Bitcoin Sign Guy: The Legend of the Sign

Bitcoin Sign Guy is known as the Bitcoin Sign Guy. In this conversation, BSG and Anthony Pompliano discuss crypto anarchy, Bitcoin art, privacy, freedom, rule of law, code as free speech, and Bitcoin's macro trends. ----- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

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

• 0:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:13Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode of Off the Chain is with the one and only Bitcoin Sign Guy. In this conversation, we discuss crypto anarchy, Bitcoin art, privacy, freedom, rule of law, code as free speech, and Bitcoin's macro trends. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I think you will as well. Let me know what you think, and shoot us some tweets afterwards.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Got our best man on it.

• 1:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, bang bang, Off the Chain with the Bitcoin Sign Guy. Sunday, Mother's Day, recording this, going live. What's up, man?

• 1:18Speaker 02

  How you doing, bro?

• 1:19Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm doing alright. Listen, we've got a lot to talk about. First, let's go through your background first, and then we'll get into the Bitcoin sign story.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

  What, uh, where are you from?

• 1:31Speaker 02

  I am from Connecticut. I'm a Yankee.

• 1:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Connecticut?

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Yup, that's, uh, that's where I get my stupid preppy wardrobe. Uh, and, uh, yeah, that's how I had the pink tie and the seersucker jacket, because I like to, uh, I don't respect the Fed, so I had to wear something absurd.

• 1:48Anthony Pompliano?

  You stunted on him.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Had to flex a little bit.

• 1:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so let's just get right to the story, right? So how the hell did you end up sitting behind Janet Yellen at the meeting?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was working at a free market think tank in Washington at the time, just covering the event. I worked for a monetary policy scholar and I was just there taking notes to report back to him. I had previously worked at a number of hedge funds out in Connecticut and there I would cover Fed analysis, which basically means that you have to watch hours and hours of video of Federal Reserve and other, you know, global central bankers just speaking incredibly tersely and, you know,

• 2:39Speaker 02

  listening for whatever word they might let slip that gives an indication of if they're looking to raise or lower interest rates. That's basically the game.

• 2:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so basically you've got humans who are trying to read like another group of humans cards that they're trying to hold close to their chest and it's literally could be one word or a phrase that dictates or indicates, oh shit, interest rates are going up or down. And then there's a whole bunch of ramifications that happen once you decide that.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  And it takes on complete second order effects. So in many ways, you know, all economic data that come out like, you know, new housing starts or, you know, construction data, car production, like all this data, this is the fundamental distortion of central banking. All that data is interpreted through the filter of, well, what does this make the Fed more likely to do? It's like, oh, there's good economic data that should be bullish, but no, it's bearish because it'll be like, oh. They're gonna, they're about to raise rates. Shit, pump the brakes.

• 3:47Anthony Pompliano?

  What, how accurate are people in looking at the data and looking at what uh the Fed or or uh some of the representatives say? And actually predicting what they're gonna do?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Dude, they, they go into it so, uh at such a granular level. Like you have funds, like I think it's two sigma, they were, I think the first to just throw it on deep uh deep learning, uh they use like a neural net and they figure out like they just give it to the computer. They're like, the computer can tell what this says. So it's, it's reached truly an absurd level.

• 4:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so you go to the meeting, you're sitting there.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Go to the meeting, yeah.

• 4:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Janet Yellen is uh is saying whatever she's saying. You're sitting behind her. Did you know when you got to the meeting you were gonna do it?

• 4:35Speaker 02

  No, no, it was, it was all spur of the moment.

• 4:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so you're sitting there, uh, did you pick that seat because you would be like behind her on TV or anything?

• 4:43Speaker 02

  No, that seat was just uh how the, how the chips fall. So the, the hearings are actually public and anyone can go. Uh, like seated to my uh right, I guess, there was actually just a homeless guy who uh, who has a, has a bone to pick with the central banking system. So uh, we, we bonded.

• 5:05Anthony Pompliano?

  He, he was a Bitcoiner for sure.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  He's a Bitcoiner now. Um, and uh, but basically what I, what I mean is that it's public, anyone can go. Uh, and it was really just how the chips fell that I had the seat, not, no premeditation.

• 5:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so you, so you got the uh, the outfit on, right? And you're kind of making fun of the, them by wearing this outfit. Uh, you end up sitting just randomly behind her.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, can you tell that there's cameras?

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so from my, from my previous job, uh, I, I knew that, you know, the camera's on when, when, when Janet's talking. So yeah, it was uh, I thought that I would. Because they put the videos up on like their archive. So I thought that I would go there later, take a screenshot, you know, stick it in my pocket and

• 5:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And it'd be all good.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  It would be my little, my tiny little treasure. And I had, I had no idea that anyone would pick it up at all.

• 6:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so you're sitting there, uh, you've got the legal pad and you just literally like sketch out buy Bitcoin on it and then you're just like, fuck it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  We'll do it live. Gotta do it live.

• 6:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, and so, uh, the part that shocks me is not only like, did you come up with this, did you write it, did you, you know, have, have frankly the courage to do it? But you actually placed the sign perfectly, like, like if you had reached too far, right, it would have been behind her head. If you hadn't gone far enough, there was somebody else's head there, but you got perfect placement, like no practice, how, how'd you do that?

• 6:39Speaker 02

  I don't know, it's uh, the finesse of an art student. I actually, I actually studied art, which is uh, which is why I maybe can draw for worth, worth anything.

• 6:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, it, it's clearly articulated, right? You knew to turn and go landscape with the paper.

• 6:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so you do it, right? And I remember the day that you did this. Uh, so for those that don't know, he held up a sign on a legal pad that said buy Bitcoin in big, bold letters, right behind Janet Yellen's uh, head while the cameras are rolling as she's discussing, you know, federal policy and all this stuff. Immediately rips through Twitter, right? When did you know that it was going viral?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  I had no idea. Uh, well, I, okay, I take that back. I, my phone was dead at the time, so I didn't have Twitter, but after about thirty minutes, uh, I was escorted out of the hearing, uh, by one of the parliamentarians of, for the hearing.

• 7:38Anthony Pompliano?

  So basically you do it, you keep sitting there, you don't know what's going on on the internet, but eventually somebody there comes and says, hey, you. You're coming with me. I'm assuming you knew, oh, it's probably because I just held up the sign.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I, I thought that maybe it was just because she saw it. Um, like saw me do it, or not because she saw some internet reaction.

• 8:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep. And so when, uh, when you get outside, like, are they trying to arrest you? Are they just pissed off? Or are they actually respectful?

• 8:08Speaker 02

  No, I mean, they, it's, it's Capitol Hill. Uh, so they, they bounce you respectfully. Um, but after that I left, I went back to the office and then all my coworkers were saying, bro.

• 8:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yo, you did it.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  I, I plugged in my phone and I thought, whoa, holy smoke.

• 8:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I remember, uh, when you did it, then there was a second photo that emerged, and I think it was on Reddit. Where basically you're holding up like the buy Bitcoin sign with another sign. That's like who you are and a wall of that.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I hate to be such a flagrant capitalist about all this, but you know, I gotta stack sats. The only way I know how.

• 8:50Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So, uh, as soon as you see it going viral, what's the reaction that people have? In, in terms of, are the messages you're getting like from friends like, hey, this is cool? Are people like, yo, you're an idiot. Why'd you do that?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Also, my dad actually works in markets, uh, as well. So he is, uh, you know, uh, his conversion from no coinarism is ongoing, uh, but he saw it and he was embarrassed. He was like, yo, I wanna crawl under my desk right now. Like you just, you just torpedoed your like career on like.

• 9:26Anthony Pompliano?

  On national television, basically?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Exactly. Um, I mean, in to that, like he, he, he was, uh, correct in some sense. I did end up departing, uh, my job at, at the think tank I was working at, but I, I quickly found, uh, found another foothold, uh, at CEI. And then from there I went on to work at, uh, a, another Bitcoin fund and.

• 9:53Anthony Pompliano?

  So as you're doing this, right, the internet, I mean, just absolutely exploded when they saw this photo. And the reaction was less, I think, about like you, right? It was just immediately like Bitcoin sign guy. And it was the idea that somebody was able to market this decentralized digital currency in one of the most archaic and 180 degree difference rooms in the entire world. Right? I mean, they're literally sitting there talking about interest rates and federal monetary policy and all this stuff. And you hold up this sign and it was just the, like, to me, the irony of it wasn't planned.

• 10:38Anthony Pompliano?

  It wasn't a well-produced sign, right? It was just like, we got the point across in the most Bitcoin way possible, right?

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, it comes from, it comes from outside. I think that the entire technocratic monetary order is completely blindsided by Bitcoin. And it's almost been unutterable up until just the other day when Brad Sherman said, oh, well, look, actually, we need to, we need to pump the brakes on it because it actually might completely disrupt our finely tuned system here.

• 11:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's talk about Sherman, right? So he's a Democrat from California. He, he's been in office for 22 years.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:20Anthony Pompliano?

  His largest donors are all financial services companies. Uh, one of them is a payment processing company.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  You know, I, I actually have a, have a deep and abiding respect for Brad Sherman because he gets it. He knows that Bitcoin is here and it poses a true and credible threat to the system he sits atop. The people that I have, you know, less love for are like, I don't know, multi corners. People that sort of have, they're, they're the highly progressive and utopian people that think, oh, it'll all, it'll all work out beautifully. But the, the Brad Sherman mindset is correct at, at its core.

• 12:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so as soon as he said this, I saw a bunch of people being like, oh, he doesn't get it. And I went the exact opposite.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  He gets it.

• 12:21Anthony Pompliano?

  That that's the best part is he actually understands exactly what is going to happen.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Brad Sherman gets it. Augustine Carstens gets it.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  The people that don't get it are just like, oh, the blockchain, not Bitcoiners, people that think that this tech will be massaged somehow into the existing world order. No, there is a sea change about to happen. And I think if you're a neoliberal, uh, listening to this, you should start stacking sandbags.

• 12:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and and part of this is, I think what Brad Sherman, there was a couple of points that he brought up that I thought were really interesting. One was, uh, he very explicitly laid out this idea of the US dollar being a weapon on a global scale, right? I haven't heard very many politicians explicitly say that in a public forum, right? So this idea that like, the US dollar is a part of the defense of the United States and the offense of the United States, right? So that's one.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 13:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Two is, he explicitly stated Bitcoin has advantages over sovereign currencies, right? So it was the first time I heard a publicly elected official admit that. And the third thing was this idea that, um, if you understand how the dollar fits into the global economic system and you understand the potential that Bitcoin has to disrupt that, there's two paths to take. One is to embrace it and one is to ban it.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:47Anthony Pompliano?

  By saying ban it, he's playing right into the hands of Bitcoiners and like the crypto ecosystem? Because all that's gonna do is it's it's the best advertisement in the world for what we're talking about.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely. 100%.

• 14:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What what did you take away from his comments specifically around like the US dollar and weaponizing it as part of this like foreign policy?

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah, the the Petro dollar is, you know, I think the the strongest foreign policy tool that the US government has. Uh, so.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  You know, as we, if we mean decentralization, we mean, you know, the Balkanization of large power in the world, you know, devolving, devolving power down to its, uh, its true level, uh, which is, you know, emergent, market-based, and entirely undirected.

• 14:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Um, all right. Before we get into a crypto anarchy, uh, and we get off this, uh, the Bitcoin sign, uh, you have put together a limited edition 21, um, of these Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin signs. So you have actually recreated the buy Bitcoin sign on a legal pad. It's in this beautiful case and you're selling them.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, one Bitcoin apiece.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  One Bitcoin a pop. Uh, you can go to buybitcoin.art to buy them. Uh, I actually have not checked, uh, since yesterday. I may be sold out, but I, I kid you not, some, somehow there were, uh, 21, 21 people that, uh, gave me their names. But, uh, at any rate, you can go there. There's an order form. Uh.

• 15:31Anthony Pompliano?

  The part that I love about this is, again, one Bitcoin for a piece of history, 21 of them.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Own the meme.

• 15:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And, yeah, own the meme.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Own the meme.

• 15:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and when, uh, when you and I talked about, uh, you doing it, the first thing you said to me was, I gotta get more Bitcoin, right?

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Once again, gotta stack stats. Shout out to Marty Bent and Matt Odell for crafting that fine, fine meme.

• 15:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, it, it's probably one of the best in crypto.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  It's, it's really good. It's, it's really slick.

• 16:02Anthony Pompliano?

  So the other day I, I tweeted at them and I was like, yo, you guys will never get the, the, um, the, the kind of recognition that they should for creating that meme. And, uh, I said, it's one of the best marketing messages. And Matt Odell just came in and fucking reverse dunked on me on Twitter and was like, it's not a marketing message, it's a lifestyle. Like he went between the legs, reverse dunked on me. And I just, I had to just say, man, you win that one.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  That's, that's sweet. It also, I like stacked sats because ultimately I think that satoshis are the uh it will be the numerare of Bitcoin itself. I don't think that we want to deal with eight places to the right of the decimal for the rest of our lives. I would much rather use satoshis or kilo satoshis, ksat. That's my modest proposal. But yeah, stacking sats, fabulous.

• 16:54Anthony Pompliano?

  So smart, so smart. Alright, let's get into crypto anarchy. You are a crypto anarchist, I think I can say. What the hell does that mean?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  I mean, I would like to be. Crypto anarchy means being willing to build things to affect, you know, Bitcoin's revolution.

• 17:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so what does that entail?

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Building things, literally just that. If you are making a product that helps people, I guess, adopt Bitcoin, use it more effectively, or if it clears up headaches for them getting out of the legacy system, that's all very well and good. But yeah, the emphasis is on entrepreneurship and you know, self-sovereignty, but not in a way where you truly have self-ownership, self-direction.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And so the whole idea here is Bitcoin's going to become the global reserve currency, right? And so there's two things that you can do. You can convert your legacy bad technology fiat currency into the new decentralized digital currency of Bitcoin. So one, just upgrading your assets, right? And then two is there's a whole bunch of infrastructure that needs to get built to make it easier to more securely and safely hold it, transact it, right? Use it in stores, etc. And so it's the idea that if not only are you holding the assets, but also you're going to want to build all that infrastructure and a crypto anarchist is essentially doing anything possible to help facilitate the building of all of that infrastructure. Is that accurate?

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It's, you know, people these days, they hear the word anarchy and their minds skips to nihilism. You know, the old bomb-throwing anarchists like a

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Vanzetti, I think, the Italians, those damn Italians.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  But it's truly about, yeah, building things and participating in Bitcoin in a constructive manner.

• 19:10Anthony Pompliano?

  What are the biggest areas you think right now that people should be focusing on?

• 19:16Speaker 02

  Well, I would really say anything that increases Bitcoin's liquidity is probably a fair thing to focus on.

• 19:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And any examples that you're excited about right now?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  So actually, I have a startup that is designing a reputation system for Bitcoin over the counter trading. So this is something that can be used to, perhaps you could call it like a KYC AML workaround. But, you know, as we upgrade our cybernetics, you know, from legacy systems to new systems, you know, we have new ways of doing business, of generating trust,

• 20:12Speaker 02

  and figuring out how we conduct civil society online. I mean, really, the old institutions, like policy think tanks in general, like an official conversation around policy, like this is all outstripped, all outmoded. You have, you know, twenty-somethings, you know, coding for Bitcoin Core, having true policy discussions, and it's all litigated in the forum of Twitter and, you know, Telegram chat groups. There is no more.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  You know, official, uh, official narrative.

• 20:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And so let's talk a little bit about this idea of liquidity, right? This, you know, really, I think most people, um, they struggle with the balance in their mind between a store of value asset that you should hold, right, versus the need for liquidity? How do you balance that?

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I would say that Bitcoin as a store of value has basically been decided effectively by the, the hard cap. Uh, I, I admire, you know, the Austrian thought that went into that decision by Satoshi. And then when I say liquidity, I, I really mean something that makes it easier for legacy finance to acquire. So the, the concern, and of course you, working in legacy finance, you could speak to this better than I could. Uh, but you want, uh, your average portfolio manager to say, oh yeah, you know,

• 21:57Speaker 02

  I could take a big position in Bitcoin because I could actually take the position without, uh, you know, exposing myself too much.

• 22:06Anthony Pompliano?

  So basically I can buy it and when I want to get out of it, I can get out of it, right? There, there's enough of that liquidity there to, to go in and out with size, right? Meaning it's not just, hey, let me buy $500 or $500,000. I want to actually buy 50 million, 500 million dollars worth of Bitcoin.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Liquidity is really a synonym for, uh, economic scaling, essentially.

• 22:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. So let's, um, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about, uh, some of the payment processing stuff.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 22:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, and Defense Distributed. Just give us kind of an overview of, of how you got involved in all this.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Sure. So, uh, a project that I have a deep respect for is the work of Defense Distributed. Uh, if you're not familiar with them, they produce the 3D printable firearm materials. And so.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  They have been battling with the US government over code being free speech. Uh, and you know, essentially linking the second amendment inextricably to the first amendment. So they have a lawsuit against the attorney general of New Jersey right now. If you're in New Jersey, uh, you cannot essentially speak online because the, uh, the state has outlawed the, uh, the distribution of their 3D printable files.

• 23:34Anthony Pompliano?

  So let me just summarize real quick. Uh, defense is attributed is, um, a gentleman created a computer file that simply is software code. Inside of that software code are plans, right? To feed to a 3D printer. That 3D printer then can produce a gun, right?

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and that gun works. It actually can fire a projectile.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  The gun works.

• 24:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And it is made out of plastic, right?

• 24:02Speaker 02

  So there's, there's a, there's 3D printers, which are additive manufacturing. They build up layers upon layers of plastic or, uh, composites that can fuse together. Uh, and then there's also sort of within the category of digital manufacture. There's subtractive manufacture, which is a C and C machine, which is a, a spinning bit that mills out, uh, material, sort of like a drill press, but still controlled by the same G code axes that a, a 3D printer would use.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  And so these are, these are the basic tools that you can translate, uh, code, uh, speech into a, a physical object. So the, the category is called, uh, physical. And you can go to Pirate Bay, um, the website, the, uh, with torrents. And you can go to the, uh, physical category. You can do a category search and you can find all this, uh, stuff there.

• 25:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And so with this, the idea was anyone with a 3D printer could take this computer file and they could create a weapon.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Obviously, when the second you're talking about weapons, government, law enforcement, etc. all get very upset and start paying attention. I think that the defense distributed response is software code is speech.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And the difference between taking that code and creating a table versus some other object versus a gun is really, it's the same mechanism.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  It's the same mechanism, but the gun is more politically interesting. The real thing here is that like, just like Bitcoin, the government is essentially shocked that there, we suddenly have these legal arbitrages. You know, so there's the way that you can make a gun for yourself with these tools is the same, is the same principle as the fact that you can be your own bank with Bitcoin. There is nothing holding you back from computer access.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  And we suddenly have these new ways of transacting in a flat, horizontal, decentralized manner.

• 26:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And so part of the government's response is not only is it just, as you said, politically interesting because it's a weapon. They're worried about things like a plastic gun can actually be brought through a metal detector, right? They're worried about the lack of registration around who owns the guns and their insight into that. Are there other aspects that they're worried about or are those the two big ones?

• 26:59Speaker 02

  I would say, you know, if you utter the word terrorism in the West, it's basically been treated as carte blanche to do whatever you want. You want to tap everyone's phones, just say terrorism. You want to get a 3D body scan of everyone who travels city to city, just say terrorism. I mean, it's absurd. I should.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  I I should try to figure out a way to work it to my advantage like oh yeah buy bitcoin dot art if you don't buy my signs the terrorists

• 27:42Anthony Pompliano?

  The the part that that's really interesting right and many people know I was in the army for you know six six and a half years did an appointment overseas and the idea of terrorism is normally the act of doing something not even necessarily to harm people but it is to scare them or control them with fear

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah terrorism is fundamentally marketing

• 28:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep and and you know I I always joke with folks and I say that the difference between marketing and propaganda is just which side you're on right when you're doing it you're marketing when somebody else is doing it and you disagree with the message that's propaganda

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yes always you know you'll notice if it's the the Obama administration opposes the Russian Vladimir Putin's regime you know all these words are coded in in a way that constructs an image

• 28:41Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure and so as this is going on the law enforcement government agencies etc obviously are not happy with Defense Distributed as they're fighting this right and I come up with the mindset of like this is going to get decided in court you and I sitting here no pining on what's legal what's not legal we can have opinions but the the real kind of battle is going to happen in that in that legal framework right but before we got there there was a whole bunch of stuff done in terms of trying to prevent Defense Distributed from distributing the computer files from shutting down their payment processors like just talk about some of the challenges

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Sure so I mean the the oh thank you the the main one and the one that I am personally contending with is their deplatforming on a number of payment processors so the the payment stack the card payment stack is you know banks card network like Visa

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Payment processors like T-SYS and then you have gateways like authorized.net and then you have you know resellers which is what I've now become which are called ISOs and basically if any one and if any single one of those components in the stack object to what you as a merchant are engaged with if they get cold feet you know they can they can shut you down so you know there are places that you know crypto positive people will will

• 30:31Speaker 02

  find you know difficulty you know remaining on like you know PayPal Stripe you know it's you have to be you have to be anointed you have to be a blue checked and or blue check friendly to to use these services.

• 30:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Well and one of the things that we see so this isn't just in the case of Defense Distributed the idea of whether the selling of the the computer files is legal or not or they they actually monetize not by selling the open source code they're selling 3D printing

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Devices right?

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Yeah they they sell a 3D it's not a 3D printer actually it's a it's a desktop CNC machine.

• 31:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it okay so and as they're doing that these payment processing companies are

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Are just you know turning.

• 31:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Saying we're not gonna we're not gonna process your payments.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Yeah they have a lot of baby boomers baby boomers got money they pay with credit card they don't pay with Bitcoin so yeah they they need that money they need that that money and it it's a headache for them and their contemporaries you know every five minutes like oh damn got that got turned off by PayPal got turned off by Stripe however.

• 31:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And and the payment processors have done this with crypto they've done this with cannabis right they've done this with Defense Distributed like this is not a new part of the playbook it's trying to go after the single point of failure which is if you cannot accept the money you cannot sell things.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Yeah exactly.

• 32:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Obviously when you have a decentralized digital currency that has much more sovereignty in terms of Bitcoin. Now the playing field shifts a little bit, right? And they actually can't prevent, whether it's a crypto company, a cannabis company, Defense Distributed, from accepting or participating in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Yes. So Bitcoin, Bitcoin works.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Like BTC Pay Server is stupid easy, stupid easy. But yeah, this, this legacy stuff is a pain. And so for the time being, while we're still paying with credit cards, someone needs to build a payment processor that is, is working and willing to, you know, develop specialty underwriting relationships that can at least give people a second chance.

• 32:57Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so as you've been working on this, is there anything specific that you went into the situation believing or not believing, and now you've changed your opinion?

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Interesting. I, I don't know. I, I feel like I've, I've been a, I've been fairly consistent my whole life since, you know, my coming to political consciousness and about middle of high school.

• 33:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, and one of the, the things to me, you know, as we've talked about this, that, that's really interesting is Defense Distributed has a couple of components to it, right? So they've got the open source software, which is pretty well understood, pretty well defended at this point in terms of how that's treated, what the copyrights on it are, who can use it, how do they repurpose it, all of that. Then they're selling this desktop CNC machine, right? Which is by itself, not good or bad, right? So you can make an argument that somebody's using it for good or bad purposes, but the actual machine is just an inanimate object.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  It, it's open hardware. And by the way, I, I must mention that if you want to Join Defense Distributed and their legal battles. You can go to D D Legio dot com.

• 34:23Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you spell that?

• 34:24Speaker 02

  D D L E G I O, like legionnaires.

• 34:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it, okay.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  D D Legio dot com. Become a member of Defense Distributed and support what I think is the defining legal battle of our time right now.

• 34:40Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, and at the heart of this legal battle is this idea that code is free speech.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Code is free speech and

• 34:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk about that a little bit.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Well, the the real thing here is that we have, you know, the Constitution. We have the way this world order has been. We have the foundation of it. And interestingly enough, we we view like banking as this huge, heavy sclerotic system that has no hope of ever changing yet. Somewhere buried in the foundation of all of this, of neoliberalism itself, there is a key, a shard, a splinter that can be used to dismantle the entire thing.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  So ultimately, it will come down to, well, Bitcoin, code, speech, can't can't get rid of it. Unless we want to, you know, slide into full despotism, which I I might, you know, not discount that quite so heavily, given past performance. But we do have a an exit door that is sort of baked in.

• 35:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I always talk about Bitcoin specifically as, especially with institutional investors. Say, listen, Bitcoin doesn't necessarily need to replace the US dollar or the fiat system. It is an alternative, right? One is a non-transparent, human-driven inflationary model that is pretty well understood. Another is a decentralized, digital, deflationary model that many people are just learning about today, right? And they're alternatives to each other. So you get option A or option B.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And you, as an individual, get to choose whether you'd like to participate in option A or option B.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Choice, choice, choice is key. There the

• 36:35Speaker 02

  The point of choice is that when there's choice, there is a market. When there's market, when there's a market, there's competition. When there's competition, you see human innovation. You see, uh, you see people apply themselves, uh, to, to bring better things. So that's, that's really, uh, the point of it. And we should have this at, at every level, like on the, on the level of nation states, I, how many countries are there? Two hundred and sixteen right now?

• 37:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Something like that, yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Something. I hope I didn't get that wrong. Um, but you know, you think that that's really the number of countries we'll have in fifty years? Probably not. I think, uh, you know, every, practically every European country has, uh, you know, a few independence movements within, within, within each one. So, uh, we will, we will see greater, greater choice.

• 37:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and, and we even see this in the United States. I mean, look, Tim Draper and, and that whole proposal to take a state and break it up into four or five.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Let's Balkanize California. Dude, you should have done it yesterday. It's long overdue. Uh, but, but really, the, the thing, uh, with that is everyone always says the United States. You gotta say these United States. The, the states, uh, never would have signed on to the US Constitution if they believed that, uh, they wouldn't be able to leave in the future. And then, you know, we have the Civil War, which the, the great negative consequence of that, not to apologize for slavery or anything grotesque like that, but we essentially,

• 38:24Speaker 02

  the, the mechanism for exit within the country was, uh, effectively defeated.

• 38:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think we'll see one of the fifty states, uh, leave the United States of America?

• 38:38Speaker 02

  I, I don't know. I, I think that we will see, uh, like I said, sovereignty must devolve down to its level, like water finds its level. Right now, things are too top-down. Too platonic fascist, you know, that's a like.

• 38:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Somebody and I probably can't say who it is, but somebody who's pretty well known in crypto. Recently was talking to me about this idea of like sovereignty doesn't have to be at the state level. Right? Like it could just be you, me and 20 other people. We just say, hey, we're going to opt out. Right? And we want to live a different way under a different uh um kind of set of rules. Uh, and I haven't thought enough about it yet, like what the pros and cons of that are. But just the the mental model or the break from sovereignty has to be at the country or state level. To it actually is just a group of people. I think is really interesting.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Yes, I I agree. Uh, and while we're on that topic, you know, just like the fetishism of like the collective uh democracy itself. I mean, it it's it's a keeping us held in these, I don't know, constrained, constrained uh systems.

• 40:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What what um?

• 40:05Anthony Pompliano?

  What's your thoughts around this idea of uh? We've talked a lot about like privacy and and freedom and personal freedom. But there's a counterbalance of, I don't think it is uh, there's any society in the world, right? Either today or historically that has uh operated with no rules.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  We no, no.

• 40:25Anthony Pompliano?

  So there's got to be rule of law that the people agree to, but what's the balance?

• 40:29Speaker 02

  So rule of law is good. Uh, rule of law has, I think, treated humans well uh since it was first developed. Uh, however, the the point is that

• 40:45Speaker 02

  the way we enforce rules in society, markets, it doesn't always have to be uh, you know, sponsored. It doesn't necessarily need a state sponsor like uh the uh.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  The, the way you transact at the store, you know, uh, it wasn't designed necessarily, uh, by, by any particular, you know, party. It was just how it, how it happens. So what I'm getting at is we can, we can come up with new rules, new cybernetics. We don't need necessarily to have, you know, legal recourse in, in the courts, or we could, we now can, uh, do like, I don't know, atomic swaps. We, you can transact, you can have a counterparty, uh, that you can transact with, uh, never knowing their name, uh, their telephone number, their address. You know, these,

• 41:46Speaker 02

  uh, the, the cybernetic framework of the world is changing with Bitcoin. It's becoming more automated. Uh, you know, in some, in some ways, that's, that's actually really, this is sort of maybe the, the Andrew Yang take, but that's what's, if I have one reservation about Bitcoin, it's that, uh, you know, holding the money was the last thing that we really trusted humans with. We gave it to all these smart bankers, uh, on Wall Street. And now suddenly we've, uh, we've taken that and just given it to a faceless, uh, faceless computer, a combine of, uh, of entropy.

• 42:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It, it is, um, it's really interesting to think through how, uh, contrasting the different viewpoints are. Um, and, and we have this world that, uh, I think a lot of people are indoctrinated into and they just, that's how they grew up, right? They just know that, look, this is how it's always been. This is how it will always be. But when you stop and you think about some of the core components of what we're talking about, right? Simple things like privacy, right? The right for you to not have to give 100% of all of your information up to people that you don't know what they're doing with it. Right? The idea that freedom of choice should be, you know, paramount in multiple facets of our life that it isn't today. Right? Or even the idea

• 43:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Of why you are forced to trust a private company to determine how you use your money, when you use your money, where you use your money, right? These things are kind of nonsensical when you really start to look underneath just that that that kind of top layer. What I don't know is how do you get people who maybe aren't like you and I, who spend the time to really learn about this stuff and develop opinions and work to get to this point? How do you get the mass population to start to see that maybe there's a different way to do things?

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Uh, just with, uh, as with politics, it's purely demographic. So the, the reason why people say are statist is because that's what they're comfortable with. That's what they grew up with, just like you have family traditions. We have religious traditions. You have things that are passed down. But, you know, things do slowly evolve over time. And so as we have a, a rising generations that are fully comfortable, you know, practically using the smartphone from, from the, from the womb.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  You know, you get people that understand, oh yeah, money is, uh, it has these properties. It's a technology, but it can, it can be iterated on. It can be improved. It doesn't have to be paper. We can, we can design, design a way to, uh, to do it better than it's been done by the technocrats of the past.

• 44:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. You've got really interesting views on Bitcoin, right? I think one has kind of, um, you know, everything from the code is free speech to, uh, its role in a much larger story around automation and, uh, um, that. Maybe describe a little bit how you see Bitcoin evolving, moving forward, and then also where it fits into some of these larger trends.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Sure. So the, yeah, the automation trend is just that. Uh, I mean, I'm not making any predictions about, you know, uh, you post scarcity utopia. Uh, or anything like that, but we were giving more and more to the computers every day. I mean, take, take the stock exchange, the New York Stock Exchange, it's basically a ghost town. And, uh, you know, when, when they, when companies like ring the open, ring the opening bell, you know, they're looking down on guys who are basically just playing a, playing a, playing a part.

• 45:56Anthony Pompliano?

  They're literally actors. They're extras.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  They're, they're extras and, uh.

• 46:01Anthony Pompliano?

  It's cute.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  It, it's, it's cute, but you know, you, you realize that we have all these, uh, all these digital systems that, uh, that run our lives and, uh, it's, it's not really trusted to humans anymore.

• 46:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So one of the things that, uh, I really use as a talking point with, um, institutional investors is this idea that like, humans are going to trust the machines more than they trust other humans, right? And I always describe it as you do this today, you get lost in a city you're not from. You ask Google Maps to tell you, you don't ask a stranger on the street. If you have a question, you ask Siri or Google, you don't ask your friend. If you want a music recommendation, you trust Spotify or Apple Music, you don't trust your friend, right? So like, we're already seeing this in certain aspects of our lives, but it's always non-financial situations. Now what we're starting to see over the last decade is robo-advisors and some of that stuff, right? But the big one, the big leap is actually we are going to trust an algorithm to make monetary policy decisions.

• 47:04Anthony Pompliano?

  More so than we are going to trust humans who go into a room, look at some data and then make an opinionated decision.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that that makes people uncomfortable.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  It, it is, it is scary, though I guess at some level we are already, you know, we're, we've completely jumped, you know, the, the shark, so to speak. We let, uh, dating apps, which I highly condemn, we let those, you know, algorithmically determine who they're going to, uh, you know, show us that we might find a match.

• 47:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Why are you so against the dating apps?

• 47:38Speaker 02

  I, cause I, I'm, uh.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  A a proponent of uh like I don't know, call it familiar humanity. Uh I think that we need to uh return to each other.

• 47:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And uh Describe this more, like what do you mean?

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Uh I mean, I I don't have it really fleshed out, but just to uh to see to see each other face to face.

• 48:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you're saying like basically the idea that most of the the conversation and the like quote unquote getting to know you is happening in digital form rather than face to face.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Or not that it's not that I I have no objection to say text messaging, but what I'm saying is that if if you go on a date with someone that the computer suggests to you, uh that it's a

• 48:26Speaker 02

  it it imports a degree of artificiality to perhaps everything in your life, maybe everything is a a an image, a simulacra and you know that already describes our our consumption habits. Anyway, we consume images. We don't really consume uh you know, products themselves. It's a it's very much an image based uh society and market.

• 48:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that necessarily bad if true?

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Uh I think it it produces psychological dislocation if you uh are living in hyperreality.

• 49:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you a simulation believer?

• 49:10Speaker 02

  I mean, uh I mean that people people like to joke about that a lot, uh but the the point is that uh you say you have a city and you have a map of the city. All right, make that map uh make that map bigger and bigger and bigger and make that map 3D, make it so big that it is the entire city that it covers the entire city. At at some point, uh you're you're just living in the map. So that's that's the way that reality as we think of it has really been built. Uh so we have, you know, mental memes that that we hold dear, uh and

• 49:51Speaker 02

  uh we we we cling to them, but in in many cases, uh they they they distort reality.

• 49:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I am fond of saying he who controls the meme controls the message.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  That's great. Man, Marshall McLuhan would be, would be proud of that. That's like a good, good synthesis there.

• 50:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Ashley, how, how does Bitcoin fit into this whole larger theme of automation?

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, simply, simply automating trust in, in the purest sense, like it, it holds the gold, so to speak. And if, uh, if blockchain utopians, you know, they want to take it even further. They want everything on the blockchain. They want, uh, you know, automated, uh, soft serve.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  And so it's the, the point is that it's, it's fine. It's fine to put it, to put our money onto this shared ledger. I mean, that's, so that the technologic aspect of it is fine. All I'm saying is don't let it occlude that, you know, we build technology to serve humans. Uh, you know, we, we should not let the techno-capital singularity, you know, stampede upon us. But instead we should, we should acquire, you know, a set of, uh, morals from some, uh, you know, other, uh, you know, non, non-automated, non, uh,

• 51:25Speaker 02

  digitally generated source. Like I'm a Christian. Uh, my name is actually Christian. I, you know.

• 51:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you doxing yourself right now?

• 51:33Speaker 02

  I'm not, I won't give my last name, but I, I like, you know, uh, you can't, you can put the Bible on the Bitcoin blockchain, but you can't generate, you know, the Bible from, uh,

• 51:47Speaker 02

  from a computer.

• 51:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What, um, what do you think? Happens next with Bitcoin, right? So like, just so people kind of, well, let's just take like a timestamp of where we are at the moment. So we've got a digital currency that is about 10 years old, a little more than 10 years old. It's got about $130 billion of market cap. It just went through its third market cycle of kind of boom and bust. We now are at a point where retail investors are aware of it. There are what I'll call early signs of everyday use case infrastructure being built. We've got a politician who's calling to ban it. We have institutional investors who are getting interested, right?

• 52:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Many of them haven't yet done something major, but but they're kind of at the gate, if you will.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 52:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Where do we go from here?

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think Eric Voskel has, has good thoughts about this. I think, and I hope I don't, you know, crib this too sloppily. I think he describes the honeymoon phase that it's basically the, the phase of unawareness from, you know, people that have stake in the monetary, you know, order now. They, they sort of don't know about Bitcoin, first of all, or they, they're basically unaware and they, they don't actively seek to make a, make the policy decision on Bitcoin.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  The, the policy decision being, you know, ban it or love it. So as we get closer to that decision, you know, this is, I guess, the honeymoon period winding down. So, yeah, it's, it's about awareness of Bitcoin and appreciation of, of Bitcoin's radical potential being, you know, fulfilled.

• 53:48Anthony Pompliano?

  To me, it is, you know, when you really sit and think there's once in a lifetime type opportunities, right? So if you look at what Elon is doing with trying to bring humanity to another planet. There's not very many people who want to try to do that, two, have the means to do that, three, frankly, are crazy enough to do that, right? All this stuff.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:10Anthony Pompliano?

  He's got a shot, right?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  He's, he's got a shot. I personally think that Elon Musk will die on Mars. And I, and I don't mean.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  In a crash landing. I mean, I think the man moves there. I think that, you know, a Martian colony is, you know, fully, fully within humanity's grasp.

• 54:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So I tend to think that there's a higher probability of that happening than many believe, right? But I think Bitcoin, for example, is another, you know, once in a lifetime type opportunity where we are talking about a digital asset replacing money.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  It is, it is extremely exciting. You know, I was a, I was a dork that was interested in money before Bitcoin. But wow, when you, when you think about like what Bitcoin

• 55:07Speaker 02

  represents, there's, there's so much potential there.

• 55:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Any, any last thoughts in terms of what you wish people knew about Bitcoin or things that you think maybe they misunderstand that you want to clarify?

• 55:23Speaker 02

  No, just buy Bitcoin. I mean, it's, it's, it's a simple thesis.

• 55:28Anthony Pompliano?

  As this was unplanned, and he inspired me, we, I made this little sign while we were sitting here recording.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  You gotta put the strike through the, through the Bitcoin.

• 55:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Jesus Christ, the Bitcoin sign guy is critiquing my Bitcoin, my buy Bitcoin sign and telling me I did it wrong. So that's how my son gets going.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Do you even know Bitcoin? Are you even a real Bitcoiner? Dude, yo, Bitcoin never forgets the strike through the Bitcoin.

• 56:02Anthony Pompliano?

  This is gonna get out of control really fast if we, if we let, if we sit here and just talk about Bitcoin.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yo, but, but, but tell them, tell them what you're doing.

• 56:11Anthony Pompliano?

  With what?

• 56:11Speaker 02

  The, the sign?

• 56:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, the sign?

• 56:14Speaker 02

  The group? Or not yet?

• 56:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Not yet, not yet.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Oh, alright.

• 56:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Stay tuned.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Stay tuned, dear audience viewers.

• 56:21Anthony Pompliano?

  We, we have, we have some plans in the works to continue to drive awareness and education about Bitcoin. This week is.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  Forget, forget all that. It is to continue to dance on the graves of central banking.

• 56:38Anthony Pompliano?

  The uh, my favorite tweet recently, uh, one of the Winklevoss twins, I actually, and I apologize to them, I can't remember if it was Tyler or Cameron tweeted, uh,

• 56:46Speaker 02

  I, I, I can for the life of me not tell them apart.

• 56:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, well, it's on Twitter, so I should be able to read their name and remember, but, but I forget which one said it. Uh, but they were like, should we rename blockchain week to Bitcoin week? And I was like, that's the greatest thing I've seen in a long time.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  It is snake oil week. It is you, you.

• 57:05Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the crazy?

• 57:05Speaker 02

  You slime around from, uh, it's all greasy.

• 57:09Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the craziest thing you've seen someone pitch that you're just like, that's the biggest scam of all time?

• 57:14Speaker 02

  The biggest scam?

• 57:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like necessarily like scam in the sense of like, they're just fraudulently, you know, like stealing from people, but just like, something that is being presented as, uh, an articulate, intelligent idea, and you're just like, that is complete horseshit.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Well, uh, I, it's not actually the, the, the craziest idea that isn't actually crazy at all is the honest Ponzi idea. It just basically being, uh, you know, upfront, some of it's, I, I forget which, which tokens it, it was, but some of them said, oh yeah, we are an honest Ponzi, you know, with transparent, like algor- algorithms that, uh, that determine how, uh, how the payouts work. But it, I do like that because this stuff is so easy to code, you can play all these, you know, game theoretic experiments, uh, very rapidly and you can really determine, uh, economic behavior.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Uh, you can basically run a, like Augur is a case study in, uh, you know, I don't know, betting or, or,

• 58:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? Uh, the, uh, the, the ease with which you can design, uh, you know, and chop up the flows with, uh, with crypto systems is, uh, it, it permits a, a type of engineering that is very nimble.

• 58:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Uh, before I wrap up, I always do rapid fire questions. Most important company in Bitcoin?

• 58:56Speaker 02

  That's hard to say. That's a, that's a real tough one. Uh, defense distributed.

• 59:04Anthony Pompliano?

  You might not be wrong with that, right? I mean, look, it, it is, it will be one of the landmark legal battles, uh, for sure, because it has so many ramifications.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? I think we can agree on that. Uh, what one regulation would you change or improve if you could?

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Uh, hmm.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  I mean, it's, it's tough to say that if there's like one single thing, um, the system sort of leans, leans on itself. Uh, I, I, and like I said before, the, there, there are, there is legal matter buried in our current system that gives us the opening we need. So.

• 59:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, the opportunity is there.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  The, the opportunity actually already exists. I, I don't think that we need any, uh, you know, uh, legal acts of God to, to, for Bitcoin to make it. I think we're 100% at escape velocity and beyond already.

• 1:00:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Strap in. Uh, most controversial thought you have in Bitcoin? The thought that you have that you think most people would disagree with you on?

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I don't know if people agree with me on like the fact that, uh, or on my thought that Bitcoin, you know, strips us of a, a small shred of, uh, hu- hu- humanity.

• 1:00:29Anthony Pompliano?

  It's possible. Most important book you've ever read?

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Most important book? Well, it, the most important book I ever read was the Bible, but, um, this book, if, uh, this is a fun book, uh, Thanged Numina by Nick Land. I, uh, I made the San Francisco Public Library buy this book.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  So you, if you, if you really wanna, uh, you know, strap in on a, on a wild ride, you can go, uh, to San Francisco and check that book out, uh, after I, after I return it, of course.

• 1:01:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, how can they, how can they, uh, get it if you have it?

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, Nick Lind, you can, you can read that.

• 1:01:09Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what is this about?

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Dude, the techno-capital singularity, the acceleration, bro.

• 1:01:14Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a-

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  The acceleration, dude, are you accelerating? Are you accelerating?

• 1:01:18Anthony Pompliano?

  On the cover, on the inside of the cover of the book, one of the sentences reels-

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, read.

• 1:01:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Wielding weaponized machinicali recombined version, gee, I, dude, I can't even read this.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Uh, read, um, I'll, I'll read you, I'll read you the beginning of meltdown. Meltdown, the story goes like this. Earth is captured by a techno-capital singularity as Renaissance rationalization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization takeoff. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in autosophisticating machine runaway as markets learn to manufacture intelligence. Politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia and tries to get a grip.

• 1:02:05Anthony Pompliano?

  That's in your local San Francisco public library. Get at your boys. All right, aliens, what the hell do you think? Real, not real? Have they been here? Do we know what they are?

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  There are the, there are aliens and they're all, uh, they're all children of God.

• 1:02:23Anthony Pompliano?

  The aliens are children of God?

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  We all are.

• 1:02:26Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, wha- what is your take in terms of, are we gonna ever like, c- contact them? Communicate, see them, hang out with them, grab a beer?

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Oh, what's that?

• 1:02:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Give them some Bitcoin?

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  What's that, uh, what's the name of that paradox that, oh, if there are-

• 1:02:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Fermi.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Fermi, thank you. I, I think that that's somewhat- I can't tell if that's compelling or not because I think that we still need to develop better, you know, space microphones, if you will, to listen for these,

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  listen for these messages, if any exist.

• 1:03:00Anthony Pompliano?

  There's somebody like somewhere in the world who's like a space microphone developer. If anyone knows about a space microphone developer, please let me know. Tweet me or DM me. I'll definitely bring them on the podcast and that's a conversation I'd love to have. All right, before we end, you could ask me one question. What do you got for me?

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  Who has been your, your rabbi for learning how to market Bitcoin so well? I mean, you, you play the game at such a high level. Everything you, everything you say goes viral. How do you do it? What's, what's your secret? Damn it. Tell us, tell us now.

• 1:03:39Anthony Pompliano?

  So,

• 1:03:42Anthony Pompliano?

  there's two things that I think are really important. One is,

• 1:03:47Anthony Pompliano?

  the things that I do and the tactics that I use are not Bitcoin specific. So you could do this with anything, right? Bitcoin happens to be like, the success of those strategies and tactics on steroids because it's so emotional, right? So like that definitely helps. The second thing is, and I tell people this all the time and people always like, yeah, yeah, that's a stupid thing. But like, it's like, keep it simple, stupid. It's authenticity. It is literally just like transparency and authenticity. So like when I'm excited, you know, I'm excited, right? When like I'm pissed off at somebody, you know, I'm pissed off at somebody, right?

• 1:04:27Anthony Pompliano?

  When I believe something, I think it just transparently and authentically comes through that like, yo, this guy may be crazy, but he actually believes this. And so I think that once you get that like foundation of just, you have to be willing to say the things that you believe, whether you think people agree with them or not. Like, like that, that kind of mind shift or the unlocking into the freedom of being able to just say what you believe, I think is the number one thing that holds most people back. Once you do that, then it's all about tactics and strategies, right? So like, look, I ran some of these growth teams on at social networks. So I understand how that some of the algorithms work. That definitely helps. Two is like, I've just, Tested more than most people. Like I've just iterated on this over and over and over again.

• 1:05:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I've tweeted more than most people. I've seen what works, what doesn't work. How do people respond? All this stuff. And so when you're doing that, two things happen. One is you learn what works. And so you just keep doing more of what works. But then two is you're like curating your audience. Right? And so like, if I was to go and talk about pretty much anything else other than crypto, my Twitter account would just be dead. Right? Like people would just be like, dude, shut up. Like, start like, talk, like, do the Bitcoin tweet again.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  Give the people what they want.

• 1:05:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. But like, but if I talk about Bitcoin or crypto, the things go viral. It's because the people have been promised that content and that's what they're looking for. And so when I violate that and I go outside of Bitcoin or crypto, very rarely is it successful. Now, there are a couple of things that are tangentially related, right? So like, things around like personal freedom, sovereignty, right? Like that type of stuff definitely works. Um, and recently, actually, uh, the idea of, um, cannabis has been, has become more and more popular because it is a very similar, uh, fight with government and kind of rules and things like that, that crypto has. It's being treated very differently though, right? And the difference is there's millions of people in the United States that are locked up

• 1:06:20Anthony Pompliano?

  in prisons today because of a plant, right? Whereas with crypto, it is more, uh, socially unacceptable or, or not yet accepted compared to other assets versus cannabis and drugs, we're actually imprisoning people. Right? And so, so I think that there's a lot of empathy between those two groups in terms of, uh, people who believe in Bitcoin and crypto also have an affinity for, we probably shouldn't have millions of people locked up because of a plant in the ground. Right? And so like, just understanding what those affinity groups are and how they relate to each other. Um, you know, has been a, a journey to some degree, but once I've understood that, then I kind of understand like, here's the boundaries of what people want to hear about and talk about.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Well, folks, you heard it here first from the master. You can now go forth and signal Max.

• 1:07:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, Bitcoin Sign Guy, absolute legend, highly, highly, highly recommend you go to buybitcoin.art.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. 10% of the proceeds will be donated to the Ross Ulbricht and Julian Assange Defense Funds. And I also donated one to Coin Center.

• 1:07:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, awesome.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  So, yeah, hop on that. They're selling fast.

• 1:07:35Anthony Pompliano?

  I've seen them. I think that they're really, really cool. We actually took a picture with one yesterday, so I'll post that at some point. But I'm a huge fan. I think that in a fleeting moment, you made one decision that frankly echoed through the world and really just kind of gave excitement and hope to a lot of people. So on the behalf of everybody, thank you. Thank you for coming and doing this.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  Bitcoin's in the room. Bitcoin is in the room.

• 1:08:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Buy Bitcoin with the line through the B. Alright, man. Thanks so much.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  Peace.

• 1:08:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey, everyone. Pop here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.