#888 Why Bitcoin Is Good For America w/ Senate Candidate Blake Masters

Blake Masters is the former COO of Thiel Capital and the Co-Author of "Zero To One". He is now running for the U. S. Senate in the state of Arizona. In this conversation we discuss the economy, Bitcoin, individual rights and how Blake intends to provide solutions to the American people if elected to the Senate.. ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/Pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK. ======================= The world's 2nd largest crypto exchange, OKEx, has dropped the "E" to become OKX, reflecting its evolution from a traditional crypto exchange to a comprehensive, cross-platform crypto services provider. With OKX's decentralized platform and Web3 wallet, MetaX, you have full custody over your crypto. Explore DeFi, NFTs and play-to-earning gaming with the world's most powerful crypto exchange. Visit OKX.com to learn more. =======================

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. Now let's kick this thing off. Blake Masters is the former COO of Teal Capital. He's also the co-author with Peter Thiel of the book Zero to One, and he is now running for senate in the state of Arizona. In this conversation, we talk about everything from Bitcoin to NFTs. We talk about individual rights, personal freedom, and many of the topics that Blake is running on. I really enjoyed this conversation with Blake, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is LMAX Digital, the number one institutional crypto exchange. They offer clients the deepest

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:19Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:42Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, we've got Blake Masters who's going to be joining us. As I mentioned, he's the former COO of Teal Capital. He's co-author of the book Zero to One, and he's now running for Senate in Arizona. Blake, how are you? Good, Pomp. How are you? I'm doing fantastic, dude. I'm super excited about this. Let's start first with, you pretty much had the opportunity to do whatever you wanted in business, in tech, etc. Why you want to run for politics and like, how important is any individual political seat in terms of actually creating some sort of change? Change in the United States.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess I intend to find out, you know, I think a US senate seat is enormously more powerful than most US senators give it credit for, right? Just look at the cultural power of a senate seat. Right now, you've got, you know, biological men sort of, you know, transitioning or whatever, competing on women's swim teams and no, none of our leaders are talking about this. That's pretty crazy. You've got open borders, you've got massive inflation because the government printed what? Like $6 trillion in the last year? And we've got a few good Republicans, I think, but like, man, not enough people are talking about this and really educating voters and helping people understand that like the Democrat leadership in charge has failed. So obviously a huge part of the job is passing the right bills, blocking the bad ones.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  But I think just the cultural power of the seat is kind of under, underexplored. And I'm, it's true, I had a really good gig with, with Peter Thiel, you know, running his family office, but this just, this seems like the most important thing I could be doing. Arizona's a swing state. I think this senate race that I'm in is going to determine the balance of power in the whole US senate. And it's, it's just important. I feel called to do it and I know I can win and do a good job.

• 5:28Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's start maybe with the economic kind of situation. Obviously it seems like our debt ceiling just goes up and up and up regardless of who the, the president is. But with that, we're living right now with 8% inflation in the official numbers unofficially, probably somewhere in the, the teens. What's your general read in terms of kind of the mistakes that have been made to get us here? And then like, what is the solution, right? I think part of what, a, a big portion of the American people, they feel like politics is just arguing all the time. And I think one of the things that has been part of your approach, which I think is pretty effective is like, hey, there's like real solutions that could be pursued, whether we do it or not is up for debate, but like, how do you think about getting out of the economic situation that we're in?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Right? Well, one, it is kind of hard to put the cat back in the bag here, right? The, the simplest thing we can do on the inflation front is to stop printing so much money. It's, it's totally unsustainable. You know, our national debt's past $30 trillion now. And I get the sense that Republicans who used to be sort of, you know, hawks on this, kind of, they're not watching anymore. It's, it's, it's kind of just like, well, you know, now you have modern monetary theory, right? The pseudo academic jargon that just says, oh, it's, you know, doesn't matter. We owe it to ourselves. You can sort of get away with this for as long as you want. And I really fear that's not true. You mentioned official inflation at eight percent. Yeah, sure. If you define the basket of goods to exclude, you know, food,

• 6:53Speaker 02

  energy, right? Gas prices. I think the real Costco basket probably costs 20 to 30% more than it did last year. And so for a lot of people, you know, who opine about inflation and the opinion making classes, inflation is just an annoyance, right? Or a economic abstraction. But for so many voters that I meet on the campaign trail in Arizona, this is like life and death stuff. You know, this is, this is not, this is existential. So you got to stop printing so much money and, and we got to get people back to work.

• 7:22Anthony Pompliano?

  When you start to think about things like wages, real estate prices, it feels like inflation, obviously, people think in the consumer good space, but wages haven't kept up. Also, things like the cost of a home. The average home in America, I think, just cost over $500,000, which is, you know, pretty insane number when you think about what that means. Is the ideas really around, hey, the government should stop printing? And then like, how do you think about things like financial education, right? And it feels almost, I always say that like, the gap between those that are benefiting in this situation and those aren't, people would like to draw the line around wealth, but really it's an education gap. Like, some people know how to benefit from this environment by holding investable assets, et cetera, and then 45% of Americans don't.

• 8:06Anthony Pompliano?

  So how do you think about like the overlay of the education for personal finance, et cetera, with a lot of this?

• 8:11Speaker 02

  I was just touring a charter school in Arizona and I was blown away because they have a year-long program. The first semester is personal finance. Second semester is entrepreneurship. And two things are remarkable. One, that's just a really cool program, right? And I got to talk to some of these kids in the entrepreneurship class. And, you know, you could, you could just see how happy they were to be there, right? And they were starting all these micro businesses and you start with nothing and you try to see if you can end the semester with like 500 bucks or whatever. So what a valuable thing that is, but then the most remarkable thing about it is how rare a program like that is, right? And I think in the first, so you got like 11th graders, they're listening to Dave Ramsey, you know?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  They, they've never heard any of this stuff before. They don't know what a checkbook is, let alone how to balance it. For them, you know, and increasingly we're in a cashless society. So maybe some of them know about crypto, but mainly it's just, you know, put it on the parent's credit card and they, they don't, they're not acquainted with this stuff. They're not learning it in school. And so I think that, that one gem of a program could be some kind of model, like bring back home ec, right? Bring back financial literacy class, bring back shop class while we're at it. But schools should be useful instead of just graduating a bunch of people that don't have any skills.

• 9:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's, it's pretty incredible. I've got a friend who, he's been rolling up a bunch of electricity or like electrician businesses. And his whole thesis is that the trade schools aren't cranking out as many electricians. It's not this sexy job, but it's a high skilled job that you basically need to be trained on. And there's, you know, probably the last thing when it comes to construction that's going to be automated away is like, how do you do the electrical work in a home? And so he's like, look, you know, basically there's going to be a mismatch of supply and demand. And I'm going to go buy all these businesses. So I think that there's many, you know, kind of implications of this. Talk to me about Bitcoin and kind of the crypto market. I know that, that is now pretty much entered into the economic conversation.

• 10:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Because it seems like there's an entire generation of kids who, you know, they might not be so interested in bonds or stocks or gold. And, and Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is pretty much the entire piece. Their their financial portfolio.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's here to stay and I'm grateful for that. You know, just non politically, I'm I'm sort of amateur enthusiast about all this stuff. I've been into it for a number of years. I used to run a program called the Teal Fellowship and Vitalik Buterin, of course, founded Ethereum, was a 2015 Teal Fellow. So we were smart enough at the time to to recognize his talent and and, you know, welcome him into the program. I wish I was smart enough to participate in the ETH ICO, but I did not do that. But I think this stuff is is super innovative and and putting a political lens on, I think there's even an argument, and I admit this is just a theory, I'm not sure it'll turn out this way. But there's at least an argument why Bitcoin specifically could be really good for the US dollar.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Now, usually I hear people in political discourse frame them as sort of antagonists, necessary adversaries, and you can sort of see why, right? Because of course, central bank digital or central bank currency like like the US dollar is is centralized and controlled and sort of inherently inflationary. Contrast to Bitcoin, obviously decentralized, no one government can can control it. Non-inflationary or even deflationary. But I actually think that Bitcoin could be the one technological check on the Fed. And maybe just the one check on the Fed. Like, I want to get into the US Senate and provide a political check on the Fed because I think things have just gotten out of control. But what if I can't do that, right? What if the US Senate at this point just can't exercise meaningful political control over the Fed?

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Then wouldn't you like something like Bitcoin? This uncancellable digital, you know, decentralized protocol. Why wouldn't that actually just make policymakers more disciplined? Because if you can print $6 trillion, well, maybe you can get away with that if you're the world's reserve currency and there's no other option. But now in Bitcoin, you have a decent investors finally have a decentralized option. And so my hope is, as the Fed sees, now if they just continue to print money, you're going to get tons of inflation in USD. And investors are going to flock to, you know, digital gold. Not a perfect metaphor, but a decent one. Maybe Bitcoin in its very existence will tell our policymakers, hey, you got to put on the brakes here and actually shore up our financial system. Again, maybe optimistic hope, but it is my hope.

• 12:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Talk to me a little bit in terms of when you say the Bitcoin kind of market or investors and their relationship to the US dollar, how Bitcoin could potentially help the US dollar. How do you think that that could work?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Well, simply by stopping inflation, right? I don't think you can print as much money in a world with Bitcoin. If you're a central banker, if you're, if you're running the Fed, I don't think you can print as much USD as you could without Bitcoin, right? It's, it's kind of scary to imagine a world where the US dollar is no longer sort of automatically the reserve currency, but I think we're getting there. We're getting there geopolitically and we're getting there technologically with Bitcoin and the rise of crypto. So yeah, I'm not an investment advisor, but I do think, you know, people should own some part of their net worth in Bitcoin. And I think when more and more people do that, and, and right now I think cat's out of the bag, like, you know, Bitcoin is here to stay.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  I think that could exercise a huge disciplining function on US policymakers. And if not, then Bitcoin is just gonna, you know, I think the dollar will eventually crash and Bitcoin or something like it will be the safe haven.

• 13:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Talk to me about big tech censorship. I know you've spent a lot of time, obviously, in Silicon Valley, talking with both employees, people who start businesses like this. And it feels like, you know, the tide has turned a little bit and, and maybe the, the way that the average citizen thinks about these platforms is not the same as it was 10 years ago when they were, you know, considered startups and the darlings of, of business coverage. What's the thoughts there in terms of how do we fix some of these problems?

• 14:03Speaker 02

  They're not startups anymore. They are, they are so big that I think they need to be regulated as public utilities, you know? And everybody wants to freak out, actually very few people freak out, but it's, it's academic. It's the libertarian economic theorists, they freak out and they're like, Blake, you could not regulate Facebook, right? Facebook's a private company, can't regulate it. And I say like Facebook may be nominally private, although functionally, right? It's so entwined with the Biden White House. The Jen Psaki just tells Facebook what to take down because that's COVID misinformation. We can't be spreading that disinformation. So Facebook's not even that private, but even if you can see that it's private, it's still so big and so powerful that I think you've got to take a look at it and recognize it's not a local bakery, it's not a small or medium business.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  This is a global communications utility with hundred, actually billions of people, right? Probably over Billion people on Facebook at this point. And when you let a handful of multinational corporations, I think it's like the new town square, right? They control the flow of information in a society in a real sense. When you let them just do whatever they want around election time, I really worry that you can't get a free and fair election. So I think it's crazy that they ripped off President Trump, Facebook and Twitter did. They censor Marjorie Taylor Greene. I don't care if you love her or hate her politics. She's still an elected official and deserves that platform and shouldn't be silenced just because her views are to the right of, you know, people at Facebook or whatever. And so I think you've got to regulate these companies as common carriers, just like the phone company,

• 15:29Speaker 02

  right? The phone company can't listen to you and me and say, oh, they're talking about Bitcoin. That makes us uncomfortable. Let's disconnect them. They probably love to do that, but they're not allowed to do that. And so why on earth shouldn't we treat Facebook and Twitter the same way?

• 15:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. One of the things that's fascinating to me is, I think it was Naval, maybe, or somebody tweeted and was like, if you can silence the king, you are the king. In terms of this thought process of like, at what point does power kind of coalesce in a society? And it used to be very much in the monarch days at the king or queen level in other types of government organizations. There's authoritarian leaders and all this stuff. But now there is very much a deep, you know, collection of power at many of these platforms. And so if we think about Facebook and Twitter, I think that's gotten a lot of the conversation in America, given its interaction with politics. But if we go and we look at something like TikTok,

• 16:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that that now is becoming a bigger conversation in this, you know, I don't know, maybe it's like a passive competition, a battle, whatever you want to call it with China and the use of AI and algorithms and this like soft power. How do you think about something like a TikTok, obviously being consumed very heavily, now the most popular website in the entire world, but maybe doesn't align necessarily with some of the the American way of either thinking or trying to actually roll out these technologies?

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I think we should ban TikTok. The Trump administration was close and didn't didn't quite get it done, but I think we probably should just because it it. I think all that data goes back to the CCP are functionally inaccessible to them. And it's really crazy, like the scale at which we are allowing our young people, teenagers and even preteens to to just chronicle their lives, to upload their faces and their behaviors and Their backgrounds to the Chinese Communist Party via TikTok, which they say, you know, has an American subsidiary. So don't worry about it. But no, actually, it's a Chinese company. I think TikTok is probably unhealthy in other ways, you know, but if we're a Swedish company, I'd have way fewer concerns.

• 17:36Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the thought process? So like, let's say, everyone uploads all this information. Like, what's the concern with them having it? Is it more so that they build a database and they're able to exploit it in some way? Is it the programming of children's minds? Like, just talk to me a little bit more in terms of-

• 17:51Speaker 02

  A little bit the latter, more the former. Like, I don't know. I'll be honest. I don't know exactly what China is doing with this data. But I bet it's not good. And to me, it seems kind of like an own goal to be giving it to them. And again, the scale is just, I think, orders of magnitude more than what most people think. So I don't know. But it just, it doesn't, it doesn't seem good. Like, China is the geopolitical rival. I, you know, we're already in a Cold War with China, and let's pray that we sort of win that so that it never becomes a hot war in, you know, 10, 20, 30 years. But they're the geopolitical rival. And so to take a whole generations, I mean, literally faces, expressions, behaviors,

• 18:33Speaker 02

  voices, and give that over to the Chinese Communist Party, that seems a little foolhardy to me. At least we should be investigating it and really wondering, like, hey, let's quantify and actually describe, like, what's the problem here? What's the solution? But you sense that the Biden administration is just laissez faire. They don't care at all.

• 18:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. One of the things we talked about is this idea that in China, they actually shut off the ability to watch entertainment content after a certain hour of the day. And pretty much, you can only watch, you know, STEM-type informational or educational content. In the United States, you know, hey, whatever dance, whatever, like, you know, have at it. And in some way, are you, programming has like this negative connotation, but like, are you essentially corrupting minds, right? Or teaching kind of just stupid stuff in comparison? It's definitely a conversation as well.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  And the Chinese model doesn't work for us. Like, we don't want to do that. We don't want to say you can only play video games. For two hours a day and then you have to, because that's too dystopian. It's, it's too heavy handed. Right? We're not a totalitarian society, or at least we shouldn't be. We're kind of inching that way. Obviously, but there's something, there's something to that policy goal. Something to recognizing that like, what's that? I saw a tweet the other day. It was like, your children are being indoctrinated. The question is by who and where, right? Your children are learning a religion. The question is which one and who's teaching them? And so everybody's being programmed. Young people are being programmed and the question is, is there any intentionality behind it? Right now, I think there's not in the United States.

• 20:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I've got two of my brothers here. What questions you guys got? Hey Blake, thanks for coming on. My question would just be around big tech again and the suppression of free speech and the censorship that we've seen over the last several years. If we continue down this path, right? Say nothing changes and we continue this way. What do you think the end outcome is for us?

• 20:19Speaker 02

  I think, you know, even more than the social media companies, I'm worried about banks, you know? Right now, there's some sort of gallows humor to it, but like in two years, what if you can't like use your credit card to get a meal? If the banks cross-reference, you know, your identity with your Twitter feed and they're like, ooh, you know, you're politically a little bit too right for, for, for our platform. And then if everybody does that, you know, you could, you could actually imagine political repression at the, at the banking level, right? What if you've come home to find a letter saying your mortgage has been canceled because of this problematic thing? You stood up for the due process rights of the January 6th trespassers. But that's sort of, you know, it's not what our regime approves of and therefore it's Wells Fargo or whatever.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  That's not what we approve of. And so your mortgage is canceled. That sounds kind of crazy, I admit, but like, I think we're one or two years away from that. I mean, look at what happened in Canada, right? And so the centralized banking infrastructure, I think is pretty vulnerable to the same kind of woke takeover that we're seeing in social media and then, you know, the sort of Fortune 500, big business more broadly. And so I think getting into the US senate and writing like a financial bill of rights and a digital bill of rights. Those are two huge priorities for me.

• 21:35Anthony Pompliano?

  John, what do you got?

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Blake, thanks for doing this. Nice to meet you. My question would just be around the geopolitical issues and things that are happening right now in the world. What are you, what are your thoughts around the sanctions that got levied on Russia from the US and just in general?

• 21:48Speaker 02

  I almost wonder if it was too much right away because then it feels like you kind of dump all those sanctions and you no longer have sanctions. I'm sure you could ratchet them up, but like, kind of not, right? The only thing to do is to go and actually sanction the hell out of the oil and gas, which Biden didn't want to do, Germany didn't want to do because it would make domestic energy prices just skyrocket. But you know, here's the thing with sanctions, they can, they can be well tailored and they can get you what you want, or they can be overbroad and counterproductive. And it's hard to know ex ante which you're going to get. The fear here is that these are so broad that you actually just push Russia, you know, totally, totally out of, out of any sort of relationship with the West and you just push them into the arms of China, right? And if they

• 22:32Speaker 02

  develop this, you know, this, this, this block with China, I think that's really bad. Going forward, what you wanted to do and what we still need to do is use sanctions in a, in a super targeted way to try to yet make, make it hurt for Russia to have done this, you know, specifically make it hurt to Putin, because you want to give him, you basically want to give him to the negotiating table. You know, you can't have this conflict escalate into World War III. You want a ceasefire. And so, so, you know, supplying the Ukrainians and sanctions, on the other hand, those two tools that we have to force Putin to negotiate a ceasefire. And so if it's just too ham handed, I think we'll push China, push Russia into the arms of China. That's kind of counterproductive.

• 23:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Blake, talk to us about two other things before we let you go. The first is in Arizona itself, what are some of the major issues that you're hearing from citizens as you talk to them in terms of what they care about and what they want to see changed?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the border crisis, you know, we do have an illegal immigration crisis and I think it's, it's actually really hard to wrap your head around, like the scale, again, it's just so much bigger than people think. I think it's 225,000 people that we know about are Coming in illegally every month through our southern border. Well, that's like 2.4 million a year. It's actually a little bit more. And over four years of Biden Harris, that's like 10 million illegal aliens. Right? And so I think it's fair to call that an invasion. Obviously, some people are just trying to to look for a better life and you know, don't blame them individually, but it still doesn't give you the right to break our laws. And so many of them, of course, are carrying drugs. I mean, the fentanyl crisis is just out of control. So people are just mad as hell

• 24:10Speaker 02

  about the open border and it is a crisis that Biden caused. You know, it wasn't perfect under President Trump, but it was pretty damn good in September of 2020. Those Trump administration policies worked. And then day one, right? Biden cancels continuation of the border wall. He rescinds those policies and basically invites this crisis. And so I think that's top of mind to people. Election integrity is top of mind. Inflation is top of mind. What's really crazy, I mean, crime. Homicide in Tucson, my hometown, is up 87% since 2019. In Phoenix, I think homicide is up 50% since 2019. So there are all these issues and it's almost hard to say, well, this is more important than this because you know, you could solve the border crisis, but if crime is still high, if inflation is still high, there's a sense in which things aren't working, right?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  You actually kind of have to solve all these problems. And it's astonishing how rapidly things are going downhill.

• 24:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Talk to me also about you've taken a what I'll call unique and what seems to be working approach to the campaign trail. The videos of you standing in the in the fields and pretty much one shot. And you just delivering your message seem to be pretty powerful. How are you guys thinking about the way that campaigns are changing? And the way that you communicate as a candidate to to citizens is evolving?

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Just trying to do what feels natural, you know? When I got in the race, there was a media consultant that I interviewed who said, Blake, we never want you to say anything unplanned. And I almost thought I thought he was joking for a minute and then I realized, oh, shit, he's serious. Like, that's that is the advice. That is the state of the art advice that candidates pay for, which is why everyone sounds so plastic. They sound so fake. You know, and and I just think departing from the norm, right? Just being authentic to me like, why is it innovative to just? Just go and do a single take and look at the camera for forty five seconds and talk about a problem and a solution somehow. In American politics in twenty twenty two, that's innovative. Um, and the New York Times just wrote a hit piece saying that my videos, those videos you mentioned, uh, sound too much like Tucker Carlson.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  You know, so what do they prefer the, the standard cliche stuff, you know, where there's flags waving behind me? And, you know, electric guitars blaring saying like America's best days are right around the corner. Um, I think people are tired of that and, and one reason why President Trump was so powerful as a political figure was whether you liked what he was saying or you didn't, you knew that he was telling you the truth, like he wasn't lying, he was just saying what he thought. So I'm getting out there every day trying to say what I think, uh, let the chips fall where they're, where they may, and I think that's, um, somehow really attractive to, to voters and why I'm getting traction in the race.

• 26:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, i- it's fascinating because as we move from what I'll call like an analog type economy to a digital one. Uh, the means of communication, uh, is very similar. I always joke that, uh, memes are just hieroglyphics in the digital world. Uh, but at the same time, uh, there's this element of authenticity really separates and you see that uh, in business, you see it in finance, you see it obviously in politics as well. Um, and I think your point about like whether you agree with somebody or don't, uh, the average American, I think, has like a really good bullshit filter of just like, hey, even if I hear the thing that I like to hear from this person, whether they're a business person or a candidate or whatever, but it feels like I'm being bullshitted. I do think that there's this like innate, uh, sense of just like, I, I, I'm good, right?

• 27:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, in some way, if you really think about like, uh, the linear progression, I would actually argue that the average American is getting better at identifying bullshit. And the internet's been a huge piece of that of calling out, whether it's, you know, large organizations, governments, whatever, just being like, hey, like we're good. We, we don't need the, uh, the, the kind of, uh, song and dance. We, we have our own thoughts and, uh, we can expose a lot of this information. Feels like the authenticity plays into that.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  I think that's totally right. Voters are just used to being lied to. They're pissed off about it and and they just want someone who's not fake. You know, and it's like, look at why Bernie Sanders, I think before they stole the nomination from him in 2016, look at why he got traction, right? And I hate Bernie Sanders politics, like he is just wrong about everything, but at least he's a little bit more honest than, say, Hillary Clinton. Right? Trump was just saying, you know, the election that people deserved in 2016 was Trump versus Bernie. Because at least both those guys were honest enough to say, like, hey, this, what's ever happening right now, that doesn't work. And Bernie wants to go far left and we should talk about why that doesn't work. And Trump had a much better set of solutions. But like, that's more honest and that authenticity broke through it. Like, listen to Bernie on Joe Rogan.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Right? He does not sound like Hillary Clinton, who's perfectly practiced and polished and manages to say nothing at all.

• 28:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I tend to to think of this as like, also, we're getting a huge swath of people, and I would put myself in this, which is like centrist, independent, I want to make my own decision on each individual thought, whereas maybe my parents or my grandparents, it was very much like you vote with the party line regardless. Internet has some impact on that. But if you take that view, it's like, you know, take maybe AOC and Trump. There's almost no overlap at all in any sort of political position or thought process. But they both understood how to use digital platforms. They both were super authentic in terms of they at least said what they believed. And you can see that they built these bases of individuals who say, hey, look, that's the candidate that, you know, I want to back, whether it's for whatever race. So

• 29:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I definitely think this is the world where the the world is going, at least. Before we let you go, one of our sponsors is Eight Sleep. What's your sleep schedule in terms of, I know you're running around the whole country, basically. What's that been like? And how's that changed from being more in the business tech world to now in the political race?

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's pretty crazy. I'm hanging in there probably about six hours average a night. A lot of hotel rooms, which is not so good. I wish they had the eight sleep beds in the hotel rooms. They don't. I also have a two year old. And so it's, you know, when you have small children, your sleep is totally dependent on whether they choose to have a good sleep or not. So it's a mess, but I'm a big fan of Eight Sleep. Yeah.

• 29:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Blake, I got a four month old daughter and like, I used to hear people say like, oh, small kids sleep, whatever. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, I got you.

• 30:07Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like a whole new education, right?

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Hang in there.

• 30:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's all right. Awesome. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about the campaign and what you guys are doing?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Thanks. Yeah, people can go to blakemasters.com, which is my campaign website. We also have a cool NFT offering right now. You can go to ztoNFT.com. Release some NFTs relating to the book Zero to One that Peter Thiel and I wrote together. So ztoNFT.com and blakemasters.com. And thanks for having me on.

• 30:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. So blakemasters.com and then ztoNFT.com is where they can go get the NFTs with the book.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 30:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, man. Well, listen, thank you so much for taking time to do this and we'll definitely have to bring you back after you win your Senate race.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Sounds good. Thank you, guys.

• 30:52Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, buddy. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.