Digital Social Hour - How to Start a $50M Investment Fund (From Scratch!) | DSH #1198

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

🚀 Building Funds, Raising Millions & Navigating the Financial World 💰 In this episode, we sit down with Bridger Pennington, the fund master behind multiple investment funds, including a blockchain investment fund and a GP stakes fund managing $50M+ in assets. He shares his journey from pitching his first fund at 22 years old to running multiple funds today, plus hard lessons learned from raising capital, fund frauds, and how to protect your investments. We also dive into how Wall Street really works, the power of private equity, the AI arms race, and hidden financial manipulation at the highest levels. If you’re into business, investing, and financial power moves, this is a must-watch episode! 📲 Follow Bridger & Fund Launch: ➡️ Website: FundLaunch.com ➡️ Instagram: @BridgerPennington 🔥 APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application 📩 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] Key Timestamps 00:00 - The Shocking Truth About Raising Capital 00:22 - Bridger Pennington’s First Fund & His Father’s Tough Lesson 01:00 - Managing $50M in Assets & Growing Multiple Investment Funds 02:45 - How to Pitch a Fund & Secure Investors 04:30 - Avoiding Fraud & The Biggest Fund Scams to Watch For 08:10 - Bernie Madoff, BlackRock & The Power of Private Funds 10:50 - The AI Investment Boom – Who Will Win the Arms Race? 13:30 - The Global Power Shift: How BRICS & the U.S. Dollar Battle It Out 17:15 - How China & BlackRock Influence Global Markets 22:30 - Gold Manipulation & The Truth About Precious Metals Investing 28:00 - Why Family is the Ultimate Flex in Business & Life 35:00 - Masterminds, Networking & Paying $150K to Meet Russell Brunson 40:00 - How to Start Your Own Fund & Avoid Costly Mistakes

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pitch my dad, who better? Apparently my dad's rich, he doesn't spend it on cars or vacations or nothing, you know, like he'll probably have tons of money, so I went and pitched my dad and he emphatically said no. Wow. Yeah, he said if I invest in your fund, it would ruin the experience of you raising money. I know to this

date he's I've now launched three funds. We're gonna do a fourth right now. Last week was the first time he's ever invested in a single fund. Wow. Currently run two funds right now. I run a blockchain investment fund. We run a GP stakes fund. We manage roughly 50 million dollars of AUM right now. Damn. That's crazy. All right guys, we got the fund master here today. Bridger Pennington. Thanks for coming on, man. What's up? Good to see you. Yeah. Long time waited. Yeah, I've been seeing you at events for years, man.

Oh, yes, we have. I think we were trying to plan this out limitless, like, two years ago, right? Yep, yep. Yeah. Good to be here. Yes. And congrats to you, man.

You're blowing up. Just crushing. I see all your clips. You guys are crushing it. Thanks, dude. You too. You're the fun expert, man. How'd you get into this stuff?

Yeah, the quick story is I grew up in a normal household. Didn't know until college my dad was running a 20-year-old are crushing it. Thanks, dude. You too. You're the fund expert, man. How'd you get into this stuff? Yeah, the quick story is I grew up in a normal household. Didn't know till college my dad was running a $28 billion family of funds. He didn't tell you? Had no clue. He drove a car with a dent in the door, an old Ford Expedition.

And I mean, to put that in perspective, that is five times bigger than Cardone Capital today. Wow. He's now retired. Their funds are $48 billion, something like that. Holy crap. And now we weren't poor by any means, but we weren't rich by any means either.

And in college, I was like, dad, what the? What have we been doing? Anyways, long story short, my desk were teaching me about funds. So he started to teach me. We got a whiteboard out. He taught me how funds are built, how to raise capital, how to put them together, how to work with the SEC. My brother then went into law, became an investment funds

attorney as well. And so I started in college. I started looking around for fund ideas. I launched a fund in college at 22 years old. Had this interesting idea. I was at a company, pitching to the owners of the company. They liked the idea. Went and launched this fund.

My dad kind of helped me put it together. And I went to raise capital. And I'm like, I'm going to go pitch my dad. Like, who better? Apparently, my dad's rich. He doesn't spend it on cars or vacations or nothing. He'll probably have tons of money. So I went and pitched my dad. Like, you know, who better? Apparently my dad's rich. He doesn't spend it on cars or vacations or nothing, you know, like he'll probably have tons of money. So I went and pitched my dad and he emphatically said no. Wow. And said, yeah, he said, if I invest in your fund, it would ruin the experience of you raising money on your own. This is

a lesson that you have to learn. He said no. And to this day, he's, I've, I've now launched three funds. We're kind of doing a fourth right now. And actually, sorry, last week, this is seven years ago, last week was the first time he's ever invested in a single fund of ever doing it. So he just always said no. But it taught me a valuable lesson. Went out, launched a fund. And then I launched a second fund,

ran that fund for about 3 and 1 half years. We sold that fund. I currently run two funds right now. I run a blockchain investment fund. We run a GP Stakes fund. We manage roughly $50 million of AUM right now. Damn. That's crazy. How tough was it raising money for that first one? Yeah, it was tough. We run a G.P. Stakes fund. We manage roughly $50 million of AUM right now. Damn.

That's crazy. How tough was it raising money for that first one? Yeah, it was tough. Well, I'm 22 years old. I have no track record, no college degree. Like, why would you invest with a 22-year-old? You wouldn't. And so I'm sitting there like, why would someone do this?

And what my dad taught me was, focus on the deal. If the deal is so good and you can outline every risk and every opportunity and really show the due diligence you have done, people may look past your youth. And so that's what we did. And so I dug into this thing. He gave me an example. He said, when raising capital,

everyone gets so introvert, like no one will invest in me. He goes, imagine if I found a brand new Ferrari in Montana that was for sale and it's in bankruptcy and the car is for sale for $50,000. He's like, Bridger, but you have till Saturday at noon to come up with 50 grand,

you can't use any of your own money. And this car we could sell for a quarter million dollars on Monday morning. Could you find 50 grand? And I was like, yeah, actually I think so. Like we're gonna make 200 grand this weekend? Like I'm gonna knock on doors, I'll be up all night, like but I, you know what, I was like,

yeah, I bet I could find 50 grand. And he said why? I'm like, well, because that's an easy deal. Like we're gonna pay 50 grand, we're getting a 250,000 dollar car, we can flip it, like it's obviously the returns, right? And that's, I'm making a lot of assumptions there, but everything checks out.

And he was like, there it is. Like if you find a good enough deal, a car that's worth 50 grand, that you could sell it for 250, and it's in probate, or it's in some special situation, they need cash by Saturday, a lot of times people will look past your youth and experience, because the deal is so good, and you just tell an investor, hey, don't trust me,

you look at it yourself, you do your own due diligence. And so that's what we did with that first fund. And we went out and raised, you know, I talked to everybody I knew and we raised it was a small amount We raised forty nine thousand five hundred dollars. Wow, but so as a team wasn't even fun It was like a syndication, but I was 22 years old and it was enough to get started We were like, okay, let's get going and that first group investors We got them a 64% return on their money. Holy crap So small amount of money but good return the second one we launched we launched, I said, OK, let's scale this.

And then we raised and deployed millions of dollars in that fund over the next few years. I'm doing extremely well. Our returns were 62% net rate of return, I think it was 47%, and then 36% cash and cash return, if I remember correctly. That's insane. And then we had a competitor come in and buy us out.

Wow. That's impressive, man. You've got to know which funds to invest in. So I looked up last night what percentage of funds beat the S&P 500, which is something everyone can invest to, and it's easy. Do you know what percentage it is? What type of search?

Was it mutual funds? Was it all funds? All funds. All funds. That'll be a big basket. Yeah. So I work more with private funds, but what did it pull for all funds?

So last year, it changes a lot every year because of the economy. But last year, only 40% of funds beat the S&P 500. And I've seen it as low as like 15 on some of the years. Yeah. That, primarily, I've seen that side before, looks a lot at mutual funds. Because they're very public, right?

And mutual funds over the last few years have really died out. Mutual funds used to be very common. They're actively managed funds. But ETFs have come and really taken those out. The problem with mutual funds is you're paying for market returns plus a premium for someone to manage it.

So you're paying management fees and performance fees. If you look specifically at private funds, so Tony Robbins just wrote a book called The Holy Grail of Investing, specifically on private equity. And I'm going to get the stats wrong, but rough estimates, he votes private equity versus the S&P 500. Over the last 30 years has four or five X the returns while on a full desk desks across the board when you're looking at the full quartile funds Has done extremely well, so you look at different categories. You get private equity venture capital hedge funds You'll see step in different returns there. That's good to know

So private funds are near the top of those investment returns out of all of them Well, it depends but but to your, there is a full gambit of funds. When I look at funds, number one, returns is important. Number two, though, is like fraud. We've seen a bunch of those fraudsters or people that steal money, especially on small funds. People that listen to this podcast, I've seen a number of people recently

that get pitched by their buddy, we're going to go buy a couple of crumble stores. We're going to buy this restaurant. We're going to go buy this thing. Let's pool some we're gonna go buy a couple of crumble stores, we're gonna buy this restaurant, we're gonna go buy this thing, put, let's pool some money together and go buy. And they don't do third party audits, they don't do third party administration, they don't button it up. And sadly enough, you'll, we've seen a lot recently of groups that someone was stealing

money or money wasn't going to the right thing that was allocated or for whatever reason. I have a simple rule for investing in any fund. Board none. Number one, do they have third party audits? Number two, do they do third party administration? If they ask the question, what's third party administration? I'm not investing. Like I'm out. I'm done. I'm already done. Well, Bridger, I'm your buddy. I'm like, I'm out, dude. If you don't know what third party administration is or third party audits, like I'm done. I don't even care what the investment is. All right guys, ketone IQ, high performance energy shot,

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Not gonna lie, shout out to KeyTone IQ, good stuff. Now then furthermore, you can talk about returns and what the investment is and how you're gonna do it and all, but that's like first point stop. I got wrecked on Aaron Wagner's. Did you? Yeah, so I'm 0 for 1 on funds. I'll try it again, probably.

But left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm sure. Yeah. When Aaron's, we know him decently well and didn't do audits, didn't do third-party administration. Yeah. And he got caught spending in on private jets. Yeah.

So we'll see how that court case comes out. We'll see. Yeah. But yeah, there's been a lot in our space recently. Jeremiah Evans, did you see that one in Utah? And yeah, you got to do your due diligence. I didn't know about the audits thing. I just trusted a friend that told me about it.

So it's partially my fault, too. Well, it's funny, I talked to a lot of investors. I know a lot of guys just like you. And I saw all those deals. This is four or five years ago. They were pitching me hard to join those deals. And I just said, hey, man, are you guys doing audits? Nah, we don't do that.

We're just a small group. We're just buying this little thing. We don't need those. I just said, hey, it, are you guys doing audits? Nah, we don't do that. We're just a small group. We're just buying this little thing. We don't need those. I said, hey, it's just too early for me then. I'm out. And I think we, and there's other guys. I won't say their names, but there's probably a handful more. And maybe it's fate or luck or whatever,

but we have missed every single one of them, me and my partners. We actually had one of our biggest investors call us up. So he's invested, I'm going to rough math, but let's call it $20 million amongst some of those deals and other ones as well. And he said, our investment, he invested with us too. He said, you guys are the only ones, first off, that do third party audits, third party administration,

the only ones that have actually given me a positive good, and actually not just good, a great return. And he goes, you're the only guys I trust anymore. Wow. And he said, furthermore the only guys I trust anymore. Wow. And he said, furthermore, how did you guys avoid all those other scams? Because we're in the same group. We've been in these for years.

And I said, it's simple. They didn't do third party audits. They didn't do third party administration. I'll tell you a story. Bernie Madoff, remember him? Yep. 30 years. He never did an audit.

Wow. Bernie Madoff was running $28 billion, roughly. He was the president of the NASDAQ. Bernie Madoff was giving millions of dollars away to charities. He was a great guy. Back in the man, early 2000s, he was the guy. The SEC investigated Bernie twice and found nothing. Bernie's great. We love him. He's given money to our charities and stuff. It took a competitor's firm. They then did a research on Bernie and built a case and gave it to the SEC.

That's how the SEC found Bernie Madoff. Wow. It's a wild story. That is. Before Bernie Madoff, only about 10% of firms did annual audits. After Bernie Madoff, over 90% of firms did third party audits.

I mean, it was a huge divide on Wall Street. Yeah, I remember watching that documentary when I was younger. 28 billion I did not know he got up that high. That must be a record right? I think it's one of the largest in history. What's Blackrock out these days? They got to be hundreds of billions right? Well Blackrock's I think roughly 10 trillion. 10 trillion? Holy crap. But Blackrock's a little different. So you have private funds then you have ETFs. We talk about these three funds that are taking over the world. You have Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street.

Now these three, primarily it's through ETFs. And so they own, get this, we pulled the Fortune 500 list. I think it's 494 of the Fortune 500. BlackRock and Vanguard are the two largest owners. Wow. Shareholders. Now if you're a CEO, what's your job? The job of a CEO is to return shareholder value.

And so if your largest shareholder is BlackRock, and BlackRock a couple years ago says, well, we really want to push an ESG agenda, which is environmental social governance agenda. And if you're not compliant with this, well, we're just just gonna delist you from our platform your largest shareholders gonna sell your stock because remember a couple years ago like every company all the sudden just was

doing this green initiative and had this and I was I was saying I was like how did they they get all these random companies around the country to all agree to go in this direction like all at the same time like it seems weird right you go oh well their largest shareholder BlackRock just said we need an ESG agenda on all your companies and you're a CEO and you go oh I need to comply with that or my stock price is going to be devalued I'm going to get fired as CEO. And you really start to look at who runs the world and it's if you look at these three companies combined managed roughly 2222 trillion of assets.

BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. Holy crap. And what happens is how they accumulate so much power is we buy ETFs. So they have iShares or iShares Pros or whatever. So if me and you went and bought a SP500 ETF, a lot of times it's going through BlackRock or Vanguard. And they go in on our behalf and buy a little piece

of all these 500 companies, which is a good thing. It's been one of the most successful products ever on Wall Street. However, the voting rights of those shares isn't held by me. It's held by BlackRock. And they can do kind of what they want. I mean, it's made them the most powerful institutions

on Earth. It's kind of scary. If you started to look at consolidation of industries right now, there are roughly five, six food companies that control every single brand on Earth. Damn. There are, have you ever heard of the big four accounting

firms? Deloitte. KPMG, those ones, yeah. There's a reason there's big four. They've bought everybody else. They've consolidated their whole industry. We're seeing mass consolidation across pretty much every industry right now.

There's 14 car companies that control pretty much the entire planet. Maserati is the same company that's owned by Dodge Ram. It's the same company. You have a lot of these brands that are mixed together under one conglomerate. Volkswagen owns Bentley, Audi, Lamborghini. It's all owned by Volkswagen.

It's the same car. Do you think that's a good thing, the mass consolidation? How do you feel about it? It's good to a degree. Sometimes it can centralize things and make costs go down for consumers. But once it becomes monopoly and anti-competitive, then it's a terrible thing.

They stopped that in Vegas with the hotels because MGM was taken over. Yeah. So they had to stop them. Half of Vegas was owned by one group. Yeah. I wonder if they're going to do that with other industries. Yeah, we'll see.

They have some antitrust lawsuits out. And it's hard. Half of Vegas was owned by one group. They had to stop them, yeah. I wonder if they're going to do that with other industries. Yeah, we'll see. They have some antitrust lawsuits out. And it's hard. In our day and age, they're trying to break up Google right now, three different groups. We'll see if they do that. But overall, even if it's you take BlackRock, though. Is BlackRock anti-competitive?

They're just a shareholder. They just own 7% of XYZ company, Walmart or Facebook or whatever. Is that anti-competitive? Is it not? So they're kind of behind the scenes pulling the strings on all these CEOs. And now they all just go compete. It's very interesting to watch what BlackRock and Vanguard and Safe Streets are doing. Once I found out how much percentage of the stock market they own, it was close to 80, right?

Yeah, well, I've seen different reports. I've seen different one. Yeah, but the one I saw it said close to 80 I don't know if that's accurate or not. I pulled all my stocks. I was like, I mean they could just manipulate the price Yeah, yep. It's it's kind of freaky and that's what we know. I wonder what we don't know Right. So I look at like Jamie diamond head of and I wonder what he knows and what actually is going on So my dad and me and my brother wrote a book called Dollars, Gold and Bitcoin. And my dad points out in this book, a few examples of mass market manipulation.

So back in, I believe it was 2012, Barclays was fined $300 million for manipulating the LIBOR price, which is the London International National Banking Rate, so huge. JP Morgan Chase was given the largest fine ever by the SEC. I think it was in 2021 for manipulating the precious metals markets for over a decade. So get this, the gold market is over 10, I think it's 13, 14

trillion dollars right now. You have the silver market, it's also huge, precious metals. JP Morgan, a company, not the government, not whatever, a company with a small group of team was manipulating the price of gold, silver, precious metals for a decade. They were moving this market. And only it was what, 10 years later, they found out they fined them roughly a billion dollars.

That's just what they caught. Wild, like that's what they caught. So my dad then points out like, what other market manipulation is going on that we don't know about, that we will know about in 10 or 15 years right now? There's some prices that don't make sense. In his book, he talks a lot about Bitcoin.

He believes that they are boxing in Bitcoin. They're lowering it. You would box it in. You don't kill Bitcoin, but you put it in a box, right? There are certain trade limits, and you suppress the price to bring in other buyers or to make it not competitive against the US dollar. Now we've had the Trump administration and we'll see if that changes that whole shift.

But if you look at the price changes after 2021, they find JP Morgan Chase, Bitcoin's price started to trade differently. And his theory is the SEC or the Fed started to come in and maybe started to box in Bitcoin in different price levels. We had the crash, you know, the last cycle of end of 2022. And now we're coming up on this crypto cycle as well. And I run a crypto fund. I'm in crypto.

I love crypto, but it's interesting to see potential huge market manipulators in that space. I could see it, man, because it's still a new industry. It's only like what? 10, 15 years old. So you can easily get in there with a few billion dollars and manipulate stuff. Well, the whole crypto market is $3 trillion.

Gold is $14 trillion. If JP Morgan, one company, can manipulate the gold market at $14 trillion, how much easier would it be to manipulate the $3 trillion crypto market? Way easier. Plus, you could trade it all day every day. It's not closed on the weekends, like gold silver. Yeah I'm mixed on gold. I got some but I hear these wild things about gold so we'll see. Well last week there's a lot of people calling

their gold due in the United Kingdom. So this whole report that I was reading, people are calling because they have gold reserves. It's supposed to be physical gold but they own like an ETF or a GLD or whatever and they're actually calling their gold back because of Trump's reserves, it's supposed to be physical gold, but they own like an ETF or a GLD or whatever, and they're actually calling their gold back because of Trump's tariffs. Trump's looking to tariff, they don't wanna get tariffs on that gold, so they're gonna try to get it and put it in a safe revolt.

They have delayed, so usually it's a three to four day delay to get your gold out, they've now jumped it to six to eight weeks. Whoa. Which everyone's theorizing they don't have the gold. They've been pontificating the price of gold. They've been selling GLD shares of gold or whatever,

and they don't actually own the gold. So right now there's a run on the bank right now on gold, which could do some pretty interesting things to the price of gold going forward. Yeah, because now other countries will see that and call theirs, and then it could be a worldwide thing. It's a run on the bank on gold, and we actually are gonna see how much gold is out there.

It's gonna be interesting. That is very interesting. Do you have any? I have some gold, yeah. I have physical. I don't have the ETF. Yeah, some physical, some ETF. It's funny, the whole entire gold, I saw a stat.

It could fit, and the entire gold in the whole world could fit into an Olympic-sized pool. I saw that. I was like, that's crazy. Really crazy. That's wild. But there's theories that there's more in space. Oh, yeah, like an asteroid or something. Elon's going to try to's theories that there's more in space. Oh, yeah. Have you seen enough?

Like an asteroid or something? Yeah. Elon's going to try to mine it in like 10, 20 years. Oh, dang. They found one? They said there. There's a lot of people that say it's on asteroids and stuff. What did you say?

There's an asteroid coming to Earth right now. I saw that. It's like a 2% chance it's going to hit us in, what, 2033? Something like that. Yeah. Keeps going up, I think, too, the odds. So we'll see what happens. Yeah.

What do you do about that? Yeah, I mean. I saw last year there was another asteroid. NASA we'll see what happens. What do you do about that? I saw last year there was another asteroid. NASA put out a hydrogen bomb into space as a potential deterrent for these asteroids if they were coming close. Really? Hydrogen bombs, what, 100 times bigger than atomic bombs?

Something like that? Like wild stuff. Maybe there are ways to blow them up in space. Yeah, go. I don't know. I bet they'll figure something out. Did you start Maybe there are ways to blow them up in space. Yeah, go, I don't know. I bet they'll figure something out. Did you start an AI fund too?

No, nothing in AI. You think that's a bubble? No, I think AI is. I just don't know how to strategically invest in AI. Because it's interesting, it's the last invention mankind will make. A lot of books will say or whatever, if you make AI, it's the last thing we ever need to make.

It'll make everything else. True, amazing, super generative AI, right? And these tech companies have spent roughly a trillion dollars in the last 18 months, a trillion. If you aggregate all together, Silicon Valley has spent that to figure out this last invention, humanity. So I'm like, I'm sitting there as an investor. Who's going to win?

I don't know. So I'm going to make a spread bet. I'm going to play, yeah, I'll buy some Palantir, and I'm going to buy some Meta, and I'm going to buy some Google, you know what I mean? Which I already owned. But who's going to win? And if they won, would they tell anybody?

Probably not. And could they have already won? Would you tell anybody? Probably not. And could they have already won? Would you tell anybody? I probably wouldn't. If XAI, Elon, if they had true, generative, amazing, super intelligent AI, I wouldn't tell a soul. You would go launch sub-companies. You'd go trade the stock market.

You'd accumulate a mass amount of wealth. You would get that integrated into every system on Earth. If AI is really smart, it would play dumb. It would act like chat GPT, right? Play dumb and give you these little answers and stuff as it integrates into all of your systems, becomes a copilot on all of your computers, and then wakes up one day and hopefully it's not evil,

hopefully it's good, right? That's where my brain goes. So what do you think? I don't know how to quite invest in that space besides just playing a spread on the whole category. No, I agree. There's so many different AI companies. It's almost like a needle in a haystack, right?

Because obviously some of them are going to pop off. Like, Nvidia. Nvidia is always going to win because they're providing the chips. So I feel like that's a safer play than these individual companies. But if you hit one of these companies, it's like investing in Amazon in 2000, right?

Oh, yeah. It's insane. And what are the odds of who's going to win, who's not going to win? And if one wins, it might wipe out the other ones that don't win. Nvidia's Blackwell series, my partner is on the board of Intel for the last 16 years.

Just retired from the board, and he's on the board of AMD as well. So he's been telling us about the Blackwell chips coming out for like 18 months. Blackwell's coming out, Blackwell's coming out. And we passed the CHIPs Act back in 2022, which was interesting. President Biden said it was a 24-hour notice.

You had to decide between your citizenship and your job if you worked in China. What? So in the Chinese chip manufacturing, they gave them a 24-hour notice. Anyone working in CHiPs needs to leave China and come home, or you're no longer a US citizen. Like it was that stark. And we were pulling out all chip,

anything chip manufacturing to China. This is when China was gonna take over Taiwan as well. And this is right during COVID. So a lot of people miss this. We parked an aircraft carrier right around Taiwan. Then another one, Biden said, we're gonna protect Taiwan at all costs. China back down from Taiwan.

And they estimate that put China back seven eight years Manufacturing well, I mean it was a huge blow to China which gave us an advantage however So that's what you know most people thought we've had a huge advantage in AI until just a few weeks ago deep seat came out Hmm, right. So deep seek was this Allegedly five million dollar startup out of China that had a model that was a order of magnitude better than chat GPT and Gemini and others and it Blew up. I mean the stock Nvidia dropped 17% a day. I saw that I bought some did you buy some that I was like I gotta buy I'm gonna buy a video. I made a good trade on that one, but

Now we've seen it looks like Nvidia has sold roughly a billion dollars of chips to them They're selling through Singapore or Hong Kong and it's moving up You know to China to build these data centers in the back end of deep sea. But what it is showing, regardless of how they're getting the technology, China is right there with AI. And it's quite an arms race right now.

And I'm grateful President Trump just announced Stargate, which is the $500 billion investment they wanna put into AI and win that race. I mean, you would say as a country, if you lose the AI race, you lose everything, right? It's the last invention mankind needs. That's pretty wild.

So we'll see. We'll see what they win. I did not know Biden did that. I've never heard of him doing something that impactful, man. I'm not going to lie. That's impressive. Well, yeah, I'm a geek on this stuff.

So I try to watch geopolitical stuff quite a bit. So aircraft carriers are pretty interesting. We have, the United States has, I believe, 14 aircraft carriers. The combined world has roughly one. Now they have other ships and stuff, but if you use the mass, like the firepower of one, the combined world has one, we have 14.

They have two nuclear power plants in each one. They can travel for roughly 100 years without porting if they don't want to holy crap These things are incredible the one aircraft carrier get this so they rank militaries and military might and stuff So air forces if one aircraft carrier parked off your coast It would be the third most powerful Air Force on planet Earth Wow, I believe number one's China Number two or sorry number one's China. Number two, or sorry, number one's the United States Air Force. Number two's China, and number three would be

one aircraft carrier. That's so nuts. So like, it's wild. So like when China was gonna take Taiwan, we had an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. We parked one there. And things kept going on. They were flying jets over Taiwan.

I lived in Taiwan for two years, by the way. I was a church missionary there. So I was really watching Taiwan, because I know a lot of people there. I love Taiwan. It's amazing people. And then we parked a second aircraft carrier in the region. Now I read a report that they parked a third aircraft carrier there. Now some people, they've kind of retracted that now. So I don't really know how many, but when we have two or maybe three aircraft carriers in a region, I mean, we are moments away from war. That's a huge, huge deal.

And China decided to back down. We passed the CHIPS Act. And they kind of said, hey, we'll have a path to you guys maybe in 2027 or something like that. I mean, we came close. The whole Israel conflict that was going on right now, we parked our brand new Ford class carrier right off the coast of Israel.

No way. And we're running all over. So it's a big deal. When an aircraft carrier moves and it's parked somewhere, it's like the whole region goes, oh crap. Wow. This is the third most powerful air force on earth. And one aircraft carrier, when it leaves port,

it leaves with like 15 ships. It's not just an aircraft carrier. It leaves with like a submarine. It comes with a battle destroyer, all these other. So it's a full group that leaves together. I wanna see a photo of one of these things. Yeah, they're wild. I can't even picture this.

How many, like, do you know the footage on it? No, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if people on here can pull up pictures or whatever, but they're wild. 15 ships, you're talking about airplanes inside of there. That's so not true. And they travel together in this whole fleet. So it's a big deal.

I did not know we were that far advanced of other militaries. Yeah, it's a, I mean, a Navy is the most expensive thing a country can buy. If you talk about expensive things on Earth, like a Navy is it. Like you have arrived. And really after World War II, you had the Brentwoods Agreement.

1947, I believe, went to Brentwoods, Connecticut, and the whole world came, and not the whole world, but the Western world came together. It was the end of World War II. We were just about to end, I believe, went to Brentwoods, Connecticut, and the whole world came, and not the whole world, but the Western world came together. It was the end of World War II. We were just about to end, I believe it was 1949. And they were discussing on the New World Order. The United States said, hey, we're the only group with a Navy, and what we'll do is we will pay for a Navy

to protect the world. And a byproduct of that is, can you guys use our dollar? And over time, we became the world reserve currency and said, we will pay for a Navy. It's very expensive to have a Navy. So if you're shipping from Brazil to Italy, we will protect you. You just have to use our dollar.

And that's how the US dollar became the world reserve currency. And for 50, 60, 70 years, we've had that agreement. That's why people wonder, why is the US the world police? It's because we agreed to it. We agreed we would be the world police as long as people used our dollar. That's why the US gets in all these conflicts

that people don't understand. It's like, well no, we have to protect shipping lanes. Additionally, if you don't use our dollar, it's a big deal. So there's three people in history that me and my dad put in our book about people that didn't use the US dollar. First one was Umar Q Gaddafi of Libya. He kinda got killed by the CIA.

Oh really? Yeah, he got assassinated. Next one was Saddam Hussein. He traded large amounts of oil not using US dollars. Kinda got killed by the US government, right? Indirectly. The last one was Vladimir Putin. Putin has traded a large amounts of oil not using US dollars

and last year, year and a half ago, his pipeline blew up Nord Stream 2 in two places. Wow. Putin has traded a large amounts of oil, not using US dollars. And last year, a year and a half ago, his pipeline blew up Nord Stream 2 in two places. Someone with a submarine and Navy SEALs blew up his pipeline in two places. And no one knows who did it. Yeah, right? Yeah, he might know, right?

It's a big deal when you trade large amounts of oil or trade goods without using US dollar. It's a big deal. People always come in. I'm a crypto guy. I hear all the arguments like the dollar's dead, the dollar, and I go, not yet. The DXY, which tracks the dollar versus other currency, is up 12% in the last three years.

I mean, the dollar is doing just fine. Now, global standards, people are moving to stay because I get the whole argument, I understand it, and I think Trump understands it too. But people, when they say the dollar's backed by nothing it I think Trump understands it too, but people when they say the dollars backed by nothing I think you got to hold your tone for a second. The dollar is backed by 14 aircraft carriers Hmm, it's backed by a trade embargo. That's gonna or a tariff if you don't trade with us cool We'll just park an aircraft carrier in front of you. Good luck trading. Well, you want to use our dollar again

India in 2022 was gonna get off the dollar They announced they're gonna to stop using the dollar. Their currency did a flash crash overnight. It looked like a meme coin. It went, whoo, and then it came back up. They called it a glitch in the system. Oh, it was a big glitch. Yeah.

That happened to Russia too, right? Yes, Russia had a crash. And Canada, when they had the tariffs there, and currently their Canadian dollar is way down. But it's like, really? You don't want to use the dollar? OK. So we really have a lot of power over the rest of the world.

Oh, I mean, it's massive. It's massive. So when people, I think it's a, you've got to be, now, could the dollar decline? Yes. Can it be less used? Yes. I understand that argument, but currently it's not happening.

The dollar is going up in value. I'll give you one more. So China announced they wanted to get off the dollar. So we have $36 trillion of national debt. So, which is a large amount of debt, don't get me wrong. But if we had zero debt, I would be more concerned than having $36 trillion of debt. Really?

Let me explain why. Is, if we had zero debt, there's no reason for countries to continue to be stuck to the dollar. So take China, for example. China, I believe, wants to get off the dollar. They hate the dollar. But they own roughly a trillion dollars of our debt. And they announced a few years ago, we're going to start selling this, you know, it was treasury debt, right? They're going to sell our treasuries. Okay, what happens? We jack our interest rates up at the fastest rate in history.

So bond prices, they own a bunch of bonds, we put bond prices, we just jacked them up to like four and a half percent from zero to four and a half. That, the trillion dollars of value, what happens when you jack interest rates, the value of bonds goes down. It's an inverse correlation. So that trillion dollars is worth $500 billion.

Like in a matter of a few months. And they go, crap, we can't sell this dollar. Additionally, we owe the rest of the world $36 trillion. Right? You want those dollars to be worth something. If you devalue the dollar, get rid of the dollar, the whole world would lose $36 trillion. We don't pay that debt. It's not being paid back in bitcoins, it's not being paid back

in barrels of oil, it's not being paid back in bushels of wheat, it's paid back in dollars. And so you want other countries to have as much of your debt as possible because they rely on getting, we're going to pay interest payments in dollars. And they want those dollars to be worth something. We're going to give them dollars, we're going to export dollars, and they want those dollars to be worth something. We're gonna give them dollars, we're gonna export dollars, and they're gonna use those dollars to buy goods or buy other stuff or exchange it with their currency and it creates demand for our product.

And this comes back to, we believe the greatest product ever produced by the United States, greatest export is dollars. It's not oil, it's not tech, it's not whatever, it is we export dollars. We print a trillion of them. And people like me and you work 80 hours a week to get more of them, right?

And they print another trillion of them, and we're like, well, we gotta work 80 hours a week to get more of these dollars, right? It is the greatest product ever produced on Earth. And we export it cross-border. Now, that all being said, it's 36 trillion a lot. Yes. Can we get that down?

Yes. And I love the Doge stuff and what they're doing, but if it was zero, I'd also be concerned as well. Having debt in other countries' hands, a lot. Yes. Can we get that down? Yes. And I love the Doge stuff and what they're doing, but if it was zero, I'd also be concerned as well. Having debt in other countries' hands, I think is very important. That is an interesting take. I never viewed the dollar as a product. I always viewed it as currency. But you're saying how we're using it to leverage ourselves with other countries. It makes a lot of sense. Are you worried at all with BRICS?

Well, the BRICS nations put up a plea to get off the dollar. First thing I'll say is it took the European Union, who are all naturally, you know, they share borders, trading parties, it took them 20 years to come up with the euro. BRICS nations, these guys are all kind of enemies with each other. They're not allies. They just have a common enemy, the United States. And they've said, we want to move off the dollar. Okay. I just think it's gonna take a long time to get all those parties to agree on something, have a central bank like the dollar, OK. I just think it's going to take a long time to get all those parties to agree on something, have a central bank, like the European Union did.

I think it's going to take a long time. Furthermore, Trump has just come out very hard on the BRICS nations and said, we're going to tariff any BRICS nation who's going to stop using our dollar. You're going to get tariffs, embargoes, aircraft carriers in front of you. We're going to go. So if you're a BRICS nation, you're all of a sudden go,

I don't, you know. Yeah, let's be allies with the other BRICS nations, but I don't know if we're going to launch. So if you're a BRICS nation, you're all of a sudden go, ah, I don't, you know. Yeah, let's be allies with the other BRICS nations, but I don't know if we're going to launch a currency. All right. Makes sense. Are you a fan of the tariff stuff? Yes and no. It's funny.

I listen to different economists. Some economists love it. Some economists hate it. And it's a mixed bag. I don't know if I have a strong opinion yet, because we don't really know the full effects. The overall concept of Trump saying, we need to make fair trading agreements, I agree with.

Using it as leverage, I mean, it's already been very successful. I mean, look at Canada. My mom's from Canada and Mexico. He said, we're doing tariffs. And in, what, 48 hours? They tried to push back, whatever. In 40 hours, both countries agreed

to send 10,000 troops to the border to secure the borders. Wow. It worked. Whether it's a threat whether you can people don't like Trump that whatever Trump's a bad negotiator or it's because he has such good position he's a good negotiator. Either way Trump's a good negotiator and I think he's been elected to be a good negotiator. China there I believe there are a lot of unfair trading practices with China. They manipulate their currency against ours and they've done it for years.

It has boosted the Chinese economy. I do believe they need us more than we need them. And I think Trump sees that and says, we're in a strong trading position. What's interesting too, Trump put the trade war back in his first term, remember? Biden kept all those tariffs and then increased them. This is, I think is a bipartisan thing.

As much as people don't like it, both last two administrations, Trump, term one, and Biden term, both kept pretty much the trade war going and increased it because they see this ever increasing conflict with China. That's interesting. How is China manipulating against us? Well, for a long time, and I don't know all the full details,

but a long time, they will move their currency price based on ours, very directly. If our currency drops a little bit, they drop a little bit more. If we go up, they go up a little bit. And it's to give them an advantage on their currency trade. Oh, wow. That's interesting.

On the Forex market? Wow. Yeah, I bet other countries do that too, though. And so then people go, well, this isn't a true price discovery of the Chinese yen. And they go, well, there's no way these currencies move just perfectly together. Because you're supposed to have price discovery on what

a currency is worth. And just think about cryptocurrency, right? It's a similar concept. And China's perfectly matches ours. It's just like, that can't happen. So someone's behind the scenes manipulating how this price action is working. Have you seen the stats on what percentage of currencies fail

over time? No. It's in the 90s, super high. Almost like worldwide history. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of concerning, right?

Well, Ray Dowd's book puts out a strong case of there's 80-year cycles. And central banks or world reserve currencies change about every 80 years. Well, you could argue we're 80 years coming up on 80 years soon. You could argue the dollar also became in 1972 when we went off the gold standard. That's when the dollar started, so we're about 50 years in.

It's a strong case. Is this time different? Maybe, maybe not. I personally think the United States and North America in general is strategically positioned better than anything on Earth, just geographically. We have no real threats. We have two oceans. I mean, it's just, we have more natural resources. It's Earth, just geographically. We have no real threats. We have two oceans.

I mean, it's just we have more natural resources. It's like it's amazing. Yeah, North America is absolutely phenomenal and as a currency goes if you know if we can and I think Trump's team is the team to do this if we can come back to A surplus like they did in the Clinton years in 1990s I thought the idea of an external revenue service and bringing invest back to a surplus like they did in the Clinton years in 1990s. The idea of an external revenue service and bringing invest back to America and strengthening it, I think we could still be just fine. And I think our currency could continue on. I do believe, I don't know when, but they will eventually

evolve the currency into a blockchain-based currency. I've been hearing rumors of that for years. I'm sure you have too. I don't know when. It could be sooner, it could be later. This is an administration that's very pro crypto. I mean, he launched his own coin. Oh, they have their own coin,

they're looking at stable coins right now, they're deregged, SAB 121 for the banks. I mean, that's huge. All the crypto stuff right now is phenomenal. Could they move to a stable coin backed currency? Perhaps. And if they don't do it, will they do it in 2028? Maybe, or 2032, maybe.

But I think it's inevitable. You will inevitably move to a blockchain-based currency. And I think the dollar could reinvent itself for another 80 years, or something like that. So you're a fan of that, because a lot of people are scared of being able to track it and stuff. Well, I don't know if I'm a fan.

I think it's inevitable, though. I just think there's too much power, too much control, too much efficiency that would happen for, and I don't know if it's this administration, the next one, the next one, but eventually politicians go, man, we got to do this. This is that good. Or, and I don't think it'll be a full central bank digital currency, like full control like China's done.

It'll act just like it's doing today. But just the back end, it just starts tracking with a blockchain. That's it. Yeah, because they're still tracking dollars. There's codes on all of them, right? Yeah. They're essentially doing it already. But let's just digitize it and put tracking with a blockchain. That's it. Yeah, because they're still tracking dollars. There's codes on all of them, right? Yeah. They're essentially doing it already.

But let's just digitize it and put it on a blockchain. It's a private blockchain. It's not going to be a public ledger. It's a private ledger, centralized. We're not going to call it a central bank digital currency because it's a bad word. But we're just going to digitize our dollar a little bit. Yeah.

I would love it. Sending wires is so annoying, man, especially international. You've got to wait a week. You don't know if it went through. I had a guy on my show, they have roughly 280 million of XRP. Holy crap. And with their family offices and stuff,

they're huge XRP people. He told me that the SAB 121 getting repealed with banks, all banks right now are ready to move on building backend wallets for all bank accounts. Damn. And some of them have already done it. So Bank of America looks like they've already done it and your wires will move and it'll act just like

a normal wire but it'll happen in a second for two pennies. Really? And he believes they're gonna use the XRP system or a thing called R, which protocol they use. But the banks have already built the infrastructure. It's already built. All they have to do is really flip a switch. They would transfer all of your bank accounts

to become, they'd have a backend wallet. You wouldn't even know it exists though. Just look like your bank account, but on the backend there'd be a wallet and you would transfer direct from bank to bank using perhaps XRP or you use R to do it. I'd love that. Because Zelle is decent,

but you can only send a certain amount, but something like that would be great. It'd be like Venmo. It's like Venmo or Zelle. It's like instant, it happens. Yeah. It's like that. Yeah. That's awesome, man. But I think it's inevitable. Like, don't you? Like it's- I think so, yeah. It's 2025. It's gotta Venmo or Rizal. It's like instant. It happens. Yeah. That's awesome, man. But I think it's inevitable. Don't you?

It's 20.5. It's got to happen. So you got two kids now, right? I do, yeah. Congrats. How's that, raising a family while running four funds at the same time? It's phenomenal.

I run two funds right now. But it's phenomenal. I just got out of baby two weeks ago. Congrats. So I'm here. I got to fly home pretty soon. My wife's amazing. We have a three-year-old son.

And it's been phenomenal. I am a big believer in family. I think it's funny. We talk a lot about money right now and assets and accumulating stuff. I think the biggest flex that someone can have. People have Lambos or jets or whatever. Your biggest flex you can have in life is an amazing family.

And not just on the billboard amazing, they look good, like truly good people. If you as you and a spouse can raise good kids, and those kids can raise good kids, and you have two or three generations of great people, that's the biggest flex you can have in life. And my wife's grandpa, he's 75 years old, I mean their family is incredible. His kids, his grandkids, now his great-grandkids, I mean like across the board,

he's got I think 70 descendants, phenomenal humans. Not on drugs, they're smart, they're doing great things, you know what I mean? Very, I think like one or two have been divorced of the whole 70 plus people. I mean, just they have good values, they were raised, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints, like raising good Christian values, just doing good in the world.

I'm like, wow, that's winning. That, and cause you can't buy that. You can't even build it in a short period of time. It takes 40 years to build that. That's a 40 year commitment and you can't even build it yourself. You have to build it with a partner. And I'm like, wow, that's winning.

That's the ultimate flex. And so me and my wife talk about this a lot and we're like, and my wife's a phenomenal human. We grew up together on the same street. Can we do that? Can we build some great roots, some great foundation, and build a posterity? And money aside, yeah, money's cool and all,

but can we build and help raise really good people? I think that's really cool. Beautiful. Yeah, your family is a representation of you, direct representation. I think that's why a lot of people like Trump, too, because you look at his kids and they're all super successful. Yeah.

And you didn't really see that with the other side of this election. Yeah, it was interesting. And Trump's had a couple wives and mixed around and stuff. But you see his kids. You see the fruits of his labors, right? And not every kid's going to turn out perfect. Some kids go wonky.

And even if you're the best parent in the world, kids can go wonky. I totally agree with that. But in general, as an aggregate, how have you done over 30, that's a long time, 30 years to raise a family or 20 years. Can you keep your marriage together? Can you grow and expand?

And anyways, I think it's a lifelong pursuit that I think is the most, when I interview people on my show and stuff, the most happy, the most fulfilled people I find are people who did that. And I said, yeah, it took a lot of work. But man, like one of my mentors, this guy's amazing. His, he has five kids, all five of them.

I know his kids, phenomenal humans. His, they all run businesses, do other cool stuff. His grandkids, they're just sharp, smart, they're funny. You'd love to hang out with them. Be with them, they're clean. They're not doing crazy stuff on the weekends. You know what I mean? They're just good humans.

And you're like, wow. And he goes, I'm living the best, my dream right now. And I was like, that's so cool. I love that. Speaking of mentors, I know you paid Russell Brunson 150 grand to meet him, right? I joined, yeah, his category of Kings group was is a year membership is in his mastermind yeah how was that was that a good ROI for you I was fun I've joined a bunch of them I

joined I've joined one for 30 grand one for 24 grand one I'm considering I was a quarter million dollars to join and I've you know going back my first one I ever joined was $15,000 I was in college put on credit cards and it changed my life and getting the right room with the right people and stuff. And I think winners always find an ROI, and losers always find a negative. And it's funny, so 150 grand sounds like a lot to do a mastermind.

I love Russell. I think he's done great things. And I was like, guess what? Worst case scenario? Worst case scenario. I pay Russell 150 grand, and I have a really good story of how it sucked and Russell screwed me. You know what I mean? That'd be a good podcast show.

Now, that didn't happen. Russell was awesome. We loved being in the group. We loved Russell's thing. We spoke at his event last year at FHL. It was really fun. And you also get to hang out with other people that also paid $150,000 to be in there. Always a good experience.

There's different groups. We kind of bounce from one group to the next each year. We joined the Greenwich Economic Forum last year. We'll just join different groups trying to get a different a difference Yeah, I do the same thing. I'm part of one if not two every year. They're important. Which ones you like right now I'm in Jim Deuce pretty good Jim Jim do 72 72 K year. I've been part of Fleishman's which is a 100 K year Flight club is another one. So there's all sorts. And it ranges from 10 to 250. Is that Tony Robbins, the 250 one?

Yeah. Yeah, I saw that one. That one must be elite. It's pretty fun. The first event's in a couple weeks, I'm going to go into it. So you should come. Yeah, 250. I'll need a payment plan, man.

Wow, I did too. I did, yeah. I'll talk to you after. Well, dude, it's been cool. Where can people look you up and find your funds and everything? Yeah, fundlaunch.com. If people want, we have a full free course on funds. So a free gift for your audience.

If you guys want to learn about investment funds, I want more people to understand what funds are, how to not get scammed, how to underwrite funds, how to make sure you're making good investments. And it's all free. So we have a free course, fundlaunch.com. You can go to altstreet.com as well. We've interviewed all these fund managers around the world.

It's all for free. Now, beyond that, we help people launch their funds and stuff. You can learn about that more about fundlaunch.com. You can find all of our stuff. Perfect. We'll link it below. Check them out, guys. See you next time. Bet MGM is an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League and has your back all season long.

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