Why Bitcoin & Stocks Will Go Up Forever | Anthony & Polina Pompliano

Anthony Pompliano & Polina Pompliano discuss short-term outlook for bitcoin, government printing money, what is going on with inflation, the biggest risk in the market, what you should be paying attention to, and are stocks overvalued and due for a crash? ===================== Independent Investor ConferenceMarkets are at all-time highs. Public equities are outperforming. And individual investors are driving it all. It’s officially the rise of the retail investor. On September 12th in NYC, I’m hosting the Independent Investor Summit — a one-day event built exclusively for self-directed investors. We’re bringing together some of the smartest public market investors I know for a full day of macro insights, market predictions, one-on-one fireside chats, and actionable investment ideas from each investor. This is going to be an absolute banger event. Join us if you like markets and think retail is two steps ahead of Wall Street.👉 TICKETS: ⁠⁠https://www.independentinvestor.co/⁠⁠ (use promo code POMPYT25)======================From The Desk of Anthony PomplianoCheck out my NEW show for daily bite-sized breakdowns of the biggest stories in finance, technology, and politics: ⁠⁠http://pompdesk.com/⁠⁠======================Podcast Sponsors"This episode is brought to you by Figure ⁠⁠(https://figuremarkets.co/pomp)⁠⁠, the platform to Earn and Borrow. Need liquidity without selling your crypto? Figure offers Crypto-Backed Loans, allowing you to borrow against your Bitcoin or Ethereum with 12-month terms and no prepayment penalties. They have the lowest rates in the industry at 8.91%, allowing you to access instant cash or buy more Bitcoin without triggering a tax event. Your BTC collateral is protected by decentralized MPC custody. You can always see your BTC ownership in your FM account and verify holdings in your personal BTC vault on chain. Unlock your crypto’s potential today. Visit their app to apply ⁠⁠(https://figuremarkets.co/pomp)⁠⁠ for a Crypto Backed Loan today! Figure Lending LLC dba Figure. Equal Opportunity Lender. NMLS 1717824. Terms and conditions apply. Visit figure.com for more information. Figure Markets Credit LLC. 650 S. Tryon Street, 8th Floor, Charlotte, NC 28202. (888) 926-6259. NMLS ID 2559612. Terms and conditions apply. Visit ⁠⁠https://figuremarkets.com/borrow⁠⁠ for more information."======================BitcoinIRA: Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Take 3 minutes to open your account & get connected to a team of IRA specialists that will guide you through every step of the process. Go to https://bitcoinira.com/pomp/ to earn up to $500 in rewards.======================TimeStamps:0:00 - Intro1:22 - Are we due for a market crash? 10:41 - Will the US government buy bitcoin?14:03 - Bitcoin price prediction 16:29 - $OPEN & why the memes are the message 26:29 - What is going on with inflation & job market?31:19 - The biggest risk is listening to the doom & gloom news

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:39Speaker 02

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• 1:02Speaker 03

  What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode.

• 1:30Speaker 04

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

• 1:54Speaker 03

  What's going on, guys? Today, we got a great episode with Polina Pompliano. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, whether I think it's going higher or lower, or it's just going to go sideways for a couple more weeks. On top of that, we talk about the government printing money, what's going on with inflation, what I see as the biggest risk in the market. And then, of course, we get into stocks. Are they revalued? Is there a big market crash coming? And what should you be doing as an individual investor? And who should you be listening to? Lots of spicy takes that you guys will all enjoy. Here's my latest conversation with Polina Pompliano. All right, Polina, what's the first topic?

• 2:25Speaker 05

  All right. The market is way up and we continue to hit these all time highs. Are we due for a crash?

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Well, nobody ever knows that there's going to be a real crash. A crash, to me, would be like, we're down 30, 40%.

• 2:39Speaker 05

  Okay, a correction.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Well, of course, there's going to be corrections. You go up a little bit, you correct a little bit, you come back. But I don't think that what people are ultimately trying to get at is, is it sustainable? What is happening in the stock market and with Bitcoin? And my point to them is it depends on what your time horizon is. But yes, I do believe it is sustainable. Now, why do I believe it's sustainable? Think about how crazy this is. In 2020 to 2021, we went up. And 22 and 23, we went down. And now we're back up again. So over a five or six year period, if your time horizon is shorter than five years for your investment portfolio, that's a whole different conversation. But over five years, it was not only sustainable, we just kept going higher over the medium term.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  And so I think that stocks are going to continue to go higher. Five years from now, they'll be higher than they are today. Bitcoin, definitely going higher. Five years from now, it'll be higher than they are today. You go through all these assets, like they're going to keep going up. Why? Because they are never, ever, ever going to stop printing money. That is all that matters. You either understand that and you express it in your investment portfolio, or you don't. But if you don't express it, you are going to take it on the chin. US dollars lost 28% of its purchasing power since 2020.

• 3:55Speaker 05

  Wow. 28%?

• 3:58Speaker 03

  28%. Most people are like, oh, since 1913, the US dollar has lost 99% of its purchasing power. Like, we got screwed.

• 4:06Speaker 05

  Oh, my gosh.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  Homie, wake up! In the last five or six years, it has lost 30%.

• 4:13Speaker 05

  Okay, that's crazy.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  So now, all of a sudden, you ask yourself, hold on a second. How many people, the stats all vary, but about half of US citizens hold 100% of their economic value that they have worked hard to earn, or the government gave it to them, that they have, has lost 30%. That's like saying I have a hundred dollars to my name. Now I can only buy 70 cents worth of goods or $70 worth of goods. Like, hello. I know. You gotta become an investor. Do you want to know why the income inequality gap is widening? Or the wealth inequality gap is widening? It's because we have an education problem. And guess what?

• 4:58Speaker 03

  The government is responsible for some of this. How many people would love to invest in private companies? But they can't because they're not accredited investors. Then how many people are being boxed out or significantly slowed before all these fintech platforms came along in getting stock brokerage accounts? In getting some sort of investment account? Thank God for the Robin Hoods, Weibo's, public.com's, eToros, et cetera. Thank God for the Coinbase's, the Kraken's, the Gemini's, the Binance's, et cetera. Because those platforms now give people access to investment assets.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  And so you can look and see and say, if 30% of the dollar's value has been lost in the last five or six years, you have to be an investor. Now that feeds into Bitcoin is the hurdle rate. If you can't beat it, you gotta buy it. Because if you look at the S and P 500, up 100% since 2020, priced in dollars, priced in Bitcoin, the S and P 500 is down 85, 90%. So it is all about relative comparison. What are you denominating the asset in? And ultimately, what we are living through is we are living through a transition period where a lot of principles that people thought were timeless, that people thought were safe, that people thought were prudent,

• 6:25Speaker 03

  are proving to be disastrous if you follow it. If you have 40% Your portfolio in bonds as a modern or excuse me as an archaic 6040 portfolio would historically tell you to do, you are getting crushed. TLT is down 50% in the last five years. You are getting crushed. 6040 portfolio does not work the way it used to work because they are debasing the currency at an accelerated rate. It's hurting treasuries. Then if you look at 1971 to today, the inflation rate, which is the debasement of the currency, has actually been 4%, not 2%. So when you calculate what is your return here, you want to hear a crazy stat? Sure. Listen to this. This one's going to blow your guys mind.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  New study from JP Morgan, 2002 to 2021, I believe. The average investor return, 3.6%. The average investor, the S and P during that period, 9.5%. So the average investor underperformed the S and P 500. That's bad, but you want to know the craziest part of that story? If you earned 3.6% per year, which is what the average investor did, the debasement rate of the currency at that same period was 4%. That means the average investor actually had a negative real rate of return for 20 years.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  A negative real rate of return. They did not outpace the debasement of the currency. You want to know why the average family can't survive? Do you want to know why people can't afford things? Do you want to know why the average person is struggling? It's because of that. They are not able to grow their salaries or their wealth and their investment portfolio at a faster pace than the debasement of the currency. And so they fall further behind. And it's the people who understand this stuff, the people who know how to invest, they're the ones who get ahead. And that is the story of citizens in America, the affordability crisis, the housing crisis, and all of the wage growth.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Is all told in that one thing, the average investor from 2002 until 2021 actually had a negative real rate return on their investment portfolio and they got crushed.

• 8:50Speaker 05

  Well, I think people are comparing what's happening today to the dot com bubble bust. But are you saying that it's not going to bust like that because the government just keeps printing money?

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Well, there's a couple of things. So the dot com bust happened because the companies were all fake.

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Well.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Okay. So everyone's like, oh, the S and P 500. Oh, my God. Look, the S and P 500 is going up so fast.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  Well, ladies and gentlemen.

• 9:17Speaker 05

  But how do you know?

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Why is it going up?

• 9:18Speaker 05

  How do you know it's not frothy? Like it feels frothy to me.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Here's a great data point. Did you know that this year, did you know that this year the mag seven has gotten cheaper on a valuation basis? Their earnings have grown faster than their stock price. So actually the mag seven is cheaper now than it was at the beginning of the year.

• 9:37Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  Why is that important? Mag seven is driving majority of the S and P 500 return. Basically, the 490 companies at the bottom of the 500, they ain't doing anything. They're not performing. It's the top 10 companies. So if the mag seven got cheaper, that actually means that the companies that are driving the return are more attractive today on a valuation basis than they were at the beginning of the year. So everyone's like, it's frothy. Well, like, hold on a second here. I talked to Jordy Visser last week, last weekend on Saturday. What'd he say? Earnings don't lie. These companies, look at Facebook's last earnings report. They are printing money. Bang, bang out performance. And so when you look at that, you say to yourself, hold on a second here.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  What is everyone talking about? It's frothy. It's this, it's that. Are you guys looking at the same thing I'm looking at? Cause all I see is global M2 money supply is going to the moon. And guess what asset prices are doing? They're repricing, but the invention of AI and its use inside of these big companies is driving earnings. They're becoming more efficient. How many times do I have to say Palantir says that they're going to continue to grow revenue, but they're going to do it with 800 less employees, 20% reduction in their employee base, but they're going to keep growing. Hello, AI. New report out that young people has seen their unemployment rate grow by about five percentage points. Young people can't find jobs at the same rate that they used to be able to. What happened? AI is replacing

• 11:08Speaker 03

  their entry level job. So you start to say to yourself, the AI story is actually driving productivity and earnings growth. If that is happening, then of course the company should be worth more money. And so if the mag seven is cheaper today than it was at the beginning of the year on that valuation basis, it's not frothy. You could start to make the argument that actually the company should be valued at more than they are right now because they are growing faster and their earnings are actually proving out what they've been saying. It was at the beginning of the year, maybe there was some frothiness. And so my guess is we go higher.

• 11:39Speaker 05

  Oh gosh. Okay. Well, let's talk about Bitcoin and its role in this situation.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Higher.

• 11:45Speaker 05

  Um, most Bitcoiners expect the US to buy Bitcoin, but Scott Best sent some mixed messages last week on a news hit with Fox Business. There was a Bitcoiner meltdown. Then he had to go like clarify his comments. Tell us about what's going on here.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  I think he said the truth.

• 12:04Speaker 05

  What is the truth?

• 12:05Speaker 03

  So I do think that the United States will buy Bitcoin at some point, but I think that right now they got a whole bunch of stuff they're trying to work through. I was of the opinion earlier this year that they for sure were going to buy Bitcoin. I think they thought they were going to buy Bitcoin.

• 12:18Speaker 05

  Why are they not?

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Well, I think that they now realize that there is quite a bit of legislative checkboxes that they need to do in order to buy the Bitcoin. And so when you go in and you're like, hey, we want Bitcoin on our balance sheet. Okay. Well, let's stop selling the Bitcoin that we've confiscated. We confiscated more Bitcoin. We're not going to sell that. Okay. That's a good start. They said, we have plans to buy more Bitcoin. Great.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  But doing it requires legislative approval and I think that that is going to be a little bit harder. And so I do think that they will do it. I just don't think it's going to be a short term thing because of the mechanics from a government perspective. Are you disappointed? No, I think that we all are learning at the same time. So like, if we didn't know that the legislative component of it was there, yeah, I'd be super disappointed. They said they were going to do something, they didn't do it. Now that is becoming clear because there's, look lobbyists, there's lawyers, there's all these people who are voicing their opinion. Could that be an excuse? It could be an excuse, but I think that I've talked to enough people from a political standpoint, especially lawyers who are like, yeah, you're going to need Congress to sign off on this. Right? Now, whether that's true or not, whether they decide to go to court

• 13:27Speaker 03

  over it, you know, they have options, but it sounds to me like that is what people believe is that Congress is going to have to sign off on it. So it's going to take a longer time to be able to do it. And, you know, I'm not an expert on Washington DC, but if you have only so much, you know, kind of political capital, do you want to expend it on buying more Bitcoin? Or do you want to expend it on, you know, the one big beautiful bill? Or, you know, other things like that? I think that's the, you know, calculation that's happening. But I do think the United States will buy Bitcoin at some point. It just seems like maybe it's a little bit further out than we originally thought. Today's episode is brought to you by Figure. They're the largest non-bank mortgage lender in the United States with over $15 billion unlocked on their lending platform. They've

• 14:11Speaker 03

  just lowered rates on their Bitcoin and Ethereum backed loans to 8.91%, improving their already industry-low fixed rate 50% LTV loans. They keep building as well, being the only major CBL player to launch decentralized MPC custody to protect against single entry failure, and they just removed interest deferral fees entirely, so you can let Bitcoin price appreciation pay for your loan over time. What is MPC decentralized custody? It's a Bitcoin or ETH on-chain wallet with multiple key shards to protect you from single entity custody failure. You can always see your crypto ownership in a segregated wallet and verify your collateral hasn't moved. Whether you're funding a major purchase like a down payment on a home, investing

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• 15:04Speaker 05

  So Vannik is um, has this price prediction for Bitcoin that it's going to be $180,000 a coin by the end of the year. What do you make of that?

• 15:19Speaker 03

  That's a little bit more bullish than I've been saying. I think the number that I've put out there publicly.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  You've put out a number, oof.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  Well, it's like maybe a year ago, year and a half ago, somebody asked me and I said, look, I don't know, right? So like to be clear, I'm not predicting what's going to happen. I'm just simply saying at the time, I think Bitcoin was somewhere between 50 and $75,000. I said, I could see Bitcoin going to like around 150, you know, plus or minus 10, 20,000 dollars, whatever it was. Um, if you think about today, that's pretty, you know, where I 120 ish.

• 15:48Speaker 05

  Should I put out a price prediction?

• 15:50Speaker 03

  No.

• 15:50Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  I think that

• 15:53Speaker 03

  you know, 150 still seems like reasonable. I mean, I hope it goes much higher than that, right? Uh, I see plenty of people saying it's going to 500,000, a million or 300 or you know, whatever.

• 16:03Speaker 05

  By the end of the year?

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Listen, people, you know, who knows? Larry Fink wakes up, hits the green button. You never know what could happen. But from that standpoint, um, yeah, I just think that 150 seems good. 180 doesn't seem like insane. If you think about it, that would be a 50% increase in price from where we are now.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  And the holidays are coming.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  What does that have to do with Bitcoin's price?

• 16:25Speaker 05

  The grandmas at Thanksgiving start buying.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Do they?

• 16:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Q4?

• 16:32Speaker 05

  Four is always the cue.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  Quarter, fourth quarter, right?

• 16:35Speaker 05

  Well, yes, but that's always the cue that really.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Real ones now, fourth quarter.

• 16:40Speaker 05

  I know. That means like we're going to come back.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  What?

• 16:44Speaker 05

  Like the fourth quarter, we're going to come back.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  Like sports?

• 16:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 03

  Well, there, there's just the, it's the fourth quarter. So people are like, you know, it's like the last quarter. So they hold up, you know, four quarters.

• 16:52Speaker 05

  But that's because you're down and you're about to.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  Not necessarily. You could be winning. You could be like, we're going to close it out.

• 16:57Speaker 05

  Oh, I see.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  But in Bitcoin terms, in best business show terms, fourth quarter, it means we're going up.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Means the grannies are coming.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. By the way, we were right. We'd blow off top. In the fourth quarter of 2021, we were

• 17:11Speaker 05

  I don't understand this.

• 17:13Speaker 03

  Right?

• 17:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  I mean, to be real, I mean, we nailed that.

• 17:16Speaker 05

  Who?

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Best business show, fourth quarter.

• 17:19Speaker 05

  Oh, you guys would say that?

• 17:20Speaker 03

  But we would all hold it up. Me, Joe, John, whoever, fourth quarter.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  I watched it every day.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  All right, what's next then?

• 17:28Speaker 05

  Okay, um, all right, let's talk about memes and how the meme is the message. Wall Street sat on the sideline for a decade as retail ran up the price of Bitcoin. And now we're watching the continuum of meme world dominance. Sorry. Thank you, Matt, for, yep. So in the past few weeks, Open Door, Eric Jackson, well, Eric Jackson has led a mutiny of shareholders who are displeased with Open Door's performance. And then, you know, Open Door CEO stepped down because of pressure from retail and the public.

• 18:08Speaker 05

  And then they

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Tell the whole story?

• 18:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, just go ahead.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Open Door.

• 18:12Speaker 05

  So once upon a time.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  Company that went public via SPAC, then fell a lot. It was trading at 51 cents, I think was the bottom. Around 56 cents, Eric Jackson came out. He runs

• 18:22Speaker 05

  So who is?

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Small hedge fund in Canada, um, who previously had, uh, called attention to Carvana before it went on an epic run.

• 18:29Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  He's got some credibility and he came out and he basically laid out a thesis that Open Door should be worth a lot more. And I think his target was $82 a share in 2027, 2028, 2029, something like that. And if stock's trading at 50 cents and it goes to $82, that's a lot. And so people obviously were like, hey, what's this guy talking about? And so they started to pay attention to it. And pretty much what people uncovered was it was a company that had been bleeding. And so Carrie Wheeler, who was the CEO at the time, she used to be CFO, she stepped in as the CEO. Uh, I don't think she gets enough credit for stopping the bleeding. Right? She stabilized the business. It's kind of like, uh, if you come upon a victim. And you're a paramedic, what's your first job? Stabilize the victim. Then we'll worry about everything else later, right? Stabilize the victim.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  If they're dead, doesn't help. So that's what she did. She basically prevented the business from dying. From there, what did they do? Uh, not much. And so that was basically what Eric and some of the retail people started yelling, screaming about it. Now I saw what they were doing and I decided I was gonna dip my toe in the water and, you know, buy some shares. And, uh, then I invited the CEO for an interview. That's, that's, listen, people were saying she's not doing a good job. Some people were saying she was doing a good job. People were asking me what I thought. It's how I never talked to her. How do I have an opinion as doing a good job or not? I gotta talk to that person. So, uh, she agreed. Uh, two days later, she stepped down, not because of the interview, just stepped down. I did get asked, I did get asked whether I should do a post-game interview. I decided not to do that. That'd be funny. For Q4, Q4? No, that'd just be overtime.

• 19:59Speaker 03

  I was like, oh, you know, post-game. Uh, and so, um, they're gonna go find a new CEO now. Um, they are, uh, going through transformation and look, I, I, the reason why I'm holding shares in Open Door is because I believe two things are true. I think that they are well positioned, if they execute correctly, to capitalize on their, uh, kind of opportunity in residential real estate. There's a huge opportunity to use artificial intelligence data to be a very dynamic, uh, market participant and to do so in a world where there's going to be rate cuts coming, which should drive home, uh, sale volume, uh, which obviously is good for a place like Open Door.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Um, and if they're able to build a relationship with sellers and direct that, uh, seller intent, uh, to their products and services, uh, I think they can build a big business and, you know, business that is worth way more than it's worth today. So money where my mouth is, right? Skin in the game, bought some shares, let's ride. Now, the other thing is I'm a very big believer in the power of the crowd. And I think that we saw that with Bitcoin. I think we're seeing that now. Uh, what people are calling is this is like, kinda like the first retail activism campaign, where people are advocating for changes inside of a business. And I just always think that the hive mind of smart people On the internet who are obsessed with something will eventually figure it out.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  And so I'm very impressed with the hundreds, if not thousands of product ideas, communication feedback, just all this stuff. And so there's a lot of people who are pointing at open door and like, oh, it's a meme stock. It's this like, I don't think so. I think this is a real company where if a hedge fund was doing this, no one would be like, oh, it's a meme stock. They'd be like, no, the hedge fund is doing an activism campaign to drive improvements in the business to unlock shareholder value.

• 21:45Speaker 05

  So this is like a retail activist campaign.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Decentralized hedge fund. Everyone makes your own decisions. You want to invest, invest. You don't want to invest, don't invest. You want to buy some shares and then sell them the next day, do that. You want to buy shares, hold them for like, everyone make your own decisions. Everyone's adults in the room, right? Not financial advice, entertainment purposes only, public conversation. Everyone make your own decisions. What better way to create the power of the crowd? Everyone's got an economic incentive. Some people, by the way, don't believe that the activism is going to work. And so they're short. That's how market gets made. You've got people who are long, you've got people who are short, that got a market. Nice. But at the same time, you have the collective intelligence of a lot of people who are all working together to try to figure out, how do we improve this business? And frankly, some of the ideas are really dumb.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Some of the ideas are really, really smart and everything in between. But that is what happens, right? It's like, just like inside of a company, you bring a bunch of people in a room and you say, all right, we're going to brainstorm. How do we improve our business? Well, if you only have 10 people in the room, they got the advantage. They work in the business, they know the data, they probably have industry expertise and experience and things like that. But now what you have is you've got hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people who are all collectively brainstorming, what can we do inside this business to make it better? That's pretty powerful. And I think that people are drastically underestimating what can happen to a business when they embrace the retail activism and they are able to actually improve the business. So if you just embrace the retail interest, but you don't improve the business, it doesn't matter.

• 23:13Speaker 05

  And what's interesting about this is that it is a product that a lot of these shareholders use, right?

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Consumer product.

• 23:20Speaker 05

  So it's potentially easier to critique and find ways to improve it.

• 23:26Speaker 03

  Almost every day now, I'm seeing somebody tweet at

• 23:30Speaker 03

  different members, whether the chief product officer, the new leader of Open Door, et cetera, saying to them, hey, there's a bug here. There's this issue here, whatever. And these folks are responding on X, and then they're going in there fixing it. That's what you need. Like, well, like, this is, there's something that is a peacetime CEO and a wartime CEO. We need a wartime CEO. We need a wartime executive team. We need a wartime board. We are at war with stasis. And so you've got to be able to go and actually drive momentum into this business. How do you do that? You increase the velocity. When somebody says there's a problem, fix it. Fix it immediately and go back to them and tell them we fixed it. How quickly can you do it?

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Don't take days, take hours. Don't take hours, take minutes. How quick can you get the velocity in this business going? And guess what's gonna happen? If they start to improve the business, all of a sudden, higher quality talent is gonna start saying, you know what? I wasn't thinking about working at Open Door, but now I'm interested.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  I'd love to go there, right? Oh, you know what? A lot of investors start to say, hey, you know what? That's interesting. Maybe I'll buy some shares. Right now, capital becomes more abundant. You can change a business. You can improve a business.

• 24:34Speaker 05

  But it's just funny that it started with memes.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  Memes are the message. Like, everything is a meme. Like, I wrote about it, uh, the other day, maybe today, whenever it was. Berkshire Hathaway is a boomer meme stock. People hate when I say that, but it's true. And I got proof now. I said it before he stepped down. Now Buffett steps down, stock's down 10%. What changed about the business? Nothing. What changed about the economy? Nothing.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  Everything's gotten better. Why isn't the stock up? Oh, it's because it was a meme stock and the meme lord stepped down. And so the meme is dying. And so you get, that was the Buffett premium, AKA the Buffett meme. It was worth 10% of the company's market cap.

• 25:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  So when he steps down, now that premium goes away and you just have Berkshire's assets. Right? Now, you are going to see this everywhere. And memes, by the way, direct a lot of dollars. Buy a home rather than rent. Not always actually the smartest financial thing to do, but great meme. That meme gets passed from generation to generation and people all want to go and actually buy a home. And so I just think that memes are significantly underrated. By the way, if you don't like the word meme, then talk about the word narrative. The narrative is driving dollars, of course. That's how it's always worked. And so whether it's Tesla, trying to convince people that they're going to build an electric vehicle, whether it's Palantir saying they're going to use AI to do all this predictive analytics,

• 26:00Speaker 03

  whether it's a company like Facebook at time that said they were going to connect the world, whether it's any other stock, they have a narrative, they have a meme that they are trying to educate the market on. And when the market starts to believe the meme or the narrative, capital flows. Today's episode is brought to you by Bitcoin IRA. Are you a crypto investor with a retirement account, but don't have any crypto in your retirement account? Listen up, this is for you. Bitcoin IRA is revolutionizing the way Americans save for retirement by helping smart investors diversify their savings with access to over 75 cryptocurrencies. With world-class customer service, military-grade encryption, and a vertically integrated licensed trust company, it's no wonder more than 200,000 Americans trust Bitcoin IRA to secure their financial future. Get started, it is quick and easy.

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• 27:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, let's talk about inflation. Core CPI inflation is back above 3% and PPI inflation is at its hottest since March 2022. Should the Fed still cut rates?

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Yes, the inflation data is wrong.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  What?

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:45Speaker 05

  Oh, because trueflation has it right?

• 27:47Speaker 03

  The inflation data is wrong. Is that simple? Trueflation right now is oscillating between 1.98 and 2.02, has been for a while, which is lower than it was in December. So they were willing to cut rates when inflation was higher. And unemployment has not significantly moved. Why are we not cutting right now? What's the argument?

• 28:07Speaker 05

  So Phil Rosen of Opening Bell said on X, NYC employers added 98% fewer private sector jobs in the first half of 2025 compared to a year ago. The data hasn't been this bad in decades and we aren't even in a recession.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  I don't think the data is bad.

• 28:25Speaker 05

  Well, why?

• 28:27Speaker 03

  Because the company's job is not to see how many people they can hire. The company's job is to be as efficient as possible. So the companies are becoming more efficient, but they're also becoming more productive. So actually, technology is doing its job.

• 28:40Speaker 05

  So like AI.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Companies should be able to do more with less. That's the whole point of technology.

• 28:44Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  A farmer used to have to go hire hundreds of people. Now they own a tractor.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  People can yell and scream about all day, but that is how innovation works. Yes, people are going to lose their job, but guess what? Yes, people are also going to gain new jobs. And so that is how this plays out. And again, I just call it how it is. People don't like it if they're on the wrong side. People like it if they're on the right side. The company's job is to produce a product or service as efficiently as possible and create a return for its shareholders. There is technology now that allows them to do that in a way that they previously couldn't do. And so if you're a young person that doesn't have that much experience and has not yet proven to the market that your expertise is actually valuable,

• 29:30Speaker 03

  you are going to have a harder time because now you are competing with thousands, millions of AI agents who can do some part of your job. So you better come up with a very unique proposition to a company as to why they should hire you rather than use AI. On top of that, what you are seeing is companies are saying to themselves, wait a second. Because there was uncertainty in the economy because of the tariffs and the trade wars and all that stuff. I actually do not want to go and just keep doing what I'm doing. Instead, I'm going to reevaluate. And say to myself, what are the options that I have? And people started to say, well, maybe we don't need to hire a person. Maybe we can just do something like use artificial intelligence.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  And so I think what you are seeing is if you look at it from an economic lens of job creation. Yeah, you're like, oh, this data is bad. If you look at it from an overall economy standpoint, earnings are up. Earnings beat expectations. So if you're focused on jobs, yeah, it looks bad. If you focus on the whole economy, the economy is actually getting more efficient. There's getting more productivity. GDP is growing like a weed. It is good for the overall economy. It's bad for the people who don't have a job. And so guess what's going to happen? You are going to see three things occur. People are going to have to upskill, reskill, or create a job. Those are the three things we're going to start watching play out here. Upskill, reskill, create a job.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  Upskill, go and get some sort of skill set that you don't have today in the same industry that you're in. Right? Go figure out how to use these tools and walk into a company and say, I know how to use these tools. You guys don't hire me and I'll show you how to do it. Reskill, I work in industry A. Now I need to move to industry B because that's where job opportunities are. I got to reskill myself to be able to be successful in industry B. The third thing is that there are more and more people who are going to say to themselves, you know what? I'm not going to work or I can't work in this industry. I'm going to go create a job and there are a bunch of tools now available to them to be able to go and be entrepreneurs with less risk. So that's where you're going to start to see a lot of people go. And I would already argue that you see this podcasters, YouTubers, all the content creation stuff.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  On top of that, though, there's a lot of people who are selling stuff on the internet in terms of Shopify or eBay or any of that type of stuff. On top of that, there's a lot of capital available. There's a lot of tools available and to create a website, to build a business, to do all that kind of stuff. Every, not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, but there's going to be more entrepreneurs rather than less entrepreneurs moving forward. So some percentage of those people will become an entrepreneur. The people who don't, either you earn seat, a job title and an industry that isn't going to get disrupted or upskill and reskill. That's, that's what we're facing here. And I don't think it's very different than what we've seen time and time again over the past, you know, 50, 60 years.

• 32:15Speaker 05

  You seem very optimistic about many of these topics. Is there anything that you're worried about with the economy?

• 32:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that the bearers completely destroyed people's portfolios. I think that we should literally call those people out and say, you are responsible for the destruction of an immense amount of wealth for everyday Americans who listen to you.

• 32:40Speaker 05

  Why?

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Because they told people that there was going to be a great depression, that the shelves were going to be empty, that the world was ending, sell, sell, sell all your assets, the big crash is coming, all this craziness. When instead, what they should have been telling people is the market's being irrational, everything's going to be fine, stop trying to sell because the stock market is down 15%. And instead, you should actually be thinking about trying to buy things that are priced less, but still worth the same. And so if you go back, one of my biggest gripes in finance over the last five or six years is that there are certain people, some people in the media, some people on the internet, some people as investors, some people who are just talking to their barber, who have

• 33:22Speaker 03

  been constant doom and gloom, constantly parroting the state talking points, all this stuff. And they have done immense damage to people's portfolio. And so people always want to know, why do I spend so much time talking, creating content, doing all this stuff? I don't get everything right. But if you look over time, I've probably been right more times than I've been wrong. And it's because this optimistic lens understands that over a long period of time, stocks are going up, bitcoins going up, gold's going up, real estate's going up, everything, because they're never going to stop printing money. So if you get focused on these short-term gyrations, it's much easier to be wrong, right? Because things move so rapidly, there's so much volatility. But over a long period of time, you simply have to become an investor.

• 34:07Speaker 03

  Anyone who's trying to convince you that the world's going to end, that these long-term investing trends are going to go away, those people probably are not that rich. Because guess what? How many people do you know who are not traders, right? Who literally make money by taking directional positions? How many people do you know that are wealthy? They were telling people the world was going to end and they were selling all their assets. How many people in the Forbes 400 list sold all their stocks in April?

• 34:35Speaker 05

  I think I remember when we, when all the tariff conversation was happening, we talked to someone who works with a lot of wealthy people and she said that she, only one client of hers was selling.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Of course, I know exactly who it was. That person's a private banker. She's got really, really big clients and she said they were all buying.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, which I thought was surprising.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  So think how crazy that is. The rich people were buying, but everyone was being told a public narrative that the world was ending, shelves were going to be empty, you know, sell, sell, sell, sell. So that's, that's actually what I think is the risk. The risk I see is that people listen, they don't watch. Cause if you watch and look at the trends, look at the data, you will know that these things are going up over the long run. Right? Again, the average investor from 2020, 2002, 2002 to 2021, they average, the average investor, 3.6% return. Horrendous, horrendous. How many of those people were buying at the wrong time, selling at the wrong time, doing all stuff?

• 35:41Speaker 03

  All you had to do is hold the S and P 500, 9.5% return. So what are we, what are we doing here? Right? Is if you think you're smarter than the market, you better be damn sure you're smarter than the market. We're finding out that most people aren't, right? But I'm not saying I'm smarter than the market. Right? How have I generated?

• 36:00Speaker 03

  This. I bought Bitcoin.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  Right? Like it, it's pretty simple. It's like Bitcoin's a hurdle rate. Can't beat it. You gotta buy it. Right? Now I've made some other investments here and there, some work, some didn't, whatever, right? But like, but like that's the game. And so I just think that it comes back to this idea of.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  The biggest risk for the average person is that they listen to the people who are telling them how the world is going to end.

• 36:27Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, and it also depends if you're looking at it short term or long term.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  Again, it goes back to if you're looking at it short term, then you don't understand finance.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  Right? If you were trying to trade in and out of assets, if you were trying to, you know, oh, I think the market's going to go down tomorrow, let me sell today and I'll buy back tomorrow lower like now you're now you are just a trader. And I always go back, how many people on the Forbes 400 list are traders? Not that many. And how most people got really, really rich, they built a business, they held it for a long time, they reinvested the profits into investments. True. Held those two. And so there's a playbook. If you don't want to listen to it, that's fine. You can do whatever you want, but why are you so much smarter than the millions of people who came before you?

• 37:16Speaker 05

  Is diamond hands still a thing?

• 37:18Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 37:18Speaker 05

  Oh, okay. Well, just have diamond hands.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, if you have diamond hands, then you can make fun of all the lettuce hands.

• 37:24Speaker 05

  Not not scissor hands.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  Scissor hands.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  You remember Edward Forty?

• 37:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, Edward Scissorhands.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, but wasn't there like a Edward Forty Hands? You know what that is?

• 37:35Speaker 05

  Oh, where you tape your things. I went to college, I know.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  You ever do that?

• 37:40Speaker 05

  No, why would I ever do that? I'm not a frat boy.

• 37:43Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  Okay. This is all we have for today. Diamond hands.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Thanks, everyone.