The Pomp Podcast - #1101 Braeden Anderson On When Crypto Regulation Is Coming

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Brayden Anderson is an attorney at Kirkland & Ellis, and he is the author of a brand new book called Black Resilience. In this conversation, we talk about a lot, everything from crypto regulation, legal frameworks, and then we talk about his background, many of the different difficult situations that he's navigated, including how he almost made it to the NBA, and the different setbacks that made him go on a different path and eventually become an attorney at the world's largest law firm.

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Starting point is 00:02:42 Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

Starting point is 00:03:06 All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Brayden here with me. I thought a great place to start is you are a lawyer, so you can say you can give legal advice to clients. What's going on with crypto regulation? Like, it feels the entire industry continues to ask, we want regulatory clarity. We want regulatory clarity. How do you underwrite where we are right

Starting point is 00:03:24 now on that? Yeah, well, I have to begin by saying I'm not giving legal advice today and that my views are my own and not necessarily the views of my firm. But with that, it's we're in an interesting spot. I think if you look at 2017, what happened with the price of Bitcoin blowing up. A lot of folks had to start paying attention to this industry. I, at that time, started a task force that was trying to educate regulators. I was at FINRA at the time as an extern in law school, and I was engaged in a bunch of different investigations of ICOs, right, that were coming in through the JOBS Act, right, crowdfunding regulation, right, that were raising money on Republic and whatnot. And if you look at where we started to where we are now, we have

Starting point is 00:04:13 made progress but a lot of the regulation that's coming down is through enforcement right and as a market participant you don't love that because it's hard to have any certainty about what you can do and what you can't do because all that you can really do is see what the sec is deciding to bring enforcement actions and so i think it's it's difficult but if you're somebody involved in the space right now, what you really need to be thinking about is how do I deliver value to the marketplace, right? There's a lot of different coins, a lot of tokens, a lot of projects, but I think you really need to think about how do I create a use case, right, through this project, implement the technology, right, but focus on this idea of value and creating value for the

Starting point is 00:05:04 community. How do law firms think about operating in environments where maybe it's not so clear exactly what the rules are, right? And what I mean by that is, like, obviously, law firms aren't going to talk to clients or even internally and say, like, hey, we should go break rules. But if you don't know what the rules are, what's like the framework? What's the conversation inside of various large law firms that are trying to figure this out, I think, alongside market participants, alongside regulators, like, like, there's a lot of different types of groups, but most people don't understand how the law firms themselves think about kind of where we are in the market. I think we've we start with published guidance from the regulators. And at this point, there

Starting point is 00:05:40 There are a lot of statements that have been made by the SEC, by different governmental groups about, hey, we think about these sorts of products and these sorts of tokens or these sorts of issues in this way. And we start to put together a plan to help that startup or that project find out where the lines are, right? Because it's never going to be perfect right now, depending on what you're trying to do. But I think starting out with, hey, listen, you can't raise money to build a product that doesn't exist using investor funds and then promise a bonus of tokens, right? We learned that the hard way over and over and over again. That's not going to work. So I think building your project with, you know, if you can self-fund it, if you can get accredited investors to be involved and be part of the project and deliver something that has value and then sell that thing that has value, you want to be in that commodity space unless you want to go the securities route. And I think if you're willing, if you have the funds to be able to just say, listen, this might be a security, let's just go that route and try to register, you may be able to avoid some of those issues.

Starting point is 00:07:02 But most startups, that's – Is it a money thing? Is that why most of these projects, technologies, teams, whatever, are not just saying, hey, let me register as a security? So there's a couple things. Money as a startup, as a new company, is going to be a lot of what you're thinking about because it's not cheap to hire these big firms. And the issues are thorny, right? And then you think about disclosure and the burden of being a registered security with the SEC and what that means in terms of ongoing governance. It's showing your work every day, right?

Starting point is 00:07:37 Everything that you're doing, everything that you're saying, you're always being asked questions. You ought to make sure everything you're saying is accurate. um it's it's difficult to do every public company has issues doing it with a ton of money so you think about a startup trying to trying to compete and play that game um it gets pretty pretty hairy pretty quickly um but that being said you can do it right and we have seen projects that have done that yeah and what is the current thought process around something like bitcoin like it feels like the SEC, the CFTC, and most market participants all agree that this is not a security. Is that generally the kind of conclusion at the moment? So that's the other thing that's going on. So

Starting point is 00:08:18 you also have this jurisdictional issue, right, between the CFTC, which from the very beginning was like, listen, crypto, they're commodities, unless they're not, right? And they fall within our jurisdiction. And it's really plain and simple. And then you have the SEC that's saying, yeah, sometimes, but we really need to be heavily involved and evaluate each one and make sure that there's, there aren't factors because the Howey test, right? It's, it's looking at investment of money, right? With this reliance on others, right? To actually build the company and generate profits And you're expecting to profit, right, as a result of those efforts. And when you see these promoters, a lot of times with a lot of these coins, it gets pretty

Starting point is 00:09:11 tricky. With Bitcoin, there's not this one person who is the godfather, the promoter who's saying, use Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin. And we're all saying, hey, we're relying on you. We're relying on you to build the infrastructure, to make sure that there's continuous value in Bitcoin. to make sure that you're making partnerships with big companies to accept Bitcoin. With a lot of these smaller tokens, if you look at Shiba Inu, you look at Doge, you look at Musgold, you look at a lot of these things.

Starting point is 00:09:43 The tricky aspect is that you really are relying on the founders to go and build the infrastructure and create the value for the coin as the community. And if you're the SEC, it's a little bit tricky because you're saying, well, a lot of people did buy this token in order to make money. They wanted – It's a security. Yeah. What percentage of the long tail of assets do you think are securities versus not? And again, there is no right answer. It's just like kind of given what we know now, do you think it's like over under 50 percent?

Starting point is 00:10:15 I think definitely under. Under 50 percent. Yeah. Okay, wow. I would think that you would have thought over. So why under? So I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that just because, because remember, the Howey test, these are all factors, right? If just because you have a promoter that's really active and you have this, you know, this expectation of profit, that doesn't mean it's an investment contract necessarily.

Starting point is 00:10:38 Right? It's, it's a, you have to weigh all the different factors. So I would say under because it's really difficult to say as an investor or somebody who buys Doge or buys one of these meme coins that there is a reasonable expectation of profit and that that is the same kind of investment contract that you enter into when you buy stock in GME or whatever. So in some way, it's almost like it's such a joke and everyone's in on the joke that it can't be taken seriously? It's for fun. It's a community. In my personal opinion, this is just my view, is it's about this community. And when you buy a token, you buy Doge, you buy Musgold, you're joining this community.

Starting point is 00:11:30 You're saying, I'm now part of this community. And we're all kind of in it together. Where you run into issues is where you have one or two people or five people or just the advisors who make all the decisions, right? They do everything and everyone's relying on them to do it. That's where you get into issues. Where you've seen it happen successfully is where the whole community, and that's where it's powerful. That's the power of crypto. That's where everybody sits there and scratches their head and says, wow, right?

Starting point is 00:12:00 Because when you have 100,000 people in a community, 200,000 people in a community all thinking about how do I create value for this token, that's where it gets special and it can't be a security at all because everybody is engaged. They're all part of the process. They're not relying on a promoter to do everything. Got it. And so, like, when we see this playing out, does it come into a factor if the team that created it ends up making money? Like, I understand the expectation from the audience or the investor or the person buying the token or whatever, and they're relying on the team. But what happens if the team makes money? Does that have any contribution at all?

Starting point is 00:12:44 I think that's where, again, that's where if you're a regulator and you're seeing that most people got the rug pulled and you see that the founders knew the right moment to sell and they made a buck and nobody else did, that becomes troublesome because, again, it makes it look like you really are in control because you knew when to sell. you're an insider and you sold and the other folks in the community they look like investors they look like people who weren't fully in they weren't fully insiders that's why i think dows are really interesting and the more decentralized that you can build these projects even if they're not technologically decentralized even just literally having a voting system just old school old school just putting questions out to the community hey guys what do you think should we do this or this or this so this is fascinating because i think i i don't want to speak for uh um or over generalize all of the critiques but i think one of the critiques that uh has a lot

Starting point is 00:13:49 of nuance to it so it's really hard to like talk on twitter and stuff like that is that uh there's a separation between like is this uh valuable is this interesting is this uh uh a way to interact with your customers your partners your community whatever kind of group they fall into uh with this um i'm gonna call it like democratic uh type approach right so opposing a question getting answers and using that information to go change what you're doing i think that like i don't hear a lot of people being like oh that's dumb right like big companies run surveys and and like like that's a thing that has been around for a while one of the critiques i hear that's like a nuanced interesting one is like okay but there's a difference between saying hey we're going to

Starting point is 00:14:28 work with the community or work with the dow or survey or do whatever and then saying it's like decentralized and you hit on this idea of like technically decentralized versus like a new type of mechanism of communicating and i think right now uh i don't think there's a lot of malicious actors is my read but they're all getting lumped together and the term decentralized just becomes like a marketing term so it's like hey it's decentralized and then they'll point and be like because we like talk to the community and like we get information right but will regulators actually peel those apart and say like decentralization is like a technology measurement And the reason why I separate those is like, is there like a number?

Starting point is 00:15:05 Is it like if you have three, then that's decentralized? Or is it like 30 or 3,000 or, you know, 3 million? Like, how do you measure that? And I don't know, maybe we just don't know the answers yet. Well, so I think you're hitting on all the right points, right? Part of, so the regulators are very interested in the definition of decentralized. and partly the reason why is because promoters of coins that they've come across that's what they're saying right that's one of the things that they the regulators have had to field

Starting point is 00:15:37 right is well this is decentralized and they're like well what does that mean right is it really decentralized and you have how do they evaluate that as of right now or your understanding so i think right now the it's it's really technological right okay but it's like nodes or or users or like that but here's the issue so let's say it is completely technologically decentralized right it literally on the blockchain you have to have a certain amount of buy-in to for certain things to happen on the chain and there's no one way for any individual to circumvent that or change that from happening what about the servers that everything's being run on is there any maintenance that has to happen who's in charge of that maintenance if you're trying to get listed on

Starting point is 00:16:23 an exchange, who is the individual who contacts that exchange and says, hey, we want to get listed? Interesting. If there is a deal, right, if there's a big deal with a company, a lot of times big companies will buy huge amounts of different tokens and give them away or do different promos with them or accept those tokens after buying a bunch of them. Who are they interacting with? Are they only interacting through the exchange to buy those tokens? Or is there someone, even if they're just a whale right that may be enough right so you have to think about that kind of stuff if you're just a whale you just own tons but you you own so much that you're able to actually your de facto customer service your de facto bd right yeah is it decentralized in that situation yeah and that

Starting point is 00:17:08 kind of stuff i think is just it's tricky and that's why i think you have to start if you love crypto and you love blockchain you love bitcoin and you want to develop a company in this space you have to think about what is a real world problem what's a real world problem you got to come back to square one and you talk a lot about this about building shit that people want right you have to do that you got to start with it's not just it's not going to do it anymore it's not 2017 you can't just throw together a meme coin and think it's going to go to the moon And that's investors deserve more. The community deserves more.

Starting point is 00:17:44 So whether you're going to go the security route or whether you think you've built a commodity, Bitcoin is a commodity. It's proven, right? It's not a meme coin, right? It really does have value because there's a tremendous infrastructure by being the first major coin out, right? And so I think folks need to stop trying to be the next Bitcoin and they need to start thinking about how can i leverage blockchain to build something that people fucking want yeah

Starting point is 00:18:13 what's fascinating about it is uh there's this weird um maybe dichotomy is the right word where uh a blockchain's entire purpose is to get to decentralization because that leads to security um there are very few things that in the legacy world uh have decentralization or this kind of robust resilient security that also are efficient almost nothing right it's like amazon is super centralized hierarchical structure like they stamp out all the bureaucracy all of the the kind of wastefulness uh and they just go for efficiency how do we get something from point a to point b as fast as possible as cheap as possible and like deliver value to the customer and what's fascinating about that is uh could there be a decentralized amazon like i'm unconvinced of

Starting point is 00:19:01 that specific business because the whole business around efficiency and the trade-off between like high security versus high efficiency seems to be like a big question people have to make a decision on yeah bitcoin on the other hand is super decentralized super secure but plenty of critics would argue oh it has a 10 minute block time or the fees uh did spike uh uh in past bull markets before the invention uh and kind of uh operationalization of uh lightning network and things like that and so what you saw was like layer one super secure and if you want to be scalable if you want to be efficient you have to then move to these kind of upper layers and so one of my big questions i don't know what the answer to this is but one of my big questions

Starting point is 00:19:39 is what is the real world use case where there's a solution to a real problem you're describing but can still be decentralized and solve the efficiency problem and it's like that's asking a lot of people to do and so it's fascinating because uh it also gets at the heart of what the regulators i think are asking themselves which is like decentralization is important And but there's a lot of use cases where actually probably it shouldn't be decentralized, which then leads to this whole idea of like, well, then I think people may have to register them as securities. And like, how do you do that? Well, there will almost. So that's why it becomes interesting to think about what does decentralization mean? Right. Because in most cases, there will always be stakeholders.

Starting point is 00:20:21 There will always be people who, regardless of the general landscape, are more well positioned to benefit from the project, service, company, whatever it is, than others, right? And I think when you talk about Bitcoin and the criticism of efficiencies in Bitcoin relative to other things, I don't think that that criticism is fair. I think realistically, there's always a fee to use any service. You look at PayPal, they charge fees, right? And so Bitcoin is mostly free, but you may have to pay fees and transaction costs to actually keep the train moving. And that to me is just fair. It makes sense. I think it's almost inconceivable that you would have a product or a service or a technology that was completely frictionless.

Starting point is 00:21:21 Right. That didn't have any fees associated with it because things that have value, there's something there. Yeah. Right. In your entire time in what I'll call kind of the legal regulatory part of this industry, whether it was FINRA, law firms, the whole thing. was there ever a time where like somebody did something and you all just looked around the room and started laughing like that can't be real because sometimes i see things right and like i'm not looking at it through the legal or the regulatory lens but i see stuff and i'm like that literally cannot be real like somebody has to be joking somebody has to because there's just crazy shit that happens and when there's like less rules there's more uh kind of a wild wild west uh aspect to it is that also happening inside like law firms and the regulatory bodies where like

Starting point is 00:22:05 sometimes they're just shocked at like what somebody attempts to do i would say that the the kinds of of clients that approach big law firms typically are a little bit more mature they have a little bit more money they're thinking about things in a different way right um things are obviously moving at rapid pace and something that seemed insane to do right in 2015 now you might be looking at it a little bit differently because there might be new guidance in that area so i mean there's so many different projects out there there's literally thousands and thousands i thought for sure we were at the end in 2018 i was like wow how many more projects can there be how many more coins can there possibly be and of course it's just continued to increase um and of course

Starting point is 00:22:52 there can't be value in all of them and some of them are i mean is it ridiculous to just put a coin out there on the ethereum blockchain you know an eth coin and just throw it out there and tell people to buy it i think so right i think you need to think about how you're generating value for that and user the person who is adding that that commodity it's not a always a securities thing it's just about doing the right thing and building something that's going to last right you're if your goal is to send something to the moon for five minutes and pull the rug, and maybe it'll work if you build if you send a bunch of memes out there. But if you want to build something that's going to last something like Bitcoin, something like gold, you have to start with

Starting point is 00:23:40 infrastructure and start with value. Yeah, it's, it's fascinating. What's your background? Like you, you have a pretty interesting story. And I think that most people who see your story would be like, how do you go from where you start to inside of a major law firm and kind of on the cutting edge of these technologies and these markets and all of that? Like walk me through how that happened. Yeah. So I grew up in Okotoks, Alberta, small town outside of Calgary in Western Canada, about 20,000 people in my town at the time. Not a very diverse place. Only one of like three black families in in the town and and so i i dealt with a lot of racism a lot of bias um but i think my perspective on these issues is colored a little bit differently because i came

Starting point is 00:24:25 from that environment um i grew up in an abuse an abusive household um things weren't great at home um but and you know i was i was homeless for periods of time um lived on people's couches Right. But I think what that created was a different sense of how I evaluate opportunity. Right. I look at opportunity. I think of it like a damp rag. Right. And opportunity and value is like is moisture. It's water. And we all grow up and we're given a rag and we can get more and we may be able to add moisture and add value to our rag. but we don't necessarily control how we start. And I started out growing up homeless, growing up in an abusive household. I was homeless at 12 years old, bouncing around, living on different friends' couches. There wasn't a ton of moisture in my rag. But when things started to kind of shift for me, I read a book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And that book saved my life. So for me, I read that book at 12 years old.

Starting point is 00:25:31 um and i started to think about my life and my damp rag in a different way and it started with gratitude okay it started with instead of looking at everybody else oil is big in alberta canada huge and so i had a lot of friends who were very wealthy it was odd to grow up how i did we were very, very poor. I had a lot of challenges. But many of my close friends and teammates on the football team and basketball team were extremely wealthy. And so it was thrown in my face, right? In a very interesting way that I don't think happens a lot in America, because I was able to live in an area that was very wealthy, but have absolutely no money at all. And not actually have the same benefits as everybody else. Yeah. Right. And so when I started to kind of just be grateful

Starting point is 00:26:24 for everything that i did have that's when things started to really take shape for me so i got a call from a coach in north carolina this is where things started to kind of shift for me um his name is ro russell and he was responsible for sending a bunch of guys to the nba tristan thompson cory joseph right helped identify andrew wiggins um and me and andrew wiggins and a bunch of other folks um were got the call to join this school in north carolina what was it called it was called christian faith center academy and it was for me as i was homeless at the time so like this was like the best opportunity ever right and because i didn't have that dynamic with my parents where they were going to say hey we got to ask all the questions about this hey i don't know if this is

Starting point is 00:27:12 the right thing that wasn't the situation for me i didn't ask my mom i told my mom right see you later i'm going to north carolina we ended up there was there was a couple different there was like a couple different apartments and there were 16 of us jam-packed into these these little apartments were kind of all on top of each other living situation how many kids were in the school there uh well so there we the basketball team was like part of a separate portion of the school maybe there was a couple hundred people total in the school okay but the basketball program was had like its own curriculum yeah what was it um i think tracy mcgrady went to mount zion yeah we played against that school we're in that league so uh tracy mcgrady i think there's 12

Starting point is 00:27:58 people on the team and there was 12 kids at the school at the time and like they got in some trouble later similar deal yeah okay because our school was it was technically separate yeah and the rest of school yeah but like big picture is row russell a bad guy yeah no he's not a bad guy right he's trying to hustle and and squeeze his rag like everybody else is trying to give opportunities to kids he didn't cross all of his t's and dot all of his i's did he get in trouble uh in terms of how much trouble he actually got in i'm not i'm not sure yeah certainly he has remorse about how it went down i ended up like i ended up becoming an all-american i ended up playing on the canadian national team i ended up getting scouted to play for you know better prep

Starting point is 00:28:39 schools that were established and different things there did end up being an issue with my transcripts from that school so i had to redo that year right it's all water under the bridge now but part of it comes down to that issue of resilience and how you internalize things that happen to you i didn't ever see myself as a victim at that school even though we were literally we got in fistfights over food right because they would drop over think about it you have 16 boys between the ages of like 13 and 19 you drop off groceries once a week what do you think kids are doing they're storing it under their mattress they're taking it to their room right the biggest kids are like nah man that's all mine and you got it like but i that's how i had to come up right

Starting point is 00:29:22 and so when i think about opportunity i see what's there when a lot of folks don't see what's there so i saw that opportunity as my my chance to get to a better school so i was like the basketball piece of this is real deal we got andrew wiggins here we're playing we played mount zion and i dropped a 30 piece on mount zion right there's coaches in the stands yeah i'm not going anywhere yep i was like i got this i can fight for food i can sleep in a in a room with four boys i don't care i'm gonna leverage this and i did and the next year i went to wilbraham and munson which a really really good private school outside of boston and from there right got the scholarship to kansas and then but you always have to be prepared for a punch in the mouth so i signed

Starting point is 00:30:07 with kansas which was the number one school in the country at that time dream come true for me yep at that point a total crazy story from homelessness to where i was in north carolina now i've signed with the number one school in the country yep everyone thought i was going to the league right away and i spend the whole summer there and what happens ncaa rules me a partial qualifier really because they don't accept the transcripts from that school in north carolina really right and so it's a big punch in the mouth it's like literally i'm at the precipice of everything i've ever wanted of course i gotta make it to the league now look who i'm around i'm training with thomas robinson i'm ben macklemore was in my class all leaguers everybody

Starting point is 00:30:48 right and so from there it's like well what do i do and i had learned though through my life up until that point this isn't a time to internalize my victim this isn't a time for that what do i do they were trying to get me to go to a juco because that's the easiest way to get people qualified get them back and i was like as a in terms of academically i was a 1450 sat so i was like i'm a better student than that there's got to be a better way right all due respect to go in the juco route there's got to be a better way and so i decided to go to fresno state right i got going there the deal the goal was to do like a one and done right two and done what have you literally a month before my first season where i was going to be eligible to play i break my neck in a car

Starting point is 00:31:37 accident holy shit yeah c5 c6 totally destroyed yep they have to airlift me out of there in a helicopter I had a 0.06 percent chance of making a full recovery wow the the surgeon I actually had the same neck surgeon as Peyton Manning um Gene Kerrigan he said if I would have taken my jacket off if I would have tried to take my shirt off adjusted anything I would be a quadriplegic yep right because any little move and you learn this if you play football growing up you learn if you if your neck hurts don't move yeah you lay back straight and it doesn't matter where anybody tells you to do you don't move yep um but i spent a almost a month in the hospital lost almost 40 of my body weight and to learn how to walk again right and this is again it's

Starting point is 00:32:25 a punch in the mouth as soon as i clawed my way back to the to the mat again and i'm gonna have a chance to play it's at fresno state it's not kansas but it's okay i'm gonna leverage this opportunity it doesn't matter paul george just came out of here i got this right yeah but and tyler johnson came out of there too and did great former teammate but it's all about mentality at that point i've now broken my neck and you already know what's going on in the coach's minds they're like okay i don't know if like zero point coming back yeah that's tough we love you buddy but i think we got to start recruiting you know and so of course they're thinking i don't know what's going to happen with this guy and i don't know what's going to happen to me it's like the friday

Starting point is 00:33:04 night lights booby miles he's like hey doc am i going to be able to play again yes like i don't know man right and he told me that and I had that moment where you're seeing in the doctor's eyes he's he's he's not pulling your leg he really doesn't know yeah and from there I came up with a new game plan right it's again okay so how do I leverage this opportunity how do I leverage the opportunity it's just the mindset of being a gravely injured may not make a full recovery but still on full academic scholarship as of right right now how do I take advantage of that and literally the only answer is okay right now you're still being paid you don't get paid in dollars as a student athlete but you get paid in education so my goal at that moment was i want to

Starting point is 00:33:49 become the highest paid college athlete of all time right in education and how do you do that max out credits i took 32 credits that next semester the next semester another plus 30 the next semester almost 30 27 right i had to write letters to the president university that to get permission because 15 is usually the max yeah right um but that it's dollars every credit was dollars so I graduated early and then from there again if your goal is to become the highest paid basketball player in college of all time I always want to go to law school let's make basketball pay for I graduated early I had two years of eligibility left right so I'm just I'm scheming because so many people get taken advantage of by the amateur system in the NCAA

Starting point is 00:34:37 belay i i was the perfect candidate for somebody to get taken advantage of somebody who was supposed to be this great player who gets in a terrible car accident and now what am i going to do go back to canada and sleep on my mom's couch yep until i'm homeless again right it's like no i don't have that opportunity to be average or to internalize this as wow i'm a victim again can you believe it everything bad keeps happening to me everything bad did keep happening to me but it didn't matter right and so from that moment it's again I remember talking to my coaches at Fresno I was like hey I want to graduate early I want to be the first person to ever play NCAA ball while in law school full-time that's awesome and the dude I mean not gonna name names he laughed

Starting point is 00:35:23 in my face yeah and like I have to share that because it was one of the most pivotal moments for me again yep when someone laughs in your face man and like truly from a position of experience thinks it's funny what you think that you can achieve yeah they're laughing at your ambition dude it's testing yeah and it it absolutely is the measure of a human being what you do next and how you respond and i was like okay this is gonna be harder than i thought right because if he thinks that it's that funny i have to think about objectively and pragmatically what that means it means that it really is gonna be hard because no one's ever done it why is that so i had to put more time and effort into my game plan to make that happen and how i did that was i

Starting point is 00:36:07 started to think about what is the value why would anybody let someone do that right because there's a lot of downsides if you let someone do something that's never been done if you fail you look stupid you look silly the whole university the athletic program that you're gonna say why'd you let this kid do this of course it's not gonna work that's why it's never been done because whatever you're gonna say athletes aren't cut out for law school or whatever you're gonna say or or it's too much of a burden to play eight hours of basketball and be a full-time law student it was ridiculous it was truly an absurd um an absurd journey to go through um but i pitched it as well the value in doing it is that what if i succeed what if i what if i do succeed and maybe i'm the guy to do it

Starting point is 00:36:57 right and I had to just kind of pitch them on listen Seton Hall I've been through a lot and I've overcome a lot and I don't lose I may fail in the mean like failure isn't gonna stop me right if I get punched in the mouth I'm gonna keep going and I'm not gonna make you look bad and I promise you I'm the guy who's not gonna make you look bad and I'm gonna leverage all of the possible value out of this law school education and being a student athlete that I possibly can to make the university look good and to make myself look good and to make the basketball team look good and the law school look good. Right. And you just got to take this chance on me. I'm the guy. And luckily they saw in me, they're like, listen, I don't want to get in your

Starting point is 00:37:42 way. Right. You may be right. You may be wrong, but you seem really sure about this. I'm not going to get in your way i hope it works out and i think a lot of times in life people are afraid to put their greatest ambitions out there there's a lot of people who say you know what you do in the dark shines in the light and stuff like that i totally disagree with that the universe works in a way that when you put out there your greatest hopes and dreams and desires and you work as hard as you possibly can you tell others all volunteer information here's all the things i'm doing to make this happen i'm not asking you for anything but are you gonna get in my way are you gonna try to stop me right and that mentality i think is something that's missing a lot from the narrative

Starting point is 00:38:30 around a lot of different issues that have to do with resilience particularly black resilience and black empowerment that's not something that's been focused on right so if you think about black lives matter it's it's polarizing there's a lot of people who have a lot of different things to say on both sides and it it's divided a lot of people yeah it's been important in terms of awareness right i think that's really one of the only things that it's done is driven awareness and there's just a flip side to that coin but without undermining what black lives matter has done let's think about what it hasn't done 64 of black americans in this country say that black lives matter and the increased attention on on racism over the last couple years hasn't led to any

Starting point is 00:39:17 meaningful change in their life which is pretty profound yeah it's pretty crazy stat it's like and i think it's very surprising when i especially with folks that i speak to um both sympathizers and people who have you know their own opinions about it it's that's surprising and the reason why is celebrating victimhood creates more learned helplessness, right? So when you celebrate and focus your attention on victimhood and pain and trauma, and you think about millions and millions of black Americans and white Americans for three years being locked in their house, watching videos of black people getting killed every day,

Starting point is 00:40:00 that doesn't build up a strong narrative and a strong idea about black people as strong, powerful, capable, skilled, excellent people in our society, right? That doesn't necessarily inure itself to the right approach in terms of hiring, right? If you're hiring a black person because you feel sympathy or because you feel guilty, that's not why you should be hiring black people or anybody in a diverse group, right? If you think about the feminist movement and what made it really, really successful was it was the celebration of excellent women. It was excellent, excellent women who were geniuses, who were really great at what they did. And the whole world was like, wow, I need to hire a woman right now.

Starting point is 00:40:58 Right. If you're head of a company, you're like basically pattern recognition. Like it's the it's the creation of a new pattern to recognize. Right. This episode is brought to you by Amber Data. If you're a financial institution entering the digital asset class, you'll need access to granular on-chain and market data from multiple venues to power research, trading, risk management, and compliance. Amber Data delivers comprehensive data and insights into blockchain networks, crypto markets, and decentralized finance, empowering financial institutions to apply traditional finance methods to digital assets. AmberData eliminates the infrastructure setup, integrated challenges, and maintenance headaches to access digital assets data, reducing cost and time to market to enter the digital asset class. Learn more and download their digital asset data guide at www.amberdata.io.pomp.

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Starting point is 00:42:32 is the market-leading solution for institutions across crypto trading and custodial services. LMAX Digital, secure, liquid, and trusted. Go learn more at lmaxdigital.com slash POMP. Again, that's lmaxdigital.com slash POMP. It's fascinating because I think a friend of mine said this to me one time.

Starting point is 00:42:51 They're immigrant. And we were talking about, uh, uh, I think a report had come out and it was all about, uh, percentage of employees that were born in the United States versus immigrants and all this stuff. And he said it to me in just like such a blunt way. He's like, I don't want to be hired to become an immigrant. I want to be hired because I did a great job. And I just was like, I've never heard anyone just explicitly say it in that manner. And his point was, uh, um, I don't want to say where he's from because it'll give it away. But like, he was like, where I'm from, no one expects them to be able to go from

Starting point is 00:43:21 there to a highly successful job in tech if i do it maybe actually people will then say maybe i should go find another person who is an immigrant from that place right and you create this new pattern to recognize and in some way like there's a lot of patterns like uh one of the things that uh is like very weird um is like the autistic uh pattern of somehow in tech uh people are like oh if there's like an element of like being on the autism spectrum uh there's value that is assigned to that because of past patterns that they have identified and so you like start to see this and i think what you're describing is less like uh the sympathy component and more of like how it takes somebody to be the first data point in the trend that then creates the pattern which then people

Starting point is 00:44:11 use to recognize over and over and over again right and to enrich and and grow yourself yeah right so i think about the pioneer definitely benefits from being the pioneer absolutely and everybody watching the pioneer yes who came from that same environment yeah i grew up not ever i never saw a black doctor black lawyer black investor black entrepreneur just didn't see it right and that does a lot that does a lot to you in terms of what you think you can achieve a lot of folks growing up in black communities see black athletes they see black entertainers and there's no question if you ask folks in those communities do you think you could become a rapper or an athlete most people say yeah i could do that right and but if you ask them could you

Starting point is 00:44:53 become and you know a billion dollar investor do you think you could create a startup that 10x is and gets you know listed um on the new york stock exchange or do you think you could become an attorney at the biggest law firm in the world it's a little bit like oh i don't know right and some of my teammates and some folks along the way have told me about my aspirations that that's white shit that's white right me focusing on school me wanting to become an attorney that's white i'm trying to succeed in the white world and that's bullshit right just plain and simple that's bullshit but that kind of narrative gets that narrative is created from the celebration of victimhood and the focus on it without putting the focus on folks who actually are succeeding

Starting point is 00:45:44 because there's actually a lot of black entrepreneurs and a lot of black achievers and lawyers and and doctors i'm fascinated with uh jc uh mainly because um obviously he he comes from where he comes from his kind of early career is very well documented now i think is very well respected in the business community and the investment community people realize like hey this guy like understands what he's doing and they respect him for the skills and experiences that he's acquired uh but then he still will turn around and he'll use the music to basically talk about it uh and in the new dj khaled song uh he basically talks about like he says something like you know uh there's three billionaires that come from uh kind of his uh group of friends um him

Starting point is 00:46:26 kanye rihanna and then he's like oh by the way lebron is also a rock boy right so that's four then he uh explains something he's like from corner boys uh we're corner boys with corner offices and this idea of like he still has a very similar mentality of just like get up every day work your ass off like do the things necessary to be successful but he's been able to transcend into like a different world and i think that he probably more so than anyone else i've seen in music or entertainers or anything uh maybe you could put like a michael jordan lebron up there as well but like jay-z specifically has been able to do it and then talk about it in a way that i think resonates with tons and tons of young people and it's pretty powerful he's a he's a perfect

Starting point is 00:47:02 example yeah of black resilience of black excellence it's and again it it starts with whatever you have for jay-z it started with music and he was a very talented musician and artist and he leveraged that to create an empire and to become a businessman right that is really really important because for me, all that I had, I was homeless. I literally needed basketball. Like it's okay. I needed it. It was my ticket to get an education. I would never have gotten an education without basketball, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter now, right? I'm an attorney at the biggest firm in the world. It doesn't matter that I, that the only reason that I got- No one asks you that when you walk in the room. Right. It doesn't matter, right? You're all,

Starting point is 00:47:48 you're in the same room as everybody else. And Jay-Z is a perfect example of that. Yeah. Tell about the book you you wrote a book on a lot of these topics which i think is uh fascinating because it's not just like you understand them and and kind of live your own life that way you also took the time to write them down so that other people could read them as well yeah i i thought about how can i best leverage my story and what i've been through to help other people and help as many other people as possible and i think there's there's a lot of stories from my background and my experiences that have to do with racism and overcoming bias some of them have to do with other things too but black resilience is is really about celebrating and focusing on

Starting point is 00:48:29 how black people in troubled environments in you know against all odds have become successful anyway and it's not about saying that racism doesn't exist and that it's not a problem it's about focusing the narrative on what we can control right and i think about when i break it down in terms of what i've done and what many other you know black successful people have done is they've taken inventory of the things that they that they can control right every one of those times that i told you earlier in the podcast that i got punched in the mouth i took inventory of okay this happened i can feel sorry for myself or i can start taking inventory of the things that i can actually control or influence and putting together a plan of attack to seize every single

Starting point is 00:49:21 one of those. And, and I think that message needs to be relayed to more people. There's too many black Americans in this country who have seen nothing but a narrative of white people preaching at white people, black people preaching at white people. If you look at most books about race and blackness they're written to a white audience that's crazy leave white people alone for a minute right white people need to have their own conversations black people need to have their own conversations and to the extent that white and black people are having conversations let's not have every focus conversation be on the focus of racism and making the other person feel guilty that's not how you're going to build a bridge that's not how you're going to build one community

Starting point is 00:50:04 racism is an issue how do we solve that issue because for 30 years all we've done is preach at white people to tell them that they're racist and it's not working so even if you thought that that might work it's not working we have the data it's not working so i wanted to make sure that i was putting on a message that just takes a different approach right it's not that i'm not going to say that it hasn't solved anything what we've done over the last 30 years but it's it's certainly not carrying us over the goal line and to me i think focusing on the black empowerment and a huddle right i think about the book is really a huddle it's a black huddle where anybody can pull up a chair black white doesn't matter pull up a chair right but this is a black

Starting point is 00:50:50 conversation i'm talking to black people the whole time right and we're talking about the issues that are that are that are facing us in our communities and the challenges and the obstacles that we're going to have to overcome and how you might be able to go about overcoming those things and be grateful for the opportunities that you do have and how you might be able to leverage your career as a musician to turn that into something else. Leverage your career as an athlete to turn that into something else. But bias is nothing but somebody else not understanding who you are. They just don't get it. They're not from that position. As somebody who's involved in Bitcoin and crypto, you know, there's a ton of people who are biased against Bitcoin. They don't

Starting point is 00:51:30 know really anything about it. Right. Except for a bunch of propaganda that they've heard. And so you say, oh, yeah, I'm Anthony Pompeano. I'm a Bitcoin guy. Right. There's a lot of things that go that run through their mind about what that means. A lot of those things completely inaccurate because they're ignorant. Right. They don't actually understand it. Education is the great equalizer right and so the question right for you would be well how can i make sure that i build a bridge to more people so that they're not just writing me off so i can actually add value to their lives and educate them is it going to be to say to every person you're ignorant you're biased you're a jerk probably won't work right and so similarly if somebody is biased and maybe a little

Starting point is 00:52:15 racist whether they know it or not is the best way to build value for myself and my brand and what i'm trying to accomplish to say you're racist you suck you're a jerk probably not it's about tact right it's about building a bridge trying to help that person understand who it is that you are right with my professors in college and in law school in the first day of school i'd always give them like a little mini speech i'd be like listen my name is brayden i play basketball but i care about this class so much i want to be a lawyer right i read x and y studies that you did i read your paper on y i'm super interested in z make sure that they understand oh okay he's not like the other basketball players whatever it is that they got going on i just assume they have something

Starting point is 00:53:02 going on of course right because i'm not gonna let some i'm not gonna let bias stop me from getting a good grade in this class and if i have to you know if i have to kind of swallow my pride for a moment and give you a little mini speech and make the first effort to get to know you i'm going to do that because my career and my life is important yeah it's powerful right absolutely where can people find the book so it's available almost anywhere amazon barnes and noble right you can you can find on through the simon schuster website if you just google black resilience It's Brayden Anderson. You should be able to find it pretty easily.

Starting point is 00:53:38 And what about yourself in terms of people want to follow up with you or kind of discuss some of the ideas you've mentioned today? Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best way to get in touch with me. Yeah, big LinkedIn guy. That's how we got connected. It's a great tool to connect with like-minded individuals and people who are trying to build great things that are going to help people. Awesome.

Starting point is 00:53:57 And just Brayden Anderson there as well? Yep, absolutely. Awesome. I really enjoyed today. I think that you have a unique perspective on a number of different things, obviously crypto regulation, but also just kind of the different points in your life. And I have often joked but also dead serious of like we have a mental toughness crisis in America, probably globally. And I think the ideas that are in your book are quite powerful for people, and a lot of people would benefit from just hearing them. You don't even necessarily have to embody all of them.

Starting point is 00:54:28 you don't have to say, yes, this is the only solution, but I do think it's quite powerful. So I suggest people go get it. Yeah, it's about starting the discussion, right? It's just about having, not everyone has to agree with every single thing in my book or everything I've said today, but I think it starts a conversation and it's a conversation that we need to have in this country. I love it. We'll definitely do this again. I appreciate you coming today. Awesome, man. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry,

Starting point is 00:55:00 we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to thecryptoacademy.io to learn more.

Starting point is 00:55:25 Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with your friends and I'll see you all for the next episode.

The Pomp Podcast - #1101 Braeden Anderson On When Crypto Regulation Is Coming

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