The Pomp Podcast - #1461 Anthony Pompliano | Bitcoin Predictions For CRAZY 2025

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

Anthony Pompliano records a solo episode breaking down the historical year of 2024 for bitcoin. Topics include institutional adoption, price hitting $100,000, bitcoin ETFs, nation states, MicroStrategy, other publicly traded companies, bitcoin miners, political environment, and where bitcoin goes from here.  ======================= 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. ======================= 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. 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 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

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today. 2024 was one of the biggest years for Bitcoin yet, and I'm here to tell you what happened, why it's important, and where we're going. Let's get started. First up, we have institutional adoption. Bitcoin started the year around $40,000. We had the approval of the Bitcoin ETF, the long-awaited new type of investment fund. Now, all of a sudden, capital poured in, and Bitcoin went from $40,000 to almost $70,000, and a brand new all-time high. That's right. Wall Street pushed us to a brand new all-time high for the first time in a number of years. Now, the reason why that's important is because Bitcoin eventually hit $100,000 for the first time in 2024, and those ETFs and the institutional adoption were a really big piece of the story.

Bitcoin ultimately went as high as $108,000, and today is trading just under $100,000 again. These institutions came in for a number of different reasons. First up is they had a brand new way to access the market. Most institutions weren't going to go and open a Coinbase or a Binance account and go buy spot Bitcoin. But with the ETFs, we were able to take Bitcoin and put it into a wrapper that they understood. And then that capital started to pour in. Secondly, a lot of institutions really understand how the traditional financial system works. And they realize that the dollar continues to be devalued, the national debt explodes higher, and there are serious issues in terms of protecting your economic value in that legacy system. Bitcoin, just like gold, happens

to protect your purchasing power in a way that other assets haven't been able to. And so these incredibly smart, sophisticated, and wealthy investors, they are looking for an asset to protect their purchasing power, just like the average retail investor as well. And then third is that the institutions realize that they can make money. And anytime that incentives align, Wall Street is going to capitalize. And so with the ETFs being approved, these institutions put these ETFs through their distribution.

Their sales teams went to work. They started running TV ads and digital ads, and they started to do educational content. The whole idea was that Wall Street was going to take this invention from the internet and the digital age, and it was going to bring it into that legacy system. Nobody does distribution like Fidelity

and BlackRock and Franklin Templeton and many others. When the big machine of Wall Street decides that something's going to become popular, there's no slowing them down. So you can look at this chart right here. Let's look at BlackRock. They have over $50 billion in AUM in their Bitcoin ETF. And you can see that that happened at an incredible speed compared to their gold ETF. It has taken 20 years for the gold ETF to get to $33 billion in assets.

Bitcoin's ETF blew by it like a Ferrari in the fast lane, passing a Toyota Camry in the slow lane. That is the beauty of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is digital gold with wings. And the more that Wall Street sees charts like this, the more they're going to lean in. The more they lean in with their capital and their distribution, the higher the price of Bitcoin will go. And it becomes this big, reflexive circle. Another type of institutional player in the Bitcoin market this year was nation states. We know that El Salvador and Bhutan, they've already been buying Bitcoin, mining Bitcoin, and generally just putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

El Salvador now has more than 6,000 Bitcoin on their balance sheet. But we also know that many other countries are starting to participate as well. There's countries in the Middle East that have joint ventures with publicly traded U.S. mining businesses. We've seen Russia come out and say that they're mining Bitcoin and they're using Bitcoin for certain transactions because they can't be censored. And then there are rumors of many other countries around the world that are either buying Bitcoin and not announcing it or also using state energy to mine Bitcoin as well.

Bitcoin is good for countries if it's good for institutions and for individuals. And that is a big theme of 2024. Institutions obviously have a lot of money, but no one has as much money as nation states. Then if we go and we look at a third type of institution, that's the publicly traded companies. Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy

now have over 440,000 Bitcoin on their balance sheet. They have pioneered Bitcoin on their balance sheet as a playbook. There were a number of fast followers who have moved very quickly to become popular companies as well using the same strategy. We can look at MetaPlanet in Japan. It's the number one best performing stock in Japan this year.

It's the most heavily traded stock in Japan this year. And they simply took Bitcoin, put it on its balance sheet and remained laser focused on buying up more and more Bitcoin. This strategy works and we're seeing companies copy it all over the world. You can see companies like Similar Scientific or DeFi Technologies and many others put Bitcoin or other assets on their balance sheet And that continues to be a great strategy heading into 2025. And then that leaves the publicly traded miners.

Many of these companies over the years mined Bitcoin, sold it for cash, and they just were trying to drive revenue and profit to get their stock price to continue to grow. But now these miners realize that holding Bitcoin is a superpower. And so we can see that Marathon has over 44,000 Bitcoin. Riot has over 17,000 Bitcoin. And Hut8 has over 10,000 Bitcoin on their balance sheet. These companies obviously are able to drive revenue and profit through the mining activities or through the AI data centers, but holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet has driven

a significant amount of value for these businesses. And so whether you are a traditional financial institution, you're a country, you're a publicly traded company, or you're a publicly traded miner, Bitcoin has now entered into the institutional game and the price of Bitcoin was a big winner because of it. Institutions aren't the only story of 2024 though. We know that Bitcoin has been a bottoms-up adoption story. It was the people who first bought Bitcoin. But there's a couple of data points that I think are pretty eye-opening.

Specifically in the United States, it was estimated in 2023 that 30% of Americans own crypto. Today in 2024, that number is estimated to be 40%. So a significant one-third increase in the number of Americans, which equates to over 90 million people in our country that own these assets. But more importantly, the number of women that own these assets has significantly increased as well. We have seen the jump from about 18% to 30% of women in America, meaning one out of every three women, they actually own crypto as well. This is a trend that is not slowing down.

And if you extrapolate it out globally, it is now estimated that more than 550 million people globally own Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. And so my guess is that we will only continue to see that number go higher and higher and higher. at one point we are going to cross over 1 billion users of this technology i don't know if that'll happen in 2025 but we are definitely on the path to 1 billion users if we know that institutions are adopting bitcoin and driving the price higher and we know that retail is also increasing their ownership it then brings us to the point that retail also is refusing to sell based on the latest numbers one out of every two bitcoin that is in circulation has not moved in the last two

years. That means that when Bitcoin was down around $17,000 all the way up to over $100,000, 50% or more of the Bitcoin in circulation, nobody sold. That is because Bitcoin takes people who come in for speculation, people who want to get rich with Bitcoin, and it converts them to long term strongholders of the asset. This is the type of thing that is needed for an asset with a finite supply to continue to appreciate in price, but it is also the thing that drives word of mouth. And one of the big stories of 2024 is that word of mouth had a big comeback. Obviously, individuals who held Bitcoin and saw their portfolios increasing in price, they started to talk about it to their family, their friends, their barber, their taxi driver, or anyone who

would listen. But also the mainstream media began to talk about Bitcoin in a way that they previously had it. It no longer was Bitcoin is this thing that's not going to work. Bitcoin is a thing as a punching bag that we should talk about and talk down to. Instead, Bitcoin has now entered the mainstream. It's hard to argue against Bitcoin when Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Tudor Jones, Larry Fink, BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, many others are all embracing Bitcoin. And so the mainstream media flipped from being bearish to bullish. They now have a cautious optimism in Bitcoin. That more positive coverage has led to even more word of mouth. As more word of mouth spreads, more people see the media talking about it, more capital comes into the

system. As more capital comes into a finite supply asset, the price continues to go higher. That is the flywheel of Bitcoin, a decentralized asset that has no CEO, no board of directors, no marketing team, and no marketing budget. The beauty of this thing is that no one controls it, but everyone is involved. Which brings me to my last point, which is not only did the institutions and retail adopt Bitcoin, but we also saw the political arena

finally embrace the asset. Donald Trump ran as the first Bitcoin president. He spoke at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville. He said that I will protect Bitcoin. I will protect your right to self-custody of Bitcoin and I will make sure that Bitcoin succeeds. He has also talked about a national strategic reserve where the United States would hold the 200,000 Bitcoin that we currently own

and would commit to not selling it, but also that the United States would start to buy Bitcoin. Once he assumes office in January, we will see whether that campaign promise becomes reality or not. On top of Donald Trump running as a pro-Bitcoin candidate and receiving immense support from the industry, Donald Trump has now appointed two different people who I think are worth paying attention to.

The first is Paul Atkins, who will be the new SEC chairman as long as he is approved. Paul Atkins is very friendly to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. He has an understanding of the technology of the market and has a thought that the United States should be a leader and therefore the regulatory body should not be as abrasive as it has been in the past. On top of that, David Sachs,

somebody who I've interviewed, somebody who owns Bitcoin and has talked very fondly of Bitcoin. He is the incoming AI and crypto czar. He'll be working to make sure that there's policy and regulation that is created, that is thoughtful, that is helpful to the United States being a leader in both of those categories. And then as a bonus, there is actually a third person.

His name's Bo Hines, and he's coming in as the crypto person. He's going to lead policy on that front as well. Between Paul, David, and Bo, I think that Donald Trump has assembled a team that is going to be friendly to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. It's going to help the United States continue to extend their leadership, and it likely will cement the Bitcoin strategic reserve. The United States has the opportunity to lead, and if the United States wants to be a leader in capital markets. If they want to be a leader in finance, then they have to embrace Bitcoin. And so if you have institutions, retail, and countries all embracing Bitcoin, that is likely a very strong long-term tailwind. Now, what happens in 2025 is anyone's guess. It looks like

the price will go higher, but nobody knows. We had the halving in 2024, which obviously created a supply shock. We've now had a demand shock coming from those institutions, the ETFs, retail, and the political arena. But now we also see the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates and the expansion of global M2. All of that is a tailwind for Bitcoin. And so 2025 likely will be friendly towards the asset. Will there be another crash? Will the four-year cycle continue? I have no clue. But what I do know is that every day, more and more people around the world become Bitcoiners. 2024 was a great year and 2025 likely will be a better year. Because at the end of the day, what we are watching is the global adoption of a decentralized digital peer-to-peer system.

That asset is being repriced by the global market. What is it worth? What is an asset that is backed by the strongest computing network in the world actually valued at? We don't know what the future holds, but the world is trying to figure it out. And so far, they think that the asset is worth at least $100,000 per Bitcoin. My guess is that over time, that price will be higher. And the people who hold Bitcoin, who understand it, who have done the work, done their own research and realize what they're holding will likely do very well when it comes to the value of that asset. And so the institutions are here. Retail's been here for years and nation states are starting to show up. If the year of 2024 was the year of institutions, the year 2025 is going to be the

year of nation states. I think there's a lot of fun in store for all of us. Thank you so much for all paying attention to so much content, for providing so much insight in the comments and on Twitter. I've learned so much from all of you. Bitcoin has been an asset that has taken me around the world. I've met thousands of people and it has helped me better understand everything from politics to the economics of what the society we live in is. But ultimately, I'm most excited about what is the future of Bitcoin. Understanding the past is important. Understanding the infrastructure and the technology is even more important. But the single most important aspect

is that Bitcoin gives everyone hope. It gives them excitement. It gives them something to look forward to. And I, just like you, have a lot to look forward to in 2025.