#420: Anna Irrera on PayPal Entering the Crypto Industry

Anna Irrera is a Chief Correspondent at Reuters in London where she covers the financial technology sector and technology related developments at some of the world's largest financial institutions. In this conversation, we discuss PayPal’s entrance into the crypto industry, central bank digital currencies, macro fintech trends, and how COVID-19 has accelerated the digitization of finance. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 80,000 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. Anna Herrera is a chief correspondent at Reuters in London, where she covers the financial technology sector and technology-related developments at some of the world's largest financial institutions. In this conversation, we discuss PayPal's interest into the crypto industry, central bank digital currencies, macro fintech trends, and how COVID-19 has accelerated the digitization of finance. I really enjoy this conversation with Anna, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is BlockFi. I'm an investor and I sit on the board,

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Next up is Choice. Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you're listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million Bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not Bitcoin. I was in that situation, too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account, though. I've got a Choice account and 100% of my retirement funds are there. You should go check them out. I'm talking about being able to own your private keys and use tax-advantaged dollars to do it, too. So Choice, a self-directed IRA product where you can buy Bitcoin, hold the private keys, and the entire time use tax-advantaged dollars to do it. Absolute game-changer. Head on over to retirewithpomp.com

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  choice.com/pomp. Again, retirewithchoice.com/pomp. They've got a really, really long waiting list. If you use the /pomp URL, retirewithchoice.com/pomp, you get to skip the entire waitlist. So go to retirewithchoice.com/pomp and get a choice account today. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 80,000 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. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Anna. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 2:53Speaker 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.

• 3:19Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Anna here. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's jump right into your background. You're a reporter at Reuters today, but kind of what did you do before you started writing about fintech?

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Actually, I was, I started writing about fintech seven years ago, so it's been kind of mostly what I've done. I used to work at a paper called Financial News here in London, and it's owned by Dow Jones, so it was part of the Journal franchise. And when I got hired there, I started on the online beat, which meant I didn't have a, really have a beat. And it was early fintech days, so that was up for grabs. The sort of beat reporters didn't think it was much because the deals were small. And I thought it made sense to cover. I thought it was, you know, going to be bigger in finance because like every other industry, you know, digital was, was coming in. So I started writing about that. And then we changed editor. The editor really believed in, in that area. And so we started writing more about it and then it sort of exploded.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  And then I moved to Reuters. I'd previously interned at Reuters in Brazil for a bit where I was covering markets. So it was good because I had the sort of finance background, which I think was a good differentiator at the start. Often you have like fintech reporters who have tech backgrounds, and I think it's important to have the, the finance understanding to cover this in the, in the right way.

• 4:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And explain a little bit, just like when people hear that you cover fintech, what exactly does that cover? Kind of where are the boundaries? Because it's so pervasive.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. When I started, I was only doing wholesale fintech. So like capital markets, technology, that sort of thing. Whereas now it's like really everything. It ranges from, you know, from crypto, but also peer-to-peer lending, or even just, you know, the tech side of banks and, you know, the tech operations or trading applications, you know, the whole of like, if you think of finance and technology, like really all of it. So it's kind of incredibly broad. And my remit is now global. So it's even broader. But it's fun because you can, you know, write about, you know, central bank digital currencies, or then you can move on and write about like fintech apps for children. It's just like the whole, the whole space.

• 5:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And so I wanted to get you to jump on real quick because you broke the news last week that PayPal is jumping into cryptocurrencies. Maybe talk a little bit just about, you know, when you started to hear about this and kind of how you got the confirmation that this was actually happening.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  So I got the confirmation because he spoke to me. It was, it was a very, I've had more, more hard to get stories in this case. So, you know, I frankly, I know there'd been, there'd been a story, I think a couple of months ago from CoinDesk about it, right? So it wasn't completely shocking to me, but I was still surprised because, you know, they're a big company. I've been covering them for a while because I was, I mean, I just moved back to London, but I was in the US. I would cover their earnings frequently. And I remember in 2016 or seven, I think 2017, early 2017, I'd interviewed Dan Schulman. It was like a sort of, he came into Reuters and it was lots of reporters and editors and he, and he said, you know, crypto doesn't have much utility yet. So I really didn't

• 6:26Speaker 02

  think that they were looking at this. Obviously, it's been many years since, but it was still surprising. Although, you know, once I heard more about it, what they were doing, and I thought about it some more, I spoke to people, it kind of made more sense for them to do something like this.

• 6:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and explain kind of what exactly are they doing?

• 6:43Speaker 02

  So they're gonna, for starters, they're gonna allow people to buy and sell crypto. And it's four, right? It's Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ether. But I think what maybe was lost on some people is that they're not gonna let you buy Bitcoin and you're actually holding your Bitcoin and you can sort of move it and do whatever you want. You're buying Bitcoin, but you can't move it away from their wallet. You'll be able to spend within the PayPal network, which is a massive network. But still, you won't be able to just buy a Bitcoin with PayPal and then send it to your friend who has a Coinbase account, you know? So it's slightly different than what you might expect. But you know, the massive thing, as I said, is that from start of early next year or like by mid next year, you'll be able to shop with their merchants.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  So that could add a lot of utility to Bitcoin.

• 7:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And what I didn't understand kind of when I saw the news break is how big PayPal is, right? So the numbers I read is it's got like 340 million users. It's got 25-plus million merchants. And then it looks like they're either the 20th or 30th largest quote-unquote "bank" by the number of deposits. And so this thing is, everyone knows the PayPal brand, but it's just massive when you look at those numbers.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  I think that the thing about PayPal is, you know, they've been around for a fintech company, they've been around for a long time. So I think people just think, oh, PayPal, it's there. I mean, but they've, ever since they spun out of eBay, they've been really growing a lot and they have a very interesting strategy of just partnering with everyone. And so they have partnerships with all the bank, the credit card providers and, you know, so it's not surprising that they would find another, you know, way to fund the accounts. It's part of who they are now, like this idea of partnering with more companies and different forms of payments. And yeah, they're massive. I think, I remember when I was writing the story, I wrote that they had done, I think, I don't want to make a mistake, but I think it was like around 200 billion in payment volumes in one quarter.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  And I kept going back to check because I was like, billion? Am I, that's, that's a lot per quarter? Are we sure that it's not like per year? But yeah, they're gigantic and they're everywhere. So that's another big differentiator, right? They're absolutely everywhere.

• 8:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And then talk a little bit about Venmo as a part of this. I think Venmo may be kind of the younger generation, kind of the newer brand, but it sounds like they also have some crypto plans for Venmo as well.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they're gonna add this capability to Venmo again, I think by mid-year or something like that. But in 2021, I don't remember the dates exactly. And I hadn't thought about this very carefully immediately as I wrote the story, but they've been trying. So they bought Venmo, when they bought Braintree, I think Venmo came with it. Again, I hope I'm not making too many mistakes, but it wasn't created by them. It was acquired. So and Venmo is free and it's been really popular with everyone. Like, it's just everyone has it in the US. But it doesn't make a lot of money, right? So they've been trying to make it generate some revenue. At the same time, they've seen like increased competition from Cash App, and Cash App has been allowing Bitcoin purchases for a while. So it kind of makes sense. They've been seeing how Cash App has been making quite a lot of money from Bitcoin. So it makes sense that they might see this as

• 9:48Speaker 02

  a way to help Venmo generate some revenue and become a bit more self-sustainable. So, you know, it makes sense. And then you have a younger sort of type of profile of people in Venmo. So, you know, it's smart.

• 10:00Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Makes complete sense. And what was interesting to me is kind of you wrote the original article, right, saying, hey, this is happening. Everyone goes wild in kind of the Bitcoin and crypto world, which has got to be a unique experience. I'm sure most of your articles don't have these rabid fan bases.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  No. So it's very funny. Like, when you write a positive, like a story that's not even like, I mean, it's positive for Bitcoin, but I wasn't saying Bitcoin's gonna hit the moon. Like, it gets so much new followers. And then if you do spend like six months working on an investigation about a crypto project, you just get haters and like your followers decrease. So I think every now and again, I'm just supposed to tweet out a very positive story.

• 10:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Just tweet the word Bitcoin and you'll be a fan favorite, for sure. In terms of the reaction from the market, so not kind of the Twitterverse, if you will, but the actual kind of financial players, it looked like you got kind of a mixed response, right? Because there was articles where people were saying, hey, look, this is a big deal, and this is something to pay attention to. But then you also had an article where there were some experts saying like, eh, you know, it's interesting, but it's not really gonna have that material of an impact. Maybe talk a little bit about that balance.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So. Obviously, the first reaction was like, this is great for Bitcoin. And I, and I imagined that it would send the price higher up because in effect, like, there's been many big companies that have tried to give utility to Bitcoin. So, you know, Dell was one that I'd spoken to in 2017 and they quietly rolled it back. And then, you know, there have been ways to pay with Bitcoin, but there's this big tension between, you know, Bitcoin as a way to invest and Bitcoin as a way to spend. Um, so originally, like, the price went up, but then I was speaking to sort of experts in digital payments and many of them were saying, you know what, it's not clear that this will be great for Bitcoin. Um, or it, or more, not really great for Bitcoin, but great for Bitcoin as a form of payment, right?

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Because it could still be that, first of all, first of all, there's that closed loop thing that we talked about before, right, where you're not really able to take it out of the PayPal network. So it has a limited effect on the whole market. And then also, like, people might not want to spend it anyways, because if you think that the price is going to go up, why are you going to buy something with it, right? You're going to keep it. But what they were saying is that it might actually have more impact for sort of digital currencies in general. And that's what also PayPal was telling me, that they're doing it because they want to get and give more utility to cryptocurrencies, but they also want to prepare for when there are central bank digital currencies. And that's sort of what the experts were, some experts were telling me, saying, you know, this is pretty smart because they're positioning themselves ahead of everyone else. Um, if this starts to happen, if, if, if, you know, you see the Euro, the sort of crypto dollar,

• 12:35Speaker 02

  the virtual Euro, or, you know, then they've already have that integrated within their system. Um, so, yeah, so it might not have seen, it might not be, have that huge impact as you think. But I think it's sort of undeniable that it's brought it more, you know, it's making it more mainstream because now people who have a PayPal account, they might not have really paid attention to Bitcoin, but it just shows up, right? So it, it is, you know, even just image wise, it's, it's a big deal.

• 13:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And, and talk a little bit about central bank digital currencies, right? You, you have kind of this unique position in the market where your job is literally to go talk to as many people as possible and kind of always know what's happening. What are you hearing on, uh, the central bank digital currency side, either from market participants or maybe even central bankers themselves?

• 13:19Speaker 02

  So I think there, everyone's really busy and there are many projects going on, but I have sort of this existential doubt. I don't know if it's, if it's like the blockchain, enterprise blockchain projects in early days. I'm trying to figure that out. Is it just, you know, everyone saying we're doing something out of like a knee jerk reaction from Libra, right? They freaked out Libra. Do we want a private social network who maybe had a hand in like messing up elections to sort of now decide like to have power over like the global currency? So they all said they were doing stuff and there are some projects that are live, but I don't know. I think it's crucial to see like, will they be used and you know, even like the bigger currencies, how long will it take and like, will they have, will they

• 14:04Speaker 02

  look at all like crypto or not really? Will they just be something different? But there's definitely more people talking about it. Yeah.

• 14:12Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And it feels like one perspective of the world, and you're kind of alluding to this earlier, is like somebody like a PayPal eventually gets everyone a digital wallet inside their system. So whether you're a user or merchant, whatever, today that's for cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, et cetera. But eventually if central bank digital currencies become real, you already have the infrastructure there. And it almost feels like the switching cost between going from Bitcoin to a central bank digital currency and back, that friction will be so low and they can use the same infrastructure for everything?

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think that's the point. I think, but I think there's, the central bank digital currencies are work in progress. So I don't know how much they can like work ahead to know what infrastructure they'll need. There was a story from, I think, Bloomberg towards the end of Friday or maybe Thursday about PayPal buying Bitcoin or talking to buy. So that's very different, right? Because then they would be, like the idea, I suppose, is that they want to be able to custody these things. So then it would be slightly different from, you know, what they've set up now. But they've, they've said that it's sort of a work in progress and they want to have like interoperability between wallets. So I think it all remains to be seen. And also, like I, as I mentioned, you know,

• 15:24Speaker 02

  I mentioned Libra, sort of PayPal was an early, was a founding member and they were the first ones to leave. So I wonder how much of this is sort of a reaction to that, right? To, you know, they believed in the idea of digital currencies, but they didn't like the way that was going. So they've still decided to go ahead in their own way.

• 15:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, one of the things I don't know the answer to, but it's interesting to think through is Facebook kind of very courageously came out. And they were the first company to really spearhead this idea of like a private currency, but still centralized in nature in terms of there was a company where you could call in the CEO or call in somebody that was running the project. And it was a brand that was recognizable. I wonder because of the government response, both in the United States and elsewhere, if that kind of scared a lot of these companies away. And they basically are now saying, uh, we probably can't do the private currency thing. So we might as well just use the existing kind of decentralized versions.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, and speaking to sort of Dan Schuman from PayPal, he was very much talking about how they've been speaking to regulators. We've been working with regulators, like he's said regulators very many times. And to me, to be fair, I was quite surprised that there were like, I think it was Mastercard, Visa and PayPal were the big financial companies in that because considering how the project was announced, there was very little clarity on, you know, if they've gotten, if they've gotten go ahead from regulators, which in the end they hadn't. So I was surprised at companies that are already like big financial companies and are aware of like the sort of massive, you know, input from regulators that you need to have, that they just jumped in without like checking with anyone before. And so in the end, you know, they left.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  So, you know, I think now they probably, yes, as you say, they're probably thinking we're going to go ahead. But, you know, we're going to do it with governments and, you know, they're a lot more cautious.

• 17:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. You, you don't just write about crypto Bitcoin. You write about fintech in general. What are some of the other fintech trends that you're seeing kind of play out as COVID and all of that impact plays?

• 17:21Speaker 02

  So obviously there's this sort of digital payment side of things, which is partly crypto, but like more broad, you know, there's been a massive upsurge in digital payments and digital banking in general because of lockdowns globally. So we're seeing more activity there and more companies sort of growing and also reaching big valuations. And it's generally one of the, I guess, biggest trends. Um, and then also like online trading is also growing, you know, we've seen like Robin Hood and the like. Uh, have an explosive year. So that's something else that that we're watching. Uh, and then in general, you know, from the bank perspective also, you know, they they were all in the process of transforming digitally.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  But now because they've had to shut down their branches, they had to, and also like their offices, if you think about the wholesale side of the business. They've obviously, they're telling us that they've had to accelerate the pace of digital transformation. Um, and you know, things that would have taken them a month or two months, they they did it in like two days. Um, so overall, it's like, I guess it's been great for fintech generally, obviously there've been areas that are not doing great with like lending. Uh, clearly it's a bit of a rough moment for lending because you know, lots of people are having a very tough time. So, you know, people are expecting more loan losses.

• 18:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And it feels almost like, uh, kind of the financialization of everything is upon us, right? You're getting kind of any company that touches money, which is almost every company. Somehow they're starting to play in this like fintech type world. Um, and then the fintech companies are also becoming much more pervasive in terms of it used to just be, hey, we want to have a neo bank, right? But now we're seeing brokerage, we're seeing cards, we're seeing kind of the the software companies trying to almost eat the traditional financial system. How do you kind of balance this in your head? Is it going to be where, uh, people are going to come from different perspectives? But everyone's going to end up in just this digital finance world. So it doesn't matter if you're a Wall Street incumbent, a technology company, a crypto company, like we're all headed to the same place.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  I think so. I think inevitably slowly it's going to end up being more like that. I think obviously there's always going to need, you will always need a little bit of a physical presence. Because I mean, for for consumers, you think less about it. But if you're a small business and you take cash, I mean, unless cash disappears. But for for a while, you'll still need to have a little bit of an out physical outpost, right? But yeah, it's, I find it interesting that. You have like big tech finance, tech firms coming in and doing finance things, you know, like Apple doing the Apple Card with Goldman. And then you have like this fintechs that were like, as you say, you had Robin Hood saying we're just a brokerage and then they started launching an account. Or, you know, Wealthfront doing the same, or SoFi doing trading, you know, it's, it's just everybody doing everything. And it's funny because early days of fintech was unbundling.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  And now I guess they figured out people don't want to have fifty apps on their phone for their financial life. And so we have a big rebundling of fintech. And I guess the winners will be who wins the rebundling, I suppose. And, and some banks, the bigger ones in the US who have all the money they need to become more digital, they'll probably still remain winners. I don't see like them disappearing in the short term, but you know, the smaller fintechs, some of them might not be able to remain sustainable, right?

• 20:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it, it's really interesting too, I think, to think through um, kind of the geographic boundaries that were really prevalent in uh, kind of the legacy financial world. Those seem to be going away a little bit as well, because in the digital world, uh, yes, you start to pay attention to the regulations, but uh, when you don't have to have a physical location, it makes it much easier to kind of go other places, right? And kind of have this like cloud-based solution.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, it definitely is only, I think the regulation is sort of like undeniable and something that stops you more than anything, right? Because you know, you need a license to be somewhere else, right? And you need to have, and that license maybe comes with rules about having people there. So whereas, you know, like other types of tech, like TikTok can like take over the world in like I, what, six, I don't even know when they were launched, but you know, you Robin Hood was supposed to come to the UK but decided not to, because I think the step of expanding in another country when you're a financial company, when you're in another country, when you're a financial company is just that much harder, right? So um, so it, it's, it's going to happen, but I think slowly. I think probably what's happening is that

• 21:38Speaker 02

  globally, we're all becoming more similar in the types of services we use. Like everybody's becoming more fake.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  And I guess it depends like developed and developing markets, but you know, we're all using the same types of services, but they're more still a bit more localized, right? There's the equivalent of Robin Hood somewhere else and so forth, right?

• 21:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that Jack Dorsey kind of highlighted this the best, right? I heard him one time say, uh, what really excites him about Bitcoin specifically is this idea of with uh, Square and Cash App. If he wants to go into a new country, he has to do all sorts of things around uh, banking regulations, getting people on boarded KYC AML like, you know, really, really in-depth kind of legacy type stuff. He's like with Bitcoin, it's immediately available in that new country, right? And now, yes, there's probably going to be more regulation over time around it, but um, I think that was a really unique perspective from somebody who's kind of playing in both worlds, right? He, he's a big proponent of Bitcoin, but he also understands uh, kind of the bureaucracy and pain of, of moving a legacy uh, company kind of country by country for expansion.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I'm kind of like pretty, and I having covered finance also broadly for so long, I just think the, the regulatory part is inevitable. And like if the more like, you know, widespread you get, the more you're gonna have like controls around it. If you see in the UK, they've now like, you can't, I think it's with derivatives, you can't, retail investors can't touch crypto derivatives. So it's, it's just the way of things, right? Because you need to protect some consumers and not others. So I think it's true. I think maybe crypto has sort of given people the impulse to realize that stuff needs to be a bit more swift and quick. And you need to have better ways of doing things, whether that translates in the existing cryptos taking over the world

• 23:24Speaker 02

  or just new forms of like payments improving, then you know, that, that remains to be seen, I guess.

• 23:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Before I let you go, I ask everybody the same two questions, uh, and then you'll get to ask me one to finish up. The first one is what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Oh, no, this is very hard. Um, oh, I don't know. I can, I can say which ones I liked that I keep thinking.

• 23:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  I don't know. Um.

• 23:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Even two or three of them, just ones that come to the top of your head.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  I, I, I'm so bad with questions like this. It's when they ask me like, what are you working on? I don't remember. Um.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  I love, I mean, these are not like business books, though.

• 24:08Anthony Pompliano?

  It's fine.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  I'm gonna be like really banal, but I loved Americana, like still one of my favorite books.

• 24:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Why did you like that one?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  I just loved it. I just thought it was like so smart and they could touch on like really important topics, but it was just like love. It was just a lovely read also on top of everything.

• 24:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, very well written. Yeah.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  I loved, um, oh, I don't remember the name. It was the one about a journalist and he, he needed started working in Silicon Valley for a bit and he was doing content. I think it was disrupted. Maybe it was called. I don't remember the name.

• 24:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't remember. No.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  That's really bad book recommendation and I'm so bad with remembering things, but it was great because it was just like, I think being a journalist, it was like looking inside a sort of the startup world from within as a journalist. So it makes me think, will I ever want to work in a startup? I don't know. Cause look at this guy, what happened? Like it was just, I just loved. It was very funny. Obviously if I remember the name, it was better. I remember the cover, but not the name. And then I think I also liked

• 25:15Speaker 02

  um, one of, in just general, Michael Lewis books, I think the early ones.

• 25:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Fantastic. Yeah.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. I just, I just like those. They're, they're fun, but they're also about finance. So you learn things.

• 25:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  But yeah.

• 25:27Anthony Pompliano?

  He's one of the best for sure. Uh, second question is a little bit more fun, which is aliens. Are you a believer or non believer?

• 25:37Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 25:38Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't know? I'm a believer. I'm a believer.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  I'm a non believer until I see evidence to say that. I haven't seen sufficient evidence to believe. I also don't really think about it very much. I'm like too worried about everything going on in the world, other worlds.

• 25:56Anthony Pompliano?

  That, that's probably the best reason to not be worried about what's going on off Earth, right? Is we got enough of our own problems here.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Uh, you could ask me one question to finish up. What do you got for me?

• 26:06Speaker 02

  What would be your dream guest? Like the one you'd like love to have, but is almost impossible?

• 26:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, it will obviously it'd have to be somebody who's dead. Um, I would say.

• 26:23Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the people I've been fascinated with my whole life, and I don't know where this fascination came from, is John Rockefeller. I think that would be a really interesting conversation, especially in, if we had all of the hindsight clarity that we have now about what he did, how he did it, what he built, how important oil became, kind of, you know, all of that. And then to be able to ask him, like, hey, man, tell us all this stuff. Like, why did you do this? How did it work? You know, would you go back and change anything? Those types of questions, I think, would be really fascinating for somebody who, you know, one, amassed a great fortune, but two, did it in a very kind of, did it in a way that I think today, a lot of people try to emulate in terms of like, standardizing industries and kind of building these very

• 27:06Anthony Pompliano?

  powerful, almost monopolistic type, type companies.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Do you think you'd be a Bitcoin believer?

• 27:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I tend to think that a lot of those early people weren't, weren't the biggest fans of, of kind of centralized planned type of currencies. So, or maybe that's my bias, just telling me that they would be. But, but yeah, him, JP Morgan, etc. I think, you know, that they tend to be a little bit more disruptive and innovative than, than not. Where, where can we send people to find you on the internet or find some of your work?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  So you can follow me on Twitter at Anne Naivella, that's my name, last name. And then my stories are on Reuters.com. But I'll post, I post everything. So Twitter is the easiest way.

• 27:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Twitter's the best one. All right. Listen, Anne, I thank you so much for doing this. I think that people are really fascinated with the PayPal news. And obviously, you got the story out first, which is always fun as well. So thanks for doing this and what you did to get in the future.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you.