because we have actually, we have the ability to generate new addresses for you to view all your historical transactions and then in self custody those coins yourself without losing any visibility into the tax data and the balance. So if you have a ledger and you have your Bitcoin at River, you can see all of the Bitcoin at once when you log into River, whether you control it or we do.

• 19:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm assuming people love that.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  It's been pretty popular. It's a beta feature. We're still working out some of the little UI things. It's really non trivial because no one's really done this before. So it's, you know, there's a lot of user research that we've had to do to learn kind of how to, how to describe what this is to, to new users. One of the biggest fears we have is, you know, someone connects their ledger and thinks that we have their Bitcoin now and they can just throw their ledger away. Right. Because a lot of people don't really know the ins and outs of how this stuff works. So getting that stuff, those little things, right, is what we're working on before we, before we take this out of beta. And we also have a mobile app coming out soon. So if you connect your, if you connect your ledger to your River account, then on the go, like you just open your phone, you can see your whole Bitcoin stack on your River app, even if, even if you're custodying it.

• 20:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And in terms of seeing a lot of customers come in, use these different products, what are the features or products that they want that you guys haven't yet built but think are interesting or on the roadmap?

• 20:30Speaker 02

  The app is a big one. So we've been working all summer on getting a mobile app out, and that's one of the biggest pieces of feedback we've gotten. We actually do, we started tracking NPS recently, so net promoter score to get feedback from our clients about would they recommend us to a friend, and if not, why? And so we collect all these responses about what customers want from us. We have a really high NPS score, actually. It's 74, which is pretty high up there. For example, Charles Schwab is in the 50s. So we're doing pretty well, but in terms of what people have said that is still missing, another big one is when you buy Bitcoin from us, you can buy it in one of two ways. You can wire us the

• 21:13Speaker 02

  funds and buy that Bitcoin. That's what people do for larger orders, like 25,000, 50,000 plus, and those Bitcoin are available to withdraw immediately. But most people, they buy via ACH. So they connect their bank account and just click buy. And then we actually front the money to buy those Bitcoin for people, and you can buy 24/7. But it takes 6 to 20 business days for that Bitcoin to settle in your account, meaning you can't withdraw that Bitcoin for some time period. So we're really focused on shrinking that settlement time because a lot of people want to be able to access their Bitcoin faster and get it off the platform faster. So that's one of the other big pieces of feedback that we've been trying to address. And a lot of that is just in all of the backend systems that

• 21:56Speaker 02

  we have to build. And then another big one has been earning yields on Bitcoin has been something people have asked for. IRAs is another popular one, being able to buy Bitcoin into an IRA. A lot of people, you can actually, if you have an IRA LLC, you can already buy Bitcoin in River through your IRA LLC. But that's something that's definitely very interesting to people who want to buy Bitcoin in a tax advantaged way.

• 22:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, talk a little bit about kind of building the company itself, like the team. You've done this in the heart of a global pandemic and economic shock. It seems like everything that could possibly go wrong in the world has gone wrong in 2020. How has that been just as kind of the founder of a company and building off that team? And have you guys made any changes that are material in terms of how you've thought about that?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  So when we raised our latest financing, we raised it in the depths of the pandemic, like the worst days of the pandemic, I was on the phone with investors. We pulled it off. We were one of the very lucky few companies that was actually able to pull off a fundraising then.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  And one of the saving graces for us was that if anything was gonna be like the black swan that came out of this mess, the phoenix coming out of the ashes, it would be Bitcoin. And I think that's where we were seeing that happening. That said, you know, it hasn't been all smooth. I mean, COVID brings has brought its own set of challenges. You know, increasing, building a product organization that is effective in a remote environment is tough. You know, there's so much that you get just from being in the same room and eating a meal with somebody. Ideas just spark and being able to replicate that online is very, very challenging. And so that's been a big focus of ours is just figuring out how to, you know,

• 23:58Speaker 02

  build good remote teams. And then on top of that, I think

• 24:07Speaker 02

  in many ways, this COVID thing has kind of been good for business. You know, it's driven a lot of trends that are in Bitcoin and that are tailwinds for Bitcoin. But, you know, so I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen at the end of the day here with the fallout of all of this. I think it's still very early and, you know, the next decade, we'll, we'll see what the end result is.

• 24:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's fascinating to me how teams are having to kind of figure this out in real time. Thankfully, a lot of the products that were in place or platforms are in place to allow some of this kind of remote communication. I had a friend who basically said, imagine if all of this happened and we didn't have the internet or, you know, some of this technology, like, what would people do? Right?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. And, you know, we're seeing some other, some other, like, it's also accelerating the move away from cash, which is, you know, it's kind of scary, right? Because cash is one of these ways you can use money anonymously and securely. And now it's drive, this is driving a trend towards everyone, you know, kind of having money. Everyone's transactions are now kind of accessible to the surveillance apparatus. And so privacy is a big, we're losing a lot of privacy, you know, as a country. And so, you know, how does Bitcoin come in and replace that gap? I don't know. Like, we still have to see what else can help, you know,

• 25:37Speaker 02

  bring back some of the privacy as things are just really forced online during this era of COVID. So these are things we're trying to pay attention to as well and see what opportunities there are there. Because, you know, there are very interesting problems, new problems in society that we didn't have a year ago, that I think people are just starting to wrap their heads around.

• 25:58Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Talk a little bit about the economic situation. You mentioned that there's a lot of people buying Bitcoin, maybe out of fear or concern. How do you guys see this unfolding? And it sounds like you're pretty bullish in terms of Bitcoin's outlook kind of coming out of all this?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I think this has been, brought a lot of people's attention to Bitcoin. The biggest thing, the best thing Bitcoin has going for it is that there's only ever going to be 21 million. Everyone understands that. Everyone understands there's only ever going to be 20 million Bitcoin. The federal government just printed $2 trillion this year. So you have all these people sitting on a lot of cash, thinking, well, what the heck am I doing with all this cash? When they're just printing it out of thin air, where do I put it?

• 26:44Speaker 02

  And I think that's like, I think just like, that meme, that narrative is the game changer, you know, 21 million. And so I think that's going to be the best thing Bitcoin has going for it over the next few years as every country in the world just prints unlimited amounts of money. And gold kind of is the, gold is the historical hedge that people use. But in the computer era, as everything comes online, I think people are increasingly going to start looking at Bitcoin over gold.

• 27:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think it's headed in that direction, that's for sure. One of the things, I don't know if you even remember this story, but I want to tell it on here when we set this up, is I went out to see you when I was in San Francisco, came to the office, you, a bunch of your co-founders and employees, and we were sitting there and somebody basically was like, hey, come into the office, right? So we're sitting in the conference room, and I walked in, and I'll never forget that your office was littered. And when I talk about littered, I mean literally all over the place with Venezuelan bolivars, with, what is it, Zimbabwe dollars, I mean, just all kinds of these currencies that are failed that I think just bought off eBay. Maybe talk a little bit about like, where did you get this stuff from?

• 28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Why was there so much of it laying around the office? And kind of what you guys do with it?

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we have a lot of stacks of, kind of look like if Floyd Mayweather lived in Zimbabwe, is kind of what our office looks like sometimes. We get stacks of like trillion dollar bills, 10 billion dollar bills all over the office. We have different suppliers for these, but we give these to customers and people who visit the office. It's kind of our thing, and we send it to many new clients with a welcome package. And as a reminder of what can happen to government money and what kind of inevitably happens with government money.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  And we have a lot of things in our office to also just like... Build the culture of the team and re-remind everybody why we're doing this. Right. Our goal is to bring sound money, access to sound money to people all over the world. And you know, for another example of this is we have a poster of Executive Order 6102 in our office, which is the order that Franklin Roosevelt, the Executive Order Franklin Roosevelt issued to confiscate people's gold in the United States. My, my, my co-founder, Andrew, who's also my cousin, our great-grandfather had his gold confiscated by Franklin Roosevelt. So, you know, these things are, these things happen and they inevitably happen whenever

• 29:32Speaker 02

  there's a centrally controlled money that you can just arbitrarily print more of. And, and so, yeah, I mean, it's just a quarter of who we are and we like to remind our clients of that.

• 29:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that. Before I go to wrap up, where can people find you on the internet or find more about River?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  So we're river.com. It's really easy to find. You know, check out, check out the website. I'm really easy to reach at [email protected] or check out my Twitter. I'm at Leishman, L E I S H M A N. And yeah, so if you ever have any questions about Bitcoin or just want to talk shop, want to learn more about River, feel free to reach out. Always happy to talk.

• 30:16Anthony Pompliano?

  How'd you get the river.com URL?

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a good question. So we went through a period last year where we had to rebrand and we, we went through a three-month process of trying to figure out a new name. And we worked with a domain broker to go through just probably hundreds, maybe even thousands of domains that were available that had a name that we would want. And I saw River on one of the lists after probably two months. And I was like, there's no way we could afford this, but like, let's see, let's see what, and so, you know, the guy selling it had owned it since the early 90s.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  And the price was actually kind of like reasonable. And for us, it was a no-brainer. You know, we pulled the trigger and haven't looked back and couldn't be happier with our name.

• 31:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Will you say how much?

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Uh, no.

• 31:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, fair, fair.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Less than voice.com.

• 31:28Anthony Pompliano?

  For those that don't know, voice.com was bought for $30 billion from Michael Saylor, who's the CEO of MicroStrategy and recently put 85% of his balance sheet into Bitcoin, which is a pretty crazy story in itself. All right. So I'm glad you spent less than $30 million. That's a, uh, zero to 30 million is not a big range at all.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 31:51Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Same two questions for everybody, then you get to ask me one to, uh, to finish up. First one is, uh, your favorite book or most important book you've read of all time?

• 32:03Speaker 02

  The Richest Man in Babylon. My dad read it to me when I was a kid, never forgot it.

• 32:09Anthony Pompliano?

  That is a fantastic one. I always say there's three books for me, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Richest Man in Babylon, and Think and Grow Rich. So, uh, that, that, that's a great one. Aliens, believer or non-believer?

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Believer.

• 32:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 32:24Speaker 02

  I think that we're not alone in this universe. I think that at some point we'll discover why we haven't been contacted. Uh, but I think we're just, it's so, so early in our civilization that wrapping our head around the whys is, is too difficult. Aliens might, might exist in different dimensions, uh, might exist in a reality that we don't quite comprehend. Uh, so that's why I'm super interested in space exploration, but also just like fun, deeply increasing our fundamental understanding of physics. I think we just have so much further to go in the fundamental sciences and, um, we'll discover things that blow our minds hundreds of years from now.

• 33:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that you're closer to, uh, to being accurate than not. So it's, uh, it's, it's amazing, right? I, uh, somebody sent me an article, um, who was it? Oh, the founder of Athletic Brewing, one of the, uh, the sponsors of the podcast. Shout out to Athletic Brewing. Uh, they, the founder sent me a article about fusion, um, and the ability to try to get the heat and energy of a star recreated here on Earth. It blew my mind. Like you start reading about this stuff, right? And it's like, you know, they haven't done it yet, but they're getting closer and closer. And you're just like, wait till somebody figures out how to do that. And then can you create like fusion power plant? So that you have, you know, eternal energy sources? And it's like, just like, okay,

• 33:43Anthony Pompliano?

  this is gonna be wild. Hopefully I'm alive for that one, right? You could ask me one question to finish up. What one question you got for me?

• 33:52Speaker 02

  When will the first central bank buy Bitcoin? Or have they already?

• 33:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I think they already have. Yeah, I think that is probably a nefarious actor like a Venezuela, an Iran, North Korea, somebody like that. But I think for sure they already have publicly, I think Venezuela said they were thinking about it, like adding it as a reserve asset. But I think we're past the point of somebody buying it. I think the more nuanced question is like, when will the first superpower central bank do it? And my guess is that we're years away, you know, five years away or something like that. Okay. What do you think?

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think I think I probably agree. There's maybe some fringe central bank that's bought a little bit. And I think that someone has to catalyze the first central bank to buy Bitcoin. I don't think it's just gonna happen. And so, you know, I think, I think maybe one of the questions, just for for people on Bitcoin is, you know, what do we all need to build to like, really push this to the next level? And, you know, that's that's kind of how I think.

• 34:57Anthony Pompliano?

  So I've got this theory that the only way a lot of this is going to happen is for Bitcoiners to get into these positions. Right? So so like, at what point do we get? I don't know, seven or eight of I think the 12 Federal Reserve governors are Bitcoiners?

• 35:16Speaker 02

  I always say Bitcoin is an individual story. You know, every institution that's going to have a massive allocation of Bitcoin is going to have that because individuals at that institution have gone down the rabbit hole. And so, you know, I always think it's gonna be a story about the individuals and the individuals who end up running the institutions of the world. So it takes time.

• 35:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that's a fair way to look at it. All right, Alex, listen, you're doing a fantastic job. Please keep building what you're building. We need more Bitcoin only companies. And obviously from the the market response, I think that it's pretty clear people want this. So we're cheering for you and we will have to do this again in the future.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Thanks a lot, Tom. It was a pleasure.