The Pomp Podcast - #1485 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Buy Bitcoin, Eliminate Pennies, & Add Tariffs!

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

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 bitcoin, tariffs, Trump’s plan to stop production of pennies, and what’s going on with OpenAI, Elon Musk, Sam Altman. =======================Consensus is where the industry does business. Join global leaders, innovators, investors, founders and brands in Hong Kong from Feb. 18-20, 2025. Curated by CoinDesk, Consensus Hong Kong offers unparalleled networking opportunities, exclusive access to top decision-makers and the chance to secure deals that will shape the future of Web3 and digital assets. Take 15% off registration with the code POMP. Register now atcoindeskpomp.com=======================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 toledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future.=======================The future is being built today and the future of currency isn’t dollars, euros, pounds, or yen, it’s crypto. And Gemini thinks that’s a great thing. Because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that’s a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Go where dollars won’t. WithGemini.=======================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 a great episode with Polina Pompliano. Polina is the founder and CEO of The Profile. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, we talk

about tariffs, we talk about the production of the production of pennies. And then we also talk about open AI and what's going on with Elon Musk and Sam Altman. In this conversation, we do our best to try to unpack what's going on in the economy, what it means for you, and also what you should be paying attention to. I really hope you guys enjoy this. And 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 consensus crypto's most influential event is coming to asia consensus hong kong it's happening on february 18th through the 20th of 2025 it's where the industry does business from bitcoin's expanding role in global finance to the latest innovations in web 3 connect with global leaders innovators and investors to forge partnerships secure deals and drive the future of digital assets with unmatched networking opportunities and exclusive access to top decision makers. This is the event you can't afford to miss. And because you listen to this podcast and watch this show, you get 15% off registration. If you use the code POMP,

P-O-M-P, POMP, you can register now at coindeskpomp.com. Again, coindeskpomp.com, use code POMP and you'll get 15% off. 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. dot com l e d g e r pomp dot com today's episode is brought to you by gemini the future is being built today and the future of currency isn't dollars euros pounds or yen it's crypto and

gemini thinks that's a great thing because a future where money is decentralized inclusive and globally accessible that's a future that we are anxious to be a part of gemini teamed up with futurist technologists and designers like award-winning artist matt griffin known for his illustrations for dune to craft a vision of the future with crypto at its core the creative theme go where dollars won't emphasizes exploration growth and the crypto markets limitless potential whether it's going on that martian safari to capture an unforgettable photo of a herd of woolly mammoths grazing the red planet or using bitcoin to pay for your lift pass to go strata skiing down the mountain peak of a breathtaking comet whatever adventures we'll be living one

thing is for sure. In a future this fantastic, the limits of traditional currency simply cannot keep up. Financial innovation will usher in this new frontier. And so go where dollars won't with Gemini. Go check them out at Gemini.com slash go where dollars won't. Again, go check it out at Gemini.com slash go where dollars won't. All right, Polina, what's the first topic? All right. Bitcoin has dropped back below $100,000 at the time of recording. The price of Bitcoin is $97,000. On February 4th, crypto czar David Sachs said that the White House was going to explore a Bitcoin strategic reserve. What are the reasons for the drop in price recently? Well, I think that Bitcoin is highly sensitive to global liquidity. It's also highly sensitive to

what I will call kind of the animal spirits of the macro environment. And then also, I think that Bitcoin is a leading indicator of many things that are happening. So let's first analyze what's going on with the economy, right? You have a stock market that obviously has liked that Donald Trump was elected. It went up quite a bit. You have a national debt that is exploding higher, adding a trillion dollars to the debt every hundred days or so. Just recently, it came out that actually the annual deficit, which previously was a trillion, then it was 1.5 trillion.

Most recently, people have been saying it is a $2 trillion annual deficit, meaning we spend $2 trillion more than we take in. Well, we just got numbers over the last couple of days. And for the first four months of fiscal year 2025, we actually have a deficit of closer to like $840 billion, which means we're not running a $2 trillion deficit, that we're running a two and a half trillion dollar deficit. So if our annual deficit is

growing at 25% year over year, that's a big problem. And so what you have seen is Bitcoin's price started 2024, around $40,000, ran all the way up to almost $110,000. It's now sitting kind of just below 100,000. So why is that we get a little bit of a pullback? First of all, it's natural, it's good to have a little bit of these kind of cooling off periods, and allows for people to kind of accumulate at a lower price than all time highs. But on top of that, the market right now is trying to figure out what is going on with the Trump administration. And the previous thought process was that Donald Trump was going to just be up only, I want to only do things that are good for the stock market. What I find most interesting is, it seems like he has kind of shown his cards a

little bit. And he's saying, Listen, I'm actually okay with some short term pain, if it means over the long run, we're going to be in a better spot. And I don't think a lot of people thought that he was actually going to do that. So one of the areas where we see this showing up most recently is in tariffs. He knows that tariffs are going to scare the market. Now, I have talked ad nauseum about the fact that tariffs are actually a good thing. They lead to lower prices. They drive government revenue. They create jobs. All of the things that people think are bad about tariffs, they're actually just wrong on. But the market doesn't care. The market believes something, the market is going to price that in. And so when the tariffs got announced, then naturally what you see

kind of stock market come down, Bitcoin come down. Now, one of the areas that I think is most fascinating about this is that gold and Bitcoin have actually separated. Gold continues to hit new all-time highs. And Bitcoin has kind of been in this cooling off sideways period. And so historically, you've said, hey, if gold's going up, Bitcoin goes up, but Bitcoin just goes up more than gold does. And so, it begs the question of, well, why is gold going up? And so, when you go and you dig into the numbers, gold is actually not going up because of the Western world. Gold is going up because of Asian investors. And so, you can see these charts of gold trading activity in China, as an example, just exploded in the last six months or so. And so, naturally, what

you're seeing is you're seeing a bifurcation even in kind of these stores of value where gold is going up and Bitcoin is not. And really what that is showing is that Bitcoin is being treated much more by Wall Street as a risk on asset. And so when stocks are trading down, Bitcoin is trading down. When stocks are trading up, Bitcoin is trading up and usually at a higher percentage than the average stock. And so the question just becomes, what is the correlation going to end up being between Bitcoin and these other assets? It has waffled over the years. At times it's been um you know a very very low you know no correlation um at other times like in during covid all asset uh correlations spiked towards one um and so right now we're kind of sitting

you know in the middle and i think for bitcoin's sake it would be great if bitcoin ends up being a non-correlated asymmetric asset um but naturally as you get more and more wall street large institutions nation states buying this asset you would expect the correlation to kind of creep up because now you have Bitcoin in the hands of people who are going to look at it and say, am I risk on, am I risk off? I'm risk off, they're not running to Bitcoin, they're running to things like treasuries, et cetera.

And so I think that's a huge question mark right now. Got it. And a subtopic, Michael Saylor has not stopped buying more Bitcoin. He just bought, well, his company just bought another 742.4 million of Bitcoin. And also, the company, MicroStrategy, has rebranded to be called JustStrategy, and this is how it is described in the press release. Strategy is the world's first and largest Bitcoin treasury company, the largest independent publicly traded business intelligence company, and a NASDAQ 100 stock.

This brand simplification is natural evolution of the company, reflecting its focus and broad appeal. the new logo includes a stylized b and it is the bitcoin's logo um signifying the company's bitcoin strategy yeah all that's noise um it just matters how many bitcoin do they have and what's the premium but do you think i mean that now cements micro strategy as like a bitcoin company again all the brand uh the storytelling it's all noise right and that's true of every company not just MicroStrategy, but it's just, hey, show me the numbers. And so for MicroStrategy, if you said to me, what really matters here? There's two numbers that matter. How many Bitcoin do they own? What is the multiple or the premium that's being assigned to that? And there are a lot of factors

that go into that stuff. How are they going to raise capital? What is the dilution? All that kind of stuff is, again, kind of the second order analysis, but really the entire value of the business, just how much do they own and what is that premium? Now, the good news for micro strategy holders is or strategy holders is they got a lot of Bitcoin. They are the largest publicly traded entity in terms of the number of Bitcoin. So that's good. And then the premium at times has expanded and contracted, but still is pretty healthy. And so when you look at that, you say to yourself, that to me is not so much like a premium on NAV. I think a lot of people look at it almost like it's like a fund. Instead, what I think that is, is that is the market pricing in

kind of future purchases of Bitcoin. And they almost look at it as like it's a revenue multiple or a profit multiple on the business. And so, you know, if they continue to acquire Bitcoin, especially at the rate that they're doing, they're going to own a lot of Bitcoin, company's going to be worth more, and that premium is going to stay healthy. If for some reason they stop acquiring Bitcoin or they can't acquire more Bitcoin for some reason, then you're going to see that kind of premium or that multiple collapse and it'll trade much closer to you know how much bitcoin they actually have and so i think that's like one of the big questions is just uh how much bitcoin can they get while this window is open where people are

willing to do this um and uh my answer to that is like a lot right i mean they they you know i expect micro strategy to end up with more than 500 000 bitcoin uh if there's only 21 million ever going to be you know in existence uh that's pretty good uh pretty good spot to be in wow okay all right um let's talk about balancing the budget while america watched the second half of the super bowl donald trump decided it was time to eliminate the penny he's gonna take our pennies from our cold dead hands kind of kidding kind um so trump ordered the treasury to stop minting new pennies he said for far too long the united states has minted pennies which literally cost us more than two cents to produce one penny he said this is so wasteful um okay so you wrote

about this in your newsletter and you said it costs 0.03 cents to produce one penny which is three times more than the face value of the coin in circulation there are more than 13 billion pennies produced each year it is estimated that 400 million to 500 million annually could be saved by stopping production of new pennies. Well, there's a lot of stuff that goes into this, right? So first of all, both the pennies and nickels cost more to produce than- Oh, and the nickels.

Yeah, the nickels. So the nickel got away. They must be lobbying somebody because the nickels escaped the wrath of stopping production. But they both cost more than their face value. Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that you should 100% stop. But when you go and you look at this,

you say to yourself, okay, the penny and physical change in general is actually quite detrimental to society. There's been studies that have shown like, hey, by using these small denominations of coins, it's really, it takes up time, right? And it eats into productivity and things like that. And so people are like, what do you mean?

It only takes me an extra 10 seconds to count the change or whatever. But there really is this big issue. Another thing people don't know about pennies in particular is, if I forget all the exact numbers, but it's something like 250 to 300 billion pennies exist in the world. Only about 150 billion of them or so.

So let's say, you know, kind of half to slightly more than half are in what they would consider like transactional use. They circulate or- Well, it's technically in circulation, right? But transactional use. The rest of them are sitting in people's jars, like people are collecting the pennies.

They are at the bottom of fountains. people throw the pennies into the fountain uh or they are held somewhere uh you know they're in your couch cushions there's like all these things that people have tried to really estimate no one's ever going to get the exact number but it's only about half of the pennies actually in circulation are used for transaction use they're being used for these other things in society he's not saying he's just saying we're going to stop future production correct because ultimately uh you could phase it out and there's immense precedent. You know, I, in the thing I wrote, I listed out maybe eight, nine, 10 different countries that have gone to the lowest denomination coin and

gotten rid of it. Their societies operate perfectly fine. So I think that's kind of one component. The second thing that I think is pretty important here is the cost savings. People look at it and they say, oh, we're only going to save $500 million. Well, it's $500 million every single year. And so what you do is you start to divert that time and attention to other things. But then people forget as a third point, that the pennies are made of zinc and copper. And actually zinc, or I'm sorry, copper in particular, is really important for things like water infrastructure, national security, you know, other types of government activities. And so we're able to divert that copper usage from pennies to things that may be higher production value uh that would

be kind of a an unseen you know benefit to doing this and so i go and i look at this and i say to myself getting rid of the penny not getting rid of it stopping production whatever uh that to me is actually not the story the story here is uh there are no sacred cows right i mean think about past administrations going and saying we're going to get stop production of the penny well they would never do that well obama apparently has uh floated that idea did float that idea again talk versus action yeah right they just they would never do it because it requires um a propensity for action it requires some tough skin because you know you're going to get criticized right it's kind of almost like it sounds weird to talk about it like from a perspective of courage

but to do things that are uh kind of outside the bounds of the norm to do things that are changing yeah rather than just keeping the status quo okay but a lot of people are pretty difficult a lot of people would argue like the whole like gulf of mexico versus gulf of america like those kinds of things they argue are more of like a distraction why because it's what's the point well they're renaming something is actually uh in that particular case really important and there's things that um as a nation you need to have an identity you need to have a culture you need to have uh national pride right and so i think that's kind of one uh component of it uh but there's also very strategic reasons one of the arguments that people are making is the

reason why they renamed the gulf of mexico is because as biden left he put into effect a number of legislative pieces uh and i believe executive orders as well that uh impacted drilling of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. But if you change the name, now all of a sudden, some of that stuff is actually inert. It doesn't have the same impact, right? Because now you can argue,

well, that's the Gulf of Mexico. This is the Gulf of America. And so again, is that why they did it or not? It remains to be debated, but there's always kind of the public story. And then there is like the real reason why some of these things get done. I think the public story right now is like,

oh, this is just some huge distraction. look we've been watching this guy operate in the political environment now for almost 10 years has he ever done anything that he didn't have an angle on right like like he has some reason you may disagree with the reason you may disagree with the sure he has a read with the impact yeah but there's always some you know kind of uh a game of chess that he's trying to play he's trying to get leverage he's trying to whatever and so um again a lot of people disagree with certain things that he does. But I just think that taking things as face value, oh, this is some stupid distraction, is probably not the way to analyze a lot of stuff coming out of the White

House. All right. So Trump is set to impose 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum up from his previous 10% rate. This is a big deal, making America rich again, Trump said in announcing the tariffs. Do you think this will work? Yes, it's going to work because ultimately what it's going to do is think of the rubric or the framework as to what is success. Do we get more American jobs? Do we get American production? Do we actually see a penalty against the foreign producers of this stuff? And do we see a continued usage of these products? If we continue having people use it and American production goes up and American jobs get created, that's success. That's exactly what we saw in 2018. On top of that, we actually saw that the price of US steel came down

in 2019. And so why is that? Well, when you put a tariff, you're penalizing the foreign producer, you're incentivizing the domestic producer. If you incentivize the domestic producer, what do they do? They produce more. How long do you think it'll take the domestic producers to produce more in a meaningful way for prices to come down? It took less than 12 months in 2018. For washing machines? Washing machines was different, but steel in particular. We saw in both 2018 and 2019, the production of steel was higher than it was in 2017. And so one of the things that people don't realize is about the steel producers.

I don't know what the number is right now, but before the 2018 tariffs, U.S. steel producers were only operating at like, I don't know, 60% of capacity or something. And so the whole reason that they put the tariffs in place was the goal was to get the U.S. steel manufacturers to produce at more than 80% capacity. and so after those tariffs were implemented that's what happened is they went to over 80 capacity so it's not even so much you got to build more manufacturing capabilities it is uh how much of the capabilities you have are you actually using and so i think that's a huge thing is like we have a lot of this productivity that that is kind of uh sitting there waiting to be used tariffs will help with that the other thing is china has flooded the global market with cheap

steel and you could argue that that is a national security uh kind of move where what they really are doing is they are trying to intentionally torpedo certain industries so okay well how do we combat them flooding the market with cheap steel you put a tariff on it so it's not cheap anymore right and so that that is the kind of game that's getting played here again where i think we're going to end up is, or where I'd like to see us end up, I think that it'd be really interesting if we implement a five or 10% flat tariff on every import. 100%. You're saying don't choose and be selective. Don't choose by country, don't choose by goods. Everything gets, let's say a 10% tariff. And then

what you do is you then go country by country, product by product, and you remove the tariff for things you want to incentivize. So right now the default is no tariff, and we pick the products we want to add tariffs to. I think it should be the opposite. I think it should be flat tariff. And then for the things we want to incentivize, we drop the tariff to either, you know, 5% or zero to allow the incentivization of those things to come to the market. And so what you would end up doing is, you know, let's say it was a 5% blanket tariff. 5% is not going to change any consumption patterns. 25% for certain goods could change consumption patterns. And so I think that is really what we're trying to get at here is like, are we trying to raise more capital? Are we trying

to create incentives? Or are we punitively running around trying to punish people? Well, Trump said that he would announce reciprocal tariffs on Tuesday or Wednesday, meaning that the US would impose import duties on products and cases where another country has levied duties on US goods. So he said, if they charge us, we charge them every country. If they are charging us 130%, and we're charging them nothing, it's not going to stay that way. So it you're saying like basically we've been a good actor and not charging or not uh tariffing tariffing imposing tariffs on other countries but now he's gonna i read a book uh recently that i highly suggest everyone goes and read it's called twilight of the elite and it's about france but

it's a lesson that can be taken across the uh uh across the globe and what it basically argues is that over the last 70 years or so, we have pursued globalization to the detriment of our citizens. And the reason why globalization got pushed so heavy is because the modern bourgeoisie or the elites, they benefit from it. But it is actually the lower economic workers,

the working class, They're the ones who have been absolutely blindsided by this. And so if you think about what ultimately tariffs do, is it levels the playing ground or the playing field between the modern bourgeoisie and the working class. Because what it essentially does is it says, hey, you rich, wealthy people who live in urban areas, you actually are going to, because capital is a source of power for you, you're going to have to expend more power, more capital to continue to benefit from this system via these tariffs. but what we are going to do for the average working class person is we are going to bring back opportunity we're going to bring back jobs we're going to bring back uh um you know economic activity to these cities all across the country and so again i will do a bad job there's an entire book written about it that i highly suggest people go read it's called twilight of the elites And what it essentially explains is the reason why we have seen this bifurcation where cities and economic activity have exploded and these rural areas haven't is a huge kind of result of this globalization.

And so when you look at that, you say tariffs, as somebody who believes in the free market, make no sense if there's a free market. But the reason why I changed my mind on tariffs is because I realized that no free market exists. So this is a good example you're talking about. If there's a product or a good that we manufacture and we send to another country and they have 130% tariff on us, but then they manufacture the same product

and when they send it to us, there's no tariff, people are like, oh, the free market. There's no free market. They're literally penalizing us. So the only way that you can even it out is you do the reciprocal tariff. Say, cool, if we send it to you, we pay 130%. Now, if you send it to us, you pay 130%.

Why do you think it became like that? Why do you think we didn't have a tariff for them, yet they're allowed to? Because the U.S. pursued globalization. Got it. The U.S. said, we want as many trading partners as possible, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And countries knew they could take advantage. And so they started with little, and then took more, and then more products, and they kept expanding.

But I think we're now at a point where it is pretty obvious that we can't keep operating the way that we're operating. And so are we going to agree with all the tactics? No. And look, this is a thing, again, you know, as somebody who's an independent, I think a lot of people, because I am supportive of these specific policies with the Trump administration, I think that we should give Joe Biden credit. Joe Biden actually took a number of tariffs that Trump had originally put in place and

made them more severe. So solar panels, as an example, Trump in 2018 put a 25% tariff on solar panels coming out of China. Biden in 2024 took it from 25% to 50%. He doubled it. And so this is not a right or left thing to me. This is a what is good economic policy and how do we think about the United States economy

and what we want to incentivize here. And so if the next president is a Democrat and they continue with these policies, we should give them just as much support as we're giving to Trump in pursuing this stuff. But it really comes back to this idea of do you want your country to be a leader or do you want your country to be taken advantage of

by people flooding it with cheap products that sounds good in the short term for the consumer, but if you actually look at it, there's two sides to a consumer. What are my economic opportunities? How much money can I make? Where can I live? What things can I buy, et cetera?

And then there's the cost of items that they buy. What do you think has a bigger impact? A reduction in some of the costs of the cheap one-off goods that they buy? Or a massive increase in their economic opportunity, the pay that they can make, the productivity in their town, etc.? It's actually the productivity of the worker, the wages, those things. Yeah. Not, hey, can we get Alibaba to send over whatever crazy product that they're building, you know, for a cheaper cost. It does feel like with the tariffs in particular, the U.S. is much more on offense than they are on defense, as they have been.

I agree with that. All right. Elon Musk is leading a group of investors and offering to buy control of OpenAI for $97.4 billion. The offer is to purchase all assets of OpenAI Inc. with funds to be used exclusively to further OpenAI's original charitable mission. So Sam Altman saw this tweet and he tweeted on Monday, no thank you, but we'll buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want. And then Elon responded with, swindler. What is this beef? And everyone's right. So OpenAI trying to sell into this for-profit entity at like a less than $40 billion valuation, that seems kind of questionable. Now they have a fair market offer at something much higher. And therefore, if it's going to pay the nonprofit, now there's kind of a floor.

So is this Elon messing with Sam? Probably, but it's going to be pretty hard for them to move around this now. Why, because they have to entertain the offer for- Yeah, if I go to the government and I say, hey, I have this nonprofit thing, I'm going to spin it out into a for-profit entity. Okay.

They say, okay, well, the charity has to get a commensurate value. So for example, I think Rolex is owned, like the company Rolex is owned by a nonprofit. Oh, really? I'm pretty sure. And so if Rolex or if the nonprofit was going to sell Rolex, they would have to sell it for an amount

that is equal to the value of the business. Begs the question, what's the business worth? Well, there's a couple of different ways you can do it. You can come up with like a discounted cashflow model and whatever, but a much easier way to determine the value of something was what are other people willing to pay for it? And so if you go to the government, you say,

well, I think that people are willing to pay $40 billion. And then all of a sudden somebody shows up and says, well i'll pay 98 billion it's gonna be pretty hard for you to argue that's only worth 40 if you got somebody who's a credible buyer who says that it's worth 98 yeah and so i think that's kind of this you know game that's getting played here so that's first second of all is um do i think that elon probably knows it's you know it could be worth more absolutely right kind of the the warren buffett like buy things for less than they're worth is why 98 billion so i don't know if elon thinks it's worth 150 or 200 or you know 125 or whatever but he uh the

reason why he's um you know giving the offer he's giving is because it is uh so if he gets stuck buying it he's it's great deal um and so i think sam's right on that i do think that there's a lot of people i talk to on a day-to-day basis that feel like the whole open ai but it's a closed model the charity the uh non-profit going to for profit all that stuff yeah it's kind of weird is that why sam and elon have beef now i thought they were like on good terms but then elon was i believe one of the first and possibly the largest donor to open ai when it was a non-profit yeah and um i don't know if i remember this correctly i think elon may have even came up with the name OpenAI, possibly.

And now you go and you look, and he's like, hey, this thing that you told me that was going to get built, you're trying to do something different. So there's probably some buyer's remorse on that. And I think at some point, Elon tried to take control, and that didn't happen or something. But it goes back to the idea of, like,

whenever you see two intelligent people arguing about something usually they both have hints of truth to their argument yeah and they just are uh seeing past each other and i think that's what's happening here is that elon's got a very strong argument against uh sam and then sam uh also is smart and knows what elon's doing and you know the claims he's making etc and so he has strong arguments back yeah and so that's how you get, you know, two billionaires fighting with each other is, uh, if you were to go and listen to either one of them, they're highly persuasive and have truth to what they're saying. Somebody on Twitter said, this is the nerd version of Kendrick and Drake beef. I mean, to a degree.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. That was great. All right. Thanks for doing this.