The Pomp Podcast - #1448 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Bitcoin Preparing To Burst Into End of Year?!

Episode Date: December 3, 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 bitcoin having one of its biggest months of all-time, where the price could be headed, risks, how the market is changing now that Donald Trump is coming into office, Elon Musk pay package, Joe Biden pardon of Hunter Biden, impact of tariffs, and more.  ======================= 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. ======================= The future is being built today and the future of currency isn’t dollars, euros, pounds, or yen, it’s crypto. And Gemini thinks that’s a great thing. Because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that’s a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Go where dollars won’t. With ⁠⁠Gemini⁠⁠. ======================= 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 going on, guys? Today, I've got an amazing conversation with Polina Pompliano. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin. It just closed on one of its biggest months of all

time. And then we get into where I think the price of Bitcoin is going to go. What is driving all of this? What are some of the risks? And how is the market changing now that Donald Trump is coming into office? On top of that, we then get into Elon Musk's pay package. We talk all about Joe Biden pardoning Hunter Biden and what some of the ramifications are and why I think it's really important for financial markets, not just for politics. And then lastly, we finished up talking about some tariffs and what the impact on both Mexico, Canada, and various BRIC nations might be. This conversation is packed with unique insights and something that will make you think more critically about all the events that are happening in the world today. Once you get done listening,

let me know what you think. Jump on Twitter or leave us some comments and have me better understand what you think. What do you agree with? What do you disagree with? It's always helpful for me to get feedback. Here's my latest conversation with Polina 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. 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 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. Today's episode is brought to you by Gemini. The future is being built today and the future of currency isn't dollars, euros, pounds, or yen. It's crypto. And Gemini thinks that's a great thing because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that's a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Gemini teamed up with futurists, technologists, and designers like award-winning artist Matt Griffin, known for his illustrations for Dune, to craft a vision of the future with crypto at its core. The creative theme,

Go Where Dollars Won't, emphasizes exploration, growth, and the crypto market's limitless potential. Whether it's going on that Martian safari to capture an unforgettable photo of a herd of woolly mammoths grazing the red planet, or using Bitcoin to pay for your Lyft pass to go strata skiing down the mountain peak of a breathtaking comet. Whatever adventures we'll be living, one thing is for sure. In a future this fantastic, the limits of traditional currency simply cannot keep up. Financial innovation will usher in this new frontier. And so go where dollars won't with Gemini. Go check them out at Gemini.com slash go where dollars won't. Again, go check it out at Gemini.com slash go where dollars won't. All right, Plano, what's the

first topic. All right. Bitcoin just had the highest monthly close in its history. It feels like a decade ago, but the digital asset was trading just over 69,000 on November 1st of this year. And it's going higher. Everyone who's looking at Bitcoin always goes away for a little bit. They pop back and like, oh my God, I can't believe Bitcoin's at whatever price. This asset moves incredibly violently upwards when it decides to go up. If you go back a couple of weeks, you remember I told everyone, I said, the sideways summer is over. The boringness, the lulling you to sleep is over. We're going up in the next couple of weeks. I didn't know when, but here we are. The price is up 40, 50% since then. And the reason is we had that having all

the way back in Q2 of this year, that having created a supply shock. A supply shock took the number of Bitcoin that was coming into the market, cut it in half. And then you go sideways for the summer. Everyone kind of works it out. But now here we go. There's a lot of people in market buying. ETFs have over a million Bitcoin. You've got MicroStrategy buying billions of dollars per week. You've got many others around the world who are saying, I need to get some of my share of the 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist. So you have a supply shock, hit it with a demand shock, bam, let's go 2020 all over again. I know you don't make price predictions, but I read something interesting that global investment manager VanEck has reissued its $180,000 price

target for Bitcoin at the peak of the current cycle. Do you think that's realistic? I think that that's probably a base case for a lot of people. You know, I've previously said that I thought it was going to go much higher. I had what many people thought was kind of a bearish view was I could see Bitcoin going, you know, 150 ish, somewhere in that range. I think that people are very excited right now. They see that they're still from a timeline standpoint, a number of months, maybe nine months, 10 months, 12 months left in this cycle. And so if that is true, then Bitcoin is going to go higher. And the question is just how much higher does it go? And so if I had to poll all my friends, I think that between 150 and 250 is the number that most

people would come up with. 180 is somewhere in the middle there. But I also think what's really interesting is that the largest pools of capital are the ones who haven't bought yet. And so this thing can get more reflexive than it has been in the past, but the percentages aren't going to be as big. So if Bitcoin goes to $200,000, if I sat down with somebody and I said, Bitcoin's going to be worth $200,000, they'd be like, that's insane. Wow. I'm going to make, quote unquote, so much money. But if you actually look at it from a percentage basis, it's about 2X. It's going to double in price. And so what I think you're starting to see is a lot of investors who say, look, I've got Bitcoin. I'm not going to sell my Bitcoin. I'm going to hold my Bitcoin. But 2X,

as crazy as it sounds, isn't nearly as attractive of a return as maybe I can get in some of these other altcoins. And so you're going to start seeing people push further and further out on the risk curve as they think Bitcoin's return becomes less and less desirable. Now, do you think that this is a result of the halving and it's the cycle, etc.? Or like the VanEck analysts are saying, it's probably, you know, this increasingly friendly regulatory environment as a result of the Trump presidency. Well, it's everything, right? So Trump comes in, obviously people get more excited. It's not just a Bitcoin or crypto thing. It's a financial market thing. Everyone wants to invest. Donald Trump's

got a magic wand. He's going to wave it. Asset prices are going to go up. I do think that the regulatory kind of relief that is on the way is not going to affect Bitcoin as much. Bitcoin's already kind of through the threshold. We have the ETFs. We've got people who are buying it and kind of it's understood that this is not really caught up in that regulatory unclarity. But the altcoins are definitely benefiting from that. And so I think there's a lot of coins that previously were in the crosshairs of these regulators. As that regulatory relief shows up, then those coins will start to move upwards because people are saying, hey, there's no longer that kind of overhang. And then also, I don't think that people are giving enough credit to the fact that the

Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates and we have M2 money supply expanding. And so you basically have kind of the trifecta. You've got the supply shock from a halving. You have Donald Trump coming in with pro-Bitcoin and pro-crypto policies. And then you've got a central bank that is cooperating and is going to cut rates and print money. And so if you go back, knock, knock, if anyone remembers in 2020, I kept yelling and screaming over and over and over again, saying this is rocket fuel for Bitcoin in the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2020, because we were going to get a halving. We were going to get interest rates down and we were going to get printing of money, trifecta. And so you can look at history to understand what is likely to occur.

The hard part is predicting when it happens and how severe the move is. But obviously, if you had the supply shock that's now getting worked into the system, you have printing of money, you have interest rates coming down, you have Donald Trump coming in and saying, I'm going to protect this industry. I'm going to make sure that these assets are successful. What do you think is going to happen? It's not like Bitcoin is going to get cut in half. Instead, it is much more likely on a probability standpoint that the price of these assets goes up. Got it. And also, I read that the chief policy officer at Coinbase is saying that he sees crypto legislation making its way through Congress fairly quickly after Trump enters the White House. What is some of this legislation? Do we know? There's a bunch of different things that people are trying to do. I don't want to get into each individual detail because people are debating even what should get put forward, what's not, what's pro-crypto, what's not, what seems like it's pro-crypto, but it's really a Trojan horse, whatever.

Put all the noise aside for a second. When the president of the United States runs on a campaign promise to be pro-crypto, pro-Bitcoin, everyone else falls in line. And especially when you have such a sweeping win. A Republican won the popular vote. It is a mandate to go and implement your plan. Whether it works or not, we're going to find out. But it was a mandate from the American people to implement the plan. A key component of that plan is to be pro-Bitcoin and pro-crypto. And so now you have all this legislation that people have been trying to kind of work through the system and they're going to go push it through. Another thing that people are now just starting to understand is there's not even necessarily legislation that has been a barrier in terms of let's get clear legislation and clear rules. But also there's a bunch of just nonsense that's been going on that people have been having to deal with. So, for example, the Operation Chokepoint 2.0. Yeah, explain that. Huge problem. Nick Carter has been all over this.

He's the one who coined the term. he gets full credit for kind of being ahead of this. I can speak from our own personal experience, right? We have a number of businesses. I cannot tell you how much time and energy we have spent talking to various banks, not just one bank, many different banks, where they try to prevent us from opening bank accounts. They try to remove our bank accounts. They try to kick us out of various banks, et cetera. I understand where the individual bankers are coming from. They work inside of a corporation. That corporation is trying to de-risk in a lot of scenarios. And so they say to themselves, okay, the regulators don't like this stuff. And if we go and we start banking a bunch

of these companies, then the regulators are going to give us a hard time. They may fine us. They may make our lives miserable, whatever. So instead of fighting the regulator, let's just not offer services to this type of business. And this type of business being a business that has... That's involved in crypto in some form or fashion, right? Now we've learned over time how to kind of position the businesses, start the businesses, et cetera, where you can kind of be related to crypto, but also make sure that you're not being stopped from opening a bank account. What is that's kind of like the nonsense. What is, I think, unconstitutional and gets kind of a step further is when you have a bank that receives federal funding that is actively

debanking people. So not like, hey, we don't know if this business really fits, but they are specifically going after founders and they're saying without any cause, without any reasoning, you're no longer welcome here. It begs the question, well, why are you no longer welcome here? What is the problem? And so I do think that a private company should be able to offer their services to whoever they want. But if you are a private company that accepts federal funding or you accept some other form of a kind of economic gain, now all of a sudden you're kind of private, but you're kind of not. And then it steps into the game of, well, if the regulators cannot debank you or the legal system cannot debank you because it would be unconstitutional,

but they simply apply pressure to a company to get them to do it, isn't that company just acting as an extension of the government? And so again, there's loopholes in everything. There's all this stuff. I'm not smart enough to figure this out. There are lawyers and many other constitutional experts, et cetera, that are going to go figure all this stuff out. But what I do know is that when you have a pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto president that steps in, the regulatory apparatus changes, and a lot of this nonsense is going to stop. And so now all of a sudden, it's like you basically were trying to fight in a boxing ring with one hand tied behind your back. Well, what happens when you get both your hands? Now, all of a sudden, these founders, these companies, they

don't have to waste time and energy. That's been my biggest thing is, again, the debanking is pretty black and white to me. And I think that the course we will figure that stuff out. It's the gray area of if they are able to simply waste time and energy of entrepreneurs and businesses in America, what is all that productivity loss? It's immeasurable. You can't go and say that's how much it costs me. But I went back and I looked, I mean, we have email threads of tens of emails about one bank account. It's crazy. Phone calls, meetings, you know, all this stuff. I mean, now, do you think that that happened? All of that, you know, I don't know. Nonsense.

Nonsense around these companies because of scandals and schemes like FTX. The companies that were doing the fraud weren't the ones being debanked. so no i don't think it has anything to do with that you were debanking all the good actors and you let the bad actors just run around like they were in disneyland right what the hell are we talking about and so it goes back to this idea of it's kind of like kyc right no your customer kyc is so onerous so crazy and if anyone's ever dealt with kyb know your business there are things that we deal with on a day-to-day in our businesses that if I explained in detail to people, they would literally just bash their head against the wall, right? I cannot tell you

how many times I've gotten a message from our operations team or finance team or somebody, and they say, hey, we need a picture of your driver's license, your social security number, your this, your that, whatever, your personal address, all this stuff. For what? And they say, oh, one of our businesses is doing a deal with another business. Not like a, it's not a merger, it's not an acquisition. It's just they're customers, they're vendors to each other. And this other business needs to know every detail

about your personal life because they claim their bank or their regulator or whoever knows it. What is that stopping? What is that addressing? Nothing. It's just this bureaucratic cloud that hangs over business that ends up, one, reducing privacy, two, being a pain in the ass

of entrepreneurs and business owners, and then three is it creates a massive amount of expenses because we're wasting money on it, the company that is becoming our customers wasting money on it, the banks are wasting money on it. Now there's companies that got created to help service this stuff, they're wasting money on it. Sometimes you need lawyers or accountants,

they're wasting money on it. And so it goes back to this idea. If KYC was so good, why don't they stop all the money laundering? Okay. I mean, this may sound a little crazy, but I don't, it sounds like there are too many issues to solve in this world for one administration to take on. I mean, I understand like creating a blueprint for some of this stuff and like the regulatory stuff and the legislative stuff, but in crypto things change, not even day by day, hour by

hour. Do we really think the Trump administration is well-equipped to handle and navigate all this like a little startup, or is it going to be harder than we think? There's a report that recently came out. I believe it's the House of Representatives put out their big COVID report. And in that report, they basically say three things in there that I think are pretty noteworthy. One, they say they pretty much now believe that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan. Internet was right. The second thing that they say is that there was immense damage done to both individuals and the economy by having to prolong lockdowns.

Internet was right. But the third one that blew my mind is they now are admitting that they believe that $200 billion worth of fraud occurred through all the relief programs, PPP loans, all these different programs, all this stuff, whatever. The internet was right on that as well. But here's what's crazy. I or a business I have or a business I invested in or the people who are watching this who run a business have to go through more hoops to simply operate their business than the people who are receiving funds from the government have to do. How is it that $200 billion of relief ended up through fraud? Now, I'll flip around the table and argue the other side is they tried to

get the money out as quick as possible to help people. And so they probably knew that there was going to be some portion or some percentage of fraud that was going to occur. $200 billion is a pretty big number though. And so it goes back to this idea of it's never black and white, right? There's always a trade-off. And so if you want to get the money out fast, you got to be comfortable that people are going to trick the system. If you want to make sure there's no fraud, then you're going to be a little bit slower. And so they try to find this balance. And I'm not saying that I or anyone I know has a better solution, but what I am calling out is the hypocrisy of the United States government. Think about how much money we've handed out in the last

five years. Handed out the PPP stuff, handed out all the COVID relief, handed out all of the different programs in the Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, all that kind of stuff. How many hundreds of billions of dollars have we sent to proxy wars around the world? Is anyone in a country that is under a proxy war going through KYC? Okay, but you didn't- Probably not. My question. Which is?

Do we think that the Trump administration can navigate the volatility and the rapid change of information in the crypto world so quickly where they institute proper legislation. I don't think it's a crypto thing. That's my point, is that what you're basically trying to do is you're trying to take the crypto world and plug it into the legacy world. KYC is not a crypto thing. That's a legacy thing. KYB is a legacy thing. All this banking regulation, this is all legacy world stuff, right? And so if you go and you look at the crypto world, the crypto world has one thing that nobody else has. We have a public ledger. You can see every transaction on the blockchain. And so if you were designing a new regulatory system from scratch, and you said

we now have a public ledger that you can see anything that happens on there, you probably don't need to do as much upfront stuff and cause as much headache and friction and lost time, money and energy, because you can say we can now look at every single transaction that occurs on the blockchain. I'm not a believer that every single transaction in the world is going to move to a blockchain. But for those that do, there's probably a lot of things that you can do that end up actually being pretty effective. Now, the other thing that ends up becoming pretty important here is there's things like tornado cash, which again, I'm not an expert on the case, but I am trying to follow as best I can and understand that the government came in and said, hey, this is bad.

We have evidence that people are laundering money. 99.9% of people that I know, they don't want money laundering to occur. They don't want bad actors to be able to move freely around the world and move their money and do all this. Like, like I call it like common sense views on things like this. At the same time, the entrepreneurs or the software engineers are saying, wait a second, we created a decentralized system. We have no clue who these people are. Privacy is built into the system. And so how are you going to hold us accountable for building a system if we aren't necessarily approving or disapproving who's using the system? And so a court stepped in and said, hey, look, actually these kind of decentralized software-based systems, they are not susceptible

to some of the things that the government thought they were. Now, one of the takeaways I have is this is the beauty of the American system, is that people hire lawyers, both the government and individuals, they go into a courtroom and they argue it out, they debate it. And the judge, a jury, whoever makes decisions and tries to implement the law. Do they always get it right? Absolutely not. But do they tend to try really hard? Yes, I do believe that, especially in kind of corporate law situations. So it comes now down to because of the regulatory overhang in this big cloud, is it going to force more and more entrepreneurs to say, wait a second, I have to build my tech stack in a certain way so that I am immune from having to deal with all of this stuff

because it's become such a big overhang that it is actually stopping me from being successful in operating ABCD things. I'm not predicting that, but I do think that there's entrepreneurs who starting to ask that question. And rather than that be the solution where now they start to operate outside of the system. Instead, I think that we should try to create a regulatory environment where people are excited about building companies and they feel like the regulators are helping them, not hurting them, not getting in their way. And part of that is reducing regulation. Part of that is, you know, literally deregulating, but some of it is also removing the bloat, right? Trying to reduce costs in the government, all these different components

that they're going to try, I have no clue if they're going to be successful or not. And one thing that the viewers may not know, because I'm just now reading it, is that Trump's administration may actually include a White House official specifically to oversee crypto policy. It's unclear just what this person might do, what sort of budget or staff they may command, or just how much authority they will wield. Nevertheless, there are discussions about creating a crypto czar or something like that to oversee policymaking or liaise with policymakers. What? This is a good idea. Yeah. Okay. Moving on. MicroStrategy just bought another $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin last week. My God. Just over a month after announcing plans to raise

$21 billion through stock sales to help fund additional purchases of Bitcoin, MicroStrategy is already almost halfway to its goal. What do we think about that? this strategy is working currently. Will it always work? We're going to find out. I think that public companies who have lots of trading volume, who trade at a premium forever, have sold shares. They have raised capital. That is part of being a good capital allocator. When your stock's overvalued, you sell shares. When your stock's undervalued, you buy back shares. The difference here is that the selling of shares is not going to cash in the balance sheet

or to buy back shares later. It's going to buy Bitcoin. And so there's some things that are old strategies, some things that are kind of new twists on those strategies. What I find most interesting is, one, is there a percentage of Bitcoin that can be held by a publicly traded company that people begin to think is too much?

I don't know. I can argue both sides. On one hand, you want a free market where anyone is available to buy as much Bitcoin as they possibly want. And regardless of how much Bitcoin you own, you get to use the network no differently than anyone else. You don't get extra control.

You don't get extra voting. You don't get extra anything, right? So that would be an argument for it's a race. Whoever buys the most Bitcoin, good on them. Knock yourself out. On the other hand, there's an argument that if somebody owns too much Bitcoin, And let's say they own 5%, 6%, 7%.

Now, all of a sudden, they become a proxy for speaking for the industry. Right. And so regulators, governments, all that kind of stuff. Now, all of a sudden, they start to really put a lot of weight on words, actions, etc. I think that's a pretty hard argument to make, is that even though you don't have outsized control, there's loud voices today, not because of how much Bitcoin they own, just because they were early or they've had unique thoughts or whatever. I would even argue

there's politicians who don't own Bitcoin, but they have become an important voice in the debate, whether they're pro or con. So it's kind of this weird dynamic where you probably can't own too much Bitcoin, but I think people will critique it anyways. And then the second thing is the more that this works and MicroStrategy stock goes up, the more fast followers, the copycats will show up. And we already see people starting to do this around the world. You've got Summer Scientific, MetaPlanet, you've got DeFi Technologies, you've got companies like Hud8, Marathon, etc. that are all doing this. And then you've got companies that are doing this for non-Bitcoin assets. So you've got Soul Strategies, which I'm involved with and a shareholder of in Canada. And I think

you're going to start seeing more of these kind of show up and say, hey, look, we're going to be the micro strategy for name another asset. At the end of the day, if you don't want somebody to buy too much Bitcoin, go buy it yourself, right? Like it is available to anyone. It's been available to anyone since 2009. And so the beauty of the industry is for 15 years, anyone with an internet connection and equal access to go and try to buy this.

MicroStrategy has just figured out a way to get more capital than everyone else that wants to go do this. And so really the innovation is on the capital side, less so than, oh, we have some secret deal with Satoshi that we can go buy Bitcoin and no one else can. It's anyone can go buy it. It's just who has the conviction

and the ability to go big. MicroStrategy is really proving that, yeah, that there's benefits to being able to do that. Yep. Okay. Something non-Bitcoin. President Biden decided to, he sent shockwaves to Washington on Sunday night

when he issued a pardon of his son, Hunter, a move he'd previously vowed he wouldn't make. Can I give you my thoughts on this first before? Okay. So as a leader of the free world, probably not the best decision after you've said you would not meddle there and do that. But as a parent, I kind of get it.

And also, I saw that you did a poll on Twitter and you were like, if you were president, would you pardon your son? And it was like 60 or 70% of people said yes. and I don't think that the issue necessarily is that Biden pardoned Hunter. I think the issue is that he pardoned him after saying he wouldn't. He lied. Right. But politicians lie all the time, right? Of course. That's why it's not surprising. Or he changed his mind, right? He could have changed his mind. Sure. Whether you call it lying, changing your mind, whatever. I 100% agree that

people have more of a problem with the fact he said he wasn't going to do it and he did it than just doing it. Guess what? If it was my son, I'd pardon him too. I remember a long time ago, you were like, before Biden leaves office, he's going to pardon Hunter. Of course. Because imagine having all that power and not doing it. My bigger point was for the country, the better thing to have happened was Biden left office and Trump comes in and then Trump pardons Hunter. Would he have done that? We don't know. We don't get to run that experiment, right? But if that had occurred, I think that it would have drastically cooled

the partisanship in American politics because they would have said, wow, this guy did this thing that we didn't expect him to do. Now, the counter argument to that is there's no way in hell that the Democrats were going to give Trump that win and let him have the opportunity to do that, right?

Because they're basically ceding a political point to him. So again, it comes back to, forget all the politics and strategy and like, you know, all this like Monday morning quarterback. If you're a father and you've got the ability to help your son, there's very few people in the world who look at it and say,

you should let your son suffer. Now, doesn't mean that your son was right. Doesn't mean that smoking crack and hanging out with prostitutes is what every dad should want their kid to do. Doesn't mean that bags of cocaine being found in the White House and no one knows where they came from

aren't necessarily tied to your son. All that stuff, again, it is what it is, but you can only deal with the hand that you're dealt. And if you're the president of the United States and your son is potentially going to go to jail or whatever, and you've got the ability to pardon him, I think that more than 60% of people do it. I think it's cute to vote on a Twitter poll.

Yeah. But I think that it's more like 90% of people say, I'm not going to let my kids suffer. Right. I was actually more surprised by the Democrats' opinion of this situation than i was the republicans um so just real quick yeah uh why why yeah well a because they were surprised that a politician lied or changed his mind but b because i actually saw more democrats speaking out against it than i i expected yeah because it's all it's like uh

a lot of people who were critiquing it i want to play the like morality game nobody's above the law Yeah, okay, sure. Well, you know what else I think Trump should do or Biden should do? Here's one, put your brain in a pretzel. Let's, let's. I think that President Biden should pardon the January 6th people who are convicted.

Why? Again, cool the tensions. Because, and also from a strategy standpoint, if Trump is talking about doing it, you take the spotlight away from him to doing it. Correct. And I do think that Biden's got an element of just like throw the middle finger to the establishment.

You guys want to push me out of the race? If I was Biden, I would burn this shit down. Like, I mean, look, and to a degree, like maybe that is what happened, right? Like, look, I actually don't even really like talking about a lot of this politics stuff, but I do think it's very important for financial markets. But one of my questions that I've been talking

to my friends in private about is twofold. One, do you think that Joe Biden and Jill Biden voted for President Trump? No. I would bet a lot of money they did. No way. You don't wear a red jumpsuit on election day. Ivanka wore a blue one.

On election day? I don't think so. It was like, I don't know. No, I don't think so. I think when Trump won, she was wearing blue. So that's one. Second is, do you think Donald Trump and Elon Musk are still friends in four years? Oh, I don't know.

Right? So like those things are interesting to me because again, it goes back to politics has a very big impact on financial markets, especially if you get the leader over the last four years of one party who is basically saying, I'm going to revolt against the party because I disagree. And he starts doing things to eat at it. And so was the pardoning of Hunter Biden a middle finger a little bit to the democratic establishment? Well, if you're going to continue on that track, what is the thing that you could do that would really stick it to them as you're leaving office? It would be the January 6th stuff.

Again, I'm not saying that he's going to do it or whatever. I'm just saying like that track of what are the things that one could cool partisanship in America, but also to fall in line with this narrative that like Joe Biden feels, you know, he needs to get revenge against the people who pushed him out of office. That would be a pretty big F you to them.

When I read about the pardoning of Hunter, my first thought was, I wonder if he always wanted to do that. But at the time when he said he would never do that, I wonder he was still looking to be reelected as president. And I wonder if the pressure for him to say that was against his own wishes. Right. So now that he's clearly not going to be president, he's like, I'm going to do whatever I want. But the possible the reason that I said that I was surprised by the Democrats. So just some context for the people, Biden's pardon for Hunter is the most sweeping presidential pardon in decades since then President Ford issued a blanket pardon for former President Nixon. So it has something like this hasn't been done since then.

And then. Oh, you're talking about like the dates. What do you mean? So the pardon goes from January 1st, 2014 to present day, I believe. And it's kind of a weird date to pick. january 1st 2014 like why uh 2014 yeah oh see like you're learning something right now let me break your brain ready uh in i believe march or may of 2014 is when hunter biden joined the uh ukrainian business uh board of directors and that's when a lot of the conversations about uh payments and

you know 10 for the big guy all that all of the um maybe in the best way to describe it uh questionable activities and behavior started to occur. And so if you go back and you start January 1st, 2014, it covers all that activity outside of the gun charges and drug charges. So if you give them a pardon for that, they can't come after them for anything else. And again, it goes back to whether that's true,

not whatever, just like the easiest explanation is the most likely. A father had an opportunity to protect his son and he took the opportunity. You cannot fault him for doing it. The problem is he said he wasn't going to do it, and then he did it, and that's what pissed people off. So Democratic governor of Colorado, Jared Polis,

said on Twitter, while as a father, I certainly understand President Joe Biden's natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country. This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later presidents

and will sadly tarnish his reputation. Stop it. That's ridiculous. Stop it. grandstanding of this is the same uh the same political party who said uh joe biden is a hero because he uh put the country above his political aspirations by stepping down blah blah whatever spun this whole little cute fairy tale story and then it comes out they literally threatened them and they basically pushed them out and it was like a so bad a hardcore uh like uh essential

coup or whatever right so you look at that and you say wait a second here take away all the the nonsense all the descriptive stuff whatever just what are the facts and at the end of the day a father's going to protect the son and actually i would argue even a step further is uh do we want someone to run the country who wouldn't who would not protect their kid i agree right again does it make it right wrong whatever everyone's black and white there's a ton of gray here but i just don't think anyone should be surprised i just think people love their like moral high ground of bs these listen half the people who are critiquing him are the same people when their kid gets detention at school they show up and they're like let me see your supervisor yeah right

nerds and and so like you want to save your kid family above the country come on stop it um and so again it comes back to this idea of uh i also think people don't look at like what the crimes were the gun charges the prostitution stuff the like drugs like all the bullshit whatever the videos the laptop also it's all bad things that are illegal obviously but as far as we know caveat uh it's not like hunter biden was like selling state secrets to you know some like you know foreign government or something now there might have been some access stuff that allegedly occurred and so that's where the kind of this pardon you know people start to talk about that stuff but here here's i think the bigger

thing is my biggest takeaway from all this and again i look at it through an investor lens the current president of the united states has 40 to 50 days whatever the exact you know days are if he's in a eff it mood there's some uncertainty and some chaos and some volatility that could pop up. We've already seen now two things that suggest to me that the current president of the United States, until Trump is sworn in, is in a mood and a mindset that's going to introduce a lot of volatility. Did Trump ever talk about what him and Biden were laughing about and being so chatty about? Nah, but I did like when Biden was like, welcome back. That's what he said. Yeah, that's what he said. But hold on one second. So one is the Hunter Biden, right? Dropping the news on a

Sunday night, kind of just like, screw it, I'm pardoning him. He didn't wait till the last day, right? He did in December or whatever. The second one is, there's been a little bit of ratcheting it up with that Ukraine-Russia conflict, where now all of a sudden Ukraine is shooting some missiles offensively, from what I understand. And so again, it comes into this thing of like,

is the current president of the United States in a mood where he's just like, screw it, I got 45 days, let's go out in a blaze of glory. What do you think Biden's legacy is going to be in 20 years? It's really, really, really hard to predict that stuff. But one way to think about it is if you look back through history and you ask someone, who are the presidents of the United States? There are some people who could name all 46 of them. most people will say something to the effect of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln,

then they'll jump to like an FDR. Maybe they'll hit you with a Richard Nixon and a, you know, JFK. A Reagan. And then, yeah, maybe a Reagan. And then like the last two or three. And the reason why i say that is most presidents are not remembered yes you can go and look who the president was or whatever but like you could rattle off a bunch of names and you could say to somebody like what are they known for what do they do and majority of people would say i don't know yeah and so well in 20 years i think we'll still remember biden but again people remember clinton bush obviously like also because in recent memory but the further you go away i do think that presidents end up having defining moments or defining pieces of legislation and

it's not for me to judge but if you look at trump i actually think a lot of the defining thing is just like the domination of the media cycle yeah right like he was famous and he he was controversial and like seared in people's brain not necessarily because of any individual you know piece of legislation etc but like that is a reason why he'll be remembered yeah from his first term. With Biden, stock market is at all-time highs right now, 53 different all-time highs just in this year alone. It's incredible. Bitcoin, all-time highs, right? There's a whole bunch of things that he would rattle off that say that he accomplished whatever, right, whether you agree with him or not. But was there a defining piece of legislation or a defining moment that

50 years from now, people will point back to. Depending on whether this pardon sets a precedent, he may be remembered for that. I think that there's a lot of people who will definitely remember it because it's a unique thing. But that's where I go back to again and say to myself, as an investor,

I'm watching politics like a hawk right now because we have this window of time where I've now seen two data points that suggest the president of the United States may be ready to do some things that are non-traditional that would introduce uncertainty, volatility, and chaos into financial markets unintentionally. Yeah. Wait, do you want to hear a fun fact you may not know? Did you know that every president at the end of their tenure writes a handwritten letter?

To the next president? Yeah, and leaves it on the desk for the next president. Did you know that so does the chief of staff? They did not know that. But anyway- So yes, I did know. I wonder, sometimes, Anthony, sometimes, stop it. Wait, what was I going to say? Yeah, broke her brain.

You knew the chief of staff thing, you didn't know the president thing. I did know that the chief of staff doesn't know the president thing. Okay, well, sometimes they make it public, and I think it's interesting to see, especially when parties are switching what they write. So I wonder what Biden will write to Trump this time. What if he just writes a letter just scathing? P.S. I voted for you. I mean, that'd be hilarious, right? Now, look, there's a lot of nonsense in politics.

There's a lot of stuff that isn't worth paying attention to. But right now, specifically, I really do think that politics in particular is going to have a big impact on financial markets. You've got obviously the crypto regulation stuff, which we talked about earlier. You've got a lot of stuff going on in terms of what the president is doing right now that is introducing this uncertainty. And then I do think that third is one of the things I keep coming back to. at 36 years old, I still got a long time to play this game. And so I look at the two parties and I

say to myself, okay, it's very clear that the Republican party's got a lot of young talent. And so you can kind of see, okay, what is the future, you know, of the party? If they're in power, what are kind of some of the things they care about? Yeah. Like, like just, there's a lot of, um, you don't get clarity, but at least you get like directional, like these are the things they care about. These are the people who are likely to be around for a long time. Here's the people who, you know, J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, you just go down the list. Like, there's a bunch of these folks, right? And you can kind of say like, okay, I kind of see where this party's going. On the left, there are a couple of young stars, right? I think that you've got like a

Ro Khanna, you've got a Richie Torres, you've got even an AOC, you know, whatever. Sorry. But the young stars are actually two different groups. I would put the Ro Khannas and the Richie torres's in kind of like a left of center they seem to be pretty practical rational and they're like look i'm a democrat but you know i i want to figure things out etc and you've got a group of kind of quote-unquote younger stars that are farther left and it feels like the country kind of rejected that view yeah and so like are those people relevant 20 years from now i don't know we're gonna find out and so i i do think that paying attention to the stuff is important because

I want to have the context as we keep moving forward to understand how these people think, what are they doing? How does this work? And you have friends on both sides of the aisle. I mean, politician friends, like, you know, people on the left and the right. And I think that honestly, like, as long as they're rational people. I've had on the podcast, Republicans and Democrats. I've talked in private to Republicans and Democrats. Um, I have been impressed by Republicans and Democrats. I've also thought that both Republicans and Democrat people I've met are dumb asses, right. And everything in between. And so it's like, uh, to me, the right and the left is, uh, less interesting. Uh, I

really think about, are you focused on the future or are you focused on the past? Like that is how I cut, uh, the people that I meet. And thankfully, most of the young people that I've met, they are focused on the future and they're kind of rational. They're pro technology. They're, you know, uh, understand this stuff, but we need a lot more of them. One time a few years ago, Anthony and I met with a Republican politician, I will not name him. And we went to his office, we talked and we came out and I was like, wow, he's like so charismatic. That's not what I was expecting. And Anthony was, yep, he's a politician. That's his job, right? So, but I mean, look, and again, you know, I've said this now a number of times, but like I used to be able to say that none of my smartest

friends wanted to go into the government. I can no longer say that, right? A number of them. And I actually believe that a very easy prediction is that I should get no credit if this becomes true because it's so obvious. Department of Government Efficiency, Doge, is going to be the new Harvard. You think? Yes. If you go and you work in Doge, you're working with Vivek and Elon, it's going to become this whole thing. And it's going to be like being early employee at Facebook or having graduated from Harvard or name your thing, Goldman in the 90s or whatever. Something like a doge continues to exist across future administrations? No. They've already said that they're going to end it after like a year or two.

But I think that the idea of it hopefully will persist. And yeah, I just think that there's a lot of people that I know who want to go work inside that organization. They're people I would have never guessed hedge fund managers um venture capitalists entrepreneurs i know one founder in particular that is like i will shut down my company and go work for them tomorrow wow and so you hear that you're just like well hold on a second let's not shut down the company but also like man that's a pretty strong statement to you know want to go and and uh and work there fascinating okay um trump threatens 100 tariff on bricks brick nations if they try to replace the dollar so just for those who don't know, major world powers, China and Russia are part of the BRICS alliance,

along with Brazil, India, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the UAE. So Donald Trump is saying that he would impose 100% tariffs on this block of nine nations if they were to create a rival currency to the US dollar. But I was reading that and like, can't you argue that Bitcoin is a rival currency to the US dollar? Why not? No. Because Bitcoin is a store of value, whereas the dollar is actually a true currency that's used. Nobody wants to spend their Bitcoin, but they all want to spend their dollar. But in the future, they could? They could. But right now, it's not a threat. Right now, it is digital gold. So why is he saying that then?

Because he doesn't want somebody to create a thing that is competitive with the US dollar. And look, it's this weird thing where on one hand, you want a free market, right? Let people do whatever they want. Let the competition flow. So on the other hand, if you have a pro-nationalist view of the United States should continue to be the leader on the global stage, you know, protect our economy, do all this stuff, then he's doing, you know, what you would want to do. Like, you're the big dog. You're the bully, right, in financial markets. And so you've got the ability. Everyone wants to transact with America. And so what do you do? You use your weight to stop the competition.

This happens in business. Obviously, it happens, you know, in competition of economies. I just wonder how many times do you get to go to the tariff, you know, bag of tricks until people say, wait a second, he's never actually going to do it. Well, why is he even saying that given that none of these nations have ever created anything that could rival the U.S. dollar? Because they keep talking about it. But would they, realistically? Um, yeah, I think, I think that they could it because ultimately what you would do is it's like the classic innovators dilemma, right? What you basically do is you say, Hey, we're going to

get together some of the biggest countries. We're all now going to trade together using this new thing. So you, so you're able to pull somewhat of a network effect immediately. And then what you do is you don't go compete head on with the dollar. Instead you go to places like in different African nations and Latin America, et cetera. And you basically seeded into areas where the dollar is not as strong, where people don't have access to the dollar, you basically beat them to the punch. And so then all of a sudden you kind of disrupt them, right? It's like you're going downstream to try to beat them. Again, I don't think that the United States has to worry about this right now, but I do think that- It sends a message.

Again, look, Donald Trump promised and ran on from a campaign standpoint, he's going to use tariffs as a kind of a stick. He loves the tariff. It's pretty powerful, right? It's very, very powerful. And so if you think of Canada, It just came out recently that he threatened the 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada. They freaked out. Mexican president called him that day, like an hour later. And then, you know, our old boy Trudeau, he flew down to Mar-a-Lago after he was done, you know, censoring all the truckers and taking away all their freedom. And he got to Mar-a-Lago.

And supposedly he said to Trump, it's now coming from two sources that were at the table with them. It's been reported on the news. So, you know, hopefully it's true. what a um trudeau said to trump if you impose this tariff it will cripple the canadian economy and trump said to him well if you can't survive without ripping off americans then maybe you should just become the 51st state of america and you can be the governor oh my god that's the type that's the type of american energy we need as president that's wild what do you think trudeau did then he put his little tail between his legs got back on his plane uh even though he's you know

obviously uh trying not to create any climate change and flew his private jet back to canada and said shit unless we want everyone saying a in the 51st state of america we better get in line and he put a statement out the next day and he said we're gonna we're gonna do our best to close the border and so again it's not just the threat of the tariff right i mean you that there's something in your head that is just innate you can't teach someone sitting there with a canadian prime minister and tell him you could be the 51st state of america dogging him i mean that that's just that's an innate thing that comes from somebody who has decades of experience in negotiating i just think that now politicians like trudeau are realizing that they don't have

the majority on their side i think they used to think everybody hated trump everybody wanted to see trump fail and now i think that the the energy has shifted the environment has shifted and trudeau no longer has that support. So he kind of has to play by Trump's rules. The will of the people will ultimately be expressed. It may take a long time. God, I love democracy. It may take a long time, but ultimately the will of the people will be expressed. Okay. And I was told to ask you about Elon Musk getting his salary blocked. This is nonsense.

Tell me. These judges, they're activists. This is insane. What happened? Elon Musk had a pay package that was created where he basically said, I'm going to bet on myself. I'm going to get paid no money, but if I have the stock reach a certain price, then I get a lot of money. Okay.

Most simple terms. Shareholders voted on it. They approved it. And Elon delivered. The company went and hit the milestones. He said, great, you owe me $55 billion. That was the deal. And a shareholder who has nine shares of the company

sued and said that's excessive pay. Okay. Even though the shareholders had voted on it and it was approved by the board. And the first judge said, you're right, that's excessive pay. So Elon appealed it and he recently went to a second judge

and that judge said, no, I agree. That is excessive pay. You can't get that. And oh, by the way, you also have to pay $350 million to the lawyers who brought this case. And my point is,

if a judge can violate the will of the shareholder, you don't have a private company anymore. You now have a state-run enterprise. That's true. That's what they do in communist countries. We're not talking about, did they break the law, not break the law, any of this stuff. And the best part is, the second time they went back on the appeal, they had held another

shareholder vote. So the shareholders knew that the judge had struck down the first one. And so they went back and said, let's do this again. Do you believe that Elon Musk deserves the money? And all the shareholders voted and said, yes. And this judge is still saying no. Well, who's in charge? Who runs the company?

Do the shareholders own the business? Or is it a state-run enterprise? And so if we want to live in a capitalistic country, then the will of the shareholder should ultimately triumph. And so he'll appeal. He'll go to the Delaware Supreme Court. I'm sure they'll hear the case, depending on what they do. He may go all the way to the Supreme Court.

And if he goes to the Supreme Court, I got a hard time believing that Elon Musk ain't getting paid. And you're talking about a guy who's averaging a multi-billion dollar company. He starts every five years for the last 30 years. Guy is just on a hell of a bender. as an entrepreneur, uh, put another feather in his cap. He could take us all as Supreme courts and he makes, you know, 55 to a hundred billion dollars, whatever the stock's worth now. Uh, I think there's a lot of people who say, you know what, good for that guy. Good for that guy

standing up for the right thing. And so we'll see what happens. There's still a long way to go, but, um, yeah, I just don't think that you want judges coming in playing Monday morning quarterback, determining what is too much pay when the shareholders approve something. It's different if a CEO just says, I'm just going to take the money and shareholders throw a fit. And they're like, hey, this isn't right. But majority of shareholders are saying, no, we voted for this once. He did what he said he was going to do. He deserves the money. A judge struck it down. We vote again. We approve it a second time. And now they strike it down a second time. Now it's very clear that the shareholders will is not being exercised. And I just don't think

that's very American. Yeah. All right. That's all I have for you today. Thanks, guys, for tuning in.