Anthony Pompliano: Bitcoin
技术与编程音乐与艺术政治与社会历史与文明商业与创业
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bitcoingoingdonmoneyvaluedigitalsaidgolddollartechnologysomebodyputideasstuffultimatelydollarscurrencytermscommunitygot
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🎙️ 完整对话（3003 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Anthony Pompliano, entrepreneur, technology
以下是与企业家、技术专家 Anthony Pompliano 的对话
Lex Fridman (00:04.960)
investor, prolific writer, podcaster, and Twitter user on topics of finance,
投资者、多产作家、播客和金融主题的 Twitter 用户，
Lex Fridman (00:10.480)
cryptocurrency, technology, and economics.
加密货币、技术和经济学。
Lex Fridman (00:13.560)
I highly recommend his popular podcast and daily letter called The Pump
我强烈推荐他的热门播客和每日信件“The Pump”
Lex Fridman (00:19.760)
Podcast and The Pump Letter.
播客和泵信。
Anthony Pompliano (00:22.480)
Quick thank you to our sponsors, Theragun Muscle Recovery Device, Sun Basket Meal
快速感谢我们的赞助商 Theragun 肌肉恢复装置、太阳篮餐
Lex Fridman (00:27.340)
Delivery Service, ExpressVPN, and Indeed Hiring website.
送货服务、ExpressVPN 和 Indeed 招聘网站。
Anthony Pompliano (00:32.040)
Click their links to support this podcast.
单击他们的链接来支持此播客。
Lex Fridman (00:35.200)
As a side note, let me say that I'll be having many conversations in the coming
作为旁注，我要说的是，我将在接下来的时间里进行很多对话
Anthony Pompliano (00:39.600)
months about cryptocurrency with people of all kinds of backgrounds and worldviews.
与各种背景和世界观的人们一起讨论加密货币的几个月。
Lex Fridman (00:44.960)
Those who are proponents of Bitcoin, like Anthony, Nick Carter, Robert
那些比特币的支持者，如安东尼、尼克卡特、罗伯特
Anthony Pompliano (00:50.080)
Breedlove, Alex Glastine, and many others.
布里德洛夫、亚历克斯·格拉斯汀等等。
Lex Fridman (00:53.040)
And those who are proponents of other cryptocurrency technologies, like Vitalik
以及其他加密货币技术的支持者，例如 Vitalik
Anthony Pompliano (00:57.560)
Buterin, Charles Hoskinson, Richard Hart, Sergey Nazarov, Silvia
Buterin、查尔斯·霍斯金森、理查德·哈特、谢尔盖·纳扎罗夫、西尔维娅
Lex Fridman (01:02.360)
Macaulay, and many others as well.
麦考利以及许多其他人。
Anthony Pompliano (01:04.960)
I'm not framing this as a debate.
我并不是将此视为一场辩论。
Lex Fridman (01:07.200)
I'm simply looking to explore exciting ideas in the space of technologies that
我只是想探索技术领域令人兴奋的想法
Anthony Pompliano (01:12.680)
could very well change human civilization and AGI civilization as well.
很可能会改变人类文明和AGI文明。
Lex Fridman (01:18.000)
I appreciate that some communities are a bit more intense in their style
我欣赏一些社区的风格更加强烈
Anthony Pompliano (01:22.200)
of communication and others, but I personally am only interested in open
沟通和其他，但我个人只对开放感兴趣
Lex Fridman (01:26.760)
minded, respectful collaboration in exploring ideas.
Anthony Pompliano (01:31.200)
I personally try to like to approach conversations by considering that I may
Lex Fridman (01:36.640)
be wrong about everything and I'm looking to learn.
Anthony Pompliano (01:41.200)
I won't engage in groupthink, social signaling, outrage mobs, mocking,
Lex Fridman (01:46.560)
and derision. If you do, I understand, it's just not my thing.
Anthony Pompliano (01:51.560)
I send you my love either way and hope to meet you in person or some drinks, some
Lex Fridman (01:56.800)
good laughs, and a good conversation one day.
Anthony Pompliano (02:00.160)
No matter the difference in style or substance, we're all just human after all.
Lex Fridman (02:05.120)
This is an amazing ride we're all on together.
Anthony Pompliano (02:08.360)
Buy the ticket, take the ride, as Hunter S.
Lex Fridman (02:10.680)
Thompson said, whether you pay for that ticket with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or
Anthony Pompliano (02:15.560)
the dollar, gold, seashells, a beer, or just a good old smile.
Lex Fridman (02:21.920)
This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
Lex Fridman (02:24.320)
And here is my conversation with Anthony Pampliano.
Lex Fridman (02:29.480)
You served in the US Army for six years and spent 13 months in Iraq in 2008 and
Anthony Pompliano (02:35.000)
2009. Can you tell the story of why you joined the army and what were some of
Lex Fridman (02:40.080)
the moving difficulties, maybe lasting experiences from the time you served?
Anthony Pompliano (02:43.960)
Sure. I joined when I was 17 years old, needed my parents to basically sign in
Anthony Pompliano (02:50.200)
order to join. And I graduated a semester early from high school and thought I was
Anthony Pompliano (02:55.240)
going to go play football in college and kind of enroll in the spring semester.
Lex Fridman (02:58.200)
And when that didn't happen, basically was working at Chick Fil A and Quiznos.
Lex Fridman (03:02.440)
And I had in my mind, look, this is probably not the path in life that I want.
Lex Fridman (03:07.880)
And so I knew I was going to go to college.
Anthony Pompliano (03:09.200)
I knew I was going to go play football in the fall, but I had this window of time
Lex Fridman (03:12.080)
and so I walked into a recruiting office and just basically was like, I'm assuming
Anthony Pompliano (03:17.000)
you guys need some help.
Anthony Pompliano (03:18.360)
And, uh, you know, they gave me the whole pitch and, uh, you know, give you a signing
Anthony Pompliano (03:22.040)
bonus, you can go jump out of planes and go do all this crazy stuff.
Lex Fridman (03:25.360)
I just said, okay, let's do it.
Anthony Pompliano (03:26.640)
This was, this was close to the 9 11.
Lex Fridman (03:29.400)
This was in 2006, about five years after.
Lex Fridman (03:33.520)
So what impact, I mean, do you remember 9 11?
Lex Fridman (03:36.400)
What impact did that have on your thinking about this?
Lex Fridman (03:38.600)
So I was, uh, in eighth grade, um, if I remember correctly.
Anthony Pompliano (03:42.560)
And, uh, I remember, uh, being in school when it happened and, uh, I walked into a
Anthony Pompliano (03:48.640)
classroom and the entire class, uh, somebody else's class, they were all talking to the
Lex Fridman (03:54.080)
teacher about something.
Anthony Pompliano (03:54.720)
The second that me and a couple other kids walked in and we got real quiet and the
Lex Fridman (03:57.680)
teacher was like, Hey, go back to your like, homeroom.
Lex Fridman (04:00.160)
And so it was just kind of a weird, like what's going on.
Anthony Pompliano (04:02.720)
Uh, and then next thing I know, they called all the students into the cafeteria.
Lex Fridman (04:06.080)
And this is back before, you know, every classroom really had a television in it and,
Lex Fridman (04:10.160)
you know, cable and all that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (04:12.160)
And so when we were there, they basically just said, listen, there's been this, uh,
Lex Fridman (04:14.800)
event that's occurred.
Anthony Pompliano (04:16.160)
All of your parents are going to come pick you guys up and, uh, they'll explain it to
Lex Fridman (04:19.520)
you.
Lex Fridman (04:20.280)
And so to, you know, a kid in eighth grade, you're basically like, what happened?
Lex Fridman (04:25.280)
And so I got home and, uh, and I remember talking to my dad about it and my dad
Anthony Pompliano (04:29.080)
basically gave me, you know, the, uh, the core American kind of talking points.
Anthony Pompliano (04:33.640)
Right. Look, somebody from another country came here and tried to kill Americans and
Anthony Pompliano (04:38.240)
was successful in doing that.
Anthony Pompliano (04:40.000)
Um, and to some extent he just said, and I'm willing to bet, you know, we're going
Anthony Pompliano (04:44.440)
to go back after them.
Anthony Pompliano (04:45.320)
Did that wake you up a little bit to the idea that there's evil out there that, you
Anthony Pompliano (04:48.880)
know, even just the idea of terrorism for many people that was, um, when it hits you
Anthony Pompliano (04:53.520)
on your own land, it's a, it really shakes up your mind in some sense, world war two.
Anthony Pompliano (04:59.600)
That's why world war two was fundamentally different for Americans than it is for the
Lex Fridman (05:04.400)
people like in Russia and England and France and, uh, in Europe in general is
Anthony Pompliano (05:11.680)
there's something about when there's a families, women, children dying on your own
Lex Fridman (05:17.200)
land, that's different.
Lex Fridman (05:19.880)
And that was one of the first times in America where like on your, uh, of course
Anthony Pompliano (05:24.480)
it's Pearl Harbor, but like, this is like in recent history, it's like, they hit us
Anthony Pompliano (05:29.960)
here, that was like a profound idea.
Lex Fridman (05:34.000)
I think America was very, very good at exporting the violence
Anthony Pompliano (05:36.720)
elsewhere for a long time.
Lex Fridman (05:38.240)
And, uh, there was this element of, uh, complacency, but also this element of,
Anthony Pompliano (05:43.160)
uh, um, you know, really just American superiority that doesn't happen here.
Lex Fridman (05:47.440)
Right.
Anthony Pompliano (05:48.000)
And, uh, I think that that woke people up, not only to, uh, you know, to the
Anthony Pompliano (05:52.840)
idea that other places around the world may not like the American ideals, may not
Anthony Pompliano (05:56.920)
like democracy and capitalism and, and that, but also, uh, maybe we aren't as
Lex Fridman (06:02.240)
big, tough and secure as we thought we were.
Anthony Pompliano (06:04.920)
Right.
Lex Fridman (06:05.280)
And so obviously I think you see the kind of the over rotation with a lot of the
Anthony Pompliano (06:08.640)
kind of security theater that came after that of almost psychologically, let's
Lex Fridman (06:12.280)
make our citizens feel like they're safe, even if the things that we're doing
Anthony Pompliano (06:15.880)
don't necessarily, you know, kind of change that apparatus.
Lex Fridman (06:18.840)
Uh, but on top of that, I think it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's
Anthony Pompliano (06:22.760)
I think that it really woke people up to, uh, extremism around the world.
Lex Fridman (06:27.760)
And, uh, I don't know if necessarily there was a change in the extremism as
Anthony Pompliano (06:32.120)
much as it just was an awareness thing, right.
Lex Fridman (06:34.440)
How, how many people, you know, kind of drew a line from, was it 92 or 93 with
Anthony Pompliano (06:39.120)
the world trade center bombing to, you know, deep levels of extremism and hatred
Lex Fridman (06:44.000)
of, uh, kind of the American industrial complex, probably not that many, 2001,
Anthony Pompliano (06:49.360)
a lot of people.
Lex Fridman (06:50.040)
And so I think that was, you know, again, as a, as a young kid, you don't
Anthony Pompliano (06:53.200)
understand a lot of this stuff.
Lex Fridman (06:54.280)
You basically just, Hey, somebody came here and tried to kill Americans.
Lex Fridman (06:58.480)
And so, you know, we should go fight back, right.
Lex Fridman (07:01.280)
Was kind of the, uh, the, the response I think that I had.
Lex Fridman (07:03.800)
What role did that have psychologically for you when you then in 2006 join the
Lex Fridman (07:09.280)
army, I mean, this is a very different joining the army than in the time when
Anthony Pompliano (07:15.480)
like it's more peaceful here, you're essentially facing, I mean, I don't
Lex Fridman (07:20.320)
know if you see it that way, but you know, there is a war on terror.
Lex Fridman (07:23.040)
And I know that people kind of, uh, criticize that whole formulation
Lex Fridman (07:27.400)
framework of thinking, but nevertheless, you are going to Iraq.
Anthony Pompliano (07:31.080)
You are going to Afghanistan, you're going to these places and are
Anthony Pompliano (07:35.000)
fighting these complicated, like, I mean, it's not even clear what you're fighting.
Anthony Pompliano (07:40.520)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (07:41.160)
Well, I think that there's a couple of key pieces, right?
Lex Fridman (07:43.480)
So one, like what the actual most impactful data points, if you were, or
Lex Fridman (07:47.560)
kind of stories for me, uh, was the Pat Tillman story.
Lex Fridman (07:50.160)
So I played football, uh, in high school and it was going to go play in college.
Anthony Pompliano (07:54.000)
Um, and seeing, you know, this NFL player who basically just one day said, Hey, I'm
Anthony Pompliano (07:58.640)
going to go and do this instead, uh, and walk away.
Anthony Pompliano (08:01.880)
I don't know necessarily if it was a, uh, I want to pursue the same story right now.
Lex Fridman (08:06.480)
So he ended up dying.
Lex Fridman (08:07.800)
And so not exactly the, uh, the end result that you want, but I think it
Anthony Pompliano (08:10.760)
was almost like, uh, he made it okay.
Lex Fridman (08:13.560)
If you were on a certain trajectory in life to go take this detour and,
Lex Fridman (08:17.280)
and to go do it.
Lex Fridman (08:18.480)
Um, but the second thing is I was 17.
Anthony Pompliano (08:20.840)
You're pretty stupid when you're 17, you're pretty naive when you're 17.
Lex Fridman (08:23.280)
Right.
Lex Fridman (08:23.920)
And so, uh, I almost, um, kind of backed into the deployment because
Lex Fridman (08:28.560)
I signed up, uh, as a, uh, a reserve member.
Lex Fridman (08:32.040)
And so basically the plan was to sign up for the reserves.
Lex Fridman (08:34.840)
I was going to go to basic training, get all the, you know, kind of education
Lex Fridman (08:37.600)
and qualification, I was going to go to college and then after college,
Lex Fridman (08:41.040)
you know, maybe there's a chance that you will go and serve or do whatever.
Anthony Pompliano (08:45.080)
For me, I ended up getting deployed when I was a junior in college
Lex Fridman (08:48.400)
and we got pulled out of school.
Lex Fridman (08:50.200)
And so at 20 years old, uh, it's not exactly what you thought you were
Lex Fridman (08:54.040)
signing up for, right.
Anthony Pompliano (08:54.960)
Especially to kind of leave school to go do it.
Lex Fridman (08:57.720)
And then on top of that, uh, I probably had an advantage over most people, both
Anthony Pompliano (09:01.760)
on the entry to combat and the exit to, uh, kind of a combat situation, which
Lex Fridman (09:06.880)
that was football.
Lex Fridman (09:08.280)
So I always explain that, um, in hindsight, you're in a male dominated
Lex Fridman (09:13.560)
testosterone driven kind of combative sport where it's us first them.
Anthony Pompliano (09:17.720)
And, and, uh, there's training and, and, uh, you know, injuries and just kind of
Lex Fridman (09:21.520)
all of the things that go into playing a combat sport like football to now they
Anthony Pompliano (09:25.400)
give you guns, but you still have a uniform on still male dominated.
Lex Fridman (09:28.920)
It's just a little bit, you know, more serious in terms of the injuries and,
Anthony Pompliano (09:32.200)
and, uh, potential deaths and things like that, but also on the exit from that
Lex Fridman (09:36.400)
deployment, most guys I was there with, they're going back to being, you know,
Anthony Pompliano (09:40.720)
prison guards, police officers working at the lumber yard, you know, just kind
Lex Fridman (09:45.800)
of every day Americans.
Lex Fridman (09:48.520)
And so I had the fortunate ability to go back into, uh, kind of that combative
Lex Fridman (09:53.320)
environment, go back to play football.
Lex Fridman (09:55.000)
And so it was almost this like deescalation on the way out, uh, where
Lex Fridman (09:58.840)
they take your guns away.
Anthony Pompliano (09:59.600)
We still got a uniform, still male dominated, uh, still combative.
Lex Fridman (10:02.840)
And then eventually you're just a normal citizen.
Lex Fridman (10:04.680)
And so I think that in some weird way, I was, you know, very fortunate
Lex Fridman (10:07.640)
to kind of on the entry and exit, have that experience where other guys did.
Lex Fridman (10:11.600)
So what you were deployed to Iraq, were there any memories, experiences
Lex Fridman (10:17.720)
that changed you or in general, like you're probably a different
Lex Fridman (10:22.160)
man on the other side of it?
Lex Fridman (10:23.680)
How did that time change you?
Lex Fridman (10:25.760)
I think there, there was two main takeaways that I took, right?
Lex Fridman (10:28.360)
So one was, um, not a specific moment, but on multiple occasions, uh, I remember
Anthony Pompliano (10:32.880)
we were driving down the road and I would look and there would be a 10, 12,
Lex Fridman (10:36.880)
14 year old kid.
Lex Fridman (10:38.520)
And if you've never seen somebody who literally has hate and disdain in their
Lex Fridman (10:42.880)
eyes, just not necessarily to you personally, just to the uniform, to what
Anthony Pompliano (10:47.640)
you stand for, it's all this stuff.
Lex Fridman (10:49.840)
When you see it, you see it right.
Lex Fridman (10:51.400)
And I always think of, um, if you've ever, uh, watched the movie, uh, 12 strong and
Lex Fridman (10:56.320)
in it, uh, they've got this Afghan, uh, Afghanistan warlord, and he's talking
Anthony Pompliano (11:00.160)
to a bunch of soldiers and he says, you know, you don't have killer eyes.
Lex Fridman (11:03.280)
You do, you do.
Lex Fridman (11:04.160)
And he's just like, he can just tell, right?
Lex Fridman (11:05.480)
He's, he's seen so many soldiers.
Lex Fridman (11:07.560)
And so I think that that was a, a memory on a number of occasions where I just saw
Lex Fridman (11:12.160)
young kids and I just said, they hate us.
Anthony Pompliano (11:15.560)
Right.
Lex Fridman (11:16.120)
And, and it's not you personally, it's what you stand for.
Lex Fridman (11:19.000)
But the really big event was, um, when you first get to these combat zones, a lot of
Lex Fridman (11:23.560)
times what will happen is, uh, you basically, your unit teams up with a unit
Anthony Pompliano (11:27.920)
that's leaving and there's a handoff and happens over a couple of weeks.
Lex Fridman (11:30.760)
And so you can imagine almost, you know, 1% of our team goes out with 99% of their
Anthony Pompliano (11:34.720)
team, then five, 95, 10, 90, all the way till it's 50, 50.
Lex Fridman (11:38.480)
And then eventually it rotates.
Lex Fridman (11:39.480)
And then it's majority of our team and a small number of their team.
Lex Fridman (11:42.960)
And so what a lot of people will explain is the two most dangerous times in war
Anthony Pompliano (11:46.960)
are actually the first two or three weeks and the last two or three weeks.
Lex Fridman (11:50.640)
When you first get there, you don't know who the people are.
Anthony Pompliano (11:52.480)
You don't know the terrain, you don't know, you know, kind of the local cultures
Lex Fridman (11:55.920)
and, and, uh, who to look out for, what signs, all that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (11:58.920)
And the last two or three weeks is you basically think you survived the
Lex Fridman (12:01.960)
deployment, you're looking forward to going home.
Lex Fridman (12:03.280)
So you become complacent, things like that.
Lex Fridman (12:05.480)
And so we made it through that transition period with no issues.
Anthony Pompliano (12:08.720)
Uh, but the literally the very first mission, uh, that we went out as a team,
Lex Fridman (12:12.960)
ourselves, a hundred percent, um, there was two separate incidents.
Anthony Pompliano (12:17.000)
Uh, one was we were driving in the middle of the night and, uh, what we think was a
Anthony Pompliano (12:20.720)
sniper shot at a truck that I was in, I was standing up outside of it, uh, along
Anthony Pompliano (12:25.600)
with a, uh, another guy.
Lex Fridman (12:27.160)
And that was kind of just a wake up call again of never been shot at before.
Anthony Pompliano (12:31.600)
Right.
Lex Fridman (12:32.200)
And so I'll never forget, uh, you kind of heard this whiz go by and the guy next to
Anthony Pompliano (12:36.880)
me was from a rural Pennsylvania.
Lex Fridman (12:38.680)
And he just said, you know, look, I've never been shot at before either, but
Anthony Pompliano (12:41.240)
I've done a lot of hunting, get the fuck down.
Lex Fridman (12:44.560)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (12:45.680)
And so, uh, we kept driving that night.
Lex Fridman (12:48.040)
Um, and, uh, later on in the night, uh, an IED went off, a guy ran over an IED,
Anthony Pompliano (12:53.720)
uh, who was at the front of the convoy.
Lex Fridman (12:55.720)
And when that IED went off, uh, again, I had never been in a convoy that had been
Anthony Pompliano (13:00.560)
blown up before, but the training kicks in.
Lex Fridman (13:02.840)
And so immediately every single person starts screaming out IED, IED, and they
Anthony Pompliano (13:05.960)
started looking and trying to figure it out.
Lex Fridman (13:07.480)
And you realize the United States military did a fantastic job training us before we
Anthony Pompliano (13:12.320)
went, because in that moment, nobody thought about anything.
Lex Fridman (13:15.440)
You just did what you had been programmed to do.
Anthony Pompliano (13:17.760)
Um, and so ultimately kind of through the end of that event, uh, there was a US
Lex Fridman (13:21.920)
soldier that ended up dying.
Anthony Pompliano (13:22.840)
He was, uh, shot in the head.
Lex Fridman (13:24.400)
And, um, when we got back to the base, uh, kind of after that entire event,
Anthony Pompliano (13:29.680)
I think it just hit us.
Lex Fridman (13:31.280)
We are at war.
Lex Fridman (13:32.520)
And if we make mistakes here, that is the cost of, you know, kind of those mistakes.
Lex Fridman (13:37.680)
And this was somebody who I didn't know.
Anthony Pompliano (13:40.120)
Uh, it was somebody who literally showed up, uh, kind of as secondary
Lex Fridman (13:43.120)
support, uh, for our unit and basically, uh, was there to help us.
Anthony Pompliano (13:48.320)
Right.
Lex Fridman (13:48.760)
And so it was one of those weird situations where, uh, you have this emotional connection
Anthony Pompliano (13:53.200)
because it's somebody who, uh, shared an event with you, but you didn't know them.
Lex Fridman (13:57.880)
Right.
Lex Fridman (13:58.120)
And you learn their name later and you understand that they have a family and
Lex Fridman (14:01.200)
they have young kids and all this stuff.
Lex Fridman (14:03.040)
And so again, as a 20 year old kid, you're kind of processing all this and
Anthony Pompliano (14:06.000)
you just realize like the gun I have in my arm, my hands, it's real for a reason.
Anthony Pompliano (14:10.640)
Right.
Lex Fridman (14:11.160)
And we better take this seriously.
Anthony Pompliano (14:13.720)
This is not, you know, let's joking around in kind of the barracks and, you
Anthony Pompliano (14:17.320)
know, all the things that you would expect, you know, guys you're doing in the army.
Lex Fridman (14:20.560)
So I think that was like the moment where I said, Hey, I'm going to learn a lot here.
Lex Fridman (14:24.640)
Uh, and I got to make sure I get home.
Lex Fridman (14:26.440)
And you snap it into the training, but nevertheless, I mean, you're somebody
Lex Fridman (14:30.040)
who thinks philosophically about this world now, right?
Anthony Pompliano (14:32.320)
You're, uh, very intelligent and things deeply about the world.
Lex Fridman (14:37.120)
So looking back, you mentioned hatred in the 14 year old kids eyes, there's death.
Lex Fridman (14:42.960)
So the way you kind of described this whole story is like training kicks in.
Lex Fridman (14:47.800)
This, this shit is serious.
Anthony Pompliano (14:50.080)
Like this is, uh, you know, there's a reason there's a gun in, in your hand.
Lex Fridman (14:54.840)
So there's a strategic element.
Anthony Pompliano (14:56.480)
There's like, you have to get the job done.
Anthony Pompliano (14:58.120)
There's a task at hand, but at the same time, if you zoom out, there's a kid who
Anthony Pompliano (15:03.800)
has hate for you, uh, some of those kids would probably, if they could, would kill
Lex Fridman (15:09.080)
you for the thing you stand for in the uniform.
Lex Fridman (15:12.120)
And then there's bullets flying at you.
Lex Fridman (15:15.800)
And then there's people that some of them you might already care for deeply are dying.
Lex Fridman (15:22.800)
What the hell do you make of that?
Lex Fridman (15:26.120)
Do you think about that?
Lex Fridman (15:27.240)
Does any of that haunt you?
Lex Fridman (15:29.640)
How do you think about the world having witnessed that?
Anthony Pompliano (15:32.760)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (15:33.680)
A lot of times when we would talk about it, we were there.
Anthony Pompliano (15:36.760)
If I was that kid, I would want to kill that person too.
Lex Fridman (15:40.240)
Right.
Anthony Pompliano (15:40.740)
I would have hatred as well.
Lex Fridman (15:42.340)
Right.
Anthony Pompliano (15:42.840)
Imagine if in the United States tomorrow, you and I woke up and there was tanks
Lex Fridman (15:46.940)
rolling down the street from another country and they were basically imposing
Anthony Pompliano (15:51.180)
their rules on us, whether they thought it was the right thing to do or not, the
Anthony Pompliano (15:55.500)
soldiers were there and they were doing this, we would probably feel not so great
Anthony Pompliano (15:59.220)
about it, right.
Lex Fridman (16:00.020)
At kind of a minimum and at a maximum, we'd be really, really pissed off.
Anthony Pompliano (16:03.260)
We would fight back.
Lex Fridman (16:04.540)
And so what you don't understand when you're in the heat of the moment is why
Lex Fridman (16:08.220)
does this person feel this way?
Lex Fridman (16:09.260)
And so what's very weird is, well, what happens if a year ago, US soldiers came
Anthony Pompliano (16:15.500)
through, they got shot at, they returned fire and they killed that kid's uncle.
Lex Fridman (16:20.820)
You'd be pissed off.
Anthony Pompliano (16:21.900)
Right.
Lex Fridman (16:22.700)
And so you just start to understand, like we look at war very black and white.
Anthony Pompliano (16:26.620)
We look at it very much from a clinical perspective.
Lex Fridman (16:29.500)
We're going to go, we're going to go kind of invade somewhere.
Anthony Pompliano (16:32.660)
We are the most dominant military in the world.
Lex Fridman (16:34.900)
We're very good at invading.
Lex Fridman (16:36.180)
And we will crush wherever we invade, but when you're actually on the ground, what
Lex Fridman (16:40.540)
you understand is the humanity of it all.
Anthony Pompliano (16:42.420)
Right.
Lex Fridman (16:42.940)
And so what becomes very interesting is pretty much every veteran I know that
Anthony Pompliano (16:47.340)
comes back, they're some of the largest pacifists in the world.
Lex Fridman (16:50.500)
And I always revert back to Marcus Luttrell, who was a famous Navy SEAL, and
Anthony Pompliano (16:55.500)
there's a movie made about him and his story.
Lex Fridman (16:57.700)
He gave a speech one time that I saw and he basically said, listen, if you're a
Anthony Pompliano (17:01.980)
politician, your job is to be the diplomat, do everything you possibly can, not to
Lex Fridman (17:06.340)
send me and my friends anywhere, because when you send us, we're going to bring
Anthony Pompliano (17:10.220)
hell with us, right.
Lex Fridman (17:12.340)
And understand that is the business that we are in, but every single other person
Anthony Pompliano (17:16.500)
up until we get sent has a job to do to prevent having to send us.
Lex Fridman (17:20.220)
And I think that ultimately that's where you see a lot of kind of this generation
Anthony Pompliano (17:23.620)
that has fought in Iraq and Afghanistan that says, listen, maybe we shouldn't be
Anthony Pompliano (17:28.180)
running around the world being the police, maybe we shouldn't be going and invading
Anthony Pompliano (17:32.100)
all these different countries, because when you actually get to see firsthand
Lex Fridman (17:35.980)
what happens, it's just something that we should avoid at all costs.
Lex Fridman (17:39.820)
But if we have to go, or we have to actually send soldiers somewhere, understand
Lex Fridman (17:44.820)
what happens when that occurs.
Lex Fridman (17:46.620)
And you know, the United States is the best in the world at doing it.
Lex Fridman (17:49.780)
Do you think, I'm thinking about that kid with the hatred.
Lex Fridman (17:53.180)
Do you think there will always be hatred in the world?
Lex Fridman (17:55.740)
Do you think there will always be hatred?
Anthony Pompliano (17:57.220)
In the world, do you think, uh, from another perspective, do you think there'll
Lex Fridman (18:01.340)
be war always, is that a fundamental aspect of human nature or is that
Lex Fridman (18:06.420)
something we can escape?
Lex Fridman (18:08.380)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (18:08.700)
So war, I think has like very negative connotations in terms of bullets and
Lex Fridman (18:12.580)
bombs and death and kind of just very morbid type, um, um, understanding.
Anthony Pompliano (18:19.540)
Conflict on the other hand, I think people look at and say, of course
Lex Fridman (18:22.620)
there will always be conflict, right.
Anthony Pompliano (18:23.820)
You just can't have billions of people all on the same planet without some
Lex Fridman (18:27.900)
level of disagreement, whether that's a disagreement of ideas, disagreement
Anthony Pompliano (18:31.220)
over physical, you know, geography, uh, or something else.
Lex Fridman (18:34.460)
And so I think conflict will always exist.
Lex Fridman (18:37.100)
The question is what form does war take moving forward?
Lex Fridman (18:40.540)
And so in my mind, you know, it's starting to look a lot more clinical,
Lex Fridman (18:44.700)
right?
Lex Fridman (18:45.220)
A lot more drones, a lot less soldiers on the ground, a lot more use of special
Anthony Pompliano (18:49.380)
forces and kind of these small, highly specialized teams rather than kind of big
Lex Fridman (18:52.900)
mechanical armies.
Anthony Pompliano (18:54.140)
Um, and then you get into like the information warfare and kind of cyber
Anthony Pompliano (18:57.700)
warfare and you start to understand that we're at war with a lot of people right
Lex Fridman (19:01.460)
now, right?
Lex Fridman (19:02.420)
Doesn't mean we're necessarily dropping bombs, uh, on their countries.
Anthony Pompliano (19:05.500)
Doesn't necessarily mean we're sending soldiers there, but on a daily basis, we
Lex Fridman (19:09.300)
are engaged in these kind of, you know, cyber battlefields.
Lex Fridman (19:12.260)
And so if that's where war starts to play out, um, it, one changes the tools
Lex Fridman (19:17.300)
and tactics and techniques that, uh, we need to arm our country and other
Anthony Pompliano (19:21.140)
countries will arm themselves with.
Lex Fridman (19:22.420)
But it also changes the way that we think about war, right?
Anthony Pompliano (19:25.540)
It seems, it sounds a lot less worrisome if I say, Hey, we're going to go to war
Lex Fridman (19:30.020)
with a country, but by the way, there's going to be no death.
Lex Fridman (19:33.100)
Right?
Lex Fridman (19:33.500)
Okay.
Anthony Pompliano (19:33.980)
Like that doesn't sound nearly as bad as, Hey, we're going to go send 10,000
Anthony Pompliano (19:36.700)
soldiers and you know, some percentage of them are going to die on the battlefield.
Lex Fridman (19:39.620)
And then we're going to, you know, basically pipe back videos and articles
Lex Fridman (19:43.340)
saying that American soldiers are dying.
Anthony Pompliano (19:45.140)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (19:45.780)
It does seem to be a fundamental difference between the, the Genghis Khan
Anthony Pompliano (19:49.740)
style, like if I would feel differently if somebody like hand to hand with a knife
Lex Fridman (19:58.340)
murdered my family versus cyber security, why I stole all their data, stole all
Anthony Pompliano (1:00:01.780)
to look at is well, if you have a finite supply of something,
Lex Fridman (1:00:05.140)
what ends up happening is people begin to value it more. And so
Anthony Pompliano (1:00:10.260)
in a world where dollars are infinite, and other fiat
Lex Fridman (1:00:13.740)
currencies are infinite, Bitcoin becomes very, very interesting,
Anthony Pompliano (1:00:17.660)
very special, and something that is very aspirational. And so I
Lex Fridman (1:00:21.860)
think that's where you're starting to see people say,
Anthony Pompliano (1:00:23.300)
wait a second, this is something where that finite, secure store
Lex Fridman (1:00:28.260)
of value is essential to wealth generation and preservation over
Anthony Pompliano (1:00:32.580)
a long period of time.
Lex Fridman (1:00:33.980)
And if Sam Harris is right, that free will is an illusion. This
Anthony Pompliano (1:00:37.540)
is really interesting to think about. Maybe time is a kind of
Lex Fridman (1:00:42.460)
blockchain, because you can't change anything. And then the
Anthony Pompliano (1:00:46.540)
physical space time of the universe is a ledger. So maybe
Lex Fridman (1:00:55.060)
it won't be Bitcoin that replaces gold, maybe it'll be
Anthony Pompliano (1:00:58.700)
time, once we crack open that, in fact, the universe is fully
Lex Fridman (1:01:03.100)
deterministic. So maybe that's what like Eric Weinstein is
Anthony Pompliano (1:01:05.900)
afraid of, once you figure out the theories of everything of
Lex Fridman (1:01:09.700)
physics, we'll be able to then start trading, create a market
Anthony Pompliano (1:01:15.220)
out of like the very fabric of reality. And that way break it.
Lex Fridman (1:01:19.780)
Well, if you look at infinite inflationary type currencies,
Anthony Pompliano (1:01:25.380)
you can't do that, right? Because it constantly is losing
Lex Fridman (1:01:27.900)
value. When you look at a finite asset, again, that has the
Anthony Pompliano (1:01:31.780)
provability of the actual finite element to it. Ultimately, the
Lex Fridman (1:01:36.900)
wealth is that marketplace. Yeah. And so, you know, I always
Anthony Pompliano (1:01:42.820)
kind of try to highlight for people, the top 55% of Americans
Lex Fridman (1:01:47.380)
understand something that the bottom 45% don't, they invest,
Anthony Pompliano (1:01:51.940)
right, the bottom 45% consume the top 55% invest. And that's
Lex Fridman (1:01:56.780)
why we have a wealth inequality gap. And it continues to get
Anthony Pompliano (1:01:59.740)
wider and wider and wider is because the people who are
Lex Fridman (1:02:02.620)
holding the devaluing assets, and saving are watching their
Anthony Pompliano (1:02:06.660)
wealth be devalued away. And there's arguments and
Lex Fridman (1:02:09.260)
controversy over how fast that's happening, but it's
Anthony Pompliano (1:02:11.980)
happening. The people who are holding the assets that have any
Lex Fridman (1:02:15.460)
level of scarcity, right, real estate may not be finite, but
Anthony Pompliano (1:02:18.380)
it's scarce, right? Art may not be finite, but it's scarce. Gold
Lex Fridman (1:02:22.660)
may not be finite, but it's scarce. Those assets continue to
Anthony Pompliano (1:02:26.620)
appreciate against the devaluing currency. And so when
Lex Fridman (1:02:30.300)
you then say, No, I have complete finite supply, with
Anthony Pompliano (1:02:35.140)
provability, and this transparency around it, where
Lex Fridman (1:02:38.180)
everyone knows how much is there and what where it's going. And
Anthony Pompliano (1:02:41.940)
now all of a sudden, you and I can transact back and forth that
Lex Fridman (1:02:45.300)
value. And it is a representation of time. Because
Lex Fridman (1:02:48.460)
what I can essentially do is if I gather or acquire more of
Lex Fridman (1:02:51.860)
that wealth, I then can apply leverage to my life. I can use
Anthony Pompliano (1:02:57.500)
machines, humans, or some other resources. And basically now
Lex Fridman (1:03:03.860)
free up my time.
Anthony Pompliano (1:03:05.100)
Yeah, and it's not fun about the way you are trading time.
Lex Fridman (1:03:07.660)
Maybe it's a little bit indirect, but maybe not. So just
Anthony Pompliano (1:03:12.260)
because I brought up Eric and you're on Twitter, I'd love to
Lex Fridman (1:03:15.500)
hear your opinions. I talk to him a lot. He seems to have
Anthony Pompliano (1:03:19.620)
stepped into the beautiful dance of human communication and the
Lex Fridman (1:03:23.780)
social dynamics that is the Bitcoin cryptocurrency
Anthony Pompliano (1:03:26.340)
community. Do you have thoughts on gauge, theoretic concepts,
Lex Fridman (1:03:33.780)
conceptualization of the world, or just Eric in general? He's
Anthony Pompliano (1:03:37.740)
got a lot of love in his heart, and he's got a grace in the way
Lex Fridman (1:03:40.860)
he communicates. But he's also loves to play with ideas and
Anthony Pompliano (1:03:46.660)
seems to have touched a sensitive point with the Bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:03:49.460)
community. Is there anything you could say that's hopeful,
Lex Fridman (1:03:52.900)
inspiring about that whole dynamic that went down?
Lex Fridman (1:03:56.700)
So I don't know all the details. But what I will say is I've
Anthony Pompliano (1:04:00.100)
listened to a number of his podcasts, and him and there's a
Lex Fridman (1:04:03.820)
whole bunch of people like him. I basically put them in the
Anthony Pompliano (1:04:07.340)
bucket of they're an independent thinker who are courageous
Lex Fridman (1:04:10.660)
enough to speak their truth, whatever that may be. They are
Anthony Pompliano (1:04:15.820)
humble enough to revisit their ideas and say, I got this right,
Lex Fridman (1:04:20.780)
I got this wrong information change, I'll change my mind.
Anthony Pompliano (1:04:23.500)
Obviously, a sign of intelligence to be able to do
Lex Fridman (1:04:25.900)
that type of stuff. And I actually think that one of the
Anthony Pompliano (1:04:28.380)
most scarce things in our society are those independent
Lex Fridman (1:04:30.820)
thinkers who are able to do all this. Right? Speaking of
Anthony Pompliano (1:04:33.620)
scarcity. Yeah. And so to me, I put Eric and the whole host of
Lex Fridman (1:04:38.460)
other people kind of, if you look at like the intellectual
Anthony Pompliano (1:04:40.780)
dark web is kind of a label that's been used. They're
Lex Fridman (1:04:44.460)
actually some of the most important people in our society,
Anthony Pompliano (1:04:47.420)
because they're the people who are willing to stand up against
Lex Fridman (1:04:50.020)
the mass kind of thought process. They're willing to talk
Anthony Pompliano (1:04:54.340)
about things that others may think are taboo, right? They're
Lex Fridman (1:04:57.100)
willing to change their mind, which all of a sudden has become
Anthony Pompliano (1:05:00.340)
a bad thing rather than a good thing. And so when I see the
Lex Fridman (1:05:04.020)
exploration of ideas in public, I actually think that those are
Anthony Pompliano (1:05:08.140)
the people who are most open to the kind of VM it blowback as
Lex Fridman (1:05:12.740)
well. Right? Because that's part of what they're doing is that
Anthony Pompliano (1:05:15.700)
they're eliciting, hey, I'm going to throw an idea into the
Lex Fridman (1:05:18.100)
arena. If it doesn't get attacked, they actually may be
Anthony Pompliano (1:05:20.660)
more nervous than if there is some level of, you know, kind of
Lex Fridman (1:05:23.620)
war of attrition, if you will. And so what I've seen with a
Anthony Pompliano (1:05:26.620)
number of the people who have done this, everyone from some of
Lex Fridman (1:05:29.180)
the best, you know, hedge fund managers and kind of money
Anthony Pompliano (1:05:31.100)
managers in the world, all the way to what I'll consider some
Lex Fridman (1:05:33.260)
of the most intellectual people in the world is they play with
Anthony Pompliano (1:05:37.740)
these ideas. And they play with the ideas and they play with
Lex Fridman (1:05:40.020)
them and they put them and they all arrive at the same
Anthony Pompliano (1:05:42.300)
conclusion. And sometimes it takes a month, sometimes it
Lex Fridman (1:05:45.180)
takes years, but they arrive at this Bitcoin thesis. And what's
Lex Fridman (1:05:49.060)
so interesting about it is it highlights something that many
Lex Fridman (1:05:52.740)
people view as a bug. But I think people in the Bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (1:05:56.140)
community view as a feature, which is that community. And so
Lex Fridman (1:05:59.940)
what ends up happening is when you have something that is as
Anthony Pompliano (1:06:02.940)
ambitious as creating a global reserve currency doesn't mean
Lex Fridman (1:06:07.820)
needs to unseat any of the existing ones, but become the
Anthony Pompliano (1:06:10.060)
global reserve currency of the internet, right, this digital
Lex Fridman (1:06:12.500)
economy, you need shepherds of it. And so just like a
Anthony Pompliano (1:06:16.260)
technology company wants to find those loyal fans that are
Lex Fridman (1:06:19.260)
willing to go out and market and word of mouth and, and kind of
Anthony Pompliano (1:06:22.740)
not only promote it, but also protect it. This technology
Lex Fridman (1:06:27.980)
that is this decentralized thing, which uses a financial
Anthony Pompliano (1:06:31.260)
incentive in order to elicit the buy in, not from a financial
Lex Fridman (1:06:35.460)
perspective, but from a mental energy standpoint, has built one
Anthony Pompliano (1:06:39.940)
of the most rabid, powerful and engaged communities on the
Lex Fridman (1:06:44.500)
internet. And what ends up happening is those people have
Anthony Pompliano (1:06:48.660)
thought more about these ideas, and actually challenged those
Lex Fridman (1:06:52.940)
ideas more than anyone else in the world. And so I've got a lot
Anthony Pompliano (1:06:56.260)
of folks who will just say, there's this guy Marty Bent, who
Lex Fridman (1:06:59.100)
will talk all the time about the Bitcoin critics haven't done
Anthony Pompliano (1:07:02.660)
their homework in a lot of cases. So they show up and
Lex Fridman (1:07:05.260)
sometimes it's super intellectual, lazy arguments,
Anthony Pompliano (1:07:07.620)
sometimes actually very well thought out arguments, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:07:10.180)
on the counter to the Bitcoin thesis. But ultimately, what
Anthony Pompliano (1:07:13.500)
ends up happening is you're talking to somebody who's an
Lex Fridman (1:07:16.180)
expert, they've been thinking about for five, seven, eight, 10
Anthony Pompliano (1:07:18.700)
years, right? They've gone through every simulation you
Lex Fridman (1:07:20.580)
possibly can. And they show up with data, examples, and
Anthony Pompliano (1:07:25.060)
responses. Now, they're not always right. But they've just
Lex Fridman (1:07:27.940)
done the work. And so what I actually like about folks like
Anthony Pompliano (1:07:31.340)
Eric and others is as they're kind of going through this
Lex Fridman (1:07:33.460)
journey, they're incredibly smart, right? And they provide,
Anthony Pompliano (1:07:37.340)
or they apply a lot of intellectual rigor to some of
Lex Fridman (1:07:41.060)
these arguments. And so what it does is what does it do? It's a
Anthony Pompliano (1:07:43.540)
marketplace. It keeps people honest. Let me sort of make a
Lex Fridman (1:07:48.060)
few comments. It's kind of interesting. So you're exactly
Anthony Pompliano (1:07:50.540)
right. Maybe the blowback is part of the mechanism that
Lex Fridman (1:07:54.940)
actually develops these ideas and so on. I do want to kind of
Anthony Pompliano (1:07:57.660)
speak to a little bit of the toxicity that I've experienced
Lex Fridman (1:08:01.540)
in the Bitcoin community. I kind of see it, the Bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (1:08:04.340)
community, I think you paint a really nice picture, which I
Lex Fridman (1:08:06.940)
kind of see it as an immune system that protects against
Anthony Pompliano (1:08:10.540)
sort of the viruses that are bad ideas. That said, the immune
Lex Fridman (1:08:17.140)
system can destroy a body, right? And the thing you
Anthony Pompliano (1:08:21.900)
mentioned about Eric and maybe about myself, and in general,
Lex Fridman (1:08:25.780)
just people exploring ideas, is there is a Dunning Kruger
Anthony Pompliano (1:08:29.940)
effect, which is when you first start exploring ideas deeply,
Lex Fridman (1:08:34.540)
you have an overblown level of confidence about like how much
Anthony Pompliano (1:08:39.420)
you understand. And that's actually the process about
Lex Fridman (1:08:42.020)
learning, then you realize you don't understand much. What
Anthony Pompliano (1:08:44.380)
I've noticed with the Bitcoin community is they're not as
Lex Fridman (1:08:49.140)
patient with the basics of the Dunning Kruger effect. Like if
Anthony Pompliano (1:08:52.780)
I step in and make declarative statements about Bitcoin, like
Lex Fridman (1:08:58.500)
I, you know, I read a long time ago, the white paper, like at
Anthony Pompliano (1:09:03.940)
the cursory level, I felt that I understand the technology,
Lex Fridman (1:09:08.980)
this is basic intuitions. You know, I didn't think about the
Anthony Pompliano (1:09:11.620)
social dynamics. I didn't think about any like financial
Lex Fridman (1:09:14.260)
implications and a lot of the deep, actually the ongoing
Anthony Pompliano (1:09:17.620)
innovations and all that kind of stuff. But I thought I
Lex Fridman (1:09:20.100)
understood that technology. And so I step in and make
Anthony Pompliano (1:09:22.260)
declarative statements. I think those are the first time you
Lex Fridman (1:09:25.540)
say, okay, what's the role of Bitcoin in the world? You start
Anthony Pompliano (1:09:28.100)
thinking about it deeply. And then you make statements. The
Lex Fridman (1:09:31.860)
toxicity that you get in those first few statements is really
Anthony Pompliano (1:09:36.020)
off putting to me. I'm somebody that tries to communicate love
Lex Fridman (1:09:38.900)
and live that with everything I do. And there is a level of
Anthony Pompliano (1:09:44.900)
disrespect that I've experienced, not directly just
Lex Fridman (1:09:48.020)
observing others, people have been mostly kind to me. And I
Anthony Pompliano (1:09:51.300)
appreciate that. But if you're going to criticize me about my
Lex Fridman (1:09:55.940)
exploration of ideas in Bitcoin, you have to also
Anthony Pompliano (1:09:59.540)
acknowledge that I'm a human being that got like a PhD in
Lex Fridman (1:10:02.740)
stuff. Like I did some hard shit that it could be in farming or
Anthony Pompliano (1:10:06.900)
it could be in whatever. Like I've lived life and I've
Lex Fridman (1:10:09.780)
really thought deeply and I really care. Like I know a lot
Anthony Pompliano (1:10:12.500)
of shit. And it's possible that I actually have a lot of ideas
Lex Fridman (1:10:17.540)
that you can learn from. Now, if it's agriculture, fine. Or if
Anthony Pompliano (1:10:22.100)
it's artificial intelligence, fine. Like I know what I'm
Lex Fridman (1:10:25.060)
talking about, about certain things. And I could be wrong
Anthony Pompliano (1:10:27.780)
about a lot of things. And there's like an exchange of
Lex Fridman (1:10:29.940)
ideas that makes that mechanism that you talked about more
Anthony Pompliano (1:10:35.620)
efficient. Sometimes when the blowback is too strong too
Lex Fridman (1:10:38.660)
early on, the development of ideas is just inefficient. And
Anthony Pompliano (1:10:42.660)
I'm not sure if there's a, you know, the way it was explained
Lex Fridman (1:10:46.900)
to me is that for so long, that community was like bombarded
Anthony Pompliano (1:10:53.940)
with just like bad ideas, like criticisms. They're just overly
Lex Fridman (1:10:58.100)
sensitive now to bullshit. They're like triggered by
Anthony Pompliano (1:11:03.860)
statements. They've heard it all before and they're like,
Lex Fridman (1:11:07.060)
oh, there they go again with the same old arguments. But
Anthony Pompliano (1:11:10.500)
that doesn't mean that you have to sort of, I guess, develop
Lex Fridman (1:11:14.660)
patience and so on. Especially when you feel like in my case
Anthony Pompliano (1:11:18.420)
that the person is coming from a good place, right? I don't
Lex Fridman (1:11:20.820)
know if there's something you could say that's positive about
Anthony Pompliano (1:11:23.940)
the future of this kind of overcoming this toxicity.
Lex Fridman (1:11:26.500)
I think there's a couple of trends that are all kind of
Anthony Pompliano (1:11:29.300)
coalescing here in these types of experiences. So one is when
Lex Fridman (1:11:32.580)
you look at a community, there's always a spectrum in
Anthony Pompliano (1:11:35.860)
terms of there's some people who over index on kindness and
Lex Fridman (1:11:39.460)
stupidity. And there's some people who over index on
Anthony Pompliano (1:11:41.700)
intelligence and basically just being an asshole. And then you
Lex Fridman (1:11:45.300)
get everyone in between. And so naturally, as we know, the
Anthony Pompliano (1:11:48.740)
extremist ends of any community end up being the loudest
Lex Fridman (1:11:52.740)
usually. The second thing is there is from the outsider
Anthony Pompliano (1:11:58.820)
view, like at the beginning of the exploration of ideas, it's
Lex Fridman (1:12:02.580)
very much a learning process. I don't know if I understand
Anthony Pompliano (1:12:06.740)
this or not, but here's ideas A, B, and C. From the internal
Lex Fridman (1:12:11.140)
perspective, there's a trillion dollars of value at stake and
Anthony Pompliano (1:12:14.660)
we must protect it with our lives. The truth is probably
Lex Fridman (1:12:18.500)
somewhere in between there. And again, the world's not black
Lex Fridman (1:12:21.460)
and white. There's this kind of more gray area that I think
Lex Fridman (1:12:24.260)
actually is where most people exist. The other thing that's
Anthony Pompliano (1:12:28.020)
at play here is I think the Bitcoin community understands
Lex Fridman (1:12:32.500)
the internet and internet culture and narratives better
Anthony Pompliano (1:12:35.940)
than almost anyone. And so you see this with kind of the just
Lex Fridman (1:12:39.540)
complete destruction of narratives with memes and just
Anthony Pompliano (1:12:44.500)
the visceral reaction and the use of things like Reddit and
Lex Fridman (1:12:48.020)
Twitter and YouTube, podcasts, just areas where I think a lot
Anthony Pompliano (1:12:53.140)
about if you are an upstart and you are going to go challenge
Lex Fridman (1:12:58.580)
the most well respected elite kind of establishment
Anthony Pompliano (1:13:03.700)
institutions in the world, if you walk in in a suit and tie
Lex Fridman (1:13:07.940)
and you say, I'm here to debate you with ideas, you're going to
Anthony Pompliano (1:13:12.260)
get your clock cleaned because they're going to trot out their
Lex Fridman (1:13:15.780)
lawyers, their regulators, their lobbyists, right? Like all this
Anthony Pompliano (1:13:18.900)
stuff. If you instead say, I'm going to meme you to death on
Lex Fridman (1:13:23.060)
the internet and I'm going to control the public narrative.
Anthony Pompliano (1:13:26.020)
You've shifted the power. The asymmetry of power is more
Lex Fridman (1:13:29.220)
symmetrical now. It's the ultimate insurgency, right? If
Anthony Pompliano (1:13:32.660)
you bring it back to the the conflict. Yes. And so when you
Lex Fridman (1:13:36.180)
think about this, you have to lean into the advantage that
Anthony Pompliano (1:13:39.460)
you have. And so what ends up happening is you and I would
Lex Fridman (1:13:44.900)
absolutely lose it if we saw JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs or the
Anthony Pompliano (1:13:48.660)
Federal Reserve start tweeting memes. Yeah, right. It it would
Lex Fridman (1:13:52.420)
almost the the validation that would give to the medium and
Anthony Pompliano (1:13:56.180)
the even playing field that it would provide would pull these
Lex Fridman (1:14:01.380)
establishments down to the level of what is this upstart?
Lex Fridman (1:14:06.020)
But now what you're starting to see is that the Bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:14:08.660)
community, even though there's some level of toxicity at
Anthony Pompliano (1:14:13.300)
times, even though there's this visceral reaction, sometimes
Lex Fridman (1:14:16.820)
there's even what I would call bullying or or or kind of
Anthony Pompliano (1:14:21.460)
outward projection of things, right? Even though it may be a
Lex Fridman (1:14:23.780)
small percentage, it'll happen every once in a while. What
Anthony Pompliano (1:14:26.980)
they do understand, though, is that these establishments are
Lex Fridman (1:14:30.100)
made up of humans. And what you can actually do, one of the
Anthony Pompliano (1:14:33.300)
best ways to pick apart an institution is to recruit from
Lex Fridman (1:14:37.460)
inside of them one by one. Yes. And so what you're starting
Anthony Pompliano (1:14:41.220)
to see now is I mean, I get the messages on Twitter and
Lex Fridman (1:14:44.420)
LinkedIn all the time. Hey, I'm a banker by trade, but I'm a
Anthony Pompliano (1:14:47.940)
bitcoiner at heart, right? And so what you're doing is you're
Lex Fridman (1:14:51.620)
essentially infiltrating the organizations, not in in
Anthony Pompliano (1:14:55.300)
physical, you know, population. Yeah. But with the ideas and
Lex Fridman (1:15:00.500)
with the philosophies, banker in the streets, bitcoiner in the
Anthony Pompliano (1:15:04.260)
sheets. Yeah. Okay. I like it. With that said, in terms of
Lex Fridman (1:15:10.100)
shitposting and memes, I gotta say like bring it on because I
Anthony Pompliano (1:15:17.940)
believe in terms of asymmetry of power, I believe in that
Lex Fridman (1:15:22.100)
love will save the world, not memes. Or at least good vibe
Anthony Pompliano (1:15:28.020)
memes as opposed to shitposting. It's an interesting
Lex Fridman (1:15:31.380)
battleground, though. It's an interesting battleground to
Anthony Pompliano (1:15:34.100)
think about. The other thing I would say, too, is one of the
Lex Fridman (1:15:37.300)
elements that's always kind of funny to me is how much of the
Anthony Pompliano (1:15:42.020)
entertainment is love, right? So, when you start to think
Lex Fridman (1:15:45.620)
about how many of the memes that are posted, for example,
Anthony Pompliano (1:15:48.340)
are for outsiders versus insiders. Yes. Laser eyes,
Lex Fridman (1:15:52.340)
right? Which seems absolutely ridiculous, elementary, and
Anthony Pompliano (1:15:56.260)
frankly, beneath anyone in any level of power or influence in
Lex Fridman (1:16:00.500)
the world somehow has congressmen and senators who
Anthony Pompliano (1:16:03.700)
have done it. Yeah. They're not trying to convince their
Lex Fridman (1:16:07.540)
colleagues in elected positions to become bitcoiners. Yeah.
Anthony Pompliano (1:16:11.380)
They're speaking directly internally to the Bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:16:13.540)
community. Yeah, there's some sense in which, yes, memes is
Anthony Pompliano (1:16:17.140)
love. Even I keep hearing Bitcoin is love. They're trying
Lex Fridman (1:16:21.380)
to convert me. The one that you have to laugh at, right?
Anthony Pompliano (1:16:26.340)
Probably my favorite one out of all of it is I've seen on
Lex Fridman (1:16:28.260)
multiple occasions, you know, Mark Cuban a couple of years
Anthony Pompliano (1:16:31.940)
ago, Kevin O Leary, whoever, you know, wealthy people,
Lex Fridman (1:16:35.140)
billionaires, etcetera, and you have people on anonymous
Anthony Pompliano (1:16:38.100)
accounts who who knows who they are telling them have fun
Lex Fridman (1:16:40.500)
staying poor, right? It's just, you know, it's just, again,
Anthony Pompliano (1:16:45.460)
part of a community and I think it's a feature, not a bug.
Lex Fridman (1:16:48.660)
There's bad aspects to it at times but I do think it's a net
Anthony Pompliano (1:16:52.260)
positive. Yeah, just like the immune system. It does a lot of
Lex Fridman (1:16:56.100)
crappy stuff but overall, it's a major net positive. Maybe
Anthony Pompliano (1:17:01.460)
this is a bit of a personal question for me. It just added
Lex Fridman (1:17:03.860)
my own curiosity but I've talked to Ray Dalio a few
Anthony Pompliano (1:17:07.540)
times. So, Ray Dalio, I think was one of those people that
Lex Fridman (1:17:10.900)
took that journey, the Bitcoin journey. Do you have thoughts
Anthony Pompliano (1:17:16.260)
about him specifically about that whole world and about the
Lex Fridman (1:17:20.100)
journey maybe of others that are going through the same
Anthony Pompliano (1:17:22.660)
process because Ray is, at least from my perspective, I'm a
Lex Fridman (1:17:26.740)
bit of an outsider. He's one of the most insightful and deep
Anthony Pompliano (1:17:33.620)
thinkers about investment, about finance, about economics
Lex Fridman (1:17:37.060)
in general. Actually, about life. So, it's interesting to
Anthony Pompliano (1:17:41.620)
see him go on that journey. Do you have something to comment
Lex Fridman (1:17:44.260)
about Ray or just those kinds of people in general? So, if we
Anthony Pompliano (1:17:47.460)
look at what I'll just consider the legends of Wall Street in
Lex Fridman (1:17:50.420)
general. Yeah. Right? There's no denying that they're
Anthony Pompliano (1:17:53.060)
incredibly intelligent. There's no denying that actually,
Lex Fridman (1:17:56.180)
especially in the hedge fund world, they're some of the most
Anthony Pompliano (1:17:58.100)
open minded people in terms of they're willing to change their
Lex Fridman (1:18:01.540)
mind when they get new information. There's no doubt
Anthony Pompliano (1:18:04.340)
that they are historians in the sense of having studied
Lex Fridman (1:18:07.540)
financial markets and cycles over time. And also, one of the
Anthony Pompliano (1:18:11.700)
things that I really respect about all those guys is almost
Lex Fridman (1:18:14.340)
all of them are willing to put ideas out via various writings
Lex Fridman (1:18:18.100)
that they do and accept the public criticism, right?
Lex Fridman (1:18:21.140)
Whether it's Howard Marks, Ray or others, they will put this
Anthony Pompliano (1:18:23.940)
stuff out in public. And sure, there's a lot of people who are
Lex Fridman (1:18:28.180)
supportive and kind of are part of a fan base, if you will. But
Anthony Pompliano (1:18:31.860)
there's a lot of people who also think that sometimes they
Lex Fridman (1:18:33.540)
say stupid things. And so, putting that out takes kind of
Anthony Pompliano (1:18:36.100)
courage, right? I think Ray's actually the most fascinating
Lex Fridman (1:18:40.020)
though out of all of these kind of legends of Wall Street in
Anthony Pompliano (1:18:42.900)
that he understands debt cycles. He understands
Lex Fridman (1:18:46.740)
currencies. He, for a while now, has been all over and
Anthony Pompliano (1:18:51.620)
famously said, you know, cash is trash, investible assets,
Lex Fridman (1:18:55.300)
right? He kind of like just knew all of it. And for a long
Anthony Pompliano (1:18:58.340)
time, Bitcoiners have said, Ray, you understand the Bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:19:00.500)
argument, you're just missing the last part, which is Bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (1:19:02.740)
is the solution, right? And so, he was gold and some other
Lex Fridman (1:19:05.940)
ideas. But I think that he's a perfect example of when you are
Anthony Pompliano (1:19:10.340)
part of the establishment, people view you in a very
Lex Fridman (1:19:14.900)
static way as the leader of a part of establishment. But
Anthony Pompliano (1:19:18.900)
whether it's Bill Gates, Ray Dalio, or somebody else, each
Lex Fridman (1:19:22.340)
one of these people were innovators and challengers to a
Anthony Pompliano (1:19:24.980)
system. They were upstarts at one point. And so, it's kind of
Lex Fridman (1:19:27.700)
this idea that like if you live long enough, you eventually
Anthony Pompliano (1:19:29.780)
become the man, right? And so, you know, Gates is a good
Lex Fridman (1:19:33.300)
example, right? Warren Buffett is a good example. Ray Dalio is
Anthony Pompliano (1:19:36.660)
a good example, etc. And so, you have to give credit, I think,
Lex Fridman (1:19:39.780)
to Dalio in the sense of he kept an open mind about all of
Anthony Pompliano (1:19:43.700)
this and more so than many of his peers has continued to do
Lex Fridman (1:19:48.100)
the work and come around to this idea. And now, I don't
Anthony Pompliano (1:19:51.460)
want to know if I wanted to say that he's a Bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:19:53.460)
proponent as much as he believes it is one of a portion
Anthony Pompliano (1:19:58.100)
of assets that can be a solution. And so, to me, when
Lex Fridman (1:20:01.940)
you start to convince those types of people, when it's
Anthony Pompliano (1:20:04.660)
Paul Tudor Jones, a Stanley Druckenmiller, Ray Dalio,
Lex Fridman (1:20:08.180)
Howard Marks now even writing about it saying, hey, I was
Anthony Pompliano (1:20:11.060)
anti Bitcoin and put a ton of intellectual rigor into it.
Lex Fridman (1:20:14.420)
But thank God my son bought a bunch for our family, right?
Lex Fridman (1:20:17.460)
And kind of we've had exposure to it. I think what it does is
Lex Fridman (1:20:21.780)
more than anything, it's not going to convince somebody to
Anthony Pompliano (1:20:24.020)
go and take it seriously or go ahead and make an allocation.
Lex Fridman (1:20:29.620)
It reduces career risk. And so, if all of a sudden when Paul
Anthony Pompliano (1:20:33.540)
Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller come out and
Lex Fridman (1:20:35.380)
say, hey, I own Bitcoin and here's why, every other
Anthony Pompliano (1:20:38.820)
investor on Wall Street now can say to an investment
Lex Fridman (1:20:41.140)
committee, well, it's good enough for Paul Tudor Jones,
Anthony Pompliano (1:20:44.260)
it's good enough for Stanley Druckenmiller. And so, I think
Lex Fridman (1:20:46.740)
that it's very interesting because Ray doesn't just
Anthony Pompliano (1:20:49.620)
represent Wall Street. I think Ray in some weird way
Lex Fridman (1:20:53.700)
represents this like macro economic investor. And so,
Anthony Pompliano (1:20:57.700)
some of those are in hedge funds and some of those people
Lex Fridman (1:21:00.180)
would be like CIOs at organizations. Some of them
Anthony Pompliano (1:21:02.740)
would be at corporations and some of them are just kind of
Lex Fridman (1:21:05.060)
retail investors. And so, you can see this kind of inflection
Anthony Pompliano (1:21:09.620)
point throughout the adoption of Bitcoin, right? There was
Lex Fridman (1:21:12.980)
infrastructure that got built. Okay, that kind of led to more
Anthony Pompliano (1:21:15.620)
adoption. There was certain individuals, right? Usually
Lex Fridman (1:21:18.980)
they were kind of technology oriented, entrepreneurial
Anthony Pompliano (1:21:22.740)
billionaires. They would buy it and come out and say it. Okay,
Lex Fridman (1:21:25.220)
that led to inflection points. You started to have some of
Anthony Pompliano (1:21:28.820)
these kind of Wall Street legends come out, sort of
Lex Fridman (1:21:32.500)
financial institutions started. And now, you're seeing
Anthony Pompliano (1:21:35.380)
corporations start to do it, right? Eventually, there's
Lex Fridman (1:21:38.100)
going to be a central bank that does it. And so, you kind of
Anthony Pompliano (1:21:40.420)
walk through that line and what you understand is like, it's
Lex Fridman (1:21:43.140)
the same thing every time. It's just somebody new, right? That
Anthony Pompliano (1:21:46.900)
path, right? That Bitcoiners journey, if you will. And I
Lex Fridman (1:21:50.980)
think that that is almost the beauty of it is if you
Anthony Pompliano (1:21:55.460)
short circuit the journey, it's almost like somebody doesn't
Lex Fridman (1:21:58.340)
appreciate it, right? If you take, let's say, somebody who's
Anthony Pompliano (1:22:01.700)
a young kid and you just give them a bunch of money and they
Lex Fridman (1:22:03.700)
didn't have to work hard for it. They don't really
Anthony Pompliano (1:22:05.940)
appreciate it. Well, and Ray actually has a book
Lex Fridman (1:22:09.940)
principles, right? And he talks about the hero's journey. So,
Anthony Pompliano (1:22:12.900)
he's like living it in some sense in terms of, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:22:16.740)
thinking about digital currency in general, like digital
Anthony Pompliano (1:22:20.420)
finance. It's one of the big transitions, transformations of
Lex Fridman (1:22:26.660)
our world in some sense. It's not just about money. Or you
Anthony Pompliano (1:22:31.060)
could argue that money is everything. I mean, it's like
Lex Fridman (1:22:33.780)
money isn't just the narrow definition of money. Money is
Anthony Pompliano (1:22:37.380)
really everything. And so, where you could argue that sort
Lex Fridman (1:22:40.180)
of cryptocurrency is like the base layer of this
Anthony Pompliano (1:22:44.900)
transformation to the digital space and everything else would
Lex Fridman (1:22:47.540)
just be built on top of it. I use a different word that I
Anthony Pompliano (1:22:52.500)
think is kind of closer to your world, which is it's ultimately
Lex Fridman (1:22:56.020)
automation. And what I mean by that is, you know, before 1970
Anthony Pompliano (1:23:00.900)
or 1980, all the assets were analog. And so, when you have
Lex Fridman (1:23:03.940)
analog assets, physical stock certificates, physical bonds,
Anthony Pompliano (1:23:06.740)
right, physical deed to a home, you have to physically exchange
Lex Fridman (1:23:11.060)
them. When we wanted to increase transactions and
Anthony Pompliano (1:23:16.180)
increase kind of global finance and access, we took those
Lex Fridman (1:23:19.700)
physical assets and we created electronic QCIP assets. So, now
Anthony Pompliano (1:23:22.980)
we have in centralized databases kind of a file, represents the
Lex Fridman (1:23:26.740)
asset that's sitting somewhere in custody. And you and I can
Anthony Pompliano (1:23:29.700)
transact them a little bit easier, but still centralized.
Lex Fridman (1:23:32.020)
There's still some bureaucracy and, you know, maybe it takes
Anthony Pompliano (1:23:34.820)
two days to transact rather than actually mailing it across
Lex Fridman (1:23:37.620)
the world. Now, what we're seeing is a transition from
Anthony Pompliano (1:23:42.500)
those electronic QCIPs to these digital assets. And so, if you
Lex Fridman (1:23:45.780)
look at, again, just let's say money or currency, every
Anthony Pompliano (1:23:49.620)
currency in the world is going to be digital. You're going to
Lex Fridman (1:23:51.620)
have a digital dollar, a digital euro, yen, RMB. You're
Anthony Pompliano (1:23:55.300)
going to have decentralized kind of open source money like
Lex Fridman (1:23:59.460)
Bitcoin. You're also going to have private currencies like
Anthony Pompliano (1:24:02.660)
Facebook's attempt at DiEM and there will be others that will
Lex Fridman (1:24:05.860)
try to do this. And so, when you get everything digital, right,
Lex Fridman (1:24:09.460)
and I think that's the kind of the first step that everyone
Lex Fridman (1:24:11.060)
focuses on, the competition at the technology layer
Anthony Pompliano (1:24:13.940)
essentially goes away. You get some level of feature parity
Lex Fridman (1:24:16.740)
and sure, there's bells and whistles on each kind of
Anthony Pompliano (1:24:18.500)
implementation of a digital currency, but at the end of the
Lex Fridman (1:24:21.140)
day, the technology is relatively the same. And
Anthony Pompliano (1:24:23.620)
ultimately, what it will do is it will facilitate the adoption
Lex Fridman (1:24:26.340)
of digital wallets. So, you have to have a digital wallet
Anthony Pompliano (1:24:29.140)
regardless of what digital currency you have. Same with me,
Lex Fridman (1:24:31.380)
same with everybody else in the world. But what it does do is
Anthony Pompliano (1:24:34.340)
when you kind of push away and reduce the friction of
Lex Fridman (1:24:37.540)
competition at the technology layer, it moves the competition
Anthony Pompliano (1:24:41.460)
to the monetary policy layer. And so, when you get to that
Lex Fridman (1:24:44.900)
layer, now it becomes interesting because all of the
Anthony Pompliano (1:24:47.220)
currencies are the same except for this one right now and maybe
Lex Fridman (1:24:50.500)
there will be others in the future. But for sure, Bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (1:24:53.380)
today and people may try to replicate in a private manner
Lex Fridman (1:24:55.780)
or something, but Bitcoin is kind of the only finite scarce
Anthony Pompliano (1:24:59.140)
digital somebody. And so, when you then have that pretty big
Lex Fridman (1:25:04.180)
difference in that competition at the monetary policy layer,
Anthony Pompliano (1:25:06.820)
it's actually not going to matter where you get paid.
Lex Fridman (1:25:10.020)
Right? And what I mean by that is like you and I both live in
Anthony Pompliano (1:25:12.980)
a single currency environment. I get paid in dollars. I
Lex Fridman (1:25:18.100)
historically have saved in dollars. All of the assets in
Anthony Pompliano (1:25:21.060)
my life are denominated in dollars and I owe my debts in
Lex Fridman (1:25:25.460)
dollars, whether it's taxes or in the private market. And I
Anthony Pompliano (1:25:29.460)
don't have to worry about foreign currencies. I don't
Lex Fridman (1:25:31.300)
exchange anything. The only time I would ever think about
Anthony Pompliano (1:25:33.460)
another currency is if I'm going to another country in
Lex Fridman (1:25:35.540)
their single currency environment. And in order to
Anthony Pompliano (1:25:39.460)
change or exchange my currency, I go to the bank or I go get
Lex Fridman (1:25:43.220)
ripped off at the airport. Right? Those are my two options.
Anthony Pompliano (1:25:46.020)
So, it's high friction to change between currencies. When
Lex Fridman (1:25:49.380)
the competition of technology is kind of innovated away, now
Anthony Pompliano (1:25:54.580)
I can get paid in dollars, these digital dollars, and with
Lex Fridman (1:25:57.140)
a click of a button, switch into any other currency in the
Anthony Pompliano (1:25:59.220)
world. And so, what ultimately happens is value and liquidity
Lex Fridman (1:26:03.220)
is going to coalesce around the best monetary policy. And so,
Anthony Pompliano (1:26:07.460)
you get in this very weird world where even if the United
Lex Fridman (1:26:09.220)
States says, hey, you're going to get paid in dollars, you have
Anthony Pompliano (1:26:11.060)
to pay your taxes in dollars. You're going to start to see
Lex Fridman (1:26:13.380)
people operate in a multi currency environment where they
Anthony Pompliano (1:26:15.860)
say, okay, I got paid in my digital dollar, click a button,
Lex Fridman (1:26:17.860)
I save in Bitcoin. It stays there or grows my purchasing
Anthony Pompliano (1:26:21.380)
power. Oh, I need to pay my taxes. Let me switch back into
Lex Fridman (1:26:23.620)
dollars with click of a button and pay. When you go to a
Anthony Pompliano (1:26:26.820)
multi currency world, it's not just about currency. It's now
Lex Fridman (1:26:30.580)
multi asset world. Because not only is the currency
Anthony Pompliano (1:26:34.660)
digitized, but that same technology is used to digitize
Lex Fridman (1:26:38.340)
stocks, bonds, and commodities as well. And so, today we live
Anthony Pompliano (1:26:42.100)
in a very fragmented financial world where basically I have a
Lex Fridman (1:26:44.580)
brokerage account, I have a bank account, I may have an
Anthony Pompliano (1:26:46.980)
alternative asset account, etc. When I can put all those assets
Lex Fridman (1:26:50.820)
in a single digital wallet, and I can then go from asset to
Anthony Pompliano (1:26:55.140)
asset without having to go back to a single unit of account.
Lex Fridman (1:26:58.180)
Like frictionless going from asset to asset. Yeah. So now
Lex Fridman (1:27:01.860)
what you end up doing is you start to open up the
Lex Fridman (1:27:03.940)
possibility for machine to machine transactions. Yeah. So
Anthony Pompliano (1:27:07.220)
today, if you and I write software code for two machines
Lex Fridman (1:27:10.660)
to transact with each other, they can't transact physical
Anthony Pompliano (1:27:13.940)
currency. And in many cases, they can't actually transact
Lex Fridman (1:27:16.740)
the electronic QCIP currencies or assets either because
Anthony Pompliano (1:27:19.700)
there's too long of a settlement time. So you can't
Lex Fridman (1:27:21.620)
get true automation, right? So the whole idea of the car's
Anthony Pompliano (1:27:24.500)
going to drive over a strip in the road and it's going to
Lex Fridman (1:27:26.740)
pay the toll, right? Well, that can't happen right now
Anthony Pompliano (1:27:29.620)
because literally the transaction won't go through,
Lex Fridman (1:27:31.780)
right? And so I always joke that in an automated world,
Anthony Pompliano (1:27:35.380)
it's like a CD ROM, but we're trying to take cassette tape
Lex Fridman (1:27:38.260)
player assets and put it in the CD ROM. It's just incompatible
Anthony Pompliano (1:27:40.900)
technology. Reference is nobody understands at this point.
Lex Fridman (1:27:44.660)
By the way, you need to update your reference. I probably
Anthony Pompliano (1:27:46.900)
do. It's like taking a CD ROM and trying to put an MP3
Lex Fridman (1:27:48.900)
player into a streaming. But I think that the reason why
Anthony Pompliano (1:27:52.740)
that becomes really interesting is when you start to create
Lex Fridman (1:27:54.900)
these digital assets, now you open up the world of
Anthony Pompliano (1:27:57.860)
possibilities. So when new technology is created, you can
Lex Fridman (1:27:59.940)
do two things. You can either create new things the world's
Anthony Pompliano (1:28:02.420)
never seen before, or you can use it to improve the old
Lex Fridman (1:28:04.980)
world. Most people, because it's the easiest thing to
Anthony Pompliano (1:28:08.180)
think about, want to improve the old world. So an equivalent
Lex Fridman (1:28:11.620)
of this would be when the internet came along, a media
Anthony Pompliano (1:28:14.820)
company that had newspapers would say, hey, we should take
Lex Fridman (1:28:17.300)
a PDF of the newspaper and we should put it on a website. And
Anthony Pompliano (1:28:20.100)
now anyone in the world can go to this website and they can
Lex Fridman (1:28:21.860)
read the newspaper today. That was valuable, but it missed out
Anthony Pompliano (1:28:26.180)
on the ability to change headlines, to test, to put
Lex Fridman (1:28:29.140)
multimedia, to distribute it differently, to do all kinds of
Anthony Pompliano (1:28:32.740)
things that today we understand the internet really empowered.
Lex Fridman (1:28:35.860)
And so what I think we're about to watch happen is we're going
Anthony Pompliano (1:28:38.180)
to digitize the assets. We're going to put them all into
Lex Fridman (1:28:40.660)
these digital wallets. You're going to get automated
Anthony Pompliano (1:28:43.700)
technologies where machines can now transact with each other.
Lex Fridman (1:28:46.420)
And we're going to do simple things like why do we pay
Anthony Pompliano (1:28:50.020)
people once every two weeks? Why don't we just pay them at
Lex Fridman (1:28:53.780)
the end of every day? Or why don't I literally stream
Anthony Pompliano (1:28:56.420)
payments to you on an hour by hour basis based on the work
Lex Fridman (1:28:59.300)
you do? It would solve incredible economic issues in
Anthony Pompliano (1:29:03.460)
our country and in countries around the world. But
Lex Fridman (1:29:05.620)
historically businesses can't do this because of the
Anthony Pompliano (1:29:08.180)
technology problem. They can't keep track of it all. How do
Lex Fridman (1:29:10.580)
they pay everyone every day? How do they pay everyone every
Anthony Pompliano (1:29:12.340)
hour? You just can't do it.
Lex Fridman (1:29:13.780)
Yeah, it's funny. The vision of the future you're painting,
Anthony Pompliano (1:29:18.180)
it's kind of an exciting one. And it almost makes me sad
Lex Fridman (1:29:22.500)
looking into the future when we'll look back at this time.
Anthony Pompliano (1:29:24.980)
It's like how incredibly inefficient financial
Lex Fridman (1:29:30.180)
transactions were. Like the transaction of value of any
Anthony Pompliano (1:29:33.940)
kind. Like how to pay each other. Like there has to be
Lex Fridman (1:29:38.260)
processes. There's like payroll and all this kind of just the
Anthony Pompliano (1:29:43.300)
entirety of the transactions is just like painful. Almost
Lex Fridman (1:29:47.620)
all transactions are painful. And the companies that
Anthony Pompliano (1:29:51.220)
innovate to make the transactions a little bit more
Lex Fridman (1:29:55.540)
frictionless like Amazon with the one click purchase button
Anthony Pompliano (1:29:58.660)
like went out huge. But even that's really painful. It's
Lex Fridman (1:30:02.500)
actually really interesting especially when you start to
Anthony Pompliano (1:30:04.660)
move that into the space of data. There's a lot of people
Lex Fridman (1:30:07.540)
thinking about privacy and data and like can we put, can
Anthony Pompliano (1:30:11.380)
we like convert data into like money so that you can pay for
Lex Fridman (1:30:17.460)
how much you reveal to the companies about your own
Anthony Pompliano (1:30:19.780)
private data that can then be used to assign value to you so
Lex Fridman (1:30:24.340)
you can use the service for free if you hand over the data
Lex Fridman (1:30:27.140)
but there's like explicit transaction going on. So you
Lex Fridman (1:30:30.100)
can empower all those kinds of things that will just like
Anthony Pompliano (1:30:34.660)
fundamentally change our world. That's really, really,
Lex Fridman (1:30:37.220)
really exciting.
Anthony Pompliano (1:30:37.860)
One of the most interesting things to me is I invested in
Lex Fridman (1:30:41.300)
a company called Bridget and what they told me was they said
Anthony Pompliano (1:30:43.460)
$8 billion was paid to the top four banks last year on
Lex Fridman (1:30:49.140)
overdraft fees. So literally they took $8 billion from
Lex Fridman (1:30:52.980)
people who didn't have money in their bank account, right?
Lex Fridman (1:30:55.940)
And so when you dig into why is that a lot of times it's not
Anthony Pompliano (1:30:58.420)
that the people don't have the money. It's actually a
Lex Fridman (1:31:01.060)
mismatch of the payments. So what ends up happening is you
Anthony Pompliano (1:31:04.500)
get paid on the 1st and the 15th but on the 12th your
Lex Fridman (1:31:06.820)
Netflix bill hits, on the 13th you went grocery shopping, and
Anthony Pompliano (1:31:10.500)
on the 14th your car payments hit, you overdraft, and then
Lex Fridman (1:31:13.460)
on the 15th you actually get the check and then you're able
Anthony Pompliano (1:31:15.140)
to pay not only the overdraft but for the expenses that you
Lex Fridman (1:31:18.020)
have. And so something as simple as just getting paid at
Anthony Pompliano (1:31:21.060)
the end of every day immediately would eliminate
Lex Fridman (1:31:24.420)
some big percentage of those $8 billion of value that flows
Anthony Pompliano (1:31:27.700)
to large institutions on overdraft fees.
Lex Fridman (1:31:30.260)
Yeah and also I mean this whole process with overdraft fees
Lex Fridman (1:31:34.100)
and just many of the financial transactions we have to live
Lex Fridman (1:31:37.060)
through today forces many of us to be like accountants, like
Anthony Pompliano (1:31:42.740)
to understand the different mechanism of financial like
Lex Fridman (1:31:46.820)
the movement of money as opposed to you which is what we
Anthony Pompliano (1:31:50.100)
want to do as human beings operating in high layers of
Lex Fridman (1:31:53.860)
like providing services for others, of like following your
Anthony Pompliano (1:31:58.340)
passions and like working for others, like doing cool shit
Lex Fridman (1:32:01.860)
or you know basically providing value, exchanging value
Anthony Pompliano (1:32:07.060)
in the world and not thinking about the money. The money
Lex Fridman (1:32:09.700)
takes care of itself and then you see the results of it.
Lex Fridman (1:32:12.420)
So you're able to think in terms of money but not have to
Lex Fridman (1:32:19.460)
know how like the accounting works.
Anthony Pompliano (1:32:22.980)
Automation simply frees humans up to do more creative
Lex Fridman (1:32:26.340)
work.
Anthony Pompliano (1:32:26.740)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:32:27.300)
Right?
Anthony Pompliano (1:32:27.460)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:32:28.340)
Like that's it.
Anthony Pompliano (1:32:29.380)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:32:29.700)
And what we
Anthony Pompliano (1:32:30.340)
Which is why you use the term automation which I think is
Lex Fridman (1:32:34.180)
kind of brilliant reframing of all of this.
Anthony Pompliano (1:32:36.740)
Yeah because ultimately digital technologies are merely
Lex Fridman (1:32:40.100)
the conduit to ushers into that world and I think the most
Anthony Pompliano (1:32:44.980)
fascinating part of this entire industry is people who are
Lex Fridman (1:32:50.020)
trying to figure out now that we're going to have these
Anthony Pompliano (1:32:52.980)
digital technologies how do we usher in that automated world
Lex Fridman (1:32:56.900)
faster and so there's people who are building all kinds of
Anthony Pompliano (1:33:00.020)
incredible things right there's literally some technologies
Lex Fridman (1:33:04.420)
where you can stream for paying for consumption of content.
Anthony Pompliano (1:33:09.300)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:33:09.940)
Right there's I saw somebody recently who they basically
Anthony Pompliano (1:33:13.060)
said hey I have created something but it's not going to
Lex Fridman (1:33:16.660)
be released until everyone and almost like a GoFundMe type
Anthony Pompliano (1:33:20.580)
situation pays for it in combination then it gets
Lex Fridman (1:33:23.540)
unlocked and so when you start to think about this it's not
Anthony Pompliano (1:33:26.580)
only innovation on the technology front it's innovation
Lex Fridman (1:33:28.820)
around the way that we form capital it's the way that we
Anthony Pompliano (1:33:34.180)
organize resources it's the way that we build companies it's
Lex Fridman (1:33:36.820)
the business models right it's the application of those
Anthony Pompliano (1:33:39.540)
technologies all that stuff starts to change and go back to
Lex Fridman (1:33:43.860)
a 2007 that's when the iPhone came out Uber wasn't possible
Anthony Pompliano (1:33:49.540)
right I'm just going to lie like all these companies that
Lex Fridman (1:33:51.620)
weren't possible before when the digital technologies are
Anthony Pompliano (1:33:54.980)
kind of adopted on a global scale I think that we all myself
Lex Fridman (1:33:58.500)
included drastically underestimate how fast and how
Anthony Pompliano (1:34:02.500)
big innovation can be because it's just hard right like like
Lex Fridman (1:34:06.100)
we like to think linearly and that's not how the world works.
Anthony Pompliano (1:34:08.500)
Yeah I do find it kind of interesting it is NFT based but
Lex Fridman (1:34:14.180)
I don't think it has to be this this idea of I think big clout
Anthony Pompliano (1:34:20.180)
it's called or whatever the idea of sort of investing in
Lex Fridman (1:34:23.860)
individuals it makes me immediately think about
Anthony Pompliano (1:34:26.660)
investing in ideas so even just the words you speak having
Lex Fridman (1:34:32.100)
value and sort of if you have a frictionless like automated
Anthony Pompliano (1:34:39.140)
financial system then you could do a bunch of interesting
Lex Fridman (1:34:42.500)
things about what it means to add value to the world I mean
Anthony Pompliano (1:34:47.860)
I don't know if big cloud is currently an efficient
Lex Fridman (1:34:50.420)
representation of that but I am truly happy that however that
Anthony Pompliano (1:34:58.180)
thing works I'm just one notch above Vladimir Putin which is
Lex Fridman (1:35:03.060)
one of the that's like one of the bucket list items for me to
Anthony Pompliano (1:35:06.180)
to have a list where I'm one notch above Putin well what I
Lex Fridman (1:35:09.460)
think you're talking about here is important because there's
Anthony Pompliano (1:35:12.740)
historical examples you could invest in a patent in some
Lex Fridman (1:35:16.660)
situations you could invest in an organization that has an
Anthony Pompliano (1:35:20.340)
idea right so these are super inefficient given kind of the
Lex Fridman (1:35:23.940)
vision that you're painting in terms of like investing directly
Anthony Pompliano (1:35:26.020)
in an idea in a super efficient automated fashion yeah but
Lex Fridman (1:35:29.380)
that's how the technology evolution works right is it's
Anthony Pompliano (1:35:32.980)
really hard to do at first and then slowly kind of becomes
Lex Fridman (1:35:35.540)
easier and easier as technology is more prevalent the other
Anthony Pompliano (1:35:39.060)
thing that I think is interesting is this whole idea
Lex Fridman (1:35:40.580)
of investing in people if you really think about the
Anthony Pompliano (1:35:43.860)
origination of that is I would hire somebody right I pay you
Lex Fridman (1:35:48.180)
money and then you're going to create production but I take
Anthony Pompliano (1:35:50.660)
the lion's share and you don't now there's things like these
Lex Fridman (1:35:54.820)
ISAs these income sharing agreements where basically I
Anthony Pompliano (1:35:57.940)
will educate you on something train you on something I'll put
Lex Fridman (1:36:01.620)
up capital right and then over time you'll pay me back plus
Anthony Pompliano (1:36:05.140)
profits as some version eventually I don't know what it
Lex Fridman (1:36:09.300)
looks like but being able to get upside in somebody's success
Anthony Pompliano (1:36:14.420)
for having risk capital early on doesn't seem that far off
Lex Fridman (1:36:18.020)
see it in professional sports you see it in you know a lot of
Anthony Pompliano (1:36:20.740)
these things and so I just think that a lot of the focus
Lex Fridman (1:36:24.660)
right now is on the technology but ultimately these are ideas
Anthony Pompliano (1:36:30.020)
that are very old and have had lots of success and traction
Lex Fridman (1:36:33.540)
and we're just merely standing in the way of the evolution of
Anthony Pompliano (1:36:36.180)
these ideas with new technology and so it's easy to get caught
Lex Fridman (1:36:40.820)
up in the technology but when you really zoom out and look at
Anthony Pompliano (1:36:43.380)
it from the ideological standpoint and kind of the
Lex Fridman (1:36:46.180)
progress of humanity it's a foregone conclusion this stuff's
Anthony Pompliano (1:36:49.220)
going to happen it's just how I think the world is waiting and
Lex Fridman (1:36:52.500)
some of us are trying to create that future world which is like
Lex Fridman (1:36:56.660)
what are the applications of this technology that will
Lex Fridman (1:36:59.140)
transform the world and then you know I hate the term but
Anthony Pompliano (1:37:03.140)
killer apps like cool ideas that are implemented effectively at
Lex Fridman (1:37:08.100)
scale that transform the world and there's been a there's been
Anthony Pompliano (1:37:11.540)
a lot of different ideas popping up like the there's a
Lex Fridman (1:37:15.300)
lot of ideas about social networks that are built on top
Anthony Pompliano (1:37:17.940)
of the technology and all that kind of stuff so but let me
Lex Fridman (1:37:21.140)
actually drag this back down to something basic if a person
Anthony Pompliano (1:37:25.620)
wanted to buy Bitcoin store Bitcoin how do they actually do
Lex Fridman (1:37:32.500)
it yeah so there's a couple of different ways to kind of
Anthony Pompliano (1:37:36.900)
acquire Bitcoin and in every way you've got to exchange
Lex Fridman (1:37:40.820)
some form of value for Bitcoin right which is part of why it
Anthony Pompliano (1:37:44.420)
has values because you're giving up value so in one way is
Lex Fridman (1:37:49.140)
to exchange energy and computational power for Bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:37:54.420)
so you can mine it you can literally take computer power
Lex Fridman (1:37:57.780)
that you have you can rent it to the network and run that
Anthony Pompliano (1:38:01.860)
software and then it will pay you a portion of the kind of
Lex Fridman (1:38:05.620)
daily revenue off that system and you can acquire Bitcoin in
Anthony Pompliano (1:38:09.220)
exchange for your power and your computational kind of
Lex Fridman (1:38:13.060)
contribution and that's the fundamental principle behind
Anthony Pompliano (1:38:15.380)
Bitcoin is the proof of work so I got a hundred bucks like I
Lex Fridman (1:38:20.100)
use cash app the you know they there's Coinbase there's all
Anthony Pompliano (1:38:25.540)
these exchanges like how do I convert my $100 to Bitcoin is
Lex Fridman (1:38:32.500)
there something disclaimer this is not financial advice and
Anthony Pompliano (1:38:36.340)
this is just us talking and just your opinions this do not
Lex Fridman (1:38:40.180)
use this to invest or take as financial expertise that said
Anthony Pompliano (1:38:46.820)
like is there something you recommend that's an easy entry
Lex Fridman (1:38:50.500)
point for somebody that's like hmm I wonder if I can convert
Anthony Pompliano (1:38:54.100)
this hundred dollars into whatever amount of Bitcoin what
Lex Fridman (1:38:57.620)
do you recommend what are the options so there's a lot of
Anthony Pompliano (1:39:00.180)
options I'm heavily biased I went out and I scoured the
Lex Fridman (1:39:03.620)
market looked at all of them I've invested a lot of money in
Anthony Pompliano (1:39:05.700)
a company called BlockFi that basically basically has
Lex Fridman (1:39:08.820)
financial products for crypto investors so you can go you can
Anthony Pompliano (1:39:11.540)
take dollars or other currency you have you can convert it
Lex Fridman (1:39:14.820)
through an exchange you can leave it on these interest
Anthony Pompliano (1:39:18.420)
bearing accounts you can earn interest just like you would
Lex Fridman (1:39:20.180)
earn in a traditional account but higher levels of interest
Anthony Pompliano (1:39:22.980)
because it's this new thing or you can withdraw it and you can
Lex Fridman (1:39:26.580)
put it into cold storage on a hardware device you can leave
Anthony Pompliano (1:39:29.620)
it in a software wallet there's kind of all these storage
Lex Fridman (1:39:31.540)
options so BlockFi is you know kind of the one that I'm biased
Anthony Pompliano (1:39:34.660)
towards because I'm sorry to interrupt so BlockFi is Bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:39:40.740)
only or is it an exchange with other crypto it's got a bunch
Anthony Pompliano (1:39:43.140)
of different ones yeah they basically are agnostic to what
Lex Fridman (1:39:46.180)
it is but they provide kind of financial you know products to
Anthony Pompliano (1:39:50.340)
crypto investors okay so you mentioned a few interesting
Lex Fridman (1:39:53.620)
ideas that'd be nice for people who would not be familiar with
Anthony Pompliano (1:39:57.220)
it cold storage hot storage what does that mean so like I go to
Lex Fridman (1:40:02.100)
a website and I convert dollars to Bitcoin that's a kind of
Anthony Pompliano (1:40:06.820)
storage that's like online banking right what else is
Lex Fridman (1:40:12.100)
there so there's a couple of different things that you can
Anthony Pompliano (1:40:14.740)
do right and let's use the legacy system as kind of an
Lex Fridman (1:40:17.220)
example so if I want to get currency and I put in my bank
Anthony Pompliano (1:40:23.140)
account it sits there I have to trust that the bank doesn't go
Lex Fridman (1:40:27.300)
under nobody steals it all this kind of stuff there's insurance
Anthony Pompliano (1:40:30.820)
for it right there's all these kind of benefits in the legacy
Lex Fridman (1:40:33.140)
system to make sure that as long as I don't have you know
Anthony Pompliano (1:40:35.620)
millions and millions of dollars there I'm going to be
Lex Fridman (1:40:37.300)
protected pretty much if anything happens through FDIC
Anthony Pompliano (1:40:40.260)
insurance if I want to do that I'm taking that counterparty
Lex Fridman (1:40:44.980)
risk though so it's mitigated but there's still counterparty
Anthony Pompliano (1:40:47.460)
risk I'm counting on that bank but it is easier to move it
Lex Fridman (1:40:50.260)
around right if all of a sudden you call me up and say hey send
Anthony Pompliano (1:40:52.180)
me some money I can press a couple buttons on my computer
Lex Fridman (1:40:54.580)
and it'll send it to you if I want deeper level of security I
Anthony Pompliano (1:40:58.740)
can go and I can get the physical dollars and I can go
Lex Fridman (1:41:02.180)
and I can you know put under my mattress right and I can say
Anthony Pompliano (1:41:05.460)
you know what it's not gonna be as easy to send it to you
Lex Fridman (1:41:07.860)
immediately but if I really want to I can go underneath my
Anthony Pompliano (1:41:10.820)
mattress pretty quickly I can grab it I can get it back to
Lex Fridman (1:41:13.380)
the bank and then I can send you the money the third thing I
Anthony Pompliano (1:41:16.420)
could do is I could basically take those physical dollars out
Lex Fridman (1:41:18.500)
of the bank and I could go and I could go put it literally you
Anthony Pompliano (1:41:21.700)
know in a vault somewhere that I don't have control over that's
Lex Fridman (1:41:24.420)
behind 10 passwords and biometric scanning and like it's
Anthony Pompliano (1:41:27.780)
really difficult to even get to it right so if you can almost
Lex Fridman (1:41:30.740)
look at it it's like there's three stages of security that
Anthony Pompliano (1:41:33.540)
you could have in the traditional world the same thing
Lex Fridman (1:41:35.540)
is true in Bitcoin so you could buy Bitcoin on any exchange you
Anthony Pompliano (1:41:38.500)
can do it on BlockFi but you also can do it on places like
Lex Fridman (1:41:40.420)
Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, etc. Also Cash App. Cash App. You can
Anthony Pompliano (1:41:46.100)
do it on Cash App. I think I think they're still sponsoring
Lex Fridman (1:41:48.900)
this podcast. I'm not biased at all. So once you get Bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (1:41:54.020)
on any of these venues you can leave it there on that venue.
Lex Fridman (1:41:58.820)
Now the trade off is you're taking counterparty risk so
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:02.580)
somebody else is responsible for the security and the
Lex Fridman (1:42:04.980)
protection of it in many cases big well known companies who
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:09.140)
have billions of billions of dollars of assets they have
Lex Fridman (1:42:11.380)
higher levels of security that's why they're well known
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:13.540)
that's why people trust them whatever but you are taking
Lex Fridman (1:42:15.300)
counterparty risk it is easier to quickly send to somebody so
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:19.460)
that so the trade off of like ease of use but counterparty
Lex Fridman (1:42:22.660)
risk is big and in the Bitcoin community specifically there's
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:25.380)
a huge thing of they really really have a keep for not
Lex Fridman (1:42:29.140)
leaving the Bitcoin there right for the obvious counterparty
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:32.660)
the second thing you can do is you can basically get it off of
Lex Fridman (1:42:35.620)
an exchange and you can put it in some level of kind of what
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:38.660)
I'll call a second layer of storage that second layer
Lex Fridman (1:42:41.220)
storage could be a hardware device that you can quickly
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:43.700)
just you know grab off your desk and plug into your
Lex Fridman (1:42:45.540)
computer and immediately use that's what they call like a
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:47.860)
hardware wallet or you can have some sort of software wallet
Lex Fridman (1:42:51.460)
right where it's not on an exchange but there is some
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:53.940)
level of in between between the hardware wallet and the
Lex Fridman (1:42:57.060)
exchange and the software wallet but the software wallet
Anthony Pompliano (1:42:59.540)
is connected to the internet yeah and so if you kind of
Lex Fridman (1:43:02.980)
think of it as like the exchange software wallet
Anthony Pompliano (1:43:05.700)
hardware wallet and then there's something called deep
Lex Fridman (1:43:07.780)
storage right or cold storage and this is you know
Anthony Pompliano (1:43:11.060)
literally there was a company called Zappo that would put
Lex Fridman (1:43:15.700)
things in deep cold storage and it was literally buried in
Anthony Pompliano (1:43:19.060)
a mountain right so like the odds that somebody's
Lex Fridman (1:43:22.660)
physically going to go there there's armed guards there's
Anthony Pompliano (1:43:24.900)
you know kind of all this type of stuff but again you're
Lex Fridman (1:43:27.460)
taking some level of counterparty risk because they
Anthony Pompliano (1:43:29.620)
have your Bitcoin and so the saying or the phrase is not
Lex Fridman (1:43:33.780)
your keys not your coins whereas my buddy Isaiah Jackson
Anthony Pompliano (1:43:38.180)
came up with he said not your keys not your cheese right in
Lex Fridman (1:43:42.420)
terms of sovereignty is important right and ultimately
Anthony Pompliano (1:43:46.420)
this goes back to kind of the beginning of our conversation
Lex Fridman (1:43:48.180)
around Bitcoin's ethos sovereignty right giving the
Anthony Pompliano (1:43:52.180)
power back to people you don't have to rely on this
Lex Fridman (1:43:55.300)
infrastructure in order to be able to participate in this
Anthony Pompliano (1:43:58.020)
monetary kind of economy what you are now able to do is
Lex Fridman (1:44:01.540)
you're able to use digital sound money you're able to
Anthony Pompliano (1:44:04.420)
keep control of it you and you alone are responsible for it
Lex Fridman (1:44:07.620)
so the idea of personal responsibility and then also
Anthony Pompliano (1:44:10.900)
you and you alone make the decisions as to whether you
Lex Fridman (1:44:13.540)
hold on to it or you use it without censorship right no
Anthony Pompliano (1:44:16.900)
one can tell you what you can do with it or can't do with it
Lex Fridman (1:44:19.060)
and so the purchase and the storage what I find is
Anthony Pompliano (1:44:24.580)
depending on who you are there's varying degrees of kind
Lex Fridman (1:44:29.460)
of concern or decisions that get made there and a lot of it
Anthony Pompliano (1:44:32.660)
comes down to personal preference the Bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:44:35.300)
community though absolutely will over optimize for
Anthony Pompliano (1:44:38.740)
sovereignty and kind of hardware or cold storage I
Lex Fridman (1:44:42.260)
wonder if you can sort of comment on that because you
Anthony Pompliano (1:44:45.220)
have both sort of cash app and the BlockFi and Coinbase like
Lex Fridman (1:44:52.100)
you can store it that you can purchase and trade it there
Lex Fridman (1:44:56.020)
and store it there and so on but ultimately they're saying
Lex Fridman (1:44:59.620)
you wanna you know keep some of it there but you wanna move
Anthony Pompliano (1:45:02.340)
it to the hardware wallet and the cold storage of the
Lex Fridman (1:45:06.260)
hardware wallet is like you can disconnect this from the
Anthony Pompliano (1:45:08.820)
computer because ultimately stuff that's connected to the
Lex Fridman (1:45:11.540)
internet can be compromised can be controlled by governments
Lex Fridman (1:45:16.180)
and other parties and so on what are your thoughts about
Lex Fridman (1:45:19.860)
sort of practically speaking for maybe like a regular
Anthony Pompliano (1:45:24.340)
citizen what's what should be the role of the hardware wallet
Lex Fridman (1:45:28.100)
in their lives yeah so at the highest level I just think
Anthony Pompliano (1:45:31.060)
that like learning about it is important right so even if you
Lex Fridman (1:45:33.860)
only have five dollars equivalent of Bitcoin going and
Anthony Pompliano (1:45:37.540)
understanding here's how it works here's why it's important
Lex Fridman (1:45:39.940)
here's how I would actually withdraw from an exchange under
Anthony Pompliano (1:45:42.900)
the hardware wall like that alone just as an intellectual
Lex Fridman (1:45:45.700)
exercise is a worthwhile pursuit I think people should
Anthony Pompliano (1:45:47.860)
go do that actually go through the process of the steps so
Lex Fridman (1:45:50.500)
you feel like you can you can do it yeah yeah it's kind of
Anthony Pompliano (1:45:53.460)
like if I said to you you know hey we're gonna go buy an
Lex Fridman (1:45:55.620)
asset and you never went and you looked at it you never went
Lex Fridman (1:45:57.940)
and you know made a decision like sure maybe I did it or I
Lex Fridman (1:46:01.060)
didn't do it but like you didn't actually experience it
Anthony Pompliano (1:46:03.380)
right and so I think that that's important part the
Lex Fridman (1:46:05.540)
second thing is each person is different from a how they view
Anthony Pompliano (1:46:09.780)
this asset so there are some people who are speculating
Lex Fridman (1:46:12.020)
right there's three use cases for Bitcoin their store value
Anthony Pompliano (1:46:14.260)
medium of exchange and speculation and the people who
Lex Fridman (1:46:16.900)
are speculating they can't put it in deep cold storage because
Anthony Pompliano (1:46:19.780)
they need to be able to trade it right so what ends up
Lex Fridman (1:46:22.660)
happening is they fall in the bucket of like high risk high
Anthony Pompliano (1:46:25.140)
reward they're trying to trade they're trying to do all these
Lex Fridman (1:46:28.580)
things and sure maybe there are profits that they can generate
Anthony Pompliano (1:46:30.900)
if they're good at it but also they're introducing a lot of
Lex Fridman (1:46:33.620)
risk and so that person is very different than the person who
Anthony Pompliano (1:46:36.260)
says hey you know I bought one Bitcoin and I'm gonna save it
Lex Fridman (1:46:38.740)
for my child right and I'm gonna give it to them on their
Anthony Pompliano (1:46:40.900)
18th birthday yeah and so when you start to look at this what
Lex Fridman (1:46:44.180)
you end up saying is what are you actually purchasing this
Anthony Pompliano (1:46:48.340)
for kind of like why are you doing it and then what's your
Lex Fridman (1:46:50.900)
time horizon and what ends up happening is more and more
Anthony Pompliano (1:46:55.060)
people in the Bitcoin community have longer time horizons one
Lex Fridman (1:46:57.540)
of the advantages to this community right if you look at
Anthony Pompliano (1:47:01.060)
the on chain metrics 60% of Bitcoin haven't moved from the
Lex Fridman (1:47:04.980)
digital wallet in which they sit in the last 12 months so
Anthony Pompliano (1:47:08.340)
even though it's appreciated hundreds of percent on the
Lex Fridman (1:47:10.740)
upside there's been lots of volatility a 50% drop in a
Anthony Pompliano (1:47:13.940)
single day in terms of US dollar price still doesn't move
Lex Fridman (1:47:17.540)
and so these are the kind of long term holders right these
Anthony Pompliano (1:47:19.620)
are the the iron fist or or as recently has become popular the
Lex Fridman (1:47:22.980)
diamond hands right they just they're not going anywhere and
Lex Fridman (1:47:27.780)
so I think that those people are much more likely to not have
Lex Fridman (1:47:32.180)
their Bitcoin on exchanges or in software walls they've got it
Anthony Pompliano (1:47:35.780)
in some sort of like highly secure environment and what and
Lex Fridman (1:47:39.540)
one in which they have deep sovereignty or kind of prevalent
Anthony Pompliano (1:47:43.780)
sovereignty and the reason for that is because they have that
Lex Fridman (1:47:46.980)
long time horizon they don't want to be kind of convicted
Anthony Pompliano (1:47:50.820)
around Bitcoin sound money macro environment all stuff and
Lex Fridman (1:47:55.700)
then they make a mistake because they trusted you know
Anthony Pompliano (1:47:58.100)
ABCD company and that counterparty risk ends up
Lex Fridman (1:48:01.940)
actually being you know fatal or or detrimental so again this
Anthony Pompliano (1:48:06.100)
is not financial advice disclaimer but let me ask so
Lex Fridman (1:48:12.340)
in terms of investment advice on Bitcoin so you see Bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (1:48:16.180)
potentially not just the thing that you speculate over like
Lex Fridman (1:48:19.700)
buy and sell buy and sell buy and sell but it's something
Anthony Pompliano (1:48:22.580)
that you can just buy only and I believe I've heard that you
Lex Fridman (1:48:26.500)
own quite a large percentage of of your wealth in in Bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:48:31.220)
and you're basically buying only and storing long term so
Lex Fridman (1:48:34.980)
that's something that's a legitimate way to approach
Anthony Pompliano (1:48:38.180)
Bitcoin in your recommendation go to other cultures so if we
Lex Fridman (1:48:41.940)
remove ourselves from the Western world culture of
Anthony Pompliano (1:48:45.060)
investing in gamification of financial markets and the
Lex Fridman (1:48:48.020)
financialization of everything let's say we go to the culture
Anthony Pompliano (1:48:51.540)
of India for hundreds if not thousands of years families
Lex Fridman (1:48:55.860)
basically saved their wealth in gold and in jewelry and in
Anthony Pompliano (1:49:00.420)
these hard assets with the expectation to pass it on to
Lex Fridman (1:49:04.820)
the next generation and so it would be blasphemous to sell
Anthony Pompliano (1:49:09.620)
the family's gold in that culture right you know your
Lex Fridman (1:49:12.660)
great grandfather gave to your grandfather your grandfather
Anthony Pompliano (1:49:14.820)
gave to your father your father gave it to you right and
Lex Fridman (1:49:17.700)
so in that culture the long term kind of holding is the
Anthony Pompliano (1:49:24.020)
default I think that what Bitcoin has presented again is
Lex Fridman (1:49:28.820)
a digital application of the exact same thing which is that
Anthony Pompliano (1:49:32.900)
while everything else in the world is being devalued that is
Lex Fridman (1:49:35.540)
denominated in a currency that is being inflated away whether
Anthony Pompliano (1:49:40.500)
it's quickly or not this finite supply this scarce asset ends
Lex Fridman (1:49:45.220)
up accruing more and more value over time right and so I think
Anthony Pompliano (1:49:49.460)
that for me personally I've got you know over 95% of my net
Lex Fridman (1:49:53.940)
worth that's in this 90 over 95% of your net worth there's
Anthony Pompliano (1:49:59.540)
two important caveats to this one is I didn't you know buy
Lex Fridman (1:50:04.900)
some Bitcoin in 2011 or 12 right and then all of a sudden it
Anthony Pompliano (1:50:08.260)
appreciated a bunch and it grew into that but from a cost
Lex Fridman (1:50:11.620)
basis perspective you know put $100 and now it's a ton of
Anthony Pompliano (1:50:14.580)
money instead what I did was I basically in 2018 saw Bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:50:21.140)
from a US dollar price standpoint was falling and
Anthony Pompliano (1:50:23.140)
falling and falling and in December 2018 as I take about
Lex Fridman (1:50:26.020)
50% of my net worth and convert it from dollar denominated
Anthony Pompliano (1:50:30.420)
assets into Bitcoin so it's a very kind of intentional
Lex Fridman (1:50:32.660)
decision with a very specific view on the world as to like
Lex Fridman (1:50:34.980)
why I was doing it I then essentially just let it sit
Lex Fridman (1:50:38.820)
there grow whatever until the spring of 2020 and when I saw
Anthony Pompliano (1:50:44.100)
the government step in and start to say hey we're going to
Lex Fridman (1:50:47.620)
really be aggressive in terms of interest rate manipulation
Lex Fridman (1:50:50.100)
and quantitative easing I then decided to go ahead and take
Lex Fridman (1:50:52.820)
basically the remainder and start to convert it as well so
Anthony Pompliano (1:50:55.940)
became very aggressive in doing that and so the way that I look
Lex Fridman (1:50:59.700)
at it is that's actually my savings right and so in some
Anthony Pompliano (1:51:03.780)
weird way if I said to you know what's the dollar worth you'd
Lex Fridman (1:51:06.100)
say well a one dollar bill is worth one dollar right Bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (1:51:09.860)
to me I denominate my wealth in Bitcoin so I think of one
Lex Fridman (1:51:13.620)
Bitcoin is worth one Bitcoin not one Bitcoin is worth 60,000
Anthony Pompliano (1:51:16.420)
or 55,000 or 70,000 right I denominated everything in
Lex Fridman (1:51:19.140)
Bitcoin when I make a purchase in my head I'm calculating how
Anthony Pompliano (1:51:22.340)
much Bitcoin am I spending right now right well guess what
Lex Fridman (1:51:25.460)
happens when you have a devaluing currency as the
Anthony Pompliano (1:51:28.420)
denominator doesn't matter right like your financial
Lex Fridman (1:51:32.100)
incentivize to spend or invest right to consume when you have
Anthony Pompliano (1:51:36.100)
an appreciating currency all of a sudden you become much less
Lex Fridman (1:51:41.060)
consumptive in your behavior yeah because you're actually
Anthony Pompliano (1:51:44.980)
trading off future purchasing power for the consumption today
Lex Fridman (1:51:50.580)
it's fascinating to think that if if when you move about this
Anthony Pompliano (1:51:55.380)
world you think in Bitcoin you behave differently is if you
Lex Fridman (1:51:59.860)
think in dollars that's really fascinating people but here's
Anthony Pompliano (1:52:05.380)
the thing is the last 50 years or so is actually the outlier
Lex Fridman (1:52:09.060)
in history most people used to think this way yeah it's only
Anthony Pompliano (1:52:14.500)
when a fiat currency got introduced that one argument the
Lex Fridman (1:52:18.740)
positive argument or perspective is there was an
Anthony Pompliano (1:52:21.380)
explosion in growth but really it's because there was a
Lex Fridman (1:52:24.980)
financial incentive to consume yeah right and there's nobody
Anthony Pompliano (1:52:28.820)
better in the world than the United States at consuming and
Lex Fridman (1:52:31.620)
we consume anything and everything and if you want to
Anthony Pompliano (1:52:34.740)
see a great example look at how big the coca colas are at
Lex Fridman (1:52:37.540)
McDonald's right you know you go to other places they don't
Anthony Pompliano (1:52:40.020)
serve them that big and so the other example though or the
Lex Fridman (1:52:44.500)
negative argument is we have to consume because if not you end
Anthony Pompliano (1:52:50.660)
up being the bottom 45% of Americans that help no
Lex Fridman (1:52:53.700)
investable assets and actually are just having their wealth
Anthony Pompliano (1:52:56.900)
devalued away so holding the dollars end up being a very bad
Lex Fridman (1:53:01.140)
economic decision and so when you then switch to this sound
Anthony Pompliano (1:53:05.060)
money you say wait a second why would I if today I can trade
Lex Fridman (1:53:09.620)
one Bitcoin you know back in October of last year one Bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (1:53:13.140)
for 10 thousand US dollars why would I spend that if at some
Lex Fridman (1:53:17.620)
point in the future whether it's a month from now or 10
Anthony Pompliano (1:53:20.580)
years from now I could trade it for something much much more
Lex Fridman (1:53:23.540)
than that you just become much more of a anti consumer and
Anthony Pompliano (1:53:30.340)
much more of a long term thinker yeah from the individual
Lex Fridman (1:53:32.980)
perspective that's pretty powerful I wonder I mean I
Anthony Pompliano (1:53:35.380)
think that's a interesting debate what's better for the
Lex Fridman (1:53:38.340)
long term economy no better for the growth of the civilization
Anthony Pompliano (1:53:44.420)
because capitalism is fascinating it seems to it seems
Lex Fridman (1:53:49.620)
to work pretty well there's this kind of like Eric Weinstein
Anthony Pompliano (1:53:54.340)
says that one of the problems is for the past several decades
Lex Fridman (1:53:59.300)
this whole economy society is built on the idea that we have
Anthony Pompliano (1:54:03.860)
to keep growing like it depends on that idea and it's a
Lex Fridman (1:54:08.100)
good question whether that's going to result in huge
Anthony Pompliano (1:54:11.460)
problems or if like a college student on a deadline the
Lex Fridman (1:54:17.540)
the dependence on growth will mean that we'll have to grow
Anthony Pompliano (1:54:21.780)
like the fear of death will force us to grow but I think
Lex Fridman (1:54:25.620)
there's a false equivalency between we're dependent on
Anthony Pompliano (1:54:29.300)
growth and then if the world was denominated in sound money
Lex Fridman (1:54:32.660)
we don't grow what I think ends up happening is we remove a
Anthony Pompliano (1:54:36.980)
lot of the society's bullshit yeah because right now when the
Lex Fridman (1:54:41.300)
money is free or the currency is free you come with all kinds
Anthony Pompliano (1:54:45.140)
of crazy stuff and people will give it to you right when all
Lex Fridman (1:54:48.260)
of a sudden it's really really valued by the population the
Anthony Pompliano (1:54:53.060)
decisions are better yeah you you have to provide real value
Lex Fridman (1:54:56.900)
in the goods and services you provide in order to get them to
Anthony Pompliano (1:54:59.140)
give it to you there's less room for corruption less room
Lex Fridman (1:55:01.540)
for manipulation that's and like that's not actually
Anthony Pompliano (1:55:04.740)
productive yeah definitely so you said you moved a lot of
Lex Fridman (1:55:10.340)
your investment into bitcoin is there when you look so you're
Anthony Pompliano (1:55:16.500)
a special human being in many ways so you're like a strategic
Lex Fridman (1:55:21.220)
thinker but you're also like a deep thinker about this whole
Anthony Pompliano (1:55:23.540)
thing but when you look at a regular club like me in terms
Lex Fridman (1:55:27.620)
of just investing and moving into thinking about
Anthony Pompliano (1:55:31.540)
cryptocurrency is there a strategy that you recommend
Lex Fridman (1:55:34.740)
what are the different options about investing into bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (1:55:38.420)
yeah so i think that there's just uh kind of timeless advice
Lex Fridman (1:55:41.860)
when it comes to uh investing or or acquiring an asset in
Anthony Pompliano (1:55:45.540)
general uh dollar cost averaging is usually the the
Lex Fridman (1:55:48.260)
best way to think about it and what i mean by that is um most
Anthony Pompliano (1:55:51.780)
people don't just have a pile of uh currency sitting there
Lex Fridman (1:55:55.300)
right it's not like they have a million dollars sitting in
Anthony Pompliano (1:55:57.060)
their bank like what do i do with it uh that situation aside
Lex Fridman (1:56:00.740)
what happens is they trade their hours and their effort for
Anthony Pompliano (1:56:05.460)
currency and so as they get paid every two weeks let's say
Lex Fridman (1:56:08.500)
um the best way to acquire bitcoin without having to worry about timing
Anthony Pompliano (1:56:12.660)
markets and being a professional trader is to simply take whatever the
Lex Fridman (1:56:15.940)
percentages that you want and to buy bitcoin when you get your
Anthony Pompliano (1:56:19.780)
paycheck so if you get paid on the first and 15th of every month
Lex Fridman (1:56:22.820)
on that day you should go take you know let's say it's three percent of your
Anthony Pompliano (1:56:25.780)
paycheck take three percent go buy bitcoin don't
Lex Fridman (1:56:28.260)
worry about what the price is you should do that over time and the
Anthony Pompliano (1:56:30.820)
reason why that's important is um if in december of 2017 when bitcoin
Lex Fridman (1:56:35.220)
is at twenty thousand dollars it was the height of kind of this last
Anthony Pompliano (1:56:38.180)
uh big upwards movement you had taken all of your money
Lex Fridman (1:56:41.700)
and you had put it into bitcoin you would have had to wait almost three
Anthony Pompliano (1:56:45.220)
years just to get back to quote unquote break even
Lex Fridman (1:56:48.180)
in us dollar terms if at the same time you had simply bought then and over the
Anthony Pompliano (1:56:54.820)
next three years bought every two weeks you would have been up hundreds of
Lex Fridman (1:56:58.180)
percent three years later because what ended up
Anthony Pompliano (1:57:01.460)
happening was you bought a bunch of bitcoin when it was at
Lex Fridman (1:57:03.540)
15 12 10 9 8 3 4 5 5 5 you know all the way back up on the
Anthony Pompliano (1:57:09.620)
other side and so dollar cost averaging is one of
Lex Fridman (1:57:12.660)
these weird things that uh it almost sounds too easy but what we
Anthony Pompliano (1:57:17.140)
find is in america we have a lack of financial education
Lex Fridman (1:57:21.300)
and so rather than try to be smarter than markets what most people are better
Anthony Pompliano (1:57:24.740)
off doing is just saying hey set your what's called an asset
Lex Fridman (1:57:27.540)
allocation plan i want 30 in stocks i want 10 in real
Anthony Pompliano (1:57:32.100)
estate i want this this whatever and every time you get your paycheck
Lex Fridman (1:57:35.300)
just think of it as a savings account right just put it in
Anthony Pompliano (1:57:38.500)
based on those percentages and don't think about it
Lex Fridman (1:57:41.620)
and over a long enough period of time what we find is
Anthony Pompliano (1:57:44.820)
almost anyone in the united states right there's exceptions but almost anyone in
Lex Fridman (1:57:48.020)
the united states can become a millionaire in their
Anthony Pompliano (1:57:50.340)
lifetime if they follow these plans and have that long term view and they allow
Lex Fridman (1:57:54.100)
compounding to work for them and so don't look at the price of
Anthony Pompliano (1:57:57.460)
bitcoin and all that kind of stuff just pick a
Lex Fridman (1:58:00.020)
specific time specific day that you just buy
Lex Fridman (1:58:04.340)
and you just keep buying that's probably good investment advice across any kind
Lex Fridman (1:58:07.700)
of assets it's like if you don't believe in
Anthony Pompliano (1:58:10.420)
bitcoin and you just want to let's say you just want to do the s&p 500
Lex Fridman (1:58:13.220)
yeah you shouldn't try to time the market of the s&p 500 either right you
Anthony Pompliano (1:58:16.500)
should just every two weeks you should just buy some
Lex Fridman (1:58:18.580)
and over a 20 year period you're gonna end up buying it at all kinds
Anthony Pompliano (1:58:21.860)
of different prices but you're gonna get kind of a blended average
Lex Fridman (1:58:24.740)
and the more important thing is the compounding and the time in the market
Anthony Pompliano (1:58:28.420)
then did you buy it at you know two percent higher or lower than where you
Lex Fridman (1:58:32.260)
bought it doesn't really matter and buying often makes you i guess
Anthony Pompliano (1:58:35.300)
uh resistant robust to the uh to the volatility of the market or the
Lex Fridman (1:58:40.020)
volatility of bitcoin price and so on that said uh you know bitcoin price
Anthony Pompliano (1:58:46.340)
is volatile and you know again the argument i've heard
Lex Fridman (1:58:53.620)
is like everything that's going to be a lot more valuable in the future
Anthony Pompliano (1:59:00.340)
like if you look at the history like companies like apple like teslas
Lex Fridman (1:59:04.580)
now i mean but let's look at companies that
Anthony Pompliano (1:59:08.740)
have now stabilized right uh apple is a good example
Lex Fridman (1:59:12.660)
it's like volatile in the beginning and so the argument for bitcoin is like
Anthony Pompliano (1:59:17.140)
yeah this is the early stages because it's going to be a lot more valuable
Lex Fridman (1:59:21.540)
right now it's volatile and this is why you have to have these kinds of
Anthony Pompliano (1:59:24.420)
strategies to ride out the volatility of course everything that goes to zero is
Lex Fridman (1:59:28.500)
also volatile like the early days are volatile uh
Lex Fridman (1:59:33.060)
do you see like this volatility as like a feature or a bug
Lex Fridman (1:59:36.740)
or is this just like a way of life so amazon is the one that i know the
Anthony Pompliano (1:59:40.420)
numbers on in terms of early volatility uh every year since it has gone public
Lex Fridman (1:59:45.460)
it's had a double digit drawdown in that year uh the average
Anthony Pompliano (1:59:50.180)
is over 30 percent and one time it drew down over 95 percent
Lex Fridman (1:59:55.300)
sounds a lot like bitcoin right like oh wow this is crazy
Lex Fridman (1:59:58.980)
but it's one of the best performing stocks in the last 20 years if not the
Lex Fridman (20:04.620)
their money, stole everything they own, falsified their identity, all that kind
Anthony Pompliano (20:08.980)
of stuff that those are both traumatic events, but they do seem to be
Lex Fridman (20:15.180)
fundamentally different, but maybe that's actually very narrow style thinking,
Anthony Pompliano (20:20.260)
because ultimately you have to think about what is life and what's happiness.
Lex Fridman (20:25.540)
And, um, it's like the samurai thinking, I'm not sure what's more painful.
Anthony Pompliano (20:32.380)
If I take it to myself, like, I'm not sure what I would rather live through
Anthony Pompliano (20:37.180)
being stabbed, like to death, or having my identity stolen, all my money stolen,
Anthony Pompliano (20:47.220)
or maybe reputation destroyed, like with lies or something like that.
Lex Fridman (20:54.620)
That that's very interesting to think about.
Anthony Pompliano (20:56.420)
If you think about quality of life and all those kinds of things,
Lex Fridman (20:58.980)
well, one's finite, right?
Anthony Pompliano (21:01.580)
One's the pain ends and the other is kind of a long prolonged, almost torture.
Lex Fridman (21:05.780)
So it's physical pain versus psychological pain.
Anthony Pompliano (21:08.380)
It's really interesting to, it's really interesting to think about.
Lex Fridman (21:12.180)
And I think another key piece to this, which I don't have answers to, but,
Lex Fridman (21:15.660)
but there is an element of emotion and rage in the physical violence versus
Lex Fridman (21:20.060)
again, more of that clinical, you know, information warfare.
Lex Fridman (21:22.980)
And so, um, it's really easy to show a battlefield where there's death on both
Lex Fridman (21:29.780)
sides and bombs being dropped and buildings destroyed, um, it fits very
Anthony Pompliano (21:34.340)
well into propaganda for everyone involved, right, regardless of what side
Lex Fridman (21:38.780)
they're on, when you start talking about cyber warfare, how many times have
Anthony Pompliano (21:42.780)
we seen a big company get data hacked or information hacked and we all, you
Lex Fridman (21:47.380)
know, read the headlines, maybe throw a tweet out and then move on with our day
Lex Fridman (21:50.620)
and don't remember it anymore.
Lex Fridman (21:52.020)
And so it's just very, very different.
Anthony Pompliano (21:54.100)
I think, uh, in, in the, uh, motion and response that it invokes and people
Lex Fridman (21:57.860)
when they hear about it as well.
Lex Fridman (21:59.820)
Given the conflict, do you think people are fundamentally good?
Lex Fridman (22:02.980)
Are we all sort of like blank slates that could be evil given the environment
Anthony Pompliano (22:08.300)
or good given the environment, or can we kind of, is there some base that we can
Anthony Pompliano (22:13.540)
rely on that people, if left to their own devices will be good and trustworthy and
Anthony Pompliano (22:21.740)
honest, I think you have to separate out intention from action.
Lex Fridman (22:25.700)
So if you talk to some of the most heinous criminals in the world, they've
Anthony Pompliano (22:30.820)
rationalized their actions, and so you've got to ask yourself, what is the level
Anthony Pompliano (22:36.220)
of which they understood what they were doing, that they intended to be malicious,
Anthony Pompliano (22:41.060)
nefarious, um, and kind of do bad things versus the actual actions themselves.
Lex Fridman (22:47.620)
And so, um, even as a society, you know, if let's say, for example, you were to
Anthony Pompliano (22:52.980)
walk down the street and you were to murder somebody on the sidewalk, completely
Anthony Pompliano (22:55.860)
unprovoked, we would look at you and say, you are a, you know, a sociopath, uh, you
Anthony Pompliano (23:01.500)
have everything wrong with you and that is somebody that we do not want in our
Anthony Pompliano (23:04.620)
society, and therefore we will levy, you know, the extent of rule of law against
Lex Fridman (23:09.780)
you in order to protect society from you, right?
Lex Fridman (23:12.300)
And you become that monster, that beast, if in the same situation, somebody walks
Anthony Pompliano (23:16.620)
in your house with a knife and you murder them or you kill them, now we put you up
Lex Fridman (23:22.660)
on a pedestal as a hero, and those are two very, very different responses.
Anthony Pompliano (23:26.780)
They may be just as morbid, they may be just as violent, uh, in terms of the
Lex Fridman (23:31.420)
actual actions, the intentions, the way it's perceived is very, very different.
Lex Fridman (23:35.420)
And so I think that, uh, as a world, we like a very black and white, clean cut,
Lex Fridman (23:40.460)
you know, good, bad, uh, I think the world's a lot more messy than that.
Lex Fridman (23:43.540)
And I think that, uh, a lot of times when you look at intention, it's hard for us
Anthony Pompliano (23:48.340)
to tell what somebody's intention is, but I've looked at a lot of, you know, people
Anthony Pompliano (23:53.140)
who are both considered very good and also a lot of people are considered very
Lex Fridman (23:56.020)
bad and they sound very similar in terms of the motivations for their actions.
Lex Fridman (24:01.340)
And so I think that it's just a really hard problem that probably doesn't
Lex Fridman (24:04.460)
have a perfect solution or an answer.
Lex Fridman (24:06.500)
Do you give much value to the intention or do you think it's better to look at
Lex Fridman (24:10.860)
the results of the behavior, uh, as opposed to the, the underlying ideology?
Anthony Pompliano (24:17.100)
Underlying ideology, the underlying intention of, of the behavior.
Lex Fridman (24:22.220)
I think that intention gets at the question of like, are people inherently
Lex Fridman (24:25.300)
good or bad, right?
Lex Fridman (24:26.780)
Is I think that they're generally inherently good and the intention is
Anthony Pompliano (24:30.700)
driving towards the thing that they believe is the best outcome or the best
Lex Fridman (24:35.260)
thing for them to pursue the action.
Anthony Pompliano (24:37.500)
I think is where we spend most of our time focused on.
Lex Fridman (24:40.180)
Um, and frankly, we actually may be a better society or, uh, kind of kinder
Anthony Pompliano (24:45.820)
as a humanity to each other if we spent more time looking at
Lex Fridman (24:48.500)
intention rather than action.
Anthony Pompliano (24:50.180)
Um, but again, you know, if somebody walks down the street and murders
Anthony Pompliano (24:53.300)
somebody, uh, it's really hard to have a conversation and it may be inappropriate
Anthony Pompliano (24:57.780)
for us to have a conversation about intention versus, uh, any level of,
Lex Fridman (25:02.140)
of action, right?
Lex Fridman (25:04.940)
So you're one of the prominent, I would say even the faces of the, the world
Lex Fridman (25:10.900)
of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, that whole entire world was dive straight in and
Lex Fridman (25:16.380)
ask, uh, do you think, do you consider yourself a Bitcoin maximalist?
Lex Fridman (25:23.140)
I think that the way I really look at it is, uh, I work backwards off of what
Anthony Pompliano (25:28.020)
is the maximalism that I believe in and the world that I believe in is, uh, kind
Lex Fridman (25:33.340)
of an automated world that is run on these open decentralized protocols.
Anthony Pompliano (25:39.420)
Uh, and what we ultimately do is we return sovereignty and individualism
Lex Fridman (25:45.660)
and, and kind of, uh, personal responsibility and liberty, uh,
Anthony Pompliano (25:49.420)
to people over institutions.
Lex Fridman (25:51.380)
And what we end up doing is we end up, uh, kind of taking what has historically
Anthony Pompliano (25:56.300)
been a very analog or physical world economy and, uh, geographic rule.
Lex Fridman (26:01.860)
And we then kind of put it in the cloud and this digital economy becomes the
Anthony Pompliano (26:05.980)
prevalent way that we all, uh, conduct commerce, communicate, uh, et cetera.
Lex Fridman (26:11.180)
And so it's less about any one single technology to me, right?
Anthony Pompliano (26:15.220)
I think that it's pretty stupid for people to, um, almost in a way, uh, put
Lex Fridman (26:20.780)
an inanimate object up for, uh, you know, some sort of obsession, uh, to me,
Anthony Pompliano (26:26.540)
it's much more about the ideals, the ethos, uh, and the most rational, uh,
Lex Fridman (26:31.540)
and likely path to that kind of end result or that world that I think, you
Anthony Pompliano (26:35.420)
know, is at this point, just a foregone conclusion.
Lex Fridman (26:37.260)
So the distinction there, and maybe people don't know the terminology,
Anthony Pompliano (26:41.340)
maximalism is basically saying, I really think this is a good idea.
Lex Fridman (26:49.100)
Like, uh, you know, if you prefer a certain kind of diet, it could be a
Anthony Pompliano (26:52.820)
keto maximalist saying like, this is probably, maybe it's not a hundred
Lex Fridman (26:57.340)
percent, but probably the diet that's healthiest for humans kind of thing.
Anthony Pompliano (27:01.300)
In the same sense, Bitcoin maximalism is saying, you know, of course we
Lex Fridman (27:06.620)
don't know, there's a lot of uncertainty, but this particular technology seems
Anthony Pompliano (27:10.060)
to be the best representations of some set of ideals that defines progress
Lex Fridman (27:14.740)
in the future, but you're drawing a distinction between sort of, um, cult
Anthony Pompliano (27:20.060)
like obsession about an object of any kind, whether it's keto, uh, or, uh,
Anthony Pompliano (27:26.260)
Bitcoin, and just sort of believing that a technology is the best representation
Anthony Pompliano (27:32.180)
of a particular set of ideals.
Lex Fridman (27:34.300)
And you believe that sort of, uh, this moving into the cloud, uh, both
Anthony Pompliano (27:41.620)
the distributed nature of it, but also just the digital nature of it is
Lex Fridman (27:45.700)
something that's going to, uh, be a positive step for humanity.
Anthony Pompliano (27:49.500)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (27:49.700)
I would even take maximalism a step further, and it's not just the kind
Anthony Pompliano (27:53.180)
of singular viewpoint of this is the best, it's also, uh, an element
Lex Fridman (27:58.300)
of it's anti everything else.
Anthony Pompliano (28:00.620)
Right.
Anthony Pompliano (28:01.100)
So, you know, take keto, for example, uh, the keto diet is not only the best diet.
Anthony Pompliano (28:05.540)
All the other diets are bad.
Lex Fridman (28:06.940)
Yeah.
Anthony Pompliano (28:07.220)
Right.
Lex Fridman (28:07.820)
And so it's, it's a very binary view of the world.
Anthony Pompliano (28:10.340)
Um, I think that what's probably most misunderstood about, uh, let's take
Lex Fridman (28:14.180)
Bitcoin, uh, as a specific example, is that most of the people who are labeled
Anthony Pompliano (28:18.780)
Bitcoin maximalist, they would be open minded if they believe that something
Lex Fridman (28:23.220)
else came along that was a superior technology or had a, a better, um, kind
Anthony Pompliano (28:28.020)
of probability of achieving again, that ultimate vision, I think where, uh,
Lex Fridman (28:32.660)
there's this controversy and kind of clashing of, uh, ideas is that the
Anthony Pompliano (28:37.740)
Bitcoin community believes Bitcoin is the best way to do that and has very
Lex Fridman (28:41.980)
specific arguments as to why the other things are not right.
Lex Fridman (28:45.900)
And so what ultimately ends up happening, which is very weird in the investing
Lex Fridman (28:49.740)
world, right, it's unlikely that you and I are going to sit down and you're
Anthony Pompliano (28:52.340)
going to like Apple stock is the best stock and there's no other stock.
Lex Fridman (28:54.660)
That's worth anything.
Anthony Pompliano (28:55.460)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (28:55.700)
Right.
Anthony Pompliano (28:56.380)
And, uh, and then also it's very weird if you said to me, um, you know, this
Lex Fridman (29:00.540)
stock is worth zero and that's where everything that I own, I've put on a
Lex Fridman (29:05.020)
short on one single company, right?
Lex Fridman (29:06.740)
There's diversification.
Anthony Pompliano (29:07.820)
There's a much more kind of probabilistic thinking in finance in general.
Lex Fridman (29:10.780)
Uh, when it comes to this specific world of cryptocurrency and kind of digital
Anthony Pompliano (29:15.380)
assets, if you will, uh, is there's two main groups of people who are trying to
Anthony Pompliano (29:20.740)
build two very, very different things at the onset, but when you unpack it and you
Anthony Pompliano (29:25.660)
start to spend more and more time on it, you rise, they're actually trying to
Lex Fridman (29:28.100)
accomplish the same thing in two different ways.
Lex Fridman (29:30.340)
So Bitcoin is seen, I think, as a, uh, a digital currency, right?
Lex Fridman (29:33.580)
Kind of the idea that this is going to ascend to become the next global
Anthony Pompliano (29:36.460)
reserve currency, it's a programmatic kind of digital currency, but it's
Lex Fridman (29:40.220)
also a programmatic kind of transparent, um, money.
Anthony Pompliano (29:43.700)
And, uh, it's essentially just 180 degrees difference than the inflationary,
Lex Fridman (29:48.060)
you know, non transparent, uh, fiat currencies that exist in the world.
Lex Fridman (29:52.460)
You then look at kind of everything else, right?
Lex Fridman (29:54.460)
And you have a lot of smart contract platforms and various things that
Anthony Pompliano (29:57.820)
they're all going after at Ethereum with kind of the world computer
Lex Fridman (2:00:01.860)
best performing stock and so volatility is not positive or
Anthony Pompliano (2:00:05.700)
negative it's positive or negative compared to the
Lex Fridman (2:00:08.820)
position you're in so if you're long and it's volatile to the
Anthony Pompliano (2:00:12.660)
upside it's positive if you're long holding something and
Lex Fridman (2:00:16.500)
it's volatile to the downside you see it as a negative it's all about
Anthony Pompliano (2:00:19.460)
perspective with that said um another way that i
Lex Fridman (2:00:23.700)
look at this is every asset priced in bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (2:00:28.180)
is down significantly so over the last one
Lex Fridman (2:00:32.500)
three five years the dollar priced in bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (2:00:36.260)
has crashed 99 percent if you denominate stocks it's down like
Lex Fridman (2:00:41.700)
80 85 if you denominate gold if you
Anthony Pompliano (2:00:44.820)
denominate bonds if you just go down the line real estate etc
Lex Fridman (2:00:47.700)
it's all down massively against bitcoin now you could argue that that's because
Anthony Pompliano (2:00:53.060)
bitcoin is appreciating in us dollar terms
Lex Fridman (2:00:55.700)
or you could actually argue that the world is
Anthony Pompliano (2:00:58.980)
repricing this asset it's doing price discovery on this asset
Lex Fridman (2:01:02.100)
and it's essentially comparing it's saying hey bitcoin verse
Anthony Pompliano (2:01:05.460)
this stock or bitcoin verse this ounce of gold or bitcoin verse
Lex Fridman (2:01:08.500)
you know this dollar which is more valuable and it continues to move up in
Anthony Pompliano (2:01:11.540)
the rankings in terms of the value that the world
Lex Fridman (2:01:13.700)
ascribes to this some of that's based on lindy effect just
Anthony Pompliano (2:01:16.580)
the longer it persists the more likely it is to survive some of that's based on
Lex Fridman (2:01:20.340)
like the underlying fundamentals of how much computing power the usage
Anthony Pompliano (2:01:23.780)
transaction volume things like that but some of it also is that as more
Lex Fridman (2:01:28.340)
and more people wake up to the fact that it's a finite supply asset that has a
Anthony Pompliano (2:01:31.860)
place in the world and demand increases people just naturally
Lex Fridman (2:01:35.220)
compete and ascribe more value to it and so the
Anthony Pompliano (2:01:38.580)
volatility i think all comes back to like what do you
Lex Fridman (2:01:42.420)
price your life in for majority people that's dollars
Lex Fridman (2:01:45.780)
and so you look at the us dollar price you get all this volatility
Lex Fridman (2:01:49.220)
the beauty of this is that 60 that doesn't move regardless of
Anthony Pompliano (2:01:52.980)
price upward or downward and movement those people aren't looking at the day
Lex Fridman (2:01:57.220)
to day price what they've basically said is i've
Anthony Pompliano (2:01:59.700)
acquired x amount of bitcoin and i'm just going to hold it for years
Lex Fridman (2:02:04.020)
and every time somebody's done that right if if uh you bought bitcoin at any point
Anthony Pompliano (2:02:07.780)
in the last 12 years and you held it till today you are up in us dollar terms
Lex Fridman (2:02:13.700)
now if we had this conversation 18 months ago couldn't say that
Lex Fridman (2:02:18.100)
so it's all about not only the acquisition
Lex Fridman (2:02:21.140)
price if you will it's also when are you looking at it
Anthony Pompliano (2:02:24.260)
right because there was a point in 2017 you could have said the same thing but
Lex Fridman (2:02:27.380)
in 18 you couldn't and so i tend to think a lot about um
Anthony Pompliano (2:02:30.820)
humans are really really bad at short term
Lex Fridman (2:02:33.540)
uh decision making because we're so emotional
Anthony Pompliano (2:02:36.580)
especially when something has a price tied to it and so it's in terms of our
Lex Fridman (2:02:40.580)
strategies and decision making we should be long term and have like a
Anthony Pompliano (2:02:43.540)
regular almost think like an algorithm that
Lex Fridman (2:02:46.500)
in that in that kind of way so i think you've tweeted that
Anthony Pompliano (2:02:50.260)
you believe that bitcoin has a chance of reaching 1 million i don't know what it
Lex Fridman (2:02:53.700)
is currently i think it's five the 60s which is incredible
Anthony Pompliano (2:02:59.700)
i think i remember when it was at least in the double digits i think i remember
Lex Fridman (2:03:03.780)
it was in the signal digits of a dollar so the fact that it's cross 50 is crazy
Anthony Pompliano (2:03:09.700)
uh but uh you're even crazier apparently thinking that it can reach a million
Lex Fridman (2:03:15.220)
so do you think it's possible for it to reach a million is there some kind of
Anthony Pompliano (2:03:18.580)
transformative effects we have to see first
Lex Fridman (2:03:21.140)
when might it reach a million like what are the signs that we would look for
Anthony Pompliano (2:03:25.540)
what's required for it to reach a million so let's just look at it from a macro
Lex Fridman (2:03:29.780)
perspective uh gold is a 10 trillion dollar asset
Lex Fridman (2:03:33.620)
and when you compare the technology of gold to the technology of bitcoin
Lex Fridman (2:03:38.020)
bitcoin is superior in every single way right it's more portable it's more
Anthony Pompliano (2:03:41.620)
divisible uh it's more verifiable it's more
Lex Fridman (2:03:44.260)
scarce on everything and so some people would argue it's a
Anthony Pompliano (2:03:48.100)
10x improvement some people argue it's 100x improvement from a technology
Lex Fridman (2:03:51.380)
standpoint and so we don't need bitcoin to
Anthony Pompliano (2:03:55.700)
actually kind of um capture the full 10x or 100x
Lex Fridman (2:04:00.340)
improvement from a market cap standpoint if bitcoin simply captures
Anthony Pompliano (2:04:04.420)
2x the value be a 20 trillion dollar market cap
Lex Fridman (2:04:08.260)
which would put bitcoin at about a million dollars
Anthony Pompliano (2:04:10.260)
right so kind of just from a macro perspective if you have a 10x or 100x
Lex Fridman (2:04:13.620)
improvement from a technology standpoint and you directionally get some value
Anthony Pompliano (2:04:17.940)
capture in that direction you're hitting around a million or more
Lex Fridman (2:04:21.780)
uh dollar price point can ask a quick question which is uh
Anthony Pompliano (2:04:25.540)
what's the current market cap for bitcoin uh the current market cap is
Lex Fridman (2:04:28.740)
right around a trillion just over a trillion dollars and you're saying gold
Anthony Pompliano (2:04:31.780)
is 10 trillion and uh sorry where did you get the 20
Lex Fridman (2:04:35.700)
trillion 20 trillion would just be 2x gold market cap
Anthony Pompliano (2:04:39.620)
got it right so if it's a 10x technology improvement let's just say it only
Lex Fridman (2:04:42.740)
captures 2x the market cap got it right and so again if it was to
Anthony Pompliano (2:04:46.740)
capture just gold market cap kind of the equivalent
Lex Fridman (2:04:49.060)
puts you around 500 000 right so you can kind of see there's bitcoin
Lex Fridman (2:04:52.740)
so if you capture the entirety of the gold market
Lex Fridman (2:04:55.940)
uh then it would be value of a single bitcoin uh the price of a single bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (2:05:00.260)
would be five hundred thousand dollars okay
Lex Fridman (2:05:04.660)
to reach a million it would be double that that's what the 20 trillion comes
Anthony Pompliano (2:05:08.420)
from correct got it so if you then say to yourself
Lex Fridman (2:05:11.780)
okay how does the uh the pricing um kind of cycles work right or the
Anthony Pompliano (2:05:18.340)
boom and bust cycles gold is a very um
Lex Fridman (2:05:23.780)
kind of linear type supply schedule meaning that
Anthony Pompliano (2:05:27.220)
uh there is a certain amount of gold that comes out of the ground each year
Lex Fridman (2:05:30.660)
the interyear variation in that incoming supply is not much
Anthony Pompliano (2:05:35.860)
right maybe there's an extra mining company that gets set up or a couple of
Lex Fridman (2:05:38.980)
them maybe one goes out of business but for the
Anthony Pompliano (2:05:40.980)
most part the kind of inflationary uh increase to the supply of gold
Lex Fridman (2:05:46.500)
is pretty stagnant uh year over year bitcoin has a very unique feature which
Anthony Pompliano (2:05:52.660)
every four years there is a programmatic supply shock
Lex Fridman (2:05:56.580)
meaning that uh in the beginning 50 bitcoin every 10 minutes was introduced
Anthony Pompliano (2:06:00.500)
into the supply after four years of that happening every
Lex Fridman (2:06:03.380)
10 minutes it was cut in half so on a in a single
Anthony Pompliano (2:06:06.900)
moment it went from 50 to now it was 25 four years every 10 minutes 25 got cut
Lex Fridman (2:06:11.860)
in half again to 12 and a half and then recently in may 2020 got cut to 6.25
Anthony Pompliano (2:06:16.900)
when you have an asset that is determined the price
Lex Fridman (2:06:20.500)
based on supply and demand you normally have
Anthony Pompliano (2:06:23.460)
two inputs to the equation what is the supply and what is the demand
Lex Fridman (2:06:27.540)
in an asset like gold or a stock or anything else
Anthony Pompliano (2:06:31.060)
we have to do our best guess at the supply
Lex Fridman (2:06:34.180)
both the existing supply and the incoming supply and do our best guess at
Anthony Pompliano (2:06:37.700)
the demand and we're actually pretty good at this a lot of times in terms of
Lex Fridman (2:06:40.820)
directionally saying it's going to go up or down and here's kind of some price
Anthony Pompliano (2:06:44.020)
point milestones bitcoin's unique in that there's 100
Lex Fridman (2:06:48.180)
verifiable proof of the existing supply
Anthony Pompliano (2:06:52.740)
the total supply and the incoming daily supply
Lex Fridman (2:06:56.180)
so we know 100 i can show you on the actual blockchain
Anthony Pompliano (2:06:59.620)
or in the code that there's 21 million bitcoin and that's all there will ever
Lex Fridman (2:07:03.620)
be i can show you that there's 18.6 million
Anthony Pompliano (2:07:06.820)
give or take bitcoin that actually are in circulation
Anthony Pompliano (2:07:09.860)
today right and i can go all the way back to every single transaction that's ever
Anthony Pompliano (2:07:12.500)
occurred since january 2009 and then i can show you on a daily
Lex Fridman (2:07:15.300)
basis that 900 bitcoin a day are coming into the circulating supply
Lex Fridman (2:07:18.820)
and so when you have 100 confidence because you can prove
Lex Fridman (2:07:22.660)
the supply side of this equation you can hold it constant
Anthony Pompliano (2:07:26.180)
i know with 100 accuracy the supply side so now i've reduced the mathematical
Lex Fridman (2:07:31.860)
equation that i need to do to determine price movements
Anthony Pompliano (2:07:34.900)
to a 50 reduction i only have to worry about demand i don't have to worry about
Lex Fridman (2:07:38.420)
supply and so when i look at demand i can do
Anthony Pompliano (2:07:41.380)
all kinds of things i can take the demand over the last 10 years and
Lex Fridman (2:07:44.580)
the growth and just extrapolate it out i can increase it i can decrease it
Anthony Pompliano (2:07:47.460)
whatever but what you find is that these supply
Lex Fridman (2:07:51.700)
shocks lead to significant price appreciation
Anthony Pompliano (2:07:55.700)
as the asset gets repriced because there there's a supply shock to
Lex Fridman (2:07:59.860)
and so probably the best thing that i've done over the last couple of years
Anthony Pompliano (2:08:03.700)
was in 2019 i started to talk about the idea that we were going to have both a
Lex Fridman (2:08:07.940)
supply shock and the demand shock in 2021
Anthony Pompliano (2:08:13.140)
or i'm sorry in 2020 i didn't know when this bull market that we were in was
Lex Fridman (2:08:17.620)
going to end nobody knows right it's impossible to time
Anthony Pompliano (2:08:20.340)
these things but you could tell that we were kind of at late stages of a cycle
Lex Fridman (2:08:23.620)
there was inverted yield curves there was rep uh gyrations in the repo markets
Anthony Pompliano (2:08:27.940)
a lot of ceos leaving their jobs you know all this kind of stuff
Lex Fridman (2:08:31.620)
and all i said was at some point when the market turns over
Anthony Pompliano (2:08:34.980)
the government's gonna have to step in we were addicted to stimulus they're
Lex Fridman (2:08:37.940)
gonna have to manipulate interest rates down and they're gonna have to print
Anthony Pompliano (2:08:40.180)
money i had no clue that there was going to be a global
Lex Fridman (2:08:43.380)
pandemic that they were going to have to step in
Anthony Pompliano (2:08:45.700)
in such an aggressive way and move rates not down but down to zero
Lex Fridman (2:08:49.620)
and that they not only were going to print hundreds of billions but they could
Anthony Pompliano (2:08:52.100)
print trillions of dollars but the framework that i used to think
Lex Fridman (2:08:56.420)
about this was when they do that everyone is going to
Anthony Pompliano (2:09:00.420)
run to store value assets they're going to run the gold they're going to run the
Lex Fridman (2:09:03.860)
bitcoin etc and right as they do that it appears at
Anthony Pompliano (2:09:07.540)
the same time there's going to be this supply shock
Lex Fridman (2:09:09.540)
so you're gonna get a supply shock and a demand shock that are both positive for
Anthony Pompliano (2:09:12.420)
the the price i called it rocket fuel for bitcoin
Lex Fridman (2:09:15.940)
well it happened and here we are i now look forward and i say okay we are
Anthony Pompliano (2:09:20.980)
likely going to see a hundred thousand bitcoin
Lex Fridman (2:09:22.900)
a hundred thousand dollar bitcoin this year or at some point i don't know when
Anthony Pompliano (2:09:25.700)
it happens but we're moving in that so you think in 2021 we'll see a hundred
Lex Fridman (2:09:28.740)
thousand that would be uh my most conservative
Anthony Pompliano (2:09:32.740)
view uh i i've said a hundred thousand dollars
Lex Fridman (2:09:35.540)
since 2019 and people thought that was insane and
Anthony Pompliano (2:09:38.820)
crazy and all stuff now i'm the conservative guy in the room
Lex Fridman (2:09:41.780)
because i stick with a hundred thousand dollars and people are saying
Anthony Pompliano (2:09:44.260)
you know multiples of that number here uh so we'll see what happens but
Lex Fridman (2:09:48.820)
but i think that there's still a lot of room kind of to run from a us dollar
Anthony Pompliano (2:09:52.100)
price standpoint what is on the horizon is in 2024 we
Lex Fridman (2:09:56.100)
will have another supply shock and so that's what i think will carry
Anthony Pompliano (2:09:59.940)
us to the million dollar bitcoin from 6 to 5 to whatever 50 reduction yeah
Lex Fridman (2:10:04.500)
yeah and so that's what i think uh well
Anthony Pompliano (2:10:06.900)
basically when we get that that next supply shock that'll carry us up over a
Lex Fridman (2:10:10.020)
hundred or over a one million dollar bitcoin price which if historical
Anthony Pompliano (2:10:15.780)
examples persist and again sometimes it's hard to use historical examples to
Lex Fridman (2:10:20.100)
look at future events um but if that happens we would see
Anthony Pompliano (2:10:23.780)
a million dollars of bitcoin by the end of 2026
Lex Fridman (2:10:27.380)
after that wave so 2024 basically is the supply shock and within
Anthony Pompliano (2:10:32.420)
you know 18 to 24 months you would see the uh
Lex Fridman (2:10:35.540)
the kind of top of the next market hopefully without a coupling to the net
Anthony Pompliano (2:10:39.140)
to another pandemic yes we we would like to do all of this without a
Lex Fridman (2:10:44.020)
public health crisis so that would take it to
Anthony Pompliano (2:10:47.860)
20 trillion you don't have to compare it to the dollar
Lex Fridman (2:10:51.540)
essentially in some sense that the dollar could also lose value i mean
Anthony Pompliano (2:10:55.780)
there's a lot of kind of dynamics at play here
Lex Fridman (2:10:58.660)
now but like fundamentally there's going to be a huge
Anthony Pompliano (2:11:02.020)
move uh in your prediction of uh value into into bitcoin
Lex Fridman (2:11:06.420)
i mean that's a fascinating world uh to think about
Anthony Pompliano (2:11:10.340)
uh i mean but i do have to kind of ask you about the whole space of
Lex Fridman (2:11:16.180)
technology there because we're talking about the value of security we're
Anthony Pompliano (2:11:19.140)
talking about the the future which bitcoin will be at the
Lex Fridman (2:11:22.820)
center of but from my perspective of
Anthony Pompliano (2:11:26.980)
thinking how like i and others can build technologies on top of
Lex Fridman (2:11:31.540)
this kind of decentralized world i'm thinking about different
Anthony Pompliano (2:11:35.140)
different technologies out there different cryptocurrencies out there
Lex Fridman (2:11:38.340)
ethereum being one but there's a lot of others
Lex Fridman (2:11:42.100)
so i'd love to get your sort of ideas about some of these but
Lex Fridman (2:11:45.300)
so first let me ask you about what the hell is shit coin
Anthony Pompliano (2:11:50.180)
is this connected to uh to our previous discussion of the meme
Lex Fridman (2:11:54.900)
uh this shit coin cover basically all coins that are not
Anthony Pompliano (2:11:59.460)
bitcoin is it uh uh mean is it a beautiful is it's a mixture of
Lex Fridman (2:12:05.620)
both as with most things in life uh depends
Anthony Pompliano (2:12:08.660)
who you ask um the uh most um
Lex Fridman (2:12:14.100)
kind of enthusiastic and uh uh parts of the bitcoin community shit
Anthony Pompliano (2:12:19.140)
coin is anything else right kind of if you ascribe to kind
Lex Fridman (2:12:23.300)
of a maximalistic view of the world shit crime be anything if you look at
Anthony Pompliano (2:12:27.060)
people who i would say are bitcoin proponents uh yet
Lex Fridman (2:12:31.780)
see value in other things shit coin may be the bottom half
Anthony Pompliano (2:12:35.700)
of the other things right so i think again it's really important kind of who
Lex Fridman (2:12:39.620)
you ask is how you'll get that answer so
Anthony Pompliano (2:12:42.100)
there's tiers and the way you divide those tiers might be different depending
Lex Fridman (2:12:45.700)
who you ask ultimately what it is is it's a meme yeah
Lex Fridman (2:12:48.980)
and it's used to uh articulate the idea that whatever you want to put in
Lex Fridman (2:12:54.500)
that bucket has no value so shit coin right are coins that have
Anthony Pompliano (2:12:57.860)
no value yeah uh what is fascinating about it and i
Lex Fridman (2:13:02.260)
think that again speaks to the power of the bitcoin community
Anthony Pompliano (2:13:05.060)
is uh there was congressional hearings a couple years ago
Lex Fridman (2:13:08.580)
oh no and at one point uh a congressman from ohio warren davidson who uh
Anthony Pompliano (2:13:13.460)
who's definitely uh open minded and excited about bitcoin
Lex Fridman (2:13:17.860)
asked a an individual on the congress floor
Anthony Pompliano (2:13:20.900)
uh during testimony to uh talk about these other coins and at one point
Lex Fridman (2:13:26.740)
basically read into the record the terminology of shit coin
Anthony Pompliano (2:13:31.300)
he said the word shit coin uh i can't remember if he said it first
Lex Fridman (2:13:34.900)
somebody else did or if uh the other person did and then he uh um
Anthony Pompliano (2:13:38.340)
you know repeated it that's awesome but he definitely he was trying to get that
Lex Fridman (2:13:42.180)
read into the record yes uh for sure and so uh you know you
Anthony Pompliano (2:13:46.420)
can imagine one again the meme speaking insolently to
Lex Fridman (2:13:50.980)
the bitcoin community was you know made him very uh very well
Anthony Pompliano (2:13:54.180)
liked uh but also too was um it does go back to this idea almost of
Lex Fridman (2:14:00.020)
uh if you and i sat down with 10 ceos and we interviewed each one of them and
Anthony Pompliano (2:14:05.460)
then we went in a room and we deliberated and we said we have to pick
Lex Fridman (2:14:07.940)
the person who's going to be the most successful
Anthony Pompliano (2:14:10.820)
one of the inputs not all the inputs but one of the inputs would be
Lex Fridman (2:14:13.540)
who's the person who we believe has the best ability to
Anthony Pompliano (2:14:16.900)
raise capital recruit people and tell a story
Lex Fridman (2:14:20.180)
to the world that will get them to follow and so somebody like elon would
Anthony Pompliano (2:14:26.020)
probably be the best example of this when you have decentralized products you
Lex Fridman (2:14:30.740)
have no kind of leader right in the sense of somebody who is
Anthony Pompliano (2:14:34.340)
financially ascribed to be that leader and kind of the
Lex Fridman (2:14:37.620)
executive decision maker so what you have to do is you have to
Anthony Pompliano (2:14:40.260)
look at these technologies in these communities and say
Lex Fridman (2:14:43.140)
well which volunteer teams or which technologies have been able to coalesce
Anthony Pompliano (2:14:48.260)
these groups around it and in some way build the same level of
Lex Fridman (2:14:53.380)
engagement and protection and things like that and so
Anthony Pompliano (2:14:57.460)
you actually get tribalism but you also get things like
Lex Fridman (2:15:00.820)
shitcoin because what it does is it's not only a um
Anthony Pompliano (2:15:05.380)
kind of verbal attack towards uh others it's a rallying cry for
Lex Fridman (2:15:12.100)
internal what's so funny is that it was started with the bitcoin community
Anthony Pompliano (2:15:16.500)
talking about everybody but now you've seen adoption in other communities who
Lex Fridman (2:15:19.780)
use it you know basically say well we're not a
Anthony Pompliano (2:15:21.700)
shitcoin it's the it's the next guy yeah i mean the meaning to be honest
Lex Fridman (2:15:26.020)
it's it's one it's off it's sometimes
Anthony Pompliano (2:15:29.380)
misused i think like with anything it's like
Lex Fridman (2:15:32.900)
people adopt memes that used to be brilliant or still brilliant
Lex Fridman (2:15:37.540)
and they're just not good at using them so they become
Lex Fridman (2:15:40.980)
mean uh but when you do with with grace it can tear down an
Anthony Pompliano (2:15:47.300)
argument and at the same time have like love and
Lex Fridman (2:15:51.220)
respect underneath it i mean it's a beautiful dance they have to be good at
Anthony Pompliano (2:15:54.820)
like you know people just can suck at communication and even
Lex Fridman (2:15:59.060)
uh like even a powerful weapon like a meme in the wrong hands
Anthony Pompliano (2:16:02.820)
just uh fires in a way that doesn't get anything done but this is like a war
Lex Fridman (2:16:09.460)
of humor and memes it's kind of fascinating exactly like you formulated
Anthony Pompliano (2:16:13.620)
that there's a symmetry of power so you have to
Lex Fridman (2:16:16.740)
have guerrilla warfare in this internet game especially when there's no leader
Anthony Pompliano (2:16:22.740)
like you said in a distributed culture i would say here that is um
Lex Fridman (2:16:26.900)
is really important i think is from a society standpoint
Anthony Pompliano (2:16:31.300)
we've become very soft and very kind of coddling and not in um
Lex Fridman (2:16:37.540)
not in a way that's like i think people take this argument like too far
Anthony Pompliano (2:16:40.660)
sometimes but what i mean by that is um it's almost like if you're the person
Lex Fridman (2:16:45.380)
who holds somebody accountable you become the bad person right if you're
Anthony Pompliano (2:16:49.060)
the person who um says hey you know that's wrong you're
Lex Fridman (2:16:53.380)
the bad person right and so in a world where i think in um
Anthony Pompliano (2:16:57.620)
this kind of influencery you know all positive if you have any negative
Lex Fridman (2:17:02.180)
you know feedback or constructive criticism like you're the bad person
Anthony Pompliano (2:17:06.020)
uh it's the ultimate echo chamber right and so i think that what the bitcoin
Lex Fridman (2:17:11.780)
world does in in some crazy crazy way to look
Anthony Pompliano (2:17:15.860)
at it is bitcoin is ultimately about truth
Lex Fridman (2:17:20.180)
not about narrative not about feelings or emotion it's math yeah
Anthony Pompliano (2:17:26.420)
you look at a blockchain and you can prove something
Lex Fridman (2:17:30.340)
or you can't and so naturally people who are attracted to that
Anthony Pompliano (2:17:34.500)
have a very similar approach in life yeah right they say hey
Lex Fridman (2:17:37.860)
you made x claim prove it and as you can imagine
Anthony Pompliano (2:17:41.060)
you know a great example is like the financial media meets bitcoiners
Lex Fridman (2:17:45.700)
and it's a bloodbath right in kind of the the arena of ideas because
Lex Fridman (2:17:50.900)
what do they do the financial media is used to the soft
Lex Fridman (2:17:54.020)
you know opinion pieces etc and bitcoiners show up and they're like
Anthony Pompliano (2:17:57.700)
uh here's data point a b and c here's example one two and three
Lex Fridman (2:18:01.300)
and you're wrong and then all they yell and scream about is like
Anthony Pompliano (2:18:05.060)
uh i'm wrong i'm wrong i'm wrong like you can't say i'm wrong and they're like
Lex Fridman (2:18:08.420)
nerd like disprove what i just said and so you get in this like very very weird
Anthony Pompliano (2:18:12.260)
it's fascinating it's a fascinating battlefield but
Lex Fridman (2:18:14.340)
i i do want to say it's i've been watching this
Anthony Pompliano (2:18:17.780)
it's kind of interesting i think that the pursuit of truth
Lex Fridman (2:18:23.540)
like tearing down bad ideas can be done with grace and to do it with
Anthony Pompliano (2:18:29.460)
grace requires a lot of skill like what people
Lex Fridman (2:18:32.660)
don't realize about disagreement they think that disagreement is easy
Anthony Pompliano (2:18:38.900)
like they they see the the the lies or the inaccuracies in the
Lex Fridman (2:18:44.500)
statement and and they just think they can say
Anthony Pompliano (2:18:47.220)
wrong uh yes you can say that but if you want
Lex Fridman (2:18:51.860)
to be effective it requires great skill like you look at
Anthony Pompliano (2:18:57.300)
i don't know um a beautiful uh verbal shit poster which is Christopher
Lex Fridman (2:19:03.620)
Hitchens right it requires a lot of skill
Anthony Pompliano (2:19:08.020)
through your words to tear down an argument
Lex Fridman (2:19:11.860)
to criticize and to take a step towards truth
Lex Fridman (2:19:16.660)
what i'm disheartened by internet culture like the negative side
Lex Fridman (2:19:20.900)
is people don't put a lot of effort in their tear downs
Anthony Pompliano (2:19:25.140)
like into your shit posting into your memes
Lex Fridman (2:19:29.060)
you should put effort and see it as a skill that you want to if you want to be
Anthony Pompliano (2:19:34.820)
a part of this culture you want to uh get good at it
Lex Fridman (2:19:39.540)
like any skill it's the 10 000 hours like get improve deliberate practice
Anthony Pompliano (2:19:45.860)
self criticism all of those things uh just because you're anonymous
Lex Fridman (2:19:50.580)
doesn't mean you won't get deep joy and actually have an impact on the world if
Anthony Pompliano (2:19:55.060)
you get good at shitposting but but i think this is really really
Lex Fridman (2:19:59.620)
important right because you're right in that
Anthony Pompliano (2:20:01.300)
uh it's all about intention versus action if your intention is to
Lex Fridman (2:20:05.300)
uh tell somebody that they are wrong in an effort to get them to
Anthony Pompliano (2:20:09.220)
see the truth yes that's very different than if your intention is to tell
Lex Fridman (2:20:12.500)
someone they're wrong and hurt their feelings yes
Anthony Pompliano (2:20:14.420)
right and so when you can unpack intention and action
Lex Fridman (2:20:18.660)
you really quickly can tell what somebody ultimately is trying to
Anthony Pompliano (2:20:22.100)
accomplish i also think that one of the craziest
Lex Fridman (2:20:25.620)
things that i've seen play out is uh memes when i use that term i'm not
Anthony Pompliano (2:20:30.180)
just talking about like a static photo right when i'm talking about these
Lex Fridman (2:20:32.900)
elaborate uh kind of edited videos and kind of
Anthony Pompliano (2:20:35.940)
all this stuff um when done right it is
Lex Fridman (2:20:41.620)
uh the most articulate way to deliver a blunt message and it's
Anthony Pompliano (2:20:47.620)
done in such a way that is humorous and entertaining
Anthony Pompliano (2:20:51.300)
yet really hammers the point home and so it's a skill set that many people don't
Anthony Pompliano (2:20:57.380)
have i don't make those i'm assuming you don't make them either
Lex Fridman (2:21:00.100)
right i see them i share the ones that i like right
Anthony Pompliano (2:21:03.060)
uh but it does take practice and you can tell
Lex Fridman (2:21:06.420)
look there's people who are fantastic meme lords right and there are
Anthony Pompliano (2:21:10.340)
people who absolutely suck at it and it's like anything it's just
Lex Fridman (2:21:15.780)
how good are you at communicating and uh i've heard the idea a bunch of times so
Anthony Pompliano (2:21:20.340)
i don't know who to kind of credit for it but uh whether it's emojis
Lex Fridman (2:21:24.180)
it's gifs it's memes whatever this is the extension and evolution of
Anthony Pompliano (2:21:29.140)
just hieroglyphics right yeah like like we have been doing
Lex Fridman (2:21:33.460)
this for literally centuries it's just that now we're doing it on
Anthony Pompliano (2:21:36.820)
the internet you can press a button and go to
Lex Fridman (2:21:38.660)
millions and millions of people immediately uh but speaking of memes
Lex Fridman (2:21:43.140)
what the heck do you think is up with elon musk talking about dogecoin a lot
Lex Fridman (2:21:48.260)
sort of uh from the cryptocurrency community i
Anthony Pompliano (2:21:51.780)
from i've been talking to a lot of sort of technologists i guess
Lex Fridman (2:21:56.100)
and reading papers on cryptocurrency it's like
Anthony Pompliano (2:21:59.380)
nobody really sees dogecoin as a revolutionary
Lex Fridman (2:22:04.100)
crypto technology a lot of people talk about it's security issues there's a
Anthony Pompliano (2:22:07.940)
bunch of issues it has nevertheless you did say that money is the
Lex Fridman (2:22:13.380)
kind of social construct right and uh elon musk's
Anthony Pompliano (2:22:19.380)
combination of humor and brilliant engineering in the various
Lex Fridman (2:22:24.020)
companies he runs combines to create a kind of value
Lex Fridman (2:22:29.140)
and excitement behind dogecoin it's like
Lex Fridman (2:22:32.660)
um what is it he says uh that the most amusing outcome is the most likely
Anthony Pompliano (2:22:38.980)
kind of idea which sounds silly but there could be like profound truth to it
Lex Fridman (2:22:44.580)
it's like what do you make of dogecoin philosophically or technically is is it
Anthony Pompliano (2:22:50.340)
possible that dogecoin will overtake bitcoin and run the
Lex Fridman (2:22:55.380)
run the entire world i can't even because it could happen
Anthony Pompliano (2:22:59.380)
it could happen but what uh if there's any serious way to answer that question
Lex Fridman (2:23:04.740)
well we have to start with uh techno king of tesla yeah and master of coin
Anthony Pompliano (2:23:12.020)
as they are so articulately called in the latest scc filing
Lex Fridman (2:23:15.860)
he officially changed his title techno king yes no king of tesla
Lex Fridman (2:23:19.460)
and the cfo's new uh title is a master of coin
Lex Fridman (2:23:24.020)
and so uh when you have a sense of humor yeah and frankly uh a level of uh
Anthony Pompliano (2:23:32.100)
self confidence and uh an element of uh an appreciation for irony in the world
Lex Fridman (2:23:39.540)
dogecoin is actually one of the least crazy things that you could talk about
Anthony Pompliano (2:23:44.340)
when you're willing to go to techno king of tesla master of coin
Lex Fridman (2:23:48.180)
uh and all this stuff and so i think that
Anthony Pompliano (2:23:51.540)
elon uh doesn't get enough credit frankly for his understanding of internet
Lex Fridman (2:23:55.540)
culture understanding of memes and understanding
Anthony Pompliano (2:23:58.900)
of frankly human psychology and marketing and so
Lex Fridman (2:24:02.660)
in some crazy way every time he talks about dogecoin
Anthony Pompliano (2:24:06.740)
it's a rallying cry for an entire generation of kids
Lex Fridman (2:24:09.860)
it's a rallying cry for an entire industry uh in terms of cryptocurrencies
Lex Fridman (2:24:13.700)
and digital technologies but this is the flag yeah
Lex Fridman (2:24:19.060)
and this is the thing that he can yell and scream about
Lex Fridman (2:24:22.020)
and tweet about without worry of punishment
Lex Fridman (2:24:26.020)
so he could be talking about bitcoin he could be talking about cryptocurrency
Lex Fridman (2:24:29.620)
but that's not going to be uh as beautifully
Lex Fridman (2:24:33.460)
humorous and whatever the hell internet culture is as dogecoin
Anthony Pompliano (2:24:37.380)
he's finding the right language he's speaking the language of the people
Lex Fridman (2:24:40.980)
of the of the in the digital age if you want to reach weird people
Anthony Pompliano (2:24:45.380)
yeah you can't be serious and most people are weird
Lex Fridman (2:24:49.220)
the masses are weird so he's speaking to the masses
Anthony Pompliano (2:24:52.740)
yeah and the techno king and even further than that i think is
Lex Fridman (2:24:56.420)
he essentially is um he's using dogecoin as a way to say
Anthony Pompliano (2:25:04.100)
i'm doing this because i can yeah he couldn't do it
Lex Fridman (2:25:08.020)
with securities he couldn't do it with certain types of other assets right
Anthony Pompliano (2:25:13.300)
like i almost look at it as like a venn diagram what's the thing that a bunch of
Lex Fridman (2:25:16.020)
people know about care about thinkers funny whatever and
Anthony Pompliano (2:25:19.700)
also overlay that with the things that like he
Lex Fridman (2:25:21.700)
could actually talk about they won't get in trouble for
Anthony Pompliano (2:25:24.180)
that's a big f you to the sec i could see the
Lex Fridman (2:25:27.380)
the people just freaking out i i mean i love it
Lex Fridman (2:25:30.660)
but um i i don't know if i would have the guts to do it myself
Lex Fridman (2:25:34.580)
but i i think he's an inspiration to a lot of us
Anthony Pompliano (2:25:37.860)
to be like well maybe you should grow the guts
Lex Fridman (2:25:40.900)
when you're the techno king you can do whatever you want right
Lex Fridman (2:25:45.860)
and i mean that's something to aspire to is to be the techno king in your own
Lex Fridman (2:25:49.700)
little world if you also think about it in the sense
Anthony Pompliano (2:25:52.500)
of uh when you're somebody on a mission to create interplanetary
Lex Fridman (2:25:58.100)
life yeah when you're trying to solve a or put a dent in the climate crisis
Anthony Pompliano (2:26:05.300)
or create electric vehicles and be the first american company and you know
Lex Fridman (2:26:08.660)
however long frankly the sec
Anthony Pompliano (2:26:13.380)
or other things in your life that just don't
Lex Fridman (2:26:16.740)
you don't ascribe that much importance to compared to those things
Anthony Pompliano (2:26:20.660)
they're almost uh nuisances and that's scary i think for shareholders
Lex Fridman (2:26:25.540)
of a company when the person that you're trusting to lead
Anthony Pompliano (2:26:28.820)
you to the promised land and create shareholder value
Lex Fridman (2:26:31.620)
doesn't put value on certain things but at the same time
Anthony Pompliano (2:26:36.260)
i always look at it as a tug of war how much of the actions of what he's doing
Lex Fridman (2:26:40.820)
and calling attention to actually change the way
Anthony Pompliano (2:26:44.100)
that regulators lawmakers politicians countries whatever act he may not be
Lex Fridman (2:26:50.660)
able to say do acts i'm the techno king and they go do it
Lex Fridman (2:26:55.300)
but with every step he makes he changes some of their behavior and so i
Lex Fridman (2:27:01.700)
think that it's um a really kind of game of like 3d chess
Anthony Pompliano (2:27:07.140)
that frankly i'm not privy to right i'm kind of watching from the sidelines and
Lex Fridman (2:27:11.220)
uh figuring out alongside everybody else but i also don't think that it's just
Anthony Pompliano (2:27:17.060)
elon uh bought a bunch of dogecoin and tweets about it because he thinks he's
Lex Fridman (2:27:20.580)
going to a dollar and he's gonna you know make money right like i don't think
Anthony Pompliano (2:27:23.380)
i don't think it's an economic argument as to why he's so
Lex Fridman (2:27:26.340)
interested in i think it's much more uh it's almost like meta message
Anthony Pompliano (2:27:31.780)
for a lot of other stuff yeah he's kind of
Lex Fridman (2:27:35.060)
trying to break apart internet communication from first principles like
Anthony Pompliano (2:27:38.820)
it does so many other problems it's kind of fascinating to watch i know he's been
Lex Fridman (2:27:42.100)
uh he's he's taught me quite a bit about communication
Lex Fridman (2:27:45.540)
and uh at least for me it's been liberating to not give a fuck
Lex Fridman (2:27:52.980)
about the old school way of things i've been always bothered by
Anthony Pompliano (2:27:57.940)
a place i deeply admire which is mit but there's
Lex Fridman (2:28:01.540)
problems the bureaucracies and hierarchies that hold back innovation
Anthony Pompliano (2:28:05.620)
brilliant minds and in that sense doge is a kind of fu to
Lex Fridman (2:28:10.820)
the system that's kind of positive but also
Anthony Pompliano (2:28:15.060)
uh kind of uh but it was also an fu so in that sense i think
Lex Fridman (2:28:22.500)
elon has a perspective on the world that's similar to bitcoin folks
Anthony Pompliano (2:28:26.180)
which i really like which is like thinking long term
Lex Fridman (2:28:30.100)
it's how visionaries think is like how will if i take these ideas
Lex Fridman (2:28:35.460)
what and the ideas hold true what will the world look like in 20 30
Lex Fridman (2:28:42.260)
50 years and think about everything in that way
Anthony Pompliano (2:28:45.380)
yeah i like uh bezos's view which is uh is essentially how do you minimize
Lex Fridman (2:28:51.460)
regret how do you accelerate your life mentally
Lex Fridman (2:28:55.300)
and go to 80 90 100 150 years whatever we end up
Lex Fridman (2:28:59.060)
being you know fortunate enough to live to and then look backwards
Anthony Pompliano (2:29:02.420)
yes and say this decision that i'm going to make i have two
Lex Fridman (2:29:06.340)
options which one is going to be the one that i least regret
Lex Fridman (2:29:10.100)
and if you continue to make decisions that way
Lex Fridman (2:29:13.140)
one you have that long term view kind of built in because you're working
Anthony Pompliano (2:29:15.700)
backwards uh two you are ultimately going to optimize
Lex Fridman (2:29:19.300)
for uh minimal regret but also three is
Anthony Pompliano (2:29:23.620)
even if you only look forward 10 years that's much much further than most
Lex Fridman (2:29:27.620)
people do and so it gives you a significant
Anthony Pompliano (2:29:29.300)
advantage and i think that um bitcoin has kind of this like um
Lex Fridman (2:29:33.620)
you know proxy for time as we talked about uh
Anthony Pompliano (2:29:36.820)
interplant uh planetary travel where there's multiple steps from creating a
Lex Fridman (2:29:41.940)
reusable rocket to landing it to you know all this stuff all the way
Anthony Pompliano (2:29:46.260)
to simple things just like if you're simply trying to figure out
Lex Fridman (2:29:49.860)
where the world's going to be 30 years from now
Anthony Pompliano (2:29:52.500)
you know bill gates says that we overestimate what we can do in one year
Lex Fridman (2:29:56.020)
underestimate what we can do in 10 well to me it's a um kind of degree of
Anthony Pompliano (2:30:02.580)
uh mistake if you will 10 years maybe you're off by 10 percent
Lex Fridman (2:30:07.860)
well if that line of progress continues 20 years you may be off by
Anthony Pompliano (2:30:11.860)
100 and 30 years you may be off by a thousand percent
Lex Fridman (2:30:15.620)
right like almost the further you go out the more inaccurate you become
Lex Fridman (2:30:20.500)
and so i think that people who want to iterate their way to success right
Lex Fridman (2:30:26.100)
that's a common thing in like the startup world
Anthony Pompliano (2:30:29.060)
end up actually following kind of the breadcrumbs to where the
Lex Fridman (2:30:33.940)
world is taking them but people like an elon musk a jeff
Anthony Pompliano (2:30:38.100)
bezos a jack dorsey all the way down the line all these
Lex Fridman (2:30:41.060)
innovators they actually say to themselves there is
Anthony Pompliano (2:30:45.060)
a point in time in the future where there's a world i want to
Lex Fridman (2:30:48.820)
construct and then they go and they construct it
Anthony Pompliano (2:30:52.420)
regardless of the short term iterations and incentives
Lex Fridman (2:30:56.260)
it is just they're driving towards that point and i think that it's this whole
Anthony Pompliano (2:30:59.220)
idea of having this like you know kind of set vision and this
Lex Fridman (2:31:03.780)
uh refusal to kind of move or budge off of that
Anthony Pompliano (2:31:07.700)
that's what makes them special one of the
Lex Fridman (2:31:11.300)
things that garnered a lot of excitement in the crypto
Anthony Pompliano (2:31:14.260)
community is nfts i i have no idea really the depths the
Lex Fridman (2:31:21.300)
fundamental technological philosophical depths of the second of this technology
Anthony Pompliano (2:31:26.340)
whether this is just like a little bit of a fad or there's some deep lessons to
Lex Fridman (2:31:30.180)
learn whether it's bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general about it
Lex Fridman (2:31:33.460)
do you have thoughts about like the long lasting fundamental aspects of nfts
Lex Fridman (2:31:38.500)
i think there's probably both things happening fad
Lex Fridman (2:31:41.940)
and things to learn right and um if we just start with like what is an
Lex Fridman (2:31:47.220)
nft it's a non fungible token meaning that um there's no fungibility
Lex Fridman (2:31:52.020)
and fungibility is a fancy word um i always describe it as
Lex Fridman (2:31:56.020)
if i took a hundred dollar bill and i put it on the table with a bunch of the
Anthony Pompliano (2:31:58.580)
hundred dollar bills and we mixed them up and i just grabbed a hundred dollar
Lex Fridman (2:32:01.220)
bill and left i'm no worse as long as they're all you
Anthony Pompliano (2:32:04.420)
know uh official hundred dollar bills because as long as i have a hundred
Lex Fridman (2:32:07.700)
dollars i have hundred dollars i don't need that exact same bill back
Lex Fridman (2:32:10.580)
so that means that those hundred dollar bills are fungible
Anthony Pompliano (2:32:13.300)
non fungible would be like art if i took a picasso and i put it down on the table
Lex Fridman (2:32:17.540)
and you brought three artists that no one's ever heard of before and we mixed
Lex Fridman (2:32:20.180)
them up and i just took any random piece of art
Anthony Pompliano (2:32:22.100)
it wasn't the picasso i lose because the picasso is really
Lex Fridman (2:32:25.060)
important there right so non fungibility is important in art
Lex Fridman (2:32:28.500)
what these non fungible tokens essentially are doing is they are uh
Lex Fridman (2:32:32.740)
creating scarcity and originality in a digital environment and what i mean by
Anthony Pompliano (2:32:38.900)
that is um take a music file if i had a music
Lex Fridman (2:32:42.980)
file and you wanted it you said send it to me
Anthony Pompliano (2:32:45.140)
i press send it essentially creates a copy and you get one music file i get
Lex Fridman (2:32:49.380)
another we don't care you can listen to music i
Anthony Pompliano (2:32:51.540)
can listen to music we're super happy if i instead though have a digital file
Anthony Pompliano (2:32:57.220)
that entire premise is based on scarcity and i hit send and you get a copy and i
Anthony Pompliano (2:33:03.220)
keep the original or you get the original i get a copy
Lex Fridman (2:33:05.620)
there's a problem and so ultimately what i think is playing out with nfts is
Anthony Pompliano (2:33:11.700)
it's a technology regardless of where it plays out from
Lex Fridman (2:33:15.220)
blockchains or uh what in communities or environments
Anthony Pompliano (2:33:19.620)
that just brings true digital scarcity to the internet and so naturally what
Lex Fridman (2:33:25.940)
people do they look at the legacy world and they
Anthony Pompliano (2:33:28.100)
say well what's scarce there that has value
Lex Fridman (2:33:30.420)
how do we bring that to the digital world so art is a perfect example right
Lex Fridman (2:33:33.780)
and you know frankly last year i started to
Lex Fridman (2:33:36.260)
look at this because it felt like this was going to be really really big
Lex Fridman (2:33:40.260)
and the conclusion i came to was just as bitcoin is going to be bigger
Lex Fridman (2:33:45.860)
than gold right the digital application of
Anthony Pompliano (2:33:48.500)
something is going to be bigger than the analog application
Lex Fridman (2:33:50.900)
the same thing's going to be true in art the digital art world is going to be
Anthony Pompliano (2:33:54.180)
bigger than the traditional art world people think that sounds crazy at first
Lex Fridman (2:33:57.620)
until you start to realize it's very very similar the art is more
Anthony Pompliano (2:34:01.540)
portable it can be divisible right it's got a
Lex Fridman (2:34:04.660)
larger demand market in terms of the internet rather than an auction right
Anthony Pompliano (2:34:08.100)
all this kind of stuff when you display it it can have motion
Lex Fridman (2:34:12.100)
and music and all of these aspects to it that are better than the traditional
Anthony Pompliano (2:34:16.180)
art what the traditional art market has that
Lex Fridman (2:34:18.740)
the digital art market has not had is the narrative narrative based world
Anthony Pompliano (2:34:23.780)
scarcity kind of in digital sense and so what i think the entire world is
Lex Fridman (2:34:30.100)
going through right now is an exploration of how do we use this
Anthony Pompliano (2:34:33.380)
technology to create new things frankly
Lex Fridman (2:34:38.100)
we're not going to be good at it for a while
Lex Fridman (2:34:40.420)
and so the only place i've really focused on is
Lex Fridman (2:34:43.700)
digital art itself and i've always been interested in art but i wasn't going to
Anthony Pompliano (2:34:50.100)
go buy a painting and hang it on the wall
Lex Fridman (2:34:52.100)
right in the sense of uh that's how i was going to store value
Lex Fridman (2:34:55.700)
what i find fascinating though is that i now can take
Lex Fridman (2:34:59.380)
that concept which most of the wealthiest people in the world
Anthony Pompliano (2:35:02.900)
have a significant portion some you know some people have 20 percent in terms of
Lex Fridman (2:35:06.420)
you know number of billionaires 20 percent of their wealth is in art
Lex Fridman (2:35:10.660)
and you can bring to this digital realm which is much more um
Lex Fridman (2:35:13.940)
kind of natural to a digital native and so the best way to describe the
Anthony Pompliano (2:35:19.140)
importance is imagine a serial number being placed on
Lex Fridman (2:35:22.820)
something take the eiffel tower the only eiffel
Anthony Pompliano (2:35:26.100)
tower that has value is the first one every replica of it regardless of size
Lex Fridman (2:35:30.900)
location you know who made it where they sent it
Anthony Pompliano (2:35:33.780)
they have no value eiffel tower 001 is the most important
Lex Fridman (2:35:38.260)
and so i think that's ultimately what we're starting to see here
Lex Fridman (2:35:41.220)
and what we're looking at is probably one percent of what it's going to grow
Lex Fridman (2:35:45.380)
into so you're you're bullish you're saying
Anthony Pompliano (2:35:49.220)
it could grow into something for one percent it could grow into something
Lex Fridman (2:35:52.580)
significant like all the kinds of different applications
Anthony Pompliano (2:35:55.220)
strip away all the applications right now and just think about
Lex Fridman (2:35:58.420)
is digital scarcity going to be important on the internet moving all the things
Anthony Pompliano (2:36:01.700)
that are scarce in the physical world into digital space
Lex Fridman (2:36:04.260)
us trying to figure out which things can be moved and not
Lex Fridman (2:36:07.140)
and also there's things in the digital space just like you're saying that
Lex Fridman (2:36:10.340)
don't exist in the physical world that might also
Anthony Pompliano (2:36:13.300)
benefit from gaining scarcity like you know people are i guess creating
Lex Fridman (2:36:18.020)
nfts out of like tweets or whatever so like you're you have you
Anthony Pompliano (2:36:21.700)
have a fun twitter account you know you could say like you
Lex Fridman (2:36:24.980)
could put value to a single tweet and then be
Anthony Pompliano (2:36:27.620)
able to invest in it and trade it and buy parts of it and all those kinds of
Lex Fridman (2:36:31.460)
things you know you can invest in people you
Anthony Pompliano (2:36:33.780)
can invest in you know art can be defined broadly as
Lex Fridman (2:36:38.820)
any kind of creation right and in some sense
Anthony Pompliano (2:36:42.340)
this whole idea of scarcity can overtake the entirety
Lex Fridman (2:36:47.860)
of the digital world it can like consume the
Anthony Pompliano (2:36:52.820)
all of the markets we see as financial markets and just turn
Lex Fridman (2:36:56.660)
everything into a market well so if i take you on like a i don't know
Anthony Pompliano (2:37:01.620)
10 year fast forward yeah and i paint a picture of uh something today that seems
Lex Fridman (2:37:06.900)
absolutely insane but there's early signs that people are
Anthony Pompliano (2:37:09.780)
building this and let's just give them the benefit of the doubt that
Lex Fridman (2:37:12.580)
some of the early iterations will work and some of or most of them won't
Anthony Pompliano (2:37:16.980)
there's a world where you and i are participating in a digital economy
Lex Fridman (2:37:21.860)
in a virtual world where uh whether it is a piece of art
Anthony Pompliano (2:37:26.340)
it is a digital sculpture it is a digital
Lex Fridman (2:37:29.620)
skin from a video game it is a digital good that we purchased somewhere online
Lex Fridman (2:37:36.340)
and we bring it and we display it in a digital museum or a virtual museum
Lex Fridman (2:37:42.740)
and so now all of a sudden you can charge people for entry
Anthony Pompliano (2:37:46.260)
you can consign digital goods it's the replication of what happens in the
Lex Fridman (2:37:50.420)
analog world now just in digital and when you do that
Lex Fridman (2:37:53.860)
what you do is you take the addressable markets
Lex Fridman (2:37:58.020)
of these assets or these mechanisms and they explode
Anthony Pompliano (2:38:01.860)
in the digital realm and so now all of a sudden
Lex Fridman (2:38:05.300)
how fast does the human race accelerate when it comes to human
Anthony Pompliano (2:38:10.500)
production intelligence learning all in the digital
Lex Fridman (2:38:14.500)
output it's just if i said to you 20 years ago i'm going to give you a
Anthony Pompliano (2:38:19.540)
global education that means i'm going to take you and i'm
Lex Fridman (2:38:22.900)
going to physically move you to geography after geography after
Anthony Pompliano (2:38:26.820)
geography it's going to take time it's going to
Lex Fridman (2:38:29.060)
take resources and ultimately it's going to take lots of effort
Anthony Pompliano (2:38:32.820)
if i now said to you hey i'm going to transport you
Lex Fridman (2:38:36.020)
in this virtual world to multiple geographies
Lex Fridman (2:38:40.260)
but you're going to experience it in this virtual
Lex Fridman (2:38:44.500)
world and you're going to have digital goods that you can take
Anthony Pompliano (2:38:47.780)
from economy to economy or from location to location
Lex Fridman (2:38:52.420)
all of a sudden you may get maybe you get 90 of the value you don't get 100
Anthony Pompliano (2:38:55.540)
of the same value we get 90 of the value but you can
Lex Fridman (2:38:58.980)
do it at a much faster pace and so in the six month period
Anthony Pompliano (2:39:02.580)
you've actually made three times the progress
Lex Fridman (2:39:05.620)
than you would have if you had to do in the physical world so that's where i
Anthony Pompliano (2:39:09.140)
think we're heading so there's digital art being displayed
Lex Fridman (2:39:13.460)
in the digital museum and people are being charged for access
Lex Fridman (2:39:17.940)
and perhaps we plug in our senses which means we start to operate more and more
Lex Fridman (2:39:22.020)
in a virtual reality augmented reality virtual reality way
Anthony Pompliano (2:39:25.540)
with this digital world and increasingly going to this world
Lex Fridman (2:39:29.860)
basically lived most of our productive and uh
Anthony Pompliano (2:39:33.700)
social lives in this digital world uh and increasingly essentially create a
Lex Fridman (2:39:39.540)
simulation where the biological basis is just there
Anthony Pompliano (2:39:44.420)
to say sustain the brain that's used to operate in the in the virtual world
Lex Fridman (2:39:49.300)
uh taking us back to the original when we started talking about war
Anthony Pompliano (2:39:53.380)
i wonder what conflict looks like in that world
Lex Fridman (2:39:57.460)
that uh the people who are born today maybe will be fighting wars
Anthony Pompliano (2:40:02.180)
in the space in in that museum world in that digital world remember what i said
Lex Fridman (2:40:07.700)
we're moving from a world of conflict surrounded
Lex Fridman (2:40:11.300)
and determined by bombs bullets and soldiers
Lex Fridman (2:40:14.820)
to a battlefield that is determined by war of information
Lex Fridman (2:40:19.300)
and cyber capabilities and so in that virtual world
Lex Fridman (2:40:24.340)
is it about death and destruction of human life in the physical analog world
Anthony Pompliano (2:40:31.300)
or will it become more important to attack or defend
Lex Fridman (2:40:35.780)
virtual property and virtual life and you know some level of virtual
Anthony Pompliano (2:40:40.420)
sovereignty in my opinion the latter is more likely
Lex Fridman (2:40:45.620)
and so what you start to understand is well
Lex Fridman (2:40:48.980)
what do you truly value in your life is it the physical analog materialistic
Lex Fridman (2:40:55.220)
consumptive goods or is it virtual
Lex Fridman (2:41:00.340)
and in many cases something as simple as the ability to connect
Lex Fridman (2:41:05.540)
with somebody it's really important and so one of the most disruptive
Anthony Pompliano (2:41:10.420)
combative violent things that a country may do to another country in the future
Lex Fridman (2:41:15.060)
simply take down the internet
Lex Fridman (2:41:18.580)
and put people in isolation yeah i don't need to physically harm you if i can
Lex Fridman (2:41:23.220)
psychologically harm you i don't need to it's terrifying yeah i
Anthony Pompliano (2:41:27.620)
don't need to uh actually convince you
Lex Fridman (2:41:32.580)
through a monopoly on violence on physical violence
Lex Fridman (2:41:36.260)
what if i can psychologically change the way you see the world
Lex Fridman (2:41:39.620)
through misinformation through all sorts of
Anthony Pompliano (2:41:42.900)
nefarious activities and i think that you know the united states has been
Lex Fridman (2:41:46.180)
struggling with this idea over the last couple of years in the political arena
Lex Fridman (2:41:49.780)
but what happens when it starts to come to other aspects of our life
Lex Fridman (2:41:54.340)
and i think it's very likely it's almost obviously likely that we're moving into
Anthony Pompliano (2:41:58.740)
the digital world
Lex Fridman (2:42:01.620)
the one of the features of the digital world
Anthony Pompliano (2:42:05.300)
is that artificial intelligence systems can operate with much more power in a
Lex Fridman (2:42:11.220)
in a frictionless way in that world currently as we understand it it's hard
Anthony Pompliano (2:42:16.180)
it's hard to build robots that operate at scale and do like
Lex Fridman (2:42:20.340)
arbitrary large amount of impact damage or positive
Anthony Pompliano (2:42:24.340)
in the physical world it's much easier to do in the digital world
Lex Fridman (2:42:28.740)
do you have do you ever think about ai systems
Anthony Pompliano (2:42:31.780)
just swimming about uh doing extraordinarily powerful destructive
Lex Fridman (2:42:38.420)
things in the digital world is that something of a concern to you
Anthony Pompliano (2:42:42.340)
or is this something into a very distant future
Lex Fridman (2:42:46.020)
i think a lot of artificial intelligence is
Anthony Pompliano (2:42:49.460)
uh in the name it's simply the replication of human intelligence
Lex Fridman (2:42:54.660)
at scale automated and program uh programmatic meaning
Anthony Pompliano (2:43:00.820)
that in the analog world you could go hire a
Lex Fridman (2:43:04.660)
thousand employees or in you know an amazon case hire
Anthony Pompliano (2:43:07.700)
millions of employees and set a mission or a goal and push
Lex Fridman (2:43:12.420)
them to go do that that requires recruiting retention
Anthony Pompliano (2:43:16.740)
training resources all that stuff in the virtual world or in this digital
Lex Fridman (2:43:22.580)
economy what if you can just program the resources
Lex Fridman (2:43:26.180)
and gain the same leverage and do it at scale and do it in a very
Lex Fridman (2:43:30.500)
programmatic way and then have them actually make decisions
Anthony Pompliano (2:43:35.540)
in a way that doesn't require you to have thought of every single
Lex Fridman (2:43:39.860)
potential scenario or edge case that's ultimately what we're talking about when
Anthony Pompliano (2:43:43.780)
we talk about artificial intelligence right
Lex Fridman (2:43:45.780)
and so when you look at that when technology is created
Anthony Pompliano (2:43:49.620)
everyone uses it for good or bad but both get used
Lex Fridman (2:43:53.460)
right and so whether we're talking about cell phones beepers the internet
Anthony Pompliano (2:43:57.300)
uh guns whatever it's always used for good and bad
Anthony Pompliano (2:44:01.700)
the big question is and i think that you know yourself and many other people have
Anthony Pompliano (2:44:05.060)
rightfully said this is the question really becomes
Lex Fridman (2:44:10.020)
is the negative and nefarious uses of this inadvertent potentially
Anthony Pompliano (2:44:16.740)
or does it actually come from a malicious person it's the intention
Lex Fridman (2:44:20.260)
malicious and to me that's what i i don't know
Anthony Pompliano (2:44:22.980)
enough you know much more about this and there's plenty of other people who do as
Lex Fridman (2:44:25.620)
well but i do think that there will be
Anthony Pompliano (2:44:29.860)
nefarious actors and malicious people but we're going to treat them the same
Lex Fridman (2:44:34.180)
way we've always treated people who use technology poorly right we're going to
Anthony Pompliano (2:44:38.260)
understand it we're going to identify it we're going to control it and then we're
Lex Fridman (2:44:40.740)
going to end up reversing it or preventing that from doing them it's the
Anthony Pompliano (2:44:44.420)
inadvertent things that i think are actually the most dangerous
Lex Fridman (2:44:47.620)
because when you have something that can think for itself
Lex Fridman (2:44:51.700)
and there is no way to leverage a monopoly on violence
Lex Fridman (2:44:56.020)
for control it's a very scary thing and it can i mean the the thing that's
Anthony Pompliano (2:45:02.020)
scary to me is this it can scale arbitrarily so it can outnumber humans
Lex Fridman (2:45:06.260)
very quickly even if it's dumber than humans and so
Anthony Pompliano (2:45:12.420)
i don't know if we're able to reason about a world
Lex Fridman (2:45:16.820)
like let's look at the physical analog where all of a sudden
Anthony Pompliano (2:45:21.460)
uh let's talk about something kind of like humans but dumber than humans like
Lex Fridman (2:45:26.020)
chimps okay imagine that all of a sudden chimps
Anthony Pompliano (2:45:30.020)
could multiply arbitrarily quickly and you could have
Lex Fridman (2:45:35.140)
like a trillion chimps the next day when you
Anthony Pompliano (2:45:39.300)
when you only had maybe a million the day before
Lex Fridman (2:45:42.500)
like how does that world look different where the fuck all these chimps come
Anthony Pompliano (2:45:46.980)
from and they like and then we can we can
Lex Fridman (2:45:50.100)
pretend to be like well let's hope the chimps like don't get violent because
Anthony Pompliano (2:45:54.660)
they don't seem to get violent when the resources aren't constrained
Lex Fridman (2:45:59.380)
but like we don't know and the problem is
Anthony Pompliano (2:46:02.340)
it all starts by building that first chip multiplier
Lex Fridman (2:46:07.060)
device and everyone's like okay yeah there's a lot of good applications you
Anthony Pompliano (2:46:10.660)
want you know uh you can make all kinds of
Lex Fridman (2:46:14.580)
arguments for why you have more chimps maybe they can help you out around the
Anthony Pompliano (2:46:19.060)
house or something like that in the physical space uh but
Lex Fridman (2:46:23.540)
ultimately it's the unintended consequences that you're referring to is
Anthony Pompliano (2:46:27.220)
you don't know what's going to happen i'm really worried about
Lex Fridman (2:46:31.460)
dumb ai agents uh like having impact when they're multiplied
Anthony Pompliano (2:46:38.740)
to a million to a billion and are allowed to operate in the digital space
Lex Fridman (2:46:44.660)
especially as we clearly are moving more and more
Anthony Pompliano (2:46:48.100)
of our lives into the digital space so it's kind of terrifying because we you
Lex Fridman (2:46:54.020)
know a lot of people are terrified or like concerned about super
Anthony Pompliano (2:46:57.860)
intelligence systems i think i'm definitely much more
Lex Fridman (2:47:02.020)
concerned about super dumb systems at scale that
Anthony Pompliano (2:47:06.180)
that's terrifying i always think about um the inadvertent
Lex Fridman (2:47:09.860)
but as you were talking what it made me think of is
Anthony Pompliano (2:47:12.340)
also the irreversible irreversible that's right so it's one thing if there's
Lex Fridman (2:47:16.580)
your inadvertent negative impact but we have
Anthony Pompliano (2:47:20.500)
reversibility built into a system and we can fix our mistakes yeah i think
Lex Fridman (2:47:24.980)
the really scary part is when you overlay inadvertent mistakes with the
Anthony Pompliano (2:47:28.820)
irreversible aspect of it and therefore humans have no control
Lex Fridman (2:47:34.020)
yeah if you if you have the trillion chimps you can't
Anthony Pompliano (2:47:38.180)
they're not gonna like it when you try to start killing them off
Lex Fridman (2:47:44.020)
uh all right but back to bitcoin those chimps in the bitcoin community
Anthony Pompliano (2:47:51.460)
anytime you bring up chimps some people say joe rogan entered the chat
Lex Fridman (2:47:55.540)
can i ask you about sort of learning about bitcoin books and resources you
Anthony Pompliano (2:48:00.180)
have an amazing podcast that's not just about
Lex Fridman (2:48:04.100)
bitcoin or cryptocurrency it's about everything including life but you do
Anthony Pompliano (2:48:08.100)
have a lot of really amazing conversations about this whole
Lex Fridman (2:48:12.420)
digital world but you obviously you also have a newsletter
Anthony Pompliano (2:48:17.300)
that's incredible on substack and and um
Lex Fridman (2:48:23.780)
but do you have recommendations maybe it would be great if you could talk about
Anthony Pompliano (2:48:27.380)
first of all your podcast and the newsletter but also other
Lex Fridman (2:48:31.860)
resources that you recommend people should check out in order to learn
Anthony Pompliano (2:48:35.220)
about bitcoin yeah so the podcast and uh email are like the two most selfish
Lex Fridman (2:48:40.820)
things i do because the podcast is a way for me to
Anthony Pompliano (2:48:43.620)
learn from other people so i get them to come on and tell me all
Lex Fridman (2:48:46.740)
the things they're thinking about and i could ask some questions what's it
Anthony Pompliano (2:48:49.380)
called by the way uh just the pomp podcast
Lex Fridman (2:48:52.100)
and so in doing that um it really is informative for me and i think that my
Anthony Pompliano (2:48:57.940)
whole goal is just like if i'm learning other people will be learning
Lex Fridman (2:49:00.900)
and then the email uh i read it every morning because it forces me to
Anthony Pompliano (2:49:05.220)
collect my thoughts and actually articulate them in somewhat of a
Lex Fridman (2:49:08.420)
coherent way and so it's just something that um is
Anthony Pompliano (2:49:12.180)
like a practice that i probably would do even if no one read it
Lex Fridman (2:49:14.740)
and then by being able to publish it uh what does it do it elicits you know
Anthony Pompliano (2:49:19.380)
both the good and bad responses and so people will let me know if they think
Lex Fridman (2:49:22.100)
i'm an idiot and they'll usually not respond if they think that
Anthony Pompliano (2:49:24.740)
it's something smart and so um those two things are really um
Lex Fridman (2:49:29.140)
educational for me and i think kind of forced me to uh to be able to
Anthony Pompliano (2:49:32.740)
articulate a lot of ideas but a lot of what i share or learn on
Lex Fridman (2:49:36.580)
those things come from these other resources
Lex Fridman (2:49:38.660)
so i'm definitely subscribing people should subscribe but
Lex Fridman (2:49:41.780)
what are bitcoin resources books that you recommend
Anthony Pompliano (2:49:45.860)
i think you got to start with bitcoin standard uh that one to me feels like
Lex Fridman (2:49:49.460)
uh it really lays out the picture nicely um
Anthony Pompliano (2:49:52.740)
there is uh bitcoin uh money you can't fuck with
Lex Fridman (2:49:56.340)
i was written by our friend jason williams uh as you can imagine it's
Anthony Pompliano (2:49:59.700)
basically what it talks about uh there's another book layered money
Lex Fridman (2:50:03.140)
um it's written by nick who uh who's done a great uh great job
Anthony Pompliano (2:50:06.820)
kind of laying it out um there's a book uh called bitcoin in black america
Lex Fridman (2:50:10.900)
written by a guy isaiah jackson and he basically lays out the argument for
Lex Fridman (2:50:14.980)
why the black community um can benefit in a
Lex Fridman (2:50:18.820)
asymmetric way from something like bitcoin um and there's a whole bunch
Anthony Pompliano (2:50:22.260)
more i'm gonna forget them all um there's the uh i think it's called the
Lex Fridman (2:50:25.700)
cost of tomorrow a guy jeff booth uh jeff booth wrote it
Anthony Pompliano (2:50:30.260)
um and just if you get on twitter basically you're gonna see all these
Lex Fridman (2:50:33.220)
books flying around um but i do have to say that uh from a
Anthony Pompliano (2:50:38.260)
psychological concept uh or philosophical
Lex Fridman (2:50:41.860)
concept the number one book that i've ever read uh that aligns with bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (2:50:45.860)
ethos but doesn't say a word about bitcoin
Lex Fridman (2:50:47.780)
is a book called the dow of capital by mark spitznagel
Lex Fridman (2:50:51.220)
and so what he essentially does is he just reiterates over and over and over
Lex Fridman (2:50:55.220)
again long term thinking outliers disruption
Anthony Pompliano (2:50:59.300)
all the stuff and so he's a guy who he runs a fund
Lex Fridman (2:51:02.340)
uh that essentially they just do uh tail risk hedging
Lex Fridman (2:51:05.940)
and so in you know march or february of 2020
Lex Fridman (2:51:09.700)
they're up like four thousand percent right
Anthony Pompliano (2:51:13.220)
by the way they pretty much lose money you know
Lex Fridman (2:51:16.260)
for eight nine years then that happens and so
Anthony Pompliano (2:51:18.980)
uh but they're still one of the best performing funds if you look at it over
Lex Fridman (2:51:22.660)
you know years and years and so it's just this mindset of
Anthony Pompliano (2:51:25.700)
uh everyone is so short term focused and so i think it's just a great reminder
Lex Fridman (2:51:29.380)
to long term thinking uh and also i mean i've gotten quite a
Anthony Pompliano (2:51:34.420)
bit of value just reading the papers and that's perhaps more
Lex Fridman (2:51:37.220)
like for technical folks there's quite an active research community
Lex Fridman (2:51:40.980)
and also going back to the original white paper and just
Lex Fridman (2:51:44.260)
original documents old school old school is still
Lex Fridman (2:51:48.100)
what uh like what a few years ago still really interesting
Lex Fridman (2:51:52.100)
to think about to look at what people were thinking about
Anthony Pompliano (2:51:56.900)
because the the principles are carried through
Lex Fridman (2:52:00.500)
with uh other cryptocurrencies as well like it's it's all
Anthony Pompliano (2:52:04.020)
it's all there even in the early documents so
Lex Fridman (2:52:07.300)
that's kind of fascinating to see that whole history from if you're more
Anthony Pompliano (2:52:10.660)
like tech savvy and like you said twitter is actually an interesting place
Lex Fridman (2:52:14.420)
if you can look past all the shit coin talk
Anthony Pompliano (2:52:17.940)
it's a it's a fascinating place for news and resources
Lex Fridman (2:52:21.620)
is there books outside of all this cryptocurrency sort of
Anthony Pompliano (2:52:24.980)
technical fiction philosophical that impact on your life
Lex Fridman (2:52:29.060)
because you've you have interests that are all over the place is there
Anthony Pompliano (2:52:32.420)
something that um you would recommend to others so
Lex Fridman (2:52:36.500)
doubt capital is definitely probably my favorite book
Anthony Pompliano (2:52:39.060)
um books that have been impactful i read uh when i was 20 actually sitting in the
Lex Fridman (2:52:43.940)
desert of iraq um rich dad poor dad thinking grow rich
Lex Fridman (2:52:47.540)
and the richest man in babble on and i don't think i took a single thing
Lex Fridman (2:52:51.940)
and like implemented it from like an execution
Anthony Pompliano (2:52:54.260)
standpoint uh but it was a complete shift in mentality
Lex Fridman (2:52:59.060)
and understanding a relationship with money and um
Anthony Pompliano (2:53:02.340)
just kind of what i wanted to do with my life and stuff like that so i think
Lex Fridman (2:53:05.140)
those three books i read them in succession
Anthony Pompliano (2:53:07.300)
were really impactful um and then i think one of the best books probably
Lex Fridman (2:53:11.060)
ever written is uh i think it's called uh when breath becomes air
Anthony Pompliano (2:53:14.340)
um or air becomes breath i can't remember uh but it's basically a
Lex Fridman (2:53:18.340)
doctor or a medical professional who's dying
Lex Fridman (2:53:21.460)
and he essentially writes about the experience and thoughts and kind of all
Lex Fridman (2:53:26.020)
the stuff and i think that it's just uh one of these
Anthony Pompliano (2:53:29.620)
things where if you said to me you know what's the number one thing i took out
Lex Fridman (2:53:32.660)
of my experience in iraq that's a book like that also gives you is
Anthony Pompliano (2:53:37.220)
we're all gonna die right and you and i can want to be as
Lex Fridman (2:53:40.100)
immortal as we want but at some point we're gonna die
Lex Fridman (2:53:42.660)
and so it really does kind of focus you on
Lex Fridman (2:53:45.860)
time being that scarce asset and use it for
Anthony Pompliano (2:53:49.540)
enjoyment and happiness uh more so than anything else and i think that's part of
Lex Fridman (2:53:53.300)
your message and it's a great one do you think do you like literally
Anthony Pompliano (2:53:58.020)
meditate on your own mortality i necessarily think i uh meditate on it
Lex Fridman (2:54:02.660)
as much as um are you afraid of death were you afraid of
Anthony Pompliano (2:54:06.420)
death when you're in iraq i mean if you're coming face to face with it
Lex Fridman (2:54:09.380)
are you afraid of death today no i i think that it was just one of these
Anthony Pompliano (2:54:12.740)
things where like if you fixate on something and you
Lex Fridman (2:54:16.820)
worry about it then at least to me like you become
Anthony Pompliano (2:54:21.700)
uneasy about it and so after an experience like going to war
Lex Fridman (2:54:28.020)
i think that everything is just so not important compared to that
Anthony Pompliano (2:54:32.180)
right like when i came back i remember uh going back into
Lex Fridman (2:54:35.620)
the college environment and like things people worried about i was like
Anthony Pompliano (2:54:39.300)
listen let me explain to you you know what the real world is like right
Lex Fridman (2:54:43.860)
but i think even today right if you talk to people who know me really well
Anthony Pompliano (2:54:47.300)
i don't get worked up about a lot of stuff i don't get you know in either
Lex Fridman (2:54:50.660)
direction good or bad uh anything because ultimately it just
Anthony Pompliano (2:54:53.780)
comes down to if that's the final result
Lex Fridman (2:54:58.100)
let's enjoy it it's fascinating to ask you
Anthony Pompliano (2:55:01.380)
because this reformulation of money essentially buying time
Lex Fridman (2:55:08.180)
and uh you know there's the old question of does money buy happiness
Lex Fridman (2:55:16.100)
do you think money can buy happiness in the context of money being able to buy
Lex Fridman (2:55:22.580)
time or is happiness something else that is
Anthony Pompliano (2:55:26.500)
beyond all of this when people talk about this question i
Lex Fridman (2:55:30.900)
think that they really focus on money as a means to getting materialistic
Anthony Pompliano (2:55:36.100)
things so they want a big house they want a boat they want a fast car they
Lex Fridman (2:55:40.420)
want you know whatever they think that's the stuff that will
Anthony Pompliano (2:55:44.020)
make them happy what i think about it is if you have
Lex Fridman (2:55:48.100)
resources you can have time and if you have time and
Anthony Pompliano (2:55:51.620)
you spend it the way that you want to spend it then that's ultimately
Lex Fridman (2:55:54.980)
happiness so i always say to people if you think that money doesn't
Anthony Pompliano (2:55:57.620)
buy you happiness what if i told you that if you had more money you could
Lex Fridman (2:56:01.220)
spend more time with your family it reframes it yeah and now is all
Anthony Pompliano (2:56:06.180)
about i want to do certain things in life but
Lex Fridman (2:56:09.460)
there's a lot of people who spend their life
Anthony Pompliano (2:56:11.620)
not doing those things because they feel the need to pursue economic
Lex Fridman (2:56:16.580)
means as a way to provide a living or
Anthony Pompliano (2:56:20.900)
whatever and so i explain this listen in my opinion again it's my opinion it's
Lex Fridman (2:56:24.900)
what makes me happy if i can leverage financial resources to
Anthony Pompliano (2:56:29.220)
create more time to do the things i like i'm happier
Lex Fridman (2:56:34.180)
might not work for everybody but like that's what works for me and so there's
Anthony Pompliano (2:56:37.140)
this element of like i don't care what other people think if
Lex Fridman (2:56:39.780)
they like that or not because they're not me right like there's
Anthony Pompliano (2:56:43.540)
almost this element of like you gotta figure out what works for you and if it
Lex Fridman (2:56:46.020)
works for me then like no i think that resonate that that will
Anthony Pompliano (2:56:50.260)
resonate with a lot of people i think that's a brilliant reframing of it
Lex Fridman (2:56:53.620)
uh that said uh you kind of imply there's a
Anthony Pompliano (2:56:57.700)
there's a reason behind this whole existence of ours there's a meaning to it
Lex Fridman (2:57:01.860)
so let me ask what is the meaning of life
Anthony Pompliano (2:57:04.980)
anthony do you think about these ridiculous big questions
Lex Fridman (2:57:09.300)
that have no answer every once in a while or do you just enjoy the shit out
Anthony Pompliano (2:57:12.740)
of every day i answer it in a way that um isn't meant
Lex Fridman (2:57:17.380)
to be accurate it's meant to um
Anthony Pompliano (2:57:22.420)
be the right answer for me which is ultimately you know and i talk to a lot
Anthony Pompliano (2:57:26.580)
of people who always ask like what's the what are you doing why are you doing this
Anthony Pompliano (2:57:29.620)
i say it's to be happy and the reason why i think of it that
Lex Fridman (2:57:34.180)
way is i've got a friend jonathan galler who talks about uh
Anthony Pompliano (2:57:37.700)
you know enough being enough and recently he talked about it in the
Lex Fridman (2:57:41.540)
um context of bitcoin and so bitcoiners are have two things any
Anthony Pompliano (2:57:45.300)
bitcoiner if you talk to them they believe the same two things one
Lex Fridman (2:57:47.700)
they don't want the us dollar price to go up because they actually want to
Anthony Pompliano (2:57:50.580)
acquire more bitcoin right and then let it go once they feel like they've got
Lex Fridman (2:57:53.540)
enough but two is no matter how much they own they think that they don't own
Anthony Pompliano (2:57:56.580)
enough and they want to acquire more and so at some point you say to yourself
Lex Fridman (2:58:02.660)
what is enough and and i think that the whole meaning of life
Anthony Pompliano (2:58:06.660)
is to understand kind of what your level of satisfaction is and for
Lex Fridman (2:58:12.500)
some people that's a monetary thing some people that's a freedom of time thing
Anthony Pompliano (2:58:15.860)
for some people it's an impact thing whatever but just
Lex Fridman (2:58:18.820)
understanding that's important and then going and accomplishing it
Lex Fridman (2:58:22.420)
and what i've found is that the people who i know who have done this and been
Lex Fridman (2:58:26.500)
intentional about it they accomplish it on a much shorter
Anthony Pompliano (2:58:29.300)
timeline than people who don't right there's some people who start thinking
Lex Fridman (2:58:31.940)
about this when they're 60 naturally you're not going to accomplish
Anthony Pompliano (2:58:34.980)
before you're 60 if you just start thinking about it 60
Lex Fridman (2:58:37.540)
people who are thinking about it earlier can do it and so i think that's really
Anthony Pompliano (2:58:40.260)
it for me it's just like the meaning of life is to enjoy it
Lex Fridman (2:58:43.140)
the way i think about it that's because it's a really nice formulation i i
Anthony Pompliano (2:58:46.660)
almost like to sort of oscillate back and forth so
Lex Fridman (2:58:49.140)
majority of the time is spent at the moment of enough is enough
Anthony Pompliano (2:58:54.100)
of gratitude of basically being content with where you're at like deeply
Lex Fridman (2:58:59.060)
appreciative of every moment and all the bitcoin whatever bitcoin you
Anthony Pompliano (2:59:03.380)
have being deeply appreciative of it and that being enough and then some
Lex Fridman (2:59:07.460)
fraction of time perhaps it shrinks as you get older that's
Anthony Pompliano (2:59:10.980)
maybe there's an optimal trajectory there but
Lex Fridman (2:59:13.460)
some fraction of time is spent being yeah like deeply self critical
Lex Fridman (2:59:18.020)
and nothing is enough nothing you've ever done is worth anything it's the
Lex Fridman (2:59:22.180)
marvin minsky said like the secret to success
Anthony Pompliano (2:59:25.540)
is hating everything you've ever done so like that mode of just hating
Lex Fridman (2:59:29.940)
everything you've ever done and just like trying to improve trying to make
Anthony Pompliano (2:59:33.620)
stuff better nothing is enough it's never enough that
Lex Fridman (2:59:37.380)
kind of stuff and then oscillating back and forth like
Anthony Pompliano (2:59:39.860)
you don't have to have the same algorithm operating throughout the day
Lex Fridman (2:59:42.820)
you could just like oscillate back and forth
Lex Fridman (2:59:44.980)
and maybe reserve that gratitude part the chill part to when you're hanging
Lex Fridman (2:59:50.020)
out with family and friends and loved ones
Lex Fridman (2:59:52.180)
and then when you're like alone or maybe at work
Lex Fridman (2:59:55.540)
that's the madman comes out kind of thing i also think it's um
Anthony Pompliano (2:59:59.620)
kind of purpose driven in the sense of there's a lot of people who have the
Lex Fridman (30:00.660)
approach, and you can kind of go down the line with all their other
Anthony Pompliano (30:02.860)
arguments as to what they're trying to build.
Lex Fridman (30:04.300)
I think the big difference just comes down to, uh, innovation versus security.
Lex Fridman (30:09.860)
And when you simplistically look at it via that lens, you actually understand
Lex Fridman (30:15.860)
where both people are coming from.
Anthony Pompliano (30:16.900)
When you say security, sorry to interrupt, do you mean financial
Lex Fridman (30:19.500)
security or do you mean like literally the, the, the security of the,
Lex Fridman (30:23.340)
of the particular cryptocurrency?
Lex Fridman (30:25.900)
The, the technical security of a blockchain.
Lex Fridman (30:28.100)
So when you look at, let's say, um, Bitcoin versus Ethereum, right?
Lex Fridman (30:31.220)
Bitcoin has decided in that community has decided security is the number
Anthony Pompliano (30:34.980)
one thing that you have to optimize for.
Lex Fridman (30:36.380)
So decentralization, um, over everything else in terms of transaction
Anthony Pompliano (30:41.220)
speeds, uh, cost, anything that you could come up with, that is, uh, something
Lex Fridman (30:45.980)
that would be important for a currency.
Anthony Pompliano (30:47.860)
The number one thing to optimize for is security.
Lex Fridman (30:50.020)
And as we have seen, uh, with a lot of technologies, right?
Anthony Pompliano (30:53.220)
Facebook's, uh, Libra or now what's known as DiEM is a great example.
Lex Fridman (30:56.260)
Uh, not having decentralization is susceptible to the nation state.
Lex Fridman (31:01.900)
And so a lot of these other platforms and blockchains, uh, they say security
Lex Fridman (31:07.380)
is important, but it's not the most important thing we believe there's a
Anthony Pompliano (31:10.620)
trade off between, you know, a little less security and transaction speed or
Lex Fridman (31:15.140)
composability or whatever it is.
Lex Fridman (31:17.460)
And so take a theorem as kind of the second, uh, largest, uh, community
Lex Fridman (31:22.020)
and blockchain by market cap.
Anthony Pompliano (31:23.220)
It was created because somebody wanted to, or a group of people
Lex Fridman (31:25.780)
wanted to do something on Bitcoin.
Anthony Pompliano (31:26.980)
They felt like they couldn't do it.
Lex Fridman (31:27.980)
And so they said, Hey, we're going to go create something that has the smart
Anthony Pompliano (31:30.220)
contracts that we can then go do here.
Lex Fridman (31:32.540)
Again, this is technology, right?
Lex Fridman (31:33.860)
And so the tribalism of like, you're right, you're wrong to me is a little
Lex Fridman (31:37.420)
childish, just in the sense of like the market is going to decide what is most
Anthony Pompliano (31:40.620)
valuable.
Lex Fridman (31:41.580)
And then when you go inside of that community, like there's a lot of dumb
Anthony Pompliano (31:44.420)
ideas, people are trying to build around Bitcoin, but there's also a lot of really,
Anthony Pompliano (31:47.260)
really great ideas that people are trying to build around Bitcoin, same thing in
Anthony Pompliano (31:50.500)
the Ethereum world. And so what you end up getting, I think, is the tribalism
Lex Fridman (31:54.220)
really comes out of the idea that there's a ticker price that is attached
Lex Fridman (31:57.540)
to all of this, right?
Lex Fridman (31:59.020)
If you go back in history of technology, venture capitalists didn't sit around
Anthony Pompliano (32:04.620)
the table and yell and scream at each other in this like religious zealot way,
Lex Fridman (32:08.500)
right? Because you bet on one type of cloud computing platform.
Lex Fridman (32:11.820)
And I bet on another one, right?
Lex Fridman (32:13.580)
It's just the market's going to decide, we're both going to work on and try to
Anthony Pompliano (32:15.820)
make our successful, uh, here in the world.
Anthony Pompliano (32:18.460)
I think that the sensitivity and mainly it comes out of the Bitcoin community is
Anthony Pompliano (32:21.660)
that a lot of this is being funded, not only by venture capitalists and kind of
Lex Fridman (32:26.060)
professional money managers and asset allocators.
Anthony Pompliano (32:29.300)
There's also this element of including the retail investor and the public.
Lex Fridman (32:33.540)
And so it, whether it's through ICOs or some other forms of capital raising,
Anthony Pompliano (32:38.020)
um, there's arguments for it saying, Hey, look, uh, this now gives kind of the
Lex Fridman (32:42.380)
little guy, some sort of access and an ability to do it.
Lex Fridman (32:45.540)
But there's also arguments against it. Some people say, Hey, it's easier to dupe
Lex Fridman (32:48.420)
them and it's easier to run scams and kind of all this stuff.
Lex Fridman (32:50.860)
And so ultimately I think that, uh, crypto is this like arena of ideas.
Lex Fridman (32:55.900)
It is literally the war of attrition and, uh, what will end up happening is 10
Anthony Pompliano (33:00.660)
years from now, you and I will talk and we're going to say, well, the market said
Lex Fridman (33:04.180)
X was valuable and Y wasn't.
Lex Fridman (33:06.300)
And so all of the tribalism from between, you know, here and there, uh, it's fun.
Lex Fridman (33:11.220)
It's, you know, engaging.
Anthony Pompliano (33:12.340)
Whatever, but ultimately it doesn't really matter because the public is involved.
Lex Fridman (33:15.580)
There's a lot of personalities.
Lex Fridman (33:16.780)
And so a lot of times we focus on the extreme personalities that do a lot of
Lex Fridman (33:22.220)
maybe, uh, pardon the French shit talking.
Anthony Pompliano (33:24.860)
And, and so we kind of focus on that, but that's not necessarily a representative
Lex Fridman (33:28.980)
of the communities involved.
Anthony Pompliano (33:30.540)
Let's talk about Bitcoin first, and then it'll help us use as a kind of comparison
Lex Fridman (33:33.980)
to Ethereum or whatever else.
Lex Fridman (33:36.260)
So when you think about what is money, right?
Lex Fridman (33:38.460)
That's kind of the first question.
Anthony Pompliano (33:39.500)
People really kind of go down the rabbit hole on, and ultimately today,
Lex Fridman (33:43.140)
it's a belief system, right?
Lex Fridman (33:44.660)
And you may believe that one currency has more value over another because
Lex Fridman (33:47.980)
it's backed by a certain military or a certain government has a monetary policy
Anthony Pompliano (33:52.580)
that you believe in or don't believe in.
Lex Fridman (33:54.580)
Um, but ultimately it's a belief system that there's nothing backing this, uh,
Lex Fridman (33:58.100)
other than, uh, a government asks you to pay your taxes in it, right?
Lex Fridman (34:01.220)
And they can have a monopoly on violence, uh, in terms of they can put you in jail.
Anthony Pompliano (34:04.580)
If you don't pay your taxes, uh, they can, uh, they can, uh, they can
Lex Fridman (34:07.740)
go to other countries and they can invade and do all this stuff.
Lex Fridman (34:11.900)
It wasn't always like that, right?
Lex Fridman (34:13.620)
It was historically a layer one technology was gold.
Lex Fridman (34:17.540)
And so gold was a fantastic store of value.
Lex Fridman (34:20.700)
You knew that if you held gold, it wasn't going to be inflated away.
Anthony Pompliano (34:23.380)
It was sound money was outside the system and no one could create more of it.
Lex Fridman (34:27.180)
And the reason why that's important is because that optimization for store
Anthony Pompliano (34:30.700)
of value served as the bedrock of the entire stack of, uh, money.
Anthony Pompliano (34:35.860)
Uh, for 5,000 years. And so the problem with that though, again, trade off between
Lex Fridman (34:40.300)
store of value is it was really hard to transact with, right?
Anthony Pompliano (34:43.100)
If I came in here and I, and you said, Hey, I want a couple of ounces of gold and I
Anthony Pompliano (34:46.700)
had a whole bar, I'd have to literally shave off the ounces of gold.
Lex Fridman (34:49.900)
Uh, it's heavy to carry around.
Anthony Pompliano (34:51.700)
If you said to me, Hey, you're in one city, mail it to me, really expensive.
Lex Fridman (34:55.940)
You know, there's all these issues with it.
Lex Fridman (34:57.460)
And so ultimately what people said was, well, let's create a second layer on top
Lex Fridman (35:01.460)
of that gold in order to make it easier to transact with it.
Anthony Pompliano (35:03.900)
That gold in order to make it easier to transact.
Lex Fridman (35:06.420)
And so we created paper claims on the gold.
Anthony Pompliano (35:08.380)
So, Hey, don't carry around the gold in your pocket anymore.
Lex Fridman (35:10.460)
Put it in a vault or a bank.
Anthony Pompliano (35:11.940)
They're going to issue a paper claim.
Lex Fridman (35:13.900)
Now you and I can trade these paper claims around.
Lex Fridman (35:16.220)
And at any point, if you want the gold, you just show up and you say, Hey, give
Lex Fridman (35:18.660)
me three ounces of gold or two bars or whatever.
Lex Fridman (35:21.540)
And so that actually made the store of value.
Lex Fridman (35:24.340)
It was allowed that to be the anchor and kind of the most important part, the
Anthony Pompliano (35:27.420)
security of your, of your purchasing power, but now it became easier to transact.
Lex Fridman (35:31.100)
And then eventually we built layers even on top of that.
Lex Fridman (35:32.940)
So everything from electronic money, uh, kind of electronic UCIPS, all the way
Lex Fridman (35:36.420)
to credit and other systems on top of that gold 1971 comes around and obviously
Lex Fridman (35:40.540)
we D peg from that gold, right?
Lex Fridman (35:42.980)
And it was a temporary measure at the time.
Anthony Pompliano (35:44.420)
We ended up not going back to it.
Lex Fridman (35:45.980)
And so what you moved or transitioned from was sound money, which was outside
Anthony Pompliano (35:49.380)
the system, no one could create more to now the government had full control.
Lex Fridman (35:52.740)
They could create as much as they wanted to.
Anthony Pompliano (35:54.660)
They tried to be responsible and disciplined, but obviously hard to do.
Lex Fridman (35:57.460)
Sometimes we've been really good at it.
Anthony Pompliano (35:58.660)
Sometimes we've been less good at it.
Lex Fridman (35:59.940)
And then you go around the world and some countries have absolutely sucked
Anthony Pompliano (36:02.540)
at it and some have been good at it.
Lex Fridman (36:04.260)
And so when you look into the Bitcoin world, I think that when you look at
Anthony Pompliano (36:07.860)
this optimization for security, similar to gold store value, people hold it.
Lex Fridman (36:12.620)
Purchasing power has gone up a lot year over year.
Anthony Pompliano (36:15.020)
It's like a 200% year over year compound annual growth for over a decade.
Lex Fridman (36:19.620)
Right?
Lex Fridman (36:19.820)
And so you measure this in kind of the us dollar exchange price, et cetera.
Lex Fridman (36:23.420)
But there's still a lot of people who will yell and scream about it's slow.
Lex Fridman (36:27.180)
It's costly, right?
Lex Fridman (36:28.180)
All the things around those transactions that are obstacles or challenges.
Lex Fridman (36:32.740)
And so there's basically two schools of thought, and this is where we
Lex Fridman (36:35.380)
kind of get into the bifurcation.
Anthony Pompliano (36:37.260)
Some people just said, Hey, this technology is antiquated.
Lex Fridman (36:40.380)
We can't use it.
Anthony Pompliano (36:41.180)
It doesn't make sense.
Lex Fridman (36:42.340)
Uh, and so what we're going to do is we're going to go build something new.
Lex Fridman (36:45.180)
And so you go get, you know, kind of all of the various versions there.
Lex Fridman (36:48.700)
The Bitcoin community says, no, just like gold had paper claims and other
Anthony Pompliano (36:52.580)
things built on top and layer two, three, four, five, we're going to do that here.
Lex Fridman (36:55.820)
And so they've already started to build kind of this layer two where
Anthony Pompliano (36:58.540)
it's easier to transact.
Lex Fridman (36:59.740)
It's cheaper, it's faster, et cetera.
Lex Fridman (37:02.180)
And so I actually think that both of those worlds are going
Lex Fridman (37:05.980)
to coexist in the future.
Lex Fridman (37:07.580)
The big question is just which one has more importance, right?
Lex Fridman (37:11.020)
So again, get out of binary.
Anthony Pompliano (37:13.060)
It's just probabilistically.
Lex Fridman (37:14.860)
And so my personal belief is that the security that the store of value
Lex Fridman (37:19.700)
component as the bedrock for a monetary system is essential, right?
Lex Fridman (37:23.820)
Like that is the most important thing because you can always improve
Anthony Pompliano (37:28.340)
the other components, but you can't go back and fix that kind of core piece.
Lex Fridman (37:32.660)
So money, money's a, an idea that we all it's like an emergent
Anthony Pompliano (37:37.460)
idea that we believe in.
Lex Fridman (37:39.060)
You're saying that security is one of the most fundamental catalysts or fuels
Anthony Pompliano (37:44.540)
for that idea to sort of take hold and be stable and sort of take over the world.
Lex Fridman (37:50.660)
The other stuff is really nice to have, but if you don't have the security,
Anthony Pompliano (37:54.420)
you're not going to, like, it's not going to spread in the viral
Lex Fridman (37:57.820)
sense in, in our human brains.
Lex Fridman (38:00.860)
Well, and especially in light of the kind of the macro economy, right?
Lex Fridman (38:04.660)
So like, what's so fascinating about the last 12 months is, um, in
Lex Fridman (38:09.180)
investing in general, the best returns, right?
Lex Fridman (38:12.140)
I kind of put that in air quotes a little bit is something that is different
Anthony Pompliano (38:15.660)
than everything else and right.
Lex Fridman (38:17.460)
So being different and wrong just means you're an idiot, right?
Anthony Pompliano (38:20.420)
Being different and right means that that's where kind of the outsize returns
Anthony Pompliano (38:23.580)
are. And so if you look around the world at currencies today, they're all the same.
Anthony Pompliano (38:27.900)
They're all inflationary, unlimited supply controlled by a government done and
Lex Fridman (38:32.340)
decisions made in a very non transparent process.
Lex Fridman (38:35.620)
And what we've watched is the manipulation of all of those currencies
Lex Fridman (38:38.380)
over the last 12 months in direct contrast to that is this thing, Bitcoin,
Anthony Pompliano (38:43.300)
which is outside of the system, has a finite supply, transparent and programmatic
Anthony Pompliano (38:47.900)
monetary policy. And so when you see those two systems kind of, um, in comparison
Anthony Pompliano (38:53.140)
to each other in the United States, there's a lot of people who say the dollar
Lex Fridman (38:56.740)
works great for me. I can go to the ATM, I can get out physical cash.
Anthony Pompliano (39:00.300)
If I want to swipe a card, I could do that.
Lex Fridman (39:02.700)
My money in my bank doesn't lose 50% of its value in a day in terms of
Anthony Pompliano (39:06.340)
purchasing power. Like the dollar's pretty good.
Lex Fridman (39:09.340)
When you go to other countries, that might not be the case.
Lex Fridman (39:11.980)
And so I do think that there's a kind of a relative analysis that goes on here.
Lex Fridman (39:16.340)
If you compare Bitcoin to the dollar, there's all kinds of arguments to make
Anthony Pompliano (39:19.740)
that the dollar is better as a medium of exchange today.
Lex Fridman (39:22.900)
But if I go and I tell you, well, what about in these kind of extreme examples
Anthony Pompliano (39:26.780)
of Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Turkey, et cetera.
Lex Fridman (39:30.540)
And so I think that that's kind of one perspective to view this through is
Anthony Pompliano (39:34.460)
security versus all of the innovative components of a medium of exchange, et
Lex Fridman (39:38.140)
cetera. The second thing, though, that I think is really important is
Anthony Pompliano (39:41.700)
around censorship.
Lex Fridman (39:43.620)
And so when you look at, again, every currency in the world today, every
Anthony Pompliano (39:47.340)
single financial service, they're highly susceptible to censorship.
Lex Fridman (39:51.380)
And actually, I would argue the United States is in the business of
Anthony Pompliano (39:54.780)
censorship in terms of how many countries around the world do we sanction
Lex Fridman (39:59.180)
and cut them off in either a minimal or a very material way from the global
Anthony Pompliano (3:00:03.620)
uh i need to do more but in a somewhat altruistic way
Lex Fridman (3:00:08.340)
so they're you know take elon as an example
Anthony Pompliano (3:00:11.780)
the idea of colonizing mars sure if he is successful he will be very
Lex Fridman (3:00:18.180)
rich i don't think you or i or many people
Anthony Pompliano (3:00:20.420)
believe he's doing it for the money right there's a lot of other things he
Lex Fridman (3:00:23.300)
could do that would be much easier that would make him tons of money
Lex Fridman (3:00:26.820)
and so in some weird way he has enough because he's able to free himself from
Lex Fridman (3:00:33.700)
the constraints of i need to acquire more resources
Lex Fridman (3:00:37.620)
and he can focus on what is the thing that i want to work on regardless of
Lex Fridman (3:00:40.420)
money and so in that pursuit that is
Anthony Pompliano (3:00:44.660)
non economic you can be as selfish as you want
Lex Fridman (3:00:47.780)
because ultimately you're not tied back to
Anthony Pompliano (3:00:50.980)
this like measurement tool and so it's this
Lex Fridman (3:00:54.260)
uh again like altruistic non monetary purpose and i think that there's a lot
Anthony Pompliano (3:00:59.540)
of people who spend their whole life looking for that and they don't know
Lex Fridman (3:01:01.380)
what it is and so again some people may not think
Anthony Pompliano (3:01:05.620)
of it that way but if you can find something to do that
Lex Fridman (3:01:09.060)
you win i don't think there's a better way to end it anthony i'm a huge fan
Anthony Pompliano (3:01:13.620)
it's a huge honor that you waste all this time with me today
Lex Fridman (3:01:16.740)
uh you know i thank you for just educating the world for
Anthony Pompliano (3:01:21.300)
for teaching me uh inspire me to learn more about this new
Lex Fridman (3:01:24.980)
set of technologies that look like they have a potential to change
Anthony Pompliano (3:01:29.220)
transform all of human civilization so thank you for coming today and thank you
Lex Fridman (3:01:33.300)
for being who you are absolutely thank you so much for having me
Anthony Pompliano (3:01:36.900)
thanks for listening to this conversation with anthony pampliano
Lex Fridman (3:01:40.340)
and thank you to our sponsors theragun muscle recovery device
Anthony Pompliano (3:01:44.420)
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Lex Fridman (3:01:48.260)
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Anthony Pompliano (3:01:51.780)
to support this podcast and now let me leave you some words
Lex Fridman (3:01:55.860)
from mahatma gandhi freedom is not worth having
Anthony Pompliano (3:01:59.780)
if it doesn't include the freedom to make mistakes
Lex Fridman (3:02:04.260)
thank you for listening and hope to see you next time
Anthony Pompliano (40:04.860)
financial system. So when you define it, when you talk about censorship,
Lex Fridman (40:08.140)
do you mean just the censoring your ability to operate freely in the world?
Anthony Pompliano (40:13.020)
Well, look at it a little bit differently, which is that the United
Lex Fridman (40:16.220)
States has kind of the American superiority because we have the bombs,
Anthony Pompliano (40:20.020)
the bullets, the soldiers and that military might.
Lex Fridman (40:23.140)
We basically impose our will around the world.
Lex Fridman (40:27.260)
And so there's a very strong argument to be made that there are certain
Lex Fridman (40:32.300)
countries around the world that are being sanctioned, that the people
Lex Fridman (40:35.660)
of those countries did nothing wrong. Now, the governments are bad, right?
Lex Fridman (40:39.980)
In terms of the way that you and I would look at democratic rule or
Anthony Pompliano (40:43.700)
communism or whatever it is, but the people are being hurt as well.
Lex Fridman (40:48.100)
So there's a whole group of people who would just argue, listen, we
Anthony Pompliano (40:51.020)
shouldn't hurt anyone at the expense of punishing one person or a group
Lex Fridman (40:55.300)
of people. There's other people argue against that. But I do think that
Anthony Pompliano (40:58.940)
if you really kind of zoom out and you say, I'm going to take myself out
Lex Fridman (41:02.700)
of the Western worldview, and I'm simply going to look at this as we're
Anthony Pompliano (41:05.940)
all part of the human race, it's censorship. And there might be an
Lex Fridman (41:10.140)
argument for censorship, but there also might be an argument against
Anthony Pompliano (41:13.060)
the censorship. And so what Bitcoin does, as that specific kind of
Lex Fridman (41:18.300)
payment network is it says anyone in the world with an internet connection,
Anthony Pompliano (41:21.460)
I don't care where you were born, what language you speak, what
Lex Fridman (41:24.100)
religion you are, your wealth status, your education status, none of it
Anthony Pompliano (41:27.940)
matters. If you have an internet connection, you're not going to
Lex Fridman (41:30.940)
care. If you have an internet connection, you can plug into this
Anthony Pompliano (41:34.540)
monetary system. And you can move value around the world to anyone
Lex Fridman (41:38.180)
else without asking for permission. And in the United States, we
Anthony Pompliano (41:43.060)
basically have that ability in the US dollar kind of traditional
Lex Fridman (41:45.820)
banking system, I can pretty much send money to almost anyone I want
Anthony Pompliano (41:48.460)
unless they're a really bad person that's on some list or something.
Lex Fridman (41:51.860)
Most people in the world don't have that capability. And so what
Anthony Pompliano (41:54.900)
you're essentially doing is you're democratizing access to a true store
Lex Fridman (41:59.820)
value, and a medium of exchange, right. And so what you see in many
Anthony Pompliano (42:05.620)
of these countries is that when their currency starts to fail, the
Lex Fridman (42:09.420)
first thing that a government or a group of people in power and
Anthony Pompliano (42:13.500)
influence do is they lock the citizens into the currency with
Lex Fridman (42:16.980)
capital controls. Why? Because if you let them out, it exasperates
Anthony Pompliano (42:22.220)
the problem. And so now what we're seeing is we basically are giving
Lex Fridman (42:27.580)
a tool to billions of people around the world that is a peaceful
Anthony Pompliano (42:30.940)
protest. Right? You and I had no say at all. When not only the
Lex Fridman (42:36.620)
Federal Reserve and elected officials here in the United
Anthony Pompliano (42:38.500)
States, but central banks around the world over the last 12 months
Lex Fridman (42:41.180)
decided to create trillions of dollars and injected into the
Anthony Pompliano (42:44.460)
monetary system. Right? They have arguments, and some of them are
Lex Fridman (42:47.380)
very good arguments as to why they should do that. They're
Anthony Pompliano (42:49.380)
trying to mitigate short term pain. Long term, they'll figure
Lex Fridman (42:51.740)
out the other issues, right? They have very kind of elaborate and
Anthony Pompliano (42:55.940)
well articulated kind of viewpoint as to why they're
Lex Fridman (42:58.660)
doing it. But you and I had no say. And so when you start to
Anthony Pompliano (43:02.500)
look at, we have a very small group of people in this world,
Lex Fridman (43:06.060)
both in our country and in countries around the world that
Anthony Pompliano (43:08.420)
make these decisions that have very, very far reaching kind of
Lex Fridman (43:12.340)
impact. And on top of that, in many cases, there's actually not
Anthony Pompliano (43:16.460)
that much kind of accountability. Because usually
Lex Fridman (43:19.580)
these are not elected officials who are making some of these
Anthony Pompliano (43:21.660)
decisions, these are appointed. And you can argue that, hey, we
Lex Fridman (43:24.900)
elected somebody who appointed them. But at the same time, that
Anthony Pompliano (43:28.140)
accountability isn't quite there. And so I think ultimately,
Lex Fridman (43:31.300)
when you just back out, you say, you know, what is Bitcoin? Why
Anthony Pompliano (43:33.940)
is it important to the world? It is giving access to anyone in
Lex Fridman (43:37.980)
the world with an internet connection to a store of value
Lex Fridman (43:40.540)
and a monitoring network that allows them to peacefully
Lex Fridman (43:43.380)
protest and to opt out of a system that pretty much is not
Anthony Pompliano (43:48.780)
working for majority of people in the world.
Lex Fridman (43:51.260)
So it's moving the power from these centralized places,
Anthony Pompliano (43:54.020)
sometimes unelected to the individuals and to the people.
Lex Fridman (43:59.740)
So the dollar does seem to work for Americans and for many
Anthony Pompliano (44:04.180)
people in the world. But you kind of have a vision, you paint
Lex Fridman (44:08.500)
a picture of a future where potentially we move to
Anthony Pompliano (44:11.380)
cryptocurrency. So what kind of trajectory do you see where
Lex Fridman (44:15.660)
Bitcoin can become the main currency in the world, or at
Anthony Pompliano (44:19.220)
least cryptocurrency become the main way of storing value in the
Lex Fridman (44:23.220)
world and basically overtake the dollar?
Anthony Pompliano (44:25.540)
Yeah, so I always go first to we don't need to have competition
Lex Fridman (44:30.020)
like in terms of like a direct competition between the dollar
Lex Fridman (44:33.300)
and Bitcoin, right? If you look at most technologies in the
Lex Fridman (44:37.060)
world, the really valuable ones are actually market expanding
Anthony Pompliano (44:40.420)
technologies, rather than simply just market share stealing
Lex Fridman (44:44.140)
technologies, right. So if you look at Uber, for example, Uber
Anthony Pompliano (44:47.460)
didn't just say, Hey, I'm gonna go take out all the taxis,
Lex Fridman (44:49.900)
right? It actually drastically expanded the market for people
Anthony Pompliano (44:52.900)
now there's literally millions of people in the United States
Lex Fridman (44:55.020)
who don't have cars because they use Uber, right. And so I think
Anthony Pompliano (44:57.900)
that Bitcoin is very similar in that, yes, there is a component
Lex Fridman (45:02.100)
of medium of exchange, in terms of the dollar. But also there is
Anthony Pompliano (45:06.020)
this component of just store value assets in general. And so
Lex Fridman (45:09.140)
when you start to look at Bitcoin, specifically, I think
Anthony Pompliano (45:11.860)
that what you're seeing is you're seeing a generational gap,
Lex Fridman (45:14.860)
where young people say, I grew up with a phone in my hand, I'm
Anthony Pompliano (45:17.900)
digitally native, the whole idea of going to the bank and
Lex Fridman (45:20.940)
sending a wire, or going to an ATM and getting physical cash is
Anthony Pompliano (45:24.820)
an antiquated idea in their mind, right? I one time asked my
Lex Fridman (45:27.580)
brother, he's 24 years old. And I said, Hey, how do you send
Anthony Pompliano (45:30.180)
money to your friends? And he gave me one answer, which I
Lex Fridman (45:32.980)
expected, which was Venmo. And the second answer, I didn't
Anthony Pompliano (45:35.500)
expect he said Uber. I said, How do you send money via Uber? He
Lex Fridman (45:38.940)
said, Well, we get in a car together. And at the end, we
Anthony Pompliano (45:40.860)
split the ride. And so again, you and I have probably both
Lex Fridman (45:44.420)
done that. But I never thought of it as a way to send money to
Anthony Pompliano (45:47.220)
each other. And so it is a psychological difference between
Lex Fridman (45:51.100)
even me, who's only, you know, a decade older than him or so,
Lex Fridman (45:54.660)
and his peer group. And so I think as we're watching kind of
Lex Fridman (45:57.940)
Bitcoin continue this ascent, ultimately, what we're seeing is
Anthony Pompliano (46:02.260)
an entire generation of kids are saying, Listen, if I look at
Lex Fridman (46:05.580)
financial assets across the board, I have stocks, I have
Anthony Pompliano (46:08.780)
bonds, I have currencies, and I have commodities, I know that
Lex Fridman (46:12.180)
bonds, from a real rate return perspective, is flat to
Anthony Pompliano (46:16.380)
negative, right? I'm gonna make no money on this, because I have
Lex Fridman (46:19.380)
a belief that my dollar is being devalued. And actually, what
Anthony Pompliano (46:23.580)
we're starting to see is, again, the internet has broken down
Lex Fridman (46:26.780)
these walled gardens and kind of these centralized hubs of
Anthony Pompliano (46:30.140)
information, in that if you were to look at, let's say the stock
Lex Fridman (46:33.260)
market, from 1971 to today, in dollar terms, it's a 45 degree
Anthony Pompliano (46:37.980)
angle right up into the right, right, you know, it's kind of
Lex Fridman (46:39.900)
seven, 810% growth, every year, it's amazing, just get invested
Anthony Pompliano (46:44.220)
in the stock market, and you'll make money over a long period of
Lex Fridman (46:45.940)
time, regardless of the dips along the way. If you do not
Anthony Pompliano (46:49.060)
make that same stock market in gold, the stock market is down
Lex Fridman (46:52.380)
since 1971. And so is it so much that the stock market is accruing
Anthony Pompliano (46:57.140)
true value? Or is it that the underlying currency in which it
Lex Fridman (47:00.020)
is denominated in is being devalued? Right? And I was being
Anthony Pompliano (47:03.700)
devalued in a very disciplined way, right, in terms of it's not
Lex Fridman (47:06.940)
like it went 50% devaluation in a short period of time, but it's
Anthony Pompliano (47:10.180)
still being devalued. And so I think that people are waking up
Lex Fridman (47:13.260)
to this idea that a traditional 6040 type global portfolio
Anthony Pompliano (47:16.820)
doesn't work anymore, right? 40% of it in bonds is just not going
Lex Fridman (47:21.660)
to get it done. And so when you start to look at this, people
Anthony Pompliano (47:24.780)
first look at Bitcoin via two main ways, in my opinion, they
Lex Fridman (47:28.860)
look at it one as a store value, should I actually go and put
Lex Fridman (47:31.580)
some of my wealth there use it as a savings technology, right?
Lex Fridman (47:34.340)
We ask people in the traditional world, if you're a teacher, a
Anthony Pompliano (47:37.340)
fireman, an accounting, you know, mid level manager, we say,
Lex Fridman (47:41.260)
hey, go do your job, be best in class as a fireman or as a
Anthony Pompliano (47:44.100)
teacher. And then Oh, by the way, you have to be a
Lex Fridman (47:45.900)
professional investor as well. Because if you just put your
Anthony Pompliano (47:48.180)
dollars in your bank account, you're literally going to have
Lex Fridman (47:50.700)
your wealth devalued away over time. So you can't just save you
Anthony Pompliano (47:54.020)
have to invest. That is a really tall task for people, they have
Lex Fridman (47:58.500)
a hard enough time just doing their job, right? Taking care of
Anthony Pompliano (48:00.860)
their family, right? Now they got to go be an investor. So I
Lex Fridman (48:03.620)
think savings technology for Bitcoin standpoint is, if you
Anthony Pompliano (48:06.580)
buy satoshis or Bitcoin, over time, it will increase from a
Lex Fridman (48:11.500)
purchasing power standpoint, because there's a fixed supply
Lex Fridman (48:13.420)
and demand continues to rise. But then you start to look at
Lex Fridman (48:16.700)
well, what other assets do people put in their portfolios,
Anthony Pompliano (48:19.980)
whether it's art, it's real estate, precious metals, or
Lex Fridman (48:23.900)
something else. Most of those assets are not because people
Anthony Pompliano (48:27.300)
actually think that they're going to go up in value over
Lex Fridman (48:29.740)
time, they're using the store of value. Right? The reason why
Anthony Pompliano (48:33.100)
somebody buys gold is because the store of value, right
Lex Fridman (48:35.660)
historically, that's a narrative driven type asset, though,
Anthony Pompliano (48:40.100)
right? We tell people it's scarce, we tell people that it
Lex Fridman (48:43.060)
is a store of value. When you look at it, though, we don't
Anthony Pompliano (48:46.100)
know how much gold exists in the world, we have a good estimate,
Lex Fridman (48:48.700)
right? But we don't actually we can't prove how much there is.
Anthony Pompliano (48:51.660)
We don't know how much is coming out of the ground every day.
Lex Fridman (48:53.700)
Again, great, fantastic estimate. But we can't prove it.
Lex Fridman (48:57.500)
And we don't know what the total supply and that's what you mean
Lex Fridman (48:59.260)
by narrative driven, we can't really prove it, like
Anthony Pompliano (49:01.380)
mathematically, we you I and everyone else in the world has
Lex Fridman (49:04.140)
lived in a narrative driven world for the last couple of
Anthony Pompliano (49:06.780)
decades, right? And what the internet and digital technologies
Lex Fridman (49:10.140)
have done is it opened up the possibility and the desire from
Anthony Pompliano (49:14.180)
people to have a world now where I can validate things. So when I
Lex Fridman (49:19.340)
see that headline, I want to see you say whatever happened to the
Anthony Pompliano (49:24.220)
news, if you're the subject of the news, rather than have
Lex Fridman (49:26.340)
somebody else tell me the story. If I see that you say something
Anthony Pompliano (49:29.620)
is scarce, prove to me that it is scarce. And so I think that's
Lex Fridman (49:33.860)
kind of a psychological shift, the younger generation is
Anthony Pompliano (49:36.260)
starting to understand because ultimately, you and I probably
Lex Fridman (49:39.220)
grew up in a world where parents could tell us the story. And we
Anthony Pompliano (49:41.380)
just believed it. You know, dad or mom says it must be true. If
Lex Fridman (49:45.260)
my brother heard a story, what does he do? He goes to Google
Lex Fridman (49:47.540)
and he looks it up. Randy comes back and usually tells my
Lex Fridman (49:50.140)
parents, oh, you got the story wrong, right. And so I think
Anthony Pompliano (49:52.620)
that that that provability or that that validation ends up
Lex Fridman (49:56.060)
becoming really, really important. And so, you know,
Anthony Pompliano (49:57.980)
look at something like gold, I think that people are
Lex Fridman (50:00.460)
drastically underestimating the shift that's underway right now.
Anthony Pompliano (50:03.780)
Gold is one down in value since April, or I'm sorry, August of
Lex Fridman (50:08.820)
2020. And so in a timeframe where central banks have had
Anthony Pompliano (50:13.860)
historic quantitative using literally $6 trillion in the
Lex Fridman (50:16.540)
United States, the one asset that historically has been the
Anthony Pompliano (50:19.660)
best store of value and has, you know, in 2008 financial crisis
Lex Fridman (50:23.300)
hit an all time high based on the government response has
Anthony Pompliano (50:26.580)
actually suffered for a main part of this financial crisis.
Lex Fridman (50:32.380)
You then look at central banks around the world who have been
Anthony Pompliano (50:34.620)
very large holders of gold for a long time and net buyers on a
Lex Fridman (50:37.660)
monthly basis. For multiple months, over the last six
Anthony Pompliano (50:41.540)
months, they've been net sellers of gold. And then you
Lex Fridman (50:45.020)
start to look at jewelry demand. So the actual non
Anthony Pompliano (50:47.860)
monetary value of gold, and that demand for gold jewelry peaked
Lex Fridman (50:53.020)
in 2013, and has continued to fall since. And so what you
Anthony Pompliano (50:57.100)
start to say to yourself is take just the asset of gold, which
Lex Fridman (50:59.740)
about $10 trillion market cap, and you say, Okay, well,
Anthony Pompliano (51:03.020)
jewelry demand continues to fall, even if it's at a slight
Lex Fridman (51:05.460)
rate, but it's continues to contract. You have central
Anthony Pompliano (51:08.020)
banks that now at some times are net sellers and sometimes net
Lex Fridman (51:11.380)
buyers, right? So okay, again, contraction there. And then from
Anthony Pompliano (51:14.620)
the investment standpoint, the actual price, the daily price of
Lex Fridman (51:19.020)
this continues to fall, which is a signal that there's a
Anthony Pompliano (51:21.940)
contracting demand from an investment perspective. That's
Lex Fridman (51:25.100)
93% of all use of gold, only 7% of it's used for actual
Anthony Pompliano (51:29.180)
technology and metal conduction and things like that. And so
Lex Fridman (51:32.300)
you have a $10 trillion asset that it appears and again, maybe
Anthony Pompliano (51:36.060)
data changes, and I'll change my mind and other people change
Lex Fridman (51:38.380)
their mind, but it appears is on the decline. And so if that
Anthony Pompliano (51:41.220)
happens, you're going to get the contraction of a $10 trillion
Lex Fridman (51:43.620)
asset, where's all that value go. And what you're seeing is at
Anthony Pompliano (51:47.460)
the same time that that asset is contracting, you're also seeing
Lex Fridman (51:50.980)
a massive influx from not only retail investors, not only kind
Anthony Pompliano (51:56.340)
of the wealthy and the elite, but also from financial
Lex Fridman (51:58.900)
institutions, corporations, pension funds, etc. into this
Anthony Pompliano (52:02.980)
kind of digital sound money.
Lex Fridman (52:04.420)
So you're saying that there's a kind of shift from gold to
Anthony Pompliano (52:07.580)
Bitcoin, because they have a lot of the same properties, except
Lex Fridman (52:10.660)
one is in the physical space, the other is in the digital
Anthony Pompliano (52:13.940)
space. So do you see like central banks, quietly
Lex Fridman (52:18.100)
potentially switching out from sort of gold to Bitcoin, like
Anthony Pompliano (52:24.380)
naturally just doing is seeing a pattern that you're referring
Lex Fridman (52:28.900)
to now, but more drastically into the future, where there's
Anthony Pompliano (52:31.660)
a complete shift,
Lex Fridman (52:32.660)
if you line up the gold community and the Bitcoin
Anthony Pompliano (52:35.020)
community next to each other, they'll agree on all the
Lex Fridman (52:37.380)
problems that they that they see in the world, right? They'll
Anthony Pompliano (52:41.100)
actually agree on the solution that sound money is the solution
Lex Fridman (52:43.900)
where they differentiate is the gold communities believes that
Anthony Pompliano (52:47.500)
it's the analog application of sound money, right? The physical
Lex Fridman (52:50.660)
gold, that is the solution. The Bitcoin community believes the
Anthony Pompliano (52:53.860)
digital application of sound money, Bitcoin, can you define
Lex Fridman (52:56.500)
sound money, by the way, someone is just outside the system, and
Anthony Pompliano (52:59.020)
no one can create more of it. So nobody controls it. This is
Lex Fridman (53:01.700)
scarcity is fundamental. Exactly why scarcity important in money?
Anthony Pompliano (53:06.020)
I think scarcity just has this very high correlation to value
Lex Fridman (53:09.660)
across all assets, not just money, right? Money happens to
Anthony Pompliano (53:12.140)
be the unit of account that we use in terms of daily commerce.
Lex Fridman (53:16.460)
But whether it is, you know, as we're seeing now, sneakers, or
Anthony Pompliano (53:21.420)
you know, whatever it is, scarcity, ultimately, is that
Lex Fridman (53:24.540)
signal of value, I think, and that's just been the way that
Anthony Pompliano (53:27.860)
humans derive value for literally, you know, thousands
Lex Fridman (53:31.140)
and thousands of years. Yeah, I gotta say, that's my view on
Anthony Pompliano (53:33.740)
life and love in general, is scarcity is what makes it
Lex Fridman (53:38.060)
valuable. People talk about immortality.
Anthony Pompliano (53:40.220)
You know, I would like to be immortal, but it does, it does
Lex Fridman (53:43.820)
seem that when you let go of the finiteness of life, I feel like
Anthony Pompliano (53:50.900)
that meals and the experiences you have get devalued
Lex Fridman (53:56.500)
significantly, like, the longer you live, the less value there
Anthony Pompliano (54:00.860)
are in infinity, if you live forever, I worry that all the
Lex Fridman (54:05.540)
meaning will dissipate. And the same thing with love, I think
Anthony Pompliano (54:08.820)
criticism of sort of dating culture and all that kind of
Lex Fridman (54:11.220)
stuff. Like I haven't had shocking revelation that I've
Anthony Pompliano (54:15.580)
never been on a tinder date or any of those things. I believe
Lex Fridman (54:19.060)
that scarcity in dating and interaction is like, intensifies
Anthony Pompliano (54:24.660)
the value of when the interactions do happen. So, when
Lex Fridman (54:28.140)
they like when love does happen. And so in that sense, there's
Anthony Pompliano (54:31.980)
something magical about scarcity in the more subjective
Lex Fridman (54:34.900)
psychological social world, as well. And perhaps money is just
Anthony Pompliano (54:38.860)
another version of that, right? It's just it's all about the
Lex Fridman (54:41.260)
stories and ideas we tell ourselves.
Anthony Pompliano (54:43.540)
I think they're actually more interconnected than you're
Lex Fridman (54:46.060)
giving it credit for, right? Which is, what is money? Money
Anthony Pompliano (54:49.420)
is time, ultimately, right? The pursuit of the acquisition of
Lex Fridman (54:56.420)
money, right, of whether it's a currency or true money, is
Anthony Pompliano (55:00.460)
because that should give you more time, right? And that's
Lex Fridman (55:04.060)
what would give you more time. And so one of my favorite
Anthony Pompliano (55:06.820)
movies ever is, and it's funny, because Justin Timberlake is in
Lex Fridman (55:10.740)
it, is this movie in a lot of me, I lose most people at that
Anthony Pompliano (55:14.820)
point, in time, in time. And basically, the premise of the
Lex Fridman (55:17.900)
movie is that everyone has a clock that is embedded into
Anthony Pompliano (55:21.060)
their arm. And so if you go to work, you basically put your
Lex Fridman (55:25.900)
arm underneath when you leave, and there's time that's
Anthony Pompliano (55:28.220)
deposited into your clock. And if your clock ever hits all
Lex Fridman (55:31.220)
the arrows, you're dead, you die on the spot. And so there's
Anthony Pompliano (55:35.300)
a number of scenes where people are basically running, you know,
Lex Fridman (55:38.180)
to get to you, and I give you a little bit more time so that
Anthony Pompliano (55:40.260)
you can get to work on Monday, and then you work to acquire
Lex Fridman (55:43.220)
time. And so basically, time becomes this currency. But what
Anthony Pompliano (55:46.460)
becomes very fascinating about it is there are sections in
Lex Fridman (55:49.620)
society, where literally, there's physical places, if you
Anthony Pompliano (55:53.340)
only have, let's say, 72 hours or less, you're allowed to go to
Lex Fridman (55:57.140)
Section One. Section Five, though, is because you have
Anthony Pompliano (56:00.220)
years and years and years on your clock. And in this movie,
Lex Fridman (56:03.940)
everyone at the age of 25 freezes from a biological aging
Anthony Pompliano (56:08.900)
standpoint. So everyone stays the same, but you may have lived
Lex Fridman (56:12.060)
for 1000 years. And so what becomes so fascinating about it
Anthony Pompliano (56:16.460)
is that rich people have time, poor people do not have time.
Lex Fridman (56:21.020)
And so in it, Justin Timberlake, the main character at one
Anthony Pompliano (56:23.980)
point, essentially acquires a bunch of time, and he's able to
Lex Fridman (56:27.860)
go to one of the higher levels. And now he's attending all these
Anthony Pompliano (56:32.180)
galas and, you know, poker nights and all this stuff. And
Lex Fridman (56:35.300)
one of the first things that he learns is that in the lower end
Anthony Pompliano (56:39.580)
of society, everyone is running everywhere at all times in the
Lex Fridman (56:43.060)
movie, because time is so finite, and it is so scarce.
Lex Fridman (56:46.820)
And so therefore, why would I walk down the street, I must run
Lex Fridman (56:49.500)
down the street. In the highest level of society, no one runs
Anthony Pompliano (56:54.940)
anywhere. And in fact, if you run, you are seen as lower
Lex Fridman (56:58.620)
class. Yeah, because wealth is time. And so that movie is, you
Anthony Pompliano (57:03.100)
know, it's got a ton of kind of things that you can pull out of
Lex Fridman (57:05.780)
it, but to me is the perfect epitome of money is time. And so
Anthony Pompliano (57:10.100)
when you start to think about the acquisition of money, right,
Lex Fridman (57:14.820)
it goes to this whole idea of time billionaire. And I know
Anthony Pompliano (57:17.140)
that there's probably a lot of people who've heard about this
Lex Fridman (57:20.100)
already. But if you think of a million seconds, it's about 11
Anthony Pompliano (57:24.900)
days, a billion seconds is 31 years. And so if I said to
Lex Fridman (57:30.580)
somebody, you have to switch lives with Warren Buffett,
Anthony Pompliano (57:34.820)
would you do it? Some people would say, Sure, that'd be
Lex Fridman (57:38.180)
their initial reaction. But you got have to be you know, 92
Anthony Pompliano (57:41.100)
years old, is the money worth the lack of time? Most people
Lex Fridman (57:46.060)
would say no, right? And there's this guy, Graham Duncan, who
Anthony Pompliano (57:48.780)
really articulated this well. And ultimately, what ends up
Lex Fridman (57:52.700)
happening is you rest time is more valuable than the money.
Lex Fridman (57:55.340)
But the you acquire the money to gain more time. And the reason
Lex Fridman (58:00.300)
is valuable is because of the scarcity of time. We currently
Anthony Pompliano (58:03.580)
have the by the biology, the physics means that this is not
Lex Fridman (58:10.300)
just the narrative we tell ourselves, maybe it is, I don't
Anthony Pompliano (58:13.180)
know, but it feels like pretty sure we're mortal. And in that
Lex Fridman (58:18.820)
sense, the scarcity there gives value to time, it's fascinating
Anthony Pompliano (58:22.620)
to think about all the thought experiments here of if that
Lex Fridman (58:26.380)
could actually be on the economy, if you can actually
Anthony Pompliano (58:28.780)
convert time in a frictionless way to money.
Lex Fridman (58:33.140)
Well, and if you start to pull on this a little bit and say,
Anthony Pompliano (58:35.740)
okay, a young person today, let's say somebody in their
Lex Fridman (58:38.380)
20s, has about 2 billion seconds left in their life, right, kind
Anthony Pompliano (58:41.860)
of 60 years, give or take, based on life expectancy. They
Lex Fridman (58:47.500)
usually, until they start to understand this concept, think
Anthony Pompliano (58:51.660)
of wealth in dollar terms. But dollars are being devalued. And
Lex Fridman (58:57.500)
so you know, a million dollars doesn't get you what it used to
Anthony Pompliano (59:00.140)
get, right is kind of an old adage. And so what you're doing
Lex Fridman (59:03.340)
is you're pursuing something that ends up losing value. And
Lex Fridman (59:07.540)
so it's the constant rat race, it's how do I constantly try to
Lex Fridman (59:11.220)
get more? How do I get more dollars? How do I get more
Anthony Pompliano (59:13.020)
dollars? Because even if I say to myself, you know, I'm going
Lex Fridman (59:15.900)
to retire when I get $100,000. When I get the $100,000, the
Anthony Pompliano (59:21.340)
$100,000 five years from now doesn't buy me what I thought it
Lex Fridman (59:23.740)
did. So now I need 500,000 or 200,000 or a million or whatever
Anthony Pompliano (59:27.340)
the number is. And so ultimately, what ends up
Lex Fridman (59:29.900)
occurring is that the Bitcoin community and many people in
Anthony Pompliano (59:33.660)
kind of this idea of sound money is you want to be able to
Lex Fridman (59:36.980)
acquire an asset that not only will hold the value, right, the
Anthony Pompliano (59:41.540)
store of value over time, but it will actually appreciate over
Lex Fridman (59:45.340)
time. And so when you look at something like Bitcoin against
Anthony Pompliano (59:48.860)
the dollar against other types of assets, all of these assets
Lex Fridman (59:51.940)
are down compared to Bitcoin, right? Now, some of that's just
Anthony Pompliano (59:55.220)
in the early days of kind of the pricing of an asset, you go from
Lex Fridman (59:58.660)
very small to something much larger. But now what you start
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