The Iced Coffee Hour - “Prepare NOW!” Eric Trump’s Shocking Prediction For Stock Prices, Bitcoin, & The US Dollar

Starting point is 00:00:00 The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horsepower power engine gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tigwan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUVW, German engineered for all. Why isn't finance 24-7?

Starting point is 00:00:32 Why isn't it immediate? Why is it that every bank in the world has to have their fingers in absolutely everything? Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe. Why can't you just send me a link? And three seconds later, it's in your bank account. We are on the one-yard line to something incredible. Crypto and what we're doing, it's growing faster than the internet grew in the 90s. Can you make the argument that the government should be buying Bitcoin?

Starting point is 00:00:57 because it's a single greatest performing asset over the last decade, increasing in value 70% a year, year over year. When you look back in five years, the entire financial landscape is going to be much different, and that's all because of cryptocurrency. I became the most subpoenaed person in American history, 112 subpoenas for doing nothing wrong. I've never gotten so much as a traffic ticket. 91 indictments toward my father, debanked by every major financial institution in the country. They came after us like we were dogs. I really believe it can never happen again based on the moves being made in crypto. Public criticism, all the attacks, how do you deal with it?

Starting point is 00:01:31 And how you do it? You fight back. You don't give up. You fight back. Eric Trump, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. Really appreciate it. Good to be on, guys. So you tweeted today, and it went viral, that the Trump family has made more than $1 billion in crypto. How did you guys make it? Well, we started the three most successful crypto projects probably in history. We started with a meme coin, Trump coin. For a period of time, it was, I think, above the market cap of Ethereum. pretty amazing. It went parabolic. I'll never forget, we launched us on a Friday afternoon.

Starting point is 00:02:04 I look at the price the next day was at like 70 bucks or something of that for literally a meme. And it just had a lot of fun. Obviously, we were really successful in the NFTs, you know, in the early days. And then we start World Liberty Financial. Everybody knows we're the fastest-growing stable coin on Earth right now. And then personally, I'm doing a project called American Bitcoin. Never bit of my heart and soul is in it. We just listed on the NASDAQ. So we mine Bitcoin out of West Texas using some of the cheapest energy anywhere in the world. We mine a lot of Bitcoin. We're doing it about 50% of spot prices right now for BTC and having a great job doing it. So we're going to accumulate.

Starting point is 00:02:37 We're obviously mining. And so crypto has become a big part of the portfolio. I was always a hard asset guy. That's what I did. I think you probably know me from building hotels and skyscrapers and golf courses and residential buildings and commercial buildings. And crypto has been incredible. And it came out of us being debanked. I mean, because we wore a hat that said, Make America great again.

Starting point is 00:02:55 A lot of the financial institutions around the country, they were effectively told. to weaponize our banks against us. And, you know, I found some of the smartest, greatest people that you'll ever meet in the crypto world. And it is the future. I have no doubt about it is the future of finance. And as a family, we're all in. And personally, I'm all in. What do you think separates great investors from good investors? Yeah. I think being able to see the future, obviously, and also being passionate. And oftentimes, I know this is going to be contrary. And every Harvard professor is probably going to scream. But it's probably not always diversification. I wouldn't exactly say we've made our family fortune based on great diversification when, you know, we were all into

Starting point is 00:03:31 real estate. Everything we did was hard assets. We weren't diversified. We believed in a certain category. We were damn good at that category. And that category grew extremely quickly, you know, and we made a fortune off of it. I think a lot of times you have people who go out and they'll put, you know, 2% into bonds and 2% of stocks and 2% to crypto and 2% right. And at the end of the day, you're not going to move any different than an ordinary market can move. It's a little bit hard to break out of the pack when you're doing. the exact same thing as the pack is doing. So listen, I think being able to look, look ahead and see the future.

Starting point is 00:04:05 And that's certainly what I'm doing in crypto. And the future is crypto on every single front, on payment rails, on obviously Bitcoin being digital gold, there's no question. It's just a modernization of finance, having 24-hour finance, having much more efficient finance, having less fees, having less costs, being more transparent. But listen, if you look out and look at what AI's done, look at what quantum's you know, done, you know, look what's happening and so many of kind of the energy advances and look how parabolic those stocks and those companies are going. You know, I think you have to,

Starting point is 00:04:36 you know, look out and be very good and harness your efforts and exploit your talents. And, you know, that's how you do well and life. See, I'm a pretty firm believer, as is Graham, in saving more than you spend. And then also investing that in index funds, a diversified portfolio. do you think that that is still a good approach to go all in on like, you know, more, you know, cutting edge, crypto. So break the two things apart. I mean, one is a savings strategy. The other is a, you know, career path if you're an entrepreneur, right?

Starting point is 00:05:06 And so, yes, should you save a hell of a lot more than you spend, of course, otherwise you can't get to the problem? Like, how do you invest in crypto if you have no money to invest, right? Let's start at the very basic. So, you know, you better save money and you better be able to invest some money into something, right? Yes, I do believe in that. And I do believe that there's a big portion that, you know, in a way, should be peeling

Starting point is 00:05:27 off 12, 13 percent in great ETFs that are efficient where you're not going out with crazy money managers that are underperforming the market where they're charging you 220 and all sorts of crazy rates. So, listen, there's certain discipline finance, but I think in terms of becoming a great investor and really making your money, you're not going to do it simply by investing in T bills. You know, it's just never going to happen. No one's ever become wealthy, you know, investing in a business. product that goes up 5% a year, 4% a year. You know, you can hold on to wealth. You can save money.

Starting point is 00:05:57 If you've got a great career and you're siphoning off $100,000 a year or $500,000 a year or a million a year and you're investing in a product that's stable, fantastic. But you also need a career that can throw off enough money that you can actually get to that promise land. What's the best investment advice that you've heard? Well, I mean, I guess there's a difference between investment and career, right? I mean, I've focused so much of my investments on my actual career and on betting on projects that I think I can effectuate and do a great job with. And so I think you have to separate the two, right? And then I think once you make a lot of money here, you can take that and you can properly invest it over here and you can do so very,

Starting point is 00:06:32 kind of safely and securely. But I think the vast majority of our bets have always been on ourselves and our talents. You know, we go find a messed up hotel. You know, great location, great property, you know, iconic as hell, run like hell. You know, no money was put into it. management teams stunk. They weren't good with what they did. They didn't have the heart. They didn't have the soul.

Starting point is 00:06:53 They didn't have the passion. The owners didn't have the vision. And so oftentimes we go in and we buy those properties for pennies on the dollar. We put money into them. We'd re-invision them and we would turn them into gold mines.

Starting point is 00:07:04 And we did that over and over. You know, in a certain way, it's almost like venture capital, right? But in a little bit of a different space in like the hard asset space, right? And that's always really rewarding when you can take something that was a mess.

Starting point is 00:07:15 Hey, I did with this property that you're standing in right now. This was a Rich Carlton. They had run the thing. into the ground. They didn't know the difference between, you know, tea and a fairway and a green. They weren't golf people. They were sucking money. They were losing a lot of money every single year. I bought the property. And nine months later, I had the thing, you know, cash flowing positively. And today is one of the most successful properties in all of Florida, right? And so, you know,

Starting point is 00:07:35 going in with a little bit of common sense and fixing a place, repairing it, you know, I like that kind of bet. I do have to say the team here was incredible. Thank you. We moved some of the furniture around. And immediately when I texted Nancy, three people showed up within a minute. And they came with tape measures and they were making sure everything was level and the same height, it was incredible. So that's my analeness that comes through, you know, the teams

Starting point is 00:07:59 and, you know, I've become famous for, you know, not walking through the front doors of our properties going through the loading docks. You know, I know every single mechanical room and every single one of our properties and every one of our addicts. I know every HVAC unit, you know, it's, we are very, very granular.

Starting point is 00:08:13 And if your back of house is perfect, if that mechanical room in the basement of a building is spotless, well lit, well painted, immaculately kept, you don't need to worry about anything else in the operation. And that standard will flow through all the employees and everything they do.

Starting point is 00:08:27 And I can't tell you guys, especially with Secret Service in our lives now, you know, how oftentimes I go through the back of one of these famous hotels all around the world, they are normally dirty, grungy, lights are burned out, the ice machines are disgusting,

Starting point is 00:08:40 they look gross. You will never find that one of our assets. So why can't we apply that same standard to politics? I'm curious, going from business into politics, what was the one thing that surprised you the most in of all of it? I'm sure you went in with an expectation as well. Yeah, I think the lack of competence of a lot of politicians, if you want to know, know, know the truth, right? I mean, these are mainly people who didn't have jobs.

Starting point is 00:09:01 Look at Joe Biden, right? Joe Biden, you know, had been in politics for 55 years, 56 years, actually, when he got out, right? I'm 41-year-old guy. I've got gray in my beard. Think about it, right? Never signed the front of a check, never built anything. You know, most of his life had yes, no decisions. Yes, no votes.

Starting point is 00:09:16 Did you imagine my life was a yes-no vote? I mean, I might need to effectuate 500 things to get to the end for salt. And it's all the roadmap in order to get there. And so I think it creates very binary thinking, you know, and oftentimes some of the politicians who are, you know, debating and voting on the most complicated, you know, items that we have in society know, know, nothing about and have zero real-world practical, you know, skill. I mean, look at like some of these minimum wage, you know, proposals that are going up in New York, you know, doubling to. tripling minimum wage. Well, you know, that's great other than the fact that they're just going to, you know, automate every single service and you're not going to have any jobs in a state because they won't be able for it to pay for it, right? And you see that. Like, look at

Starting point is 00:09:57 California, right? And, you know, they want to triple minimum wage, double minimum wage. And guess what Duncan Donuts does, you know, they just automate all of their processes and fire all of their employees. And, you know, I think sometimes you need to be able to have a comprehension of the other side, you know, of a topic. And so oftentimes these politicians, because they've never run a business and they've never signed a check and they've never had to make payroll and they never lived through a recession or a depression. They have no idea what the hell they're doing. But in fairness, though, isn't that advancing something that we're going in that direction anyway? So let's say they do raise the minimum wage and now it's $40 an hour. I feel like we're

Starting point is 00:10:32 heading in that direction anyway. The jobs are going to be taken over by AI. So they're just speeding that process. Could AI help you do more of what you love? Workday is the AI platform for HR and finance that actually knows your business. We help you. you handle the half to-dos so you can focus on the can't wait to-dos. It's a new workday. They're probably speeding the process up, probably at the behest of people. And they're forcing it, right? You know, right now it's not forced. It can, you know, capitalism can, it can, you know, chart that path and the speed of that path. I think so oftentimes, you know, they make bad decisions that that forces something that wouldn't otherwise have to be. And I think that's, again,

Starting point is 00:11:11 at the behest of a lot of people, right? And so that always enamored me about, about politicians, right? When you have people who really never had real world experience and all of a sudden they're on a, you know, but yet you'll hear from all these people, right? You know, Hillary Clinton, you know, what does Donald Trump know about foreign policy? Oh, ha, ha, ha.

Starting point is 00:11:28 Well, I mean, in fact, the fact that we've spent our entire life in just about every country around the world because we're in international real estate, you know, maybe nothing, but her foreign policy caused 20 years of death and destruction and wars. Whereas, you know, my father was serving French fries 12 months ago and all of a sudden we have, you know, peace in the Middle East. So everyone knows that politics is extremely corrupt, but what was the exact moment in your life that you realized it's way worse than you could have thought?

Starting point is 00:11:52 Well, you know, it's funny. I talk about it in this book. Congratulations, by the way. And I never thought I would be a number one bestselling author. I'm a guy who builds, you know, building some number one in the United States. It's kind of a crazy thing. I got a call from the FBI and they say, we need to see you at FBI headquarters in downtown New York. There's a threat against your company. And so naturally, I rushed down there and no one knew what I was going.

Starting point is 00:12:12 And they specifically asked that, like, please, no one knows your company. coming. And I drive into parking garage. The only people who knew I was there with Secret Service, the guy driving me down and go up to the eighth floor into one of these, you know, skiffs. It's kind of this, you know, the lead-lined room where, you know, you can't, you know, you can't bring cell phones. You can't bring anything into it. And they go, hey, there's a cyber threat against your company. I go, okay, great. I can see every cyber threat that's coming into our company, right? If you have a half-decent IT department, you can see cyber attacks every single day, right? This is like, you know, one-on-one business stuff. And I go, where's it coming from? Yeah. Well, sir, we can't.

Starting point is 00:12:45 I can't tell you that. Guys, is it China? No. Is there Russia? No. Is Iran? And their eyes just, you know, light up. Okay, so guys, so there's cyber threat coming out of Iran.

Starting point is 00:12:55 Least shocking thing I've heard, heard all day. But you can't tell anybody that this is happening. You know, this is absolutely secret. You can't tell anybody. And I go, okay, I won't tell anybody. Thanks a lot. Like, this whole thing's felt like it's a waste of time. You could just told me, hey, there's, you know, cyber threats.

Starting point is 00:13:08 Just be really careful with your servers and everything else. But they swear me to secrecy. I go down to the parking garage. I get in a car and no one guys knew I was there. My assistant didn't know I was there. No one, the company who knew I was there. I was driving up the ramp in the FBI building in New York, and I got a call from the head of ABC News, a friend of mine.

Starting point is 00:13:27 Eric, I hear you down at FBI headquarters. And I go, John, what are you talking about? He goes, I hear you're at FBI. I'm like, I'm not at FBI headquarters. He goes, yes, you are. I know you're in the building right now. I go, John, I'm not at FBI headquarters. He's like, Eric, listen, we've known each other for a long time.

Starting point is 00:13:41 Don't lie to me. I go, how would you know something like that? And he goes, because their press office out of Washington, D.C., just called to tell me that you just left their skiff, and they were briefing you on a cyber threat from Iran. And I go, you got to be freaking kidding me. Beyond, the Secret Service agent in the front of the car, you know, who was with me for three years, I had him on speakerphone at that point, was flinching his fists like he wanted to fight. I just couldn't believe that was the status of the government, that they would do something like that. And then we get into under siege, right? That was kind of my first.

Starting point is 00:14:16 Where they impeached my father twice, right? They make up dirty dossiers. They, you know, I mean, the dirty dossiers were talking about golden showers. They were talking about things. All they wanted to do was have my father, you know, divorced, lose his family, embarrassed, all paid for by Hillary Clinton, right? They made up the Russia hoax. So we had secret servers in the basement of Trump Tower communicating with the Kremlin. Give me a break.

Starting point is 00:14:37 We don't have servers in the base. You know why you don't put servers in basements? Because basements flood, right? Let's just start at the basics. I became the most subpoenaed person in American history, 112 subpoenas, for doing nothing wrong. I've never got so much as a traffic ticket, right? 91 indictments toward my father, debanked by every major financial institution in the country. They came after us like we were dogs.

Starting point is 00:14:57 They raided Mar-a-Lago. They raided Melania's room. They raided Barron's room. It was the government. It was, I mean, it was the government. It was Joe Biden. It was Merrick Arlent. You think Joe Biden is literally pulling the strings saying, like, you do this, you do that?

Starting point is 00:15:10 because I actually don't think that he was, you know, competent enough to... Okay, fine. So Joe Biden or the Autopen or his underlings or Merrick Garland, who is definitely, you know, capable enough of this. They lied. When they raided Mar-Lago, they said it was on behalf of NARA, National Archives. Does anybody really believe that the National Archives has enough power to tell 30 armed FBI agents to raid Mar-A-Lago when it not come from the White House?

Starting point is 00:15:36 And by the way, they've all but admitted that it came from the White House to this point, right? But, you know, no one believes that, right? I mean, why was Letitia James at the White House every week, right? Why was Alvin Bragg at the White House every week? Why was Fannie Willis and Nathan Wade at the White House every single week? Was that their jobs? You know, like, isn't that a little bit, is that a little bit strange? You know, like, we know that Hillary paid for the dirty dossier, right?

Starting point is 00:16:00 We know that Barack Obama was the one that did, you know, the Russia hoax. You know, first because they wanted to try and make sure my father didn't get as many votes. And then second of all, because they were so embarrassed that a rag-tag group of people who didn't know a damn thing about politics beat them, that they want to be able to perpetuate this narrative for a long period of time, right? They weaponized every bank. They weaponized every, you know, financial institution. They weaponized the DOJ. They spied on our campaign and kind of forgot to mention that before, you know.

Starting point is 00:16:26 How do you handle all of this? All the public criticism, all the attacks. How do you deal with it? And how you do it? You fight back. You don't give up, you fight back. Right. And that's this story, guys.

Starting point is 00:16:39 Right. They wanted to destroy us. They wanted to have our family get separated. They wanted certainly my father to get divorced. They wanted to see us voiceless. Hence the reason we all got stripped off Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. You know, they turned down all of our tiles. It's one of the reasons you guys are as successful as you are, right? Because people are sick and tired of, you know, they want to hear independent media versus, you know, the nonsense that ABC and NBC and CNN and everybody else was shoveling for for years. I mean, they wanted to see us dead. They wanted to see us in a jail cell. And when none of this worked, do you know what they did? They tried to shoot my father, right? Not only the first time in Butler, but then they tried to get him eight weeks later, you know, about four miles away from here at Trump International. They wanted him off of the stage because they couldn't control us, right? You know, we weren't one of them. We weren't the establishment.

Starting point is 00:17:28 They couldn't believe that we beat them at their own game. I mean, guys, we self-funded our first campaign. Hillary Clinton raised $1.5 billion and actually knew what a delegate was and we still beat her, right? It's kind of a remarkable thing. And we love this country. We love our nation. We love the Constitution. We love God.

Starting point is 00:17:45 We love faith. We love freedom. And our country was going to hell. And so guess what? We fought. And we fought relentlessly. And I talked about it in the book, it was, guys, we either won the White House or we were going to be in jail for doing absolutely nothing wrong. You know, like that was that was the pendulum that was the Trump life.

Starting point is 00:18:04 And I said that to my father in a car one day. We were coming out of a courtroom in downtown New York. And I go to either 1,600 Pennsylvania Avenue or are you and I for doing nothing wrong are going to be into jail cells because that's how bad the system was weaponized. We all spend money on little things every week. Coffee, gas, groceries, nice suits. But imagine if all of that spending automatically earned you Bitcoin. Well, that's exactly what the Gemini credit card does.

Starting point is 00:18:26 They're the only instant Bitcoin rewards credit card out there. With this, every purchase you make earns Bitcoin back. Or in this case, you could get up to 4% back on transportation, 3% on dining, 2% on groceries, and 1% back on everything else. It's really one of the simplest ways that you'd be able to gain a little extra exposure to Bitcoin without trying to time the market

Starting point is 00:18:45 or buy it yourself. All you have to do is swipe your card like you would normally and you're investing as you spent. And here's some crazy perspective. Bitcoin rewards earned and held for one year on the Gemini credit card have appreciated 277% on average.

Starting point is 00:18:59 Now, of course, crypto is volatile, but it just shows the potential if you're thinking long term. Plus, the card has no annual fee, which I know this guy really appreciates. all you got to do is head to Gemini.com slash iced, and when you're approved and spend $3,000 in the first 90 days, they will give you $200 in Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:19:15 You could also check if you're eligible with no impact to your credit score. So use the link down below in the description, or again, head to Gemini.com slash ICE to sign up today. Check out the rates and fees down below in the description. Thank you again to Gemini for sponsoring this episode. What do you think is the main thing people get wrong about the Trump family? The closeness of our family is remarkable. having gone through the fights that we've gone through,

Starting point is 00:19:37 they would have otherwise destroyed every single one of us. I think conventionally, and I really mean that. I'm not sure how many other families could have taken what they put through us. Thankfully, we had to checkbook that we were able to fight, you know,

Starting point is 00:19:48 the legal battles. I mean, guys, we spent over 400 million bucks in legal fees, right? Just fighting off, you know, the Russia hoax and the dirty dossiers and everything else that they threw at us. You know, thank God we also had a voice, and that probably came a lot from The Apprentice

Starting point is 00:20:01 and being on TV before politics, you know, being pretty comfortable in front of the microphone before. But we have a family that fights together that's always stuck together that was unbreakable. We're a very, very close-knit group of people. And honestly, it's probably the only thing that kept us alive. That reminds me of what I thought was one of the most pivotal moments of the first candidacy, which was in the debate with your father and Hillary Clinton, and they were asked to compliment each other.

Starting point is 00:20:31 And Trump said, oh, she's a fighter. She'll never give up. And you remember what she said? And she said, oh, you have great kids. Which is kind of like everyone thought a backhanded compliment. It's like, well, you're not really complimenting his character. You're not compliment. I'll take it as one of the kids is one of the benefactors of the compliment.

Starting point is 00:20:47 You are probably true. But I'm curious, what is something that you learned from your father that's outside of politics, outside of business, just purely on a human level? I think whatever you do in the world be myopically focused on it, right? And that probably goes back to, to, what we were talking about with business, you know, everything I had ever seen him accomplish, you know, when it was a residential buildings, he was myopically focused on the residential buildings, you know, building Trump Tower, right? And he just, it would be the only thing that was in his mind. You know, when he got to the golf courses, he loved doing the golf courses and me and him were myopically focused on is all we thought about is all we did. It was it was literally occupied 95% of the same thing with the apprentice. Like when it was an apprentice, just everything was ratings. It was the cast. It was. It was, you know, the filming, but you were just, nothing else came in the way. He was always incredibly focused.

Starting point is 00:21:38 When politics came around, his only focus was politics, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. And every single thing that he did, he turned to gold, right? And I think when somebody becomes myopically focused on their passion, whatever that might be, and for whatever reason they're trying to do it, I think it's awfully hard to beat them. I think kind of the weekend warriors are very easy to beat and the people who are lazy, the, you know, the people who show up at 10.30 in the morning and go home at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, they don't stand a chance against that person who's driven and will go through every single wall in order to get to their objective. But there's no denying that people like that exist. Do you think

Starting point is 00:22:15 that they're just a product of their environment where being lazy is totally fine? There's no real push to be exceptional at anything. Or do you think that, you know, they're making the active choice and they're just like, it's nobody's fault but their own? For example, we have a question we asked on this podcast, we used to ask it quite often, which is if you're poor between the ages of 25 and 45, do you think that it's your own fault? You better find a different career path and you better harness, you know, whatever your talents are and you better run at those talents, you know, as hard as humanly possible. And listen, there's a lot of people have advantages, right? In the world, there's a lot of people that have opportunities and there's a lot of people who were given

Starting point is 00:22:50 nothing who became the wealthiest people in the history of this nation out of nothing. I mean, you know, I know so many of them, right? And didn't graduate high school. and built billion-dollar companies and have done tremendously well. And so I think if you're ever in that spot where you're bored as hell and you're not moving forward, you should probably pull the ejection seat and get out and find something that you a love or you're passionate about something that has high growth, something that you're able to monetize. And I would sprint toward whatever that might be in your life.

Starting point is 00:23:24 And what that is for you is probably very different than it is for me and it's probably very different than it is for you, right? It's, you know, I think people have to harness their skills. Skills come in a thousand different forms, you know, and ultimately monetize them. If you're not passionate about something and you really are working, you know, three hours a day and, you know, don't give a damn about whatever you're doing, you're not going to break out from the pack. It's just very hard. Statistics will show you that it's going to be next to impossible for you to, you know, overachieve. What separates the people, though, that are not self-motivated but those who are?

Starting point is 00:23:57 Listen, maybe his attitude, you know, I would hope, and maybe the utopian view would be that, you know, everybody could self-motivate if they found the right thing that motivated them. And I would hope that'd be the case. I'm not saying that's the case. You know, you probably have people in society who are lazy. I hate to say it. In fact, I probably know a couple of those people. And then I certainly know those people who are absolute overachievers and, you know, everything they want to do, they want to do to 110 percent, no matter what it is, where it is. And I think those people are probably, you know, we'll overachieve. You know, as kids, we didn't have the opportunity. It was, we didn't have the opportunity to be lazy, I should say. You know, we were put on construction sites when we were 11 years old. You know, if we wanted a bike, congratulations, go work for it. You know, go earn money. And, you know, we were spoiled as hell in the conventional fashion.

Starting point is 00:24:48 We had, you know, a warm roof overhead. We were always fed and we have had great education. But, you know, if anybody thought that we were rolling around with $100 bills in our pocket, you know, we weren't. We were working on, I was doing demo all summer. And again, you wanted a fishing rod. Congratulations. You used the money that you earned, you worked for, and you went and bought it.

Starting point is 00:25:06 But what was your attitude towards the work when you were young? Were you excited? Because you right now seem highly industrious, highly productive. You love what you do. But back in the day, to take a while to foster that sentiment. I loved it. I probably would have done it. So you always loved it.

Starting point is 00:25:19 Yeah, honestly, I probably would have done it for free, right? And so back to your last question, you know, was that built into your DNA? Was that nature? Was that nurture? you know, I don't know. It was built it to my DNA and I loved it. But it also taught me the value of dollar. It taught me the value of hard work. It certainly taught me a skill set, right, which is kind of building blocks to what I do every single day. And by the way, it tired out a young kid. You know, if you're a 13 year old kid or a 15 year old kid in your type A, do me favor. Don't give them money and don't give them a lot of free time because bad things are going to happen. Right. Like, yeah, it's a terrible recipe. And so my parents were exceptional. were exceptional when it came to that. You know, we asked Dave Ramsey the same question, and he said the reason a lot of people aren't motivated

Starting point is 00:26:01 or they feel hopeless is that they believe that the work they put in is not going to have the result that they want. And I think for you, you could very well see that if I do this, this is what's possible. And you see the reward of that. There's light at the end of the tunnel. I think a lot of people in America feel like they're hopeless,

Starting point is 00:26:19 that they can't get ahead, that they feel like housing is too expensive or the stock market's overvalued or crypto, they could have gotten in at $1,000, and now it's $110,000. I feel like they can't do anything to get by. What would you say to those people? Yeah, well, I think you have to find the industry

Starting point is 00:26:35 that you're good at, and I think you have to find the job that you're passionate about. And I think you have to find, you know, the opportunity, whether it's self-employment or not, you know. I mean, I can't tell you how many friends I have who started, you know, small electrical companies, you know, they were electrical foreman. And, you know, they worked their way up,

Starting point is 00:26:53 and then they went out, and they started doing their own jobs, and all of a sudden, they're running 30, 40, 50 crews with unbelievable companies and they built it from nothing. And it's hard to get there. It's really hard to get there.

Starting point is 00:27:03 But, you know, I think you have to take the initial step. I think I agree with Dave, but what you have to do is you have to take the initial step toward whatever that is that you're ultimately passionate about. You know, so oftentimes it's,

Starting point is 00:27:14 well, the market's not right, so I can't do it right now or life's not right or, you know, it's a hard time or this or that. You have to take the step. You have to be able to take that initial leap. And I encourage people to do that, you know, follow their hearts, follow their passions, you know, preferably in an industry that has growth or that has, you know, real kind of potential. Do you think the national debt affects the average person out there?

Starting point is 00:27:38 Yeah, of course it does. And what does that look like to the average person? Oh, listen, you have a national debt of, what, $37 trillion right now? Yeah, you better believe it does because it hangs over everybody's head. And whether you like it or not, at some point, everybody's going to have to pay that national debt and it's compounding. rapidly. So in some way, shape, or form, you're going to pay that in taxes. Maybe we didn't have a national debt. Your taxes would be substantially less than what they are. That means you could probably afford a nicer home and more belongings and to take a better trip with the kids. And yet,

Starting point is 00:28:08 every single year, this thing goes up by by an absolute fortune because the government's out of control and has been and absolutely rebels against people who try and cut the hell out of it. And you see what's happening right now with the government shutdown. You know, they want an extra what, you know, $2.7 trillion for health care-free legal immigrants, you know, and when you say no, not a single Democrat comes out and votes in favor of reopening the government, right? Among other things, by the way. Yeah, I think it affects everybody that lives in this country. There's no question about it.

Starting point is 00:28:40 And in fact, it might be the greatest risk that we have as a nation, you know, outside of serious armed conflict. How do we solve it? Is there any way out of $37 trillion? Because I've heard either you have to let it inflate away or you hope it doesn't go up so much that maybe AI could help boost our economy and make enough money to start shipping it away. Like, can we ever pay this thing back? Yeah, you have to grow out of it. I mean, anybody thinks that you can cut out of $37 trillion.

Starting point is 00:29:08 You can't. I mean, it will cuts be important. Yes, you need to get rid of fluff and garbage and fraud, waste and abuse, no question about it. At the same time, you have to have unbelievable growth. And I think that's what we're seeing. And how do you get growth in society? you need the lowest energy costs in the world, right? You need to be champion of industry.

Starting point is 00:29:25 I think my father did that better with crypto than anybody before. The entire world is following us. America is the crypto capital of the world by far, and we were losing our standing there. We're also losing our standing on energy. I mean, look at nuclear power. We haven't had nuclear power plant in this country built in 30-year period of time, and we are the ones that championed nuclear power.

Starting point is 00:29:45 I mean, for a long time, France had more expertise in nuclear power than the United States America did. You know how embarrassing that is? You know, what's France in terms of economic power of the world? What, like, 13th in terms of GDP? You know, it's a joke. America has to be number one at absolutely everything we do. We have to be number one at energy,

Starting point is 00:30:03 and that's not just nuclear, that's oil and gas and everything else. You know, any country that has low energy costs, you know, has much better productivity. It's just pretty simple correlation that I think, you know, anybody can understand. We have to champion the industry. We have to win the AI revolution. we have to continue to win the space revolution.

Starting point is 00:30:21 You know, we have to be the most business-friendly country on Earth. We need to maintain the reserve currency under, and by the way, we are the reserve currency. No one can argue that it's not even close. No one wants any of the Asian currencies. No one wants any of the South American currencies. Certainly no one wants a euro for obvious reason. No one wants the pound. So I think it's a great advantage.

Starting point is 00:30:41 And we better maintain the greatest, you know, rule of law, an honest rule of law. because it's why is we have so much direct inward investment in the United States of America. You know, they look at their own countries and they see no promise. They see no future. They see massive government corruption. They know all of it can disappear like that. And guess where they park their assets? They park in the United States of America.

Starting point is 00:31:02 We better maintain that safe haven for people parking their money. And so long as we do, we'll maintain the greatest economy ever. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids. And I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting.

Starting point is 00:31:24 An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. It's like energy is going to become a major issue over the next 10 years. Why aren't we going heavier into nuclear energy today? Well, I think we are. I mean, I think my father, what was his exact quote? If you propose a nuclear plant, I'll give you approvals in seven days. You know, I mean, my father's the biggest proponent of nuclear energy. How many people applied? In terms, I have no idea. But, you know, I mean, these are big because these things cost $30 billion to build.

Starting point is 00:32:02 I understand. You know, how many had times have you heard drill baby drill, right? And people are drilling. I mean, we're exporting energy for the first time. Again, we're exporting in the first administration. Then we stopped exporting. In fact, we became an importer of energy. Now we're exporting again.

Starting point is 00:32:16 And that's not just oil, right? That's natural gas. You know, you've got states. Look, in New York with Marcellus and Utica. And you've got the greatest natural gas, you know, shale anywhere on earth. you know, it makes Saudi, it makes a UAE look like small potatoes in upstate New York, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, they're not even tapping into most of it, right? And so we need to drill, we need to be energy independent. And by the way, there's a ton of other forms of energy as well.

Starting point is 00:32:43 I mean, solar is doing great, right? We're in Florida right now. Every day there's another solar field and, you know, it's working great. It's augmenting the grid and, you know, it has its purpose, but nuclear is going to win the day, especially these small nuclear reactors that are coming out, these SMRs and it's fascinating what's happening. So we're huge advocates for financial literacy. I mean, that's what Graham built his entire brand on. I joined because I became financially illiterate because of his content on YouTube, helped us create this podcast. And I think that that is pretty much the main thing causing people to go poor or some people to go to go wealthy. Why is financial literacy not taught in schools? Some people speculate that there are elites that want to keep people

Starting point is 00:33:23 poor so they can keep them under their thumb. Why is it not talking? in school. It's the simplest thing. We learn the most, it's useless. It's useless. I zoned out in high school. I hated it. Then why do we teach anything in high school? It's such an obvious. It's such an, I mean, I agree with you guys 100%. It's because our educational system is absolutely broken. I mean, I went to a school where I was taking Latin classes. You know, no disrespect to, you know, formation language, but you know, give me a break, right? I mean, you know, 100%. I mean, listen, I went to Georgetown. Georgetown's, what, top 10 school in the country and in the world. It's, you know, is up there every single year. You know, I can't tell you how many nonsense classes that we took in, you know, I don't want to disrespect, you know, I can go down the list of worthless classes that I took there. But you had liberal arts majors who couldn't calculate mortgage, who had no idea what the difference between principal and interest was, right? I mean, compound interest. The fact that probably less than 50% of people know about compound interest is a crime. How to get an 800 credit score.

Starting point is 00:34:23 How to open up a home mortgage. how to get a, you know, car lease, how to, exactly, the difference between interest principle or how to calculate any of it, right? I mean, you know, how the stock markets work, you know, how the bond markets work. And I'm not talking about, you know, complicated quant, right? I'm talking about just, you know, the fundamentals of all of it. Yeah, exactly. You know, how the FICO system works and, you know, why you might want to actually maintain

Starting point is 00:34:47 a high score and, no, and, by the way, even just basics, how to open up a bank account, savings account, all right? You know, what a 401k is and how to utilize it effectively and what you should be doing with? No, no. We are grossly. And by the way, and that's before you get into just a basic concept of economics and other things that can help in your daily life and business. But why is that not taught? Because we have an incompetent educational system.

Starting point is 00:35:13 I mean, guys, we have an educational system in our country that's ranked 10th and, you know, 30th in the world. And we spend like, you know, seven to 10 times the amount per pupil, you know, educating people, right? the curriculum. I mean, this is something my father's fought so hard against, right? I mean, look at the DEI curriculum that you've had over the last in the woe curriculum. I mean, they're teaching revisionist history. We couldn't get past the fact that they were going up to first graders, you know, drawing a line across a chalkboard, you know, male, female, you know, little Johnny, go go put your, your mark on the line as to, you know, where you think you are on the spectrum of, you know, confusing it. I mean, we got over that about eight months ago when my father got into office and aback.

Starting point is 00:35:52 killed that entire curriculum, but this is this is where our country was going in terms of the educational teachings, let alone trying to teach him, you know, the financial literacy, which there is nothing more important to the world, right? Let me just, let me say that. There is nothing more important. I would get rid of half of the curriculum and I would translate that over to, and by the way, you know what else should be taught? Basic trades, right? I mean, I have some of the smartest friends who do exceptionally well who couldn't hang that picture on the wall. Zero chance. Zero chance. And if they did, the thing is going to be crooked as hell. You know, they're certainly not lining up two pictures and having them be within Nathan and inch of one another, right? They would have zero chance of

Starting point is 00:36:29 being able to do it. Like, how about actually teaching some people, some real world skills so when they move into their first department? You know, they can mount the TV and actually find a stud in the wall, right? And I think our educational system is broken and it's a great shame. Well, we were thinking that's something we're extremely passionate about. And if there ever isn't an initiative to increase financial literacy in school, there's any way we could be. Any way we could be. Oh, my gosh. That would make our dreams come true. But by the work for free, we just want to make sure people understand the basics of investing, the safe way.

Starting point is 00:36:58 I'll partner up with you guys. That would be incredible. He's already talked millions of people. Like, people come up to him on Australia the last time. I opened up a Roth IRA because of Graham, you know, simple, simple thing. I would love to see. I did a whole analysis on this. And it seemed like once the government began subsidizing a lot of public schools and colleges,

Starting point is 00:37:15 the amount of money per student stayed the exact same, but the amount of money for administrative and staff, skyrocketed. Have you ever actually seen that like the charts where where they take the amount of student loans, meaning the actual like monetary supply of student loans outstanding and they actually track that to college tuitions? And, you know, the more money that they put into the system. Yep. The more they charge. It just gets it. It almost tracks like perfectly. It's like, it's like Bitcoin and M2, right? They almost like to track perfectly. Who would have thought? No, it's crazy. And, you know, it'll be charging $90,000 for a degree and, you know, somebody will come out with a basket weaving major. And you're saying, I don't know. Like, like maybe.

Starting point is 00:37:51 Maybe some of these schools, especially when you're getting financial assistance, maybe they should actually peg it to the amount your career will pay when you come out of that very institution, you know, based on that respective major because it's, I mean, how many times do you hear somebody coming out of school with a given degree, you know, and they're making $25,000 a year, and they're spending $25,000 a year, and they spent $80,000 a year for a three-year period of time, four-year period of time to get that respective major. And they just never give you able to pay back. You're giving the person, you know, the chance of either you default, you know, on your student loans or just never fill it and live behind an interest clock and, you know, and interest payments for rest of your life. I mean, it's... Now, what's also interesting is that also correlated with mortgages as well, that the overall size of someone's mortgage was correlated almost exact to the amount of government loans that were issued. Yeah. So that's also something that I find kind of interesting that housing prices also went up along the same as what they were able to get as a mortgage.

Starting point is 00:38:57 I'm the biggest proponent of higher education, right? The biggest, if done right, I can make a solid argument. And it hurts me to say this, but I can make a solid argument for what the price of a lot of these colleges are charging and for the product that they're putting out, you'd be much better off taking the $300,000 that that education would above, right? Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah, put in an like anything else with it. Do anything else. Yeah, put it, put it in an ETF, you know, attracting the S&P 500, you know, down payment on a house. Yeah, make 12% a year every year for, you know, in perpetuity, you know, add to that every single day by, by going on, you know,

Starting point is 00:39:33 saving, you know, starting a career saving. And it's four years of time, too, that you're sinking into it. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And get a great jump start. There's, there's, there's almost no question about it. I think our colleges in this country have a lot of soul searching to do. A lot of soul searching to do. Although really quick, before we go into that, I just want to say that eating healthy sounds simple until, of course, life gets in the way. Like a lot of us don't have the time to go and cook six cups of vegetables to hit her nutrition goals. That's exactly where our sponsor, First Leaf, makes it easy. They've created a microgreen supplement with up to 40 times the nutrients of fully grown vegetables. Just one scoop gives you the benefits of six cups of greens. It's packed with

Starting point is 00:40:10 vitamins, antioxidants, and phytonutrients that support gut health, immunity, and natural energy without stimulants. And considering the fact that these nutrient-pack supplements are usually really tough to make taste good, these actually stand on their own legs. Although personally, I really like to have it blended into a smoothie with bananas, yogurt, and a few berries. It makes it creamy and fruity, and it's such an easy way to stay consistent every day. It's also clean. Non-GMO, vegan, pesticide-free, gluten-free, and what's super unique is that First Leaf actually does the growing and harvesting themselves. So try it out today by going to drinkfirstleaf.com slash iced to save 30% off your first month's

Starting point is 00:40:48 subscription. Seriously, guys, do not skip your veggies. Either mix it with water or throw it in a smoothie and it's a super easy way to stay consistent on your nutrition. Again, that's drinkfirstleaf.com slash ice to save 30% off your first month's subscription or the link is down below in the description. Thank you so much to First Leaf for sponsoring this episode. How has the quality of your life changed over the past few years?

Starting point is 00:41:08 I started fighting for a cause that wasn't monetary, which is very different, right? I always wanted to build great buildings. I always wanted to have unbelievable teams. I always want to, you know, recreate skylines and landscapes, and that's what we do in hard assets space. And I was dead serious about that. And then all of a sudden, we were fighting for something that was a little bit less tangible. We were fighting for the American spirit. We were fighting for the American flag. We were fighting for our Constitution. We were fighting for our nation. And it changed in that every single day. I started taking arrows. for doing something that I thought was noble and righteous and and and and and and and right um I never thought that because you love America and you wanted to fight for

Starting point is 00:41:49 its betterness you would start becoming the most subpoenaed person ever I never thought that you'd have to spend 400 million dollars defending yourself from shams because you know Hillary Clinton made up a you know Russia hoax and you know I just I never thought that we'd be there but it's also been really kind of rewarding of this 99 year old grandmother who always has a saying she goes how may stay? can you eat? And it means a lot to me. Or, you know, a certain point, it's not monetary. It's not a best succeeding in business. It's about, it's about doing the right thing. You know, how many, how many stakes can you eat?

Starting point is 00:42:19 And, and I think it's changed me in that I think I have multiple purposes in my life now. One certainly a company that I love in one of the great real estate companies anywhere in the world, but also one, you know, fighting for American spirit and American people that I adore and in a movement that has become, I think, the most powerful political movement on Earth. You mentioned that you're very lucky that you were insulated from a lot of these attacks because of your pocketbook, basically.

Starting point is 00:42:48 You had the money to stay protected from all of this stuff. Would you say money buys happiness? No, money definitely doesn't buy happiness, but hold on one second. I can go back that, the insulated. We were far from insulated. They wanted us imprisoned, and they did everything they could to effectuate that.

Starting point is 00:43:06 And the only tool that we had was the fact that we had enough monetary means and allowed enough voice to be able to go and fight back against an incredibly rigged system. If we didn't have the voice we would have lost, if we didn't have the monetary means to pay a lot of lawyers, we would have lost. And it was touch and go.

Starting point is 00:43:25 You better believe it was touching go. I will tell you some of the most miserable people in the world are some of the wealthiest. And, you know, I've met people who have achieved every milestone in life. they have their private planes, they have their this, they have their that, they've got their beautiful houses, they've got their trophy wives, they've got their trophy husbands, right? And yet they're still miserable. So no, I don't think money buys happiness. I think being a great person, I think being mission driven, I think being loving what you do. So oftentimes I think it's when you lose the passion that you find the misery, you know, the people who have done extraordinarily well but are passionate about what they do are normally incredibly kind of happy people. versus the people who are now sitting on, you know, tremendous fortune with idle time are typically the people, you know, who go down the other path. And I've seen that a lot. And it's a shame. So what would you say for yourself are your primary sources of happiness? Yeah. I've got two unbelievable kids, Luke and Carolina. They are absolutely my joy in life. I've got an unbelievable wife, Laura. You probably know her from, she's become a superstar in the world of politics and on Fox News. and she's amazing.

Starting point is 00:44:38 I love building, meaning in my free time, I love projects. I love the shooting sports. Love the outdoors. Love being outside. Love dirt bikes. Grow up on dirt bikes

Starting point is 00:44:48 and still doing a lot of the ATVing stuff. So I just, I love the outdoors. I love waking up early. I'm up at 5 o'clock on a weekend. Normally my truck and, you know, watching the sun come up and, I love fishing and skiing.

Starting point is 00:45:02 I mean... How do you even find time to do that stuff? I don't. I don't, but I try and carve out. a day a week. Is this a recent thing? Oh, a day a week. So you have like a schedule? No, it's a, listen, I'm not traveling on a Saturday or Sunday. You know, I try and find some time for myself. And, you know, listen, it's difficult. Right. I do run a very big company and work very hard and don't sleep a whole lot and, you know, always get interrupted no matter, you know, what I'm doing. And

Starting point is 00:45:25 and that's fine, right? It's the life I love and it's life I enjoyed. And I think if I ever had free time, I'd probably be miserable and incredibly bored, right? You know, I think there's certain people who are my grandfather had this great expression. It's to retire is to expire. And I think we're all built that way. I think humans are probably actually built like that. But no, I like to run hard in everything I do. And I can't tell you how many times I'll come off a plane at one o'clock in the morning.

Starting point is 00:45:51 And I'll be up at 5 o'clock in the morning to try and get a couple free hours of free time. So I think what actually gets compacted in my life is actually probably sleep. But that's okay. We operate on very little sleep anyway. Would you ever run for president? I retired from politics. I called my father the morning of the election after we won in November 6th. And I said, pops, I love you.

Starting point is 00:46:13 I'm going back to the company. I'm going back to the people I love. I'm going back to, you know, doing this. You know, I'll run this side of life. And, you know, you do a great job for the country. And you won't need to worry about anything over here. And, you know, I know the country is in great hands. And I never thought I would have been in this race.

Starting point is 00:46:29 I never thought I would have been a major player on that stage. And I was. And arguably, without. Without me, my father couldn't have done it, right? Because there would have been no one watching over the actual company. And, you know, that was everything he had ever built. Everything he had ever created as a major. He had an answer back in the 80s, which is, you know, if I ever got so bad that we had no other choice, I would do it.

Starting point is 00:46:50 And that would probably be my answer as well. I've seen the best of politics. I've also seen the worst of politics. I've seen how they can try and destroy a family for doing absolutely nothing wrong. I see how they can lash out and try and imprison you and bankrupt you and then kill you as they did to my father twice. At the same time, I see this is kind of amazing transformational change that he's making every single day, right? I mean, peace in the Middle East, who the hell would have thought, right? Look at where our economy is.

Starting point is 00:47:15 Look at where our world is. Look at our standing around the world. And so, you know, the good news for the first time, I can see, you know, I really see people who are making a difference. He's making a difference. And I think that's a beautiful thing for our nation. And we better have good business leaders running this country and not these bureaucrats who have been playing. I mean, can you imagine a O. ran a $32.5 trillion economy.

Starting point is 00:47:35 Yeah. Well, it's Deloitte. They're polluting the oceans. Did you see that? Yeah, I mean, but look at, you know, Kamala, right? I mean, she goes out and talks to her big economic plan was to stop the price. What did she say? Caraging.

Starting point is 00:47:53 No, no, she said gauging. Price gauging. Oh, sorry, price gauging at the grocery stores. Yeah, so she wants her economic plan for this country is to stop the price gauging. Have you seen the margin, though, that they have it? Grocer stores are making a ton of money. They're making 1% margins. Yeah, I mean, those guys, if anyone has money, it's the people around the grocery store.

Starting point is 00:48:13 You know, Casamatidis is a friend of mine, right, I owns Christie's and Degistinos and all those. And a lot of places are not even making that. You know, why? Because of the theft in some of these cities, right? When you used to have a theft rate of, you know, half of 1% and now all of a sudden, you know, you have 7% of product walking out of your stores in high tax environments, you know, with, you know, with, you know, spoilage and everything else that you have in the supermarket business, you're not making anything. And the hardest business, but yet, Mandami wants to go in nationalized grocery stores. So, you know, in all the infinite wisdom of City Hall and New York, I've saved them more times than you can count.

Starting point is 00:48:44 We save them on a skating rink in Central Park. We saved them on a golf course, which they spent 30, 30, not three, 30 years trying to build at a cost of almost $300 million to build a golf course. And I got the thing done in 18 months, right? And yet in City Hall's infinite wisdom, there you go nationalized grocery stores and make these things profitable. give me a break. How are you going to save New York in a sense? Like, it seems like he's getting a lot of attention. And I would even love to have him on the podcast.

Starting point is 00:49:11 We would love to. Guys, we try to have people on the left on this podcast all of the time. I'm not just saying that seriously. They don't do it. They don't do it. We want more people on from the left. We have Eric Trump here right now, guys. This is each hand.

Starting point is 00:49:21 If we could just get Mondani, if we could get Kamala, if we could get anybody, any, AOC, Bernie Sanders, please. Ask her all the same questions you asked me to. What's funny. We would love to. We've thrown out the offer for years and zero response back. So if you could help because I'm in real estate. Are you guys on talking terms?

Starting point is 00:49:39 Well, I mean, can I be honest? I'm in real estate, yeah. I mean, the reason they won't do it is, you know, they don't control you. They control ABC. They control NBC. Right. I mean, network TV became the, you know, kind of the PR arm of the Democratic Party. Everybody knows that, right?

Starting point is 00:49:55 You know, the reason you guys are doing great is you have an independent voice and you can ask questions and you can ask them uncomfortable questions. And because of that, they won't go on your programs, right? Like, if they go on CNN, they're going to just, you know, they're going to hold up little, you know, fluff tea balls, you know, and let them kind of hit it out of the park all day long with nonsense. And in the case of ABC, you saw what they did with, you know, Kamala's interview. They literally edited all the questions to make her try and sound intelligent. And they took questions. They edited her answers and they tried to make her sound intelligent. Like this is, and that's the reason these people won't come on your podcast because they have to do what I've done for the last 90 minutes where you actually have to be intelligent.

Starting point is 00:50:30 in and run your mouth and, you know, know the answers to kind of far-reaching topics of which these people don't because they've never lived in the real world. And as I said before, most of their votes have always been, you know, yes and now. But seriously, that is an honest offer. So if anyone, you know, if you know Kamala, let her know. Are you worried about him getting elected and destroying a city and putting these policies in place and driving people out? He was talking today about a 52% tax rate in New York City. Well, listen, guys, I left New York, I left New York because of the weaponization in New York, but I left New York also because of the taxes. We left California because of taxes. We left back in 2020.

Starting point is 00:51:07 How can you blame you? I mean, let's just take a tale of two cities, right? New York, which was our entire life, I still have a lot of assets in New York and let's take Florida for a second, right? You know, New York is thinking about increasing property tax, you know, just taxes generally more, you mentioned the 52%, you know, kind of marginal, right? Yet DeSantis is coming out every day saying he's going to eliminate all property taxes in the state of Florida, right? You know why DeSantis has that much cash because everybody left New York and they all came down here. There's an article in New York Times

Starting point is 00:51:32 saying that the top 18,500 taxpayers in New York City paid 85% of the taxes. And they all left. They all left. And now all of a sudden they want to raise taxes again. You know what? They should do. They should go the exact opposite of the rate.

Starting point is 00:51:48 Cut wasteful spending. Bring down the tax rate. And no city in the world could compete with New York. I love New York. New York's made. I love New York. I love everything about the city. If they had,

Starting point is 00:51:58 I'm not talking about bringing it down to zero, but if they brought like, you know, state and city tax down to like when North Carolina has, you know, 4%, 4.5%. Oh, it would crush. Same with California. So many people would move back to California. People would pay the marginal difference 100%. You couldn't compete against New York. You could pay a little more, but, you know, what's going to happen?

Starting point is 00:52:13 He's going to come in. Your streets are you get dirty. Your streets are you get unsafe. You know, he wants to defund the police, as you know. You know, he hates the Jewish population. I mean, he says he's, including last night on Martha McCallon. He said that he wants to imprison, you know, Netanyahu, if he ever came into New York. So Netanyahu comes to speak of the UN

Starting point is 00:52:30 and you're going to have the mayor of New York imprison him. This can't be serious. This can't be serious. Right? So congratulations. You're just going to have a major world later that doesn't come to the UN,

Starting point is 00:52:39 which is going to diminish what the UN function is, which is going to only diminish New York. It's hard to believe we're here. It's incredibly. So what are you planning to do? If anything. Listen, I no longer vote in New York. I'm a proud Florida residence.

Starting point is 00:52:53 I love it down here in Florida. It's sad. Again, I have a lot of assets in New York. I only wish the best for the city, but it's, um, but you do have a big platform and a big voice. Oh, and believe me, I use that platform and voice. And, um, you know, it is hard to run against somebody who promised everything for free, right? It's, it's kind of, you know, one of those life lessons that I think we've learned over

Starting point is 00:53:13 hundreds of years, you know, somebody goes around, you know, promising, you know, the world for free. I mean, it's easy to promise something until you actually have to pay for it. And, uh, and I think they're going to run into that in the hard way. And I think if he does, in fact, increase taxes again, I think you're just going to see another exodus from, from New York. Florida, and I think that's just going to continue to make Florida real estate more expensive. So guys, honestly, I want to bring in Ashtra Gnudh. He's one of our partners. He's a part of American

Starting point is 00:53:35 Bitcoin. This is a company that we started. We just listed. I've never been more proud of a company in my life. Again, as I said before, we're literally mining Bitcoin at $0.50. I believe in the future of cryptocurrency, probably more than anything I've ever believed in my life. I think it's the greatest complementary asset to hard assets, which is what I do every day. And we should have him, we should have him join. There's been a lot. No one's a partner in this space. This episode is brought to you by Tellus Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season?

Starting point is 00:54:06 Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms. But I've got Tellus Online Security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud, so I can stress less during tax season, or any season. Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft.

Starting point is 00:54:26 Conditions apply. Real talk for a second. If you're trying to grow on social media, short-form content is literally digital gold. It has been one of the biggest drivers of success for the ice coffee hour. We just take our best moments from the podcast and we can clip them up for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, you name it. But let's be honest, it takes a lot of time to do that properly. And that's why tools like our sponsor Opus Clip are a total game changer. For those unaware, Opus Clip isn't just a clipping tool anymore. It's a full-on AI-powered video editor built for creators. So incredible that it could automatically pull in your long-form YouTube videos, find the best moments, add captions, B-roll, and even schedule clips to post while you're away.

Starting point is 00:55:05 It's like having an entire editing team but built by AI. Top creators like Jubilee and Darmann are already using it, and we actually use it here on the Ice Coffee Hour. You see this clip togi reacted to, it was made with Opus Clip. And here's the best part. Everyone who signs up with their link gets one week for free, plus 50% off your first three months. All you have to do is go to opus.pro slash iced coffee hour or click the link down below in the description. Again, that is opus.compoor slash iced coffee hour. Seriously, guys, we cannot recommend it more.

Starting point is 00:55:35 For what they deliver, it is extremely affordable. So if you want to get a bunch of content, super fast, built by AI, I highly recommend OpusClip. Thank you so much to Opus Clip for sponsoring this episode. Although really quick, let's be honest, the big phone carriers are all stuck in the past. I mean, over $100 a month for a phone subscription that barely changed. is insane. That is exactly why our sponsor Helium Mobile is flipping the script on wireless and you can actually get a phone plan for free. With this, their zero plan gives you reliable coverage for $0 a month. No contracts, no credit card required. Plus, you could also bring your own device and phone number.

Starting point is 00:56:10 This is perfect if you're a light user, a traveler, or to someone who wants to try out a second sim. And Helium Mobile is the only plan that rewards you back. It's called CloudPoint. You earn them from just using your phone and you can redeem them for e-gift cards for brands like Amazon, Apple, and Sephora right inside the app. Then from there, if you want more data, you could upgrade to their Air Plan at $15 a month or the Infinity Plan at $30 a month for unlimited everything. All of this is still way cheaper than the big guys. If you're curious about coverage, you get nationwide 5G plus their community-built network, kind of like their Airbnb of Telecom. That's exactly how they keep it reliable, affordable, and yes, even free. So click the link in the description or download

Starting point is 00:56:50 Helium Mobile on iOS or Android today, skip the contracts, and try the plan that's reshaping how everybody connects. Thank you again to Helium Mobile for sponsoring this episode. So now we're going to be adding in Asher Genute from Hutt 8. He's the CEO of Hutt 8, which builds and operates data centers. How did you guys meet? Got it. It seemed like we had every mutual friend in the world who goes, Eric. You need to meet Asher.

Starting point is 00:57:12 And I think they were saying to Asher's you've got to meet Eric. And the rest is history who comes to your friends. And no one better, smarter, no one better in the energy space, no one better in the crypto space anywhere in the world. And we started American Bitcoin together. Yeah. Mike and I were chatting about this. Actually, last night we were saying that one of the first nights that we met, we had like a pizza party. And we were chatting about just what drove us and kind of what was the kind of intrinsic driver.

Starting point is 00:57:39 And I think we connected really well because mining lives in the center of real estate development and also in this crypto world. And so we started talking about and he's like, look, I grew up living on. development sites. I grew up building these buildings, these real estate properties, and so we connected a lot on kind of our both of our passions to build infrastructure. Okay, so in the simplest ways possible, because we're going to do a deep dive on crypto. That was one of the main reasons we wanted to film this episode was to talk about crypto and its involvement in the United States. Explain what it is exactly that you do and how it ties in with what Eric does. Sure. So Hut-8 is an energy infrastructure company, and the idea is we're harnessing power to push technologies

Starting point is 00:58:16 of the future forward. And what that exactly means is we're investing into power infrastructure. So that's power generation, interconnection to the grid. And then we're building data center capacity. Those are data centers that support Bitcoin mining compute. Those are data centers that support AI compute. And so when we formed American Bitcoin, HUD-Aid was one of the first Bitcoin miners out there, one of the first companies that was publicly traded to own Bitcoin on the balance sheet. And we said, as we continue to become more and more of an energy company, we need to separate kind of the Bitcoin in the energy businesses. And then so, HUD8 basically build and operates all the data centers.

Starting point is 00:58:49 And then American Bitcoin owns the actual servers that mines all of the Bitcoin and is able to produce the Bitcoin. And so if you think about American Bitcoin, essentially the business model is we're increasing the amount of Bitcoin we have. So our shareholders increase their Bitcoin per share. So essentially it's like a Bitcoin yield if you were to own Bitcoin directly versus owning a percentage of the company. How profitable is it to mine Bitcoin? Depends on when. Right now, it's been really great. I mean, we have over 50% margins right now.

Starting point is 00:59:16 in terms of how we're mining. And the unique thing about our business is I think our competitive advantage is that relationship with Houdate. Houdate is a large shareholder in American Bitcoin. So I obviously serve as a CEO of Houdaet and also the exact share of American Bitcoin. And so there's this natural synergistic relationship where American Bitcoin doesn't have go spend the money on all these lower yielding assets. So like when you invest into a substation or into a building, you're not expecting to be paid

Starting point is 00:59:43 back in two or three years. When you're investing into Bitcoin servers, you're expecting to be paid back really quickly. And so we have this unique relationship between the two companies that allows American Bitcoin to have these vertically integrated cheap economic economics without having to put out the capital spend up front and then without having this kind of large team and overhead that we have to carry. So when did the both of you first learn about Bitcoin? You go first. You go first.

Starting point is 01:00:07 You were first. All right. So, I mean, I learned of Bitcoin itself early on. I mean, we have two people in the room today who are partners in American Bitcoin as well. So early on Bitcoin and then crypto in general in Ethereum, I remember when Ethereum was sub $100, Matt Prusak, who's our president, sent me a long email. And like, if Bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum's digital oil and kind of the whole presentation. And then in terms of mining specifically is our CEO, Michael Ho, and he started mining really, really early on, 13, 14,

Starting point is 01:00:40 as kind of a hobbyist, and then really 15, 16, and 17 on an industrial level. And so when we started kind of the business, the idea was Bitcoin mining is now an industrial-scale business. And we can go and build a blue chip company within the sector and within this ecosystem. And that kind of, so really early on from buying interests, hobbyists of buying GPUs and plugging them into racks and mining Bitcoin to now large-scale infrastructure projects. But how early on? Like, what age were you?

Starting point is 01:01:09 Yeah, what was the price of the first? The first time you bought Bitcoin. So my story is a little, my story is a little bit different. Because my story was when we started, so we started a company called US Bitcoin Corp, and merge into a company called HUD-8, and so we run HUD-8 today, and then we spent out American Bitcoin. So there's a lot of US-America in the story. But when we started the company in 2020, that was basically my approach was very conservative, which was, I don't know Bitcoin that well. It's this awesome store of value. But there's also in crypto, as folks I'm sure are listening,

Starting point is 01:01:40 for every one or two great projects, there's 100, 200, not great projects. right? And so actually understanding which projects actually invest into, what are the long-term stable assets. So Mike has owned Bitcoin since, I don't know, 2012, 13, if not earlier. And then my experience coming into it was very different, which was, okay, if I invest in Bitcoin, I'm taking volatility risk. It can go up. It can go down. And my thesis in Bitcoin grew as we started building the company. And the reason we started a mining company was, if Bitcoin doesn't go to zero, and we're one of the best operators, will always make money.

Starting point is 01:02:16 When times are good, we'll make a lot more money, when times are bad, we'll make less. We'll always make money in betting on kind of this asset class. And so I have a very different and unique way of entering the space. It came from a energy background of, if we understand energy,

Starting point is 01:02:29 and energy is the thing that produces Bitcoin when you're mining, and we're a low-cost operator, then I have a different. So I'm not the bought Bitcoin super early on, have believed in Bitcoin for the last two decades, Mike, our partner, is much deeper. I came from very much the power story, which was how do we invest into Bitcoin

Starting point is 01:02:48 in a kind of de-risk fashion and how do we manage to kind of volatility? And obviously, since building the business and growing, we've become only more and more passionate about this asset class. When did you first learn about Bitcoin? I really got to crypto when we started getting debanked. The same people that were coming after us were going after all the crypto people, the same people that were shutting down our bank accounts. We're shutting down the crypto people's bank accounts all because those people believed in a different type of finance, a different way to move money. Think of Bitcoin. I mean, I think it's really important for people to kind of, you know, zoom out. We have a company that literally can mine a product for roughly 50 cents on

Starting point is 01:03:20 the dollar, right? So the spot price of Bitcoin right now is, you know, 150,000 roughly, you know, and we're mining it every single day for roughly 50% of that. Go talk to anybody who does copper. Go talk to anybody who does gold. Go talk to anybody who mines lead. Go talk to anybody who mines silver. Most of the time, they're actually mining at about par. And then they're using complicated options and financial kind of mechanisms to otherwise get, you know, they're selling futures and all sorts of other things in order to make their profit. You also have a product that's limited, right? And I think it's the only commodity in the world, the only product,

Starting point is 01:03:50 the asset class in the world that, you know, can't grow. You've got 21 million Bitcoin, slightly less because some of it's been lost over time. But you have 21 million Bitcoin. If the cost of gold ever went up to $20,000 an ounce, I would break down this wall. There's concrete behind it. You know, and we would extract gold for, those columns because there's gold and, you know, virtually everything, right? As price goes up,

Starting point is 01:04:14 Elon will put a spaceship on Mars and he'll extract gold and the supply of gold will go up. That can never happen with Bitcoin, right? So it's this unbelievable asset, but it's global. It has media liquidity, you know, try walking through an airport with a gold bar, right? They're going to rest you and they'll probably call the IRS, even if it's your own money. You know, around the world, it's become such a powerful tool, even maybe more so outside of the, the United States and that you've got absolute government corruption all over the place. You've got massive inflation. You know, I often use Zimbabwe because I've been there and I've seen it.

Starting point is 01:04:46 But, I mean, you had Zimbabwe. You had inflation that was going up 1,000 percent a year. You had inflation that was actually going up more than that during certain periods of time under Mugabe. I mean, imagine getting a paycheck. You work in Zimbabwe. The second you get the paycheck, it's gone. Set it on fire, it's gone. Now all of a sudden with a basic phone, being able to connect to, you know, the internet,

Starting point is 01:05:07 which virtually everybody has in the world now. You can buy an asset class that has 24-hour liquidity, that's global, that's incredibly in demand, that has a limited supply that can never be taken from you, that can never be confiscated from you, that you can't get debanked, you can't be burned, it can't be taken out by a tornado or a hurricane. You know, it's not subject to your little local branch

Starting point is 01:05:30 that can be robbed. Bitcoin has become an unbelievable, an unbelievable asset. Try and transfer money. We transfer a lot of money because we're a very big company. Try and transfer money at 501 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. For the SWIFT system, that money won't get to its intended recipient until, you know, Monday afternoon, maybe Tuesday morning. Why isn't finance 24-7?

Starting point is 01:05:53 Why isn't it immediate? Why is it that every bank in the world has to have their fingers in absolutely everything? You know, if I want to go buy a watch out of Geneva, you know, why do I have to transfer money from, you know, chase here or whoever the hell I bank with to, to do that. Geneva, you know, you have FX, you know, currency exchange fees. The bank's going to have his finger in the transaction. Why? Why can't you just send me a link, you know, a link to your wallet? And instantaneously, you receive the funds at virtually no cost to move that money. And instantaneously, that watch is in a FedEx coming over to the other side of the point.

Starting point is 01:06:25 So how does this compare then to the dollar? Couldn't the dollar be digitalized in such a way that it could do the exact same thing? It is being digitalized. Right. Right. It's called stable coins. But you're then betting on completely, you're betting on the dollar, right? I mean, Bitcoin is a store of value. It's digital gold, right? That's here. Stable coins is obviously, you know, digitizing obviously a currency. It doesn't have to be the U.S. dollar, but the vast majority of stable coins is the U.S. dollar. We have U.S.D.1, which is the fastest-scoring stable coin on Earth right now, and it's pegged one to one with treasuries off of the U.S. And so there's no question that the Swift system is going to disappear. There's no question

Starting point is 01:07:04 that finance is going to become 24-7. There's no question that you're going to have this defy atmosphere, you know, using blockchain and smart contracts that can play a major role in the role that traditional finance is playing right now. If you have a million dollars with assets, right, and they're in JP Morgan Chase, why are you going to JP Morgan Chase to ask them to give you financing? And why does that financing take you 120 days to get after going through paper contracts and know your customers while they have every skyscraper in every city around the

Starting point is 01:07:34 world. Why can't you just go on there to say, I want to borrow against my money. I'm going to do this in a smart contract. And three seconds later, it's in your bank account, right? And that's what's going to happen to finance. We are on the one-yard line to something incredible. I mean, listen, crypto and what we're doing, it's growing faster than the internet grew in the 90s. Right? That's just a fact. When you look back in five years and 10 years, the entire financial landscape is going to be much different, and that's all because of cryptocurrency. And that's why am so damn excited about it. And I would have never gotten excited about it.

Starting point is 01:08:06 Had it not been for this, had it not been for a siege, had it not been for debanking, had it not been for deep platforming and realizing that there are a couple people, you know, sitting in their ivory towers that can control what you do, what I do, what all of us do. We've all been, he's been on the receiving end of being deplatformed all because he believed in industry that was a future of finance. And we've all been there. And I really believe it can never happen again based on the moves being made in crypto. What does it mean to be debanked?

Starting point is 01:08:33 Is that just something that happens overnight? You check your accounts. There's no money in it. I'll give you an example. His is much more extreme. But we started the company. We were young entrepreneurs just raised our Series A, right? All of our money was in Bank of America.

Starting point is 01:08:49 All in one bank, one bank account. We were just starting the company. We didn't have a bunch of different bank accounts. And we get an email and said, your account is shut down. You'll receive a check in the mail in the next four to six weeks. and we just said, what? Like, four to six weeks. We have to pay bills.

Starting point is 01:09:05 We have to pay employees. We have to pay our vendors. We raise the money to go buy equipment, to go build a facility. And so we had this period of time where people said, do you actually even have money? Are you a real company or not?

Starting point is 01:09:18 We're like, we do. We just don't know what's in the ether. Who decides that at Bank of America? It's crazy. You go into the branch and you say, where is my accountant? And they look it up and they say, doesn't exist.

Starting point is 01:09:29 We can't help. you here. But then what does that escalate into? You say, okay, well, you literally just wait and check the mailbox every single day. There's no person you can contact. It's insane. You go into the branch. You're not in the system. So who's making that decision then? Bureaucrats. People who can hate you because you believe in something that they don't, which is exactly what's happening to us. So you were opposing as competition for Bank of America, I'm guessing. I think it was just because we were in the, we weren't even buying Bitcoin. We were in the business of buying equipment that were building data centers to support the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Starting point is 01:10:00 So it's funny. You call in the middle of the night. I did. In fact, I got a letter in the middle of the night. I got it from Capital One. I got it from all the banks, but the biggest one was Capital One by far. Eric, your accounts are all shut down, right? You know, where you give you a couple of days to migrate your accounts, but they're all shut down.

Starting point is 01:10:15 Now, think about a company like ours where you have some of the biggest commercial buildings in the world, some of the biggest hotels in the world, where you have thousands of vendors, thousands of tenants. You've got lockbox provisions in loan documents, right, where, you know, money has to flow in and out of certain accounts, right? So, you know, mortgages can be paid first after taxes and everything else. And then they can waterfall. You've got ACH payments coming in from every direction.

Starting point is 01:10:36 You've got real estate taxes. You've got, you know, you've got hundreds of employees. You've got every cost imaginable, right? Thousands of inputs. This isn't a personal account where you pay a credit card out of and you pay, you know, a couple bills, a couple of homeowner bills. You have thousands and thousands of inputs. And then you take that and you spread that out to 300 accounts that all have that scenario,

Starting point is 01:10:55 that all have that Christmas tree. And they call you up saying, congratulations, you know, you're done, you're closed, or you give you a couple days. The accounts to close, go somewhere else. Right. They wanted to take the rails out from under us, right? They wanted to see us bankrupt. They wanted to see us gone. They didn't want us to be able to, you know, to conduct normal business.

Starting point is 01:11:15 These are for kind of minimum associations. These are for, on, golf courses. And who is they? Who do you think it is? Well, I mean, two things. In a lot of cases, it was the actual bank and the higher-ups in the bank who simply didn't agree with, let's make America great again, right? And they weren't wearing the red hat, you know,

Starting point is 01:11:29 and they didn't like my father's political views and the fact that I was standing on that stage. So they assert them, them. And then I think in a lot of cases, it was, it's not that I think. I know. It was government regulators going in and, you know, they happened to flip to page 17 or whatever the hell page it was. Oh, interesting.

Starting point is 01:11:47 You have the Trump organization. I'd be very careful doing business with them because we're the regulators, and, you know, we will, you know, start looking. I can't tell you how many of my friends ran big, banks and they were shaken down by the government saying, I hear you bank Trump and you better not do that anymore. Guys, this is real world stuff. This isn't, this isn't, this isn't, and I would have never believed it could have happened

Starting point is 01:12:07 in the United States of America if it didn't happen to me, right? If I didn't see, see assets that had no affiliation with politics shut down in the middle of the night for no reason whatsoever other than political affiliation. What banks shut you down? Oh, let's start. Capital One. Bank of America? JPMorgan Chase

Starting point is 01:12:27 Um Uh, First Republic. First Republic was, was big, right? And then about, you know, 12 others behind then.

Starting point is 01:12:35 But, but beyond those, you know, I'd say just about every major financial institution in the country, but then you had the Aeon insurances of the world.

Starting point is 01:12:43 Then you had the Shopify's of the world. I'll never forgetting, you know, all our e-commerce platform for Trump was on Shopify at the time. And, you know, congratulations, you're here by closed.

Starting point is 01:12:50 Why? Like, why are we closed? Because we're selling golf polos to say Trump national golf course on it? Right. And that's when you realize that there's nothing that can be done in that world that can't be done better on blockchain. Guess what is you? Using smart contracts, they can't do that. How is your relationship now with those banks?

Starting point is 01:13:06 Well, they all kiss her ass. I mean, what do you think they would do now? You know, how many of them have come back to me and lick their wounds? You know, and how does that look like? Do they just apologize? Do they ever give you a reason? Yes, normally, you know, we very much, you know, Eric, it's so great to see you again. You run into them and like, you know, cocktail party or a lot of times they'll reach out to you. And, you know, we really like to bring the teams back to the, together. You really have an amazing company. We're really proud of everything that you've been able to accomplish. And I'm sitting there gritting my teeth saying, you dirty, I can't say it on the podcast, because, but you can only imagine my anger when I had hundreds of employees who didn't sleep for months on end, you know, as we're working on Hail Mary after Hail Mary to try and find every little small regional bank, who by the way loved our accounts, right, because of the value of them, after being thrown off for dogs, for doing absolutely enough.

Starting point is 01:13:55 Could you ever talk to him be like, hey man, let's just like go off to the side of what happened? Like, who told you this? Yeah, but my conversations aren't. I think the conversation you would have is probably exponentially nicer than the conversation that I would have, right? And I think maybe that's a little bit better than this over what happened. Sure. And you'd probably be in the same seat if they did the same thing to you. It's funny. My Bank of America account was shut down. This is back in 2020. And my theory, and I've had this account, by the way, for 15 years and I had a mortgage with Bank of America. And my theory was that I had too much money going in the account that it flagged. it. And they gave me, thankfully, 60 days. They said, you know, after 60 days, we have to shut down your account. That was very kind of them. But I had everything going into one account, but I think too much money was going in, and then I would transfer that to investments. And I think they saw, like, big transfers in and out within 24 hours. I guess it was that. I'm not sure. I never found out. And they never found out. Yeah, it was just, it was a letter I got in the mail. I reached out, and they say, oh, your account has been flagged for something. And I looked it up online. I couldn't find exactly what it wants.

Starting point is 01:14:56 The employees at those banks, right? Obviously, on a smaller retail account, you probably don't have an exact account rep that just kind of owns you. I remember calling some of our account reps who would be crying, which is like their entire livelihood was managing the Trump accounts at these various financial institutions and they were gone. They were just, they were out of work. I mean, you know, everything that, you know, all our accounts were just closed down for no

Starting point is 01:15:19 reason other than some call from above. It can't happen. It can't happen. And I'm proud to say I've held a lot of banks accountable, you know. I was one of the first to start talking about this. Asher is the first one to say is like, he's like, I never talked about this because I always found it embarrassing. And then by the way, back in the day, I almost found it embarrassing too. Like, how can you lose a bank account?

Starting point is 01:15:36 Like, we're a great business. We're one of the greatest real estate companies anywhere on earth. How the hell do you lose a bank account? Like, it was almost like a mark of shame. And now, honestly, it's like almost like a badge of honor that we fought through it. And I've held every single one of those banks accountable. And there's probably one that I'll sue next week. So, okay.

Starting point is 01:15:52 But honestly, just to make the point, guys, it wasn't just us. They were doing this conservatives all across the country, right? Like, again, not back to this, but the sole concept of what I wrote about in under siege. It's, they were coming after all of us. They had, they weaponized the IRS against, you know, churches, right, against conservative causes. They weaponized every aspect of this system. The fact that both you and you have been debanked and I've been debanked, like, that's more than coincidence, right?

Starting point is 01:16:20 I mean, this was happening to a lot of people that they did. didn't like. And so to crypto, why am I such an advocate of Bitcoin? Why am I such an advocate of blockchain and defy? You know, I would love to see so many of these banks fail to exist. Can you make the argument that the government should be buying Bitcoin and putting that on their balance sheet? Yeah, 100%. Why aren't, why is the government not getting involved? Why are they simply taking crypto and holding it rather than actively? Let me make the argument for both sides, right? Please. Why should any government be buying Bitcoin? Because is a single greatest performing asset over the last decade, increasing in value 70% a year,

Starting point is 01:16:57 year, over year, every year. Like Germany a couple years ago, there's a great article. You might know the exact numbers, but Germany had like 30,000 Bitcoin or something along those lines, and they sold it right away. They monetized it into, you know, their currency. And it was like the worst investment ever made by a government. And by the way, that's a pretty damn low bar, as you know, right? The government should definitely have certain crypto assets on their balance sheet,

Starting point is 01:17:21 mainly, mainly Bitcoin. And actually the United States government does, right? You have a lot of forfeitures. Correct. And they've taken a great stance saying that we're not selling any of it. You have a lot of countries around the world that are actively buying. If you go to the UAE, if you go to a lot of countries, they are actively putting that in their treasuries. And you look at the Fortune 500 companies, they are actively hoarding Bitcoin.

Starting point is 01:17:41 The biggest families, the biggest companies, you know, countries, sovereign wealth funds, and individuals are all hoarding Bitcoin, right? It's why it's been as explosive as it is. And it's funny, people like, oh, well, Bitcoin's down like 3%. Now it's like this time last year, Bitcoin was at like $55,000 or $60,000 roughly. It's had unbelievable explosive growth. Why is the country not just going out and taking billions to go buy it? Because America kind of doesn't work that right.

Starting point is 01:18:07 You have sovereign wealth funds in other countries and they go out and they make investments on behalf of that country. And honestly, I wish America had a sovereign wealth fund. I think it would be the greatest thing we ever did. But America doesn't kind of work that way, right? America's pretty myopic. You take in tax revenue. you pay the expenses and you let capitalism in the private industry reign. Mostly there's other companies, you don't really let capitalism in or countries.

Starting point is 01:18:27 You kind of let government take every penny they can, invest it on behalf of the country, and then pay out dividends. And so it's a little, America has a little bit of a different way of thinking. And obviously, thus far, it's served as well. Local news is in decline across Canada. And this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void. and it gets harder to separate truth from fiction.

Starting point is 01:18:52 That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. So what percentage of both of your portfolios are in Bitcoin and or crypto? And for the average person out there, the average listener,

Starting point is 01:19:16 what percentage do you recommend that they would have reflected of Bitcoin in their portfolio? So I have a pretty large percentage of Bitcoin. I am a large owner of HUD8. Houd8 has a large owner of American Bitcoin. We hold over 10,000 Bitcoin at Hutt8. We have a lot of Bitcoin we're accumulating at American Bitcoin. We haven't shared the updated numbers yet. But I would say it's really what is your investment horizon? If you buy Bitcoin, you're buying and holding it and you don't want need or want that liquidity. I think that's key. And so everyone has to think about, all right, what percentage of my portfolio can I just buy and hold? Like, Bitcoin is a volatile asset.

Starting point is 01:19:51 Over the course of the last decade, it's compounded at over 7% on kind of an average annual basis. And so, but there are years where there's pull downs, and you have to be able to withstand those pull downs and not sell. And so I would say, I mean, if you're just kind of passive and you say, hey, I want to dabble, have a couple percentage points, 5%, potentially even 10%, and just hold and leave in and pretend that that capital doesn't exist. And in 10 years from today, you'll be very, very happy. Right. On the other hand, if you're younger, you're a bit more risk-taking and you want to build more generational wealth, then you can increase that percentage because you're a large earner and can have new income coming in that you spend instead of your assets. And also, where do you hold your Bitcoin? Like, do you have it in cold storage? Because I mean, I don't maybe want to say exactly. I have mine in Coinbase. I don't

Starting point is 01:20:42 know, like, you know, how secure that is. This is like a very novice question, but for the people out there that want to buy Bitcoin, what's the easiest and best way of doing? You know, the amazing thing now, you can buy Bitcoin in a thousand different ways, right? Go back five years. You had to buy it on a ledger and you had to kind of put it in cold storage. You were buying it mainly on defy and it was a complicated process. It lost a lot of people. You know, and it was hard. Now it's easy. You can go to Fidelity and you can stand up a digital asset wallet in three seconds. You can go to Schwab. You can buy, you can buy ETFs. You can buy American Bitcoin. I mean, we're listed. So your stock account, you can literally go buy American Bitcoin on the NASDAQ as of six weeks ago when we listed the company, right?

Starting point is 01:21:22 I mean, you can buy it through most of the financial institutions. And if you can't, you can buy spot ETFs. And if you don't want to do that, you can buy pure plays like us and, you know, or you can go to Coinbase or you can go to a crack in or you can go to Binance or you can go to, you know, a thousand other, you know, places. Or you can go back and do it, you know, the traditional way and own it on ledger if that's what you choose to do. But, you know, Bitcoin has so many different kind of ways you can own it relative to where we sat five years ago. And I think it's one of the reasons that all of crypto has exploded the way it is because a lot of people just didn't want to go through the hassle. A lot of people didn't want to go through the pain. And now guess what?

Starting point is 01:21:58 The market opens up at 930 in the morning. And, you know, you can put $10,000 into something that you believe in. But, you know, I think Azure said it best. You know, there's a lot of people who love crypto and they'll hop in and they'll ride it up, they'll ride it up. And they're seeing these compounding returns that are insane. 70% year over year, as Asher said. And then all of a sudden it draws down 10% or draws down 20%, right? And they lose their minds.

Starting point is 01:22:19 They can only see a one-way arrow. And I think you have to have, you know, they call them diamond hands, right? But like you've got to be able to hold and you've got to be able to understand that you might have five, six X to return, but you also might have five, six X to the volatility. And volatility is actually what's amazing in crypto. Go buy the dips, right? that people who have been successful in crypto or the ones who bought in here wrote it up, it might come down

Starting point is 01:22:44 and guess what? They dollar cost average back in, rode it up even higher. It comes down. They buy back in. Buy the dips in crypto and the people who have done that historically have made an absolute fortune. How manipulated is the price of Bitcoin? Because I see all of these charts and analysis on Twitter and they

Starting point is 01:23:01 say, oh, this Bitcoin whale just came in and like shorted the market and then bought the dip perfectly and like all of this stuff. And now there's this narrative out there that like someone's behind the scenes like you know being able to influence the market upper down like 10 20% well I think it's certainly easier

Starting point is 01:23:16 to do with meme coins right than then it is Bitcoin I mean you know what's the average of liquidity Michael our partner would know this right behind us Michael what's the average like liquidity of Bitcoin on 60 billion a day so you know somebody going in with 100 million bucks isn't moving moving BTC at all right it's and by the way

Starting point is 01:23:35 there are people who take these wild bets and by by the way I've seen as many go right as go wrong where somebody goes in with 20x leverage on a BTC bet, right? And then, you know, BTC goes down $1,000 and they get totally liquidated. Like, that's not how you play this game, in my opinion. I would never play the game like that. I really do believe in buying and holding long term. And I think if you buy Bitcoin and you buy and hold and you buy into some of the dips at obvious times and you open up your eyes in a four or five year period of time, I think you're going to have done exceptionally well. You know,

Starting point is 01:24:08 it's funny is have you seen the stuff online where people are speculating that baron is like a secret crypto whale people on twitter are like posting that yeah it was really it was really bizarre is the same tweets that come up about baron come up about me in the exact same verbiage with same images just with a different face i meant apparently last week i bought a billion dollar yacht i'm not sure if you saw this oh how is it hey i i've been really really busy with under siege so so now this is how you relax i i guess i guess i just forgot that i bought a a billion dollar yacht i just I guess I didn't know about that. I don't know the name.

Starting point is 01:24:40 I don't know where it's being built. I know nothing about this yacht, but apparently I bought a billion dollar yacht last week. Congrats. You know, so you guys will be the first guest when we get this. Thank you. No, it's a joke. And then I'll see the exact same picture of the same fictitious yacht.

Starting point is 01:24:51 And, you know, Baron Trump just bought a yacht. And it's, it's, it's, don't believe what you, you know, believe credible people. Don't believe what you read on the internet, right? It's what we've come to experience as well. I think, though, that Barron's behind the scenes. Like, I see him next to Trump is like, father, by now. Or, father, time to dump. It is funny.

Starting point is 01:25:08 I think people like it's a bit mysterious. Yeah. Like, people don't see him. By the baron's a sweetheart, and he's a great friend of mine. And he's really, I brought him into a lot of the crypto projects that we've done, and he's done great for himself, and we've had a lot of fun doing it together. But I can tell you that I look at those memes, and I literally, I laugh. Right. And by the way, they're hilarious, yeah.

Starting point is 01:25:31 You know, a meme is meant to be funny, right? I think sometimes I hope I hope serious people or or people who are trying to get into a space don't take this crap literally because I think that's dangerous. And and I think once in a while the industry has to mature a little bit. It's matured a lot. I mean, over the last five years, it's matured a lot. You have serious people. I am dead serious about replacing traditional finance with cryptocurrency. I'm dead serious about this.

Starting point is 01:25:58 This isn't fun. This isn't trading meme coins. This isn't screwing around. This isn't gambling on brands you like. I am dead serious about the rails of what cryptocurrency will do and having America lead the way and curing so many of the wrongs that have been perpetrated against so many people, including both of you and me, based on what you just said. And so there's a lot of people, Asher, I mean, he's spending billions and billions of infrastructure,

Starting point is 01:26:27 electrical infrastructure, the heaviest gauge wires you've ever seen behind the biggest energy, you know, formulation, I mean, you know, in the greatest complexes you've ever seen, you look at, you look at one of our sites that mine's Bitcoin, right? Every one of these computers is literally running underwater. It's all, they're all liquid cooled. All the chips are liquid cooled. I mean, this is space age stuff. It is real.

Starting point is 01:26:51 It's tangible. It serves an amazing, you know, purpose. And it is the future of finance. There's just no question about it. And, you know, you have to be able to differentiate that from the, from the garbage. and the meme warriors and, you know, the people who haven't left their, their, you know, their grandmother's basement in a long time and just want to spew nonsense and make up facts and, you know, claim that Barrett and I both bought the same vote for a billion dollars last year.

Starting point is 01:27:16 We're going to be giving away a hat to one iced coffee hour member. So this is it. Pass me those other two books. Yeah, dude, okay, so this is for us. Eric, thank you. Guys, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee. Great, great being on. Thanks. Thanks, guys.

Starting point is 01:27:41 your playlist taking you down the highway to the mountains or just into daydream mode while you're stuck in traffic with over 4,000 hotels worldwide best western is there to help you make the most of your getaway wherever that is because the only thing better than a great playlist is a great trip life's the trip make the most of it at best western book direct and save at bestwestern.

The Iced Coffee Hour - “Prepare NOW!” Eric Trump’s Shocking Prediction For Stock Prices, Bitcoin, & The US Dollar

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.