The Pomp Podcast - #1460 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Bitcoin Will SHOCK People In 2025

Episode Date: December 31, 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 what is going with bitcoin, potential threats to bitcoin, market manipulation, why the stock market should be open 24/7, immigration, and 2025 predictions. ======================= 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. ======================= 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 Polina Pompliano. This is the last episode of 2024, and we discuss a ton. We get into what's going on with Bitcoin. What are the big threats?

Are they real or are they not? How I think about 2024, what transpired, and what's going to happen in 2025 when it comes to Bitcoin. We then talk about the market closing for Jimmy Carter's death and why I disagree, think it's market manipulation, and why they should open the market 24-7. We then get into a number of controversial topics, things like immigration, and also understanding why nuance is so powerful in a world that only wants things to be black and white this conversation touches on tons of topics and i promise if you watch the whole thing you're going to learn a lot you're going to understand my opinion and you probably are going to walk away from this having your own thoughts and so i'd love to hear them please get on twitter and

let me know what you think what do you agree with what do you disagree with let me know and then we can have a conversation that's the beauty of this type of episode is that i get to learn from all of you so please please please reach out once you've actually listened to the whole thing and I'd love to learn from you just as much as you hopefully learn from me. So 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. 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. All right, Plana, what's the first topic? All right, we got Bitcoin at $95,000 at the current time of recording. So what is the status of Bitcoin going into 2025?

Where are we at? Bitcoin in 2024 went from a contrarian idea to consensus idea, which is very important because that meant that Larry Fink and the rest of Wall Street, they said, you know what? These Bitcoiners, they may be insane. They may have been early, but they are right. And we're going to get in the game. And now the reason why that's so important is that once Larry Fink and the rest of Wall

Street says, we want this, they don't stop. And so we have seen $50 billion flow into the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF. We have seen tens of billions of dollars flow into the other ETFs. And all of a sudden, all of the career risk around Bitcoin on Wall Street got removed, and that has opened the floodgates. And so if you see the corporations, why are they raising so much money to go buy Bitcoin? it's because all the fixed income or all the debt funds, they now are allowed to go and buy these bonds that are backed by Bitcoin. The ETFs, why are they raising so much money? Because all

that career risk has been removed. So the story of 2024 is that we successfully went from it being an individual driven market to now it is fully an organization and institution driven market. And I think that that transition really, really changed a lot of the market structure. When the market structure changes, you can see price has changed. We'd never gone into a halving at a new all-time high price. And so when you see that, you say to yourself, wait a second, there's a lot of things that changed in 2024 that will forever have moved Bitcoin to grow up. And so Bitcoin was basically, it was like an adolescent type technology. It's a full-grown adult now. And what I think we will see in 2025 is we're going to see the countries

start to participate as well. And we're going to have gone from individuals to institutions to countries all within the span of call it 24 to 36 months. And you went on Fox talking about how Trump should buy Bitcoin in the strategic reserve, strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Yeah. Well, what do you, why? Well, if we're going to go and we're going to buy Greenland, which is a national strategic purchase, if we're going to go and take back the Panama Canal, which 36,000 Americans died building, and Panama all of a sudden is playing games

and they are trying to use this as a bargaining chip, well, wouldn't it make sense for us to spend a little bit of money to also get digital real estate, to go and get these digital assets? There's only 21 million that will ever exist. And we know, we can count. I can get up to five, six, seven, 8%

of all Bitcoin that will ever be in circulation that's in the hands of individuals and companies. Then you add in the ETFs, then you add in the masses of people, there's not a lot of Bitcoin that trades. And so if the United States wants to be a leader, then they are going to have to go and they're going to have to buy Bitcoin.

And if we don't, it isn't a game of, oh, El Salvador, that's a small little country, nobody cares. Or, oh, Bhutan, I can't point it out on a map. Don't worry about them. Russia has now come out and said, both Putin and other people in the government, we are mining Bitcoin

and we are going to use Bitcoin for transactions because it cannot be censored. And so if you go back, check the receipts. I said that when the United States sanctioned Russia in the way that it did and went after all the oligarchs in the way that it did, and then when it took Russian assets and it said, we are going to lick our fingers,

stick it in the air, and we're going to decide that these assets are now going to be the Ukrainian people's assets. You've weaponized the US financial system and you are going to push people off of that system who are your adversaries and or think that they may become one of your adversaries in the future. And so now we are seeing it. Of course, a country like Russia, which is under these immense sanctions, which I'm not making judgment on whether we should have put them, we shouldn't

have put them from a kind of strategic standpoint, a geopolitical negotiating standpoint. I'm putting all that aside. I'm merely looking at it from what are the incentives now that it's been done. You are going to push them off of it. And they are saying that they are mining Bitcoin. They're going to use it for transactions. Now, a lot of people will say, oh, that's a great reason why Bitcoin shouldn't be valuable. It doesn't matter. Every single technology that I can think of was first adopted by people on the fringes of society. They were the nerds. They were the weirdos. They were the criminals. They were the people who had some specific use case, some edge case that they needed to use the technology. Beepers, if you go back and remember, there was only two types of

people pretty much using beepers early on, drug dealers and business executives. If you go back and you remember, why do people have phones in their cars? A lot of young people forget that there was literally phones that had a wire in a car. Well, who was using that? Business executives and drug dealers. And so you can go through all these technologies and you start to realize that technology is usually adopted at the fringes and then gets pulled into the mass adoption, right the stay-at-home soccer mom is not using a beeper first they're not using a laptop first they're not using the internet first they only get it once there is true mass adoption and so bitcoin being adopted by a country that is under these adverse uh kind of uh pressures from the

united states makes a lot of sense why did el salvador do it all of a sudden el salvador showing up to the imf and they're doing a bunch of negotiating and bitcoin gave them immense negotiating leverage with the IMF that they previously didn't have. So you see this and you say to yourself, okay, obviously other countries are doing it too. We also all kind of wash over the fact that there are countries in the Middle East that have joint ventures, publicly announced joint ventures with US-based publicly traded mining companies. And so you say to yourself, okay, hold on a second here. Countries are mining Bitcoin. Some countries are even now saying that they're using it for transactions to avoid censorship.

Just extrapolate out what's going to happen. Of course, these countries are going to end up adopting this asset. I'm not saying it's going to replace fiat currencies. What I am saying, though, is that it is going to have a place in their portfolio of strategic reserve assets. If you can see the writing on the wall and you're the United States, you already have 200,000 Bitcoin in your control, don't sell them. Commit to never selling them.

Then go and buy more. And the beauty of this is we're not talking about a lot of money. if we went and we took $100 billion and we bought Bitcoin, that would be, I can't remember if it's 10 or 20% of all the money we've sent to Ukraine. It's nothing. It's a rounding error, right? And so if we have a $2 trillion annual deficit and we spend $100 billion, it's nothing. Yeah. Literally, your life will not change. Nothing will change. And so if you said to me, hey, what should we do? I've previously said, look, just print it, right? They're going to

print it anyways. But actually, if we had intelligent people who were going to do this, you wouldn't print it. The better thing to do would be let's find $100 billion of savings. Let's take that money and divert it to go and buy the Bitcoin. I just don't think that we have enough time for people to go and get $100 billion of savings. Because when we started talking about this, Bitcoin was at $70,000, right? It was like $69,000 on November 1st, 2024. 60 days later, Bitcoin is near $100,000. Yep. So every day you wait is max pain from a financial standpoint.

It's more expensive for you to go and buy the Bitcoin. So you can keep waiting. That's fine. But everyone gets Bitcoin at the price they deserve. Let's hope that our country isn't buying it at a million dollars a coin because they were so kind of dumb and slow to act on us. Yeah. Now, let me ask you about two potential threats

that have been circulating in the news lately. The first being that BlackRock has come out with this explainer video about Bitcoin saying that there's no guarantee that Bitcoin's 21 million supply cap won't be changed in the future. Stop it. What do they know? BlackRock doesn't. Listen, this is loyal. Okay, but again, Michael Saylor retweeted it. No, no, no.

Hold on. Let's back up. Okay. This is classic, like people who don't understand how companies work on the internet, yelling and screaming because they want to hate BlackRock. There's plenty of things that BlackRock does that you can critique. There's a lot of things that BlackRock does that you should sit there and say, hey, I like this. That's true of all these financial organizations, right? Okay.

It cracked me up at one point. Everyone was yelling and screaming because there was Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds that were doing things like live golf, right? And then you're like, okay, we don't like that they're going into golf. But then you look and you say, well, what else do they own? They're like the largest shareholder of Starbucks. Okay. Right? So BlackRock, what ends up happening is they say, hey, we're going to make an educational video about BlackRock.

Yes. Great. And then somebody says to them, you know what? We're a publicly traded company. We better be careful that if we do not say all of the risks that we could be sued by shareholders. And so it becomes a disclosure game. The United States is full of all these like gotcha legal leads. And so some lawyer or somebody in the compliance department said, well, we know that the code says there can only be 21 million, but there's no guarantee you could change the code sometime.

We better put the disclaimer there to cover our ass. Again, that's fine. Go. You want to see the disclosures? Go read the Coinbase S1 when they went public. Look at all the things that they put as potential risks. But is that a realistic risk? No, because the way that Bitcoin is governed is a very important point.

It mimics very closely the United States government. And what I mean by that is in the United States government, there are three branches. There are checks and balances on each other. And so if people have probably heard me talk about this before, but Justice Scalia one time was asked, what did he think was the superpower of the United States? Whatever the phrasing was. And he said deadlock. And everyone was like, wait, what? Like, that is a crazy answer.

And he said, part of the governance beauty of the United States is those checks and balances don't allow anyone to come in and make radical changes. And so the United States system grinds itself forward with lots of abrasiveness and friction, et cetera. And so that deadlock actually prevents damage from being done. So if you look at Bitcoin, there's three branches, if you will. There's the software developers, there's the miners, and then there's the node operators, the people. In order to make changes to the code, you need those three groups to all get on board.

And so we saw in 2017, there was a group of people that came together. They were all miners and they said, we have more than 50% of the hash rate. We are going to change a very technical component of Bitcoin. We're going to make the blocks bigger because we think that's how Bitcoin is going to scale. More than 50% of all the miners hash rate got together and they tried to do that. And they got a middle finger from the node operators. They said, we're not going to accept this. And it was, it literally was called the block size war. Is that when they forked? It was all out war intellectually, online, et cetera. So when you try to make a change and you can't do it, the beauty of open source software is you can fork it. And so I was right.

Bitcoin was the same Bitcoin that it's been. The miners said, hey, we want to make this change. And so what do they do? They forked the code from the beginning of Bitcoin until that point. The two chains look identical, but they went and they changed the block sizes and they went and they created Bitcoin cash. I remember this. Wow. Bitcoin cash has done nothing but go down compared to Bitcoin.

And so it didn't work. But that's the beauty of free markets, right? That's the beauty of this is, hey, you can try to change the code. Yeah. But if nobody wants to do it or you don't get enough people on all three of those parties to do it, then guess what? You can go play with your ball somewhere else on the playground. And nobody went to play that game. Everyone stayed with this game.

And so the same thing here. Somebody could show up today and say, you know what? I'm actually going to create a Bitcoin fork and I'm not going to have 21 coins. I'm going to have 42 million coins. Go do it. The market's going to decide. But guess what? The market's going to stay with the 21 million Bitcoin because that is the code that everyone has rallied around and said, this is Bitcoin.

And so I just think that this idea of BlackRock putting it in the video is much more of a legalese. And, you know, again, it goes back to there are different people in the market today. BlackRock and what they have to address is very different when it's me or individuals. I have no lawyer up my ass telling me, oh, when you tweet, you should put this huge disclaimer because you said Bitcoin is good. But also, also, I didn't know this, but earlier this year, Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan CEO, said he believed Bitcoin supply could be changed in the future. He said, how the hell do you know that it's going to stop at 21 million? He said at Davos. I've never met one person who told me that they know for a fact.

OK, how do you know Jamie Dimon is going to be the CEO of JP Morgan in 10 years? Right. Again, I actually think that Jamie Dimon is an incredibly intelligent person. He's definitely the best banker of our generation. I don't even think that he hates Bitcoin, right? I think that he enjoys playing the contrarian on Bitcoin, right? But that's fine. Like, whatever. Put him aside for a second.

My thought process is you don't know. Right. But you can check every day. That's the difference. Is that if a change is going to be made, You need all three branches of Bitcoin to come together and make that decision. And then you can audit the code every single day. I can't tell you what's going to happen in the future for anything.

But what I can tell you is today, what happened on Bitcoin, I can show you on chain. And then I can tell you what does the code say is going to happen tomorrow. And when that code changes, I can tell you in real time, this is the change that's going to be implemented. And so if it ever changes, you're going to know immediately. But as of right now, that's what the code says. The code is continued to execute exactly as it's been implemented. And I don't foresee that changing anytime in the future. If it does, tune in.

I'll be the first one to tell you. But right now, I don't see that happen. As an aside, it's great news that BlackRock is making Bitcoin explainer videos. This would have never happened four years ago. BlackRock is the chief marketing department of Bitcoin. I've been saying for months now, Larry Fink is the CMO of Bitcoin. He doesn't even have to try. All he has to do is go on TV.

They ask him about it. If he says anything positive, he is the chief marketing officer of Bitcoin because the messenger matters more than the message. The fact that he likes Bitcoin now is incredibly important. And I think that he continues to go on TV and not only just say positive things, but say things like,

oh, Bitcoin's going up because it's a flight to quality. That was unfathomable five years ago coming out of his mouth. And so he's done a fantastic job. BlackRock, the entire team over there, Robbie Michnik, et cetera, they've done a great, great job of putting that product out in the market and definitely becoming the winner. But there are a number of other very successful launches as well. You can go and you

look at Fidelity, Bitwise, 21Shares, etc. They're all doing a very good job, I think, of getting these assets into these funds. Yeah. So, okay, there's a Forbes article that came out. This is the second kind of risk that people are talking about for Bitcoin. Not a risk. It says, in recent days there has been a mini media firestorm surrounding google's announcement about willow it's a new quantum computer and a perceived threat to bitcoin most of the analysis reveals a remarkably surface level understanding of how quantum computing will change cryptography as well as how bitcoin remains resilient to these kinds of technological advancements what do we need to worry about with the quantum computers now right now nothing why nobody has a quantum

computer okay they have a chip that shows promise that maybe in the future in like a decade could become a quantum computer okay so but what is the risk well the whole idea of cryptography is you could brute force it if you have a computer that could do you know if it took 50 years to do a calculation right and now you can do it in five minutes well maybe you could actually violate the encryption. Well, guess what? Encryption has gone through a ton of new technology advancements throughout the years. And every time that a new technology is coming out that the bad guys want to use, the good guys are right there to increase the defenses. And so should we pay attention to this? Absolutely. Could quantum computing be a big problem in the future? Absolutely. Is it a

problem today? No. I know of very specific companies that are already working to go and try to increase the quantum protection of these blockchains etc and so i think that's really where uh you can see people are thinking about okay there's quantum computer what i always tell people is you want to know what the risk is the risk no one's talking about if it's written in the headlines of forbes it ain't a risk well just think about that right no the reporters are telling you it's a risk no it's not a risk this article actually makes a pretty good point that you know quantum computing is not an existential threat to Bitcoin, because just like the Y2K computer upgrades that things had to go through, it's likely, you know, when this comes about, like

Bitcoin will have a similar upgrade. But it says, it's not an existential threat to Bitcoin itself. And it will only be Bitcoin that's affected since what we're really dealing with is the ability of quantum computers to crack every kind of cryptography we use today across finance, It's commerce banking. I mean, that's the whole of the argument is like, hey, if I had a quantum computer that could crack encryption, if I go and I steal the Bitcoin, now the Bitcoin's worthless. So what about state secrets?

What about the nuclear codes? What about, you know, all these other things that are out there that are quote unquote encrypted? Wouldn't you love for, if you're a bad guy, to get the communications between world leaders and supposedly encrypted communication or military communications or state secrets, you know, all these different things.

and so it just comes back to this idea don't be a bad guy well obviously don't be a bad guy bad guys are bad that's in their name uh but you've been spending too much time with our three-year-old no i mean you gotta explain it sometimes bad guys are kind of like the luigi guy like murder is bad you shouldn't do that if he did it i don't know like supposedly allegedly you're supposed to say that uh but he seems to be the one who probably did it and so i don't know why we're celebrating a guy like that. Right. And so it's like, uh, when you get into, uh, these conversations, it's like society has lost its mind. And so bad guys are bad. If you murder people, you're bad. If you, uh, do things that you're not supposed to do, you should get in

trouble. Like pretty simple. And if you come back to this encryption thing, uh, encryption is there because it is increasing privacy. It's increasing security. And so think of all of the banks, right would you rather steal bitcoin or would you rather go break into a bank electronically right that all these things that i think are much bigger targets than bitcoin at just you know a trillion and a half dollars or so this uh i think this is an op-ed this isn't a real like article by forbes but it's really good it says critics who have long criticized bitcoin are seizing on google's quantum computing news to predict bitcoin's downfall these reactions often say more about the biases of the skeptics than the vulnerabilities of bitcoin itself

show me one critic show me one critic that can talk about bitcoin in greater detail with more depth of understanding than the best bitcoiners yeah i don't know one and there are people who will say hey look uh and the people i probably respect the most other critics i understand why people like this i understand how it works i understand why it has value I just don't like it. Yeah, which is a fair point. That's fine. There's plenty of assets that I see that, you know, I've talked ad nauseum about the fact that somebody pitched me early on AI porn company.

Going to be a home run. Grand slam. I don't want to be involved. Yeah. Right. And so it goes back to I understand exactly why they're doing it. I could actually argue the pros and cons of the company. Right.

end, I could see exactly how they're going to monitor. It was a grand slam. As long as they execute, that company is going to be a massive company. I don't want to be involved. And so if you go and you look, there's a lot of people, I think, who look at Bitcoin and they say, hey, look, I've done the work. I understand how it works. I can argue the pros and cons with all this stuff. I actually think it's going to work. I just don't want to be involved. And so having that approach, I think, is a much more intellectually honest approach than the people who are like the quantum computer is coming uh you know oh my god everyone saw your bit like shut up yeah just shut up it's kind of like when you don't like something you just look for it's a

confirmation bias of things you don't like about it oh they're not sending their best to critique bitcoin that's for sure nassim taleb is still tweeting out into the ether uh after he blocked everybody about how bitcoin's going to zero and nassim taleb's his portfolio just looks like a bag of trash compared to Bitcoin's return. Oh, man. It's true. Clip that. No, clip nothing. Listen, Taleb is the perfect example, right? He's the perfect example. He is an intellectual who, I mean, read the books. They're incredible. He nails it. He is incredibly smart. But he thinks that he's even smarter than he actually is. And so whenever things come out, he actually is not as much of a practitioner as he is an academic. And so he sees something and

it comes up with all these academic theories as to why something's not going to work. Dude, egg on your face, man. Like, just give it up. Like, you think you're smarter than Larry Fink now. You think you're smarter than Paul Tudor Jones. You think you're smarter than Stanley Druckenmiller. You think you're smarter.

And then you realize, wait a second, this guy thinks he's smarter than everybody. I do think, I mean, I witnessed this in 2022, I believe it was, when all the crypto companies came crashing down, the price, everything. Yeah. And the haters were taking a lap.

That's fine. Knock yourself out. But guess what? It's probably going to happen again because it's cyclical, right? Of course. But like, who cares? Because at the end of the day, it comes back to this idea of a broken clock is right twice a day. Okay.

The critics will sit there and they were yelling at 1,000, it's going to zero. And then it'll go to 20,000. And they're still yelling, it's going to zero. And then it drops to 3,000. And I see, I told you, and then it goes to 69,000, like it's going to zero and then it drops to 17,000. I told you, bro, what are you talking about? This thing is up a hundred X since you were yelling at a thousand that it was going to

zero. So it comes back to at what point would they change their mind? And that's my favorite question. Ask the critics at what point would you change your mind? What, what has to be true for you to change your mind? By the way, I could rattle off 10, 15 things. If it came to Bitcoin, what would change my mind? Right?

One obviously is if the price broke below some level. If Bitcoin all of a sudden we woke up tomorrow and it had dropped and it was 50 bucks, that would cause a lot of people to change their mind. They'd be like, wait a minute. Like that is such a serious drop. What happened? If all of a sudden 90% of Bitcoin's hash rate went offline, it became unsecure. I would have a lot of questions.

if somehow somebody got centralized control of it. All of a sudden, a lot of the value proposition goes away, right? You can go through these different things. The things I just mentioned have like a 0.0001% probability of happening. But again, if they happened, I would probably change my mind or at least I'd be very focused on trying to understand why did this happen and should I change my mind? If you ask critics, they'll literally tell you nothing.

So what would change your mind? They say nothing. okay so you're just an idiot wait i just have a quick question is it possible if countries start buying bitcoin for somebody to have to spend enough money to have the majority or no to of bitcoin yeah well bitcoiners aren't going to sell their bitcoin so are not no so the if a country had to uh buy 51 which even if they own 51 they have no extra control over bitcoin than anyone else but even if they spent all the money they had bitcoin would be at 50 million dollars for a country to be able to buy all the Bitcoin, right? I mean, they would just have to spend

such an enormous amount of money and the price would just keep skyrocketing because all that capital coming in with a fixed supply asset. And so go back to Taleb just for one last second. I got a personal thing with Taleb because he also violates the second rule in my book of being a critic. When you're a contrarian, you can't also be an asshole, right? Because if you're going against the grain, you have to understand that if you're right, that means that there's a whole hell of a lot of people who their worldview, their portfolios, like there's gonna be a lot of damage and negative impact. Yeah.

You should be gracious in your victory. But if you're wrong, then literally you're just standing on a soapbox proving that you're the idiot in the corner because you're the one who believes something and everyone else doesn't believe it. So if you're a contrarian, you can't be an asshole. Why not? Because it ultimately goes back to this idea of if you have true intellectual humility, you say to yourself, I know everyone believes A, I believe B.

Here's my reasons why I may be wrong. Yeah, he doesn't do that. I just went on his Twitter. The latest is how. I can't go on his Twitter because he blocked me. I'm not blocked. Yeah, and I was super nice to him. But he did one time hear that the very first fund that I ever had,

me and Jason Williams started the fund and we didn't have an office and we would go to a Starbucks and we would work out of the Starbucks together. Some of the most fun I've ever had in my life, right? Also early investor in four unicorns in that fund. Thank you. But he tweeted at us and was like, go back to the Starbucks bathroom or something. And I was like, see, like, again, if you're a contrarian, you can't be an asshole. And so. But some people just enjoy the fun of Twitters. I have tried to get Taleb to come on the podcast. I've tried to get him to go to lunch. I've tried to get him to do all, like, I wouldn't even need to record it. I would just like to have a conversation with them and sit down and say, listen, like, give me the best argument as to

why I'm wrong. Maybe he could convince me. I don't know. A lot of people know this. Mark Spitznagel, who is one of Taleb's partners, is probably one of my favorite investors. I think incredibly highly of him. I love their strategy. I think that they're very smart. I love his approach to life his ethos his values all that kind of stuff um in some of the books uh that spitznagel has written or there's been other books written uh they used to go on these long walks in new york city like in the middle of the day and just talk i would love to go on a three-hour walk with nassim taleb and just talk about the world and markets also i actually don't even think we need to talk about bitcoin yeah but i don't think he's interested all right well so nassim if you see

this. Call me. Wow. Okay. If not, you're wrong. Let's talk about... The man does not hold a grudge, I promise. So the markets. So the markets... Sorry, I'm just still thinking about it. So former President Jimmy Carter passed away at 100 years old this week. The New York Stock Exchange announced that the markets will close on January 9th to commemorate the loss of an american president it is customary for the exchange to close trading to honor the passing of a president the last such occasion was in december 2018 for the death of former president george hw bush oh what do you think market manipulation should be outlawed but but outlawed but why it's a nice commemorative thing listen i'm gonna argue on behalf of the presidents

if you want to honor a former president yes which is a noble cause yes there are many ways to do it without locking millions of people out of accessing their financial assets they cannot access their financial assets you are hurting you're taking away access from millions tens of millions hundreds of millions of people many of which are not even american to honor a former president oh the nasdaq will also close trading that day fly the flag at half staff hold an event have a moment of silence when the market opens there's all kinds of stuff you can do but closing the market is woke capitalism yeah but it's virtue signaling this was founded in the 1700s they were not woke it's virtue signaling nice tradition it's virtue

signal no and as i continue to say having hours of operations is market manipulation let the market be free if you close the market it is not a free market open the market 24 7 365 and allow assets to trade the machines are trading let them trade it says it is rare for the exchange to close on non-holidays since it is a symbol of america's leading capital markets position in the world let me take a step further you want to honor real heroes why don't they shut the stock market when soldiers die overseas well why is it just for the president well now you want to close all the time but let's just extrapolate this out right what you're saying oh do they not meet your standard are they not heroes are they not part of the american fabric do they not meet the criteria

that you have if we're gonna shut the market when martin luther king jr died why didn't we shut the market they actually did for that one again okay perfect example why martin luther king jr he's not a president that was an exception but here we go now we're playing a game so now you're gonna say this is the craziest part ready is you say oh it's for presidents oh but martin luther king jr okay so what's the next one the next person that dies who gets to decide the point goes back to this is not actually conducive to a free market and so even crazier than the president's is when you start to pick and choose you say oh martin luther king jr we're gonna shut it for him that's even if i had known that that would i would have even went even

crazier with my tweet well because it comes back to the idea of human bias how are you honoring someone by shutting down the most american thing we have which is capitalism yeah it makes no sense and so it goes back to the american people don't want this they didn't ask for this just open the markets okay again it'd be real nice go go out on the mark on the stock market floor have a moment of silence do a little ceremony all great but shutting down the stock market makes no sense and so if you say oh we always do it for presidents great well what category did martin luther king jr fall into is that just world leaders when gandhi died i don't know did we do it i don't know what the criteria is but they probably should have a better

criteria if they're gonna shut it do you have a list of when else for whatever their uh events i still think they have shut the market for i don't have a list do i need a list well i'm just wondering so if you do martin luther king jr what when jackie robinson died okay hold on did they shut the market let's ask chad gbt and what non-holiday times has for death when when else did they do it um let's i love a little live chad gbt oh they did it following september 11th okay They did it for Hurricane Sandy. That was the first weather-related closure of this length for like two days. There was a technical glitch in 2015.

Oh, and then in response to the pandemic, the New York Stock Exchange temporarily moved to all electronic exchange, closing its trading floor. Okay. Yeah. But that's... But they did it for Martin Luther King Jr., you said. That's what the CNBC article said, yeah.

Okay. Did they list anybody else? Hold on. so let's just let's use a hypothetical situation if they close the stock market because martin luther king jr died but not for jackie robinson okay they do have a few okay so mlk um president drive john fk assassination fdr world war one in response to outbreak was shut down for nearly four months but that's different uh wall street bombing in 1920 stock market crash yeah i mean again but like that's some of those were it comes back to the idea that if you're going to start

playing the game of we're going to pick and choose then why don't we just every single day because that because that that is how this works right as you just extrapolate it every day we should just shut the stock market because somebody somewhere yeah i do think that there's like different ways to honor them but i just think this is like a 1700 1700s tradition that has seen just because you've been wrong doesn't mean you should continue to be wrong um and the only thing worse than being wrong today is committing to continuing to being wrong in the future fair we live in a global digital real-time 24-7 market and you're going to shut the stock market by the way we haven't even talked about for holidays it's the biggest joke in the world

they have half days in preparation for holidays yeah the machines don't take a break that's the world we're headed towards and you everyone who says oh it's honoring this is honoring that whatever right it's going to be closed tomorrow bitcoin trades 24 7 365 the entire crypto market a multi-trillion dollar market trades 24 7 365 there are no hours of operations you can't shut it off yeah so why is it that the digital native world says we just are always on but the dinosaurs of wall street are picking and choosing when to shut the market because they're no because it's market manipulation you're manipulating a free market you're preventing the trading of assets and so it comes back to very easy solution don't shut the market

the technology is there robin hood has pioneered this they've introduced all this overnight trading, all these after hours trading. And so how is it that a technology company is able to affect change here, but the existing exchanges won't? And my guess is, and I only say this because I've talked to some of the people, the people at the exchanges actually want to change some of this stuff. They would like there to be 24 seven trading. They would like for there to be more volume trading. They would like to not have to shut down the market, but there's always the balance between how do you disrupt the status quo and the incumbents and kind of tradition etc with adapting for the new world yeah so it's very hard for the people in charge of these roles to do

it open the market that that's the overarching message open the market and if it takes congress to step in and create legislation that says you cannot shut down the american market then so be it okay okay i can't believe they shut it for mlk and not for somebody like jackie robinson i don't know what to tell you go ahead okay so um let's talk about the h-1b visa saga uh first let me just tell you what the h-1b visa is very quickly and then we can talk about the drama the h-1b visa is a u.s work visa that allows employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations requiring theoretical or technical expertise like it engineering finance etc. The eligibility requires a bachelor's degree or higher in a related field. It's initially

valid for three years, extendable for six. The cap, it's limited to 85,000 visas annually, 65,000 for general applicants, 20,000 for those with U.S. master's degrees. So that's not a lot of people, to be honest. 85,000 visas a year is not a lot. Employers file a petition on behalf of the employee, and it can lead to permanent residency. It's a popular visa for tech companies and fills critical skill gaps in the U.S. workforce. Tell us what the drama is. Everyone has a hint of being right. Yes. And that's what makes these so controversial, is that multiple things can be true at the same time, but everyone wants to hold on to the part that matters the most to them and then extrapolate that out and yell and scream about it and not

listen to the other side it is true that there is abuse in the h1b system but we're talking about 85 000 doesn't matter what the number is okay there's a system that brings in non-americans to work in the united states where an american could get the job and it is not being used for the reason that it was originally created. That is true. Is it as big of a abuse system as people want to make it out to be? Well, if every single H-1B was abused, they were all fraudulent in terms of it. They're not. I know a few. But let's just seed the point, right? For the argument's sake. 100% of H-1Bs that are created in 2024 were abused. Okay. What's the total number you say 85 000 yeah okay so 85 000 out of a country of 330 million americans right

it's a very very small number that's if 100 of them so again is there abuse 100 should we stop the abuse absolutely how do we do that somebody smarter than me will figure that out right but is there abuse yes the second thing is if you are a company that is competing on the global stage you need the best people regardless of what language they speak with their religion their wealth status, their sex, their income level, whatever you see the best people. And usually in these debates, the people who are building and running those companies, that's their position. I need the best people. It's the people who don't run the companies who are yelling and screaming about all this other stuff. Yeah. But the people who are actually on the ground closest to the

problem say, I need the best people. So again, there's abuse, but also true. You need the best people and the united states has a monopoly on great talent but that doesn't mean there's not great talent elsewhere okay right that that would want to come here there's a line out the door i mean look at our southern border there's people who are literally just walking from hundreds of miles to walk into our country yep so the people who don't like our country you can leave you'll easily have somebody who wants to take your spot there are a lot of workers who want to come here because they want opportunity. They want higher pay.

They want social mobility. There are people who want freedom. There are people who want to come here and arbitrage. They want to make more money and send it home to their families. There's a bunch of reasons why people want to come here.

There are people who moved to the United States through these programs simply because they watched a movie when they were a kid. Wait, just really, really quick on our prior point. In 2024, there were 780,884 applications

for those 85 000 slots so line out the door so one in ten right you know 15 gets uh gets approved now if we understand that there's abuse in the system we understand that the companies want the best people yeah uh we also have something called country caps or country uh components which my understanding i'm not an expert i'm not a lawyer definitely not an immigration expert but my understanding doing some reading is that country like india gets as many slots as a much smaller country like uh maybe sweden or whatever and so what ends up happening is uh you get these really long backed up lines in countries that have a billion people and then other countries obviously there's a much slower line or a much faster line because there's not as many people applying

so again there's probably some things to do there yeah on that it does not prioritize or limit applicant applicants by country everyone competes equally for the same pool of 85,000 no no the h1bs my understanding is that each country is allocated a certain number of h1bs and it creates this huge backlog so like a country like india it can be like a 10-year wait wait wait if you apply for permanent residency like a green card after getting an h-1b country specific quotas can create significant delays but to apply there's no country quotas yeah applications but i think the acceptance we'll have to again we're not experts we'll have to check for example an indian h-1b holder may wait decades for a green card applicants from smaller countries may get

a green card within a few years it's because if you want a green card not if you want the visa OK, fair. So another component of this is that what it means to be American is actually a paradox. America is a country that was built by immigrants. If you look around a room, go to anywhere, go to Times Square, go to Grand Central, go to the middle of Iowa. and you look at those people and you say, where did your family come from? They can tell you, my grandfather grew up on this land. My grandfather did this.

My grandmother did this. But if you keep going far enough back, they came from somewhere. Most people in this country, their families did not originate in the United, you know, what is today the United States. The other day we were talking about how with me, this, it was me, my generation,

but with you it was like two generations ago and it's like how quickly you can go from not speaking a word of english to like your children or your grandchildren achieving these amazing things the reason why that plan and i had this conversation is it never hit me until i started thinking about my grandparents and great-grandparents or someone came they went back they came etc the amount of social mobility yep that is available in this country in two or three generations is absurd. And so you look at it and you say, how would you not have some portion of your population that wants to go to the United States if that's possible? Of course. So again, these families came from somewhere. At the same time, it is incredibly important to protect

what it means to be an American. And so there are people, especially online, who continue to say, we should prioritize American citizens. We should prioritize training American citizens. 100% sure, you're right. We should do that. The best example that I heard of this is, I can't remember who tweeted it, but somebody said, it's kind of like the NBA.

You have a team and on that team, 90 plus percent of them are American. But you might go get one star player from somewhere else and put them on your team. and now you have a better team because you got the one star player from the international market but the majority of your team is american yeah and they're working here they're creating value they're you know paying taxes etc so again it goes back to this idea that like each side of the debate if you put all the people at a round table and you said what do you believe each one

of them has at least a hint of being right yeah but the problem is when you put them all together everyone is looking in the rear view mirror and they're saying look at the problems yeah my challenge to everyone is look forward look through the windshield what is the solution i don't have some perfect plan but what i do know is that if someone could create a plan that says we only want the best of the best it has to be a meritocratic system where we have some way to prove that they're the best. We have to somehow disincentivize American companies from so easily importing people from other countries to replace American workers. So they're only incentivized to do the absolute best people who are better than Americans, take a software engineer or whatever.

And we have to end the abuse of the system. And we have to figure out a way to make this sustainable over the long run and we have to figure out how to better train and educate american workers that would be the plan to me it's like i i take issue with the people the extremists on the right who say that there is it it should be american only we should train the people here there shouldn't be any immigrants hired for these roles um but like again it's been a long time coming. This country does not prioritize STEM education like other countries do. I've told you in Bulgaria, we were solving for X in second grade. It's definitely, they put a premium on it over there. The other thing is that immigrants, like you say,

it's a perfect paradox. A, immigrants, I think, tend to love America more even. And I think that they are even more proud to be American than people who are born here. But also generally, yes, there are those exceptions. But yes, of course, of course. But like my dad is so proud to have like the American flag hanging in his house. And there's a hell of a lot of Americans who think the American flag is a signal that you're a far right extremist. Right. And they're actually they're a naturalized citizen, many of them. So they had to like pass a test and like know the history to questions that a lot of Americans born here maybe would not.

And it's important to note that a lot of economic like immigrants add a lot of positive things to the economy, such as jobs. As of 2024, 46% of Fortune 500 companies, 230 firms were founded by immigrants or their children. This marks the highest percentage recorded in the history of such reports. These companies collectively generated $8.6 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2023 and employed over 15.5 million people worldwide. This is where being an independent becomes a superpower. When the far left implemented their dumb DEI nonsense and they said we should pick people for jobs based on things other than who's the best person for the job, I yelled and I screamed. and I said, this is dumb, this is bad, these people are idiots and this is not going to work.

Now, when the right has their own version where they say we should pick people for jobs for reasons other than they're the best person for the job, I'm yelling, I'm screaming, I'm saying they're dumb and they're wrong and it's not going to work. Okay. Because what we are figuring out in society is that Marjorie Greene and AOC

are the same person. The far right and the far left are the same extremist. Yeah. What you are watching is not a swing solely from left to right in the country. You are actually seeing a swing

back to a more centrist, common sense, et cetera. And it's a rejection of extremism. That is why Donald Trump won is because Donald Trump actually softened on some of his most controversial opinions look at ivf look at some of the things that people really said hey he he's he's too far yeah he softened he came back a little bit more to the center now he still has very very strong views secure the border build more housing get

inflation down, have a strong national defense, all these things, right? Those aren't extreme views. Those are actually views held by the majority of Americans. They don't want a porous border. They want to have housing that is affordable. They don't want high inflation. They believe that America is strong and that strength is the deterrence, all these things. When it comes to things like immigration, the problem is it's not a widely held opinion. to be anti-immigration, to be anti-skilled labor because the country is made up of so many people who are immigrants. So what you are basically doing is you're advocating to a group of people to be against themselves, which is a losing strategy. Yeah. And so it comes back to this

idea. If America wants to be the best, we need the best. Option one, let's create the best here. We should do that. We do an okay job, but we can do much better. Option two, go find the best and bring them here. There's a reason why I say that's option two. And option one is to build them here. We can create the greatest number of highly skilled labor in the world. but we ain't going to do it with the current department of education we ain't going to do

with the current school system we're definitely not going to do it with teacher unions holding these schools hostage and we're definitely not going to do it in a world where our children are being taught nonsense yeah rather than math and science yeah i i gotta say though back to this so people were very worked up about this h1b issue um elon musk was going on tirades on twitter supporting it. Vivek Ramaswamy was getting heat because he said that American children were prioritizing the wrong things. All this stuff happened. And Trump didn't say anything. And my bet was that Trump would side with the people who were saying, you know what, this immigration thing sucks. It's broken. We need to fix it, which I mean, yes, it's a fair point. But he said he came

out in support of the h-1b program he said i've always liked the visas i have always been in favor of the visas this is why we have them i have many h-1b visas on my properties i've been a believer in h-1b i've used that many times it's a great program so that is trump moving more back to the center that is trump rejecting the extreme views of a party yeah the reason why trump won and was able to get so many undecided voters and people who are center left to move over one he had the blessing of running against a very weak candidate but two is he actually softened a lot of his positions not maybe a lot is even an exaggeration maybe he softened a number of his positions and he didn't go left what he did was he just came back a little bit to the center

and i think that's where people said to themselves you know what that that's where i am yeah right is I think we should go get the best people, but we should also stop the abuse. And so my message to a lot of people is the following. Your view has truth to it. The only way this gets solved, the only way we look through the windshield rather than the rear view mirror

is we got to work together. And so the same person who says there's abuse has to work with the person who says, I need the best people, who has to work with the person that says we must preserve the American values and society and the things that are important to America, who also has to work with the person

who sits there and says, we need to train American people. All that is true. Because there's power in nuance. And I think over the last few years, that's what we've lost. It's either you're here or you're here. There's no nuance.

Well, if I'm a dunk on you on Twitter, I need to be black and white. Yeah. Right? But if you go and you sit these people down and you say, hey, look, here's where the conversation is. And so in a hilarious way,

And I actually think this whole kerfuffle has created more strength in all of these people because they realize we're going to get in the shit. You want to create change? You really want to go in there? You want to rip out spending? You want to secure the board? You want to do? It's going to be some hard stuff.

Yeah. This is not going to be like, hey, let me, here's my stump speech and let's go get things done. But it's also surprising. I had no idea that so many people felt so strongly about H-1B visas. it it is this undertone of people are upset because there's illegal immigration right and so then they extrapolate that and they say all immigration is right right but it goes back to you want nuance well there's a difference between illegal immigration and legal immigration there's a difference between people who are coming here and they become a drain on the system versus

people who come here and they contribute to the system right and there's a hell of a lot of examples of people who are here who we did not work to keep here and they left tsmc is one of the best examples probably one of the single most important companies from a national strategic standpoint was not built in the united states tsmc i don't know this one in taiwan and so if you go and you look at tsmc a semiconductor yeah they create all the chips that he was here but he couldn't build it here now all of a sudden there is debate as to whether the united states should step in from a military standpoint if china was to try to take taiwan because tsmc is such an important part of america's strength and national defense interesting so for all the people

who are yelling and screaming about immigration. Well, hold on a second. We may get pulled into a war decades later because we took a certain stance. This is stuff super complex. It's all interrelated. I don't think there's easy answers.

I actually think there are things that I said today that I will learn more about over the next couple of years. And I will change my mind on. that won't prevent people from clipping these uh fine clips and say whatever you want to clip something go get to love to come on the podcast just please make sure like i'm not in the video i feel like getting um okay last prediction or sorry last topic what is your 2025 prediction today we are filming it is the last day of 2024 what is your hot take for the year everyone is underestimating AI and everyone is underestimating Bitcoin for all the hype,

for all the bullishness, for all the excitement. We are all underestimating how big those two trends will be. And it is not just a 2025 thing. It is a, the next two decades, we will look back and we'll be shocked at how big, how important, how integral they are to American life. and so the people who are excited today it's really hard for them to fathom how it could actually be even bigger but i think that that is likely to be the scenario how many people saw bitcoin in 2010 11 12 13 and were like within 15 years i think it'll be a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. I think that countries will be buying it. It sounded like a psychopath. Here we are. AI is moving at a pace that is just hard to comprehend, right? I could

sit all day, do no work, just read about all the advancements that I couldn't keep up. That's how fast it's moving. And so if the trend is likely to lead to explosions of adoption and advancement that are bigger than what you're expecting today, you really, really have to focus and take seriously, if I want to be in the business or investing world, I have to become an expert, which means that I need to treat this like I was studying for an exam.

Go and do the work. And so in 2025, I think there's going to be a great separation of people. The people who take this seriously and who say, hey, look, I'm going to go and I'm going to do the work and I'm going to learn about this stuff And I'm going to make sure that I'm understanding as much as I can. And the people who say, eh, I think it's all hype.

It's not going to be around. I'm not worried about it. But that bifurcation, that decision that individuals make, I think will drastically determine outcomes over the next decade or so. And so I'm going to be in the camp of, let's go get the books. Let's go read. Let's go learn. Let's go get prepared. Because if this is going to be big, I want to be there.

Yeah, I think what I was going to say is similar. I was going to say, I think 2025 will be the year of the Bitcoiner. I think that up until now, Bitcoin has been kind of on the fringes of society, but also the internet. So I think this year is like, like you said, like kind of when it grows up, but also it becomes serious. You know what I mean? Like it's no longer just like, oh, they made money in Bitcoin. Now it's like, it's like a serious thing where financial institutions are taking it seriously. Countries are taking it seriously. So we'll see what happens. Thanks so much for doing this. Hope you guys all have a great new year. See you guys in 2025.