#436 Dan Tapiero on Gold and Bitcoin

Dan Tapiero has more than 25 years of experience investing across asset classes on Wall Street and is one of the most well-known macro investors in the world. He previously spent time working with Julian Robertson, Stanley Druckenmiller, Steve Cohen, and many other luminaries. In this conversation, we discuss the gold thesis, the bitcoin thesis, the recent divergence, whether they will co-exist in the future, how to think of an ideal allocation to either, and stock-to-flow models. ======================= 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 ======================= 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"

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. 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. Dan Tapirio has more than 25 years of experience investing across asset classes on Wall Street and is one of the most well-known macro investors in the world. He previously spent time working with Julian Robertson, Stanley Druckenmiller, Steve Cohen, and many other luminaries. In this conversation, we discuss the gold thesis, the Bitcoin thesis, the recent divergence, whether they will coexist in the future, how to think about an ideal allocation to either, and the stock to flow models. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dan, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:14Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:59Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:44Anthony Pompliano?

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• 4:16Speaker 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.

• 4:47Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I have a very, very special treat for you today. I have Dan here. Thank you so much for doing this, sir.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Hey, Pomp. Happy to be here. Finally.

• 4:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's jump in real quick. Give us kind of a quick overview of your background and then we will get to the conversation that everyone wants to hear, which is gold and Bitcoin.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, you know, I've been through this a few times already. I think most people know a little bit about my background. I was in the hedge fund business for 25 years as a global macro PM. Worked early in my career with Julian Roberts in a Tiger and then Michael Steinhardt. Also then, a little later on, worked with Steve Cohen at STACK for 10 years and then Stan Druckenmiller at Duquesne and then back with Steve again. Along the way, focused on just about everything outside of specific equities. You know, that would be commodities and currencies, emerging markets, et cetera.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  In 06, when I was working with Druck, we launched, I was very focused on agriculture then. We launched a company called Agcoa, which ended up becoming the largest private farmland REIT in the U.S. We sold it in 2013 to the Canadian Pension Fund system. But for seven years, we built up this portfolio of farms out in wheat, corn, soy-producing farms out in the Midwest, mostly in the Mississippi Delta and in Nebraska. So that was, you know, that was a case where I took a macro idea that I focused on for the portfolio through positions in in grains and then applied that idea to starting a business.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Um, did the same thing in oh eight oh nine uh with physical gold. Uh, had been trading gold in the nineties or positioning um and then got very bullish in oh eight. Worried about, you know, banking systemic risk, wanted to hone some physical gold outside of the banking system. I mean, to have it stored outside the banking system, couldn't find a really, I would say legit triple A, you know, way to do it. You know, you had guys on the internet, uh, I've said sort of like crazy Eddie type guys selling you physical gold. Or you had guys, you know, with a P O box in the Caymans. So um, set out with a partner to start a company called Gold Bullion International. Uh, my partner there is still the C E O.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Uh, today it's eleven years later, the business is uh really flourishing this year. Uh, it's it's just been a great business, um, over uh, over forty people. We've done, uh, we've, we have over three hundred thousand clients, uh, done over a million trades. And we're the third largest vault or now gold out in the world outside of the max. Um, and so I I really know the physical gold business. Uh, I I I, you know, I sometimes, it it takes a lot for me to sort of hold back, especially on Twitter. We'll get into this a little later because I am coming from a different place of knowledge. I mean, I I I know this business anyway, so um.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  And then uh, in two thousand fourteen, that gold business integrated with Bit Reserve, which today is the uphold wallet. And we were the first place that you could buy and sell physical gold to buy and sell Bitcoin and Ripple. So that was sort of my intro into uh, the Bitcoin world. Uh, and then in two thousand nineteen, uh, the company partnered with Equity Trust to offer an I R A. And we were the second place in the U S where you could trade eight different cryptocurrencies um, in your I R A. And we also partnered with DCG. I've known Barry, you know, eight years or so on the other side. So we built that platform. DCG, of course, doing the execution and equity trust in the,

• 8:49Speaker 02

  you know, facing the client, but we were the ones who sort of built that architecture. So that pulled me more into the world. And then in Q1, Q2 19, what happened was, you know, the price had collapsed from 19 down to four. And as a macro guy, look, you know that either it's a bust, right? After a blow off, or it was a big opportunity. And I had been making little bits of money in it. Not a lot. And then I just sort of, I did the whole rabbit hole thing. I, I said, this is the time. I did six months really of 10 hours a day of reading podcasts.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  You know, everything just totally immersive. And it sort of resulted in that interview I did with Raul Pau last summer about Bitcoin. And that was sort of like my kind of entry into the world. I mean, I, I didn't even do Twitter at that point. And Raul says to me, Dan, just give me a Twitter account. And like people will follow up with questions. And so I just, I had had an account that I'd set up, but I'd never used it, didn't know how to use it. Anyway, I, that was sort of my sort of entry into the world, into this world. And, you know, of course, as you know, the entire Bitcoin world lives on Twitter. I tell people, it's not New York, it's not Silicon Valley, it's not Hong Kong, it's, it lives on Twitter.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  And of course, because it lives on Twitter, we know you are one of the guys, I don't know, not gatekeepers per se, but you're one of the, you know, I just think key, key people in the space. You connect so many different people. And I'm thrilled to be here. And I know we've been trying to do it for, for about a year, just because, I, I guess in a way, I think you reflect the zeitgeist. That's how I, I see it from like, you know, from the top down. Like if people say to me, who are five people I have to follow? Or who, whose daily piece that you write? You're definitely the hardest, hardest working man in Bitcoin. There's no blockchain cryptocurrency,

• 10:54Speaker 02

  whatever you call it. I don't think anybody would dispute that.

• 10:58Anthony Pompliano?

  I appreciate the kind words and for those that don't know, in March and April of this year, when all of the economic chaos was kind of going on and there's lots of uncertainty, you were one of a very select few number of people that basically I was like begging to get on the phone. I was like, help me understand what is going on right now. And you nailed it, man. You were all over it. And so that experience definitely paid off.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, you know what? That was really fun because, look, when you've been in the markets for 30 years, you're used to, you know, selling climaxes and panics and this and that. And you see it in different places around the world. And March was really bad. But I can remember that one day in March, when it got down, the Bitcoin dipped down through like six, it was six and then five. And I started getting all of these messages from all these people that like, Dan, you were so wrong. You don't know anything. And I put this tweet out like, listen, it's the only time, and I'm against the cursing on Twitter, just because I, you know, you got to, but it was the only time on Twitter I

• 12:01Speaker 02

  said, what is it? I said, STFU, right? This is like the, this is like, this is the only really truly freely trading market. Basically, this is it, right? Like, this is the bottom. This is not, you know, I was getting bombarded all over the place. And, you know, I just, nothing really had changed. And, you know, anyway, it was, it was a great moment to be involved in. And then in the weeks after, I mean, you and I did talk a lot about the dollar, because that was the high. And that was part of what we were talking about was that the Federal Reserve would sacrifice the dollar before the equity market and the

• 12:45Speaker 02

  asset market. And so that was another, meaning, they would have preferred the, they would let the dollar go down as much as they needed to, as long as it ended up supporting the equity market, right? So, yeah, that was a very exciting time. And I think a lot of guys in the space sort of became more macro after that, right?

• 13:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's start the conversation just around gold and Bitcoin with how do you, right now, if, you know, one of your global macro friends called you up and they said, look, we, I want to understand this, Dan, like, how would you describe your thesis on gold and your thesis on Bitcoin to them?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you know, the macro guys, for the most part, know why and how to execute and position in gold. And, you know, you saw Tudor Jones's letter this summer, which was, I think, you know, one of the two or three most important events in the space. You know, he had a, he has a significant position in gold. You know, and you can read his eight-page paper, which I think is pretty good, gives you good sense. And then, of course, Druck as well came out a few days ago and mentioned a position in gold. And so that really doesn't need so much explaining. People get that, look, the balance sheets of central banks

• 14:07Speaker 02

  have been exploding. You know, M2 is up 25% year over year, and, you know, it's really not been up over 10% at any period. Rates are zero globally. There's huge injections of liquidity going on by all the major central banks. So I don't, that's not really, you know, that doesn't really need explanation. I think it's a little more, it's a little more difficult to explain Bitcoin because to own gold is to own, you know, is to, is to be short fiat, right? And so there's also this paper, hard asset dichotomy, which really resonates with sort of more traditional investment managers. Meaning, they get there's

• 14:51Speaker 02

  paper, they get there's an unlimited amount of paper, right? Or there will be. And that there's more or less a finite amount of gold. And that it's hard, you can hold it, you know, with 1% a year increase in supply or whatever. It's versus all the other assets out there in the world, it's finite, right? And I know the Bitcoiners are constantly saying, oh, gold, it's not finite, it can find it in the asteroid or whatever insanity that you want to come up with. But more or less, and I want to get into this because even though I do have great respect for your work, I do think that the piece that you wrote a few days ago sort of really inspired this. And we

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Talked about this a bit before the show, gold versus Bitcoin doesn't end in coexistence. And it's something that, you know, I really don't believe that's true. And I think one of the themes, if you'd say there's one theme that's consistent that I continue to put out on Twitter is that you really have to own both. And I want to clarify that though, because

• 16:01Speaker 02

  and that's because, look, there's no question that Bitcoin is going to outperform gold. So I think people should stop talking on Twitter about it's bad.

• 16:14Anthony Pompliano?

  You're saying, you're saying specifically that Bitcoin from like a price appreciation.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Price appreciation, it is the fastest horse, it will be the fastest horse. We can, you could spend hours explaining why, but I just, or not. I think it's, and the way I think about it is in the next sort of five years, I could see gold at 4,000. So that's a double, but if gold's at 4,000, Bitcoin is probably somewhere between 300 and 500,000. So that's a 2030 X. Well, it was from last week. It's still, I mean, it's about a 20, 2030 X. And so I don't really think that, that anyone in the gold world even who, you know, even Tudor Jones, as he's his fastest horse, they're not going to debate that.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  So I don't, you know, I don't, you know, so, and if you're a little, if you're a small investor, you know, you may, you may say, well, I don't need gold. I just want the one that's going to perform the best over a bunch of years. Okay. But gold has certain characteristic, characteristics and traits today that I don't think.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  I'm not sure people are aware of. And like, so why bother with gold at all? You use the blockbuster and Netflix analogy, right? And I think that's actually the wrong analogy. Because you, and also, and Sailor too, by the way, who I love to death. But, you know, you come from a technologist background, right? And so you look at it and you say Bitcoin is new technology. Gold is old technology. Okay, so there is some truth to that. There is some truth to that. But that's not, that's not why gold is important today or why it will be in the future.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  So, okay, so what is, you know, what is, uh, what's important about gold?

• 18:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's, let's start with gold itself, right? In terms of like, like, why is gold important today?

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Right, so one of the things is, um, gold is tremendous liquidity, right? It's an 11 trillion, the 12 trillion dollar total market value. Bitcoin is still only 350 billion. So if you are an institution, let's say you're the, as an example, this Norwegian oil fund. They have a trillion dollars. They want to put 5% to work, uh, in, let's say, a non-fiat asset that is scarce. Okay, they can't do Bitcoin. They can do $50 billion of gold in less than a week. I mean, and if you're, I mean, you can really accumulate that, right? It trades $50 trillion in volume a year, right?

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Versus, let's say, 3 to 4 trillion in Bitcoin slash all the other cryptocurrencies. So in terms of trading volume, uh, it's much bigger, okay? But gold, and I think a lot of people are missing this, um, is just now entering a new phase. It is just now entering a bull market. And I might even argue that this coming up is gold's first bull market. And I say this because And again, I did a longer interview in March on this, it's on YouTube. But I say this because we've never had

• 19:48Speaker 02

  we've never had zero rates or negative real rates for this long. I think that the the bond portion of all of these traditional asset managers portfolio, okay, has now become irrelevant. So let's just say you have 200 trillion dollars in assets out there, or even 100 trillion dollars owned by pension funds, insurance companies, all these guys. And they have these 70-30 portfolios, right? So you're talking about 70 trillion, I'm sorry, 70% in, yeah, 70 trillion in equity or assets. You've got 30 sitting in government bonds, just in that one cohort, right?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Those bonds do not act as a hedge to their portfolio anymore. They're sitting at 50 basis points, right? They cannot go below zero. If we have a slowdown to the next few years and the Fed has to come in again and take rates negative in the front end and inject liquidity, those bonds will not appreciate to offset declines on the asset side of the portfolio. Okay, they're in big trouble. And I've said this on Twitter, I've said it, you know, a few times, that the biggest question that people will have traditional asset managers in the 2020s to answer is what am I going to do with all of those government bonds?

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Or even like, you know, corporate bonds that are, that used to yield five, that are now yielding one and a half or two because they've gone out the risk spectrum.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  One of the things that they will do, and they have not done it yet, is to move into gold. Okay, and so I don't know even if you're aware of this, but the institutional allocation to gold is less than 2% globally. Okay, it cannot be over for gold before it has even started. So when you say Bitcoin and gold can't coexist, that makes no sense to me because the move into gold hasn't happened yet. The move into Bitcoin will come after that. And I know some people will say, oh, no, smart people will just jump over the gold step

• 22:07Speaker 02

  and they'll just go right to the Bitcoin, right? Well, it's too early for that. And also, you know, the mentality of people in that traditional asset world, they're way far away from owning Bitcoin. I mean, I know from when you were, you know, as a private equity slash VC investor, you speak to some of these institutions and there are many of them that are years and years away. You know, we talk about the ones who are allocating now, you know, who who understand it now and all the institutions are coming. But it's it's the top 1%, right?

• 22:49Speaker 02

  90% of them still, I just got a message today, it's not a proven valid technology. How many times have you heard of that? So those people are sitting with all of those bonds, okay? And from 1980 until today, every time we've had a slowdown, the bonds offset losses on their equities, okay? For the first time ever, that's over. And so why move to gold? Because they're going to move 5% or 10% of their portfolio to gold because gold does not have a limit on the upside when central banks are in balance sheet expansion mode.

• 23:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Why have so many institutions not put assets like historically? Right? So over the last 2, 5, 10 years, why have they kept that allocation at 2% or lower?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  It's actually, I mean, it's pretty much zero for almost all of them. And then a few of them are like five and five percent or whatever. So it averages out to like one or two. You know, it's just like anything. Gold was pegged until seventy one. And, you know, it didn't exist as a market from thirty three to seventy one. So it didn't trade, it was pegged. The seventies bull market in gold was really just about a release from a peg. I wouldn't even say it was, you know, no one, it was a trading asset. I don't think that people thought of, maybe they thought they'd have a little bit of it. But remember, it peaked in nineteen eighty, okay?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  And went into a bear market for twenty years. Gold price was declining for twenty years. So if there was somebody out there who thought gold should be in your portfolio circa nineteen seventy eight, by nineteen eighty eight, he was, you know, he was proven wrong. Or, you know, and then by ninety, by ninety eight, you know, he was dead on the ground. And then in two thousand, I think it was two thousand, you had the Bank of England sell the complete low. You know, and people just completely gave up on it. Of course, then, you know, with the rise of China, gold then sort of took on a different, you know, took on a different narrative.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  I mean, gold, gold like Bitcoin has different narratives that drive it at different times. It's an incredible asset in that way. I would just say sort of historical predilection. Again, a big bear market and then people sort of having done really well in equities. Right? Equities, you know, went sideways from sixty eight to eighty three, basically. So you made no money in equities for fifteen years. But then, look, since nineteen eighty, you've done great. And technology has come and changed everything and, you know, and driven returns in the economic. So people haven't needed to look at gold, right? Also, in America, Americans are very comfortable with.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Equity and with their currency. So we've never really been forced to think about non-dollar assets. We've never had to worry about inflation. When the dollar goes down, as it did from 2008, euro went from 80 to 160. People forget the dollar lost, you know, you know, whatever, 70, 80% of its value against the euro.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  And has, you know, over periods of time, but it didn't hurt us. We saw it, you know, the equity market benefited. But like in foreign countries, and especially in the EM, they do have currency problems, right? They do have weak monetary policy, people who, you know, do, you know, quasi-illegal things. Do, you know, do actively debase their currencies. So for them, gold is more a part of their portfolio than for ours. I would say only the Germans and the Swiss really historically, and then the Chinese and the Indians.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  But, you know, I just think amongst the really big portfolios globally, you know, there just hasn't been an experience with it. And look, even just as an example, just look on Twitter. How many true, truly smart gold advocates are there? You know, there aren't. There, I mean, of the, you know, I interviewed Tom Kaplan, you know, and John Hathaway for Raul Q4. Those are two super smart gold gods. You know, there are also older people, right? I mean, you know, John's in his seventies, Tom is, you know, is young still in his fifties.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  But, you know, the preeminent guys are still very old and not sort of out there getting the message out. So, look, I, I think it's coming. That's when you say something like, why, why has, why hasn't the world put 5% or 10%?

• 27:55Speaker 02

  I think there's just, there's no Mr. Gold. There's no, there's no Morgan Stanley of gold, right? Um, I think that's, I think that's it. There's not been an advocate. Like, imagine if gold had a guy like you, the way you advocate for Bitcoin, and throw in Michael Saylor, and some of the other guys who are out there really, you know, banging the drum. Um, gold doesn't have anyone out there like that.

• 28:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, and I guess, as you think about, um, kind of, a lot of these institutions now are obviously seeing, hey, central banks aren't playing around, right? They're gonna keep just printing and printing money. Balance sheets are gonna continue to expand. There's gonna be weaker currencies around the world. Um, one definitely is gonna be, hey, we should put gold in the portfolio. But it sounds like you're bullish on both gold being added to the portfolio and also Bitcoin, just in different sizes?

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think, I think that's right. But I also think it's for different groups of people.

• 28:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, explain that.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  So, look, I mean, if you're, if you're a retail guy, uh, and you, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're passionate about Bitcoin, and you know, you think it's gonna change the world as, you know, as I do. Um, I'm as bullish a- as any of those guys, uh, out there pounding the table. I'm, I'm just not as, as loud about it. I think, you know, you know, you should have some gold, but you don't, you don't really need it, the way that larger investors really need gold now. And they don't have it. Because in their portfolio, they have a big hole, right? So for them, they should have that 5%. They should have that 10% or even more. And they're gonna have

• 29:39Speaker 02

  a hard time getting the gold on. I mean, I'm sorry, getting the, the Bitcoin on. At some point in the future, when, when Bitcoin is, you know, a $5 trillion, uh, asset, yeah, I think it, it becomes easier to handle. Maybe even 2, 3, 4 trillion. Um, but we'll get into that. I think that's also, uh, it's, it's an intellectual leap that is very hard for people to make, and we can get into that. Um, but they, I think these things coexist for a while, because they're both hedges to the fiat system.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Right? I don't think fiat is going away anytime soon. Governments, central banks, they're not going away. I just, you know, control, power, they're not gonna give, all the world's elite, they're not giving up this power just because Bitcoin is going up 20x, right?

• 30:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  It's just years and years. So, but if you don't believe in what's going on in the system, you don't have a lot of options, right? So, gold will remain that an option, right? So, another thing, just to touch on, is that we don't really have enough liquid stores of value available in the investment world. But remember, I'm coming at this from the investment perspective. You're coming at it from the tech perspective and saying, "Gold is old tech." Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, it is a little, but that's not the point.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  The point is you don't have a hedge to the existing system at all. Look, real estate now, which many people thought, you know, was, is getting crushed in the cities. I mean, who even knows? I mean, eventually, you know, we'll get back to work in that way, but it's not a great, you know, maybe over a 30-year period, I guess it's a good store of value, I don't know. I don't really know real estate that well, but...

• 31:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And is your thought, Dan, that when an institution says, "Hey, look, the central banks are printing tons of money, we've gotta get some sort of hedge, whether it's to inflation," you know, kind of a whole story, do they look to an inflation hedge basket and then pick individual assets within the basket? Or do you think most of them are looking for more of like index-like exposure to inflation hedges? Like, how do you think about the allocation decision?

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Well, I think you try to find different things that, I mean, if you're really that big, you probably, you know, there's certain equities that'll perform, you know, well, when gold performs. You know, there are miners as well. There are other things. I don't, I mean, I'm not managing a trillion-dollar portfolio. I don't really worry about that. I have a, you know, I have a very large percent of DTAP, which is my own entity allocated to gold and Bitcoin. And I, I see the two together for me, and I have more gold than I have Bitcoin.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  But, you know, look, increasingly, the Bitcoin side is getting much larger. Because I am, as I say in my Twitter bio, I am a hodler of gold, of physical, and Bitcoin. I think, I, so, when I say that each person has different needs, so gold is really important to this institutional world, but they've yet to acknowledge it, right? You don't see it in the allocations yet. People don't have, don't have it. The language of understanding gold is really still just in its infancy for them, right?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  That's why this coexistence, ending it, is totally off-base, because for these people, it hasn't even started yet. And that's why I keep saying gold and Bitcoin are like cousins. Because, you know, it's a hard-money asset in a world where, for the first time in my career, there has never been as clear and active a debasement of fiat, ever. I mean, in the last thirty, ever. So what are you gonna do against that, right? Historically, a store of value was like the yen, right, or the Swiss franc. But no one's buying the yen anymore. That's like fifteen years ago.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  That's the problem, is that there aren't enough safe haven options. There are not enough store of value options available to the investor. And so, saying that gold is gonna go away, even before it started...

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Like it's accept it's it's acceptance mode, right?

• 34:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So let me do this. I want to I want to walk through kind of step by step as to the thesis that I have as to like where I get to, hey, they won't be coexistence. And I want to try to pinpoint the point at which we diverge in thinking because I actually think we agree on a whole lot.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:51Anthony Pompliano?

  At some point towards the end, there's this divergence and I want to try to pinpoint that. So the way that I think about this is like the legacy system, the central banks, like there's a bunch of problems. They're going to debase currencies and investors are going to flee to inflation hedge type assets or store value assets. I think you and I see eye to eye on that.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:08Anthony Pompliano?

  We could literally talk for hours and hours and hours about all the problems, but we agree there.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Second thing is that the solution or one of the the main solutions is going to be sound money principles. Right? And I think that then where we get to is like gold is the analog application of those sound money principles. Right? You say, hey, look, I want the physical gold. I'm going to get the gold. I'm going to put it outside the making system and I have control over like an analog asset that I can touch and feel.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Right, but that's but that's me and you agreeing on that.

• 35:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  If you were to sit in a room with more traditional that hundred trillion dollars, they may not, they may not.

• 35:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain explain why they may not agree with that.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  Well, look, they can see that it's happening, but they they they're looking at, you know, what are their ranges, range of opportunity, the the opportunity sets? They're just, they've never done it before. The allocation even to gold miners, gold, it's not that big. No one in that room, okay, I'll tell you this for sure, is sitting around and saying, gold can be 4,000 in five, six years from now. I say that to you and you're like, yeah, that's reasonable, right? The Bitcoiners are more gold believers than everyone else outside of the Bitcoin world.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  You see what I'm saying?

• 36:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  So if you come into my world, so here, I I run the investment committee for an endowment. Like I do it on my, you know, as part of my charitable activity. It's a $500 million endowment. I've worked on it for 11 years. Okay, we have an institutional advisor. So we have an advisor who who who advises over a trillion dollars in assets. All right. It has been extremely difficult over the years for me to get them to let us have some gold. I mean, we finally did about 18 months ago, we went into gold. They don't, you know, they don't recommend out front and center, everyone needs some gold because of currency debasement and because bonds are at 50 basis points.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  They are just now, in the last six to 12 months, saying maybe you should entertain some gold. So I'm seeing this from that perspective. I'm in that.

• 37:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  I'm really a, you know, a hedge fund investor, trader, entrepreneur, but I span the entire realm as well as like a Bitcoiner. So I go from endowment manager to Bitcoiner, right?

• 37:47Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  By the way, that endowment put 1% of its portfolio into Bitcoin in Q1, Q2 19 last year. So, and then that took, we became the first, it was, well, the first endowment of its kind to own Bitcoin directly.

• 38:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  It called storage. Anyway, my point is that, so being in that world, none of those people like are really saying what you've just said to me.

• 38:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  You agree.

• 38:18Anthony Pompliano?

  But, so you and I see gold as this analog application of sound money principles. And then I think we see Bitcoin as like this digital application of sound money principles, right? There's the scarcity, all that kind of stuff.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So when I look at that, I say, hey, gold and Bitcoin, right? For literally for years now, I've been saying gold and Bitcoin or sound money principles, whether it's the analog application or the digital one, will end up both doing well, right? Kind of what your position is. Only recently have I changed my mind and here are the things that I'm starting to think through. So if you look at some of the gold, right? There's gold ETF outflows on a very small basis over the last couple of weeks or months.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, but that's just flow. I mean,

• 39:05Anthony Pompliano?

  of course, right? So, so there was a massive rise and you would expect that not everyone's going to hold all the gold forever and keep buying, right? So it doesn't just kind of go up into the right forever. There's going to be kind of these, uh,

• 39:16Speaker 02

  it always goes up and down.

• 39:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. So that was kind of one. Two then is some of the central banks, right? Have actually been a net seller of gold on a very small basis again, and, and only in the short term. This isn't a long-term trend. This is just recently. So as I started to think through this, I started to say, when these asset allocators look for those sound money principles, the big question I think is, are they going to allocate across the analog application and the digital? Or are they going to pick one or the other? What I've become convinced of in the first scenario, if they pick both, then you and I are correct and like both do well, right? What I'm starting to become more convinced of and was kind of the, the impetus for that piece was,

• 40:03Anthony Pompliano?

  wait a second, they may only pick one. And if they do, I actually think they pick the digital version, not the analog version over a long period of time. Not in the next three, four, five years. I'm talking over 30 years.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  The moment they can't, right? At the moment they can't. And so,

• 40:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I agree.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  At the moment, it's too, it's too much of a leap. What, what I was trying to say before was that there, you're so far ahead, you don't realize it.

• 40:33Anthony Pompliano?

  I completely agree in the short term.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Even accepted in institutional circles yet, right? They're going to say, we need to hedge for the next five years to replace our bonds. Right? They can't go in and do 30 billion of Bitcoin. They just can't do it. And it would be irresponsible to own 10% or 20% of all the Bitcoin outstanding. And they'll drive the price up a lot. It just doesn't make sense. Before they get to a five to 10% allocation in gold, it will be years. Okay. Years. So that's why, now if you're telling me in 50 years from now,

• 41:15Speaker 02

  People will have more Bitcoin than gold. I mean, I think, sure, it could be, maybe. But, hold on one second, hold on one second, because I played that thought out as well. Reading your piece. I said, so 50 years from now, I have a different thought than you do.

• 41:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, this is what I want to hear is, what do you think happens over a long period?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Because 50 years from now, every single asset will be on the blockchain. Every financial asset, whether it's on, you know, the Bitcoin network, or whether something in the future happens, or whatever it is, I don't know. But everything will be digital, every, everything of extreme value, right? We love Bitcoin because of its intense security, it's unhackable. If you want to do, you know, for large transactions, eventually the collateral of the system, everything, we agree on all of that. Okay, the one thing is that maybe in that time, 50 years from now,

• 42:15Speaker 02

  there might actually be a premium for physical gold because it won't be on the blockchain. Physical gold will be physical, it won't be tracked. So you forget, everything, every Bitcoin, everyone knows where it's completely known. And the tax authorities are also going to know, and governments are going to know, and everyone's going to know, okay? But they're not going to know on gold, okay? And they still don't know on gold. And physical gold, I'm talking about, forget ETF and futures and all that. There might be a premium because 50 years from now, physical gold will be the only liquid asset that is not digital.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Now, some of it will be digitized, you know, like the Pax Gold token could have 50 billion on it eventually, or whatever it is. But that, to me, also in my mind, is like, I think that physical gold is completely anonymous, if you want it to be. And physical gold is not considered as security also. So the regulations around physical gold and the taxation principles are different. There is a chance that in the future, when Bitcoin becomes an established thing, and everyone has it, and it's trading at 400,000, 500,000.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  You know, government may say, "Yeah, we want to tax, you guys have made $10 billion. We're going to tax Bitcoin to 50%, right?" It's, they'll know it, there'll be a record of it. Physical gold is different, and I'll tell you why. And this isn't about evading taxes, that's a, no, I'm not talking about that. There are different taxation laws for physical in different jurisdictions. As an example, in the UK, if you are a UK citizen, you can buy their sovereign coins, UK sovereign coins, and they're pretty liquid, and pay no tax ever. No capital gains, no income, no wealth, no inheritance, nothing.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  They're grandfathered in, zero tax forever. So, that's a nice, yeah, I know, that's, that's one thing. There are many things like that around the world for physical gold. Okay, I'm not going to get into them, but because it's an old asset, because in certain places, they try to encourage a ownership of gold, again, that can change, but remember, in 50 years from now, there could be that premium, right? Because it'll be something that is not known, if you want it to be not known, right? So that's, you know, that's something you should think about.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I don't think it, it plays into any, you know, any, anything that impacts my decision-making, because I think it's still early for both assets.

• 45:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And so when you think about kind of the asset allocation, whether it's for, maybe we'll do a retail investor and then a large institution, between Bitcoin and gold, if somebody called you up and they say, "Hey, you know, I've got some money in my personal account," what do you suggest that allocation, or what do you see people doing there? And if a big institution called, how do you see that asset allocation between Bitcoin and gold?

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look, I think institutions should have somewhere between 5% and 10% in gold, and then I kind of use it like a 3 to 1 ratio. You know, that's what I, so if you have, if you have 10% in gold, 3% in Bitcoin. If you're a retail person, depending on your age, like I think you can have, you know, you can have 20% in Bitcoin. If you're a 30-year-old guy, zero in bonds, like zero. You should not own any bonds at all, zero. So I think, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, but everyone has different risk appetite. It's hard to say. I mean, I've heard you

• 46:19Speaker 02

  say you're 80% in Bitcoin or whatever it is. You know, I, again, I, that's, I really am from sort of the Druckenmiller camp of, I like to put all my eggs in one basket and then watch that basket very carefully. It's just a macro, you know, a macro guy of focus. You know, I want to be in the fastest horse. So my guess is, is, look, I think Bitcoin outperforms gold tremendously. There could come a point, you know, maybe not too far in the future where my Bitcoin and gold is the same, right? Because I'm not trading.

• 46:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Growth.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, I think I like Wences Casaris, you know, 1% for institutions to dip their toe in. So I think at the very beginning, they should have 1%. And then it increases with comfort. But if someone just calls me up randomly, they're, you know, 40 years old and they have no Bitcoin they want to buy, I'd just say 5%. I also like this exposure, and you're probably not aware of this, I'm launching a fund at the end of next month called 10T, and I have a bunch of partners, and we're buying private equity stakes in mid to late-stage companies in the digital asset ecosystem. So some of

• 47:42Speaker 02

  the companies that even that you own, I would own, you know, let's say Figure, I know you've been a big proponent, I think that's a fantastic company to own. You know, Kraken and Paxos right now are doing raises. You know, I think those are two excellent companies. So I would, uh, I, so after my Bitcoin exposure, I say to people, I have, would have half in Bitcoin and then half in this type of, of fund.

• 48:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Infrastructure.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I do believe that, um, you know, central bank currencies, whether you like them or not, they're coming. Um, you know, DeFi, stable coins, that entire world, whatever you think about it or not, uh, there is going to be a world where everything will be digitized and there are companies that are facilitating that. And, um, and also actually facilitating commerce. Um, it's not just, you know, the trading volumes, it's actual commerce that will be, um, completely digitized. So I think that, that for me is, is, is also a, a chunk of that exposure.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Um, and I think as some of these companies come public, people will start to allocate to some of these, uh, businesses. You know, Coinbase might be an IPO right in Q1. Um, I think, and we've, yeah, go ahead.

• 49:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And I was gonna ask, how, how do you think about, um, gold, Bitcoin and that infrastructure? So it, it tends to be when Bitcoin's price rises, obviously a lot of the infrastructure companies do really well as well, because there's just more trading volumes, the price goes up, all that kind of stuff. How, how do you think about kind of this recent short-term divergence between gold and Bitcoin? Right around like the correlations and things like that?

• 49:29Speaker 02

  I see, I, I don't think you can trade this thing. Look, I followed markets and traded markets for years. And, you know, there's a lot of time and, and brain damage that's, that's done with people trying to figure out, you know, day-to-day moves and this thing moved and that thing didn't. This is, this is much bigger than that. I mean, Bitcoin, um,

• 49:52Speaker 02

  You know, I don't think you can trade it. I think there's too much risk that you miss, you know, a thousand point move at one in the morning and it never comes back, you know, or a, you know, the, it, it, all the, all the math and studies have shown you really get paid when you hold this thing. It's up 250% annualized for the last 10 years. Why would you ever trade it? Right? And, and you have two massive down years. So I don't, I, I believe, you know, people can do what they want. And if you're 26 years old and, you know, you love, you know, the action and you're kind of a gambler and you want

• 50:31Speaker 02

  to trade Bitcoin, that's great. I mean, that's great. But in terms of building wealth in Bitcoin and gold as well, it's just not, you know, you're not going to make that money at the end. And I don't want to pay short-term capital gains tax, right? You want to pay the, as long, you know, you want to pay that long-term capital gains tax rate. So, uh, you know, that, that plays into this too, right? If you, all that trading, you're paying, you know, you're paying, uh, income. I mean, rates, it's crazy.

• 51:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I couldn't agree more. Help me understand in terms of the sentiment right now you're hearing from the institutional world around, uh, gold and Bitcoin. It sounds like you're bullish on that sentiment being more open to adding exposure to gold and you think that'll kind of continue, uh, in the coming years. And then what about Bitcoin in terms of same there, just on a smaller scale?

• 51:26Speaker 02

  No, I, I, I don't think people are there. I mean, like, you know, as I said, uh, I, I've been speaking to a lot of institutional investors, um, about this, this fund that I'm launching. And of course you talk about Bitcoin a lot, uh, when you talk about digital asset ecosystem and the, as you call the, the infrastructure around, uh, around it. And, you know, there's, there are a lot of, a lot of people out there who, who won't even discuss it. So they're just like, we don't believe in crypto, is their comment. And they haven't, they haven't done the work. They don't know what the white paper is. They don't know, you know, they don't, they don't know. Um, even, look, honestly, even,

• 52:12Speaker 02

  You know, even someone like I was listening to Druck on CNBC and he says, "Look, it's a store of value for millennials and for people in Silicon Valley and they're making a lot of money and I think, you know, it's a good bet in that way." He didn't come out and say, "I believe this is a great store of value." He didn't come out and say, "You know, this is the security network, this is the money protocol for the internet." He didn't say any of those things. So, my guess is he's not even really committed in a big, big way. Not like Michael Saylor. I mean, he's unbelievable. I mean, you know, fantastic that he's getting out there every single day, that he's bought

• 52:56Speaker 02

  $600 million of Bitcoin. I mean, he's a huge shot in the arm for the space. You know, I think we're all just grateful to have him. But again, he comes from a technologist background. He's not from the investment background. Now, he's thinking about things in an interesting way, the way he thinks about inflation and depreciation of his assets and he has his hurdle rate as 15%. Because, in a way, US equity kind of functions as US fiat. Right? And so, he's like, "Well, if fiat is being debased at a dollar, could go down 15% a year for five or six years, I'm assuming, you know, the equity will continue up.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  I'm losing my purchasing power." So, I mean, I think he thinks about it that in the right way, but that is very innovative. That is not normal. Right? And if you have even someone like a Druck and some of the other guys not quite all-in like that, I mean, 600 million is a really, I mean, that is one, that's a big statement. Right? To do that now, it's not like the Winklevoss who've had, you know, a billion plus or whatever for years and years and there are a handful of guys like that. This is a guy who allocated it basically, you know, now. Right, so it's, you know, at 10,000. Um, you know, it's a very powerful statement and his reasoning, I think, is phenomenal.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Um, but he also attacks gold and he says it's dangerous to think about gold and Bitcoin together. And that's actually not right. I mean, maybe within the framework of a, of a tech. Uh, in a tech background person, but if you are an investor. Okay, you haven't come to the conclusion most that you've come to yet. Many have, some have, but again, you're just seeing the smartest guys in the world coming to it now. Tudor's piece was just last summer. It didn't come out five years ago. Druck was just on CNBC last week. Those are the smartest guys in the space in the world.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  Right? And Dalio, he's not even there yet. He wants to be, he wants to be taught. He's asking you on, you know, Twitter, maybe, you know, you and, you and Sailor sit him down. I mean, so. And he is at the cutting edge apex really of that traditional world. So that just shows you how far away. They're not even there yet. They don't even know how to think about it yet. So I just, I have like a different perspective. And I don't think it's dangerous to think about gold and Bitcoin. I think that gold in a way. I don't want to say it's like the gateway drug to Bitcoin because, but it kind of is the gateway.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  And it seems obvious to you, but it's not really that.

• 55:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. How do you think about stock to flow? Obviously, that's been a very popular. Uh, thing in the gold world or used in the gold world previously, uh, and now has been, um, kind of applied to Bitcoin. Uh, is that something that in the gold world you put, uh, kind of weight on, um, or do you?

• 56:16Speaker 02

  No, I mean, look, I mean. I think it's fine. I like it. He has an RSI that he puts out, a relative strength index, in connection with his model, you know, 100 trillion, the stock to flow model, that I think is great, because when it's low, that's when you're supposed to buy, when it's high, you're supposed to sell. But it works over years, and it's had a very good tracking. We're right in the middle now. And I think I put a tweet out last week about it. So I like it, but in some ways, it's a relatively, I don't want to say simplistic model. There's a lot more that goes into making decisions about assets.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  So yeah, I look at that, but I also look at 50 other things before making a decision. And I look at the gold, where gold is on, and I'm like, yeah, I'm aware of that. But, you know, drilling down into supply-demand mechanics of gold is probably, is a lot more important. You know, we don't have a lot of gold coming online. I don't want to say we have peak gold, but supply will decline over the next, you know, three, four years. And that just tells me that price is going to have to go up a lot to encourage a lot more exploration and excavation. So I like it, but it's just one input.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  And I think people in the Bitcoin space, again, a lot from a technologist background, aren't used to doing the deep, deep, 50-page analysis on an investment, you know, which is normally what we do. You know, ordinarily, I would have, you know, between four and eight research analysts. We'll spend months writing a presentation or an idea out before taking a position. That's months of digging. It's not just, here's the model we're gonna buy. I mean, no one does that. No one who's long for this world does that, right? So it's just a nice input. I think he got attacked a little bit recently.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  I just, it's because, you know, eventually, there'll be a lot more work like that. I think Nick Carter does tremendous work. Couldn't agree more. Tremendous work, you know. So I, yeah.

• 58:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's talk a little bit about Twitter before I let you go, just in terms of Twitter is where kind of the the community is, where the conversation is. You mentioned earlier this idea of privacy and how privacy used to be a big thing, but is quickly not becoming a big thing in the investment world. Talk a little bit about this.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  Well, no, no, no. I, yeah, I think, look, as I said, I think, you know, in the first 20 years of my career, you basically, as I said, you, you know, you'd get fired for talking to the press and people didn't talk to the press and it just, you just didn't. You focused on your ideas and your portfolio and, you know, and moved on. But I think that, I think that's sort of a very, you know, almost, it's, it's, it feels to me old and archaic. I try to move away from things that are old because they don't evolve. And, you know, the, the, the

• 59:38Speaker 02

  concept of complete 100% privacy, I, I just, I don't want to say I see going away, but it's just that, look, there's, you get, you get quite a benefit from these interactions as well. So you have to give up a little bit of privacy. Look, Metcalfe's Law is something real. And here's something that investment guys, macro investment guys especially, don't really get as much. Like, they don't really get the network value, for instance, of Bitcoin. Like, it doesn't really make sense. Like, where's the cash flow? Well, there's no cash flow. But, but the network is expanding at a, at a crazy fast rate, right? So it's the

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  sort of the same thing with Bitcoin. I mean, with Twitter, I mean, I guess the hive mind concept that, you know, you get so much from interactions. Again, 50, 70% of it, you know, can be garbage, but 10, 20% of it is really good. And there are people out there, you know, who may not necessarily be, you know, well-known fund managers, or even necessarily that successful, but who can have great ideas. And so this is a forum, you know, this is a forum for that. Just, I, I don't, I don't know, the old, the old guys.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Are just, I think they're just uncomfortable giving up a little bit of that privacy. And I think the benefits are great. And also, it's becoming a little weird to be a hermit, you know? I mean, even if you're, it's just weird if you don't have, you know, if you're not on any social media anywhere, people think you're hiding something or even though you may not be.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  So, anyway, I like, I like the interaction. Lots of smart people from all over the world who you'd never get to interact with.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  And, you know, I, I just, I, I make liberal use of that, of that blocking function as well. Because I don't really like cursing or personal attacks or people who are too emotional about all this. I like, you know, it just, life's too short. And I like to read my threads. I like them to be clean. I like to go back and look at them, you know, you know, have conversations sometimes with some people's comments. So you don't want a lot of, you know.

• 1:02:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Nonsense.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. I mean, you know, some people like it, I, you know.

• 1:02:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Before I let you go, let's talk a little bit just about when you zoom all the way out and you see gold and Bitcoin and kind of the institutional world. What is your, maybe not prediction, but just what's your sense of like how this plays out? We, you know, let's go 10 years from now. Do majority of institutions have exposure to gold and 20% have exposure to Bitcoin? And they're at that kind of 10% and 3% you mentioned? Like, like, how do you think this plays out? Let's say through the 2020s, where, where do we end up?

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  I think we'll get to a place, so you're saying 10 years from now? I mean, this is hard. I, look, I think we get to a place where people have between. You know, these big institutions call it, I could see 10% in gold and 5 in Bitcoin. And some might reverse that. The more speculative guys who are used to investing in venture capital as well, you know, they could have maybe 10%, 15%. You know, it'll eat away a little bit of people's equity allocations and a little bit at, you know, and of course, the bonds will be at zero. So, you know, that's a huge, huge chunk.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  I mean, 15% of, you know, 100 trillion, right, is 15 trillion. That could be 15 trillion to flow.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  To flow into, or more. I mean, I think it'll eventually be more because, look, for me Bitcoin, we didn't talk about this, but I, is much bigger than gold. All right? Bitcoin is, you know, could be, and I think will be, that value protocol for the internet. Gold is a store of value. Bitcoin is an entire network. Right? One aspect of what Bitcoin is, is a store of value. That's another reason I don't understand all the constant comparisons to gold, because you're limiting what it is. And if you say to an investor, "Oh, it's just digital gold", they're like, "No, it's not." And that's it.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  But if you say to them, "This is an invention akin to the invention and discovery of electricity", or "The invention of the combustible engine", then they're like, "What are you talking about? It's just digital gold, you said." "No, it's not." That's one little aspect of what Bitcoin is. So, I think that people in the space who harp on this comparison...

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Are, you know, at least for the bigger investment world, they're not telling the story the right way. This Satoshi's white paper solved the Byzantine generals problem. That's a big deal. No one else was able to solve that problem. The mechanics of how Bitcoin works is very complex, but it's an unbelievable creation. Gold is not that creation. Gold is important as in the investment world, as a store of value and a hedge against the fiat. Bitcoin is bigger than, you know, it could be a system that grows up, that's equal in size to the entire legacy system.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  So I don't know why people don't focus on that aspect more. The, you know, the collateral for the new system, right? The, I mean, all of those bigger things, like the security. Look, it turns, what have we had that turns energy into security? Right? Gold doesn't turn, gold actually does turn a little bit of energy into security because it takes a lot of energy to produce a bar of gold and gold is very secure, you know, Brink's vaults have never been violated. I mean, it's a lot more secure than I think the Bitcoiners understand.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  But, look, it's not this unbelievable, almost like machine, this mechanism. Okay, investors don't get there because they stop at, oh, it digital, well, maybe, but maybe not. If they were to understand what it actually is, right? This bulletproof security, truth mechanism, you know, you know, I have real estate investors especially coming to me, trying to understand this because they think, you know, you probably see this with some of your companies. They think that.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  Eventually, all the transactions that get done, you know, are put on some blockchain or are put on the Bitcoin network or however, you know, I mean, that would be transformative. There's a hundred, 200, 100 trillion in, in real estate assets around the world. Imagine if, you know, that were all on the Bitcoin network. I, I'm just saying, you can't do that with gold, right?

• 1:07:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  Gold is not that. So, you know, Bitcoin is much bigger, is a much bigger thing.

• 1:07:28Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a very nuanced.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  So I'm gonna ask you this question.

• 1:07:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  Why do guys in the space not push that message out there?

• 1:07:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Obviously, I can't speak for everybody. I do think that, uh, one is, um, there's a group of people who don't believe that, right? I'm with you. I believe it, but I think that there's some people.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  What don't they believe? What don't they believe?

• 1:07:50Anthony Pompliano?

  I think there's some people who literally just think it's digital gold and they talk about it that way, right? Now, maybe that's a small group, but there's definitely some people who just think that. Then there's a group of people who believe kind of the way.

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  But wait, wait a second, Anthony. Hold on a second because there aren't even that many people who really believe in gold. And so you're telling me that guys are like, okay, it's digital gold and that's it? And they're, and then they move on?

• 1:08:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I, I think, put in that bucket, I think what ends up happening is there's a lot of people who would have been gold bugs, right? Like, like a, a group of people who naturally would, they're just much younger and so they hear Bitcoin, right?

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:08:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and so like, again, it may be a small group, but there's definitely that group. Then there's a group of people who have a belief in that bigger vision, but they're scared to talk about it. So what do they do is they, they basically just say, oh, it's digital gold. They explain it on a smaller scale because they think that the group that they're talking to will, uh, be more receptive to that, right? It's kind of like if you walk in and, uh, and you pitch Amazon in 1994 and you say, uh, we're going to be the largest company in the world. Everyone goes, good luck, kid, right? If you say, hey, we're gonna sell books on the internet, I'll give you some money for that, right?

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  Right, but on Twitter, people can voice their opinions as they like. Why doesn't this message get out there? I mean, Antonopoulos and some things, especially these older YouTubes, he gets into this, the Saphadeen Amos, uh, book, he gets into sort of a bigger vision. Um, you know, there, there are other books and articles out there, but.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  You know, I don't, you know, I don't really get it because it is that mechanism, right? It's the functioning, you know, figuring out how the miners work and the node operators and this proof of work algorithm. Maybe those words just scare people. I don't know.

• 1:09:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's definitely part of it. And then I think that there's actually a big group of people who believe exactly what you just said about like the really big opportunity, right? And I'm one of them, you're one of them and all of that. Because I think you hold a very nuanced view, right? It's, it's a view of gold and Bitcoin will coexist. Bitcoin will have a larger market cap over a long period of time, but gold market cap will also increase.

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  Like 50 years from now.

• 1:10:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, a very long period of time.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Anthony Pompliano?

  And then on top of that, that doesn't necessarily mean as Bitcoin's market cap grows, that gold's market cap goes down. They actually may grow in lockstep.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  Well, they will grow in lockstep. And for the next 10 years, many institutions have no alternative. They need this in their portfolio, the gold. So I think it's like growing together, as you say, for at least 10 years, you know, at least. I mean, I, but Bitcoin will be the fastest horse.

• 1:10:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And look, I think that that's probably one of the most rational views of how this plays out, especially over 10 years, right? Like, I tend to think that that is probably more right than wrong. And the big question is just going to be, what's it take to get the, you know, $800 billion, trillion dollar asset managers to start putting gold in there and Bitcoin as well, right?

• 1:11:10Speaker 02

  I think it's, I think it's more of the same, you know, this balance sheet expansion, you know, moving to negative rates. I'm shocked that it's actually taken so long, to be honest, because Europe and Japan have had negative rates. You know, you actually get paid to own physical gold if you're borrowing it that Negative rate, so there's no storage fee at all. I'm just surprised it's, you know, it's, it's taking this long for this wholesale adoption. But look, people get used to patterns of behavior and get used to assets.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  And look, uh, price goes up helps in gold too, right?

• 1:11:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  It's not just, uh, Bitcoin.

• 1:12:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. All right. I asked the same question to everyone, uh, two questions before I wrap up and you'll get to ask me one. The first is, what's the most important book that you've ever read?

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  God, there are a few. Um. Someone asked me about this recently.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  I should have, uh.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  Well, a book that I recommended recently to somebody that is certainly in my top five is The Rebel by Camus.

• 1:12:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you like that one?

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, I mean, it's, it's sort of the best, uh, you know, intellectual history of a Western philosophy. So I, I did a B A M A in history at Brown, so I, I've always sort of tended towards history and philosophy. And, um, I think there's a, a really great personal message there. I mean, that book. Yeah, that book's been very important to me. Yeah.

• 1:13:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Love it. Second question is more fun.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  I also like, uh, go ahead.

• 1:13:09Anthony Pompliano?

  No, go ahead. What was your second?

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, you know, for the, for this crowd though, a little more, I mean, I also love The Fountainhead. Um, you know, that was a key book when I was younger that I, you know, kind of. You know, there are aspects of that that I love, some not so much, but I can remember, uh, that had a profound effect on me when I was young too, so.

• 1:13:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Second question is more fun. Aliens, are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Aliens, uh, yeah, I think the probability is there's something out there. I mean, you know, look, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, right? Hundreds of billions. At some point, some molecules must have come together, you know?

• 1:13:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Just probability.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I just, the, the odds are there. Uh, it might take us another billion years to know it, right? I mean, you, you don't know, but when you ask an open-ended question like that, I think the odds are, are there, yeah.

• 1:14:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I agree with you.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  Alien, that's a good one.

• 1:14:17Anthony Pompliano?

  What, uh, what one question do you have for me to finish up?

• 1:14:20Speaker 02

  Um, how the hell do you, uh, do all the stuff that you do? I just don't understand it. I, you're on Twitter, it's, you know, 2:00 AM and then you write the newsletter and that comes out and then you're, you know, you're, you're involved in an offering of, uh, you're just, I, I, I, what's your workout regimen? Because that's, that for me is what keeps everything together.

• 1:14:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so, uh, over time, I've gotten hyper-efficient with my time and I basically have like blocks on my schedule of, I know, okay, now switch contexts, like working on this, working on that. Uh, so that definitely helps. Uh, from a workout standpoint, um, I have spent a ton of time trying to optimize sleep and

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:06Anthony Pompliano?

  what I've found is

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  I have too, it's very important.

• 1:15:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and, and what I've found is, uh, working out is the key to sleep. So what, the way I think about it is like, I want to do enough physical activity every day to tire myself out so that I sleep well at night. Uh, and, uh, usually that can be anywhere between like 35 to an hour and a half. Uh, one of the hacks in quarantine has been, uh,

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  Every day, every day?

• 1:15:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, every day.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  You don't miss a day?

• 1:15:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I, I mean, I might miss a day like here or there randomly, but, but no, nothing, I don't try, uh, to miss a day. Um, but the other thing that I've, uh, started doing that is really helpful is, uh, when I'm taking calls, I'll go on walks. So I may end up some days, I may go, you know, and have walked for two hours outside. Uh, and then I'll come and I'll like finish, you know, working out or whatever.

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you're not that old a guy to be like going on walks. I mean, like you could, what are you 37, 38, 39?

• 1:16:04Anthony Pompliano?

  32.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  32. You should be, I mean, the walks, I mean, you should be on the, uh, on the treadmill, hitting it hard or.

• 1:16:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but if I'm on the phone.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  Working up a sweat. Yeah.

• 1:16:14Anthony Pompliano?

  No, if I'm on the phone.

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  I guess you're right, right?

• 1:16:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Yeah. So when I'm not on the phone, I'm not going on walks, but if I'm on a phone call, basically it's a way to kind of be hyper efficient with my time, right? Get the call done and also some physical activities. So.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Anthony Pompliano?

  It's, uh, it's not.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  So you're, you're just multitasking through it.

• 1:16:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, exactly. That's all. No, no.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I presume you see yourself in this business for the next, you know, 20 years.

• 1:16:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Just having fun.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, me too. I, I mean, I think this is going to be my focus for, you know, the next 10 years plus this world. Um, I don't see, and I don't see anything with as much asymmetry to the upside, right?

• 1:16:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Nothing.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Nothing, right? It's so early still.

• 1:16:59Anthony Pompliano?

  It's gonna be, uh, it's gonna be fun. That's for sure. Where, where can I send people to find you on the internet? Or find out.

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  Well, Twitter.

• 1:17:06Anthony Pompliano?

  What you're working on? Just send them to Twitter?

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, D-TAP cap, uh, is, I'm, I'm not on LinkedIn. It's so funny. I get like all these requests every day, but I don't do it because I was never a guy that did that. I was not a, a going out, meeting clients, you know? I was an investor, so I just never got around to doing that. Uh.

• 1:17:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Twitter, Twitter's way better. Twitter's what LinkedIn should have been anyways.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  Of course I'm on Bloomberg, but you know, that sort of dates me, right? Like I can't live without my, it used to be Bloomberg was the cutting edge. I used to transact over Bloomberg.

• 1:17:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  Where I would just send it a message and say, you know, buy this.

• 1:17:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Crazy.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Today. Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

• 1:17:48Anthony Pompliano?

  So now it's all Twitter. All right, my friend. Listen, thank you so much for doing it. Absolutely. You are an absolute legend and I appreciate the time. We will definitely have to do this again in the future.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love this. I, I had some points I didn't make that maybe I'll make next time. And, uh, have a good Thanksgiving and congratulations, uh, as a newlywed.

• 1:18:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  That's a lot of fun.

• 1:18:10Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, Dan. Thank you so much.

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  See ya.