The Pomp Podcast - #1456 Anthony Pompliano & Phil Rosen | Bitcoin Is Taking Over Traditional Finance

Episode Date: December 18, 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, federal reserve, housing regulations, home affordability, why the market is telling the fed what to do, and why you need to become an investor.  ======================= Ledger has been trusted for 10 years to secure 20% of the world’s digital assets. For a limited time, upgrade to the Ledger Flex and get $70 of bitcoin. Go to ledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future. ======================= Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Created by Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, Polkadot empowers users to build decentralized applications with ease. Backed by industry leaders, making it a preferred choice for big names, Polkadot stands out as a leading choice for investors seeking a reliable, future-proof solution in the growing world of Web3 technology. Learn more at https://polkadot.com/. ======================= 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 excellent episode with Phil Rosen. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Opening Bell Daily. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin,

the Federal Reserve, housing regulations, what's going on with home affordability, why you sitting at home have to become an investor, why savers are losers, and why the Federal Reserve is not actually in control, but instead the market is telling the Fed what to do. This conversation covers a lot. I really hope that you guys enjoy this. Please let us know what you agree with, what you disagree with, and what questions you have for the next episode. Here's my latest conversation with Phil Rosen. 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 Ledger. They're celebrating 10 years as the most trusted name in crypto security. With over 7 million users and 20% of the world's digital assets secured, Ledger continues to lead the way in protecting your crypto and digital ownership. Their latest devices, Ledger Stacks and Ledger Flex, feature the world's first secure touchscreens,

making managing your assets easier and safer than ever. Plus, the new Ledger Security Key app offers a secure alternative to traditional passwords, enhancing your digital security. Go to ledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future. That's ledgerpomp.com. Go check them out today. Today's episode is brought to you by Polkadot. Polkadot offers secure, scalable, and decentralized blockchain technology that perfectly aligns

with the needs of innovative projects. It was developed by Gavin Wood, one of the co-founders of Ethereum and the creator of Solidity. Polkadot aims to build an internet where users have full control over their data and their applications. Polkadot offers tons of unique features, a shared security model, along with a new auction model and significant implementations like ASIC banking. Given these characteristics, it's easy to understand why Polkadot is gaining more and

more traction in the cryptocurrency world. Some people even are talking about it as the AWS of Web3. Now, companies such as Mythical Games, Astro Network, and over 50 other independent blockchains with hundreds of applications already leverage Polkadot's technology to power their platforms. If you're looking for a reliable, scalable, and cutting-edge solution, Polkadot seems to be the top choice for industry players. Go check them out today at polkadot.com. All right, Phil, what's the first topic you got?

So every single investor in the world is about to gain exposure to Bitcoin because MicroStrategy was just added to the NASDAQ 100. And that's QQQ, which pretty much every retirement account goes into. It's the most popular fund for passive investors. What did you make of this news? Well, it's really just kind of an algorithmic decision that if MicroStrategy gets big enough and meets certain criteria, it gets included in the index. If it doesn't meet that criteria, then it won't be in the index. I do think that MicroStrategy is appreciated a lot, right? The market cap is much larger. Obviously, it qualifies to now be included.

What is interesting to me is everyone is talking about it in terms of like, oh, now every investor is going to know that they're investing in Bitcoin. I don't think that most people could name 20 stocks in the NASDAQ 100. I don't think most people could name, you know, 50 stocks in the S&P 500. They're buying an index. They're just saying, hey, you guys are smarter than me. Just give me the 100 stocks. And that's what I want exposure to.

What I do think is pretty interesting, though, is more so the impact on micro strategy more than the impact on the investor. So that persistent bid of, you know, tens of billions of dollars that will be flowing towards micro strategy is a very big deal. And so it will continue to give Michael Saylor the ability to sell stock, buy more Bitcoin, Bitcoin goes up, sell more stock and kind of play the game that he's playing. And so while it's a good narrative or a good story to talk about the fact that like now every investor is going to have exposure to Bitcoin, I think they're going in there like half a percent. Right. So like, sure, they kind of sort of have exposure, but I don't think 99% of the people that are

holding NASDAQ 100 could tell you what's the percentage or it's not like they're making an active decision. I'm going to go buy the NASDAQ 100 because MicroStrategy is in there. So passive indexes are more valuable to the company, I think, than a company is valuable to the people holding the index. Yeah, I think that's a great point because even for us, we look at the market all day. So we might not, we think it's obvious that, holy crap, this is a, you know, micro strategy being added, but most people wouldn't know or recognize that. One, so one analyst told me this improves how micro strategy is viewed from a credit perspective. So ratings agencies will say, okay, now they're more credible or legit of a company. So I think that impacts the cost of

capital for what micro strategy can get in the market and just how the market perceives them. To a degree, yes. He's unique in that he's had a pretty good cost of capital so far. Like he's been issuing 0% convertible notes that are converting at 55, 60% premiums to his current price. I'm not aware of anyone who's able to get better terms than that. So in a weird way, yes, getting into the NASDAQ 100 does improve credit rating and does improve kind of your position, if you will, kind of is like a stamp of validation in the traditional financial system. but actually Bitcoin gave him that already. And so it's like trad five being like, oh, now we think this is validating, right? But if you look at the market, the market determined that Bitcoin was more important than the NASDAQ 100

because having the underlying Bitcoin exposure gave him the ability to raise these converts at very, very attractive terms. And so if you go and you ask an analyst on Wall Street, they're like, oh, he's now in the NASDAQ 100, right? But if you go and you look at the convert market, actually they don't care. Like they've already been giving him, you know, pretty insane pricing terms because they're like, hey, what we want is not another company than NASDAQ 100.

What we want is we want a company that's giving us exposure to Bitcoin. And so this is like a classic paradox of kind of traditional financial system and Bitcoin system meeting each other is that where the market clearing price has been is actually in favor of Bitcoin. But there's still a lot of people in the traditional system that they're waiting for these kind of traditional milestones to be hit. So there's some investor somewhere who didn't have exposure to MicroStrategy, but now they're excited because now they're in the NASDAQ 100. It doesn't matter though, right? In the grand scheme of things. And so, again, I just go back to like, if you look at all of the ramifications of this and you just zero in like what matters, it is that there's now a persistent bid from passive investors into MicroStrategy at a size and scale that they previously didn't have. That will likely drive the price higher and also give him the ability to get more Bitcoin, which will then drive his price higher.

And so my expectation is that let's call it a half a percent or whatever allocation in the NASDAQ 100 will grow over time. And so one of the most interesting questions is, you know, at the end of 2025, what percentage of the NASDAQ 100 is micro strategy? I don't know. Right. And I don't know if I necessarily have done enough work yet to have a strong opinion on it. But I do think that that question is going to tell you a lot about the NASDAQ 100, a lot about microstrategy, et cetera. And so if it's, you know, half a percent to 1%, okay, fine. What if it's 5%? That'd be a pretty big jump, right?

And so that's the type of stuff that is pretty interesting because now you're talking about relative comparisons to, you know, other companies that are in the index. And I think one piece of that too, if it gets to 5%, what does that do to the price of Bitcoin? and Bitcoin just hit $108,000 today as we're recording. And pretty much it's hit a new high every week since the election and sometimes multiple times a week. Seven weeks in a row. Yeah.

Greatest winning streak since 2021. What has changed in this week versus the week before? If anything, have you noticed any new drivers or maybe it's just micro strategy? I'm not sure. Well, I think last week or the week before, Paul Atkins being named as the SEC chair is a pretty big deal.

People realize, hey, Trump is following through with his pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto stance. Plotkin seems to be a good tailwind. You also see Howard Letnick being named the Secretary of Commerce. I think that's a big deal. He's obviously very pro-Bitcoin and crypto. Scott Besant, he's been coming in as Treasury Secretary. That's obviously very pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto. And so you're putting the puzzle pieces together for the administration.

You're realizing like, hey, these people are actually people who seem to understand the technology and the assets. And they're going to be friendly to them rather than abrasive. So I think that's a big deal. Second thing is 100K is a pretty big psychological, I think, milestone. There's a lot of people who said, hey, I think this is going to zero. Hey, I don't think it's really that valuable, whatever. Let's get to $100,000. You're kind of like, there's not that many stocks that reach $100,000.

Now, of course, stocks are constantly doing splits and kind of all these different things. But Berkshire, a couple hundred thousand dollar stock. And so you start to get into this like rarefied air where people are like, hey, I can't ignore this thing. And so I think that that's a huge piece of this is just seeing the price of the asset kind of cross that threshold is pretty important. And then lastly is we're now at the end of the year. And so the last two weeks of December in the stock market is usually a pretty good time. But December through March of halving years, so kind of halving happened earlier, we get December, we go to March, I think is historically a really, really good time for Bitcoin. And so if price continues to go up, Trump waltzes his way into the White House, he'll be saying, you're welcome the whole way there. And I think that him claiming that he's the Bitcoin president, and let's say Bitcoin tripled, that would be pretty powerful, I think. So if by March, Bitcoin is 130K, well, Bitcoin basically doubled, that'd be a pretty big deal. Yes, that would be. And I think the sort of the macro component here with Bitcoin hitting all time highs, the stock market is hitting all time highs. That sort of undermines the Federal Reserve, who's trying to cut interest rates right now. And now there's talk, oh, they may slow down in 2025. And I've also seen chatter of stagflation risks. So high inflation essentially coming back. What's your read on these next 12 months from a macro perspective? Inflation is higher than they're saying, and it's not going away.

I've been saying this since 2020. I'm still going to keep saying it. Asset prices are going to the sky because they're devaluing the currency. They can play all these games with CPI measurements. They can rebalance baskets. They can send people into the grocery store with tablets to count baked beans with no sodium and do whatever they want. Inflation is the measurement of the increase of the money supply.

And if I look at the Fed's balance sheet, it's going up a trillion dollars every 100 days. These people have lost their minds. And so if you're going to keep jacking up the federal debt and you're going to continue to devalue the currency, right, by the best case analysis that I've seen, not probably was actually accurate, but the best case using the government data, the U.S. dollar has lost more than 25% of its purchasing power since 2020. It's insane. So you look at it and you say the stock market, Bitcoin, all these things, they're just responding to the change of the money supply. So if you are watching this stuff go up, you're saying to yourself, what's happening? You're not smarter than the market. The market is understanding what's occurring.

And so inflation is not 2.7%. 2.7% is bad. And it's still, real inflation is higher than that. And so if you're an investor and you're sitting in cash, you're getting screwed. It's like very simple. And so I think people want to make it very complex. Like, oh, the Fed's going to cut interest rates, do this. Like, dude, the Fed has no choice but to keep interest rates lower and to print money.

Because if they stop doing that, bad times come. And so we now have a Federal Reserve that because they broke the market, they are being dictated what to do. And so if you're an investor, it's a very binary decision. If you lived your life in our generation and you did not invest, you suffered. If you invested and had half a brain, you thrived. That's the game. But the Federal Reserve, they're sitting there like, oh, maybe we should slow interest rates. Maybe we should do this.

They have no clue. They have zero clue. You're telling me they're looking at data from a month, two months, three months ago. They're going to make a decision today and they're going to predict the future? Stop it. Because guess what? They're also making decisions without any sort of allegedly input from politicians. So the interest rate decisions and the monetary policy decisions they're making in October, they claim that they're not accounting whatsoever for who is likely to win the presidential election.

They also claim that the December decision that they're going to make is taking into zero account any political kind of influence. Hello, Donald Trump is coming to be president. People are going mega long in the stock market. Assets are flying right now. but we're central bankers. We don't pay attention. We're independent. So it calls into question,

are you actually taking a holistic view of the economy? I don't know. Somebody smarter than me will figure that out. But all I know is regardless of whether the Fed cuts, Fed stays, Fed hikes, Fed prints, or Fed drains, asset prices are going higher. And so this is a very simple test. Did you invest or did you not?

That is a, I think, And boiling it down to investors and non-investors is a great way to think about it. I'm also wondering, is there, and I don't know the answer to this. Maybe there isn't an answer. Is there a best case scenario for what the Fed should be doing? I think that the Fed is in a lose-lose situation. Because if inflation is higher than 2.7% and you cut, inflation probably comes back. Okay.

If you sit there and you do nothing, then what you really are betting on is that you have some minute control of the economy, and they don't. If you hike, you basically lose all credibility with the market, and you probably push us into a recession. So if you think about how do you solve this problem, it's not in the Fed's hands because the Fed broke the market. It's like, you know, if you are out with your dog and you're going for a walk, you're the fed, the dog's the market, and the fed used to walk the dog. Now, the leash broke off and the dog's running wild. Guess what? The dog's walking you, even though the dog don't got a leash on you, you're chasing the

dog all over the neighborhood, right? Who's laughing now? That's basically what has happened. And so when you see that, you say to yourself, well, how do we get out of this situation? It's got nothing to do with monetary policy. It has everything to do with we have to innovate. We have to get GDP cranking. And so the best thing that we can do is deregulate, empower entrepreneurs, make massive investments

in technology, and grow our way out of this problem because it's a structural issue. And so the Fed actually, they can have impact on the short term, but they're chasing the dog all over the neighborhood. and so what you need is you need that dog to run home that's what you need that's the only way you're going to catch the dog right yeah and so how do you do that get gdp growing and i think that's why putting a bunch of business people into the government it's a really fascinating experiment is it going to work i don't know but it's our best shot yeah i saw uh jerome powell he said himself at dealbook he said we need to grow our way out of debt and ken griffin agreed

with him he also said we need to grow our way out of debt um these people are smart they know exactly what's going on the challenge that somebody like jerome powell has is he can't actually say the truth right imagine if he showed up to the next uh um press conference he said no matter what we do it's on you guys you guys got to grow you guys got to build technology you guys got to get gdp going people would lose their minds but oh my god the federal reserve chairman has just said that he has no control over the economy, right? I mean, it'd be mass chaos. So instead, what they have to talk about is data points, use the Fed speak and play their whole game, which is fine. Like they're doing the best that they can. But at the end of the day,

the solution is not in the hands of the Fed. It's in the hands of entrepreneurs. I think that's the message that Trump has pretty much been pushing because he has put a lot of doubt on the Federal Reserve in his first term and also coming into his second term. And he's in the pro-growth camp that he says we need to grow our way, innovate, etc. I think he's pretty much saying what the Fed cannot say, because Trump has no filter. He's going to say, oh, the Fed has the easiest job in the world. They show up and make a coin flip every quarter. And Jerome Powell, of course, will push back on that. But I do think there's something there where the market is controlling everything anyway. So the Fed is sort of just a figurehead

at this point. Let me flip around on the table and give you the best argument for why the Fed This is not a good job. So COVID happened. We locked tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people in their home. Velocity of money goes to zero. Businesses are shut down. Huge, huge, huge problem. Supply chains break, all this stuff.

By the end of the year, asset prices are up. How they did it, obviously is going to have long-term pain, but they solved the short-term problem. Okay? So we know you're going to get an F on the long-term, but you get an A-plus on the short-term. trade-off. Then you look at 21, November 21, they realized the market's frothy. Were they late? Of course, but better late than never. And they say, we're going to hike interest rates. They're able

to hike interest rates up over 5% and they don't push us into a true recession. NBER, they're full shit. We did have a recession for two quarters, but in terms of like a massive crash, a big crisis, et cetera, we don't get that. Again, solve the short-term problem, probably cost us more in the long-term, F on the long-term, A plus on the short-term. So they were able to navigate basically four years. They were dealt a hand and they dealt, you know, and figured it out. Now they're starting to cut interest rates. You can see capital flowing back into the market. You can see asset prices going, right? The question is going to be, can they do this without reinflating inflation? probably not

maybe they can do it less inflation but probably not and so at some point remember when they were getting an F on the long term how do you measure the long term

you got to pay for your sins you didn't study for the test you don't pass the test question is is 2025 the test time does the Fed have to take the test finally we're going to find out and the crazy part is

it's like taking a test with a partner and you don't know whether they studied or not because the politicians they don't give a shit right they've been printing money this whole time so they're making your job harder and so i think that again did the fed do a good job or not it depends on how you measure it but there's a strong argument that the ability to overcome you know the the public health crisis to then get interest rates up and not crash the economy severely, and then to start to cut again and kind of have this asset price boom.

A lot of people who say, actually, you know what, they're doing an okay job. But if you're an investor, you don't look at what's going on today. You're constantly looking in the future, peeking around the corner. What's coming? It's going to be a hard one. I think the ones who pay the most as far as deal with the most pain will probably be everyday Americans and, uh, people that want to buy a home. And, uh, you, you shared a chart on X recently that showed purchasing a home now costs a thousand dollars more per month than renting the same property. And the historical average is about 230 bucks. If the fed goes back into raising interest rates, that will probably worsen. Um, what do you, I don't even know what

the question is, but what do you make of that? Well, I think that individuals are sold a dream called the American dream. The American dream is you can be born here or you can come here. It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what language you speak, what your education, your wealth status, et cetera. You can create a life of financial security. You can buy a home. You can pursue happiness. Great. Buying a home is a key part of that American dream. And it used to be that buying a home was a little bit more expensive than renting. And really what you did is you short-term sacrificed that incremental expense because over 20 or 30 years, you paid off the mortgage and then the cost of the home would go down

the carrying cost. And so it actually would be cheaper to own your home than to rent. And you had the equity value that was appreciating. So you came out better. now the gap is so wide that for 20 or 30 years if you have to pay a thousand dollars of carrying costs versus a couple hundred dollars of renting it's a big big gap and so the question is how long can you do that and still come out on the right side now one of the things that is also happening simultaneous to that is obviously the home prices are appreciating significantly

and so it really ends up being a evaluation of cash flow versus capital appreciation monthly expenses versus future capital value. And right now, unfortunately, there's a lot of Americans that say, I can't afford to make the short-term sacrifice that is required to buy the home. Even though I know that there's supposedly this big payoff at the end, the short-term pain is too much. That gap is too big, right? It's widening. So I'm going to rent. Now, here's the crazy thing is there's a sense of security in owning your home. There is a sense of pride in owning your own home. I rent, I've bought homes. I rent, I bought homes. Done both. Renting is less mentally taxing. And so again, goes back to for a certain generation,

how many of them actually want to own a home? How many of them actually want to have certain responsibilities. For a generation that is obsessed with clicking a button on their phone and food showing up, it's very different than maybe our parent or grandparent's generation who took great pride in cooking dinner every night. So you look at that and you say, oh, wait a second. Our parents and grandparents could never imagine asking someone else for a ride. We press a button, someone comes and picks us up, right? Like the way that we interact with the world has completely changed. And so then the question begins, well, our parents and grandparents would go cut the grass. They would go and fix something in their home. They enjoyed doing

certain things. How many young people actually want to do that stuff? Probably not that many. And so there are multiple factors other than just the economics, but the economics are a big part of it. And so there's people who are watching this who say, I want to own a home. I want to do that stuff. I want to have that responsibility. I wanted that pride of owning a home. I can't afford it. Huge problem. So how do you fix it? Build more homes.

How do you build more homes? Well, we have the ability to build the homes. Get the regulators out of the way. Whether it's local city council or housing regulations, remove them. Now, it doesn't mean, hey, just go build whatever home you want. They can look like whatever you want. There's no standards or anything. But remove the onerous ones.

Put very simple things. I always laugh. I say, why is it that every single regulation in the housing market is like 27,000 pages? You get one page, write it on one page. Be very clear. If you can't write it on one page, then what are we doing? And so you can get one page for zoning. You can get one page for, you know, house specs.

You can get one page for like, you just go through this and you say, okay, people are like, oh, you can't do it on one page. All right. Well, if we're at 27,000 pages and I'm asking for one, maybe we settle on 10, but that would be a big improvement, right? And so it's that type of stuff that you just have to kind of go at this and say, okay, how do we actually increase the housing supply? Because if we increase the housing supply, prices will come down. Huge problem. We should have a doge for housing. I was about to ask you, is doge the trick that will get us moving in the right direction?

I don't think that they're focused on that type of stuff. I think they're more focused on the abuse, fraud, and waste. and so things like these types of regulations they kind of uh uh they're just good enough you know it's like uh um if you have a group of kids and you say you know which ones are the bad ones which ones are the mischievous ones you pick out four or five like those are the bad ones there's always the kid who like kind of sort of participates but he's not really thought of as the ringleader so he gets grouped in with the good kids that's what these regulations are is like they're not directly abuse waste and fraud but they're not very helpful either and so they kind

to skirt by. And so they're not in the crosshairs of Doge, but maybe we actually need an organization or we need five people. And we say, hey, go focus on this or get these regulations down. The problem is they're not federal regulations. They're local. And so then you get into a state versus federal thing and very complex, very hard. And so it's easy to see how we get to this very bureaucratic situation. But at the end of the day, we just need to build more houses. On that note, thank you for your time, Pomp. Thanks for doing it. We'll be right back.