My Biggest Bitcoin Regret Ever | Anthony & Polina Pompliano

Polina Pompliano is the founder of The Profile, where she writes long-form profiles of the world’s most successful people. In this conversation, we break down bitcoin’s recent sell-off and why the bears are a bullish signal, the Anthropic IPO and its long-term benefit trust, and why AI abundance makes scarce assets more valuable. We also discuss kung fu robots, AI psychosis, and why laser eyes might blind you. ====================== Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates investment strategies across Stocks, Commodities, ETFs and Crypto. Whether you’re rotating into AI & Gold, allocating to the S&P 500, or accumulating Bitcoin, Arch Public executes your plan 24/7 without ever taking custody of your assets or funds. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com, and start your FREE automated trading strategy! ====================== Need liquidity without selling your crypto? Take out a Figure Crypto-Backed Loan, allowing you to borrow against your BTC, ETH, or SOL with 12-month terms, 8.91% interest rates, and no prepayment penalties. Or check out Democratized Prime (https://figuremarkets.co/pomp) and earn ~8.5% APY on real world assets. Unlock your crypto’s potential today at Figure! https://figuremarkets.co/pomp Figure Lending LLC dba Figure (NMLS 1717824). Loans subject to approval. Crypto collateral may be liquidated. Terms apply - see full disclosures at https://figure.com/disclosures/ ====================== Simple Mining makes Bitcoin mining simple and accessible for everyone. We offer a premium white glove hosting service, helping you maximize the profitability of Bitcoin mining. For more information on Simple Mining or to get started mining Bitcoin, visit https://www.simplemining.io/pomp ====================== Uphold is the easiest way to buy and sell crypto unlike any other platform allowing you to trade in just one step between any supported asset. Check them out at https://www.uphold.com/pomp/This video includes a paid sponsorship with Uphold. I’m compensated by Uphold for promoting its products and services and may receive commissions from referrals. Terms apply. Not available in all jurisdictions. Digital assets are risky and may result in the total loss of your capital. ====================== Today's episode is sponsored by Abra. Hold bitcoin with a plan: explore bitcoin-backed borrowing for liquidity or a BTC-denominated yield strategy managed by Abra Capital Management. Learn about options, terms, and risks at https://www.abra.com/pomp. Borrowing may trigger liquidation; investment strategies may lose principal. Paid sponsorship. Not investment advice. ====================== 0:00 - Intro 0:58 - Is bitcoin going to zero? Bear market & Q4 outlook 7:44 - Is AI stealing capital from bitcoin? 13:01 - Anthropic IPO & why AI is bullish for bitcoin 14:26 - Ad Ends 17:58 - Anthropic’s public benefit shares vs Elon & Michael Dell 22:30 - Who is Buddy Shah? 25:38 - AI regulation, profits vs humanity 32:58 - Should we fear kung fu robots? 34:49 - How AI impacted our family & privacy fears 41:07 - Separating products from the BS 45:39 - AI psychosis & Pomp’s biggest bitcoin regret 52:20 - Ambition vs delusion

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:26Speaker 01

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• 0:56Anthony Pompliano?

  An abundance of money, dollars, means that the scarcity of Bitcoin is more valuable. AI is an abundance technology. It is going to bring an abundance of dollars. It's going to bring an abundance of intelligence. It's going to bring an abundance of information. In a world of abundance, scarcity becomes more valuable. So I am bullish on Bitcoin. I am bullish on gold. I am bullish on land. I am bullish on scarce collectibles. We never talked about this on the podcast. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a great conversation with Polina Pompliano. In this conversation, we talk about what's going on with Bitcoin. What one of my greatest regrets in the Bitcoin industry is. We also get into AI. What's going on with the Anthropic IPO? Why exactly? I am very distrustful of a certain group of people who are building a lot of the AI technology. What's going on with the robots?

• 1:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Polina is scared of the Kung-Fu robots. We'll get into that, too. And we talk about whether your portfolio is actually going to do better or worse going into the end of the year, and what exactly, I think, is so bullish about certain assets. All that and more in this conversation with Polina Pompliano. All right, guys. Polina is back. Welcome. Thank you. I appreciate it. Our kid's turned one. That means that Polina comes back. She's just a year. She's gone for a year. Now you're back. Go ahead. What questions do you have for me?

• 2:04Speaker 03

  I've missed the people. I think the people have missed me. But the first question is, what the hell's going on with Bitcoin? I leave, it drops. People are claiming it's over. Jason Calacanis, Chamath, Polina, they're all saying it's dead. And it only went down under 80K?

• 2:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, we need people to say Bitcoin's going to zero. You need two sides to the market. And if, when everyone says Bitcoin is going up, that means that it is consensus that it's going up, which means that there is much less of a return available because there's no mispricing in the market. But the louder that people are saying that it's going to zero, it's going down, it's over, whatever narrative they want to spin, that means that you get a disconnection between the fundamentals and the price. And that is when investors who have conviction are able to capitalize on the opportunity. So every time I hear people saying that stuff, regardless of who it is, I really like Jason. I like Chamath. They've both been incredibly kind to me over the years. I don't agree with them that Bitcoin's going to zero or it's over,

• 3:06Anthony Pompliano?

  but they're smart guys and maybe they're right. Who knows?

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was going to say, how do you know the bears are not right?

• 3:11Anthony Pompliano?

  They could be, but like, that's the risk that you're taking. And so when you get that dislocation between the fundamentals and the narrative, then if you are correct and you have conviction and you are willing to have the courage to deploy capital into the asset, that's how you drive asymmetric return. Now, with that said, let's go and look at what are some of the fundamentals? Well, first and foremost is a lot of Bitcoin's value is derived from the security of the network. For years, go back, check the tape, look at the receipts. I have been saying, people would ask, what is Bitcoin backed by? And I would always tell them, the single most valuable commodity in the world, computing power. And people are like, what do you mean, computing power? Now everyone's talking about computing power as one of the most valuable commodities in the world.

• 3:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And so Bitcoin is backed by computing power. There's a scarcity of computing power in the world. People are literally scouring the earth and thinking about going to space to get more computing power. Bitcoin is the strongest computer network in the world, which means it's incredibly valuable. It is very secure. It's very decentralized. All of these components. And so that's first and foremost is if you look at hash rate, hash rate is back to almost all-time highs, which is fascinating because the Bitcoin miners, many of them started to transition to become HPC or AI data centers. So you took a bunch of the large players and basically took them offline. But hash rate is coming back and almost back to all-time highs.

• 4:38Anthony Pompliano?

  My friend Will Clemente pointed that out. I thought that was a very important observation. Second thing, where is a net new buyer going to come from in order for price to continue to appreciate? Well, we know that the Bitcoin ETFs have done that. We know that individuals are still continuing to accumulate. But now there is research coming out. I think it was Fidelity that put this out first, is that the perpetual preferreds coming from Strategy, Strive, et cetera, are producing net new demand for Bitcoin. I think there's over 135,000 Bitcoin that have been purchased as part of the perpetual preferreds. Why is that important? Well, if you can now take 135,000 Bitcoin off the market and they go into these perpetual preferred vehicles, that is very similar to the ETFs.

• 5:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I think the ETF number, something like 800,000 Bitcoin have gone into the ETFs. So you have almost a million Bitcoin between the ETFs and the perpetual preferreds that have already been taken off the market. And then you have perpetual preferreds that are continuing to increase. Strive took, I think, 5,000 or 6,000 Bitcoin in the last week and went and purchased it via proceeds from the perpetual preferreds. And so you say, okay, I have computing power and hash rate continuing to increase. I have this narrative dislocation and I see a net new buyer in the market. Hey, man, I'm excited about Bitcoin. I'm not saying Bitcoin's going to a million. There's all kinds of crazy price predictions that people are throwing out there. I think Bitcoin goes to a million at some point. I just don't think it's going to happen next year. But I think that Bitcoin looks very attractive here

• 6:08Anthony Pompliano?

  because basically what you had is you had Bitcoin go from 125K down to, let's call it 60K or so. So a 50-ish percent drawdown. Great. Then guess what happened? It had this very violent puke, which usually marks the bottom of a bear market, and it has recovered back. And so what you have is you have kind of confirmation that the bear market is likely over. If that's the case, from here back to all-time highs is about a 50% return. So at what point is that going to happen? Is that going to happen in three months, six months, 12 months, 24 months? Whatever. But a 50% return from here going back to all-time highs. But then, if you look historically...

• 6:42Speaker 03

  And we're about to hit the holidays.

• 6:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Then if you look at history, the fourth quarter tends to be very strong.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  That's what I'm saying.

• 6:49Anthony Pompliano?

  If you look at the equity market, the fourth quarter tends to be very strong. But more importantly is the fourth quarter of mid-terms tend to be even stronger. And so right now, in this 80 to 85K range, what we're watching is weakness. People are saying, oh, it's going to zero, all this stuff. Well, in the month of October, when you're going into mid-terms, usually there's a lot of concern about there being no certainty. Who's going to win? Are the Democrats going to take Congress? Are they going to take the Senate? Can the Republicans defend it? What's going on with Trump? J.D. Vance is running around the country and he's doing all of these different speeches and rallies. Trump is campaigning. Which candidates are they going to back? Are the Democrats going to be strong enough? Can they exploit any of the mistakes? The administration?

• 7:34Anthony Pompliano?

  It's all noise. So what happens is people basically want certainty. As we get close to the mid-terms and we get certainty, all of a sudden people say, oh, nothing bad happened. Let me go keep investing my money. And they'll start pouring capital back into the equity market, into the Bitcoin market. And my guess is that going into the end of the year, you're going to see strength in both equities and Bitcoin. And we're going to end the year higher than where we are right now in both of those markets. So it goes back to if you have fundamentals, if you have seasonality type-based stuff, and you have a very clear reason why the narrative is dislocated from those fundamentals, that's when you should be excited. And I think going back to the people calling it going to zero, all this stuff, hey, thank you. I appreciate all of that because it actually provides the opportunity.

• 8:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you look at, again, what have we been doing in the public company for the last couple of months? We have a lot of Bitcoin. We've been selling Bitcoin at NAV and buying back shares, which is us buying more exposure. We're cranking on the Bitcoin exposure for every shareholder. We're trying to get more Bitcoin exposure because I have a generally bullish view as to Bitcoin's future over the next 12 months or so.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  So let me ask you this. Get CEO Gracie Chen says that Bitcoin could swing 30% in either direction in a month or two as the big AI IPOs hit. Why?

• 8:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I think that anytime you have change in a market, there's always volatility. Volatility can work in both directions. Now, one of the questions that people have had historically is, is AI sucking the air out of the room and capital is rotating towards AI? And it's moving away from the Bitcoin market? Now, I definitely think that there's been a lot of capital rotation. Specifically, we mentioned the miners moving to HPC, things like that. In my own investing, do I as aggressively buy Bitcoin every single day like I used to? No. But do I still want more and more Bitcoin exposure? Month after month, year after year? Absolutely. And so I'm continuing to increase that exposure.

• 9:36Anthony Pompliano?

  But now, when I get paid a dollar, maybe 100% of it doesn't go to Bitcoin. Maybe it's like 50/50 between Bitcoin and AI.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Is that because the risk profile has changed? And also, there's not as much upside as on the Bitcoin trade?

• 9:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I look at, again, I continue to say this, and I think that people almost think that it's like some like trite phrase. I look at AI as offense, Bitcoin as defense. I used to look at Bitcoin as offense. It was a thing that at, you know, 1,000 bucks, 3,000 bucks, whatever. The bottom of the 2018 market, as I've talked about plenty publicly, I looked at it as there is a generational wealth opportunity to buy an asset that had dropped 85%. And I didn't think anything had changed about the asset. And I was like, thank you very much. 85% discount at the store. How much can I buy? And then I kept buying and kept buying and kept buying. That was wealth generation. I still think that Bitcoin can generate a lot of wealth,

• 10:33Anthony Pompliano?

  but it is going to do it in a much more linear fashion compared to the asymmetry that we used to see. And you just look, Bitcoin went from 1,000 to 20,000 in 2017. 20X. It then dropped 85%. And then it went from $3,000 to $69,000. So if you go back to 2017 and you look at, it went from 1,000 to 20,000, dropped down to 3,000. Then it went from 3,000 to 69,000, right? Then it dropped down to 15, 16K. Then it went from there to 125K. The returns are compressing.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:07Anthony Pompliano?

  But who doesn't want to see an asset in two years go from $15,000 to $125,000? Are we really going to complain?

• 11:15Speaker 03

  I know I've said this before, but I've seen Bitcoin dropped to 2K and it dropping to under 80K cannot scare me because I have perspective.

• 11:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, but it's also Bitcoin is the risky.

• 11:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin is the least risky that it has been in years, right now, in my opinion. Why? The Lindy effect, the longer it's around, the more likely it is to persist. Hash rate. The adoption, the institutionalization and financialization of Bitcoin by Wall Street, the clearer regulatory environment. And I could go through thing after thing after thing. So if it is less risky than it was five or 10 years ago, you should expect a lower return going forward. By the way, though, lower return does not mean no return. Lower return just means it used to go up 100% a year. Maybe it goes up 30% a year now on a compounded basis. Well, the stock market is going to do 10 to 15%. So you're going to outperform the stock market most likely with Bitcoin compared to equities. Doesn't mean that you don't want equities.

• 12:17Anthony Pompliano?

  It just means that maybe Bitcoin's going to outperform the indexes. And so if you have core Bitcoin exposure, plus you add in some of the AI stocks that you want exposure to, or you want to make private investments that you think can outperform Bitcoin, that's how you got to put together a portfolio. But you also have to understand what is your risk profile and how do you want to put that portfolio together and where does Bitcoin fit into it?

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:40Anthony Pompliano?

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• 13:23Anthony Pompliano?

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• 14:06Anthony Pompliano?

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• 14:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And so with attractive financing available, you can deploy these assets without selling any of your assets to do it. This is not some garage operation. Simple Mining runs over 40,000 machines and was just ranked the fastest growing company in Iowa on the INC 5000. They put together a valuable resource called the 2026 Bitcoin Mining Blueprint. It covers the five mistakes investors make when allocating to mining and how to avoid them before deploying capital. You can access it for free at simplemining.io/pomp. That's simplemining.io/pomp. Go check it out today.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  Um, and also AI, let's talk about AI. Anthropic filed, it's S1, uh, which makes it poised to become the first massive AI company to go public. Um, what do you think? What, is that going to suck the air out of the room for Bitcoin or is that just gonna?

• 15:42Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I think that Bitcoin is going to be just fine. I actually think that the more successful that SpaceX SI, I don't know if you know about them, SpaceX SI, uh, Anthropic, OpenAI, all these companies, the more successful they are at AI, the higher Bitcoin's price will go. And a huge reason for it, I continue to talk about this.

• 16:03Anthony Pompliano?

  An abundance of money, dollars, means that the scarcity of Bitcoin is more valuable. AI is an abundance technology. It is going to bring an abundance of dollars, is going to bring an abundance of intelligence, is going to bring an abundance of information. In a world of abundance, scarcity becomes more valuable. So I am bullish on Bitcoin. I am bullish on gold. I am bullish on land. I am bullish on scarce collectibles. Land, productive land, I think is going to be big, gold, et cetera. So going back to Anthropic, the number one most impressive thing about Anthropic to me is that it looks like they burned less than $10 billion to generate what looks like it could be somewhere between 75 to 100 billion dollars of annual revenue.

• 16:47Anthony Pompliano?

  If that is true and those numbers, you know, people are trying to kind of piece it together. If those numbers end up being accurate, incredible business. I think that they still have a lot of pressure coming from people wanting to own their own intelligence, people fine tuning models, a lot of the personal agent stuff, people having all kinds of like, uh, model routers. There's a lot of headwinds. But just like game, respect game, man. These guys build a big business and they did it in pretty short period of time. They've generated an immense amount of wealth for their investors and for the different employees at that business. You can say what you want about their perspective on working with the government. You can say that, you know, some of the people who are the leaders of that business, they're kind of wonky, they got weird thoughts, you know, the whole EA community thing is obviously

• 17:32Anthony Pompliano?

  something that people aren't super excited about when it comes to crypto.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  What is the EA community?

• 17:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, effective altruism, you know, it's kind of the SBF kind of world, whatever.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  I, I, I thought that was weird that it had a resurgence when SBF was, uh, the poster boy for the industry and everybody was around about effective altruism. Then all that stuff happened. People were like, that was complete BS. And now it's coming back and again, people are taking it seriously.

• 17:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Because, because a lot of the, because a lot of the Anthropic folks, that's the world they come from. That's how, that's how Sam Bankman Fried knew these people to make an investments. They were all part of the same community, right? And so you, you just look at it again, like I, I'm not here to pass any judgment. I, I've actually gone, a lot of people I think judge effective altruism. Uh, I forget the gentleman who wrote the book. Uh, there's a book that was written that basically explains the whole idea of effective altruism. I bought the book, so I guess I'm a financial supporter. Right now, when I read the book and look, there are some.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  It sounds good in theory.

• 18:30Anthony Pompliano?

  There are some ideas that you're like, this is a good hearted, like, you know, hey, I understand what you're trying to accomplish here. I disagree with a lot of the components of it. I don't think it's like really how the real world works, but I can separate from things that are part of the effective altruism movement and say, hey, I like this stuff. I don't like this stuff. I think you guys are onto something here and I think you're wrong here. So it's like, people just want to paint this broad brush type thing. So put EA stuff aside for a second. The big thing when it comes to Anthropic is ultimately going to be, what are the crazy ideas they have around the technology? It's clear the technology works. It's incredible. Anyone who has used Claude, Opus, Haiku, any of this stuff, man, these guys nailed it.

• 19:14Anthony Pompliano?

  They got a great piece of technology and they are scaling.

• 19:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But the concern that I think a lot of people have is like, yo, these guys got some wonky ideas. They're talking about the machines being sentient. There's rumors that they were trying to convince the Pope that the machines could have a soul. They're talking about, they're going to take, uh, 20% or something, or some percentage of their company, they're going to like, give it to the public. The second I hear stuff like that, I'm out. Put me on the record. The second I start hearing about.

• 19:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Let me explain how human nature works. It is very rare for one person to do something that is 100% done for the good of other people. It happens. Like I genuinely believe Michael Dell, who gave five plus billion dollars to the, uh, Invest America Trump account stuff. I do not see how he benefits from that. Maybe there's something, I don't know, but I genuinely think that that is something where they're like, hey, we want to help the country. We want to help these children. It, you're not giving it to an NGO that invites you to a gala. You're not like making friends. You're just giving money directly to individuals, which I think is the entire innovation of those Invest America accounts.

• 20:25Anthony Pompliano?

  These guys, they're not saying, let us take the equity and just give it to the children of America. Elon said that Elon said he's going to take one SpaceX share and he's going to give it to every kid in America. That's a pretty cool thing because you're ripping out the NGOs and the nonprofits. You're basically saying it's basically public figure directly giving to people. The same way you give 20 bucks to a homeless person on the street, he's saying, I'm going to give a SpaceX share to every child. That's cool. And Anthropic is saying something a little bit different. They're saying the public should have a stake in the company. Sounds good, but now they're going to take some of the shares and it's unclear exactly how many, because they always make promises and who knows what actually gets put there. But they want to take it and they basically want to put it to the public benefit, but they're going to be in control of it.

• 21:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, that sounds a lot like power accumulation to me.

• 21:12Speaker 03

  Why?

• 21:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Well.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Of course you're going to be in control of it. They own the company.

• 21:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Elon's not. Elon's going to take a share of SpaceX and give it to the kid. The kid can do whatever they want when they turn 18. He, he's, he's not hoarding it and saying, well, maybe I'll give you something, maybe I won't. He's, he's just saying, I'm just going to give you the share.

• 21:29Anthony Pompliano?

  He's done.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  So what are they trying to do with the share?

• 21:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Unclear, which is why immediately my antenna goes up. Because when I hear people saying, oh, I have, you know, I just want to help everybody else also. Like, yo, you think, do you think we're dumb? Do you think we're stupid? You're gonna take five to 20% of your company, you're gonna put in this public beneficiary thing, and there's gonna be no fuckery going on? Stop it. Who's in charge of it? Why do they get to make the decisions? How are you gonna allocate the capital? How do we know that you're not gonna use that for your personal benefit or for the company's benefit and actually not help people? So if you really wanted Americans to have a stake, then I challenge Anthropic to take the shares and give it direct to the kids. Adults don't need your shares.

• 22:15Anthony Pompliano?

  We all can go buy our shares on the stock markets like everybody else. If you really think that you're gonna build this massive company and you want to help people, take the shares and put it in the Invest America accounts. Because anything else introduces bureaucracy, potential corruption, potential fuckery. And so instead, if you really, if this is genuinely a thing where you are saying, we want to help people, which by the way, maybe I'm wrong and that's actually how they're thinking about it. Then prove it with your actions, not your words. Take the shares and give it direct to the kids. Because Michael Dell did it, Elon Musk did it. Why isn't Anthropic doing it?

• 22:52Speaker 03

  I'm sure there's reasons.

• 22:54Anthony Pompliano?

  There might be, but like, we should ask those questions.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 22:57Anthony Pompliano?

  An investigative journalist should go figure that out. I'm not a journalist, I don't have that skill set, I don't have the temperament to do that. But that is a great question. Is why at the exact same moment that Elon Musk is taking 10-plus billion dollars, the largest philanthropic gift ever, and he's giving it direct to people with no NGO and no profit in between him and the person? Why is Anthropic not doing the same thing? They're claiming they're doing the same thing, but mechanically they're not. I got questions.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Great. So you published this tweet with your investing lessons.

• 23:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Before we get to my investing lessons, can you tell me about Buddy Shah?

• 23:36Speaker 03

  So I wrote yesterday an article.

• 23:38Anthony Pompliano?

  You didn't think I was gonna ask you about that?

• 23:40Speaker 03

  I did not think.

• 23:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Tables are turned.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  About this man whose name appears on page 145 of the Anthropic S1 filing. His name is Buddy Shah, and he is arguably one of the most powerful people at Anthropic. He is not on payroll. He does not own stock. He is prevented from buying any stock. And his whole purpose is he's the chair of the company's long-term benefit trust. And he basically helps oversee a trust that has the power. Why are you smiling at me?

• 24:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Because I set you all up. I threw the softball up. Go ahead, tell me about Buddy Shah.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  That has the power to appoint and remove any portion of the, of Anthropic's board. So my question is, why give this man all this power? And my question in the article is, or my statement, I guess, is, what is worse than having an AI decide what it thinks is best for humanity? A man, another human who thinks he knows what's best for humanity?

• 24:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Prime example of fuckery.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  Well, we don't know. They're trying to stay.

• 24:53Anthony Pompliano?

  It's impossible, it's impossible. No, it's impossible.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  And in the article, I say, like, even if you have no financial stake in the company, you can still make the wrong decision. You're influenced, you talk to people, like, it's not a guarantee.

• 25:08Anthony Pompliano?

  The second I hear he doesn't have equity, fuckery going on. The second I hear.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  The whole point is independence, that he can't be swayed by having a financial incentive.

• 25:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Independent directors on boards in the public market have equity. They get paid in equity. They're independent.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  How independent are they?

• 25:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Because they're supposed to have skin in the game. How can you have the best interest of something if you don't have skin in the game? It's all a mirage. It's all smoke and mirrors. It is all like, we are here from Anthropic to save you.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  You really don't like Anthropic.

• 25:43Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't fucking need help. Humanity is fine. Y'all don't have a moral high ground on what humanity needs. Think about how arrogant you have to be to believe.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  No, I think they're addressing the fear that people have around these massive AI companies.

• 26:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Just because people have fear doesn't give you permission to capitalize on the fear. Guess what? I don't hear Mark Zuckerberg talking about, I'm creating a board to tell y'all how AI is gonna save humanity.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  Maybe that's a bad thing. Maybe he doesn't care.

• 26:20Anthony Pompliano?

  No, you know why? Because Mark Zuckerberg's a normal fucking person who understands my job as a CEO of Meta is to make money for my shareholders. It is not to meddle in the future of humanity.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  Okay, but here's the, here's the problem with that.

• 26:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Elon Musk is not creating any of this stuff.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  I understand, but that's the problem with this. It's like, okay, so they only care about the short-term financial benefits.

• 26:44Anthony Pompliano?

  That's their job.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Whereat, yeah, but at the expense of what is bad, what could be bad for humanity.

• 26:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Name one company.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  We haven't seen AI before.

• 26:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Hold on a second, no, no. Name one company that has used a new technology to do something where it led to profits for the company and was a net negative on society, and it did not get corrected by the market. So I can name a lot of companies who used a new thing.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  That's different, that's different, because it did not get corrected by the market, because it was an AI which could be sentient or have its own whatever, robot army. I saw that Kung Fu robot coming out of China. I was watching that, I was like, oh my God, how am I gonna face off this thing? I gotta go take some self-defense.

• 27:25Anthony Pompliano?

  It goes back to, let's just use a couple of examples from history. Cigarette company, tobacco.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  I'll do that on my own time.

• 27:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Tobacco companies, right? I think people generally would look at, they put profits above the health of people, right? Well, guess what ended up happening? Eventually, now, everyone would wish that it happened earlier, but eventually the market intervened. We had, oh, you can't sell cigarettes to certain age groups.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Regulation.

• 27:50Anthony Pompliano?

  The market is, regulation is part of the market, of course. The government is a market player.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  Okay, so why are you against the government putting regulations on some of these AI companies?

• 28:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm not against them putting regulations. What I'm saying is the government is gonna figure out, whatever, it's like crypto. I never said that the government shouldn't put regulation in place. I just said if you make stupid regulations, then other countries are going to not make stupid regulations, and you're gonna lose the race. The same thing with tobacco companies is, actually, other countries were hyper-aggressive, and America was much more individualistic, and we were slower to adopt some of this stuff. But eventually, I think we got to a good place. Is there's a ton of rules and regulations now around tobacco that it may have taken a long time. People definitely got sick. But like, in what world are we coming at it from the perspective of,

• 28:41Anthony Pompliano?

  dude, the individual never takes personal responsibility for smoking the cigarettes? Like, that's like completely lost from the conversation. And so it goes back to this idea that I'm not saying that the AI companies shouldn't be thinking about what is a positive, all this kind of stuff. What I am saying is, you have two different groups of people, and I'll give you a good example. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, the guys at Google, all these people. You don't hear any of this nonsense from them. These are real founders with real companies who have a track record of delivering. What you are hearing is bullshit coming from people who literally think that they can play God. Good luck, good luck.

• 29:27Anthony Pompliano?

  But I, as an individual, I'm entitled to my own opinion. I hear that stuff, the more I hear it, the less I trust them.

• 29:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And so far, if we look,

• 29:40Anthony Pompliano?

  what company sells software to the United States government and says, you can't use it to go get people who are killing other people?

• 29:56Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 29:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Anthropic. That's the whole dust-up.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  Well.

• 30:01Anthony Pompliano?

  While his competitors are more than happy to allow the United States government to make the decisions of how they use the software. So it goes back to, am I saying that the government should just have free rein and do whatever they want? Absolutely not. But what I am saying is that if you want, which is, Anthropic's right. Right, this is the beauty of America, is that you, as a private company, can say, I'm not gonna sell my software to the government. That's fine. But again, the market competitiveness, if you don't do it, somebody else is gonna do it. And if you're okay doing that, that's fine. But it comes back to this idea of wanting your cake and eating it too. We want to sell to the government so that our competitors can't, so we get that revenue in those contracts.

• 30:42Anthony Pompliano?

  But then we also want to be hyper, hyper-prescriptive in what you can do with it. And so the market force took over, the government said, no, kick rocks, we're just gonna rip you out, and we'll go do a deal with somebody who actually wants to let us use the software. And so the beauty of free markets, the beauty of capitalism, the beauty of America, is Anthropic is allowed to say whatever they want, do whatever they want. But there's gonna be consequences from the market.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  So my question is, why should I not be afraid of killer robots?

• 31:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, let me ask this question. Do you trust Anthropic?

• 31:15Speaker 03

  I don't know enough about Anthropic.

• 31:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, that was a cop out answer. I say everybody else, do you trust them?

• 31:20Speaker 03

  But

• 31:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Most people don't.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  But I, in general, don't trust private companies to look out for me, but that's

• 31:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause you got common sense.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  But that's a different thing of like, oh, we want to be careful, so

• 31:33Anthony Pompliano?

  That's not what they're saying. They're not saying we want to be careful.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Okay, um, why should I not be afraid?

• 31:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Sure, Meta's being careful too, but they're not running around beating their chest, talking about how they're gonna save humanity.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Um, okay.

• 31:49Anthony Pompliano?

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• 33:57Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 33:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Scared of the robots?

• 33:59Speaker 03

  Why should I not be scared of the Kung-Fu killer robots? Cause the way that they are marketed is they're gonna be your bodyguard, but what if they come for me?

• 34:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course, but sure, uh, your car can also, uh, the brakes could stop working. The self-driving car could make the wrong turn. Uh, GPS could tell you to drive off a cliff.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  That's different.

• 34:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Sure, there's some differences, but there's also some similarities, right? It's the same thing, like, uh, uh, think of, um,

• 34:25Speaker 03

  But like, this thing is smarter than me.

• 34:27Anthony Pompliano?

  AI is definitely smarter than us.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  I know.

• 34:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, there might be other smart people who it's not smarter than yet, but me, you know, I got a small brain. It is 100%.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  I know that. That's what I'm saying.

• 34:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So like, I just, I just said, hey, it's smarter than me. Cool. I got that. Me and machines, I'm on your team.

• 34:44Speaker 03

  But what if you're not?

• 34:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Huh?

• 34:46Speaker 03

  What if you're not?

• 34:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Then we'll deal with it.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  No, that's scary. For my anxious brain that doesn't like uncertainty.

• 34:53Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like saying, like, what if the, uh, robotic arm in the warehouse turns on and smacks the worker?

• 35:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Are we just not gonna, we're just not gonna have robotic arms in the warehouse anymore?

• 35:06Speaker 03

  I don't know. It's just too much for my little brain to handle.

• 35:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? So like, it goes back to, we can play the what-if game all day long. Right? Every single day, when you buy a consumer packaged good and you ingest it, what if it was bad? What if it has salmonella?

• 35:23Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, wait, wait.

• 35:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that what it's called?

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Salmonella?

• 35:27Anthony Pompliano?

  What is it?

• 35:28Speaker 03

  What did you just say?

• 35:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Salmonella.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 35:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that what it's called?

• 35:31Speaker 03

  The robots are definitely taking over.

• 35:33Anthony Pompliano?

  What is it?

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Salmonella.

• 35:36Anthony Pompliano?

  That's what I said.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  He said, what did I say? What did you say? I don't know. That was crazy.

• 35:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? So the point is that we take risks every single day, but it just goes back to,

• 35:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I can talk from my personal experience.

• 35:51Anthony Pompliano?

  AI,

• 35:53Anthony Pompliano?

  just think of our life for a second. Let's have a personal conversation.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 35:58Anthony Pompliano?

  AI probably had a very profound impact on our family.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:04Anthony Pompliano?

  In terms of our two children, for those that don't know a story, uh, that we've talked about publicly, uh, we had, uh, twin boys. And during the pregnancy, we were told by a doctor that, uh, there was complications that most people would, uh, terminate the pregnancy. We, Polina, used AI to confirm the fact that the doctor was wrong. Long story short. Uh, the second, AI has made us significantly more productive. It has probably helped us make more money in our businesses. It has definitely given me back an incredible amount of time that I then can spend with my family. It also has done tons of things in terms of plan events for us to do, find cool things to do.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  I agree, but it's just, are we, are we enjoying all of that at the expense of something scary happening? Cause we're feeding it all this information.

• 36:52Anthony Pompliano?

  We, we, we live in 2026. If you walk outside of our office and go one block, there are probably 20 cameras that are gonna film you in New York City. And you're worried about telling the AI, I don't have enough toilet paper. Can you order me more? Like, what?

• 37:14Speaker 03

  I'm always on top of the toilet paper.

• 37:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, just think, but just think about how crazy this sounds. You, you, you walk around with a tracker, like, like there's GPS in your phone.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  Tell the people about the Amazon story.

• 37:25Anthony Pompliano?

  What Amazon?

• 37:26Speaker 03

  The Amazon store. So Anthony has like a thing about being tracked by tech.

• 37:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, so, uh, one of the first Amazon Go stores, you know, where they

• 37:35Speaker 03

  Amazon Go.

• 37:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, facial recognition, you walk in, you don't, and then you get your stuff and you walk out and you don't pay.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  I was being like really cool to introduce Anthony to his first Amazon Go store.

• 37:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Polina used to work out of, uh, Brookfield Place, uh, down in Lower Manhattan, and, um, that was when, where one of the first Amazon Go stores was. And so I went to pick her up after work one day and, uh, we were walking around. I was, uh, on the phone, in air quotes, and, uh, she was like, hey, I gotta go get something from that store. Do you want to come in as the first, you know, Amazon Go store or whatever, or one of the first ones? And I was like, no, I gotta do this call. And, uh,

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Which was weird, cause you could have just done the call in the store.

• 38:12Anthony Pompliano?

  So she went in and, uh, and when she came back out, she said, um, did you not go in there? Cause you don't want them to scan your face? And I said, of course. I didn't have a call. I just, I just wasn't going to the store, but we were still like, we were dating for a while, but like, I didn't want to like get into the whole like, yeah, the conspiracy, the government.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  But you just said that there's 20 cameras pointed at your face.

• 38:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm not going to the store. I've never gone in Amazon Go store. Bezos, good luck. Can't see me. Uh, but yeah, correct. I walk outside the office, there's 20 cameras, but like, hey, do I want to live in New York City or not? So it goes back to this idea of, there are plenty of things that we should be scared of. By the way, I don't love the surveillance state. I don't love the fact that all of our data is everywhere. I don't love blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Am I so unhappy, so worried, and so negatively affected by all that, that I'm willing to go like Homestead in Oklahoma and live off the grid? No. So guess what? I am actively making a decision to participate in that. That's on me. That is an individual choice that I am making.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  If the Kung-Fu robots come?

• 39:13Anthony Pompliano?

  If I choose to buy a Kung-Fu robot as a bodyguard, which by the way, sounds awesome. We'll talk about that later, how much it costs and whether I should do it. But if I choose to do that and it goes rogue, I have nobody to blame but me. I'm the one who bought it and gave it keys to, you know, our place. Or, uh, let it come with me to the office or ride in the car. If it turns on and just slaps me,

• 39:37Anthony Pompliano?

  why I let it in the car? It's just like, I'm a big believer that, uh, people like to worry about things. And when they worry about things, they try to find the craziest, most cockamamie thing ever. So for example, all these people keep running around saying, AI is gonna kill us. Okay, let's play a game. I am going to assume that you are correct that AI is gonna kill us. And I ask them, how will it happen? I swear to you, the stories that I hear are like, well, see, the AI is gonna hack into this pathogen lab and there's gonna be this super

• 40:11Speaker 03

  That's immediately what I care do I want.

• 40:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Pathogen, whatever. And then they're gonna let it escape. And when it escapes, it's gonna get into the airstream or the jet stream. And then when it does that, it's gonna go all through all the world. It's gonna kill all humans. And I say, okay, great. Um, you're fucking crazy.

• 40:27Speaker 03

  Why though? It could happen.

• 40:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Sure. And I could literally walk on the floor and the engineer could have made a mistake and a hole opens and I fall into the crust of the earth. Like all kinds of crazy shit could

• 40:40Speaker 03

  I think maybe the AI discussion discourse is very different for people with anxiety versus

• 40:48Anthony Pompliano?

  people without. Of course. By the way, I also understand that like, I probably have a better understanding just because we work with this technology. You know, we're building a ton of proprietary AI when it comes to Sylvia.com, all this stuff. And so like, I am closer to it than many others. And by the way, I don't make fun of the people who are worried about this stuff. I don't think that the people who are asking questions are wrong. I don't think that the people who don't want a data center in their backyard, that they should be like mocked and ridiculed. I don't think that the people who have concerns, questions that are like, hey, let's make sure we understand this. I think all of that is very rational in the sense of, yeah, we probably want to understand this stuff. Yeah, we probably want to ask these questions. If the AI people

• 41:32Anthony Pompliano?

  are right, they should have good answers for many of these questions. If the people who are building data centers want to build them close to residential areas and the residents have questions or concerns, the data center people should have answers to those questions or concerns. If not, then move it to somewhere else. So like you go through all of this and you say to yourself, it's not that the people are wrong or that they shouldn't be asking these questions. It's just that I have done enough work where I'm not worried about those things anymore. But if people are worried, then it's on the companies who are building this stuff to go and educate them, to go and answer their questions. And so if you bring it all back to Anthropic, I love the product. I think the people there are incredibly smart. I think it's an incredible business that they've built. All of that stuff is true. What

• 42:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't like is the like, moralizing. I don't like the like, we're gonna save humanity. And I don't like the like, we literally have a cabal of people that are smarter and have like deputized ourselves to now make decisions for humanity. I don't like any of that stuff. And I think that it's all a big charade and mirage that is really this like non altruistic thing that is to accumulate power and money. And so, again, most people would be like, oh, you hate Anthropic. No, I don't at all. Actually, I use Anthropic. I think that it's a fantastic product. But I can separate out the product, the technology, the company from the bullshit. By the way, just so people think that I'm being intellectually honest, let's take another

• 43:02Anthony Pompliano?

  company. I don't know. Let's take SpaceX.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  I knew you were gonna say that.

• 43:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, that's like the other end of the spectrum, right? I think that there is a bunch of stuff that SpaceX does on a day to day basis that is incredible. Reusable rockets, Starlink internet, all this kind of stuff. There's also, and I think that actually, I actually think that Elon would say this himself, that he makes these, hey, here's the timeline. What people misunderstand about it, and it took me a while to wrap my head around, is he puts out these timelines, but he expects it to be hit 50% of the time. Whereas most people, when they put out a timeline, people expect it to be hit 100% of the time. So, he probably didn't do a good job of communicating that to people, right? So like, there was bullshit associated with the Tesla, the SpaceX, all this kind of stuff, because people would hear these crazy things and it would only get hit half the time or whatever. The same thing's

• 43:53Anthony Pompliano?

  happening here. You can't critique SpaceX or Tesla from a business perspective, at least I don't think you can. Riding a Tesla, it's fucking amazing. Look at Optimus, it's amazing. Look at the reusable rockets, it's amazing. Look at Claude, look at Opus, look at all these products, they're amazing. But it's just like, I think people have to separate the companies, the products, all this kind of stuff, from like, the bullshit surrounding these companies. And if you can do that, then what's likely to happen is, you're a user of Anthropic products, you pay them money most likely. Like, I'm supporting them. I pay them a subscription every month. And you also probably are deeply looking at, should I buy the IPO? So you're considering being a shareholder, but you still can hate all

• 44:38Anthony Pompliano?

  the bullshit.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think the beauty of living in America, not to make this patriotic, but it is to, the whole point of like a democratic society is that you can love something and ask questions and criticize it in order to make it better.

• 44:55Anthony Pompliano?

  100%. By the way, let's take it to another company, right?

• 45:00Speaker 03

  Oh, geez.

• 45:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's go and look at, for example, Grindr is a great example, right? I know the CEO, George there, he's been on the podcast before. And if you think about that business, there are some people who come from the gay community, they buy Grindr stock to support a public company that's supporting gay people. There's other people who say morally, ethically, whatever, I don't want to be a shareholder. It's America, dude. You can choose to allocate your capital how you want, what you want, whatever, right? But then there's some people who say like, I'm not gonna take a stance on, I like this, I don't like this. Like, my job is to make money. That's also okay in America. And so it's just like, you kind of extrapolate this

• 45:41Anthony Pompliano?

  out to the AI stuff. And I think that everyone is, it's not fun to constantly talk about, these are great companies that make a lot of money. How many times can you write that headline? So what you have to do is you have to start to look for the second or third order thing to talk about. And it becomes the like, you know, some of the companies are giving you lots of fodder. They're giving you a lot to talk about, because they keep saying crazy stuff. But also, I always go back to Elon, when he hosted Saturday Night Live. My favorite part of his entire appearance was in the opening. He was like, I'm trying to like, settle on Mars. Did you think I'd be normal? Like, we kind of need these people to be a little crazy, a little out there, a little like, dude, you got a lot of, you know, this like, kind of mirage bullshit. Because it also means that they're the same person to

• 46:26Anthony Pompliano?

  go create this technology. And so it's not even that like, I hold it against them. I don't like it. But like, I understand that that's what comes with the innovation, the technology, you know, accelerating.

• 46:39Speaker 03

  And this reminds me of one of our friends recently, he was talking about this in terms of like, personal relationships, but I think it applies in this sense as well. He said, kind of like, somebody's superpower, the thing that drives them and creates the conditions for them to be ultra successful, can also be the thing that if they don't know how to stop across all areas of in their life, is also the thing that prevents them from other things.

• 47:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, of course. I mean, look, it's work-life balance is the one everyone always, you know, looks at is like, you can work your ass off, be super successful and have a disastrous, you know, family life, whatever, right? So like, that's kind of a quintessential example. But if you go and you look at, let's say for example, AI psychosis, right? One thing that we think a lot about as we're building Sylvia is, in New York, there's not a lot of AI psychosis. It's actually people are somewhat distrustful of the AI. So people are much less likely in New York City.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  To have AI psychosis? What is that?

• 47:38Anthony Pompliano?

  So in New York, people are much less likely to just like, oh, a new AI thing comes out, let me hook it up to all my accounts. Let me hook it up to all my data.

• 47:45Speaker 03

  That's called AI psychosis.

• 47:46Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, no, but I'm just using an example. And so they're coming at it much more from a data privacy, a risk mitigation, like, there's a different mentality. In San Francisco, generally, people are basically like, oh, new AI product comes out, here's my birth certificate, here's my social security number, like, just, they just hook up everything.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  It's kind of like what people did with Instinct when it first came out.

• 48:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Correct. It's just like, and then they're like, oh, wow, I did give it access to a lot of stuff, but like, I'm AI-pilled, right? I believe in AI, understand the more context I give it, like, because they understand how the technology works, so they're much more likely to connect all this stuff. Now, the reason I share, again, generalization of like, New York versus SF, right? AI skeptical a little bit versus AI kind of pilled, is that AI psychosis is when you take the AI pilledness and you take it to the extreme. And now you're like, dude, no one's gonna be in a human relationship anymore. We're all just gonna love the AIs. Dude, AI, no one's gonna work. Like, you're just like, you're fucking crazy. Like, you're just off in la la land at this point, right? And so

• 48:47Anthony Pompliano?

  you have to be careful that you don't over-rotate to the psychosis and you're just like, literally lost your mind. What you want to be is you want to be a optimist without going crazy.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  I mean, it's the same with like, the political people.

• 49:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Political people? Bitcoin.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  Bitcoin people.

• 49:06Anthony Pompliano?

  How many people over the years said, literally, all other assets are going to be worthless and all of the money is gonna move into Bitcoin and you're literally not gonna touch cash? You're just gonna hold Bitcoin?

• 49:18Speaker 03

  And I think some people were criticizing you for not having full-blown Bitcoin psychosis, because you weren't willing to go to the extreme.

• 49:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Correct. One of my biggest regrets, ever, in the whole Bitcoin world, is a stupid thing, but to me, is near the end of the 2021 bull market, I put the stupid laser eyes on, on Twitter. And

• 49:40Speaker 03

  I remember you didn't want to do it, but then you did it.

• 49:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And I was like, this is stupid. Right? Because it was very much, I was very hesitant of like, this is like, getting cultish. This is getting like, you get blinded, you can't think clearly when you tie your identity into something where you're like, I have to, whatever. By the way, I wanted to believe, it's awesome to be part of a cult. It's awesome to be, you know, with everybody, all this stuff. It is very lonely to say, I am gonna resist the human nature of wanting to be part of a tribe, and I'm going to try to clearly think and critically think, and I understand an argument, but I'm not going to like, subscribe

• 50:23Anthony Pompliano?

  wholeheartedly, blindly, religiously to it. And I told Sarah before, there's an individual who asked me to do a call. And literally, I mean, in hindsight, it was insane.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  I remember that call, and I remember how you felt after.

• 50:39Anthony Pompliano?

  He was like, you don't have laser eyes on Twitter.

• 50:43Speaker 03

  And this is an influential person. It's not like some Joe off.

• 50:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I was like, looking around, I was like, am I getting punked right now? This what we're talking about? What the fuck? And he was like, it would mean a lot to everybody if you did it.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 50:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And me being a clown coward who, in a moment of weakness, said, you know, I'll do one for the team. Okay, I appreciate you asking me that. I'll go ahead and I'll do it. By the way, I tried really hard. I tweeted, I said, you know, laser eyes to 100K, laser eyes to 100K. I tried. And then

• 51:18Speaker 03

  I forgot about that.

• 51:19Anthony Pompliano?

  As I sobered up from the 2021 insanity, I was like, what the fuck am I doing with these goddamn laser eyes? And I wrote a whole piece and I said, maybe the laser eyes blind you.

• 51:29Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 51:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Can't see clearly if you've got lasers on your eyes. Right?

• 51:35Speaker 03

  All right, this is where we end. It was a pleasure.

• 51:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Hold on, hold on. And so the whole idea is, can you subscribe to a point of view of the world, understand, believe in an asset, because you've done the work, et cetera, without the psychosis. So AI psychosis is a thing. Bitcoin psychosis definitely exists. There are, there are people that I know who I love them because you need some of the crazy people because they push the, the, the, the pace, the edge. But you're also like, hey, their vision of the future, I believe 30, 40% of it. But then they go past that into crazy town. And so this idea that like, there are literally people who believe that you are violating the ethos of Bitcoin if you hold cash.

• 52:24Anthony Pompliano?

  That's crazy. And so it just is like, okay, I wanna 30, 40%, I'm in. But I want my feet on the ground, clear eyes, no lasers. AI girlfriend, I already got a wife, I'm good.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, girlfriend. Oh.

• 52:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, the psychosis. They, these guys are fine. These guys are crazy. They're like falling in love with relationships with a piece of software. Like dude.

• 52:47Speaker 03

  It does just agree with everything you say.

• 52:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Dude. Snap out of it. Let's go. What are you doing? Right? And then you, you start to kind of understand that you see this pattern over and over and over again, whether it's AI, whether it's Bitcoin, right? All this. By the way, there's going to be new technologies. Like, there's going to, I promise you, there is somebody who's going to get space psychosis. They're gonna be like, dude, we're all gonna live in little capsules, like the jets and flying around in space. Then we're gonna repopulate and then on our way to Mars and this and.

• 53:19Speaker 03

  I remember.

• 53:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  Um, when I was at Fortune, I wrote something about a company and I said, it's a very, very fine line between ambition and delusion. And sometimes you think you're just being ambitious about your company and what it could do, that you kind of fall into delusion.

• 53:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I would, maybe we disagree on this. I don't, we've never talked about it.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  You want, you want the founders to be delusional. I already know.

• 53:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that, well, I think that, uh, it is very hard to create things that change the world.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 53:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Without being delusional.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  I agree, but there are limitations to that delusion.

• 53:59Anthony Pompliano?

  There's an extreme that then transitions from delusion to.

• 54:04Speaker 03

  Psychosis.

• 54:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, psychosis, but also people take it to the extreme and then they like, again, I would argue like the EA mentality. Right? Again, I, I read the book, right? So like, is that the, is that the Bible of EA? No, but I think it gave a pretty good understanding is the argument, if I had to like summarize it, is almost anything is on the playing field if it means that you can accumulate more resources to then do good in the world.

• 54:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So like, by any means necessary, right? Is essentially the, the argument is effective altruism. It's like, if you are, uh, if you can go exploit sports gambling to make billions of dollars and then you're going to help the world, who cares that you exploited this sports gambling and on the other side are people who lost their life savings? Who cares that the dad who was drunk on Saturday night took the other side of the bet? And you made a lot of money and he lost his family or lost his house. It's kind of like, that gets brushed under the rug. It's like, no, I as an EA was able to accumulate all these resources. I'm gonna go help the world. By the way, you may go do good.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  The Robin Hood example?

• 55:12Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's just like, the world is complex.

• 55:13Speaker 03

  Oh, we're gonna piss off a lot of people with this podcast.

• 55:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So I just, I, I, by the way, I don't think that this stuff is like, uh, crazy. You could say the same thing in the stock market. Right? It's like, there's winners and losers in a trade. And so it just comes back to like, the world is not black and white as people want it to be. And so I think that when you take a, a, a overlay of everything is good or bad, I just kind of, this is not my thing, right?

• 55:38Speaker 03

  I agree. I think that's why we get along. All right.

• 55:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Where, where can we send people to, uh, read the profile?

• 55:45Speaker 03

  Read the profile.com.

• 55:47Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And what do you publish there?

• 55:48Speaker 03

  What do I publish?

• 55:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  I publish long form profiles that people can read every week. Sometimes I write them, sometimes I curate them and now I'm writing, um, I launched something called the portrait, which is a moment in time of many profiles of the people making the headlines.

• 56:04Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So, uh, Saquon Barkley, Anthony Scaramucci, Jake and Logan Paul, Ryan, uh, Serhant.

• 56:13Speaker 03

  Catherine Wild.

• 56:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Kathy Wild, uh, Kevin O'Leary, a bunch of people that you've written long form profiles on. And then you're the one who found Buddy Shah. It's pretty, it's actually pretty interesting that you of all people were able to find, uh, the one guy in the S1 before anybody else that, uh, now everyone's talking about. Good job.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 56:32Anthony Pompliano?

  See you guys next time.