The Pomp Podcast - #1430 Anthony Pompliano & Phil Rosen | Bitcoin Showdown: Donald Trump vs Kamala Harris

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

Phil Rosen, the Co-Founder of Opening Bell Daily, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin, US economy, stocks, Presidential election, prediction markets, and what we expect to happen throughout the end of the year.  ======================= The Pomp Podcast is powered by BetOnline.ag, the premier crypto-friendly place to gamble on politics and sports, casino, poker and horse racing. BetOnline.ag gives you the ability to use Bitcoin and more than a dozen altcoins to make deposits and withdraw your winnings. There are no crypto transaction fees, and processing is instantaneous and secure. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use PROMO CODE: POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline.ag is available in nearly every country around the world, making it the top global gaming destination for crypto users. ======================= 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've got Phil Rosen. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Opening Bell Daily. We talk about the U.S. economy, stocks, the presidential election,

prediction markets, and what we expect to happen through the end of the year. Bitcoin's price is surging, stocks are going up, and the presidential election is almost over. So this conversation unpacks it all for you. Everything you need to know right now in the economy. So here's my latest conversation with Phil Rosen. it. 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. This episode is brought to you by BetOnline. Do you like making a profit from sports betting? Well, set yourself up to take home the most profit possible using crypto to fund your sports betting, casino, and poker account at BetOnline.ag. You can avoid costly transaction fees, get your payouts lightning fast, and do it all securely and anonymously with the highest deposit and withdrawal limits in the industry. If you want to get in on the action, do it the smart way with crypto at BetOnline.ag. Head to the website, sign up with promo code POMP100 to get a 100% bonus on your crypto deposit today. If you go and you deposit, they'll give you 100% bonus if you use promo code POMP100. Bet online. The game starts here. Betonline.ag. Go check them out today.

All right, Phil, what's the first topic I'm going to talk about? Okay, so Bitcoin just hit 71K. I think it's still going higher. And it's at that level for the first time since June on track for a 12% gain in October, which would be its best month since May. How much of this do you think is the market pricing in a Trump victory? Because he's been courting himself as the pro-crypto candidate. I think the market understands three things are happening. Interest rates are going down, which means the cost of capital is going down. The money supply is expanding, which means that liquidity is coming into the market.

And therefore, the dollar is going to be debased. And then the third thing is, I do think that the market is now saying, hey, we think Donald Trump is going to win. What's fascinating is that the first two points are much more important than the third point for Bitcoin's price. Now, market sentiment is very heavily tied to that third point of Donald Trump winning as president. But I think that who sits as the Fed chairman and what monetary policy is, is drastically more important than who sits in the Oval Office. Yeah, I totally agree with you. But then if you look at what, for example, the media is covering,

it is all about Trump and his positioning as a crypto guy. Where do you think Bitcoin goes under a Trump White House versus a Harris White House? The media is covering that story because it drives clicks for their newspapers and their outlets. And also the media doesn't have any skin in the game. And so it's a good story. It's obvious why people are attracted to it,

but I don't think that it's completely rooted in fact. In terms of where Bitcoin goes under both VP Harris or former president Trump, higher. And this may be surprising to people, but I do not think that VP Harris can hurt Bitcoin. I do not think Donald Trump can hurt Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is predisposed to continue to benefit from the debasement of the dollar. And we're going to see the debasement of the dollar happen under either administration because both Republicans and Democrats increase the national

debt and debase the currency. And so Bitcoin is going to go higher. The question is how quickly, how severely are these moves? A lot of that will depend on what is the monetary policy under each one of these people. Do you think there's a chance that Bitcoin goes higher under one or the other as far as, you know, maybe a 10 or 15 percent move under Trump or maybe a 12 percent? You know, I don't know. The only thing I think the president can affect at this point in terms of Bitcoin's kind of vertical price growth is if Donald Trump actually does what he says and he creates a strategic reserve of Bitcoin for the United States, I think that would kick off a domino effect across the world and a lot of other

countries would start trying to buy as much Bitcoin as they possibly could. That is the only thing that i see a president being able to do that would have a drastic kind of advantage for bitcoin everything else is pretty much noise uh as we've seen bitcoin has continued to do well uh under a kind of abrasive regulatory regime we've seen uh you know organizations continue to adopt it even though we had that regulatory kind of environment and so uh the only lever that i think the president can pull is create the strategic stockpile he says he's gonna do it Let's see if he can actually get it done if he becomes the president. Now, VP Harris, if she became president, it doesn't mean that she wouldn't do it.

But I got if I was a betting person, I would say that Trump is much, much, much more likely to try to do this than VP Harris. VP Harris seems to be reactive to the Bitcoin community, kind of trying to reset relations only because she realized that those people didn't like her policies, her administration. Whereas I think Donald Trump is leaning in. He's being more proactive and he's saying, hey, look, this thing that you have, I'm going to protect it. I'm going to make sure that you all kind of get what you want. And this is classic politics. One side is trying to serve the constituency base, the other side isn't. And so naturally, that's where you see a lot of attention, capital, support, et cetera, flowing. Yeah, I think the narrative has definitely been markets pricing in a Trump win. And that's shown up in the stock market as

well. We're at near a record high in the S&P 500, but that's actually quite typical for stock market history stocks are always usually very very strong during election years i think in the last 75 years there's only been a negative s p 500 twice in an election year maybe stocks are not going up because of one candidate or the other maybe stocks are going up because we're getting closer and closer to clarity and so if we are five days six days seven days eight days nine days away from the election we're getting closer and closer and closer to getting our answer and if neither candidate actually is going to be bad for the stock market than actually having the clarity, maybe the thing people are starting to price in. I'm not saying that's 100% right, but I do think

everyone focuses on who the candidate will be more so than the fact that right now there's uncertainty. Come November 6th, there's not going to be uncertainty. And therefore, as we get closer to that date, you should expect the market to be kind of revving, getting ready, getting ready, getting ready, getting ready. And then I do think that we will see the stock market into 2025 continue to go up, regardless of who the president is. What happens in the first week after the election would be very interesting. If Donald Trump is elected, I expect it to go up. If VP Harris is elected, I do think we could see a sideways to down stock market for a week or so. And then people kind of remember, hey, structurally, stocks only go up over the long run

because of that debasement of the currency. Do you think a Harris presidency or a Harris win in that first week you said sideways or down is that just because it would be counter to expectations i think that's right um you know as we've talked about plenty of times in our conversations the last couple of months is uh the stock market goes up under every president uh the stock market has performed very well actually better under obama and clinton than any republican president last 50 years uh and so regardless of what the actual policies are regardless of what the actual performance is right now many people are pricing in a trump victory And so anytime that the market is surprised, people sell.

And so naturally, there's this kind of like, oh, I didn't expect that sell. Whether that's for one day or one week, I'm not sure. But I do think that if Trump gets elected, people kind of net long, let's go. If Harris gets elected, I think there will be a little bit of surprise to people. And therefore, again, it could be a sell off. It could be kind of just sideways. But I would be surprised if we saw a pop in stocks after Harris was elected in that first week. Yeah, I think that makes sense. So the biggest thing that I think around the election and

financial markets is really this, these betting markets that have come out Kalshi and Polly market, I think predicted is another one. We're seeing markets, financial markets with rising bond yields, stocks and crypto all going up. And that's what people have said are pricing in a Trump victory. But I wonder how much of those financial market moves are coming from the influence of betting markets so heavily pricing in Trump. I don't think there's as much connection between, let's say, Bitcoin and the price and the prediction market stocks in the prediction market. Just look at the volumes, like the volumes on these kind of assets are much, much higher than what we see in these prediction markets. Now, what I will say is there are certain

assets that are more likely to be held, most likely, by people participating in the prediction market. I don't think that, you know, BlackRock or Vanguard's on the prediction markets. And so if you think of their retirement accounts now, yeah, they're starting to put a little bit of Bitcoin in there, but they're more S&P 500, NASDAQ, you know, Russell 2000, kind of set it, forget it, index, be passive, and let's, you know, kind of protect your wealth. there's a lot of meme coin traders who hold you know name their favorite crypto bag who's also like let me just go punt on you know calci or polymarket or whatever and so i do think that there's this element of you would expect kind of the the highest risk assets that the most

volatile assets those are the ones that are going to be most likely held by these prediction market uh traders and so you should see some correlations there that you might otherwise not expect merely because it's just the same person holding these things. The other thing that I think is really interesting is the bet sizes on Kaoshi between Trump and Harris. These are like pretty small investments. They're like, you know,

I think the median bet size is like $30,000, $35,000. We're not talking about people putting millions of dollars in. We're not talking about people putting $5 in, right? And so really it's, you know, a couple thousand, maybe a couple tens of thousands of dollars, which frankly is kind of like a Super Bowl bet. It's enough where like, hey, I'm really paying attention, but it's not so much that if I lose 10 or 20 grand it's going to like ruin

someone's life. Now, again, the, for the people who are doing this, losing 10 or $20,000 would ruin a lot of people's lives. It's just, those aren't the people in the prediction market. And so having this median bet size of call it, you know, 20 to $40,000 is pretty interesting because it means that like people aren't just putting $5, right. It is something that they obviously have some deep conviction in and they're looking for what is the payoff?

what can I possibly generate with this? And so I think the prediction markets are only going to become more important over time. I agree. And I think they're going to, I think every election will get bigger and bigger. But what's really interesting to me is that, and I see this in media all the time, the traditional polling and prediction markets get compared as if they're measuring the same thing, but they're actually not. And you sort of just touched on this. A prediction market is measuring someone's conviction in an outcome, but then a poll is measuring who someone is going to vote for or who they want to win, even if they don't think they're going to win. One way to think about this is like batting average versus slugging

percentage. Right. And so like the poll is kind of like your batting average. Right. It's just like, hey, how many times did we ask somebody, are you voting for Harris or Trump? And then this is kind of what they're saying. The prediction market in a weird way is basically looking for like how many home run swings are you taking? What is that slugging percentage? And so it is measuring something that's a little bit different. Now, what I will say that I think I believe this is what the outcome is going to be. So let me make a prediction about prediction markets if you'll let me. I believe that the prediction markets are going to be way more accurate than people think they are. And I think that people will start to point to the prediction markets more and more

as a data point or a signal for future events, whether it's politics related or not. But I think that the rise of prediction markets is going to set an alarm off in the polling world and specifically in the politics world. And when that happens, they are going to try to take components of or lessons from the prediction markets and start to incorporate it into their polling. And so I previously was like, oh, you know what's going to happen? Prediction markets to be more accurate. Polling is going to be over, you know, the death of polls. I don't think anymore. That's what's going to happen. I've talked to a number of people now. What I think is going to start to happen is you're going to start to see these two things start to merge a

little bit. And people are going to say, hey, you know what we could do? Like, what if we take some of the best parts of polling and we start to combine it with some of these free market ideas around economics and prediction markets, et cetera, let's put them together. What that looks like, I don't know, but you can imagine campaigns of the future trying to figure that out. And whoever is successful will have kind of the best data points on what is actually the truth on the ground. And when they get that truth, then they're ready to rock and roll. If you've got an information advantage in politics and you're pretty well suited. Yeah, that could be a great business if you can combine uh where people would put their money and how they personally view uh you know

their political leanings uh i do wonder um something that is interesting about the predictions and the polling polling i think is a lot harder to meet someone that has actually been called for a poll but then prediction markets i know a ton of people that have put bets down and that makes me think maybe I hang out with a bunch of gamblers, but also how widespread are these polls really going? Some of these polls are like 3,000 people. We have a country of 330 million Americans and they call 2,800 people and they ask them some questions. And by the way, if you think about it from one standpoint, you're like, wow, that's a really small sample size. On the other hand, especially if they're calling, to make 3,000 phone calls, sure, you got a lot of people calling,

but that's still a lot of phone calls. And so what they're looking for is they're looking for statistical significance. And you can imagine that designing the poll is almost more important than running the poll, right? So when I was at Facebook, one of the lessons that we learned was there's two things that were really important when you were doing kind of this iterative testing growth work is one, you got to design the right test. What is it that we are actually trying to answer here? So if, for example, you're trying to see, does the color red or green look better on me? Well, the test should probably involve having red and green put on you and then asking people what looks better or whatever your metric is. It wouldn't make sense to run a test

of is red or green look better and me walk around with a black shirt on, right? So designing the test is really important. The second thing and the part that everyone forgets is that it is essential that you run the test perfectly. Because if you get to the end of the test and you have the results and you're looking at them and it invalidates whatever your hypothesis was. Your hypothesis was red is going to look better than green. And you get to the end and it's like, oh, green looks better than red. You say to yourself, OK, but if you did not run the test perfectly as designed, you're left wondering, is it because my thesis was wrong

or would I have gotten the desired result if I had run the test perfectly? And so perfect execution is really important. If you go back to the polling, designing the test or designing the poll is really important. How well do they actually execute is a black box. Nobody knows. And so there's kind of those two components, but there's a third thing that Donald Trump introduced over the last 10 years or so in politics.

There's a lot of people who voted for him in 2016 that did not want to tell anyone. There's way more people now who see, I mean, they just held a rally in Madison Square Garden with 20,000 people inside and 70,000 people standing outside. A lot of MAGA hats, a lot of all this stuff, right? So it looks like there's more people willing to show that support, but does it show up in the polls?

Nobody knows. And so I do think that that is quite telling. One last thing I'll say to you about asset prices and politics I think is pretty important is that the rhetoric in this country has changed. We now are a country where people are going to start to fight back against taxes. That changed in the 2024 election. We have never had political candidates who agreed to not tax certain groups in the way that we're seeing right now. No tax on tips. That was the crack in the dam. No tax on Social Security. Another crack in the dam. No tax on overtime. Another crack in the dam. I've heard the idea floated that no tax on police, firemen, paramedics, cracking the dam.

We had Howard Lutnick on the podcast. He's talking about could we actually generate revenue and potentially put a dent in lower or even eliminate income tax? We now are a country that is getting back to its roots where people are saying to themselves, why is it that certain citizens are paying more than 50% of their income to the government? And if you don't pay more than 50%, why are you paying 40% or 30% or even 25%? Because this country existed for a long time with no income tax. And so now it doesn't mean that we're going to go from a lot of income tax to no income tax.

What it does mean, though, is you have an entire generation of people who start asking the question. The question eventually leads to proposals. Proposals eventually lead to action. And my bet is that over the next 20 to 30 years, you're going to see a lot of politicians running on the platform of I'm going to actually drop your personal taxes, corporate tax rate, all that stuff that's always going to get debated. But there are going to be a lot of politicians that say it is unfair that you pay so much in taxes. I'm going to bring it down. Now, there will be some that I would put in the category of being amateurs who are just going to promise I'm going to lower your tax rate, but they don't have a plan. There's going to be others that show up and they say, if I remove 10% of every single person's personal tax rate, I got to replace the revenue somewhere.

Here's my plan how to do that. And so we are now entering an age of creative finance in the government, which has never been seen before because the government historically has been filled with bureaucrats and people who they don't want to get fired. they don't want to take risk they want to simply keep the machine going but what i am hearing and the rhetoric from people definitely in the republican party but also starting to even see some people on the democrat side right some of these forward-thinking people hakeem jeffries rokhana etc creative finance is coming to the government and the question is what is the actual

things that get implemented how do they get implemented uh what are the results all that's up for debate but have you ever heard people talk about america inc have you ever heard people talk about monetizing the balance sheet of america have you heard people talk about let's get other countries to pay so we can lower our citizens tax rates game on and that's the world that we're headed into and it's pretty exciting that i think does sound exciting but i feel like uh you know sitting here in 2024 there are so many reasons why uh people would push back on that and i think the what would a politician's incentive be to lower everyday americans taxes there's two candidates in this party are in this race one of them is not a politician

there's a lot of people who are talking about it they're not politicians you're talking about business people who are saying enough right and so it blew my mind that's something that i've changed my opinion on uh or at least evolved my opinion on uh was talking to howard lutnick and sitting there he's not a politician he's actually very opposite of what most politicians are um but he's sitting there and he's saying to himself wait a minute this is a business problem we're talking about revenue and expenses doesn't mean america is a business where the government should be a business but it does mean revenue and expenses that's a business problem how do we solve this oh i'm a finance person guess what we have a balance sheet guess what we have this

the and that's the difference and so what i also see on the democrat side mark cuban anthony scaramucci right i see people there as well they're just as smart just as capable just as i think uh loving of america as well and so now what you get is you get this rise of these business people who is no longer taboo to say oh i don't want to be involved in politics the graying of the lines you can get on twitter and you can see people who you never thought bill ackman is tweeting about politics just as much as tweeting about finance, right? And vice versa. So is Mark Cuban. In what world did we have people doing this? Because historically, all these conversations happened in private, right? And you had to go on the mainstream media. That was the outlet. They

had the monopoly on distribution. That's gone. Now you got a supercomputer in your pocket. You pull it out, type a couple of things on your keyboard. Bam, you're reaching millions of people with your messaging. Elon Musk is campaigning in Pennsylvania. Again, Scaramucci going door to door in Pennsylvania, right? These are just a couple of examples, but we now are seeing the graying of business and politics. And as you bring more and more of these business people into politics,

they show up with skills and experience that can be helpful. And so I think that the single greatest alliance that can get created is all the business people come together. And in business, usually what ends up happening is people don't want to burn bridges. The whole idea of tribalism and kind of the political land in this

or line in the sand doesn't exist as much in business. So they say, hey, let's do a deal. Let's figure out how to do this. And so maybe the business people come in and they may not be able to solve all the problems. I know they won't be able to solve all the problems, but there may be some economic or business issues that they can solve. And if we start to see that happening, then we can keep pushing the country in a direction that I think most Americans are pretty happy with.

Do you have a dark horse prediction for the next two or three elections of who would come over from the business side to come in and disrupt politics? I don't think it'll happen the next two or three elections, but I think Kim Kardashian will be president. Wow. Yeah. Kim Kardashian is one of the only people in society who's been able to be a chameleon and continue to iterate herself from a sex tape to reality star to an entrepreneur, now to a criminal defense and kind of legal scholar who's literally got people out of prison. She's one Instagram post away from being the governor of california and if you can be the governor of california you can be the president she's very popular and uh she's still young enough and tapped in enough

to a very large portion of the audience where she can dominate headlines and so as she has gotten more aspirational she's got a private equity fund kind of all these different things she's pitted me the american dream which that that is very mind-bending to a lot of people That's a hot take. But that story is going to end up resonating with a lot of people. And so that's my really big dark horse. I think The Rock will try as well. There's something about being physically dominating on stage in these debates, etc. That is very helpful to a candidate. And I think that, you know, I've always said, imagine Donald Trump and The Rock debating each other and The Rock standing there and Trump's firing away at him. And The Rock just goes, shut your candy ass up. And I think a lot of people would find it quite funny. Right. he's very charismatic. And I think that that would resonate with people as well. And man, if the rock sat down with Putin, I think that maybe the power dynamics a little bit different. And so there is something about people like Kim Kardashian or the rock that I think will continue to infiltrate into politics. Trump, you know, was a was a great example. A lot of people forget

Zelensky in Ukraine, like this is a trend that is happening across society. And the last thing i would say is um i would expect that we start to see um very different marketing of these campaigns msg for the republican uh event like that that's basically a concert right how many stars objective stars not political stars just stars are showing up to that right pretty crazy look at the podcast usage by both harris and trump changing the landscape and so as all this stuff starts to evolve it opens up an opportunity for people like a kim kardashian or the rock to start to insert themselves into it because they're much more native to those uh kind of venues than let's say kind of traditional uh politics where you've got to go and kind of play

the machine game yeah i think there's a lot of uh upside but also there will be a lot of pushback when celebrities start using their celebrity to run for office i think that gets pretty dicey it's been happening throughout history yeah ronald reagan that's true right and here's what i would say is uh politicians just want to be celebrities like obama he's basically a rock star right and and by the way because he's such a great orator because he's got great stage presence because he can do all this stuff like he really used rallies in a weird way you could say that trump learned from obama right and they just started picking it up like what happens when you bring somebody who's a professional entertainer and put them in that environment yeah it could be over um what

What happens if Theo Vaughn ends up being the president? Oh boy, can't go down there. Well, on that note, Pomp, thank you for your time. Thanks so much for doing it. What's up guys? I hope you're enjoying this episode, but I got a quick message for you. I just released my very first book.

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Go check it out today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you buy your books. Hardcover, audiobook, it all works. Thank you so much for the support, and I'd love to hear what you think about the new book.