The Pomp Podcast - #1424 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Is Bitcoin Ready To EXPLODE Higher?!

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss why bitcoin is going up, why the mainstream media reports don’t matter, Goldman Sachs S&P prediction for the next decade, Elon Musk, and prediction markets.  ======================= Buy book: https://www.amazon.com/Live-Extraordinary-Life-Anthony-Pompliano/dp/0857199927/ ======================= Gemini is the safe and secure way to trade crypto. Gemini is offering eligible new users the opportunity to earn $100 in BTC when they trade $1000 in crypto within their first 30 days of signing up. Head over to https://www.gemini.com/partners/pomp and start trading crypto to earn $100 in BTC. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's up, guys? Today, I got an amazing episode for you with Polina Pompliano. In this conversation, we talk about why Bitcoin is going up and all the things that the mainstream media

is telling you don't actually matter. Who the president is, what's going to happen in the economy, none of it is going to matter, and I'm going to explain to you why. On top of that, we talk about Goldman Sachs and how they've lost their minds. They're predicting a negative real rate of return for the stock market over the next 10 years. That's wrong, and I'll explain that as well. Then we get into Elon Musk, the greatest entrepreneur of our lifetime, how he is doing what he's doing, even though he's being heckled and constantly overseen by so many different regulatory organizations that are just full of bureaucrats that are getting in his way. And then last but not least, we talk about prediction markets, what's going to happen

with the presidential election and why the prediction markets may actually be a little bit more accurate than you think. This conversation is full of different topics. I really look forward to hearing your thoughts, what you agree with, what you don't agree with, and of course, how we can make this better. So please leave comments or reply on Twitter. Here's my latest conversation with Paulina Pompliano. 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. Today's episode is brought to you by Gemini. Gemini is a fantastic platform. How do I know? Because I've used it for years. These guys get it. They right now have a special offer where they are offering all eligible new users the opportunity to earn $100 in Bitcoin. That's right, 100 big ones. They're going to get out in Bitcoin if you go and you trade $1,000 in crypto within the first 30 days of signing up. What is Gemini? Gemini builds crypto products that are simple, elegant, and secure. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the billionaire Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, founded Gemini in 2014 with a security-first mentality

and ethos of asking for permission, not forgiveness. They've been pioneers for the crypto industry since day one. And unlike many exchanges, they are available in all 50 US states. Gemini has tools for new and advanced traders. They've got an advanced trading platform called ActiveTrader, which is where crypto traders go for advanced charting tools, access to over 300 crypto trading pairs, and multiple order types to trade the way you want.

Head over to Gemini.com slash partners slash pump and start trading with Gemini today to earn $100 in Bitcoin. That's right. Gemini will give you $100 in Bitcoin. If you head over to Gemini.com slash partners slash pump and you trade $1,000 in crypto within the first 30 days. All right, Polina, what's the first topic we got today? All right, we got Bitcoin flirting with $70,000 on Monday as a spurt of inflows into exchange

traded funds for the largest digital asset, as well as optimism about the outlook for U.S. regulators supported, sorry, U.S. regulation supported sentiment. So the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs lured almost 2.4 billion of net inflows in the six days through October 18th. It's not going up because of any of that. Is it the election? People are just grasping for straws. No, it's not going up because of the election. It's not going up because the ETF flows. It's going up because it's time to go up. Sideway summer is now officially over and we go up from here. And so if you go back, you can use 2020 and 2021 as the perfect overlay. People forget that we

already had a supply shock earlier this year. The supply shock is that halving. And so in May of 2020 is when that supply shock happened. Bitcoin was trading somewhere around $8,000, $9,000. We then went the whole summer, sideways summer, and nothing happened. Everyone's like, well, is it broken? It's like a meme where they're like with the stick, we're just poking it, like, does it work? And then all of a sudden we got to the end of October and up only, and we went from $10,000 to $64,000 by March. And so in six months or less, we went up 600%. percent. Fast forward to 2024, there's a whole bunch of chaos, FTX, nonsense, bear markets, bull markets, interest rates, all of it is noise. What we are watching is we are now going to get

the pricing in of that supply shock. When we had the halving, we're pretty much flat to today. Sideways summer happened, the sideways summer is over, and we go up from here. And so people will try to attach Bitcoin to all these different narratives. Well, guess what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who the president is going to be, Bitcoin's going up. It doesn't matter what the monetary policy is, Bitcoin's going up. It doesn't matter what happens with the ETFs, Bitcoin's going up. And so Bitcoin is going to go up from here. The question is not whether it's going to go up, it's how much is it going to go up. And the severity of that move is going to be greatly determined by a number of different factors. Obviously, you need more buyers than

sellers. You need people to not sell and kind of hold that Bitcoin. There is a public narrative that Trump will be better than Harris for Bitcoin. All those things, they do not impact direction of travel. They impact the severity of the move. And so my guess is that we are going to see over the next 18 months or so a pretty substantial move in Bitcoin. My only word of caution is do not expect it to be nearly as big on a percentage basis as it has been in the past. And so if you're used to 500, 1,000% move post-having, maybe you should expect maybe 100% or 200% move, which still is great. But as an asset gets larger and volatility comes down, the asset naturally can't just keep compounding at these really high rates of return forever.

But let me just challenge that for a little bit. I hear what you're saying. Challenge away. Yeah. I hear what you're saying about it'll impact the severity or the magnitude or whatever. But how can you say that let's say it's been called the trump trade you know people are expecting trump to be much friendlier to bitcoin in the crypto environment um if harris is too i think i think people have said that she's looking to create a regulatory structure but let's say that there was a political candidate who got into office and suddenly was like absolutely not we're not going to be friendly we're not gonna we're going to be more punitive than supportive how

is that not going to impact the price that would be more bullish for bitcoin i think why because in countries where they have banned it pakistan nigeria china adoption goes up faster because the people understand that the government is full of shit and so if the government says you can't have something people are interested look at every industry that they've ever said you can't participate. The people revolt and they go and they adopt that industry. And so there's a huge argument that the war on drugs actually made the drug industry bigger. If you look at prohibition, yeah, sure, you pushed it into the shadows, but it actually probably made the alcohol industry bigger. And so if you think about kind of these industries have like a respawning of them.

So, look at nicotine as an example. Oh, we're going to slap all these labels. We're going to stop people from smoking cigarettes, all this stuff. A lot of people say, hey, that's a good thing. We're going to tax the hell out of cigarettes. How many kids are running around with nicotine pouches in their mouth? How many kids are running around with jewels and they're vaping? You didn't kill cigarettes. What you did is you just pushed it into other form factors. The people get what they want. And so, if you had somebody come in and say, I'm going to shut down Bitcoin, guess what everyone would do? They'd rally around it and they'd go buy as much Bitcoin as they could before that happened.

They go and they put it in cold storage and the price would skyrocket. So actually by them embracing it, it is making Bitcoin something that is, it's not that it's not going to go up. It's just not going to be a violent move upwards as people maybe think. Instead, you get what we've seen.

Bitcoin is up about 60% so far this year. And so that's a great performance for any asset. But 60% in a year where gold is up 30% year to date, up two times more than gold. And so you look at that and you say, look, it's not that crazy outperformance of gold's flat and Bitcoin's up 500%. And so I do think that you've got to kind of contextualize this. And then the other thing you got to look at is both candidates are saying that they are going to be positive, but it doesn't matter. The president of the United States cannot really do anything to hurt Bitcoin. A lot of people say, oh, what do you mean? They

could go and they could outlaw ownership. There's a lot of countries around the world that have outlawed ownership and Bitcoin did not care. Continue to produce block after block after block of transactions and Bitcoin is fine. So you can hurt the American citizens, but you can't hurt Bitcoin. And so that is really important because ultimately Bitcoin's value is derived from the fact that it is not controlled by anyone. It's never been hacked. It is a programmatic monetary policy that is globally accessible to anyone in the world. And that is a very nuanced component because in a weird way, the most powerful person in the world, the president of the United States, cannot wound and kill Bitcoin. Instead, Bitcoin will survive

the president, Bitcoin will survive the country, and Bitcoin will also continue to produce blocks of transactions, regardless of what policy is in any one country. And the craziest part is even if every country came together and they said, we're all going to collude and we're going to shut down Bitcoin, they couldn't do it. Bitcoin is the strongest computer network in the world. If you take AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, you put all that computing power together, Bitcoin is still bigger than all of them combined. This thing got like, talk about the public health crisis that got let out of a lab. This thing got let out of a lab in terms of the free market of ideas. And it is winning in a meritocrate kind of world because it is the best idea. It is the

best implementation. And so people want to attach these narratives because it makes us feel better. But the simplest explanation is the most likely. Bitcoin is going up because it's time to go up because we had a 50% supply shock. Demand has not changed. Actually, it has increased. Bitcoin's gone sideways. The coiling of the asset is ready to unleash. And here we go. And a small nuance, but you said that, you know, the returns may not be as lucrative now, but isn't the fact that the volatility has kind of dampened a good thing, meaning that Bitcoin is now so mainstream that you shouldn't expect these big swings in either direction? Yeah, I do think that there's a very strong argument. You know, the Bitcoin community is

good at a lot of things. One of the things that it is not good at is intellectual flexibility. And what I mean by that is it's very hard for Bitcoiners to hold in their head. I want mass adoption and I'm willing to give up returns for it. But that is what mass adoption means is if you want everyone to hold the asset, then you are going to get a dispersion of ownership. You are going to get a dampening of returns because it is less risky. So buying Bitcoin in 2024 is child's play compared to buying it in 2016. But if it is less risky, the risk you take is the return you get. And so you should expect a lower return. Now, the nice thing is Bitcoin is still quote unquote riskier than buying the S&P 500. So you

should expect it to outperform the S&P 500. And risk is not true risk. Risk is basically how many people in the market believe that this is safe, likely consensus, you know, you use your term of choice. And so my expectation is that Bitcoin will do better than gold stocks, real estate, anything else, but it's just not going to perform on the upside to the degree that it has done it in the past. By the way, that's what every cycle of history so far shows is that the returns in the first cycle were highest. The second cycle were second highest, the third cycle or the third highest. It's going to continue. But Bitcoin is up 60% to start the year. There's not very many assets that you could have bought at the start of the year on January 1st and outperformed Bitcoin.

And so I'm not bearish. I'm not saying that you shouldn't buy Bitcoin or hold Bitcoin. What I am saying, though, is you should understand that happiness comes from a meeting of expectations and reality. And if your expectation is that Bitcoin is going to $500,000 in the bull market and that doesn't happen, you're going to be unhappy. You're going to feel disappointed. But instead, if you have lower expectations and reality matches or exceeds that, then you will be happy. And so set your expectations lower for any sort of price movement in a bull market. And that is the way to guarantee that you are happy over the next 18 months. Fantastic. Goldman Sachs says U.S. stocks are unlikely to sustain their above average

performance of the past decade as investors turn to other assets, including bonds, for better returns. So Goldman also says that the S&P 500 index is expected to post an annualized nominal total return of just 3% over the next 10 years. You say you disagree with this analysis. Why? They should fire whoever wrote that report. That's how dumb that is. Why? If somebody in our organization wrote that report, I would fire them. You know why I would do that? because it is a mark of stupidity. Let me explain why.

If you hold bonds, you're an idiot. That point blank period. TLT over the last- This is not financial advice. TLT over the last five years is down like 25%. How is holding bonds? You don't make money. The real return on bonds is negative.

On top of that, you get the capital is being eroded away because of inflation, right? So people sit there and they say like, oh, I'm holding bonds. I have a 3% return, but whatever. No, you don't. You're losing money. You are losing money. Inflation isn't keeping up with. Yes. Bonds drive a negative real rate of return. And so it is dumb to hold bonds that do that. Again, you can argue with me all you want. That's dumb. How do I know? Because I have money in the market. Does the person who's writing this article, are they buying bonds? Show me your portfolio. If you're telling people that bonds are going to do so well, go put 100% of your

portfolio in there. Because if you're not willing to do that, then you shouldn't be able to write this report. On top of that, the idea that the S&P is going to return 3% a year for the next 10 years, that's the nominal rate of return that they're talking about. So if you add in inflation, They are basically saying that the stock market is going to return a negative return for the next 10 years. But let me stop you right there. Hold on. They say they also see a roughly 72% chance that the benchmark index will trail bonds

in a 33% likelihood they'll lag inflation through 2034. Are these people stupid? Do they understand how finance works? If you have a stock market that is priced in dollars and the dollar is being debased, You can't lag inflation because the inflation pushes the stock prices up. You're the 500 largest companies in the United States. You're the best companies ever created in the history of humans. And they're telling us that they're going to grow at less than 3% a year for the next decade.

That's what they're saying. Which means it's a negative real return. These people have lost their minds and they're violating rule number one. Warren Buffett is very fond of saying never bet against America. Goldman Sachs is basically telling people you should bet against America. Well, that's what they're saying. They're saying the S&P 500 is going to deliver a negative real rate of return. So if you as an investor read that and you want to make money, essentially, you should bet against America. You should sell and not lose money because a negative real rate

of return means you're going to lose money holding the S&P over the next decade, according to this report. That is dumb. Yet the S&P 500 is on track to outperform the rest of the world in eight of the last 10 years. The S&P 500 is destroying historical returns and has been for a long time. Why? Because inflation is higher than it historically has been. Earnings are better than it has historically been. These companies are more capital efficient than they've ever been. Think about how efficient some of these companies are. We've never had trillion dollar companies before. They're still compounding at incredibly high rates of return. One of the most interesting things about some of these companies is that as they get bigger, they grow faster rather than as

they get bigger, they grow slower. And so this idea that somehow the S&P 500, which right now is returning 11% a year, is the latest data. So on average, returning 11% a year, that somehow we now are going to drop to a negative real rate of return for the next decade. Yeah, but it used to be 13% in the last decade. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's part of adding to the 11%. It used to be, if you go all the way back to 1920, the average rate of return for the S&P is like 8%. So now it's 11 if you go and look over the last, I think the last like two decades or so. So it's actually increased. And some of those, depending on which time lapse you take, right? I don't know what it is, maybe the last seven or 10 years, maybe it's been 13%. And so if you then zoom out over 20 or

30 years, it's 11%. And so you can manipulate this data to say whatever you want. The one thing that I'm sure of, again, is whoever wrote the report, are you short the S&P 500? Show us your portfolio, or are you just screeching on the internet? Because there's a hell of a lot more people who are betting that the S&P 500 is going to go up compared to the people who think it's not. And so it goes back to, they put out these research reports. Show me that you believe what you're saying. Show me your portfolio. Because if you're claiming that the S&P 500 is going to have a negative real rate of return, I want to go buy a gun because that means America is going to be in a really bad spot, right? I want to actually start thinking about a hell of a lot of things other than

my investment portfolio. Because what would happen if all of a sudden the S&P returned a negative real rate of return? What about all the pension funds that owe money to people? What about all the people who are depending on the stock market to be able to live their life moving forward? all that goes away if you have a negative real rate of return. And so it goes back to the fact that this is insane. It is just showcasing either one, they're looking for attention. They got it. I'm paying attention.

I'm talking about you. Or two is they don't understand how the debasement of the currency and the stock market is related to each other. How is it possible that the analysts at Goldman Sachs don't understand the debasement of currency? Have you talked to some of these people before? All right. Again, there are some people, forget which company,

There are some people who work in finance that are very smart, but there's a hell of a lot of people that are really dumb. And the best way to show it is if you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Right. Warren Buffett has a great quote where he says Wall Street is the only place where millionaires ride in their Bentleys to go take advice from people who don't have a million dollars that ride the subway. Right.

That's Warren Buffett saying that the whole point is that this is just a propaganda factory that they are putting these things out into the world. And they're making these claims. But if you're so smart, why aren't you rich? And again, it goes back to, there's a difference between the people in the market and the people commenting on the market. We need both. It's important to have both. There are times where the people in the market are wrong and the analysts are right. And the people who are producing the research, they're right. And when that happens, I promise you that the researchers, they take their victory lap. They say, I told you X was going to happen. I told you Y was going to

happened. Look at how bad the market was offsides here. Look at what happened in the housing crisis. I'm the one who wrote the research report, blah, blah, blah, whatever, right? But when the opposite happens, the market participants should also, they should call the foul. I'm throwing the yellow flag. I'm saying, listen, you guys, this is a penalty. You can't write a report like this and just get off scotch-free and no one critique it. Scotch-free. Scotch-free, scotch-free, whatever. Probably a guy named Scott wrote the report. Scotch-free, get your scotch tape out. Okay. I'm just saying that we should call it out. We should say it's stupid.

And by the way, if the analyst wants to make a bet, I would gladly bet over the next decade that the S&P does more than a 3% nominal return. Yeah. I can almost guarantee you that they won't take me on the bet. I will make a note and we'll return in a decade and rediscuss. That's fine. Okay. Let's talk about Elon Musk. Elon Musk has been busy.

Skin in the game. Busy. And in one week, he's caught rockets with some metal chopsticks. He has launched humanoid thing, robot things, and he's putting robo taxis on the roads, kind of. So, OK, let's start with the Starship rocket. Fun fact for those of you, we watched it live with our two year old in the room. And Anthony said a bad word when Elon caught the rocket. I said, holy S.H.I.T.

No, you said, what the? Oh, I said, yeah, I said both of them probably. It was a holy shit moment. It was a whole fuck moment. So I looked at him and I was like, oh. And then of course she just ran around the apartment yelling it all morning. Well, at least we know she listens to me.

She does. So, okay. So let's talk about that. This rocket was caught in a giant mechanical like chopstick situation. as part of its fifth test flight. What I thought was interesting about this is that Elon Musk himself

did not think that they would catch it. He thought it would take a few tries, but they caught it on the first try. What do you think? Because he set the expectation to meet reality. The odds that the first time in human history, we're going to launch the largest rocket ever created by humans.

And when it comes down, we're going to be able to catch it in a thing that no one's ever done before. It's very low. And so if you go in and you say, you know what? We're 100% likelihood we're going to be able to do this. You're probably going to be disappointed. But instead of you say, I actually don't think it's going to work, but we're going to use it as a way to learn. And then we're going to do this again.

Then if it works, you're, oh my God, that was amazing. And so it's just being pragmatic. The other thing that I think is really important about this is we need things like this to happen in our country so that young men and women are empowered to dream what is possible. There are so few things that happen on a day-to-day basis where somebody looks at and they objectively say, that was cool. That was impressive. I saw for the first time in a long time, a lot of people on Twitter say something to the effect of, I disagree with Elon Musk's politics. He's a bad guy, but that was cool. I respect that he figured that out, right? Kind of the like, let me caveat all this stuff and then give this guy kudos because you can't

deny results. Results are the best resume. And Elon Musk shows up and he's got a long list of results. And most of the people critiquing him online, all they got is hot air. And so watching something like that how many people i mean i did it i turned it on i got our kid and i said sit here right here watch this thing whether she remembers or not doesn't matter well to the point where she's now so excited about rockets in space she is having a uh a space themed birthday party because you end up being inspired by the things that you are exposed to right and so it doesn't matter that you can't explain to a kid how it works it doesn't matter that a kid uh doesn't even understand a hundred percent of what's happening. All they realize is that humans

can do anything. And so I liked, my brother tweeted out a picture of the original Wright brothers flight and then of SpaceX catching the rocket. A hundred year difference. In 100 years, we went from, can we fly to we can fly without people and catch ourselves in rockets in the air. The iteration. Imagine what happens in the next hundred years. Yeah. And so it goes back to this idea that regardless of what you think of Elon Musk, I don't care. Because objectively, he is the best entrepreneur of our lifetime.

He's solving real problems. And we are now figuring out that SpaceX can do things that governments can't. And that's the power of capitalism. That's the power of the private market. And anyone who is attacking him is attacking him for things that are not on the playing field. It's kind of like watching football. We'll get to that. Right?

You watch a football game. You can critique someone for what they do on the field, or you can critique them for what they do and say off the field. If you're objectively looking at who's the best player, none of the things off the field count. It's just, are you the best in between the lines? And in the game of business, Elon Musk, he's winning. It reminds me of the kid in school that was always a little rambunctious

or would talk back to the teacher, things like that. Probably the smartest kid in the class. And then you would want to knock him for that, But then he would like, you know, get an A on the test or like do things that were like, man, they're smart, but you want to not like them for certain things. I think when I was in school, I used to talk in class a lot, which that's, you know, not shocker. That's not very encouraged. And the teachers would always be like, stop talking. What did I just say?

I had 100 percent accuracy. I can repeat back to him exactly what they just said. And they would get so frustrated. And I would basically, I didn't know how to articulate it at the time, but I was bored. I would just sit there and just be like, okay, like, I don't need, I already read the book thing. Like, I don't need you to then regurgitate to me what's in the book. Like, do you even know what you're talking about?

Right. And so I do think that looking at people with idiosyncrasies, right. And, you know, all that kind of stuff goes back to Elon said it on SNL when he hosted it. He said, I'm trying to go to Mars. Did you think I'd be normal? Right, right. Kanye West, you know, show me a genius that's not crazy.

And I think that those things, there's a very strong hint of truth in them. And Elon just, you know, kind of is the perfect embodiment of that idea. Hot take. I like Elon. That shouldn't be a hot take. So the event also highlighted Optimus, Tesla's humanoid robot. It's capable of performing various tasks like navigating complex environments and assisting with manual labor. Here they have a photo of a humanoid robot waiter, it looks like, handing people drinks.

It can do assembly line work, caregiving, and even exploration in hazardous areas, demonstrating a broad potential impact across industries. I think this could be huge. I mean, obviously. It is going to completely revolutionize the world. If you think what Uber did, Uber essentially brought a private driver to every single person, right? And a private butler. All you do is you press a button and a car shows up. That used to be reserved at one point for kings and then eventually for rich people.

And now anyone with a smartphone can press that button and the car shows up. What these humanoid robots are going to do, what do kings have? Butlers. They have staff. What do rich people have? They have staff. What is the everyday person, regardless of wealth status, going to have?

They're going to have a staff. Now that staff, depending on who you are and what you do on a daily basis, may do different tasks. But how many people in America would love for someone to cook clean, fold laundry, mow the lawn, do all that stuff? Everyone would like somebody to do it,

but everyone then jumps to, well how much does it cost and a lot of people in america can't afford it but when you automate the work and you can drop the price down lower and lower and lower and lower eventually it will become cheaper to actually have somebody else do it than for you to try to do it yourself could you imagine having a private humanoid chef oh amazing that's what 100 coming but then it gets into things like this this is where it becomes really fascinating will the setup the structure the architecture of homes change yeah because you need to put the robot somewhere but you may not need a kitchen in the same way that you need it today

and so there's these ramifications across industries when a piece of technology like this comes uh out on top of that are you going to bring your robot to the grocery store If you go to your kid's soccer game, does the robot come with you? Does the robot have to wear a seatbelt? Does the robot have to pay taxes? Because Bill Gates thinks that you should, that the robot should have to pay taxes.

Oh my God. I disagree. But those are the questions that are coming is if this becomes prevalent. Right. Is the robot treated like a human or is the robot treated like a machine? I do think it's interesting that Musk,

I'm sure there's strategy and it's very methodical, but that he does want them to look human. And it's not just like a box, right? Because easily, this humanoid robot doesn't have to look like a human with arms and legs. It could just be like a box or some sort of vertical thing. I was talking to a VC once, and he told me that he was talking to me about the Roomba in their house. The little self-cleaning robot is just a circle that moves around the floor. But he was like, my kids think of the Roomba almost as a pet because there's something about when something moves, humans tend to anthropomorphize it. I think that's how you put it. They give it a name. They give it a name. They think about it as something with feelings

just because it moves. So I wonder like if, and that's just the Roomba, this is a robot that looks like a human. I bet you, you're going to be nice to it. You're going to treat it almost like a human living thing. I made an investment recently that I'm not ready to talk about yet, but it is in the robotic space. And all I can say is we're coming. I'm super excited about this. I think that it is when people see the demo of what these people have built, they are going to be blown away. And the only thing that I'm going to say is that, have you ever seen a robot unplug itself from the wall and go do what it's supposed to do and come back and plug itself back Oh, that scares me, but yeah.

These things are going to come alive. They are going to be here and they are going to do tasks for us. And so that is this huge wave of what's coming. People will fight it. People will say, I don't want it. People will say, that sounds scary, but you're going to put it in your house and it's going to do a lot of work for you and you're going to be happy. One of the only times Anthony has gotten misty eyed is when we watched a movie where a robot

got hurt. I already know you're going to say chappy. a robot got hurt he couldn't handle it you couldn't what was the name of the movie was it called Chappy you watch

yes you watch war movies and you were upset about the robot getting hurt because it was a human human on robot violence uh cut off his arm

if I remember correctly yeah he did not like that that's messed up man so we had to stop we didn't finish the movie yeah so I can't watch this this is violence like this

alright this robot should just spawn another arm and just smack this human to another planet yeah I think it was called Chappy. So RoboTaxi, it's a two-seater vehicle designed for individual or small group transport.

No, is this the same? RoboVan and CyberCab. There's two different versions. What is the one where there's a camera in your Tesla and you can make money while you're not in it? Well, there's the Teslas that exist today, which are the consumer cars. Okay. Then there's CyberCab, which is, you can own it and like rent it out, but basically just think of it like cabs that are full self-driving that just are like patrolling around a city and you basically, you know, call, comes pick you up. And then there's the RoboVan, which is like a 20 seater and can take you different, you know, different places.

Interesting. Because I remember I was always asking you like, why do the Teslas have this camera? And I think Elon's vision for the future is that people can generate some extra income by letting it be a robo-taxi for the day and then collecting their income. Yeah. I mean, well, the camera has a bunch of different purposes. One of them in the future could be, hey, you can actually see what people are doing in your car. But also, one of the things that it does is I believe that the camera evaluates whether your hands are on the steering wheel or not. So when you turn on full self-driving, if you take your hands off the wheel in some of the cars and some of the versions, the wheel will actually like give you a warning.

And if you don't kind of, you know, jiggle the wheel a little bit to make sure that it knows that you're back with your hands on the wheel, it will actually shut off the full self-driving. That's like a safety precaution. Okay. All right. So I have one more thing on the Elon topic. California officials cited Elon's antics in rejecting SpaceX's plan to launch more rockets off the central California coast. So the California Coastal Commission on Thursday rejected the Air Force's plan to give SpaceX permission to launch up to 50 rockets a year from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County. And listen to the reason.

Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the Internet. And that's why they rejected it. Fire them all. Right. Whoever can, whether it's the president on down, whoever is responsible, fire every single one of them. And when you fire them, put their faces on the front page of every national newspaper and say, we will not stand for abuses of power, unconstitutional behavior or political law. If we judged politicians on every lie they told, I think they'd all be rejected. I bet these people are on Facebook saying a bunch of nonsense themselves.

Right. And so it's got to be Facebook. That is, of course, it's Facebook. Sure. Of course, it's Facebook. That's what that's how you stop this stuff in this country is you fire them. And you put their pictures on the front page of every national newspaper and you say, these are the faces of people who are violating the Constitution, who are using political lawfare, and who are actively working against the best interest of our country. If you want behavior to stop, call it out and punish it.

But instead, they live in California and there's a bunch of people in California who are cheering them on. And so guess what? When they go on the weekend to their kid's soccer game or to a birthday party or out on Friday night, I bet that there are people saying to them, great job, way to get them. That is the difference. There's a fracturing in this country of two different types of people. There's a fracturing on one side of people who say, I believe X, but I am willing to defend free speech enough to defend your right to say things I disagree with. In the pursuit of innovation and bringing innovation to our area. No, just period. Not even innovation, just period. I believe X and I think you're wrong, but I'm still willing to defend your right to

say the thing I think is wrong. That's one group in this country. There's another group in this country which will say, I believe Y, and if you say anything else, you're a threat to democracy, you're spreading misinformation, and we should put you in jail. That's the difference between the country. It's a very extreme fracturing. I've never seen this before. But the thing that gives me solace in the whole situation is that the people who are willing to defend free speech, they have history and they have accuracy on their side. And so guess what? Elon Musk is going to still be launching rockets after these people are gone.

They may be able to give him a hard time right now, but he's still going to be launching rockets 20 years from now. And so when you see what is happening, the only way it self-corrects is if the people stand up and they say, you are wrong. You should not do this. It's unconstitutional to deny someone's ability to operate their business based on political beliefs. Why don't we instead start saying things like, you can't drive on the highway if you're a Democrat. That's about the same thing that they're saying. And so obviously driving on the highway with your Republican or Democrat and not allowing people to do that. Use a public good airspace is a public good.

Yeah. Then we would all yell and scream and say that's that's unconstitutional. People forget just real quick. How much the government overreached over the last five years. do you remember the guy in New Jersey who had a gym and the government kept telling him to shut down his gym? And he said, no. And they said, we're going to fine you. I think it was like $10,000 a day. And he said, do it. And he kept his gym open. If I remember correctly, he recently won in court and it was deemed that them shutting him down was unconstitutional.

There was something like that. Yeah. Right. And so all those people who were cheering the government on to do all that nonsense, they were wrong he was cleared of more than 80 charges they charged a man with 80 different things and you know what that man his face should be on the front page of every national newspaper and they should put him up there instead it's in like somebody who believes in the american constitution and was willing to stand up for those rights regardless of the personal pain he went through one of the charges is disturbing the peace i don't even know there could be a charge you get charged with that every day well i was gonna say uh what never mind okay so yeah if you

go back and you look at it people all want to say like oh the government has what's in your best interest no they don't they charge this man with 80 different things and it came out that none of them they went oh for 80 all 80 of them they were wrong on they violated his constitutional right as a business owner in america to operate his business and he ended up being on the right side of it all ian smith somebody should buy ian smith a shot how many other things are happening that we don't know about i saw a graphic recently that had all the investigations that all of elon musk companies are under it's like alphabet soup all these different organizations are all investigating by the way if he does something wrong then they should investigate actually this

is what i was going to say earlier is i think it's it's it's almost like mind-boggling to think the problems that elon musk has set out to solve are so just you know difficult it's like an engineering feet, each and every one. It's so hard. Rocket science. But he's been doing that and figuring that out with the backdrop of

constant regulatory nightmares. Did you see the SEALs? No. He came out. The government, this is not a joke, the government forced SpaceX to kidnap a SEAL and put headphones on

it to test how seals actually react to all these noises and all this stuff okay they also at one point he told a story that when they launched the rocket and they were gonna land it in the water asked well what if it hits a shark and he said uh the odds it hits a shark are like really low and then i put like what if it does and so he was like uh okay we'll go figure that out they came back and then the next question was like, what happens if we hit a whale? And he was like, are you guys serious right now? But that's the stuff that happens. And so what it goes back to is it goes, America has a bureaucrat problem, right? Guess what? Bureaucrats don't have anything to do. So they

sit around pontificating about bullshit. And then what they do is they take all of that pontification and all that bullshit. And then they bring it to people who are really doing things. And they say, well, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if? And entrepreneurs, you know what they usually say? I'm going to figure out the what ifs of the big stuff, and then I'll figure everything else out. And you know what? Yeah, it's just surprising that he's been able to do all of that, given all the roadblocks

on the regular. Imagine someone telling you, I can launch a rocket to space, and then I'm going to bring the rocket back down. I'm going to hit a shark in the water. You would be like, I'll bet my life you can't do that, right? So it's just stupidity. And so it goes back to there's a fracturing of the country. There's the doers and then there's the talkers. And if you look at it, unfortunately, we are now seeing the doers say, I have to get more involved in certain aspects of society that I didn't want to get involved in. I don't believe that Elon Musk enjoys going and talking about politics, talking about these stories. I bet that Elon would like to just build his companies. But it's not just a Republican thing, right? Now what we're starting to see is that actually there's Democrats coming out saying the same stuff.

I've seen more Democrats come out and say some version of I'm trying to do something in the business world and the government is stopping me. How many times has the FTC blocked acquisitions in the tech industry over the last five years? it keeps reinforcing this idea that if we want a country that is going to accelerate and have GDP grow and get results, we have to empower the people who are creating value. And so instead, we live in a country where people want to lionize success. Here's the thing that I think everybody should write moving forward, every time you mention Elon Musk's name, you have to put next to it, Elon Musk, the man who paid the most amount of taxes in a single year in history, did blah, blah, blah, whatever. How much would that change the way people thought about Elon

Musk? He paid $11 billion in taxes in a single year. It's the most money anyone had ever paid taxes in a single year but that's not the narrative the narrative is look at this leech he's leeching off the u.s government it's crazy i know all right well on a more positive note um america has a new millionaire class and it's made up of blue collar workers this isn't new it's not new okay but wait wait wait this is good this is a good thing that um it's interesting