The Pomp Podcast - #1473 Matt Cole | Investors Are ALL-IN On Bitcoin

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Matt Cole is the CEO of Strive Asset Management. In this conversation we talk about American capitalism, merit, bitcoin, how the world is changing, the political shift, and what it all means for your portfolio.  ===================== Ledger has been trusted for 10 years to secure 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management. 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. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got an amazing episode with Matt Cole. Matt is the CEO of Strive. In this conversation, we talk about American capitalism. We talk about merit. We talk

about Bitcoin. We talk about why the world is changing, how the political scene completely shifted, and what it means for people's financial portfolios. When we think about investing, most people just think about numbers. They don't think about things like merit. They only think about things like DEI, ESG, and many other factors that are going into these financial investments. But Strive pioneered a completely different way of thinking about investing. Their new way of thinking was all about going back to the basics, going back to merit and simply trying to create shareholder value. And now Strive is plugging into the Bitcoin system and they're trying to bring Bitcoin to people all over the country. And so it's awesome to talk to Matt. I think you guys

will really enjoy this. If you listen to the whole thing, I think you'll walk away thinking much more critically about what's going on in the world, especially for investors who are trying to embrace Bitcoin. So here's my latest conversation with Matt Cole. 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. L-E-D-G-E-R-Pomp.com. Today's episode is brought to you by Meanwhile.

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

Whether you are a long-term Bitcoiner or are just considering it for the first time, a Bitcoin whole life policy could make sense for your wealth plan. Visit their website, meanwhile.bm, to join the waitlist and to learn more about the world's first Bitcoin life insurer. Again, that's meanwhile.bm. Go check them out today. All right, Matt, I thought a great place to start the conversation is Strive, which is an asset management firm, really kind of hung its hat originally on this idea of

companies should be pursuing merit. Stop playing around with DEI stuff. Stop playing around with ESG stuff. Just get the best people for the job in a seat and go make money for shareholders, like create shareholder value. Talk a little bit about kind of how that applies to Bitcoin, because it feels like maybe Bitcoin is the asset in financial markets that has had to show its merit, right? There is no company, there is no executive team, there is no board of directors. And so it's really either won or lost in the free market, which seems to be exactly what you guys are all about. Yeah, absolutely. So the starting of Bitcoin was when banks were being bailed out by governments, right? And to have a free market system that will stand on its own

or fail on its own merits. And as a longtime holder of the asset, myself, yourself, every Bitcoiner knows, this asset's volatile. And so if you can contrast that to traditional markets, that volatility in traditional markets create situations where bell-outs come. There's no bell-outs in Bitcoin, but yet it doesn't matter. So, it will crash 80%, 90%, have a one-year bear market, a two-year bear market. But the actual fundamentals and what it solves and why people buy it has lasting value. And so, it has proved itself in a merit-based free market system. So I do think it is the ultimate asset of meritocracy and it's an ultimate asset that's winning. And I think when you think about besides just the unique things

that it solves going forward and the unfairness of the government agenda to shut it down, I think one of the things that actually makes Trump like Bitcoin is that it wins. And I think he likes winning. And I do think it's the ultimate asset for the values that Strive stands for, which is meritocracy, it's capitalism, it's innovation, it's excellence. So Strive was started by Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for president, now is running Doge. I think that you guys have a number of very interesting ideas. And I would almost say, whether it's internal culture or kind of company values, it is clear that you guys we're on a collision course with Bitcoin, right? Talk a little bit about kind of what are those

values? Like how do you guys evaluate, you know, should we launch a product? Should we go into a certain market? Should we do this or not? And what that kind of framework looks like, because I think like who you guys are is a huge part of why now you guys are one of the asset managers in the world that is really embracing Bitcoin. You want to bring Bitcoin to every single RIA, every single, kind of wealth relationship. And so talk about that kind of like company values or framework that you use. So we're long-term investors at Strive. And so we're not looking for something that's going to return 100% in a year or 50% in a year. And that's it. We're looking at long-term macro market cycles, 10 years, 20 years, 40 years, right? So as you look into the future,

the question is what are those long-term risk factors that are going to you need to hedge against or or actually go aggressively into return enhancing vehicles because of what you see going forward and like i think you're one of your previous guests jordy strive to actually views the world very similar in that we think three things matter energy ai and bitcoin it's that's not a a unique position necessarily but in the so we have an asset manager and a wealth manager in In the wealth space, it's actually extremely contrarian, even still to this day, to say Bitcoin belongs as a core asset in your portfolio for almost all of our clients, unless they don't want it, because we're never going to force something in there.

But that's a very contrarian take. But when you actually look at the global fiat debt crisis, you look at sustained inflation, you look at technological innovation around AI, which I think is going to be a huge tailwind for Bitcoin. And then you look at the election that I think actually took off the biggest risk for Bitcoin of the government actually just trying to shut it down and make it uninvestable, that this is the ultimate long run asset. It is, in my view, the ultimate savings asset. So bonds used to be the savings asset. My background, I used to work at CalPERS.

I ran $70 billion bond portfolio and was concerned about these macro issues there. And even there, did a lot of work on Bitcoin for pensions and how to think about this from an institutional perspective. And that's ultimately what we're doing here. And so our view is that at a 3% to 5% level, it clearly improves risk-adjusted returns. for me you know i'm i'm very convicted on it and i can handle volatility so i own a lot more than that but for for a client that may not be educated in bitcoin may not be able to handle massive volatility swings in their portfolio you can put three to five percent in bitcoin and increase returns for the same amount of volatility and i think that's where you can get people comfortable to say okay you know what you're talking about let's do this and the overall portfolio is not swinging in some drastic way, but yet they still have exposure to the best asset possible.

You mentioned that when you were at CalPERS and you've got the $70 billion bond portfolio, you did some work on Bitcoin for pensions. Talk a little bit about why did you guys start to look at Bitcoin? Why did you go and do the work? And then what was kind of the conclusion of that work? Yeah, part of it, it just bluntly was because I wouldn't shut up about it, but I was on the trade desk. I started as an intern. I became one of their youngest portfolio managers ever and had long track record of success, outperforming in our benchmarks every year. And so I was very respected on the desk, had a lot of friends on the desk. And myself started as a Bitcoin skeptic, even when I was there in 2012, 2013, 2014. As you're following

this asset, it kept not dying. I finally did the research in 2016. That's what you ultimately have to do. You have to do the research. I did it. I allocated to it, talked about it on the desk, And they still thought I was crazy, but come around 2020 when their thesis stopped not working and where they were like, you know, Matt, your assets going to go to zero, your investment's going to go to zero. They said, why don't you look into this and just say, what does, what is the asset allocation that might improve risk adjusted returns for our portfolio? What size is it?

Because one of the things that pensions have an issue with, and this is one of the reasons why increasing Bitcoin prices actually increases the chance of adoption of pensions is that they don't want to allocate half a percent of their portfolio to something or 1%. It has to be a percentage that's large enough that if the thesis plays out, it actually contributes meaningfully to the returns of the overall portfolio. And so that's where this three to 5% allocation made sense on a backwards looking basis, but also on a forwards looking basis. And even if you put in some logarithmic return that might be smaller in the future than it was in the past, you still have a great returning asset with great fundamentals. And you think

about the bond market that had a 40-year bond bull market from 1980 to 2020. We know going forward, we're not going to have a 40-year bond bull market unless rates are going to go to negative 20. And I don't think any one of us thinks that. So you have to think outside the box of, if you're not bullish bonds, where do you go? And I think the answer is mostly Bitcoin. When I recently went and did a whole bunch of research looking at this stuff, if you replace bonds with gold, almost no difference. But if you were to take a 60-40 portfolio, leave 60% in equities, domestic equities in particular, and then 40% in Bitcoin, your return over the last five years would be 430%. And so that's pretty good, right?

Now, I don't expect most people to go drop 100% of their bond allocation and put Bitcoin. But what do you see as you're talking to whether it's institutions or some of these wealth clients and various kind of clients, are they saying, hey, maybe I should drop like half of my bond portfolio or what are they doing? So clients are concerned about bonds. That's a very consensus view.

Clients as a whole that are in the older generation, I would say are open to Bitcoin, but they're often not running to it. And their biggest concern is their legacy, their legacy that they're going to leave to their family. And so that's where you can get a lot of reception to a three to 5% well thought out allocation, I agree that it could be higher

and still not increase risk for the amount of return that you can be. But you gotta, I think with clients that you're introducing it to walk before you run, because if it actually goes down and they themselves are not convicted, then they're gonna wanna sell the asset at the bottom and it's not gonna be a good experience for everyone.

But I do think for people that are financially literate, know Bitcoin, can handle the volatility, substantially higher amounts can make sense. And there are a lot of those people. So as Strive goes out there and talks about that or other wealth managers go out there and talk about it, they're going to get clients that are going to want that,

but they're also going to want the really smart ways to custody assets that if they pass away that Bitcoin's not lost or name your way to allocate to Bitcoin responsibly. responsibly. Our view is that it should be an asset class, not just an asset. So owning Bitcoin, Bitcoin debt, Bitcoin equities. And it really has had a lot of positive reception in the market. And what do you clients think of as the risk? Is it just volatility or are there other things that they're worried about putting this in their portfolio for?

Well, when they don't understand it, they hear a headline like quantum computing. Okay, quantum computing is going to kill Bitcoin. And you even hear that sometimes at our organization where some people are, you know, Strive started out as this pro-merit organization. I would say half of Strive is really well-versed in Bitcoin. Half of them are eagerly learning and excited about our focus on this, but also, you know, they hear this

and you have to talk through it and you have to take those concerns seriously. You can't just brush them off and say, oh, like, have fun staying poor. But when you talk through that and you talk through the security mechanism of Bitcoin, you can get people there, but I think it just takes time and effort.

when you say that you guys are kind of embracing bitcoin what does that look like right you know um i think people know you guys for the kind of anti-dei anti-esg and pro-merit stuff um but now it seems like this is not so much a pivot as it's additive like you guys are still doing what you were originally doing but you're adding in a very heavy focus on bitcoin so what does it look like so since day one of our company we actually said our company is foundation is not being anti-esg or anti-DEI. It's just being pro-fiduciary and value maximizing for our clients. Our first step in that was the pushback against ESG and DEI through very simple index funds, because it was a clearly missing product that we felt like half of America at least would want,

would rather have that than have their funds pushing some political agenda at their expense. But when you go back to, okay, like mission, I want to say mission accomplished, but that ball is rolling down the hill. And it's clear now that merit and capitalism are what's popular in this country. And there's a big pushback to neutrality. And anytime a company gets exposed for DEI, they just get blasted. PR risk, legal risk, same with net zero and emissions where you just see this collapse of the net zero asset managers foundation. I don't think that's necessarily because there's a change in view versus massive legal and PR risk. But regardless, the industry of ESG is collapsing very quickly. So going back to the first principles of what Strive stands for,

Bitcoin became the next obvious focal point of something that is clearly needed in the portfolios of Americans, but yet doesn't exist and is authentic to the founding principles of our company. It's authentic to our founder, Vivek, to myself as a CEO, that we really felt like we could make a big impact in bringing Bitcoin to the masses of people that maybe don't own it. And that's different than Bitcoin companies that are doing super, super innovative stuff to Bitcoiners. And that's great.

Ours is, let's bring it to people that don't own it and do it in a way that will get them to yes at their benefit. How important is Larry Fink and his pivot been to kind of Bitcoin's adoption in what I consider more of the traditional financial world? Yeah, the ETFs have been really important, actually. It's, it's, it's democratized access to Bitcoin in a major way. I think that I would like to see BlackRock go a step further than they have where right now they have Bitcoin white papers that, that more or less say, if your client's interested

in Bitcoin, here's how you can allocate it to allocation up to 2%. I'd like to see them go one step further and say, we actually think that Bitcoin belongs in, in the portfolios of everyday Americans. That's still the, where they are way better than a company like Vanguard that won't even allow their clients that want Bitcoin to buy Bitcoin. I think that's... Well, that CEO's out. He got fired. They haven't changed their policy yet though. And I just think about what Vanguard under Jack Bogle stood for. And I just don't think that that's consistent. I feel like there's a little

bit of a miss there. So at least I can give BlackRock credit for a massive success on the Bitcoin ETF. Got it. And when you're talking with many of these family offices or individuals, is it, hey, I'm interested in Bitcoin or are people then jumping to like, hey, I want Bitcoin plus name your other coin or, you know, kind of go down further in the kind of risk curve? it really varies based based on the client the most common iteration of people that want something other than bitcoin is probably not a coin that most people in the crypto community would think actually has value it's more of the the scam coins that that get attention to them and so it's it's at least in my view so it'd be like more of like hey i'm interested in ripple not i'm interested in solana or or something that that i think actually has has interesting

adoption metrics. Our view for Strive is that Bitcoin is the unique asset that we can confidently say has a core role as a core allocation to clients. And then I look at the other coins more from the perspective of like a VC investor, where I think that you need someone that's deep in the community and very actively watching all the different changing metrics because winners are and losers are going to pop up and and i think a buy and hold for 20-year strategy is extremely risky and non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies and what do people want to do they just want to hold this stuff or like you know coinbase recently announced that they're going to lend against it i know the banks are salivating over the fact that they are eventually going to be able to custody

these assets and you know they can kind of put all their financial products and stuff so like um you know one of the things i always find interesting about uh people who uh are working with an asset management firm, some of them are saying, hey, just it's all about return, right? And there's a lot of people who say, it's really important how much income I have, or it's really important I'm able to borrow against this stuff because I have either high expense ratio or I want to buy a house or whatever. So what are people telling you that they want to do with the Bitcoin that they're holding? So the average client doesn't know what they should do. And so our perspective is we need to think about what the best way to own this asset

is. And I do believe it's actually directly owning the coin rather than an ETF because I do think it unlocks a lot of interesting opportunities, whether it's the ability to lend against your Bitcoin, whether it's the ability to, let's say Bitcoin goes up a lot and you're sitting on a lot of gains and you want to generate income. Maybe you put on the Bitcoin basis trade where you still own your Bitcoin, you show short Bitcoin futures against it, turn it more neutral with respect to kind of more into a dollar asset with pretty high income returns. Or let's say Bitcoin goes down, if you own it, you can do tax loss harvesting, right? It opens up a lot of different avenues that an ETF just can't. So I do think that that's the best way to own it. And I'm a big proponent

of that over an ETF. But for the average American citizen, that's more of an educational conversation than an ask. In the Bitcoin community, people that have had Bitcoin for years, that's more of a of a demand that that they're seeing the need and desire to to leverage their bitcoin in different ways yeah i do wonder how much uh bitcoin becomes kind of like juice um for uh for some of these strategies right if you have a fixed income strategy like we know blackrock has a etf this fixed income and they put a little bit of bitcoin in there and over the long run you would expect that fund to outperform it's like fixed income peers yes and so uh obviously corporations are doing this with their balance sheet but like you you see a game where people start to kind of put

bitcoin in these things and say hey i'm better than all my peers because i got this five percent exposure to bitcoin or something yeah yeah and with regards to to a fixed income fund i think it's it's more of that game of it's better than the peers i think the the bitcoin treasury conversations i think is actually a extremely interesting conversation of i think people's first reaction to it is oh it's bullish this company's adopting bitcoin and i think a lot of the companies that are doing it might start doing it for almost marketing reasons. But I think there's actually a way more intellectually interesting argument for Bitcoin treasury companies. And the argument that I would make is that in over the last several years, real interest

rates have gone negative or to zero, which means if you think about putting capital to work to grow your business, whatever your business might be, that the hurdle rate is extremely low from an IRR perspective. So your motivation is to either put money to work, do stock buybacks or issue dividends and not to save. So there's been a collapse of a savings vehicle in this country. But if Bitcoin, actually you view it as the savings vehicle, and I think that's difficult for some boards to get there. I think it is a savings vehicle, but if you can convince a board that Bitcoin is a savings vehicle, and then for us to deploy capital to grow our business, we have to expect that the IRR of that capital deployment is greater than Bitcoin.

I think in the short term, you'd probably see actually like a slowdown in the amount of capital deployed probably wouldn't matter in my view to this country because of the AI boom. I think that would offset a lot of the productivity gains. But what that would do is it would create war chests for companies. And our view is that companies should unapologetically pursue their mission to maximize value to shareholders. If you have a war chest, your ability to pursue your mission in good times or bad goes up dramatically.

And you could then think about things from a more IRR perspective with Bitcoin being the hurdle, right? When you look at your current client base, one of the things that you've shared with me that I think is fascinating is that Texas is obviously a huge area. That makes sense.

But California is, I think, one of the top three states for customers as well. I don't think a lot of people would expect California to be a huge honeypot for a firm that says, we're not into ESG, we're not into DEI, we're into Bitcoin, you know, we're into freedom and like all these things. So explain a little bit as to what you think is going on there. Yeah. So prior to joining Strive, I was a lifelong Californian. So I've- You recruited all your friends? I've lived this journey. I recruited all my friends. It's no one outside of my friends

in California. No, but one of the interesting things when you live in a deeply blue state that went really hard into ESG and DEI is that you personally felt the pain of those policies. And so for people that don't agree to them, that can create a massive motivation to be part of the problem that if you're in a purple state or a red state that you might really only be seeing more through TV than in your everyday life. And so, when I was in California, we lived in just outside of the Sacramento area. Our network was literally on fire during COVID when all this stuff was happening about fighting back. And those people are much more likely to want to invest with an asset manager that's going to be pro-merit, pro-capitalism because they themselves see the

need in their daily lives and so even though now i think the stats would say i think california might have one of the most highly just number of republicans in the entire nation so that's probably another reason but i think you just have highly motivated people even if less people in some of the blue states and is that shifting with the political side you know obviously vick ran for president he's now running doge trump gets elected um it does feel like there's like this vibe shift you know they he wins the popular vote um and maybe it's not so much a shift it's like it's a revealed preference right it's like people were going to vote this way anyways but now we know for sure that that's what the vibe had already shifted to um how does that

change your strategy or maybe it doesn't at all so our strategy will never change at least the investment process how we how we market our funds i think when strive started our view was contrarian and it was contrarian to the point that when i joined strive my wife joined too as you know as part of the day one team of strive we actually thought it might be that this might be the last job we ever get in america that we might be cancelled because meritocracy is going to be deemed racist right or or whatever or you're and they tried they tried right and and our response and and the response of the entire team at strive was we believe in this so much we don't care and we're going to stand on, on, you know, a firm foundation of what we believe to be the truth

and we'll let the consequences lay where they, where they are. And what we found was a very warm reception to strive. And, and that's not just saying from like the customer perspective, there was a lot of people, the most common response was like patting us on the back, but saying, you know, like more behind the scenes. And, and that was extremely common, whether it was from, you know, people at my old employer to name your politician or CEO in America, there was so much agreement with what we're doing, but yet so much of kind of just fear to actually publicly stand for what, what we were doing, what we were doing. And that's what gave us confidence that we were on the right side, that, that, that this was this ESG and DEI movement really was a

house of cards that you had most people that were saying this stuff didn't really believe it. They were doing it for their career or out of fear of, you know, being blasted for being racist. They didn't feel the power to do that. And so when a few people stand up for that, and I know you've been standing up for that for a long time as well, you start to create a movement. And there was a movement in this country that different people from different perspectives were all part of. Strive was part of it from the financial services perspective. And then it made it easier for the next person to join and the next person to join. And then you saw this with the Trump election this year where people got so fed up that silicon valley started supporting trump

and that to me was a massive just wide opening of the overton window of what it was okay to say in this country this country had clearly had enough and and people were willing to more and more speak out and then he won the popular vote and and that to me is how why i think that esg and dei collapses so much, we're still going to vote the same way. But in a large part, I would say a lot of the mission of the original focus of Strive is accomplished or actively being accomplished as we speak. And when you think about kind of the world we're headed into, this idea of merit seems to drive better performance in public companies. Bitcoin obviously has done very well. Do you think that we've got enough data points now where people realize, hey, we should embrace merit?

Or do you think there's still kind of work to be done? And there's still enough leaders that haven't yet caught on to this or they're held hostage by kind of the extremes of society? There's definitely still more work to be done. And I mean that on the left, also the right, that when we talk about sometimes you can stand against something, but what you actually stand for might not be the same thing. And so making sure that as a country that we stand for merit and that we understand that that is a founding principle of this country, that is what made America great. And STRIVE talks a lot about the power of American capitalism and why American companies have outperformed European companies by so much, 2,000% over the last 40 years. It's a museum. Yeah, it's a museum.

Have you seen the graph that shows the market caps of American companies versus European companies? And it's like huge circle in America, very small circle in Europe. Well, that is a difference in mindset from a regulation perspective, from a hiring perspective, from an immigration perspective, right? And so for this country to really embrace merit. And I think one of the interesting things about this next few-year cycle and this idea that many people are saying about 100 years of innovation is going to happen in 10 years is that if you believe that, and I believe that, then leaning into merit now has never been more important. Leaning into deregulation now has never been more important. If you fumble the ball in a 100-year period, your country is going to crumble. And so I think that's why you saw all these very knowledgeable Silicon Valley people stand up and they stood up for this election because it really was existential. And I think there is more work to be done. But ultimately, I do think that we're never going to get a pure merit society. It's kind of a spectrum.

And I think we're moving in that direction in such a big way that I do think that the odds on favor is that America just is the all-out winner in the AI race. And I think it's going to be more bullish for this country. When we think about American capitalism, what do you think is making it so special, right? It feels, to me, patriotism is down. you know so many different components that people thought fed into it but it's still just as strong as ever yeah right um so what do you think are like that the ingredients that make american capitalism kind of stand out on the global stage first and foremost it's about incentives if you innovate in this country versus other countries you are way more likely to personally benefit

from that innovation and innovation incentives drive results and and so to the extent that we move away from that and that could be in different directions it could be meritocracy you move away from meritocracy well then the incentives move away from being the best person for a role you move away from personally raise taxes too high well then the incentives go down why why should i innovate here you constrain what what people can do through regulation with regards to tech or energy or bitcoin well then why should i do it here i should do it elsewhere so to the extent that you maximally incentivize people to build businesses in this country, then it will win. And, and it's, it's obvious that America has not, has not been perfect, especially over the last

couple of years with regards to any of those things. But we had a very strong start from the history of leaning into those things in this country. And so I think that it's, it's as long as as long as we move back to that, our brightest days are still ahead. And I, and I, and I really think they they are but it was at risk and i think that the tailwinds to move america towards europe i think almost almost succeeded yeah what about like the people like uh bernie sanders recently scott uh besant went through his confirmation hearing and uh in it one of the things that sanders was pointing to was you know how much wealth uh elon musk's and the jeff bezos etc have and i thought besant had a really interesting point he said but they didn't inherit that

right they made that they created value for society talking about people who have created the most immense amount of value captured the most immense amount of value. And it was like a moment where I was like, that means the system's working, right? But I think Sanders' point was like, hey, there's this bifurcation in society. And so how do you think about kind of,

okay, we know that the people who understand how capitalism works are obviously benefiting. Are there things that can be done, whether it's education or elsewhere, to help the people who maybe don't even know how the game's played or how the kind of capitalistic system is structured?

So I'm a big believer in unconstrained capitalism to the maximal degree. The downside from that from a society perspective is that even if you raise the standard of living of the entire country, if the gap between the 0.1% and the average person increases, even though they're better off, that can create some resentment. And I think that's what you're seeing right now. And it makes sense because of technological innovation, the ability to have businesses that quickly scale globally or across the nation. It makes sense that the brightest people that innovate and provide the most value, create the most wealth for themselves, that they go up more in the internet era than they would have historically. I think that's pretty logical. I still think that America is better off if it can lean into that system that people that aren't inheriting worth but are building it benefit from it to a maximal degree. But in my view, when it comes to a society, businesses should maximize value within the law. And it's kind of like a sports analogy. Whatever the rules are, maximize value within the rules. As a democracy, we set the rules and it's up to the American people to decide if they want unconstrained capitalism. I think clearly they've spoken that they want more

unconstrained capitalism than what they've been seeing for the last couple of years. Yeah. What surprised you the most as you guys have navigated building the business, embracing Bitcoin, moving the headquarters, the founder and CEO becoming the founder who ran for president? There's so much stuff that has gone on and you guys continue to succeed, which is pretty impressive. And so what have you learned or what surprised you? learned a ton of things through this probably one of the the most important lessons is that you really just have to ignore the the haters if you really believe in something and and that was our our intuition but but it's been really interesting to see the formation of a movement

and how how powerful a movement can be and i'll give you a like something that i used to say that I think proved false. I used to say that it took 14 years for ESG and DEI to rise, which is true. In 2010, there was not one company in the S&P 500 that incentivized their executives based on ESG or DEI measures. From 2010 to 2024, 14 years, it went from zero to 75%. It's now collapsing at a extremely quick rate. And so I initially thought it was going to take 14 years, like a bell curve. 14 years to rise, 14 years to fall. And that was, that was how I would talk about it because what I believed, but what I learned is that when, when you have a house of cards and the biggest way to see to me a business opportunity or house of cards is when there's a gap between what people say

behind closed doors and what they do publicly. And so that was true in ESG and DEI. It's also true with Bitcoin where, well, I think it's a 55% of advisors feel constrained to talk about Bitcoin because of their employer. Well, you clearly have this gap between a lot of advisor community that might buy Bitcoin themselves, but yet they're not talking about it to their clients. So I think that's how you can kind of get a little bit of a sense for if there's legs to something before you start it. What's your pitch to clients as to why they should work with Strive versus anybody else? We are deeply committed to fiduciary duty. And I think that that, and we don't care if we're contrarian to do so. And I think that everyone would say they're

about fiduciary duty. That is not a unique statement. But the question is, are you willing to put your reputation on the line to stand for fiduciary duty? And we are. And we did it with ESG and DEI. We're going to do it with Bitcoin. And it's not about just being contrarian to be contrarian. If the consensus opinion is something that we agree with, and sometimes it is, then we're just going to go with the consensus opinion. But if it's not, we're not going to be afraid to just stand next to the consensus, which when I was in the more institutional space, that was my biggest criticism of the Wall Street research crowd is that I felt like they all just would kind of move around some sort of consensus. And it kind of just the consensus

kind of moved together. And very few people were willing to put their neck out there. We're going to put our neck out there. And I'll say that sometimes we're going to be wrong, right and and and in my investing career i've been right about 70 of the time that's really good but it also means you're wrong about 30 of the time and and and you just have to expect that but also not be afraid that sometimes that over time if we're making good decisions it's going to show and that you can expect us to do the right thing regardless of what we think people will say and where can we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about strive Yeah. So strive.com is our company's website at strive funds on Twitter. And then I'm on Twitter

at Cole macro. Amazing. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm a huge fan. Uh, obviously I think you guys built a great business and, uh, doing right by a lot of people. So please keep up the great work. Thanks.