Zuby, a Rapper, Author, Speaker, and Coach: Music, Masculinity and Social Media Mayhem

Zuby is a rapper, author, speaker, and coach. He graduated from Oxford and is quickly becoming an international sensation. In this conversation, Zuby and Anthony Pompliano discuss politics, guns, religion, social media, gender, and many more controversial topics. BLOCKFI-----BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. CRYPTO. COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine. Visit coinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world. ETORO-----This episode of Off the Chain is sponsored by eToro, the smartest crypto trading platform, and one of the largest in the world. Join 11 million other traders and create an account at etoro.com and build your crypto portfolio the smart way.

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

• 0:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Zuby is a rapper, author, speaker, and coach. He graduated from Oxford and is quickly becoming an international sensation. In this conversation, we basically discussed everything we aren't allowed to. We talked about politics, guns, religion, social media, gender, and many more controversial topics. I really enjoyed hearing Zuby's perspective on the world, and I find his interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to be quite telling. This is a great episode, so I really hope you enjoy it. Skrt skrt! Wanna know who has the best URL?

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:09Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:51Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:29Speaker 01

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

• 3:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. Zubie's here. I feel like the man, the myth, the legend.

• 4:04Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, we got a whole bunch of shit to cover. Let's start with, um, who the fuck is Zuby? Like, like, who are you?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Okay, so, uh, I'm Zuby, independent rapper and creative entrepreneur, uh, author of the book, Strong Advice: Zuby's Guide to Fitness for Everybody, host of the Real Talk with Zuby podcast. I am a independent hip hop artist, of course, also a podcaster, writer, occasional public speaker, occasional fitness coach, occasional life coach. I do, I do a whole bunch of stuff.

• 4:36Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, so look, you, you, uh, you've been at this a really long time. We're talking before we started recording, uh, fifteen years in the making, and now it's like everyone has discovered you. But, uh, there's a lot of hard work that's gone into this. Before we get to the hard work, though, let's talk about, uh, the video in February.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah.

• 4:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what is this video that just exploded on the internet and kind of brought a bunch of attention? Then we'll go back to kind of what you did before, uh, before that video went viral.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  No problem. So, uh, on the twenty-sixth of February, it's still my pinned tweet on Twitter.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  I, uh, I posted a video of me doing a two hundred and thirty kilogram deadlift. And in the caption of the tweet, I wrote something like, um, I keep hearing about how biological men have no physical advantage over women in twenty nineteen. So watch me destroy the British women's deadlift record without trying. P.S. I identified as a woman while lifting the weight, so don't be a bigot. And, um, I wrote that thinking that, you know, a number of my nineteen thousand followers at the time would, would find it funny. But I realized within about ten minutes that I'd created an absolute monster. So that tweet's now done almost seven million impressions, over two million views on the video, just on Twitter alone.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  And it got picked up, you know, it went, went crazy. Um, I think the video got about ten thousand views in the first ten minutes. And then within an hour, it had cracked fifty thousand. By the time I went to bed that night, it was at three hundred K. Woke up in the morning, over half a million. And it just kept going. I was gaining like a hundred followers, um, an hour for several weeks. And it just kept going and started getting picked up by the media, BBC, Sky News, uh, Fox News here, Sky News in Australia. It just went crazy. Then Joe Rogan picked it up, talked about it on the podcast, shouted me out on the podcast.

• 6:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I remember. He was like, he was like, get that dude in here. Get him in here.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  So that brought a whole, whole nother wave and it just, uh, it's just kept growing and, and snowballing and just been getting all these new opportunities. I've now been out here in the States for nine weeks. It's my very last day in the States. This is my

• 6:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, it's last day?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm going back tonight.

• 6:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, man. Well, thank you for coming to spend, uh, spend an hour with us.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  You're welcome, man. You're welcome.

• 6:45Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So what, what, what was the video like in terms of what chord did it hit? Cause it obviously you posted it trying to be funny, right? And there's plenty of people who laughed, but it also really resonated with a lot of people. And I think that's what really drove kind of the, the, the attention to it. Like, what is that chord of society that it struck? Is it just that you were just being honest and saying stuff that people normally don't feel comfortable saying or like, like from your perspective, what did you hit?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  I think it, it hit a whole bunch of different nerves. I think firstly, it's one of those issues that's at the cross section of lots of different areas of society and culture. So there was, you know, there, there was sort of like, obviously just in terms of the sports itself. So it kind of hit the sports world. It hit the whole kind of, um, socio-political world. It hit the, uh, I don't know, like obviously it went into the, uh, kind of LGBT world.

• 7:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  It went into, in multiple countries as well. And it's one of those issues that's been going on for a while. Some people are very aware of and privy to, some people are not, but it was a very hot button topic at the time. I didn't realize how much so until it went viral. Cause, uh, of course you got the Olympics coming up next year. So they've been trying to decide what the rules should be in that regard. You've had multiple stories from different countries of, um, you know, transgender women or men identifying as women or whatever the case is, breaking women's records, winning their races, beating them in, in fights, various sports, all this kind of stuff. And it's one of those issues where I believe that over 90% of people.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Are actually not in favor of that being able to happen, right?

• 8:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  If you went out and pulled people on the streets, regardless of their political views or whatever, and you just ask people, do you think someone who's biologically male should be able to compete against biological women in sport? Most people would say no in private.

• 8:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  But publicly, we live in a time where there's a lot of things where people are afraid to voice publicly for a lot of repercussions. And I think it was also the fact that it wasn't, I wasn't even explaining the point. And there was no anger, there was no malice, there was no anything. I was just like, okay, these are the rules? Cool, I'll play, I'll play by these too, and I'll use your own rules to show you why this is a bad idea.

• 9:08Anthony Pompliano?

  So, does the new record stand? Or, or did they say, no, this doesn't count?

• 9:15Speaker 02

  So, the video that went viral was actually just from a training session.

• 9:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  It wasn't in a sanctioned competition. To set an actual record, it would have to be in a sanctioned competition. Um, which I didn't do, but.

• 9:25Anthony Pompliano?

  But, but could you have done it? Like, is that, is that part of what the rules are today? Could you walk in and say, I identify as a female, it break the record and then walk away?

• 9:33Speaker 02

  It depends on the league. I know the US, um, APL, the US, um, powerlifting organization. I know that they have, uh, they've banned it.

• 9:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  So, it's, it's not allowed. So, it depends on the, um, from sport to sport, it depends on the federation.

• 9:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Some of them have different rules. Some will say, okay, you need to, I think in the Olympics, for example, now they're saying you have to suppress your, keep your testosterone below a certain level for two years. And then, anyone can compete in the women's, which is a terrible rule still. Um, and then there's other ones where it's just self-identification.

• 10:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  So, you can just, anyone who, you can just literally do what I do and say, you identify as a woman and.

• 10:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Go smash the record.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, go, go smash up the records. Um, it's probably worth saying as well that I can lift a hundred pounds more than I did in that video. That wasn't remotely close to my maximum.

• 10:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  But that was kind of the point. It was like, I don't even compete.

• 10:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  I can crush this record.

• 10:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and, and I think part of it is, um, The way I see the world is it's actually not a binary either, right? It's not like, hey, uh, you should be able to identify however you want, right? Or you can't, for example. Because then you get into things like transgender, right? Which is, well, what if you are biologically one gender, but then you switch, right? It's more than just psychologically or kind of mentally saying, hey, I identify as something. Now you've actually taken steps physiologically to transfer uh, or, or, or, uh, or change your gender, etc. And so when you start getting into this world, like, I don't know if there is a good answer, right, to a lot of this stuff. But like, it is so complex, especially when you then overlay the, the socio-aspects of it.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  For the sports thing, I don't think it's complicated at all.

• 11:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Like, it's very simple.

• 11:14Anthony Pompliano?

  What is it?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  You, you've got two solutions. This is why I think it's ideological, rather than a push for genuine inclusivity and fairness, right? You, you can either have two rules, right? Either one, you can have a separate transgender, uh, division in whatever the sport may be. Um, it's unlikely you'd have enough people to compete in that, and so that, that may not.

• 11:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So you'd have male, female, and then transgender?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, that's one option.

• 11:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Or you can have what already exists, which is, which a lot of people aren't aware of. A lot, most male sports are not actually male sports leagues, okay? There's, I don't believe there's any rule in the NBA, MLB, and, you know, any of these sports divisions, NFL, that explicitly says a woman can't compete. But for obvious reasons, there's no woman who's good enough at American football to compete and with the best in the world in American football.

• 12:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Uh, same with basketball, same with any sport, essentially.

• 12:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and that, and that belief is more because of the biological aspect of just

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 12:15Anthony Pompliano?

  men are bigger, stronger, faster.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Exactly. We, we know this. That's why you, you split them up to begin with. So you could just have an open division. And then if you've got an open division, then regardless of whatever someone's, you know. Gender identity or whatever the thing is, if they're good enough. They can, they can compete in that competition and then it's fair and then you're not sacrificing fifty percent, fifty percent of the population to appease perhaps one person.

• 12:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and I think those are pretty fair and simple solutions. Right? It's just like, look, let's not try to put people in boxes, actually just say, anyone who's the best, come compete.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Exactly, because it's, it's not, it's, it's not about, um, you know, even, even the point I was making, it's like, I'm just talking about facts here. This isn't, this isn't discriminating against, this isn't even really saying anything about my thoughts or anyone else's thoughts on this whole issue. It's just like, look, if you're talking sports. You, you, it's gotta be fair, it's gotta be even safer.

• 13:12Anthony Pompliano?

  It's science.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  It even, yeah, it's, it's simple science, it's basic science. And it's even, it's even safety and security, right? If you, if you do have someone like myself, right? You know, someone like yourself and you're competing against, like, there are pretty much, apart from like a very small handful of women who were like super duper elite and in many cases like jacked up on steroids, right? There are almost no women in the world who are like, there's tons of guys in the world who are stronger than them.

• 13:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Right? Uh, I'm, I'm a strong guy, but there's tons of guys in the world who are stronger than me. There are almost no women in the world who are stronger than them. You're right, and, and so it's crazy, right? Like, I, I used to play rugby and stuff, like, if I, if I just went and I, I like, if I tried to play against the, the English rugby team, men's team, I'd get crushed.

• 13:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Okay? If I identified as a woman and, but I would probably ma- immediately make

• 14:05Anthony Pompliano?

  You'd be an all-star.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  The English, like, national team. Just pure physicality, speed, strength, et cetera. Like, I'd just be running, running through them, because there's just a difference.

• 14:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  So.

• 14:15Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, so that, so this video, a- a- and I, I jokingly put in the, uh, we're, we're live on Twitter for those that are just listening. Um, and I said that you're a fifteen-year overnight success, right? Which is how these things tend to, tend to work. Um, let's go back fifteen years before this, right? So, uh, my understanding is, um, you split-time growing up in Saudi Arabia and London?

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Uh, UK.

• 14:36Anthony Pompliano?

  UK, okay.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Specifically, yeah.

• 14:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it, and, and. So what kind of after childhood, what what did you do leading up to your your big moment on the on the stage of of Twitter?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So um yeah, so I I grew up in Saudi Arabia. I moved there when I was one. My my family lived out there. My parents worked out there. So I went to school there from preschool all the way up until fifth grade.

• 14:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  When I was eleven, I actually went to boarding school. So I went to the UK um and I was back and forth between the two countries for about nine years. So I did seven years boarding school there, did really well in school, got into Oxford University. Studied computer science. That's where I started my music career, actually.

• 15:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Was studying computer science at Oxford is where you started uh music.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  So I started rapping.

• 15:17Anthony Pompliano?

  That's amazing.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, bit of a weird origin story.

• 15:20Anthony Pompliano?

  You know what I love about this, though, is uh everything that in before we started recording, we were talking. Uh I actually was following you before the deadlift thing, right? And so when I, the first time I uh heard Rogan say like, where's this zuby dude, you know, whatever, like, go get that guy. I remember being like, wait, what the guy like, you know, whatever. And I actually, I I wish I remembered why I followed you, but but for whatever reason I was.

• 15:46Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's all of the things in the traditional like way of life, right? That like your parents say, hey, you know, be really smart, go to school, get a great education, you know, go get your degree, go get a job, like all that. Like, you did a lot of that stuff.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And you blew up because of a video where basically you just said what everyone's thinking and no one wants to say. Right? And and so like to me, there's some um um comedy to that, right? This new world that we're in, even though you went to Oxford, you studied computer science or all that stuff, that's what explodes, right?

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I mean, that video is actually a good metaphor in quite a lot of ways because uh, you know, I I often joke that it took me to identify as a woman for nine seconds and that's what brought so much attention and opportunity to me. But uh, you know, one of my friends made a really good point on it and he was like, you know, it took you, it took you fifteen years to make that. He's like, almost nobody could make that video because almost nobody can live that way. Right, so he's like, it took you, there's a whole backstory behind you even physically being able to do that. And that's like a good metaphor for everything else.

• 16:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  It's like, you know, most people can't just stroll in the gym and lift 500, 600 pounds.

• 16:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Um, it's taken a lot of work and training to get to that level. So although it seems like it was just that one moment, if you kind of look behind the curtain, yeah, back it up, there's a lot behind that. And I think that's really how everything's been for me.

• 17:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so what was the interest at, uh, while you're there at Oxford studying computer science? Uh, where'd the interest in music come from? Were you into music kind of as a child? Or was it just at one point you decided, hey, I want to go do this?

• 17:17Speaker 02

  So as a child, I used to play piano and I used to play trombone for a little while. I used to do recitals and stuff like that. But I wasn't really a music fan. I wasn't really a listener initially until I went to boarding school. And then I really fell in love with hip hop when I was like maybe 13 or so. Started listening to lots of like Nas, Jay-Z.

• 17:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, Nas, One Mike, man.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, I was, yeah, even before that album, I mean, I was listening to like It Was Written.

• 17:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I used to, I used to run home from, uh, from school and, uh, what was it? Uh, TRL? Remember with Carson Daly, uh, here in the US? And they would play the top 10 songs and One Mike like dominated for like a year. And I remember in the, they played music video, right? Got the chair sitting in the room and they break the glass and he was like, this shit is awesome.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Uh, and music used to be a lot more exciting in a lot of ways.

• 18:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  I think the, um, speed and ease of consumption now has somewhat devalued it. But maybe that's be me being a little boomerish.

• 18:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, boomer.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I, I, I was a fan, you know, I was a fan. And then, um, when I was in my first year of university, I was going to Nigeria for a vacation.

• 18:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  And I got stuck in an airport in Paris.

• 18:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  And I was by myself, had like 24 hours to kill, basically. And I didn't have much on me. I had my MP3 player and I had like a notepad. And I just started jotting down some lyrics. And it came to me fairly naturally for someone who, considering I'd never done it. Yeah, it came to me fairly naturally. So I kept doing it and I would just take my phone and record, record my raps.

• 18:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, so you were writing the lyrics and then recording on the phone?

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, just recording them into my phone. Yeah, yeah. So just super duper basic and then I kinda started getting the confidence to play it to people. You know, people are like, yeah, that's pretty good and whatever.

• 18:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And were you editing music in underneath it or this was all kind of like a cappella?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  This was pretty much a cappella at the time.

• 19:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Um, and then when I got back to U- uh, university, one of my friends, Chris, had um, just like a basic recording setup in his dorm room. And uh, so I would go on um, a website, I don't know if it's still going, soundclick.com. It was like way before SoundCloud and before, before YouTube even pretty much. And um, I'd go on there and producers would put up beats. So I'd download beats and you know, just, just rap over them. So I recorded my very first song was a song called The Batman.

• 19:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Um, it's funny, like lots of my friends in university, that's my nickname with them, The Batman. So um, I recorded that song, um, and then I followed it up with one called Oh No and another track called Tonight. And I kinda had these three songs and I was just putting them out to, you know, friends in the universe, friends in my university. It was really positive. It was really positive. Um, and to be fair, like, I mean, I can, obviously if I go back and listen to them now, I'm like, okay, like I'm, I've gotten a lot better.

• 19:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Practiced.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  What? It's not that bad. Like it's not, even now if I listen to it, I'm not like, dude, that was terrible.

• 20:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Okay, you know, I picked it up really, pretty fast. And then um, I actually released my first album, Commercial Underground, when I was in my second year of university. So after I'd been rapping for about nine months, I released my first album. And um, I just initially started with a run of fifty CDs. I just did fifty CDs and um, I just went around the university and sold them. Sold them to my friends and people I knew for like five pounds each. Um, and I sold out of them in probably two weeks. And so I was like, okay, so I took that money, I reinvested it. I made, did you know, another couple of hundred copies? And sold those. And that, you know, and that was that realization point of, hmm, okay, you know, it's one thing for someone to say, okay, I like,

• 20:45Speaker 02

  I like your music or you're good at rapping or whatever. But if someone's willing to pay for a CD, then I'm like, okay, that, yeah. Yeah, there's something happening there. So I started doing uh, more, more gigs. Um, I did a couple of gigs where I, I was still living in Saudi Arabia at the time. I actually did a couple of gigs there at some of the schools.

• 21:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's that like, man? What's living in Saudi Arabia like?

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Different, man.

• 21:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Different, I can imagine.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of stuff different. Uh, where I lived was very much an expat community, so it was a little bit of a bubble.

• 21:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  So in terms of the culture kind of within that little fifteen hundred people.

• 21:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep. You get some aspects of the Saudi Arabian culture, but but more so expat.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, there there it's very expat, but then you if you go out, you know, into the city or anything, you want to go shopping, you've got to go into the city and then you're in in the real Saudi where, you know, the usual rules and laws and regulations and everything apply. So it's cool. Like I have a very positive um view and memories of growing up in Saudi Arabia, which surprises quite a lot of people, you know, I think people expect me to talk about how awful and scary or whatever it was. And I'm like, nah, like it was.

• 21:47Anthony Pompliano?

  You like it?

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I loved it. I loved it.

• 21:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And what was their reception when you come back and now you're producing music and and I'm assuming you're trying to sell CDs and stuff in Saudi Arabia? What was the uh response in terms of um, you know, kind of you coming from the UK, right? With music that I don't know if they listen to it or not or whatever, but what was that response like?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Um, so I I wasn't really pushing my music beyond my sort of local community or anything in Saudi.

• 22:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Um, I was doing that in the UK initially. Eventually I started just going out on the street and just doing doing street hustle. Just uh, you know, once I kind of, once everyone I knew had my music already, then I was like, okay, cool.

• 22:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Took all the money I could from everyone I know.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  I need to take it to new people. Yeah, I mean, I've sold over twenty five thousand albums out of a backpack, pretty much, man.

• 22:33Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fucking awesome.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 22:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and this is like literally on, so we're recording this in New York City, like on the street corner, you walk outside, people will hand you a a CD, right? And people in New York basically like, hey, man, get out of my way, right? But all the tourists, etc., they grab the CD and next you know they're asking for money.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know. I I don't do it like that. I hate that, man.

• 22:52Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, how do you do it?

• 22:53Speaker 02

  I don't do that, man.

• 22:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What did you do?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  I'm upfront. I'm upfront, so I'll I'll see, oh, hey, what's up, man? You know, what kind of what kind of music do you listen to? If you're, you know, if you've got the time and you're interested, you say, okay, I like some hip hop, whatever. I'm like, cool, I introduce myself, tell you what I'm doing, and I'd always have my headphones. I'll have my music, I'll have my my music loaded up on my phone, like, yo, have a listen, look, this is my album. This is how much it costs.

• 23:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  I'll play you some tracks. If you like it and you want to check it out and support what I'm doing, then here we go. So I don't like that whole thing.

• 23:20Anthony Pompliano?

  It's it's way more authentic.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Authentic, man. I don't like this. I don't I don't like this thing of. Giving it to someone like it's free and then like pressuring that I'm not like I wish and there's a few people who would do that in the UK and it kinda it kinda messes up the game for

• 23:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Everybody else.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Everybody else cuz it's like I don't want people to think that's my approach and no I'd rather just be honest with people and you know if someone someone doesn't want it It's totally fine you know I'd have like promotional cards as well so with my social media and YouTube and everything so it's like cool no worries man have a have a listen online And if you like it you can also check it out.

• 23:52Anthony Pompliano?

  A theme across this whole um kind of evolution of your life and your career is uh It seems at least from my perspective you've gotten very, very good at producing things that people want

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 24:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Which is half the battle the other half is how do you get it in their hands right how do you convince them to buy it?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Um and whether it's uh the merchandise it's the CDs it's the book you know we'll we'll kind of talk about all these different things um You put a lot of work into figuring out how to sell stuff.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Right a- and uh once you understand how that works and how the human psyche works and kind of what people what motivates people to actually purchase something You that with the product is interchangeable right and then you kind of move it across different different aspects of what you wanna push in terms of uh what you're optimizing for.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah absolutely and you know a lot of a lot of it is just being real with people and knowing your audience and getting people to like you.

• 24:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Now you can't make people like you but if you know who does like you and you know why they like you Then everything kind of becomes easy from there that's why you know this year my focus has really just been on building the audience.

• 24:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  And letting people know who I am letting people know what my message is and whatever I find and I found that wherever I go like from city to city country to country Whatever now even in in different zones I I can go and talk to Tucker Carlson on Fox News and then go talk to Joe Rogan and then go talk to Like a school teacher here and talk to and it's there's like a common thread through it all like these things might seem really disparate and not connected But I find that if you're just authentic and you're true to yourself and you and you you're honest with people and people just like your demeanor and you're positive Then people well one people will want to support you.

• 25:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Um and you know you're you're encouraging and helping people and all that and you know opportunities just kind of will Come your will come will come your way you know I think good people who are on a certain

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Level vibe, kinda find and will resonate with each other.

• 25:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, look, to be completely honest, the reason why I wanted to do this was I was like, hey, man, that's gonna be fun.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, I'm sure he's got some things that he must talk about, whatever, but like, that would just be a fun conversation to have. And I think that, uh, when you give off the vibe of, hey, you're authentic, right? It will be fun to have a conversation with you. That's where you can attract all these different types of people who, uh, just say, look, I, I don't even have an agenda, right? As much as I just wanna enjoy a conversation with somebody who I don't feel like has a hidden agenda, who isn't trying to sell me something, you know, blah, blah, whatever. Um, so today you've got, let, let's see, uh, you've got an album, right?

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Eight.

• 26:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Eight albums, but what's the latest one?

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Perseverance.

• 26:30Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, and where can people find that?

• 26:31Speaker 02

  That's on iTunes, Spotify, my website, teamzubi.com. Um, all the places you'd get music from, um, if you wanna stream it, if you wanna download it, just search Zuby on any platform. Um, if you wanna get a CD, then my website.

• 26:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Merchandise, what, tell me the story of how, like, where did the idea for the merchandise come from? Team Zuby is fucking fantastic marketing. So, so just what's the story behind the merchandise and the Team Zuby name?

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So I released my first bit of merchandise in university as well. So I made one T-shirt for myself. And, uh, cause I, I, someone made a logo for me, the Zuby logo, it's the one with the two dots, it's different from that one. Um, and I was thinking of, I was like, okay, I wanna make a T-shirt for myself to promote my music.

• 27:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  And I didn't wanna just have the logo on it. I thought that was a little boring. I think it needed something to capture people's attention. So I was toying around with lots of different ideas and eventually I came up with, I'm down with Zuby, are you? So those shirts, uh, uh, anyone who went to university with me will recognize that shirt.

• 27:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Because I used to wear it all the time. I was just, I just had a black shirt with white writing, I'm down with Zuby, are you? Right? And so people would always ask questions. They'd say, oh, what's, what's, uh? Someone's asking what's the album name. The album is called Perseverance. Um, so yeah, I I just got the T-shirt for myself to begin with. And then my friends at university started being like, hey, man, like, I want one too. I want one of those T-shirts. So I went back to Saudi and I got like ten printed and I just gave them to my best friends at university. So like there were just a bunch of us who were going around with these black T-shirts saying, I'm down with Zuby, are you?

• 28:14Anthony Pompliano?

  That's awesome.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and people would like see them and be like, hmm, am I am I down with Zuby? Like, what's Zuby? You know, because it makes people ask, what's Zuby?

• 28:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Right? Um, so that started happening. And then eventually I just I started selling that one T-shirt alongside my album. And then eventually I did him in like a range of like twenty different colors and I did girls ones and you know, I'd have people come into my gigs and stuff wearing them and it's sort of expanded from there. Um, you know, people wanted hoodies and then hats and it's gotten to a stage, I think I've got one of the widest merchandise ranges now in the UK.

• 28:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got a really broad range of stuff now.

• 28:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty big thing. Yeah. And and to me, like, again, what I take away from that story is, uh, there's a lot of people who, sitting in college, where everyone wants to kind of conform to being the popular kid and and kind of the social norms, etc. Uh, frankly, they just wouldn't have the balls to walk around with a shirt with the name on it.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Most people still don't.

• 29:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Yeah, and yeah, especially after college, right? But but definitely during college. And there's a a thing that I've seen on Twitter specifically where the people who are most authentic are the people who are least scared of uh, being embarrassed or failing in public, etc. What you're talking about is having done that in real life and and being willing to have the self-confidence, walk around with your own name on your shirt. But then it becomes a thing.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And once it becomes a thing, then people want it, right? And you just kind of build off of that. But it really comes from that element of like not being scared to just do what you want to do.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. And I I've really learned that. I mean, a question I'm getting a lot now. Um, I did a did a meetup in New York last night, which was which was awesome. A lot of people came. Um, but a big question I get, man, how do you deal with all the big? People see the negativity and crap I get on on social.

• 29:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  And people are like, man, dude, how do you deal with all that stuff? And I was telling my story about going out and selling twenty five thousand albums on the streets of the UK. I mean, do you know how many people I had to talk to? To sell that many albums like I've spoken when I'd say I've spoken to like half a million people, I'm not exaggerating and this like in real world face to face. So I've had every rejection, every way that somebody can say no, every way someone can show disenchil- I've had that multiple, multiple times. And so, and I know my mission, I know who I am, I know what I believe. So it's like, there's nothing anyone can say to me, whether that's online or offline or whatever. That's gonna just sort of, oh, you know, make me feel super duper sad or

• 30:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  I wanna give up or anything like that. Like I just use it all as ammunition fuel. Like I write some of my best songs after I've been like, you know. Like people that talk a lot of crap like, okay, okay, okay, like.

• 30:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, it it is this belief that, um, and again, a lot of this, uh, people don't understand, uh. There's pressure, there's negativity, etc. It's what sports athletes and celebrities dealt with twenty years ago.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 31:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Today, the quote unquote average person, if they grow a following online, they get the same stuff.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And and it's, um, actually, in some cases, they didn't ask for it, right? So you see these people who go viral, who, you know, if they caught in their worst moment or their best moment or whatever. They just get sucked in and there's people who, you know, like yourself, which, uh. You were looking to promote your music, right? Your merchandise, etc. But you also get pulled into an area of the world where maybe you didn't intend to be there either. Right? And and so, um, you know, it it's a positive side of, hey, you create this video, it goes viral, right? And it kind of started as a joke, whatever. But you didn't ask for all that, all the hate.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, I didn't know it was gonna go that far.

• 31:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like, and and and so how, how do you deal with it? And do you ever just wake up and say like, I don't wanna do this anymore? Right? Or like today, I don't wanna deal with this?

• 31:54Speaker 02

  No, I mean, look, you can always log off. That's what I always tell people, you know, when people talking about like cyberbullying or like this or that, I'm like, look, you don't, no one is forcing me to be on Twitter. No one's forcing me to be on YouTube, Instagram, whatever. So yeah, sure, the stuff can be annoying. And occasionally I might need to mute someone or very rarely block them if they're just being completely, yeah, they're just being complete idiots. But ultimately, it's like, it's my choice. And in the real world, like, I love my life. Like, I'm very happy. I've got a wonderful family, wonderful friends, great girlfriend, like, life is, life is cool. So I'm not gonna let what's going on in this world. Like, I can just put, put this down here. And I'm not worrying now about, oh, what's going on on Twitter or whatever. It's like, I choose to look at it as much as I want.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  And then also, the, the, the love outweighs it like thirty times. For every thirty, thirty, you know, I get all these lovely DMs and great people, and I'm seeing people in real life who I'm meeting or telling me I'm helping them, inspiring them. They like what I do. And then, yeah, you get the occasional, well, now it's more than occasional, but you know, you get some random avatar on Twitter calling you a mean name.

• 33:05Anthony Pompliano?

  They're always anonymous, right?

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Always anonymous, right? And it's just like, okay, like, why would I let that ruin my?

• 33:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  My day. That doesn't even make sense.

• 33:13Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. So you're on a eight-week tour in the US, right?

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, nine weeks now.

• 33:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Nine weeks, okay. What, um, what's been the craziest thing you've done? Or like the, the most fun, memorable thing?

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Wow, uh, a lot of stuff.

• 33:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, I've been watching on Twitter, you, you've done, you've been all over the country. Uh, what'd you say? You said LA, San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth. Where else? Atlanta?

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Atlanta, Nashville, DC, New York.

• 33:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Jeez, man, you've seen more of the country than most Americans have. Uh, what, what, what do you think is the most memorable thing from the whole trip?

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Man, um, I'd certainly say one aspect has been, you know, having the opportunity to do so many awesome podcasts and shows and meet people who I, you know, greatly admire and who I listen to and everything like that. Uh, that's, that's been really dope. One cool thing has been the, the meetups. So I did the very first meetup in San Francisco. Um, I just literally tweeted out, hey, I want to, anyone want to go get dinner in San Francisco? And two hours later, I'm there sitting with a bunch of people who follow me on Twitter and we're just having great conversation and good food. And so I was like, cool, I can do this in other cities. So I did one in Atlanta. I did one in Nashville, did one in DC, had New York, New York last night, which was the, probably the biggest.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Um, and just, man, that's amazing. I, I'm, I'm an independent rapper from the UK. So to be able to-

• 34:32Anthony Pompliano?

  You're according to Tucker Carlson, when you went on TV, a famous rapper from the UK.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Famous rapper from the UK, yeah?

• 34:39Anthony Pompliano?

  So those that don't know, uh,

• 34:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Zuby went on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News and I saw a clip this morning before we got here and underneath him, where they usually put, you know, uh, founder of X company, CEO, whatever, uh, it just said famous rapper from the UK.

• 34:58Anthony Pompliano?

  That is the most OG thing I've seen on television in a long time.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did, I did crack up when I saw that because I watched it live. Well, when they broadcast it and I was like, oh yeah. I was like, I'll take it.

• 35:10Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm gonna get a business card made with famous rapper from the UK.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, so yeah, the, the meetups were great. Like I was saying, just knowing that having people in every city who care and who like me and who like want to just go and hang out for a few hours and talk and-

• 35:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and you went to the White House, right?

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I went to the White House.

• 35:30Anthony Pompliano?

  And you were saying that while you're in the White House, people are DMing you being like, yo, yo, yo, I heard you at the White House. I come meet up.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I've got fans in, in the White House and the Pentagon and all these places I didn't know because you know, you don't know who's watching. You don't know who's listening. You don't know who's following. Um. Like, uh.

• 35:48Anthony Pompliano?

  You get Trump, you get Trump to blast some zubi in the Oval Office?

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, I didn't get a chance to meet the president, but, uh, you know, maybe, maybe next time.

• 35:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Whoever is working in the White House, he said next time, he's coming back.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm coming back, man. I've been there twice now. Um, but yeah, I mean, like last week, uh, do you know Dan Crenshaw?

• 36:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, like he DM'd me.

• 36:08Anthony Pompliano?

  He's the man.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, he followed me on Twitter and DM'd me and was like, yeah, you know, I saw your interview with Ben Shapiro, like, really like what you had to say and this and that. Andrew Yang followed me today.

• 36:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, Andrew Yang as well.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Yang followed me and Scott Adams followed me today. So it's like, you're just, it's, it's just interesting seeing it kind of grow.

• 36:24Anthony Pompliano?

  We gotta talk about this, right? There's like a underground, uh, culture or community, right? So you just named a bunch of them. So there's, you know, Scott Adams, Andrew Yang, um, you know, Rogan's in there, uh, the Tim Ferriss is whatever. And for whatever reason, a lot of them tend to be males, right? But these are all people who I think have built very large audiences and very loyal, engaged audiences around, um, being more rational, I think, and kind of not bending to the cultural pressures, right? And so each one of them has their own thing, right? You know, like Yang's running for president, right? And he's very different than, um, you know, Crenshaw or Shapiro or whatever. But does it say something about the fact that there's so many different people who take the same mechanism of just, I'm not gonna bend to the cultural pressures?

• 37:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm gonna speak, you know, my truth, I'm gonna be rational, that they all are gravitating towards you who, or you're doing the same thing, you're just doing it a different way, right? On different topics.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:20Anthony Pompliano?

  But do you think that there's like almost camaraderie around the fact that, hey, I respect somebody who's willing to just say what they believe and not conform? Or do you think that it's more just coincidence that those are the types of people?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  No, I don't, it's not, it's not a coincidence. Um, you know, a lot of people think a lot of the, you know, been having a lot of political conversations, a lot, and a lot of people think, you know, everything's left versus right, right versus left, conservative versus liberal on everything. And a lot of it is more like, in this current climate, a lot of it is more like reasonable, rational people versus like unhinged crazy people.

• 37:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  You know, it, it, it's really, it's really more like that. Like, it's, it's, you could take someone who I, in terms of, I don't know, political policy, like, I almost disagree with him on. Every issue.

• 38:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  But as long as like, but I'm reasonable, they're reasonable, we're not gonna like scream at each other or call each other evil or call each other Nazis or whatever, you know, like just, we're just gonna be reasonable, decent human beings, and we can chill, we can be friends, we can have great conversations, whatever. It's just, you know, but you've got people on fringes who, yeah, they're just, you know, really emotional and angry and.

• 38:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And part of this is, I think, why like Rogan specifically has blown up in mainstream media or kind of culture is, if you look at all of the mainstream media, they're optimizing for the inflammatory, salacious headlines, you know, audio clips, et cetera. So what they actually are doing is they're enticing and incentivizing people to be on the extreme.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 38:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so take their coverage of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Donald Trump, AOC, you know, just down the line, it's across the aisle, just they want the salacious inflammatory stuff. But I've now listened to Rogan interview Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, I've learned more listening to those interviews than I've ever learned from the mainstream media.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 39:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's because it's a much more rational conversation that doesn't have interruptions and it's, what do you believe about healthcare?

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 39:28Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you believe about X?

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Can we return the mainstream media back to kind of that rational, less salacious world?

• 39:35Speaker 02

  No.

• 39:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Or is it stuck and it's just gonna continue accelerating kind of on the extremes?

• 39:38Speaker 02

  No, no, it's not going back.

• 39:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Because of the format.

• 39:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Right, so when I was on Tucker Carlson, I had six minutes, right?

• 39:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Solve the world's problems in six minutes?

• 39:51Speaker 02

  I had, I had six minutes, six minute segment to discuss some pretty.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  New, like, I I think I handled myself well.

• 40:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  But you don't have a lot of time to expand. You've got just just the format of television because you you've only got twenty four hours in a day.

• 40:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  And each host or whatever has, you know, thirty minute show, one hour show, whatever. You've got plus the ads. So it's all really, really short bits.

• 40:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  And there's no real way to expand that. Like, Rogan can sit there for two, three, four, five hours. And talk to someone. And if there's something that, um, you know, we're doing this podcast now, if there's something that I say which needs clarification. You can be like, oh, what do you mean when you said that? Or go go into a little more detail. On TV, you can't do that. There's just.

• 40:37Anthony Pompliano?

  The nuance of the time.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  No. So you've just got to have the the sound bites. And as you said, it incentivizes everyone to be a little more extreme and shouty and irrational and emotional than they could be, right? When I saw, uh, I watched that one. In fact, I watched all of Joe's interviews that he's done with Democratic candidates, right?

• 40:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Has he done any with Republican candidates?

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Uh, no, no, because there aren't any. It's just Trump.

• 41:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Oh, that's true. Yeah. He did Tulsi as well.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Tulsi Yang and Bernie Sanders.

• 41:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I got.

• 41:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey, I'd love to hear him and Elizabeth Warren. That that would be fascinating.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw her on the the Breakfast Club. But yeah, I mean, it's so there you can at least understand what people's, where people's heads are at. Get more of their personality and everything rather than this, you know, stand on stage and shout at each other for five minutes.

• 41:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I I actually saw there was, I don't know if it was a petition or someone was just tweeting about, uh, Joe Rogan should, uh, moderate a presidential, uh, debate.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  He's not down.

• 41:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, one, he, I could just imagine him just be like, fuck this, like, right? Like, in the middle of it. Um, but, uh, all right. So let's talk a little bit about Bitcoin and crypto because that's actually what we're supposed to be talking about. Uh, what do you know about Bitcoin? What what's kind of your view, um, coming from like? More of a music writing, kind of creative type, you know, focus in life. You blow up my mind, etc. Bitcoin in the community that's listening right now is, you know, it's the say all be all, right? They're they're obsessed with it. Cryptocurrency is going to take over the world, etc. That's not a world that you necessarily come from, but like, what is your perspective as to how this fits into the world?

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Well, I've got an entire song called Crypto Currently, which is

• 42:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, really?

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I didn't know that.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a song on my latest album that's all about

• 42:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, we're going to tweet that out for sure.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  I think I name dropped like at least forty different cryptos in there. Um, yeah, go listen to that. It's interesting. It was it was it was a bit of a thing of wordplay. I wanted to make a song where whether or not you knew you understood the references, the song would still make sense.

• 42:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  So

• 42:39Anthony Pompliano?

  When did you record this? Eighteen?

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Uh, twenty eighteen.

• 42:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Twenty eighteen, okay. So like after the big mania and it was kind of still

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, when it was bleed, when it was blood in the streets.

• 42:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, yeah, so in terms of my own investments, I'm still waiting to, you know, get get back in the black because my my the timing of my investments was not too great. So I first heard about Bitcoin. I mean, I'm a computer science grad.

• 43:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  So I actually heard about Bitcoin. I hate saying this, like somewhat early, maybe like twenty twelve or twenty thirteen. Like, I heard something, but I never looked into it. I thought it was just like an in-game currency or something like that. I did, or like something like PayPal.

• 43:18Anthony Pompliano?

  It was it was one of a lot of different versions that were out there in the world, right? It just happens that this one ended up being worth a hundred and sixty billion dollar market cap, right?

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just I just never looked into it. I didn't I didn't understand the fact that it was, you know, fully decentralized and, you know, people didn't know who the founder was. And that it was deflationary and limited in number and that if you I mean, because it's because it's unique, right? The it's the first time you've had a digital anything that Is not limitless. Mm hmm. Right? Mm hmm. Um, and I didn't research it properly until twenty seventeen. Okay. And that was when I was like, oh, like for me, it was actually a pretty easy sell. Mm hmm. Cause I'm quite libertarian minded and I'm aware of a lot of the issues with like central banks and just the money system in general. Mm hmm.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Um, and the way that it's even been abused, both in, both in history and also in different countries. Mm hmm. Right? So in a country like the UK, a country like the USA, people don't need, I think, people don't need to be irrationally concerned with, um, like massive, um, what do you call it? When they just start printing money? Inflation. Yeah, it, uh, yeah, inflation, hyperinflation. There's a word though, isn't there? When they just do the money printing. Uh, quantitative easing. Quantitative easing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So seeing what happened in my lifetime in places like Zimbabwe. Mm hmm. Um, seeing what's happening, you know, and so I remember one of my friends in boarding school coming into school and he'd have like five hundred billion dollar notes and stuff.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Billionaire by age twenty two. He'd just have this money, like he'd just be showing us all these notes and we're just like, what on earth? Like what's, what's going on in your country, man? Um, so yeah, so for me, it was actually a fairly easy sell in terms of the, the value proposition. Mm hmm. So, um, I think it's a, I think it's a really interesting world. I'm, I'm quite the, um, that's, that's probably, that's certainly how I, I came to follow you. Yep. Um, and I follow quite a lot of people in the crypto world and things like that. So I do think that it's, um, a very exciting space. Like I'm, I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm an, I'm an evangelist. Mm hmm. But I'm very like pro Bitcoin, pro crypto. Look to create a song about it, right? You, you obviously know more than, than most, right? In that sense.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Skrt, skrt. Wanna know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right. Crypto.com. They're a crypto platform with one goal. Motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending and card payment.

• 45:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Everything you could want at crypto.com. Go help your boy out. Tell them POMP sent you. Download the app or visit crypto.com. POMP's got you always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy POMP's got you. Everybody got some electricity and wifi. All you gotta do is go to coinmine.com, you buy a coin mine. It's like an Xbox or a Playstation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right. You purchase it, it shows up at your doorstep, you pull it out of the box, you plug it in, connect to your wifi, five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide, and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis.

• 46:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Kind of like how Tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software. Just you're updating your coin mine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right. Go to coinmine.com, tell them POMP sent you, and thank me later. One more word from our sponsor BlockFi. Their new interest account allows you to securely deposit your Bitcoin or Ether at BlockFi and receive 6% annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency. This rate actually compounds, so you receive a 6.2% APY, which is very attractive given the alternatives. So you can actually take your Bitcoin, you can deposit it with BlockFi, and get paid an interest rate of 6% in return. Go check out blockfi.com/pomp, again, blockfi.com/pomp,

• 47:23Anthony Pompliano?

  to sign up and start earning interest on your crypto today. What is, um, what do you kind of feel like in terms of, uh, so you have what I would call retail channels, right? So you're selling music, you're selling, um, uh, t-shirts and gear, et cetera. Do you accept Bitcoin? Have you ever thought about it? Like?

• 47:44Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, teamzubi.com does accept Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum.

• 47:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, nice, alright.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  I don't think, I don't think I've ever actually done a sale in crypto though, but I do accept it.

• 47:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, okay, so now it's gonna be part of my question. What was the thought process? Was it just, hey, I want as many payment options as possible, and this is another one that I think people might use? Or was there some other, like, thought process behind accepting Bitcoin?

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I thought, well, if I'm, you know, telling people about Bitcoin, and I'm invested in it, and I believe in the idea and everything, then it only makes sense for me to accept it. You know, um, and so... Yeah, and also I think it's, you know, making a little bit of a statement as well. In fact, that's something I'll probably start shouting out, shouting about a little bit more because I kind of, until now, I almost forgot that my website does take Bitcoin.

• 48:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, after we release this thing, if you talk about it, I'm sure somebody will give you some Bitcoin.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, because it's not, you know, for the average person who comes across my music and my merch, it's not their usual currency.

• 48:43Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  So I haven't like kind of pushed it too much. But um, yeah, I'm very, I keep a pretty close eye on the space. And I remember, yeah, I just think it's exciting. I mean, I've, I saw, like, I'm thirty-three, so I remember seeing where, you know, I remember when people didn't think that email addresses had value. I remember when people didn't think that, I've been on Facebook since two thousand and four. I remember when people didn't get Facebook, like, people were like, well, what's the point of this thing, right? Because the network effect hadn't really taken place yet. I remember the adoption of mobile phones, let alone smartphones. All these things which at the early stages, I remember the way people talked about them

• 49:27Speaker 02

  is the way a lot of people talk about Bitcoin now, both on the skeptical side.

• 49:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  And also on the like pro.

• 49:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  In favor of the adoption side. And so I'm like, okay, like, there's a lot of really smart, brilliant, interesting people who are talk. I think with anything, if there's a lot of like, smart, interesting, you know, intelligent, trustworthy people who are interested in anything, it's probably worth.

• 50:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Spending more time.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Spending some time on it and at least researching, okay, there's, you know, what's going on there. So that's kind of part of what it was with me.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  So I feel like I'm starting to ramble, so let me pause there. Because I now, I don't know, I don't know what question I'm answering right now.

• 50:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So I want to switch gears, I want to talk about just kind of the cultural implications of a lot of what's going on in mainstream media, politics, etc., right? So one of the aspects of Bitcoin and the crypto world or kind of ethos behind it is this whole idea of like, don't trust, verify, right? And it's this idea that. Our entire lives, I'm thirty one, so we're about the same age. We've grown up being told, trust institutions, right? Whether it's banks, whether it's media organizations, whatever. Those institutions are the ones who are going to not lead us astray, right? We can, we can trust them and that's the way to go. The internet broke that monopoly, right?

• 50:59Anthony Pompliano?

  And the internet basically exposed the corruption and the propaganda and like all this stuff. And that shift is going from the institutions now to verifiable news sources or information sources and also individuals. One of the things that is interesting to me is when you overlay the people who are speaking truth, right? So whether it's the Rogans, the Shapiros, the Kanye's, like anybody who, who kind of fits in that bucket with this idea of don't trust verify. What you get is you get a relationship between the audience and the actual source of information, right? That the individual, not the audience and the institution.

• 51:43Anthony Pompliano?

  So you remove that layer, you're at the forefront of this, right? You've got music with no record label, right? You've got merchandise you're selling directly to people. You've got a book you're selling directly to people. Like people are subscribing directly to you on Twitter and listening to you, et cetera. Like where does this go, right? Cause, cause you're kind of encapsulating now like where we are today. But you've been very opportunistic and very kind of smart and forward thinking about how you've navigated up to this point. In your mind, what are you excited about? And where do we go here as those institutions continue to lose power? And we shift more and more to this individual model?

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Wow. One thing I think that has already happened, whether or not people realize it and is going to happen more is I think everyone is, I feel like everyone now is actually their own media company.

• 52:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I agree with that.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think every.

• 52:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain why you say that, though.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we're living in a time and place where individuals are empowered to create and distribute and sell.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Off the power of themselves. The tools are essentially free to do it. Right? We're recording this podcast right now. We're live streaming it. So we're creating content, distributing it in real time all over the world. Like it's it's basically magic. Like doing something like this, this used to cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Like you'd have to you'd have to go in a studio, pay for studio time, you know, have someone engineering it and do this. And then if you wanted to distribute it, you'd need to, you know, have a record label or distributor which would place, like think of think of music, like not not let's not do podcasts because that's kind of newer. But with music, you'd need trucks traveling all over the country, literally dropping records

• 53:29Speaker 02

  into the shops every week. And then people have to physically go. Now you can just record a song on your laptop or in a studio, home studio, whatever. And you can just distribute it immediately. You can put it up on YouTube, on SoundCloud. If you wanted to get on iTunes, they've got 24 hour turnaround now on like iTunes and Spotify. I could just record a song tomorrow and drop a new single on Monday. And I could shoot I could shoot the music video over the weekend. And like this thing.

• 53:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Smartphone, yep.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Dude, you this isn't a phone. This is like a whole computer.

• 54:03Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a computer, supercomputer.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  The camera here is better than the most expensive camera in the world like 15 years ago.

• 54:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, it's crazy. And here's the part to me is not only the mechanism that you're describing, it's the scale, right? So between you and I, we have almost half a million followers on Twitter.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? The most popular television shows in America get about half a million people to watch it for an hour.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And you and I who were no smarter than anybody else, right? But we built up these followings, we flip.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Well, we might be.

• 54:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I was I was gonna be nice before the uh before the Twitter, the anonymous Twitter trolls come after us. But uh but yeah, actually, we are. No, but but we flip on, you know, live on Twitter. And we both tweet it, right? Whatever. All of a sudden, we actually can garner a larger audience than some of the most popular television shows in America.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's nuts.

• 54:59Anthony Pompliano?

  But with that responsibility and power, or with that power comes great responsibility, right? And it's this idea of you see the negative effects too, because there's other people who have audience, who they just start saying crazy shit, right? And it's just complete misinformation, etc. How do individuals balance those two? How do they? Is it a trust thing? Is it a, I trust Zuby and when Zuby talks, I listen because I followed him for fifteen years and he's built up that trust? Or is there some other mechanism in which makes you the good actor and somebody else the bad actor in the minds of an individual?

• 55:33Speaker 02

  I would certainly, the latter option sounds very frightening. Because who would be that authority who determines what's real and what's fake and what's true and what's false? Like, I think that would be a, that would be a, kind of going back to what you've kind of already got, but probably making the problem worse.

• 55:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Isn't that what the social media platforms are doing today?

• 55:53Speaker 02

  It's what, yeah, but that's a big problem. Right? That's a big problem. They're censoring people, shadow banning people, um, you know, people are seeing political biases leaning in and stuff like that. That's a problem which I think, you know, a lot of people are talking about it and I hope that that does get solved.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  So, I think, I think it's more the former. I think it's coming back down to just that human level interaction of, but just on a bigger scale. That's, that's the beautiful thing with the internet. Um, it's weird with social media because we're, you know, all the stuff we're doing, you're almost not supposed to be able to do. That's what I was saying when I did the meetup last night with people. I was like, this, we're not all meant to be here. You know, like, we're not, like, the way that I was able to set this up and the fact that we're all connected and the

• 56:40Anthony Pompliano?

  It's crazy.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  You know, and I'm there and people there, like, people are there telling me all this stuff about myself and I'm like, I'm almost like, why do you know so much about me? But of course I put it out there. It's like, I followed you on Twitter for a year. It's like, of course you know a lot about me.

• 56:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  But it's odd, because this is our first time meeting face to face and human beings aren't really designed for that, you know? We're supposed to be in these little, small tribes and communities.

• 57:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the weirdest thing somebody said to you on this trip that you've been like, wow, you really, you really know me?

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Um, oh, gosh.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Man, I think.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Maybe like, I don't, I can't think of one specific thing, but I think maybe people just knowing so much about, not just even my views, but like even my background. Especially because I've done all these podcasts and interviews and stuff where people have asked me about growing up in Saudi Arabia or.

• 57:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  This or that. So I've had people just kind of want to go deeper and, oh, like when you were talking to Ben Shapiro, you said such and such. Like, what do you mean by that? And so I'm like, oh, okay, like, so, yeah, so it's cool, but it's, uh, it's, it's weird. I just think that, I don't think that people have really realized just how magical the time we're living in is.

• 57:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  And, and it's gonna get crazier. I mean, now there's four billion people online now. It's predicted that by 2030, it's gonna be seven billion. So the number.

• 58:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Ten years.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, the number of internet users, I mean, think of all the people in, uh, uh, places in Africa, South America, Asia, who don't yet have full internet access, but will within the next 10 years. This, what's happened in the, in the Western world in the last 10 years, it's like that's gonna happen again.

• 58:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  In even more populous places. And I don't think people are even kind of aware, let alone, let alone ready for that. Um, so the world's gonna keep getting smaller. People are gonna keep getting more and more connected. And I think that the opportunity that will come with that is tremendous.

• 58:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  I think some of the challenges and risks and dangers, both on an individual level and on a sort of col- collective, community level have some concerns. I mean, we've already seen that in the past 12 years. You're seeing things like anxiety and depression, even suicide rising as social media use rises. People feeling more lonely, all that kind of stuff. So it's, um, it's just a, it's a tool. It's a tool, but you know, this thing can be a, a weapon of mass destruction in there.

• 59:04Anthony Pompliano?

  How, how do you deal with like the digital addiction stuff? Right? C- cuz, cuz you have a, a very large engaged audience, right? And, um, one of the things I think about a lot is, uh, if you wanted a hundred percent optimized for mental health, you'd walk away from it all.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  You would, yeah.

• 59:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Absolutely. You'd just be like, I don't even need a computer.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Um. But it's incredibly powerful tool, especially when you're building a business, right? And and you're kind of building this community, etc. How do you balance it?

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Hmm, I think it's about being cognizant and having a level of self-awareness. And knowing that the addiction is a genuine risk. So if I'm having this conversation with you and I'm I'm not having it, but you know, you might have times where you're you're using your phone a lot and you you find yourself like reaching for it or wanting to reach it, or maybe you maybe you checked it two minutes ago and you're checking it again two minutes later. Like what I I'm very self-aware of stuff like that. So I like I fight it. I'll be like, oh, no, let me.

• 1:00:00Anthony Pompliano?

  You got Android or iPhone?

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Android.

• 1:00:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Android?

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So on the iPhone, they have now it'll tell you how many notifications you get, how much time spent.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the data points is pickups.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Oh, OK.

• 1:00:10Anthony Pompliano?

  First time I looked, it was I was picking up my phone eighteen times an hour. I was like, what the fuck am I doing? Right? But but it was great because by measuring it, I became cognizant of it. And then I was like, all right, man, can I go five minutes, right? Can I go ten minutes? And and the pickups went down, but it was it was scary, right? Imagine picking up an object five hundred times a day.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Crazy.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  And it's it's at almost almost everybody at any given moment, their phone is within arms' reach.

• 1:00:38Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure, even when they sleep?

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  So that's one thing I do. I I sleep with my phone in a different room.

• 1:00:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  I sleep with it in a different room and I turn it off.

• 1:00:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So you, before you go to bed, shut it off, leave it.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Shut it off, put it in a different room, so that.

• 1:00:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you go to sleep, wake up, gotta go in the other room.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't I don't even want to risk having it next to me. Now, if I need to wake up in the mid middle of the night and use the bathroom, I don't want to be, oh, maybe I got some new tweet, you know, like.

• 1:01:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Let me not even run that risk. Just just put that away that my brain doesn't.

• 1:01:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I like that.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Think about it, yeah. Um, and also to just to de-screen because you get that, you know, the light, I've got the blue light filter. But even just for your own sleep, just so that you're not staring at a screen and then going straight to bed. It's not very good for your sleep. And then, you know, just all the physical stuff, balancing it with the real world things, meeting friends, family, um, going to the gym, training, exercise, all that.

• 1:01:27Anthony Pompliano?

  We're we're laughing because someone on the live stream just said, I'm trying to put my phone down right now and I can't do it. I need help.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, speaking of Twitter, what's the Twitter strategy?

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  Like, I can't tell everybody.

• 1:01:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Nah, come on, you gotta, you gotta tell a secret. The, the, uh, the, the thing that you've done a great job of is, uh, you get really, really, uh, high engagement on Twitter.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Anthony Pompliano?

  What is that strategy that you have? And it may just be, hey, I'm authentic, right? But like, what, what do you kind of think about when you think of Twitter?

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, this is, this is one of the next, next quarter, I'm right, that we're working on a book and course about this.

• 1:01:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, um.

• 1:02:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what is it called? Like, how to be good at Twitter like?

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  I don't know, maybe like Twitter domination or something like that.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Cause you can make money on Twitter too.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my Twitter strategy, well, a lot of it is about authenticity.

• 1:02:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  It's about having fun too. Like, if I, if I'm not having fun, I stop. Right? When I'm, when I've stopped having fun, like, I put it away. If it's getting too, it's getting too much. People are just getting too angry too. It's like, ah, just let me, let me leave this for a while.

• 1:02:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  Cause you've got to maintain a sense of humor. That here, that's one thing that also, you were talking about what a lot of different, these people and disparate things have in common. Beyond authenticity and telling the truth, it's having a sense of humor as well.

• 1:02:44Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  It's having a sense of humor. You, we're living in a time where some people are just taking themselves way too darn seriously. Way too seriously. Like, you, you know, you, someone cracks a joke and someone's like, mm, well, you know, it's just like.

• 1:02:54Anthony Pompliano?

  It, it just happened with Bill Gates. Did you see this?

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:02:57Anthony Pompliano?

  So, Bill Gates was on, uh, onstage. Now, let me caveat this whole thing before all the, uh, the trolls come out. Uh, I have not watched it. I've only seen people tweeting about it.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:03:08Anthony Pompliano?

  But from what I gathered from the tweets, uh, this morning, it was, Bill Gates was onstage, he was asked about Elizabeth Warren and, uh, the wealth tax. And he basically was like, look, I've paid ten billion dollars in taxes. If you want me to pay twenty, that's fine.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But if you want me to basically pay ninety percent of my wealth, right? Like, I start doing some math and I'm basically like, you know, how much is left?

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And then supposedly he laughs and he says, just kidding? But of course, that first part of, you know, Bill Gates doesn't want to be taxed, you know, nine percent as well, whatever.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  I'm confused as why he said, just kidding.

• 1:03:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, well, so again, I haven't, I haven't seen the whole thing.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  Okay, I was at a fair concern.

• 1:03:47Anthony Pompliano?

  But, but the, but the whole thing is, you get somebody who, it appears to be, he was joking. So forget whatever the joke was. But people, maybe they take a piece of the, well, right. And it becomes this whole thing and it's controversy, et cetera. And all I could think about when I was reading these tweets was like, people are coming at Bill Gates. The guy who's agreed to give away ninety-nine percent of his wealth.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Dude, no one is immune.

• 1:04:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Who, who has almost, you know, eradicated the globe of polio. We're, we're mad at that guy? Okay.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  It doesn't matter. That's the thing to these people. It does not.

• 1:04:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Like Warren Buffett gave him all the wealth because he said, you're going to be better at doing good for the world than I am. So I hear, take all my money and go do stuff with it.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  Dude, it doesn't matter how much good you do, how much positivity, whatever, you're still gonna, you just cannot appease certain people.

• 1:04:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Crazy.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  And so I don't even try to. That's, that's one of the things like, that's happened to me. Like, that was one switch that went off for me in twenty eighteen. It was like, you know, I'm not even gonna try.

• 1:04:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  You know, like if someone just wants to be angry at me or hate on me or write mean comments or whatever, just, just regardless of what I do. Oh, screw it. Like, okay, I'm not, I'm not even gonna try to win you over because you're just so weirdly entrenched. If you want to have a conversation or you've got a fair criticism or something, happy to listen.

• 1:04:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  If you're just gonna jump in there and just be shouting and angry, I'm like, dude, like whatever, mute. Um, you know, it's just, it's not.

• 1:05:05Anthony Pompliano?

  You're a big muter, but not blocker.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  I don't like blocking. I really like, some people really, really push it to the point where it's like, okay, like, there's, there's, yeah. Yeah, you're just disrupting stuff here, you know. Um, but yeah, mute is better. I'd rather just let people like keep shouting, but I can't hear it.

• 1:05:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, uh, we were talking about Twitter strategy. So, okay. So, so coming back to it. It's, uh, yeah, it's about, it's about having, having fun, being authentic. Um, I like to start dialogues and debate. Sometimes I just put stuff up because I want to see kind of what people debate back and forth. Like I'll put up polls and things like that. Like I had, um, one famous poll I did, which was, um, which one's a greater threat to humanity, um, feminism or climate change? And eighty percent of people voted feminism. But the comments on it were just amazing.

• 1:05:58Anthony Pompliano?

  How did you come up with that? Like, what the fuck went through your head before you tweeted that? Were you just like, look, man, I really want the trolls today?

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  No, no, no. To me, it was actually, see, it sounds like a troll-y question, but I think it's actually. Some people are like, this is a stoop, this is a stoop. I'm like, I genuinely, like, I don't actually think that's a silly question.

• 1:06:21Anthony Pompliano?

  But.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Like, I don't actually think that's like, uh, like, when if, just on one level, it sounds silly. But when people sort of like really, really think about it, especially, you know, people who recognize some of the issues of modern feminism. It's like, that's a fair question. And there were, there were some really good responses to it as well. Some people were like, well, you know, because da, da, da. Other people were like, da, da. And so, I mean, thirty thousand people voted in the poll.

• 1:06:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it.

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  So it went really far, you know, it got like, I just wanted to see the discussion. So I was like, and I didn't put my own opinion.

• 1:06:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  People got angry at me. And I'm like, I was like, hey.

• 1:06:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so this, this is one of the things that, uh, I think Twitter has done a great job of doing, accidentally, is, uh, in society off of Twitter, there are sacred cows. You can't talk about, like, that question, you can't ask anybody that. Like, are you crazy? Like, you're, you're an asshole, right? On Twitter, you actually could ask the question, and the fact that thirty thousand other people wanted to participate and, and discuss it, it's like, hey, you know what? Like, that's not your fault that thirty thousand other people, like, you're talking about something that obviously other people want to talk about. And the thing about polls on Twitter is all anonymous, right? So when you vote, nobody knows who voted for what. And so, yeah, there's some bias, right? So if I ask about crypto stuff, whatever.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  Of course, you know your audience.

• 1:07:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but, but still, it is very, very interesting that Twitter allows for this conversation to happen that you can't.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was amazing. And it was amazing how many women voted for feminism, by the way. That was a.

• 1:07:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so while we're on the topic of Twitter, uh, you're not an American citizen, right? Uh, we, we've got, uh, President Trump, who, uh, has taken Twitter and used it as a tool unlike any president in any country in history. What is your view of him, the Twitter usage, kind of everything in general in terms of the US government versus other countries you've lived in, right? Cause you have, you have this really interesting perspective, right? Saudi Arabia and the UK, those are pretty different. Then compare those two to the US right now, really different. So you kind of have a, an actually like a much more well-rounded view and, and have lived in those environments. What's your take on kind of what's going on, uh, politically and with Trump?

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, it's hilarious.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  It's fantastic.

• 1:08:44Anthony Pompliano?

  That might be the best description ever. It's hilarious.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  It's, it's brilliant.

• 1:08:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Before you elaborate on this, uh, so I was actually in Nigeria, in Lagos, when, uh, Trump, uh, I think it was that he, cause what, November 4th is election, yeah, so it was, uh, on the election night. The next morning in Nigeria, I was sitting in the hotel with my buddy and it was, it was in the papers, right? You know, Trump was, and people were laughing. People were just like, yo, he won, but I couldn't believe it, right? And these weren't Americans, these were Nigerian citizens who were just like, you gotta be kidding me.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  A lot of people in Nigeria like him.

• 1:09:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And, but they loved him. Because he's funny.

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's funny.

• 1:09:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And then I saw in the Ukraine, I don't know if you saw this, a comedian became president.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw it.

• 1:09:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that actually gonna be a political strategy is just get people who are funny? Um, or is it charismatic? And that's always been part of the presidential election?

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's, I think what the, the bigger thing is people who are no, not really sort of in entrenched in that long-term political world can now via the powers of social media and the internet and having large followings can enter that arena and toss their hat in there and actually be legitimate contenders. I mean, if my Twitter keeps going the way it is, I mean, even as it is now, I could probably run to become an MP in the UK.

• 1:10:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you gonna do it?

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  Not now. But there's

• 1:10:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Would you do it?

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  There's people who want me to.

• 1:10:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Would you do it?

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Uh, in the future, maybe sometime, but I've got other goals I wanna achieve first. Like it's not, I don't wanna get entrenched in the politics world right now.

• 1:10:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Between now and a time where you would run for politics, what is Zuby's life look like? Like, what are you optimizing for?

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  So I want to become an internationally known and renowned and successful musician.

• 1:10:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  And author.

• 1:10:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  And podcaster and public speaker.

• 1:10:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Sounds like you can get that shit done by the end of this week.

• 1:10:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Only, only those four, that's it?

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  To begin with.

• 1:10:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think that you have to, uh, will you only be satisfied if you are successful on all four of those? Or?

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  Uh, no, no, no.

• 1:11:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Would you be okay if you just?

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  If I were just like a super global rap star, I mean, that would be pretty cool.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  It's just Kendrick Lamar's doing all right. He hasn't written a book yet, you know, like, um, yeah, so.

• 1:11:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Wait, wait, what two rap artists would you pay to listen to them have a po- a weekly podcast?

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Ooh, oh, wow. Um.

• 1:11:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I know exactly who my two are.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:11:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but you go first.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  Really? Um, is it, do you mean them doing it together or just having their own ones?

• 1:11:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Together.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  Oh, together?

• 1:11:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Together.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. Um, man, I, I haven't, I feel like I'd need to think about this. Who, who are yours?

• 1:11:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Kanye, West and 50 Cent.

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  Kanye 50?

• 1:11:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause Kanye would be saying all kinds of wild shit and 50 would just be keep yelling at the microphone, give me my money by Monday.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, that would be funny.

• 1:11:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And they would just be calling people out, like they would just be absurd.

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Anthony Pompliano?

  The two of those sitting in front of microphones.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's actually a good shout.

• 1:12:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And just to the point where, uh, it's kinda like, uh, what's that guy, uh, uh, Rob De- Deardick or whatever? The, the skateboard guy, he had a show, uh, here in the US called, uh, Ridiculous.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:12:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Or Ridiculousness or something. It was just like, kinda like America's Funniest Home Videos, but you know, like more modern version of it. I feel like those two guys alone would just have like their whole, whole highlight reel of Ridiculousness, right? Walk, hey man, what you wanna talk about today? I don't know Kanye, what, what, I saw you were on, you know, TV and whatever.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, that would be funny.

• 1:12:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And they would just go wild.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that would be funny. Hey, I'm down with that.

• 1:12:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Who, who's the goat?

• 1:12:34Speaker 02

  Ooh, there's no one goat. There's no, there's no single one. There's no single one.

• 1:12:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Who are the top three?

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  Top three?

• 1:12:46Speaker 02

  Jay-Z.

• 1:12:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Agreed.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  Tech nine.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  And Eminem.

• 1:12:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I'll give you two of the three Eminem and Jay-Z.

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:12:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Tech nine is pretty good.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Pretty good.

• 1:13:00Anthony Pompliano?

  But I don't know.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  I I I think he is. He hasn't had, you know, he's the yeah. Tech tech nine is ridiculous, dude.

• 1:13:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  Um, so eh eh man, but it it almost depends to me that like that's for me in my.

• 1:13:15Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fair. That that is your.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:17Anthony Pompliano?

  That's your top three.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that that's that's mine. Yeah, and it's also a factor of that is like my era. Had I been born ten years earlier. My top three might be like, I don't know.

• 1:13:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Biggie.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  Biggie, Rakim and uh. Cool G rap or something, right? You know, and then.

• 1:13:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Not not Destiny's Child?

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  If I were.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  If I were born ten years later, it might be like J. Cole, Kendrick and Drake or something, you know, so eh. You know, people, it depends on people's era as well.

• 1:13:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, before I let you go, because I know you got to uh get going, um aliens. You believer? Not a believer?

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:13:57Anthony Pompliano?

  They're real?

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  You know. For some reason, when you said aliens, I was thinking, I was like, I am an alien here right now.

• 1:14:05Anthony Pompliano?

  I I want to hear something funny is uh in China, so on uh uh WeChat. I interviewed a guy who's an ancient alien researcher.

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:14:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Which is a whole thing, right? Um, but basically, he believes seven hundred and eighty thousand years ago, there's a.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  How do you make money off that?

• 1:14:22Anthony Pompliano?

  There's an alien aircraft that like busted up in the solar system and crashed into earth, whatever. Crazy stuff.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:14:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Somehow, me interviewing an ancient alien researcher got translated in Mandarin onto this very large WeChat channel that Anthony Pompliano interviewed an alien.

• 1:14:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And somebody I know in China said it to me, he said, yo dude, they think you interviewed an alien.

• 1:14:52Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 1:14:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And so now I can say, I actually interviewed a real alien. But alright, so what, believer, non-believer?

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's, I think there's likely to be aliens. I think the probability is higher that there are than isn't, given the vast expanses of a space and the galaxy and the universe.

• 1:15:10Anthony Pompliano?

  So you're more of like a math probability, it's gotta, it's gotta happen?

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it makes sense.

• 1:15:15Anthony Pompliano?

  You think they've visited Earth?

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, some of those people on Twitter, man.

• 1:15:26Anthony Pompliano?

  But my favorite thing, uh, the favorite thing that anyone's ever answered this with is when asked by aliens, they say, uh, what do you mean, we are the aliens?

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:15:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, like basically, uh, cause I, alright, so the way, reason why I asked the question was, uh, one night I was lying in bed, uh, and I turned to my girlfriend, I said, yo, this is gonna be weird, but, uh, why does no one ever talk about alien pets? We always think of it as like one single homogeneous like species.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And they're gonna like come here and they're little like green men or whatever. I'm like, you think they got pets? Like, maybe a little alien, like dog or something?

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And she was like, busy, shut up and go to sleep, right?

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  No, I think they would. When I think of aliens, I, I think of there being different, like a whole ecosystem. Like a whole just different ecosystem. So just, just like, you know, we've got humans and cats and dogs and different types of trees and plants.

• 1:16:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so you think similar.

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd imagine like another planet, but you've just got totally different species of all of those things, almost like, I don't know, like Pokemon kinda thing.

• 1:16:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  Like, it's, it's just a whole nother ecosystem and world.

• 1:16:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  That's, that's how I think of it.

• 1:16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, last question for you. Um, I'm assuming you're familiar with this meme slash the whole truther thing, uh, in the US, Epstein didn't kill himself?

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  Of course he didn't.

• 1:16:40Anthony Pompliano?

  What's your thoughts? You think no way?

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  No way.

• 1:16:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  Like the, that's one of the things where like the conspiracy, the conspiracy theory is far more believable than the actual story.

• 1:16:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I'll give you that.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Like when, like when that thing happened, I mean, that, that was like one of those like rare bipartisan agreements. That was, everyone was like, no, that's fishy.

• 1:17:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Literally on Twitter, there was like congressmen who were like, nah, no way. I remember that, like when the news came out, I literally remember being shocked at the types of people. Like people who would be very reserved, would never tweet any conspiracy theory, whatever. They were immediately like, no fucking way.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  It's too, way too many conveniences, man. Too many conveniences. Oh, the CCTV like all just stopped working and.

• 1:17:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, no, come on. Technical, uh, technical issues, right?

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  On someone that high profile.

• 1:17:35Anthony Pompliano?

  The, uh, I think it's the perfect example of, uh, 50 years ago. Nobody questions anything.

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:43Anthony Pompliano?

  The internet breaks up that monopoly.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, true.

• 1:17:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Like the people on Twitter being like, no fucking way.

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was more shocked by how, how brazen it was. I was like, you guys expect us to believe this?

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  I was like, what? What? Then the story came out, I was like, oh, nothing to see here. It's like, no, no, no, hang on.

• 1:18:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you see the guy who was on, uh, uh, television recently? He had a do, he had a dog and, uh, somebody was interviewing him. And they asked him like a super serious question at the end. He's like, uh, yeah, so what? Just finish up or whatever. And then at the beginning, he just goes, I've seen him kill himself.

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did, I did see that. I did see that.

• 1:18:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I was like, man, it's like Harambe. Remember, remember the gorilla?

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Harambe was funny.

• 1:18:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, Harambe was an inside job.

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was funny. Yeah.

• 1:18:22Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, man. Where, uh, where can people find you, uh, on Twitter, on website?

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Basically, listen, this is my endorsement. I've never endorsed a single fucking thing on this podcast. Go buy the music, go buy the t-shirts, the hats, his book, everything else.

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  Awesome. So, um, I'm zubymusic.com, Z U B Y music.com. And at zuby music on all social media. Definitely follow me on Twitter. I'm also on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook as well, at zuby music.

• 1:18:49Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And the books are on the.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can get the book at teamzuby.com as well as the merchandise. Uh, my book, Strong Advice, Zuby's Guide to Fitness for Everybody. Um, ebook out now, physical doing pre-orders, audiobook pre-orders coming very soon. And, um, yeah, my podcast, Real Talk with Zuby is available on, um, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, et cetera.

• 1:19:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, man, you're basically what NBC, CBS, et cetera, used to be. It's just you now. You're the last hope. So keep doing what you're doing. We appreciate it and we'll have to do this again sometime in the future.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  Appreciate it, appreciate it, man.

• 1:19:26Anthony Pompliano?

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