Allen Farrington On Why Bitcoin Is Venice #905

Allen Farrington is a former institutional investor and author of the new book "Bitcoin Is Venice". In this conversation we discuss institutional adoption, errors of modern economic theory and why Bitcoin is such an elegant solution to many of the world's problems. ======================= Exodus is leading the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. With its focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. It’s supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies straight from your wallet. Interactive charts let you view an asset’s price history and your portfolio’s performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the Trezor hardware wallet - making advanced security easy for everyone. Visit exodus.com/pomp for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or Playstore. ======================= Today’s episode is sponsored by Abra. Based in California and backed by top VC firms, Abra is an all-in-one simple, secure app that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies, get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral and earn interest with up to 14% APY on stablecoins and 8.15% APY on Bitcoin. Join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the Google Play or Apple App store. If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account. You came, you invested — now conquer. ======================= DeFi Technologies represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U. S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at http://defi.tech =======================

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. Alan Farrington is a former institutional investor and the author of a new book, Bitcoin is Venice. In this conversation, we talk about institutional adoption, the errors of modern economic theory, and why Bitcoin is such an elegant solution to many of the world's problems. I really enjoyed this conversation with Alan, and I hope that you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Exodus, the world's leading desktop, mobile, and hardware crypto wallet. They offer beautiful, user-friendly blockchain products that sync

• 0:42Anthony Pompliano?

  across all of your devices, making it easier to send, receive, and exchange over 150 or more crypto assets in one place. And with world-class customer service available to you 24/7, Exodus always has your back. But the fun doesn't stop with staking and trading. They recently launched a new NFT marketplace where you can buy and sell your favorite NFTs on the Solana Network. By partnering with the popular NFT platform, Magic Eden, they're offering the Full Monte Unverified Collections, with more added every single day. Ready to check it out for yourself? Run, don't walk. Over to exodus.com/pomp for your free download today. Again, if you want the world's leading desktop, mobile, and hardware crypto wallet, go to exodus.com/pomp

• 1:24Anthony Pompliano?

  today. Today's episode is sponsored by Abra. They're based in California, and they're backed by top VC firms. Abra is an all-in-one, simple, secure app that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies, get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral, and earn interest with up to 13% APY on stablecoins and 7.15% APY on Bitcoin. You can join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the Google Play or Apple App Store. If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account. You came, you invested, now conquer. Abra, conquer crypto. Go check it out today. This episode is brought to you by DeFi Technologies. DeFi Technologies represents what's next in the digital economy. They're providing simple

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and web three investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. DeFi Technologies is currently listed on the US exchange at DEF TF Stock ticker and the Canadian NEO exchange at DEFI. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at defi.tech. I'm really excited about what these guys are doing. I've become an advisor to the business and I highly suggest you go check them out. Go to their website at defi.tech today. All right, let's get into this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 2:56Speaker 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.

• 3:19Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Alan Farrington here with me. How are you, man?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  I'm very well.

• 3:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm super excited about this because I feel like you went from zero to like a thousand on the

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just kind of feel that way, too. Entirely unexpected, too.

• 3:32Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. So you've got a brand new book out that basically looks at all the errors of modern economic theory. So I figured that'd be a good place to start.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, sounds good.

• 3:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I think there's a whole bunch of people who are wondering what the hell's going on in the world. And it's human nature to look just at right now and forget that there's decisions in the past that led up to today. So maybe walk us just through like, what do you assign today's problems to and from past economic theory?

• 4:00Speaker 02

  How long do we have? I feel like I should probably just read you the book to explain, yeah, how did we end up where we are?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  To be fair, what we go into in the book, I say we, by the way, because I have a co-author, Sasha Myers, who will be at the conference. Unfortunately, he couldn't come to this, but we're doing a book signing on Friday if anyone's interested. So that's just why I keep saying we. Our approach isn't really to explain kind of the exact point that we are at now. It's not really to like trace history exactly. It's a lot more theoretical than that. What we dig into is some surface level explanation of what we kind of amusingly sarcastically just called degenerate fiat economics. But it's not really an economics, it's certainly

• 4:52Speaker 02

  not a textbook. It's not really a book about, you know, laying out economic theory as we think it should be sort of understood or taught or whatever. It's almost a step back from that in terms of what ways of thinking about economics are even helpful in the first place. And probably obvious by the title or, you know, anyone who has heard of me before, the conclusion of this is that if you approach it properly and sort of competently and with a philosophically coherent outlook, you end up having quite a favorable view of Bitcoin. You don't necessarily, I think, conclude that Bitcoin is the answer to absolutely all of this, but you certainly end up having a very favorable view of it relative to the

• 5:37Speaker 02

  fiat alternative.

• 5:38Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of this can just be assigned to like Austrian economics versus Keynesian economic kind of thought processes versus there's more nuance to it than just, hey, there's two completely different schools of thought?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's a very good start. There is, I forget which one, but relatively early on, there's an end note. There's a very, very long end note where we answer exactly this question. And so I think as a starting point, just looking into Austrian economics is fantastic. Everybody should do that. Everybody should compare their learnings from doing so to what they've, I would imagine, unless they've actually, you know, done, studied economics at like an undergraduate degree, for example, probably they've just imbibed. From the culture and they'll notice a massive contrast there. And but this this end note goes into basically a whole bunch of other schools that

• 6:28Speaker 02

  don't necessarily contradict Austrianism. I wouldn't put them up as kind of competing schools or anything. They're just they're, as you say, they're nuanced. Yeah, they flesh it out some more. So for for people who are interested, I would strongly encourage, after you've done the kind of core Austrian regimen, I would encourage looking into complexity economics, ergodist economics, Islamic economics. And actually, there's a whole bunch of kind of, I guess you'd call them just heterodox thinkers that quite self consciously don't place themselves in any particular school. And there's a very long list of them that we do cite at various points. My favorite, which I've been kind of banging the drum on for a while, is a guy called Hernando de Soto,

• 7:12Speaker 02

  who wrote a fantastic book called The Mystery of Capital. He doesn't, as far as I'm aware, at least, he doesn't consider himself an Austrian economist at all. But I think his writing fits not only with the Austrian school very nicely, but it has very kind of obvious morals, once again, for for Bitcoin. It's very useful for explaining some of the things that I would argue Bitcoin fixes.

• 7:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you started to think about some of those kind of her docs type ideas, what are the like main takeaways, right? If somebody is like, hey, look, I don't have a year to go and study all of this, like, what's one or two of them that you would kind of put forward as examples of if you went to go do this work, you'd walk away with?

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Sure, I'll maybe just pick all of the ones I mentioned. I'll just pick a few and like, give a give one of their lessons, if you like. So the reason that complexity economics is maybe kind of controversial, I don't, I haven't really heard that many people in the Bitcoin sphere talk about this. So I don't know if I am kind of, if there's any inadvertent Bitcoin blasphemy involved here, but the reason that I like complexity economics, I think it actually fits very nicely alongside Austrian economics. I don't think there's there's much of a contradiction. The reason I would say it's controversial, though, is kind of bizarre that most of the, I guess, foremost economists who identify with that school.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  And they it's not that they they sort of explicitly dislike Austrianism. It's more that they come to conclusions that I would argue are politically motivated and that don't actually really follow from the economics that they've just done. But the gist of it and the reason I like it is that I think that it's a very nice counterpoint to Austrianism for people who are very either mathematically or kind of mechanically inclined. And so one of the I think this is actually a really good thing about Austrianism. This is in no way a criticism is that you'll you'll hear people who are kind of fans of it. One of the things they tout is that if you go through an Austrian economics like textbook,

• 9:17Speaker 02

  say, so something that is like really rigorously academic, you'll find next to no equations, right? And this is like a obvious counterpoint to basically all of mainstream. I actually don't even really like saying Keynesianism because I think the mainstream goes beyond what would count as just Keynesian to for that to be all that helpful. It's a good kind of an insult, though. But yeah, mainstream economics, equations, absolutely all over the place. Austrian, not so much. I think there's potentially a tension there. This is something that I felt, given that my undergrad was in math, that I have some sympathy for people who look at that and, you know, they don't disagree with any of it. They they follow all the reasoning and if anything, it's kind of refreshing that it's like it's just verbal logic and that's great and they, you know, they follow it, they understand

• 10:02Speaker 02

  it. I have some sympathy for if they have an instinct that there there must still be some kind of math behind this, right? It's not just like completely beyond being very careful exactly what I say here, but like modeled or measured in some way like clearly there are numbers involved, clearly there is causation involved. There must be some way of explaining this that isn't, you know, the the complete farce of of the math that goes into mainstream. That's where I think complexity is really interesting because. The, I would argue, it provides that to some extent, but I think the main thing

• 10:44Speaker 02

  that it provides is more just kind of, it's more like intellectually satisfying than necessarily like, oh, here's the explanation of how everything works, because the satisfaction that it gives is in providing mathematical tools that themselves, in my view, more or less prove why you can't know the kinds of things that it's implied in the mathematical modeling of mainstream economics, which is, might seem kind of weirdly paradoxical, but it's, once you do grasp it, you're like, ah, perfect. There's like, you know, it's not just a kind of a philosophical explanation for why, you know, this is basically nonsense, because you couldn't possibly know any of the things that are going into this. It's

• 11:27Speaker 02

  actually more of a mechanical explanation of why you can't know these things. So that's why I like, that's why I like complexity economics. That's the, the value that I think it brings.

• 11:37Anthony Pompliano?

  What about de Soto?

• 11:38Speaker 02

  De Soto, so he's not, he's certainly not involved in the complexity school. I'm not really even sure how to place him, to be honest. He was one of the ones I mentioned as just being kind of heterodox. So his, his whole spiel, I guess, like the moral of the mystery of capital, is, it's quite, I guess, yeah, philosophical. I'm not sure how else to describe it, really. It's, it, he likes to emphasize actually exploring the reality of institutions in which so-called capitalism is operating. And so what the,

• 12:22Speaker 02

  without like ruining it necessarily, I mean, most of the mystery of capitalism is, it's fascinating in its actual, almost journalistic quality in that he and his, his researchers, his academic team actually go to many places in the world and do like really rigorous in-depth research of marketplaces for property and capital and so on, and the legal regimes around them that, that make this point, basically beyond what he assumes his readership is going to be really used to in the West. But his argument is that capitalism itself is, it depends on much more than just free markets. And I think I completely subscribe to this, having read that book and thought about it quite a bit.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  I think that in, in, I guess, economic discourse, like popular economic discourse that we're used to, there often is and can be, and there's certainly a temptation to conflate the two, to just say, okay, you know, if you have free markets, you'll eventually get capitalism or some, some kind of equivalence, like, you know, capitalism basically is just what happens when you have free markets. And De Soto's argument is that free markets are necessary but insufficient. What is definitely, maybe not even of itself sufficient, but is necessary in addition to free markets is property rights and, not, not just property rights, sorry, because you could kind of argue

• 13:51Speaker 02

  that that's a feature of free markets in the first place, but legible records of property rights that everybody has access to and can understand and over which there's no conflict and which is, which is effectively legally recognized, is really more a point about legal regimes than about trade. But his point, though, is that if that exists, people can create capital from their assets and then engage in free trade ultimately, far, far more effectively than without that. And so what he points out in a lot of the places that he goes and looks at is that

• 14:31Speaker 02

  there's actually like flourishing free trade, but there's almost no wealth creation because people have no access to capital. They have access to goods that they can trade, in many cases entirely extralegally, but because their, the, the legal system that they're forced, they're forced to operate under precludes them from accumulating capital, there's very little additional wealth that can be created. It's, it's actually, to put it in kind of Bitcoinery terms, it's very difficult to have a low time preference in that environment because, you know, you can... You still can't even potentially get quite wealthy, right? You can do well with the free trade, but you can't really invest at anywhere near the scale that would be ideal.

• 15:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's fascinating to think about the idea of property rights. And I think the argument really is, his book specifically is Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, right?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I forgot the subtitle, yeah.

• 15:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and so the whole idea of the free market or kind of this capitalistic ideal, it obviously works in the West. Why doesn't it work everywhere else? And it ultimately comes down to this idea of property rights, but not just having them, but also everyone else knowing you have them, who owns what, right? And so when you start to think about Bitcoin, obviously, is it a fair comparison to say that it's essentially a digital version of what he's talking about?

• 15:51Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah. I think that book lends itself very, very nicely to Bitcoin. I mean, it's not like the obvious conclusion of it is, ah, well, Bitcoin fixes this. But I think for the people who are in exactly the situation that he explores in great depth, what Bitcoin offers is a system, I mean, obviously, it has the same kind of benefits just for trade and for money and so on, and uncensorable money. But that's kind of straightforward. I wouldn't expect that to be remotely insightful. What it offers beyond that is exactly such a, almost, it's not even really a legal regime, it's kind of a supra-legal or quasi-legal regime of the grounding for capital formation.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  So it's extending to them this global network of, yeah, of, in a sense, digital property rights that has all of those characteristics that I mentioned earlier as obviously being ideal and not necessarily present in otherwise failing legal regimes. So everybody can see that you have it, you can see that you have it, you can transact with it freely, and it can hopefully be a basis for capital formation.

• 17:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it's fascinating, too, to think most of the argument really seems to be you need the local legal structure to be set up in a way. In which it then provides that property rights and the readability of the property rights to the citizen. So go to any country around the world to go find that. It would require the local government to actually put that in place. It's not something that the citizens could put together, the property rights or the legal structure. They need the politicians to do that. With Bitcoin, in some way, it's outside of the system, but it assigns that same property right structure. And in another way, the people did create this and then exported it globally. And so it's very unique when you start to view Bitcoin.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah, it's something that, yeah, they can probably for the first time in their experience of acquiring property and trying to accumulate capital, it is a system that they can merely opt into without having to convince anybody, really.

• 18:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's fascinating.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Sort of is why I was kind of struggling to even come up with a good adjective to describe it as like supra-legal in a sense is kind of supra-political too. Potentially apolitical. I know that triggers a lot of people saying that, but I quite like sticking to, yeah, Bitcoin is apolitical. Yeah, I think this is maybe a good example of why, though, right? That and a lot of that debate does just come down to semantics ultimately. But I think in this case, it's quite a clear example of at least why the semantics are helpful, even if you don't necessarily agree with that. You know, that approach to labeling things that people in that kind of environment where the the local legal regime is not conducive to capital accumulation.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  They, which is ultimately a political question, they have this alternative that they can opt into completely regardless of what any political pressure is brought to bear. So I think that's fair to call that apolitical.

• 18:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think so. Another thing that a lot of folks are talking about right now, obviously, one is this idea of just like, what is the economic theories that are at play right now? How are people making decisions and is it good or bad? What are the impacts? Related in some way is all of the ESG stuff that seems to be quite popular. And there's, I think, two pieces of the conversation that no one just states out front, which is. I don't think anyone wakes up in the morning and is like, today's the day I'm gonna go destroy the environment, right? I think most people generally think that, hey, we should take care of the earth. The disagreement ends up being in, well, what is actually negatively impacting the earth? How do we stop that?

• 19:37Speaker 02

  There's a very long passage in the book, by the way, about how probably the best way to actually seriously incentivize protecting the environment is to have a low time preference in the first place. So in a very roundabout sense, Bitcoin fixes this, but I mean Bitcoin fixes everything. So that's.

• 19:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think that it's it's interesting because there's obviously an appetite in the institutional world with the media with, you know, people who I think are looking to virtue signal, etc. around, hey, I am pro ESG, right? And frankly, half of them probably couldn't even describe what exactly that means. But we've seen studies that.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  I think they think they're saying that they are moral. Like they're basically, it's not even, I'm a good person. It's more like, I'm not explicitly a bad person.

• 20:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes. So one of the most interesting things is there was a study done that basically shows, like, 70% of the funds that they studied changed the language on their websites to be more ESG friendly, or specifically reference ESG type initiatives, you know, ethos, etc. And then they looked that from when those words got added to the website, did they change the actual contents of their portfolio?

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 20:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And of course, majority of them did not, right? So it was like, majority of the funds studied actually added ESG type language, but majority of those that added the language didn't actually change anything in their portfolio, which I don't think is necessarily like a huge surprise, but to actually see the data. And even if you take it with a grain of salt and say, hey, you know, maybe the data is not completely accurate, but directionally, I think it confirms what a lot of people probably would assume. And so when you start to think about this, how do you look at ESG? You mentioned a little bit of like lower the time preference, and that actually would be a more kind of pro environment type approach. What else on that issue do you feel like is either misplaced or people are misunderstanding?

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is really interesting question. So I have a thesis about this, which is. I think actually kind of boring in a way it's sort of it's a good counter to the temptation to view this all as some kind of giant conspiracy or or even I don't think anyone anybody serious is really putting that forward but even as a kind of subversive political tool I certainly see the temptation to see it as a subversive political tool mainly because I think the culmination of how vague borderline meaningless a lot of the language actually is versus how it then seems to be implemented in you know a very

• 22:12Speaker 02

  a very similar way all the time towards you know very clearly aligned political end so I do appreciate all that I'm not even sure I disagree with that my my thesis and I think why I'm kind of characterizing this a little bit boring is where this is even coming from in the first place I think is nowhere near that exciting and nowhere near that conspiratorial where I think it comes from is basically how asset management at a global scale works and the I think this is ultimately just a product of the flaws in that industry I'm wondering if maybe there is a way of spinning this is oh Bitcoin fixes this too we can maybe come back

• 22:54Speaker 02

  to that I'm not sure I don't have a solid like line of reasoning that gets to that point but I think that actually probably most people don't really know or most Bitcoiners I would imagine unless they've worked in institutional finance for a long time I would imagine they don't know a lot of this so the vast majority of asset management in all its various guises is remunerated or rather the kind of the corporate level not the not the personal level that the revenues are a function of the volume of assets managed and in almost every case

• 23:32Speaker 02

  They are far more a function, or far more heavily a function of assets under management than on performance. And so this, I mean, this creates all kinds of problems that have nothing to do with ESG, nothing to do with Bitcoin. It's, they're more just kind of classic, you know, cartel behavior, regulatory capture and so on, that the incentive that almost every asset manager faces is basically to be as close to average as possible in terms of the success of doing their own job. And this is where, this is where index investing comes from. I could have a whole other rant about how ridiculous even the concept of index investing is in terms of thinking about the implications for allocating

• 24:14Speaker 02

  capital effectively and efficiently. But that's why it exists, because people don't want to, it's, it's not that they don't want to not do well, they just don't want to do worse than anybody else. Because then their assets will be taken away by the underlying clients and then they won't make any money. And if you deviate too much from whatever your perception of the average is, and in many cases, you know, the fact that there is an index is very clear kind of quantification of what the average is. Yes, you, you, you can conceive of it obviously as being like a risk reward trade off as you would in any, you know, if you're just like an entrepreneur of any kind, if you're doing any kind of business activity where there is some uncertainty. But the payoffs are massively skewed in asset management, because if you do well,

• 24:59Speaker 02

  you get paid a tiny bit more. But if you do badly, you get fired and like your entire business is over. So I think it's really important to understand that that is in the background of this. Where ESG comes in, not to completely discredit the political angle,

• 25:18Speaker 02

  but I, I pretty much think that most people like honestly don't care. Yeah. They're not actively bad, you know, they're not like lying through their teeth. They, they, it has like just enough, not even truth to it, but kind of relatability. And I think even that actually goes back to how vague all the language is, right? It's not that the clearly political outcomes are, you know, that's, that's what they wanted all along. And this was all a conspiracy to get there. It's more that there's very little to object to in the language that's used upfront, hence the example that you gave, right? Like anybody can change their language to be ESG friendly. Correct. And it doesn't make any difference to what they're actually doing.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  But I think that the ultimate effect for them is that it's really about compliance. This creates an additional compliance burden that for large incumbents is highly attractive because it's a fixed cost on a per-company, say, basis that is effectively being... As far as I'm aware, there's not really any strict regulation about this, but it's being almost bootstrapped into a norm across the entire global industry that just gives incumbents an advantage because it's a cost that they can bear and that smaller competitors can't. And I think that's ultimately what it comes down to, honestly. It's incredibly

• 26:44Speaker 02

  boring by comparison. It's just that they want... It's a form of organically bootstrapped regulatory capture that nobody actually cares what they're saying, really. Or at least, nobody making the decisions to include this kind of language. And the evidence is, exactly, as you say, right, that they then don't change anything. What they do like is that they alone can afford the compliance costs. That's my theory on this.

• 27:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I mean, look, it's directionally correct, right, in the sense of we definitely know that people are changing the language. We know that it leads to all this compliance. We know that it boxes some people out. And we know that the same people who are changing the language on their websites still get on their private jet. They don't really advocate for building nuclear power plants. Like, all these things that we know would actually have an impact. It feels like it's much more virtue signaling than it is impact.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's an obvious frustration. I think, actually, the reason that I have any desire to even say this at all, right, because it's kind of like a controversial thing to come out with, is to reassure people to not...

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Well, not to reassure, mainly to warn to start with, but then reassure if they make this decision, to warn people not to bang their heads against the wall in terms of this language, because it's completely straightforward to make the argument that, like, for example, Bitcoin is the most ESG investment in history ever, like, across all three categories. You could do this quite straightforwardly if you took the meanings of the words seriously. But the problem is that the people you're arguing with don't. So I just wouldn't waste time on it, to be honest.

• 28:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think this is where Kathy Wood, at one point, she was on a panel, and it was like her, Jack Dorsey, and I forget the other folks that were on there, maybe Elon Musk, and maybe one other. And she walked through it. She said, you know, what is E? Environmental, right? Like, she literally went ESG and explained it. And I think that people don't think that much. One of my big theories on society today across geographies is that we have a critical thinking crisis, which is just that people, basically, they hear something, they immediately say, oh, I heard that, of course it's true, and they just run with it. And people don't stop and think. And, by the way, you may stop, think, and still arrive at the same conclusion, or you may stop, think, and arrive at a different

• 29:07Anthony Pompliano?

  conclusion. But this kind of intellectual laziness that, frankly, we've probably been trained, because we stare at computers all day, that have all these notifications and bells and whistles and feeds, and just constantly are hitting us with dopamine, it incentivizes us to go faster, go faster, go faster, stay on the hamster wheel mentally. And so you don't stop and think. And I think that that kind of critical thinking crisis ends up actually putting people in a really bad situation, because when there are topics like this, where you're like, wait a minute, yes, you can be pro ESG and pro Bitcoin, because actually Bitcoin is ESG-friendly, that like blows people's minds.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  My favorite example of this, I mean, obviously, there's been a lot about Bitcoin specifically lately, and, you know, obviously, you're gonna want to ask me about it. But there was one from, maybe like two or three weeks ago, you might be able to find this tweet, actually. It was something, as Mark Andreessen tweeted, and then I think it got even bigger, because Musk replied.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  And it was something along the lines of, I think he screenshot some like, was it like a fund document or something? It's probably exactly the kind of thing you were talking about where, you know, these people are like fixing their ESG language. But he was, he was pointing out something, it was like this ESG fund had changed its, you know, its like parameters, its ESG parameters on the spot to now include defense companies, which had previously been excluded because, you know, they're bad, guns are bad, right? But now guns are good because now guns are going to the good guys to fight the bad guys. But also, they weren't gonna change, they weren't gonna put any oil into ESG

• 30:46Speaker 02

  good. Because I'm butchering this, obviously, Andreessen's tweet, I don't know if you've managed to find it, but it's a lot more succinct, but it's just sort of characterizing the like obvious, it's not even contradiction, it's just like incoherence. Like there's, there's blatantly no attempt to even have this make any sense or be consistent. It's just whatever is the virtue signal of the day, that's how we're gonna, that's how we're gonna tweak it.

• 31:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  And now it's obviously kind of spiraling into Bitcoin. I mean, it's been present in Bitcoin for a while, but there was, I know, I don't know why these two seem to really enjoy tweeting at each other, but there was one from only a few days ago this time between Musk and Andreessen, which originated with the classic clothes dryer comparison, right? So yeah, so now it's, it's, it has come to Bitcoin.

• 31:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Refrigeration, right, is the one I was going to, like, nobody's advocating that we should stop using refrigeration for food, right? But guess what? It consumes a lot of energy, right? And guess, the entire society globally has decided that that is a good use of energy.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  So I don't like that as a comparison, though. I really like the clothes dryer one specifically.

• 31:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, why?

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Because there is an alternative that is exactly the same and uses no energy, which is you hang up your clothes. We don't do that because it's annoying. So it's the perfect example to compare to Bitcoin. So on the one hand, because it consumes, what is, I forget the figures, like 10 or 20 or something times more energy globally than Bitcoin mining does. But also, it is like indisputably pointless, other than, I want to make it clear that I'm not actually advocating against clothes dryers, but it's just, it's so straightforwardly and transparently about the subjective value of the, of, what would you even call it?

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Like, the user's own time and, um, yeah, time, I may as well just leave it at that. Because ultimately, that's what it comes down to, right? It takes longer to dry them. But everybody, everywhere is perfectly happy with utilizing energy and paying for it, obviously, to speed up that process. So it's not even like, and that's why I think it's such a good comparison to Bitcoin mining specifically, because Bitcoin mining enables something that there is no other way to achieve, right? Whereas with this, there's an entirely straightforward way to achieve it, which is basically that you just do nothing. You just don't do the thing. You get the same outcome, and it just takes, so I prefer that as a comparison. What was it you mentioned a minute ago? Refrigeration?

• 33:22Speaker 02

  That's more obviously useful. I don't want to give up my fridge. I actually don't, for example, this, I'm not saying this to virtue single, I'm just saying it's kind of funny. I don't have a clothes dryer. I have a drying rack. I'm fine with that, but I would not be fine giving up my fridge.

• 33:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that, do you do it intentionally so that you can say, as part of the ESG conversation?

• 33:40Speaker 02

  No, I rent and they don't have, oh, I should say that, though. Yeah, I should say I'm doing it for ESG purposes. I'm doing it because in the other room, I'm mining Bitcoin. So I'm like balancing my own, my own energy budget, which, you know, is surely coming in the near future.

• 33:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, of course. If we think about kind of institutions in general, what's your experience or kind of thoughts and institutions actually starting to adopt Bitcoin? Obviously, we've seen public companies buying Bitcoin. We've seen a number of asset managers come out and say, hey, maybe we're not going to buy Bitcoin directly or invest in something like a GBTC with indirect exposure, but we'll help our clients. So like build products and services that drive revenue for the business. How do you see them all kind of playing in this space?

• 34:21Speaker 02

  I am quite, I guess, conservative is maybe the best word around this. I used to be extremely excited because I think the economic logic is like entirely straightforward. I think any Bitcoiner would tell you that, even being Bitcoiner in the first place. If you describe yourself that way, probably part of that is, you know, a view on what one's portfolio ought to be, right? So I used to be a lot more excited about, you know, assuming that as soon as there's a kind of a critical mass with, in the thinking in institutions that this would just happen naturally.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  The thing that I've realized in the past few years, though, is the incredible hurdles around not just regulation, but I think infrastructure is probably the most important one. And it's made me appreciate a lot more, actually, what a whole bunch of companies that you hear about every now and then, but never, basically because they only cater to institutions in the first place, don't really get as much fanfare as a lot of others. So I think like Nideg is probably the best example here. I think what they're doing, which is basically entirely in the background, like we don't really hear much about them besides, you know, occasionally like Ross Stevens will do an interview and everybody will lose their minds or like write a shareholder letter or something. But what they're doing in the background is so incredibly useful, basically because

• 35:46Speaker 02

  for an institution to take a holding in anything at all, it requires significantly more, almost from the point, from the perspective of an individual who's done the same thing, unimaginably more red tape. Yep. To actually get that over the line, not just in terms of like everybody's made the decision and they're happy with it, but how practically do you do it? Which is even more complicated in the case of Bitcoin as opposed to just any other kind of asset class, I suppose, because there's entirely novel technical questions around, you know, what it even means for an institution or for anybody, but, you know, obviously institutions may be more important to quote unquote, "hold Bitcoin."

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Like, how does the equiv... I was gonna say, how does custody work? But it's not even, it isn't really custody. It's like, how do you, how do you have a proxy for custody that is legally satisfactory? I mean, this is like, this is kind of boring. I don't want to go on about this for too long, but. The point being that I'm now a lot less, I think it will happen eventually. I'm a lot less excited about it being kind of imminent because I remember there was maybe, I would probably, everybody had a slightly different experience of this, but for me, it was maybe two years ago or so when there was a rush of, oh, you know, the institutions are coming and I kind of bought into that on, basically only on the,

• 37:14Speaker 02

  on the economic reasoning, not on the infrastructure side.

• 37:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Technically, the institutions did come, they just didn't come in the aggregate number of them. That I think people were expecting.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  The way, the way to view what has actually happened with institutions is that so far, it has been predominantly institutions that are, they're kind of like quasi-individuals. Like there is an individual with so much power, sounds a bit nefarious, but like influence, let's say at that institution, that they can just force it over the line and they can absorb the costs. So classic is like Sailor, classic example of this, Abby Johnson at Fidelity, Kathy Wood at ARC. There's not that many more people in this, like in that position at all. Never mind to, you know, actually buy into Bitcoin in the first place. So, I mean, I think it will happen. I'm just kind of, I'm a lot more reserved about, you know, expecting it any minute.

• 38:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, this brings me to the last thing I want to talk about, which is this idea of like a divergence in thought. And so I'll use two frameworks. They're overgeneralizations intentionally to kind of highlight the differences. But one is what I'll consider more of like an old school 6040 portfolio, Keynesian economics, right, diversification protects you, like all these things that I think if you went and you sat in any sort of educational environment over the last 50 years, you got that old school kind of economic, personal finance education. Then there's this new school idea, which is much more Austrian concentration,

• 38:54Anthony Pompliano?

  less about like, hey, there's a bunch of solutions, like no, there's only one solution. How do you work through that as like one lens between what I'll just label as like old school and new schools of thought, whether it's around economics or even just like personal finance and your relationship with assets?

• 39:12Speaker 02

  I think it's, it's. Probably quite a natural outcome, I guess, of demographics and relative differences in circumstances of the demographics that matter at those stages in their life. I think it's probably like an incredibly complex problem if you actually dug into it. I would pick out two factors, though. So one is that young, I'll just say younger and older. I don't think the actual, you know, like the specific cutoff matters all that much. But younger people are, by virtue partly of exposure to the web when they were kids,

• 39:53Speaker 02

  but now certainly with smartphones, are far more used to just things being digital. Probably in particular, financial things being digital. So like doing your banking on your phone and doing your payments on your phone. That's an enormous mental hurdle to get over, I think, in terms of the jump to then, you know, having Bitcoin on your phone, for example, or like doing a Lightning payment or something like that. For me and for, actually, I'm not a good example because, you know, I'm a Bitcoiner. But for my non-Bitcoiner friends who are my age, who've had like roughly the same life experiences as me, I don't think that's, I don't think paying with Lightning on your phone is really that big a leap for them at all in a way that it would be incomprehensible

• 40:37Speaker 02

  to some, well, I shouldn't say not like everybody, I don't want to be overly deterministic about it, but it would have been completely incomprehensible 20 years ago. There's a lot of people now for whom it is completely incomprehensible. So I think that's one, it's just affinity with things and in particular, financial things being digital.

• 40:53Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about this idea of then taking it and evolving it to not just old school, new school, but like internet versus classroom, it feels like that's another framework that you could analyze it. What do you think about that?

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's, that's a great one. I think that's probably less relevant demographically. There probably is a strong demographic component there, but I think, I think if anything, that probably comes more down to personality in a sense. Like I think the internet, this is like not remotely original as an insight, but I think the internet has provided an opportunity for people who are either genuinely really curious or, as is maybe more relevant to Bitcoin actually, are suspicious of, you know, the mainstream in quotes.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  It has provided those people an opportunity to seek out a far wider range of information, ideas, communities, I think is maybe even the most important one, of communities that have formed around alternative heterodox ideas that, yeah, they would never have been exposed to otherwise. And I mean, I think it's like, it's kind of a classic talking point in, certainly on Bitcoin Twitter. I mean, there's, there's a relatively small group that it applies to, but I'm sure everybody's heard it, where, you know, you're, you either studied, you studied economics undergrad, or you worked in finance and some, some part

• 42:22Speaker 02

  of finance, or both potentially. And it was only when you discovered Bitcoin that you also discovered, right back to what we started off talking about, right? Not even necessarily Austrianism, but literally anything at all, other than what I would call mainstream, most of which is Keynesian economics. And I don't see how you can possibly put that down to anything other than the internet. I don't think that's even a Bitcoin thing. That's obviously Bitcoin helps in like, being a, kind of a, a point of attraction for people who have that interest in the first place, but it's very much, you know, the internet creating the opportunity for those communities to organically come into existence in the first place.

• 43:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that not only does the internet provide access to information you don't get in the classroom, right? So that's obviously kind of a easy one. There's also the community. And this like, this like reinforcement of like, you have self-learning, then you test ideas, you get feedback, you do self-learning, you test ideas, you get feedback. And I think school tries to do that, but like, there's a balance in school. I think a lot about, school is half learning, half like, social control, right? Like, I always think of like, imagine if you're a third grade teacher. Half your job is literally like, everyone chill out.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, everyone stay in your seat, everyone shut the hell up, right? Like, like, it's just-

• 43:42Speaker 02

  There's a lot of people who don't want to be there. I think that's a really important difference, right?

• 43:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Correct. And, and third grade's obviously different than when you're, you're older, right?

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Probably no one wants to be there.

• 43:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah. But, but I do think there's this element of, uh, the environment, the, uh, the thing that is being asked of the teachers near impossible. Right? Hey, take, I don't, I don't know how old you are in third grade, but maybe you're, uh, you're, what, you're probably like 10, 11, 12, somewhere in that range, right? Whatever the age is, or no, uh, third grade is like younger.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Eight.

• 44:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Eight, right? Yeah. Uh, and so if you're in third grade, you're eight years old, and you're around 25 other eight-year-olds, like, game on. Right? Like, and your parents aren't there, right? Like, sure, the teacher is like a authority figure, but like, really? You know? And so you get in this weird environment, and that I actually think gets extrapolated out till when you're in high school. And sure, maybe there's a greater degree of respect, you're dealing with somebody who's a little bit more mature, whatever, but like, it's still not, I want to be here. I'm here because I want to learn, and if the teacher wasn't here, I still would learn.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:47Anthony Pompliano?

  When you get to the internet, the people who are quote-unquote "learning," they're the ones who I think are, uh, are there because they want to be, and they're able to extract quite a bit of information.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  There's another, there's an interesting kind of symmetry there, another difference. So not only does everybody want to be there, but nobody can be stopped from being there either. And neither of those are the case in, you know, traditional classroom education. Very important difference.

• 45:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Um, when you just look out 10, 15 years, like, what, is there one or two milestones that you're super excited about on the, uh, on the Bitcoin front? Where you're like, man, you know, this is the thing that, uh, when this happens-

• 45:23Speaker 02

  That's a great question, yeah.

• 45:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I'll, uh, I'll think that it's, uh, it's game on?

• 45:28Speaker 02

  There's, there's some kind of fairly obvious ones. I want to not be boring by, I mean, like, more legal tender law. Actually, that's kind of tricky. I don't mean to go off on too much of a tangent. I don't really approve of the legal tender laws, but-

• 45:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, explain.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  Some fluffier, like, you know, legal recognition would be nice. Um, do you want me to go into that?

• 45:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, do it.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  So, I, I dislike legal tender just in general, nothing to do with Bitcoin, because it's, it implies, um-

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Sort of knowing better than the market. It's enforcement of a means of exchange that you have to assume probably wouldn't happen otherwise. And what I would prefer, and this obviously, again, this is beyond just Bitcoin, but how it applies to Bitcoin is fairly obvious, is that there, I gather there, I wouldn't even say there needs to be, I don't want to sound too statist about it, but it is helpful for it to be recognized that there are certain monies with which debts will be recognized

• 46:42Speaker 02

  and accounts will be done and taxes will be paid. But rather than, I think legal tender almost starts with that kind of, sort of, practical truism that it's just, you know, I'm not even saying it's good, I'm just saying it's helpful, and extends it to like, okay, well then we will dictate exactly how all of these things will work. I think what would be a lot more helpful would be a list, I suppose, of currencies with which you can do these things if you want to, not that you have to. So I think that's probably the major hang up I have with actual legal tender laws, because frankly, there's a lot of people who just don't care about Bitcoin, and they have every right to not care about Bitcoin. I'm not at all comfortable with forcing them to use it.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  I want it to win on its own, basically. I want it to win on its own merits, not because a government is telling people they have to use it. So my preference would be far softer, which is that you can use this for clearing debts and doing your accounts and paying your taxes, but not that you have to. So that's my, that's my little legal tender rant.

• 47:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So basically, like, once it's named legal tender, you have to accept it. And so rather than do that...

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Which I just don't think should be the case for anything, never mind for Bitcoin.

• 47:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  I go back to your question though now, because all I was saying about legal tender was I didn't want to, you know, have the boring answer of like, oh, it's legal tender in the US. I think something, well, this is maybe, this is something that we didn't, we didn't touch on, probably won't go into that much detail on it just now, but my connection to Blockstream, I would, I mean, obviously, just in general, I would like for them to succeed, but I think an obvious indication of what success for them would mean is that Liquid becomes common, if not ubiquitous, as infrastructure for securities. And actually, I should backtrack on that a little bit, so I can be more of like a Bitcoiner rather

• 48:36Speaker 02

  than like a Blockstream shill. Any sidechain technology, it doesn't necessarily, obviously, through my connection to Blockstream, I would be thrilled if it's, if it is Liquid that ends up in that position. But let's say Bitcoin native scaling layers end up having that, you know, fulfilling that role in securities markets. I think that would be, that would be very good in and of itself. I also kind of like it because it's sort of like a niche answer that probably wouldn't occur to, to most people.

• 49:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's very nuanced, right? But, but I think one of the key pieces to all of this is it feels like Bitcoin is winning.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:23Anthony Pompliano?

  But there is no guarantee of future success. That's what I keep in my mind, is like, if you evaluate Bitcoin's progress in the last 13 and a half years to nearly a trillion dollar asset, Bitcoin is quote unquote winning. But if you evaluate from here to where I think most people believe it will go, there's a lot of work to do.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And there's no guarantee.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it's like you can be positively viewing the past while also having this like almost worried view of the future, right?

• 49:58Speaker 02

  I have quite a, I think, a controversial take, or certainly, I don't imagine this will be a very popular take on this, which is that I actually, I'll be careful how I word this exactly. I don't want to say I don't care about Bitcoin. That's obviously not true. I don't, looking forward, I see Bitcoin as far more of a hedge than anything else.

• 50:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  So I think that Bitcoin's continued success increasingly becomes dependent on the failure of other institutions. And

• 50:32Speaker 02

  I think that there are, there are a lot of ways that that failure can go that will be extremely unpleasant. And so I feel weirdly conflicted on this because, you know, I'm not like, I'm not in favor of suffering and, and, you know,

• 50:54Speaker 02

  institutions collapsing.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  But if that's going to happen anyway, then I'm extraordinarily grateful for having Bitcoin as a life raft.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  Probably all of that sounds quite dark and like not really appropriate for, you know, oh Bitcoin Miami, we're here to celebrate.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  But I can't, I can't really kind of argue my way out of that position. I think it's, I think maybe there's something really interesting that, um, I haven't heard this in quite a while, but I remember Safe saying, uh, he, he might've said it more recently, but I, I remember hearing him say it a couple of years ago, I think that actually that at this point, the biggest threat or that point, the biggest threat to Bitcoin is that

• 51:43Speaker 02

  governments roll back fiat and go on a gold standard or, or have some, it doesn't need to be that specifically, but you know, actually take the idea of sign money seriously. I think that's, that's very similar, that's very related to what I'm saying in that it's, it's more, it's kind of the opposite side of the same coin, I guess, in that I see the opportunity coming prime, not exclusively, but there are obviously lots of areas to be excited about where it does, I mean, like liquid, for example. Probably more obvious ones to just be like what Lightning does for payments, what mining does for energy. There are areas where it, um, it brings new technological capabilities that aren't necessarily directly dependent on the price.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  But they are dependent on the price not going to zero, right? So ultimately, I do think that it succeeds as alternatives fail in the very long run. That's what will drive its success.

• 52:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, if we bring this back to your book in conclusion, it feels like the errors of modern economic theory drive so much of this because that is where investment comes from. That is where the currency value comes from. That is ultimately the incentives in a society. And so if we can understand the errors of many of the theories that are being played out today, and even in the recent past, and we can start to correct that, it goes back to, you know, fix the money, fix the world.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:17Anthony Pompliano?

  It feels like that is the

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Which is the final line in the book.

• 53:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it?

• 53:20Speaker 02

  It's actually, I really like that as a way of framing the book, though, because I was saying to you just before we started recording that having Bitcoin in the title is like kind of clickbait. There are very long passages about Bitcoin, so I don't want to scare people off. There's considerable new content there about Bitcoin, which I'm quite excited by. And touched on a little bit now, too. So the whole, I actually basically just characterized the whole of chapter seven, I think, the likely effect of Bitcoin on capital markets in the case of liquid, payments in the case of lightning, and then energy in the case of mining. But the way that we tried to write the book was we were quite self-conscious about it not just being like an advert for Bitcoin.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  It's more like, and actually, I think part of the reason here is that, well, time will tell if this actually is, ends up being remotely true. But I think that this is primarily a book for people who are not, or not yet, but are pre-coiners, right? So it's, I would like to think it would be more appealing to pre-coiners than to Bitcoiners. I don't think Bitcoiners will learn all that much from it is basically the reason. And that the way that we're trying to appeal to pre-coiners is not so much, oh, here's why Bitcoin is amazing. It's more, here's why contemporary finance, contemporary economics is horrible.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  And framing that in terms of things that they very much can relate to, like cultural values and intellectual sort of methodologies. And then much, much later in the book saying, oh, by the way, if you take that seriously, which you, we would argue you should. And to a large extent, you probably do, even if you don't realize it. What pops out of that is, oh, by the way, Bitcoin ticks all these boxes like perfectly.

• 55:07Anthony Pompliano?

  It does feel like the way we communicate with the pre-coiners is important as well. Like the language used, the way the ideas are presented. It is important because you need people to have a certain type of mentality. You have to get out of the old school thought, you have to have an open mind. You have to really think that some of this is possible in order to really understand what the potential is.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that was the, that was kind of the basis of my talk at last year's conference, actually. Because I was thinking about that a lot in the lead up, just to not even to me giving the talk necessarily, but to the conference. It's just kind of coincidence that it was on my mind that I was beginning to become a bit wary of the idea that most of what pre-coiners were presented with was a combination of like quite complicated financial concepts and quite complicated technological concepts. Not that there's anything wrong with those, I mean, they're obviously all correct anyway, but they're, I worry they're maybe a bit intimidating.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Right? Like if you, if you didn't, if you weren't already aware of these problems, you know, just having all this material laid on you is like, maybe would just scare you away. And so what I ended up focusing on, what my talk was basically about was Trying to make the case from the starting point of literature, of classic literature. And I don't want to like re give the whole talk now, but I, if anything, I was just kind of pleased with myself that I even like that turned out to be a coherent topic to have a talk about, but I, I think there's, you know, that that links to what we, or what I mentioned about how we wrote the book. We didn't obviously like, literature wasn't the starting point, but it was

• 56:50Speaker 02

  a bit more holistic than that kind of culture. It really very much is actually now that I'm sort of thinking all of this out loud, it's very much a book about culture. And the, the, the, the conclusion is

• 57:07Speaker 02

  that Bitcoin fits it nicely as, as opposed, and this was kind of the point I was getting at with the talk too. As opposed to, oh, this is just scary and new. Like, there's never been anything like this before. True in some respects, but I think more importantly, not at all true in some other respects. It, in my view, ties, you know, partly by whether your starting point, if you want that to be literature or culture or the kind of values from which sensible economics emerges in the first place. This should feel familiar, or it, I think maybe the more important point, and actually back to your question about how we communicate. It can be made to feel familiar. And so to whatever extent it can, it, you know, we should.

• 57:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Where can we send people to find the book?

• 57:53Speaker 02

  So it's on the Bitcoin magazine website. If you want to pay in Bitcoin, which might be fun. Some people might want to do that. It is also on Amazon. If any of the listeners are coming to the conference this week, Bitcoin magazine are going to be pumping physical copies there. And we're doing signing. So me and Sasha, the co-author, will be doing a big signing. I believe it is Friday at 12.

• 58:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. And then where can people find you on the internet?

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Probably just Twitter. I mean, I have presences in various other places, but it's obviously used Twitter to coordinate it. So it's at Alan is A L L E N F 32.

• 58:30Anthony Pompliano?

  32, what's 32 for?

• 58:33Speaker 02

  The fact that I joined Twitter in February 2019 and all the good handles were taken. I do actually, I like the number 32. So no one's ever asked me this before. I've actually, I've kind of, I've wanted someone to bring this up at some point. So I can then say that when I was a kid, well, I still now, I suppose, but I supported both the soccer team Inter Milan and the Indianapolis Colts. And my favorite players were Christian Vieri for Inter Milan and Edgeren James for the Colts, and they were both number 32. So I've had this in the back of my mind for a while. Like I like dripping 32 into things. And when I tried, you know, Alan, nope. Alan F, nope. Alan Farrington, nope. Alan F1, nope. You know, blah, blah,

• 59:16Speaker 02

  blah. I was like, ah, shit, well, 32 might work. So that is where I came from.

• 59:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I love to hear how people come up with these or names. Awesome. And listen, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I think

• 59:26Speaker 02

  No, thank you for having me. It's been great.

• 59:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Really enjoyed it. If anyone hasn't gone to get the book, highly recommend it. And we'll go from there.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  Thanks very much.

• 59:34Anthony Pompliano?

  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.