The Pomp Podcast - #1454 Anthony Pompliano | Bitcoin Hits New ALL TIME HIGH

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Anthony Pompliano records a solo episode explaining why bitcoin has exploded in 2024, and where it could be headed. Topics include historical bull markets, media coverage, Wall Street, Donald Trump, US bitcoin strategic reserve, MicroStrategy, federal reserve, and more.  ======================= 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. ======================= Meanwhile is the world’s first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Protect your loved ones with sound money built to manage life’s uncertainty and a broken financial system. Their BTC-denominated Whole Life Insurance policies allow HODLers to pass more BTC on to their loved ones and a tax-advantaged way to access BTC for liquidity during their lifetime.Visit their website at https://meanwhile.bm/ to join the waitlist for a policy and to learn more. ======================= 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. 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 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 futurist 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 lift 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 a 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.

Today's episode is brought to you by Meanwhile. Meanwhile is the world's first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Operating on the Bitcoin standard, they do everything in Bitcoin. You pay in Bitcoin. They pay claims to your family in Bitcoin. You take out policy loans entirely in Bitcoin when you need liquidity. Meanwhile, Bitcoin life insurance has redefined what it means to HODL. Protect your family from life's uncertainty and a broken financial system. Build intergenerational Bitcoin wealth while the cost of living skyrockets in dollar terms. Get all the tax and legal benefits of life insurance now in Bitcoin. They are actively binding policies today. Whether you are a long-term Bitcoiner or just considering it for

the first time, a Bitcoin whole life policy could make sense for your wealth plan. Visit their website, meanwhile.bm, to join the waitlist and to learn more about the world's first Bitcoin life insurer. Again, that's meanwhile.bm. Go check them out today. Bitcoin just smashed through a brand new all-time high. The asset is now worth over $2 trillion. It's the seventh largest financial asset in the world. Bitcoin is up 150% year to date. And now I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to know moving forward. Bitcoin is the decentralized currency that has taken the world by storm. We've watched five different factors play into why Bitcoin has done so well. Bitcoiners have been on the internet for years telling you, buy some Bitcoin and wait. Bitcoin's going up in

price. But there was plenty of detractors. The critics had their way. There was this battle of ideas. Were the Bitcoiners right or were they wrong? I think now we have the verdict. Bitcoiners were not only right, but Bitcoiners drastically underestimated just how high and how fast Bitcoin's price would appreciate. One of my favorite stats is that Bitcoin is on a seven week winning streak. That is the longest winning streak that Bitcoin has had since 2021. If you go back to that bull market, enthusiasm was palpable. Everyone thought Bitcoin was going up forever. And so to have lived through the last three years of a bear market and to have experienced all the volatility, mostly to the downside. It's fun to be winning again. Having seven straight weeks of

Bitcoin going up is a great sign that we are in a bull market. Bitcoin will continue higher. Again, things in motion tend to stay in motion. And if you go and you look at the stock market, it's a great signal that buying all time highs, you would think that that is a negative. But actually, those days, if you go forward three, six months, 12 months or three years, tend to actually outperform buying any other day of the market. And so naturally, Bitcoin hitting an all-time high has momentum. The more momentum that we see and the more media coverage we see means that we will lead to more Bitcoin prices. Now, what do I mean by more media coverage? If you go this morning and you look at Bloomberg, three, four, five different articles

on the front page, every single mainstream outlet, they've got to talk about Bitcoin. Whether they're critics or they're bulls, Bitcoin is the story in finance. It continues to go higher. It has infiltrated all of the Wall Street firms. Some of the smartest investors in the world, like Paul Tudor Drones, Stanley Druckenmiller, and many others, they're buying Bitcoin, they're holding Bitcoin, and they're talking about Bitcoin. Everyone wants to know, what is Bitcoin? How high can it go?

And should I own some? Naturally, Bitcoin's price is the marketing campaign. Bitcoin's a decentralized entity. There is no marketing team. But when price goes up, people pay attention, and then they talk. And the more word of mouth spreads, the more people that get interested in Bitcoin, the more people interested, the more capital flows in. And if you've got a finite asset and you've got capital flowing, then naturally the price goes up. So let's dig in. Why is Bitcoin hitting a brand new all-time high price of $106,000?

And why is this $2 trillion asset likely still undervalued? First, let's talk about President Trump. He's the first Bitcoin president, and he's showing up to the White House with pro-Bitcoin policies. There's talk of a strategic Bitcoin reserve. They would hold on to the 200,000 Bitcoin that we already have in our possession, but also they would start to buy Bitcoin, which would diversify the holdings of the central bank. If we can create a Bitcoin strategic reserve, it's going to kick off a global race to accumulate Bitcoin. Remember, Bitcoin's price used to be too small. The large pools of capital like countries

and sovereign wealth funds and central banks, they didn't buy Bitcoin because they couldn't put enough money into it. But now that Bitcoin is more than $2 trillion, anyone can buy Bitcoin. And if the countries, the sovereign wealth funds and the central banks start to buy, obviously the price is going to go up significantly. On top of the Bitcoin strategic reserve, President Trump is also talking about a number of policies that he may put in place, which would be a big tailwind for Bitcoin investors. Things like addressing the capital gains tax or also trying to incentivize for there to be more miners in the United States.

Any president that goes into the White House and says, I'm going to protect Bitcoin, I'm to protect your right to Bitcoin, and I am a Bitcoin president, that's likely to be good for Bitcoin. On top of that, President Trump has historically measured the health of the United States economy using the stock market. But there's rumors being reported now that he also is using the price of Bitcoin. When Bitcoin crossed over $100,000, President Trump tweeted saying, Bitcoiners, you're welcome. That's the type of thing that you would expect a president not to do. But the fact that the president of the United States is going to be watching the price of Bitcoin says that it's likely to continue to go up.

On top of President Trump going and assuming office, we also have a number of companies in the public markets that are buying Bitcoin and putting it on their balance sheet. MicroStrategy is obviously the most famous and the one who has done this with the most conviction. Just today, Michael Saylor announced that they've bought another 15,000 Bitcoin for approximately $1.5 billion.

This means that MicroStrategy now owns more than 400,000 Bitcoin, which is more than 2% of the total supply of all Bitcoin that will ever be in circulation. It doesn't look like he's stopping anytime soon. And so anytime you have a public company that is buying billions of dollars of Bitcoin per week, obviously the price is probably going to go up.

On top of that, we also saw a similar scientific announce that they bought Bitcoin as well over the last week or so. And then you've got companies like MetaPlanet, you've got Riot, Marathon, Hudate, and many, many other public companies putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet. We now have companies that have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars on their balance sheet

and they're actively trying to convince other public companies to go ahead and buy Bitcoin as well. We saw Rumble CEO come out and say, should we put Bitcoin on the balance sheet? And then later he confirmed that they're going to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet. If more public companies continue to buy Bitcoin, the price is going to go up because Bitcoin is a finite supply asset. Demand increases and the supply can't respond. Then obviously the price has to appreciate in order to accommodate everyone. And so Michael Saylor is buying billions of dollars of Bitcoin and many other public companies are also buying a lot. But not only do I see these existing companies

continue to buy more and more Bitcoin in the future, I also think we will see more companies starting to buy Bitcoin and put it on their balance sheet for the first time. You get an expansion of the number of companies, but you're also going to get an expansion of the number of dollars being put towards this strategy. The third point that is driving Bitcoin's price right now

is the Federal Reserve. We already have seen the Federal Reserve step in and drop interest rates by about 75 basis points year to date. On top of that, we also see the M2 money supply is expanding. Anytime you get interest rates dropping and the money supply expanding, that's quantitative easing. And when you have quantitative easing occurring, that means that more capital is flushing into

the market. As that capital comes to the market, investors will push out on the risk curve and they will go and they will buy assets that previously were reserved for the risk asset. Now, on top of that, what we see is that Bitcoin in particular continues to keep pace with this money printing. If you look, about every 100 days, the United States is increasing the national debt by a trillion dollars. As the national debt grows to the sky,

Bitcoin's price continues to go up as well. A couple of weeks ago, I was on national television, and I said it's basically a race between the national debt and the price of Bitcoin. It looks like Bitcoin is doing a pretty good job of keeping up. Now, one of the interesting things is that Fidelity's Jaron Timmer recently came out, and he said if you take gold's market cap and Bitcoin's market cap and put them together, it equals about $20 trillion. Why is that interesting?

Because that is about the market cap of U.S. dollars, which means that gold and Bitcoin, which are both store value assets, they are continuing to keep pace with the growth of dollars. Anytime that you see dollars growing to the sky and Bitcoin's price growing to the sky, it's likely to continue that trend. Things in motion stay in motion. And I think that the Federal Reserve is only going to continue to cut interest rates. They're likely to do it here in December, again, to get us to 100 basis points of total

cuts for the year 2024. but also we will continue to see that money supply expand. And that means that Bitcoin's price is well positioned. We had a supply shock coming from the halving back in earlier of 2024. Now we have the demand shock. People see what the Federal Reserve is doing, cutting rates, printing money.

That's pushing people towards Bitcoin. Again, if supply is not going to move and demand increases for Bitcoin, the price goes up. Speaking of demand increasing, we had one of the greatest access tools in the world created for Bitcoin in 2024. before. We saw the ETFs get approved in January. Almost immediately, we saw the price of Bitcoin go up by 50%. Today, Bitcoin is up more than 100% since those ETFs got approved. There's been tens

of billions of dollars from Wall Street that's been put into Bitcoin. And the beauty of these ETFs is now not only do people not have to go sign up for Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, Binance, or some other exchange, but on top of that, they now can do it right in that same brokerage account where they have their other assets. The beauty of the ETFs is that we put Bitcoin in a wrapper that is familiar to many of the largest pools of capital. Whether you are Fidelity, you are Franklin Templeton, you're BlackRock, you're Bitwise, or any other provider, you now have the ETF wrapper,

which is highly popular on Wall Street, but it now gives you exposure to Bitcoin. What most people on Wall Street want is they want price exposure to Bitcoin. They're not true Bitcoiners. They don't want to necessarily take custody. They don't trust Bitcoin as a bearer asset, but they do believe that the price of Bitcoin

is going higher. And so the ETFs allowed them to be able to go and do this. Now, one of the interesting things is that BlackRock has been the big leader here. Larry Fink came out and he said that he believes people are buying Bitcoin because it's a flight to quality. But more importantly, it's not just Larry Fink's personal comments or the fact that he continues to go on national television and act as the CMO of Bitcoin. It's that BlackRock has put out to all of their financial advisors a target percentage

ownership of Bitcoin in a portfolio around 2%. If 2% of the world's portfolio all start to buy Bitcoin and the supply of Bitcoin doesn't change, again, a reoccurring theme in this entire video is the fact that Bitcoin is going to go up because you have an increase in demand. And so the ETFs have been one of the leaders of accessing Bitcoin in 2024. And now we see that more and more capital continues to flow into these funds. And I do not see that changing going into 2025. Now, last but not least, the fifth point is the geopolitical environment.

We saw Russian President Vladimir Putin come out and say that he believes Bitcoin cannot be censored by anybody. No one can debase it. No one can control it. Those types of comments coming from somebody like Putin obviously are going to draw the global attention to why is this specific guy talking about this specific asset? On top of that, we have the United States considering that Bitcoin strategic reserve. Japan is also looking at Bitcoin as how it could be used in their monetary policy and

or in their central bank. And then there are a number of places around the world where we are seeing Bitcoin adoption start to increase in places like Nigeria and Pakistan, where Bitcoin has actually been banned. We see adoption increasing in other places around the world, like Venezuela and Argentina, where they have a massive issue when it comes to their currencies or their specific economies. We see Bitcoin adoption increasing. And so naturally, whenever you get conflict or you get geopolitical issues playing out in the global economy, you're going to see people say, you know what, maybe I should go and buy a little bit of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is apolitical.

It is not unique to any one country. As long as you have an internet connection, you can play the game of Bitcoin. It does not care who you are, where you come from, what your religion is, what your education or your wealth status. Bitcoin is available for anyone. And anytime you have a programmatic monetary policy that endears trust over time. If I asked you, what do you think the Federal Reserve is going to do later this week? Nobody knows.

All anyone can do is guess. If I asked you what's going to happen over the next six months or the next year, nobody knows. That's not true just in the United States. It's true of any human led monetary policy. But where I have utmost confidence is I can tell you exactly what is going to happen with Bitcoin and its monetary policy today, tomorrow, a week from now, a year from now, or a decade from now.

It is pre-programmed into the code. I can audit it at any time, and I can actually plan my life based on that programmatic monetary policy. This is a new era, a new monetary regime. There is only so often that a new monetary asset comes around. And as we transition from the old monetary regime into a new one, people historically thought that the Bitcoin and dollar were going to compete with each other. But instead, we are seeing something different.

We are seeing dollars and Bitcoin both rise in popularity together. People want stable coins. And so we continue to see hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap accrue to those assets. But people also want Bitcoin. They want that digital savings account where they can store their wealth and they can leave it there

without having to worry about what's going to happen. Will it be devalued or can someone take it from me? Ultimately, Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high price is a story that you should get used to. It continues to hit new all-time high after new all-time high. We are in a Bitcoin bull market. Crossing over a $2 trillion market cap is important.

Because people look at that and they say, well, I remember when it was $200 billion or I remember when it was $20 billion. We've come so far. But I would tell you, no, we still have a lot of work to do. Gold is sitting at less than $20 trillion. And I believe that Bitcoin is a 10x improvement on gold. And so at a minimum, Bitcoin and gold will meet. Those market caps will be equivalent one day.

And so that means that Bitcoin still has a massive amount of opportunity to appreciate in value. There will only ever be 21 million in circulation, and if we're only at 2 trillion today, that means the price of Bitcoin has to continue to go up. Now, when will it happen and how fast will it happen? I have no idea. There are plenty of people with predictions out there. You see VanEck saying that they believe that it'll hit somewhere between 150 and 200,000

in 2025. You see Max Keiser saying it'll hit 220,000 in 2025. You see Michael Saylor saying he believes in the next 21 years, Bitcoin is going to hit somewhere around $13 million. These predictions may be true or they may not. Nobody knows. But what I do know is the market cap of the asset is going to continue to appreciate because Bitcoin is an asset that we have never seen before.

It provides certain properties to an individual, to a company, to a nation state that they desire. It is going to suck up liquidity. It is going to demonetize other assets. And Bitcoin is going to continue winning. Ultimately, Bitcoin, now over $100,000, is in full price discovery. How high can it go? how fast can it go. Your guess is as good as mine. But what I do know is that if it is the seventh

largest asset in the world, there's a good argument that one day it just may be number one.