Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - ENTREPRENEURS Reveal What CENTRAL BANKS Don't Want You To Know! - George Kikvadze and Bill Tai

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

George Kikvadze is the Founder of Cryptic8 VC, investing at the intersection of technology and longevity. He is also Vice Chairman and an early backer of Bitfury Group, the company at the heart of this book. A Bitcoin pioneer since 2013, he was privileged to be behind three tech unicorns - Bitfury, Cipher Mining, and Hut 8 - with a combined value exceeding $12 billion. A graduate of Wharton and Johns Hopkins, George enjoys tennis, chess, and raising his two sons. Bill Tai has funded startups since 1991, with 23 becoming publicly listed companies. An early backer of Zoom, Canva, and Dapper Labs, he also co-founded data pioneer Treasure Data (acquired by SOFTBANK) and IPInfusion (TSE:4813). Originally a chip designer at LSI Logic and Taiwan Semiconductor, he later led semiconductor IPOs at Alex Brown & Sons. He holds a BSEE from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Harvard, where he advises the Dean. He chairs ACTAI Global, uniting entrepreneurs and innovators for tech-based conservation. Learn about the inside story of Bitcoin in this great new book, And Then You Win: A Start-Up's Untold Story of Grit, Grind, and Glory Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. 📚 Get a copy of my books: Solana Rising: Investing in the Fast Lane of Crypto ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/43F5Nld⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ From Wall Street to the White House and Back ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/47fJDbv⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Little Book of Bitcoin ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/47pWRmh⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Little Book of Hedge Funds ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/43LbM83⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Hopping over the Rabbit Hole ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/3LaykJb⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Goodbye Gordon Gekko ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/47xrLYs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🎥 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗼 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻𝘆! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.cameo.com/themooch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🎙️ Check out my other podcasts: The Rest is Politics US - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@RestPoliticsUS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Lost Boys - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYFf6KS9ro1p18Z0ajmXz5qNPGy9qmE8j&feature=shared⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ SALT - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/SALTTube/featured⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📱 Follow Anthony on Social Media Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/scaramucci/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ X - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/Scaramucci⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/anscaramucci/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@ascaramucci?lang=en⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@therealanthonyscaramucci Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Conditions apply. You grew up in a rough place. You're talking about communism, totalitarianism. You're talking about the taking away of liberties. You're talking about loss of financial freedom, inflation, devaluation, waiting on lines for just economic basics. It could make somebody hard. It could make somebody cynical.

How did you transform all of that? Your word is the most important thing. That really was the foundation of everything that I was raised on, honesty, hard work, and doing good. You know, my parents were doctors. My grandpa kind of called up in the middle of a night, 3, 4 a.m. to go and save someone. one's life doing a surgery and this kind of selfless giving. And if you do this selfless giving without thinking to receive something back, this is actually ironically the most selfish thing you can do because if you do it selflessly to go and make an

impact and help others, you know, the universe comes back to you 100x times. Usually the people that get super rich are like incredibly ruthless. They're like backstabers. They're going for your carotid artery with a ballpoint pen. I thought nice guys are supposed to finish last. How are you guys pulling this off? What I do is I look for projects the teams can lower the friction to a solution to a problem and build it to replicate and skill.

That's Zoom. That's Canva. That was Bitfury and Bitcoin. And if you can do that right, you go to sleep every night and you wake up the next morning and the value creation was bigger every day. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us now is George Kikwase and Bill Tye.

Okay, let's go to George's background. First, he's the founder of cryptic aid, the VC firm. He's a Bitcoin pioneer. Vice Chairman and early backer of Bitfury. I'm sure there's some great stories there. And of course, Bill Tai, the legendary prolific investor and entrepreneur and founder of everything you are using in your house. If it's a technology, Bill Tai has been involved with this thing. But they wrote an amazing book.

And the title of the book is, And Then You Win. What a great title. And then you win a startup's untold story of grit, grind, and glory. It's great to have you both. It's a rare opportunity to hear from two people with such an inside-the-room knowledge of everything that's been happening over the last several decades. So I want to begin with you, George, first. Tell us about your background.

Tell us how you got to be where you are. Then we'll talk about Bill and the forward, et cetera. Yeah. pleasure to be on your show, pleasure to be here. You know, I grew up in Soviet Georgia. My parents were doctors, and then on one sort of a sunny day, 1991, the whole entire life savings of my parents that were in Zburbank collapsed and everything evaporated and everything was gone. And basically, you know, I went on a journey where I, you know, applied for a high school exchange ended up in Oregon came to the United States with $200 went to you of all then went to

UPenn, working then went to Johns Hopkins and basically ended up working for Jamie Dinan at York capital and as the world was collapsing in 2008 you know there was an opportunity for me to take a time off and he just got sort of introduced to Bitcoins through a good friend of our Maraths that talked to talk to me about this sort of a crazy idea of Bitcoin mining and this Latvian entrepreneur Val Vavilo that, you know, produced the first A6 and said, why don't you, you know, come in and join. And, you know, coming from the background of not trusting the centralized governments, not trusting the central banks, you know, having sort of family paying the price, I was a big fan of mathematics.

And when I started reading about Bitcoin, sort of connected to Bitcoin OGs, Wences Cesaris and Mickey Malco, were my first sort of a connection in 2013. And we connected right away, them coming from Argentina, Venezuela, I mean, Georgia. And I realized that, okay, this is the next big thing. And I had some capital, and I backed Bit Fury,

and the rest is the history. Why'd you write this forward, handsome? Mr. Bill Tai. Why did you write the focus? You know, I was, I guess, lucky enough to be the main capital provider to the big ASIC that became Bitfury. I forgot the exact year 2013 or so. And yeah, it's kind of a long journey into the Bitcoin ecosystem. But yeah, interestingly enough, I was working on peer-to-peer systems in 1999-2000.

And I launched a product that eventually got bought. by Nokia to be their cloud infrastructure with their web phones called, they called it Files by Ovi. The company name was called Avon. In 2003, I helped launch with Philip Rosedale, the digital currency and second life. So those two things together led me to Bitcoin in 2010. And in 2010, I started experimenting with the software and I was looking for somebody to buy from. I met a young man named Nico Poonen who was heating his apartment in Finland with mining rigs. And he ended up becoming part of the team at Bitfury.

And it took a little bit, you know, to get to know him and the team across Central Europe. And I ended up funding Bitfury. You know, when I came into this space, I'm after you guys, obviously I'm a little late to the party. But I think we're all still early unless you guys tell me differently. but when I got in the space and I asked somebody about Bitfury, they told me that it was more or less

the industrial backbone or the sort of the you're like the OG miners in the space and you sort of created the ethos of Bitcoin mining and basically you're the central nervous system of Bitcoin.

Do I have that right? Is that the right description of you guys and if it isn't what is the right description in that beginning period there weren't enough companies doing different parts of the stack so bitfury made its design and made its own silicon made its own servers deployed them and built data centers had had hookups at you know george found a 40 megawatt dam in republic of georgia this is 2013 so bit fury in that window 20 13 to 2017 was at times 40, sometimes a little over 50% of the world's Bitcoin mining. I mean, there were months.

George, I forgot the exact numbers, but there were months the company would mine tens of thousands of Bitcoin's. Maybe more, actually. So, George, what did you see? It's an obscure technology. I know you guys are technologists, but it's an obscure technology. It's a cryptographic code on the internet that you looked at and said, okay, this is going to be perceived over time as super hard money and an eventual digital store of value

and potentially operating system for money around the world. But how did you see it so early? What rang your bell? You know, I think, Anthony, in life, sort of I trusted the way to follow the signs. And the number 21 has followed me all my life. You know, I was born on March 21st. My house is on a 20 number 21.

You know, I would go to Vegas in a casino, you know, from time to time I make bet on 21. And it sort of was there with me. And 21 million coins. Bitcoin itself, a big B. My nickname as a kid, I was raised under nickname Buka. So B was always so B and 21. So for some strange reason, it's kind of connected the dots. when, you know, I was investing in Ukraine agriculture and that project was coming to an end.

That guy exited to Cargill. I had some capital. Here's my very close friend pestering me about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is at 20 at 50. Then Cyprus happens. And Cyprus was a wake-up call. And, you know, the price went to 200. Let's stop on Cyprus for a second.

I got young viewers that may not know what you're talking about. So during the Grexit crisis where the Greeks were thinking. about leaving the euro and there was a whole sort of consolidation in banking and there was a need to mark down assets in the banks in cyprus the banking authorities agreed to take a 10% haircut of everybody's savings account in the commercial residential you know the banking industry in cyprus and so if you had a million dollars in an account it was now worth 900 if you had $100,000 in account, it was worth 90. I just want to explain that to everybody so they know what it is. And why did that have such a big impact on you, sir?

Yeah, because it was a wake-up poll that at the end of a day, you know, the Fiat system is broken. You know, I sort of saw it first hand in Soviet Union, but not even Soviet Union, but in established entities such as European Union. And not only the haircuts, then there was also a moment where your money was frozen. You could not take your money out. So all of a sudden, you know, there was a massive panic and Bitcoin went to 300. And I used my network. I contacted some of my friends in Silicon Valley and one of the guys that reached out was DeVesh Makhan of Iconic, who is my classmate. And DeVos is like George, some of the wealthiest tech investors that I manage money. I'm not going to name names, but they are big investors in Bitcoin. And I'm like,

okay, this is very interesting. And then I got into Cannes Academy. Can Academy had the first Bitcoin course. So I started religiously, you know, getting into it, studying it up. And I realized, okay, oh my God, if this system, alternative to existing Fiat and central bank system that's propelled by mathematics and cryptography works, even, you know, 20% of it, this is going to be massive. And another point was that when I met a value, the final. and the people around him, they were just on a different level. And when I met the young coders that were coding on Bitcoin, these young Ukrainian geniuses,

I was just amazed by the raw brainpower. And if anything, it was just a bet on the intellectual power of these young generation that was coming and coding and developing on his open source system. And for me, that was an aha moment. And, you know, that's when I got engaged in 2013. Why this book right now? And by the way, it's a brilliant book about chance, risk-taking, informed decision-making, not getting things right, making an adaptation, the grind. I mean, that's exactly what it is.

You get to the glory, but you're grinding. And I think people have to realize that because they read these glossy magazine pieces and, oh, the guy, I guess he just stepped in it and he's made the money. But that's not really what happens. You write such a really authentic book about that grind. But why? Why write it now? Well, I think first, while we were going through the journey, we always joke that the stories are so unbelievable that no one would believe it. And at some point, we got to share this with the world, you know, the journey that we went through.

And it really was a, from my standpoint, it was a psychological kind of therapy in a way, kind of reflecting on the past. we've taken reflecting on the people and the friends we gained along the way, and reflecting around doing good things and going through this experience as band of brothers. Let's put it this way. And time has come, and it was, you know, we were at the Diamandises, Peter's Summit, and it just by coincidence, one of the folks, one of the guys in my forum, he just wrote a book, and Carrie Oberiner of Igniting Souls was there, and it's just another sign, you know, I said, okay, time has come and let's do it. And, you know, I posted on a social. And as you know, when you post something on a social, I said, I'm going to have book in six months. And that's it. That was a commitment. And I just grinded and grinded and grinded and worked and worked. And, you know, Bill obviously has helped out a lot in terms of guiding. And we put this thing together. And it was really a journey in terms of what we went through.

and trials and tribulations. And really, if you think about Anthony, the space had a lot of reporters and journalists writing about the space and they're great stories, but we really never had a true insider story. So what I want to do is part of it, kind of unleash the storytelling by all the founders and folks that went through this, you know,

through journeys of building up and being part of this ecosystem. And, you know, I think it was fun, and I'm really glad that we did it. Well, listen, I mean, the stories are awesome. I want to go to Bill for a second because when I think of the title of the book, I think of, and you guys write about it,

I think about the famous progression, the entrepreneur mantra, right? You first, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then of course they fight you, and then you win. So let me go to Bill first. When did it dawn on you,

oh my God, we may actually win here? Oh, boy. I would say that I had a feeling maybe four or five times during the journey, and then we would get literally hit in the head with a sledgehammer, you know, whether it was regulatory or competition or something. And it wasn't really till the end where the company, through a lot of George's creativity, spun off HUD-8 mining that became HUD and American Bitcoin and created the, the entity to take cipher out through us back.

You know, at that point we had liquidity. It still wasn't clear at that point whether the liquidity would be enough to carry the company all the way through. But, you know, with the advent of AI lifting those companies because of their infrastructure, the balance sheet and the capital wherewithal behind Bitfury has grown substantially. And so now I feel like it's in a safe zone. But I can't say that I ever felt that until about a year ago. All right.

So for those of you listening and now watching us on YouTube, George just crossed his fingers, okay, which is a sign that he's superstitious like the rest of us. So you're crossing your fingers. You're like, I'm hoping that, you're right? Because George, the uncertainty that you've lived with and the doubt, right? We call it fun, right? The fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And of course, the wave of people.

And by the way, myself included, and Michael Saylor has admitted this show. I didn't understand it. I walked away from it. I think I made, you know, we were mentioning it. You guys are mentioning Peter Diamandis. I met Hal Finney. It was either 2011, maybe. I don't know what it was.

It was at a singularity university workshop at the Ames Research Center in, you know, in Palo Alto, or where that is exactly, you know, what better than me is in Silicon Valley. And I was like, where is it? Moffett Field. Okay, yeah, Mothet Field. Exactly. So I'm meeting him. He's making a presentation on Bitcoin and my eyes are glazing over.

I don't get it. So how do you combat all of that? And also, you guys are too old for this shit if you don't mind me just pointing that out. Okay. I mean, you, you know, if you were 21 and a computer programmer, I'd be like, all right, but you, Wences, another great OG in Bitcoin. How did you see it? I think from our standpoint, yeah, go ahead, Bill.

For me, I think the lead up to the great financial crisis told me that there had to be a new alternative. And I don't, you know, a lot of young people on here, as you mentioned, they probably weren't around during that era. But I got stuck with a bunch of auction rate securities in 2007. And I didn't understand how a capital market of massive. I have to stop you, sir, because again, I got to explain it. We have so many young viewers and listeners. So what is an auction rate security? So Bill is talking about something that we thought prior to the global financial crisis

was relatively riskless. We were rolling commercial paper on seven-day rolls. It was probably giving Bill 50, 75 basis, point improvement in his interest rate. And Bill was told by a financial advisor somewhere, this is fine. We've been rolling these successfully for three decades and you never get caught in them and you'll always be able to get out of them. And guess what happened, guys? We had a global financial crisis and in the fine print of these auction rate securities, you know, in an event that they don't roll, you could get locked in them. So how long were you locked in them? Because I have

clients that were locked in for several years. I couldn't believe it. Okay, so I had I had told my broker at Smith Barney Solomon to put them in something safe, and I thought they were in treasuries. And I get this letter from BlackRock in my physical in basket in that era that that was called the benefits and risks of leverage. And I'm like, what, do I even have BlackRock? And why am I getting this kind of title? Something must be wrong. And it took me a while to track it down and I call my brokers named Fred, I was like, Fred, why am I getting this letter from BlackRock? And he said, well, the market froze.

I said, the market froze? How does a multi-hundred billion or maybe trillion dollar market freeze? He said, well, just like you explain, Anthony, these are pieces of paper that get auctioned every week to set the interest rate and nobody showed up at the auction. I said, what? I said, so what do I do? And he says, well, I guess if you hold them the maturity, you'll still get your principal back if the companies are around.

And so I said, well, how long dated are these things? And he said, well, there's some that are like 30 years. And I was like 30 years so I get my money back. And I said, well, I guess those go to my grandkids or something like that. And that got me thinking about what is

wrong with the world financial system. And I started to look at the level of debt of the developed countries. And I realized that the math doesn't add up. I mean, I don't remember the exact numbers, but at that time, I would guess the world economy was about 70 trillion, and the debt on the world economy was about 270 trillion. The world economy was growing 3% a year. The debt was growing

10% a year. And those lines will never intersect. So that made me say, this system that we are living in is not durable. Got to do something about it. And I didn't really know what that was. So I started buying gold and derivatives and things like that. And then, of course, Bitcoin came out. And then I thought, you know, this could be the solution. So I jumped right in when I, when I understood what it was. George, I feel we're getting close. What Bill is talking about is 15, 18 years ago. And we all know it's gotten so much worse since then, which is probably the reason why Bitcoin went from, I don't know, a market capitalization of tens of millions of dollars into the several trillion dollars now. But what happens? Is it just a slow boiling, George,

where we, well, you know, our kids wake up one morning and the dollar, no one wants to use it anymore, or is there an explosion at the end of this thing? Or what happens to this fiat-based currency system that we know has been woefully corrupted by bankers, central bankers, and politicians. Yeah, Anthony, if you look at the history of the fiat, I mean, it has been corrupted from the day one. It originated, and there were so many competing fiat systems. At the end of a day, sooner or later, you're going to face the banquet of consequences, you know, Winston Churchill. And we're kicking the can down the road, and we're kicking the can down the road.

The central banks are printing more money. the governments are living beyond their means. The deficit are widening. So I think from that standpoint where we are, it's just a one-directional asset bet. And when a system is in trouble, where do you want to be? You want to be outside of the system.

And Bitcoin is that bet. Okay, but why? Let me play the step for a second. And everybody knows on my podcast that I'm long Bitcoin. I'm loud about my book. But let me play the skeptic. Why? Why would it be Bitcoin? Why wouldn't another coin manifest itself that maybe has more quantum resistance or has a better security corporal or maybe uses less energy? Tell me why it would be Bitcoin. And we were using something called like Alta Vista or Yahoo to do search in the late 1990s. And then the whole thing got big footed by Google as an example. Why wouldn't Bitcoin be big footed?

Because Bitcoin is the first decentralized protocol there is. All the companies that you mentioned, Google, Altavista, or Napster for that matter, these are centralized companies and a single point of failure. Bitcoin is decentralized. It's supported by 25 gigawatts of compute power that's globally distributed. And the ledger, this immutable ledger gets updated at thousands and thousands of nodes. It's the first out there. And it's a TCPIP protocol of the sort of money and of the new age.

Can someone compete with Bitcoin? Potentially, but it is first, it is the largest. It is the safest. It is the most secure. It is the most decentralized. It is the most scarce. I mean, it's already running in terms of the emission of new bitcoins at less than 1%. Which yesterday I had to meet up with Peter Schiff here at the conference.

and, you know, gold 2%. And if a price of gold goes up to 10,000, other miners will come to gold and emission will go to 5, 6, 7%. If Bitcoin and when Bitcoin goes to 1 million, Anthony, the algorithm will not change. The emission, the scarcity model will stay. So from all these parameters, it has been able to survive. And I say it's like a maugli that was really young and it has grown. and now it's sort of the king of the jungle. So I don't see any sort of a challenge is for it.

Serious ones going in. It's there. And if you look in terms of sort of the Bitcoin itself and the acceptance that is happening right now on institutional level, you know, yesterday you had, for example, Vanguard, for the finally sort of coming in and putting in the ETF. I think we're there. And I just don't see anything that can, in a meaningful,

full-won challenge. Now, in terms of quantum computing, you know, people mention that all the time. Guess what? There's also quantum cryptography that's being developed to counter that. So I think Bitcoin is, the future of Bitcoin is very bright. So, so guys, you seem too nice. Okay. I mean, you know, usually the people that get super rich are like incredibly ruthless. They're like backstabbers. They're going for your carotid artery with a ball ball. point pen. So how do you know, I thought nice guys are supposed to finish last. How are you guys pulling this off? We'll start with you, Bill, because I've never seen you without a smile on your face, you son of a bitch. So let's start with you. Well, you know, I think technology brings

with it a totally different dynamic that is growth oriented. I think that I don't know where the line is that you draw, be delineating, you know, past versus present. But I think there was a a point in time that pre that line, wealth was about taking everything from everyone else, kind of zero-sum game, very transactional, trying to make a penny or a nickel off of every deal. And I think what's happened since the advent of Silicon Valley and the new ethos of growth, it's become an industry where you're looking for not necessarily the smaller piece, but a smaller piece of a bigger pie. And that if you can get collective energy

of a lot of people working on something, the size of the outcome and the pie is so big that the people that are social and contributing and can gather other resources in that way, do better. And you see that in the advent of companies like a Google or Facebook or things like that that have network effects, and they just keep going. And I think the, I had the,

I had the benefit of really learning that from Linus Torvalds. And for those young people out there, if you don't know Linus, Linus created Linux, but Linus was an engineer in a company I put together in 1995. He wrote compilers for us at a company called TransMeta. And as a side job, he managed this amazing group of developers, the worldwide footprint taking on Microsoft for no pay. and they created a ton of value both in Linux and all of the derivative companies that came from that. Linus became one of my advisors to my peer-to-peer project that was called at the time,

iFrog.com, and the site is still up. It's E-Y-E-F-R-O-G.com. But he was an advisor along with a bunch of interesting people, including Philip Rosdell that started Second Life, and we created this peer-to-peer fabric. And you could see energy would just come. come into this and it would just, the value would grow without you having to do very much. So that might be why I smile because I tend to fund projects that are naturally viral. What I do is I look for projects where the teams can lower the friction to a solution to a problem and build it to replicate and skill. That's Zoom, that's Canva, that was Bitfury and Bitcoin.

And if you can do that right, you go to sleep every night and you want to work. and you wake up the next morning and the value creation was bigger every day on average. And you just, you just like take, you don't take life easy. You still got to work at it. But you get rid of that stress because you're not fighting every day. You're getting things to work.

I love it. It's a little, it's a little less cutthroat than financial services, Wall Street, what I've experienced. You're basically saying the pie is growing. And you guys are smart enough to take your requisite share of the pie. and also recognize there's a lot of pie out there for everybody.

But George, you grew up in a rough place. You're talking about communism, totalitarianism. You're talking about the taking away of liberties. You're talking about loss of financial freedom, inflation, devaluation, waiting on lines for just economic basics. It could make somebody hard. It could make somebody cynical. How did you transform all?

of that. Tell us about your mindset. Tell us about your physical and mental makeup that gave you this wonderful ability to see the glass half full in things. Yeah, I think it's, it was very important, the upbringing and the foundation in my family that your word is the most important thing. And that really was the foundation of everything that I was raised on, honesty, hard work, and doing good. You know, my parents were doctors, my grandpa kind of called up in the middle of a night, three, four a.m. to go and save someone's life doing a surgery. And it's kind of selfless giving.

And if you do this selfless giving without thinking to receive something bad, this is actually, ironically, the most selfish thing you can do. because if you do it selflessly to go and make an impact and help others, you know, the universe comes back to you 100x times. And we've said it over and over and over again. And if you smile, the universe smiles back to you. It's a law of universe.

It's a mirror. And for us, you know, Anthony, we were on this journey, which I was utmost confident that everything would work out. You know, I was really, in a way, kind of missed those crisis days because that's when we rallied out. That's when we tested each other. That's when we kind of got sharpened up. And, you know, it came to a point where we haven't messed a lot of capital,

but, you know, we don't buy yachts. We don't buy jets. You know, all of this capital is going towards investing in young founders, in new projects. We just launched a billion dollar fund to invest in a mission-driven entrepreneurs. It's very important for entrepreneurs to be in qualms in the same understanding of our mission, to do good and do impact. And actually one of the key projects we just announced 50 million phase one is the young audience. You're going to hear it first here.

It's a decentralized AI play run by proof of work, compute power. Initially, its GPU is growing like crazy, close to 6,000 GPUs, and soon we're going to switch to A6. And David Lieberman is the founder of the Gonca AI. And I think at some point, Anthony, once we sort of do this major announcement, would be great to have David come in and talk to your young viewers in terms of what going on. David, we welcome you coming on. And I appreciate you joining us as a witness to this podcast. I want to go to what I typically do with my authors. We've read your book.

My producer and I go through the book. We pick out five words. and then I give our authors, I'm going to say the word, you're each going to answer, you're going to me a one or two sentences, I'm going to say a word, you're going to say, okay. So I'm going to start with Bit Fury. When I see the word bit Fury, George, you think of what? I think of perseverance and resilience. Okay, so that's really the whole construct of your book, but it's also the story of your life. So Bit Fury is you, basically. Okay, let's go to Bill Tai. When I see, say Bitfury, what do you think of? I think of a team that just powered through walls in a totally

undefined environment that had every risk in the book. You know, they had never ever ever been up. Every reason to fail, by the way. I mean, this is the thing that people have to understand. I sit here with you guys today and I saw George do this, so I'll do this. I'll stipulate that I think Bitcoin has met the crossover threshold of its own survival. I do believe that, but look at me because I've been humbled by life in markets. I've got my fingers crossed. But it wasn't that way, guys. You made it that way, right? And so Bitfury is a representation of that. Okay, so that's a good segue to my second word. Okay, George, I say the word believers. You say what? belief comes from educating yourself on the topic and investing in doing your due diligence on a topic.

And after you have done the due diligence, after you have done this deep dive, then sort of the belief in something like Bitcoin comes to you. So you have seen it all over, Anthony. People that have spent more and more time, they call it Bitcoin Rabbit Hold, they have this aha moment and aha moment. but it is a derivative of really doing their due diligence. What about you, George? What about you, Bill? I'm sorry. I would say faith and the universe smiling on occasion.

You know, because you have to understand this team. When they first came to me, okay, so I don't know how many of you understand what it takes to design a silicon chip, a computational silicon chip with transistors that you cannot even see. see this group of people started mining with kind of laptops and taught each other how to use graphics cards taught each other from scrap by program FPGAs and then and they were ahead of everybody but the world would catch up and one of the young guys is nico punan from finland said to me we need to design a computer chip i was like you can't do that you none of you know anything about it's

hard that's really hard and i had been looking at teams from son micro-microsts systems and Intel that had designed chips and passed on those guys. And they set out to design a chip and I looked at it and I thought this could actually work, which is why I ended up gathering a group people to fund that chip. But for them to pull that off with zero background ever working in a silicon company or learning how to design using open source tools that they found on the internet was freaking mind blowing. And every step of the way, that attitude,

It wasn't just the chip. It was the building of data centers. They had never done that before. They designed servers. They had never done that before. And they became the world's largest footprint for this industry for years. So you just had to have faith and hope that the universe, for some reason, had picked them out and would smile and shine a little light. And somehow it did.

You know, it's amazing. You know, let's keep going. I say the word trust, George. Trust is the foundation of it all. It's either you have it or you don't have it. It's zero or one. And for us, it was the most important big stone. We had this saying, Anthony, that, you know, you look at a life and you have a vessel

and you have big stones, pebbles, and sand. And first you need to put the big stones, then you need to put the pebbles and then you need to send. If you start putting sand first, you're not going to have the space for the big stones. And the big stones for us were family, was trust, was honesty, was hard work, was camaraderie. And those were the big stones upon which our relationships were built. All right. Let's keep going. I say the word blockchain, George. Bitcoin. All right. What about you, Bill? I say the word blockchain. I say TCPIP for assets.

So, you know, if you think about the context-aware cloud that information has become and Google has organized the world's assets, when you say blockchain to me, I immediately think this is the technology to define a contextuallyware cloud of assets that know everybody that's connected who owns what, where, and when. It's profound. It's representative of a value. If you think about Google's value having organized the world's information, what happens when you organize the world's assets? It's thousands of times larger in value. Okay, I'm going to leave you both with the last word. We'll start with Bill. I say the word Bitcoin.

You say what? The defining monetary infrastructure for the rest of history. You say Bitcoin. I say Anthony Hope, because Bitcoin is the hope. for this planet. You know, it's interesting, I'm going to tell you guys, I didn't see it in the beginning, but I see it now. We have drunk drivers that have operated our central bank,

and we've had ruthless lying politicians that have overpromised people and undertax them, and they've got this whole thing out of whack. And so what Bitcoin does is because we don't have to trust anybody, because we can trust the network, and we can trust the integrity of the software. We can begin to rebuild a financial model that's based on value. And by the way, as a person, and I know you guys can appreciate this, I grew up in a blue-collar family whose dad was an hourly worker.

You're literally through the process of inflation stealing his time and stealing his life. Because if he doesn't have assets, which we didn't have, and you're paying him by the hour, but then you're taking 8% inflation, you're killing his ability to raise his family. And this provides that hope, George, that you're talking about. So I greatly appreciate you guys being on. I'm sorry I went a little longer today, but I just think this is too important of a philosophical conversation.

The title of the book is, and then you win a startup's untold story of grit, grind, and glory. George Kivace, am I saying it right, George? All right. So George Kivace, the title of the book, Bill Ty writing the forward two brilliant entrepreneurs

and two OGs who I have an enormous amount of respect for and I really do appreciate both of you coming on. Thank you for being here.