The Pomp Podcast - #1551 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Big Banks Are Embracing Bitcoin?!

Episode Date: May 20, 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, Jamie Dimon & JP Morgan, inflation, Genius Act, and a mind-blowing story Anthony had with a financial institution. =======================Core is the leading Bitcoin scaling solution, enabling you to lock in yield by locking up your Bitcoin. Simply lock it on the Bitcoin blockchain to secure the Core network, and get rewards. No bridging. No lending. Just holding. Still your keys. Still your coins. Now your yield. Start at https://stake.coredao.org/pomp=======================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.=======================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 conversation with Polina Pompliano. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan, inflation, Genius Act,

and why I tell a story that is going to blow your mind about an interaction I had with one of the major financial institutions this year that shows you how much opportunity is still left for people in Bitcoin and crypto. This entire story is going to open your eyes to what the big differences between what you think and what they think. So here's my latest conversation with Paulina 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. earns rewards fueled by network activity and passes them back to you as yield. With a minimum lockup of just one day, when the time lock ends, you get your Bitcoin back untouched. Steal your keys, steal your coins, now your yield. For even higher rates, stake core alongside your Bitcoin and multiply your yield. And if you want to see what your Bitcoin is securing, join millions of others in exploring the largest Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem.

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suits you. It's liquidity entirely on your terms. Zappo understands the unique needs of Bitcoin holders. That's why they developed a product design specifically for you. With over a decade of experience in the Bitcoin space, Zappo Bank has been a trusted partner for those looking to make the most of their Bitcoin while keeping it safe. Your Bitcoin stays safe in your vault, untouched, never lent out and secured a global network of military grade bunkers with cutting edge security technology. Head to Zappobank.com forward slash POM to learn more. That's X-A-P-O-B-A-N-K dot com forward slash POM. Go check out Zappobank today at Zappobank.com slash POM. All right, Plano, what's the first topic? All right. Bitcoin's price is back up to $105,000

at the time of this recording. And on Monday, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon announced that they will allow clients to purchase Bitcoin. What are we talking about here? Well, I thought Jamie Diamond actually the context of how he said it was really important. He said, I don't think that you should smoke, but I'll defend your right to smoke cigarettes. And then he said, I don't think that you should buy Bitcoin, but I'll defend your right to buy Bitcoin. And so this is the escape hatch for Jamie Diamond, JP Morgan and all of the financial organizations that historically have been anti-Bitcoin. Do you think he was under pressure to do this?

Well, again, people want to yell and scream and like, oh, this, that, whatever, right? There are definitely some people on Wall Street who lead these organizations who have been very pro-Bitcoin or pro-crypto and they've leaned in and it seems to have worked for them. But also, they're not JP Morgan.

JP Morgan is the largest bank in the world. Their whole thing is risk management, not going out on that risk curve. And so it makes sense. and his clients probably didn't want five years ago, seven years ago, him running around talking about Bitcoin all the time. So it was very rational for him to,

hey, how do I do my job? How do I serve my clients, right? So that all makes sense. Now, with that said, that has changed over the last five years. Now, most of the clients probably are interested in Bitcoin. BlackRock's got the Bitcoin ETF.

Fidelity's got the ETF. I mean, it's game on now. Bitcoin and Wall Street, dapped. Are there any public company, treasury companies, all of this? So I think that's why part of why he's changing his tune. But he can't say I was wrong. Right. So he said, we're going to allow you to buy it.

We're not going to custody it. We're going to put it in statements for clients. And then he also, you know, said that his view remains unchanged, highlighting issues such as money laundering and the lack of clarity surrounding ownership, along with the sex trafficking, the terrorism, etc. well let's take each one of these one by one right so the way to kind of escape from the i don't like bitcoin is exactly this is a master class he is the best banker of our generation point blank period he's a smart guy he works very hard like people who are yelling and screaming it's like this guy's an idiot like no you're an idiot he's jamie diamond the what he's essentially saying is i still hold the view that i personally hold but i understand you have a different view

than me. So as my client, I'm going to allow you to do the thing that you want to do within some parameters that I can get comfortable from a risk management standpoint. It's like a parent whose kid wants to take some risks. So what is the risk management that they're not going to custody the Bitcoin? I don't know this for sure. My guess is that it probably has a lot to do with the fact that it's a bearer asset. And now all of a sudden there is increased risk for the bank to hold the assets because what if they ever get hacked? Right. So they let you buy it, but they don't hold it that becomes a way to de-risk the kind of entrance into bitcoin right so that's one piece the second thing is um and this is true of everyone not just in this context if you take

everything that he said about bitcoin around sex trafficking terrorism blah blah whatever and you just replace the word bitcoin with dollars it's more true than if it you say it about bitcoin more dollars are used more for that stuff than bitcoin is and so it kind of gets to this weird place where um it's kind of like a politician a little bit right you're saying the things that the audience expects you to say and therefore you're not rocking the boat fine whatever just understand the game that's getting played right and realize that the the big news here is that jamie diamond said i will defend your right to buy bitcoin and now he's going to let his clients buy bit by bitcoin everything else around it is uh wrapping paper i just don't want to be wrong

you don't save the wrapping paper after christmas day you just know what was the gift inside right And that's the thing. And that's the decision. So I think that's a big deal. Now, on top of this, I also think that these banks, one of the areas that they have not yet gone in on, which they're going to have to try to figure out is if you go and try to use some of the financial services, they want a personal financial statement on those personal financial statements. they look and they say, okay, well, how much cash do you have? How much equities do you have in public markets? What are the private investments you have? What's the crypto you have? What are the houses you have? What are the cars? What are all your assets? And then they go through and they say, oh, private investments, zero. Crypto, zero. And they zero out a bunch of stuff that is either hard to value or are things that they feel like are too risky, too volatile or whatever, so they can't rely on them. We're now reaching a point, sure, if you show up and you got fart coin,

that's probably going to be a zero in their book. But if you show up and you say, I got Bitcoin, well, if you have Bitcoin as the ETF, they count it because of public equity. But if you have Bitcoin, not in the ETF, they're going to start to give people credit for that stuff. And I actually think that if you go and you talk to the private bankers, the financial advisors, they want this, like their clients own these assets. They're trying to serve their client, right? That's the part that always gets lost in these conversations. These are people who want to do right by their clients. It's just that the bank's got to have these frameworks around risk management, et cetera. And so I think that's going to be a really big unlock is when all of a sudden the banks start to say to people, I will actually acknowledge or include in my analysis, whatever the things are that are not in the public markets that are not cash, etc. And I think that that is coming. I don't know how you draw a line.

Okay, if Bitcoin counts as Ethereum, I don't know. Well, if Ethereum and Bitcoin count as Solana, do you skip one of them? Do you take a view? Do you say there's a centralization filter? Do you just say it's the top 10 coins? Do you say stable coins count, but anything that's not a stable coin doesn't count?

These are questions I don't have answers to, but they're going to have to figure that stuff out for each individual financial institution, how they want to handle it. And are there any other large banks like JP Morgan that are still holding out on Bitcoin? Well, I think that each bank has kind of a different level of like,

capitulation is too strong of a word because I don't ever think that it was like, we hate this and we're not going to serve our clients. I think that, again, go back to Jamie Dimon. I think that he said at one point, like, I'll fire anyone who's trading this. But then he was like, and then my daughter called me and was like, well, I own some dad

or something like that, right? And he was kind of like, that's the dichotomy Of like, you know, he's learning, like what is the younger generation's a difference of opinion than the older generational stuff, right? I do know that Brian Monaghan, I think is his name from Bank of America.

He's talked about if the regulators will allow them to get the stable coin game, they're ready to rock and roll like they want to be in the stable coin game. If you go and look at just large financial institutions in general, you know, VanEck, shout out my boys at VanEck. They have been very much embracing this.

BNY Mellon, they're building a lot of stuff, especially around custody, et cetera. but there are some maybe I could drop a little a little story for the people out there oh we love I'm not gonna say I'm not gonna say which organization this is but let me just give you a sense we held the Bitcoin Investor Week conference in February we're not talking about five years ago the story I'm about to tell you we're talking about literally this year a year after the Bitcoin ETFs got approved this is a true story we reached out to an organization a very large financial institution and we said hey we're holding this conference we would love

to have somebody come speak you guys are obviously trying to figure out what to do in this space uh how about the person who runs your like you know crypto work or whatever that person was like sounds great here go talk to the comms people go and talk to communications people for at least weeks probably months i can't remember but i feel like it was like two months maybe more they gave us all kinds of hurdles to jump over do this do that do that like you know i was like a like a monkey with tap dance shoes on just dancing away whatever they wanted yes yes yes caroline who runs our event she was whatever they need bam bam bam bam whatever finally they come back and they say we're in you feel like you just climbed you know mount everest with no oxygen or something right

you're like on top of the world and then they say uh i say well what would you guys like to talk about i got some ideas but you know i want to make sure this is valuable for you guys you're going to send your person but whatever and they send me a bunch of talking points and bitcoin was not mentioned one time not one time so i oh it must have been a mistake obviously you know uh no big deal go right back to them and i say to them uh i say hey uh you know this is a bitcoin conference i get that you guys are doing you know tokenization is the bad man whatever but we're talking about bitcoin right like like we can talk about bitcoin and if you want to throw some other stuff in there i don't love it but okay fine i'm cool with it but we gotta talk about bitcoin and

i swear on my life the comms person hit me back with something that was like so and so will not be speaking about bitcoin you ever seen you ever seen a cartoon where like the guy's head just like spins around a million times that happened to me in real life and i literally was looking around the room for a hidden camera am i being punked right now this financial institution thinks they're gonna send somebody to our conference to talk about everything else but not talk about bitcoin at the bitcoin investor conference so i sent back a nice message you know me i'm a nice guy right a uh sorry there must be some miscommunication here uh we gotta talk about bitcoin comms person sends me back a book this dude wrote a book in the email of all the things

they were going to talk about with our strategy with all stuff bitcoin was not in the entire book one time so i said uh you know take a deep breath sleep on it come back the next day Hey, guys, we still got to talk about Bitcoin at the Bitcoin conference. They pulled out. That's how crazy it is. In February of 2025, a large financial institution wanted to come to the Bitcoin investor conference and not talk about Bitcoin. Well, but is that that is the opportunity?

That is where the disruption is going to happen. You think that those people can compete? Do you think that's just like a regulatory thing? There was every other financial institution that came was talking about Bitcoin. and they were talking about other stuff too. This is the way I operate. Ready? Here's the deal.

If you are operating in good faith, I operate in great faith. In great faith. Not just good faith. No, great faith. If you're going to come, you're going to take time out of your day. You're going to come to one of our conferences.

I'm going to try to do everything in my power to make it valuable for you. I'm going to try to make you look good. Can't help if you're not handsome, but I'll try. I'm going to make you look smart, right? I'll try to put the lights real nice so people can see,

you know maybe you got a nice watch on or something it glistens people oh he's wealthy you know maybe i should go give him my money like whatever we can do we are going to do for you at the conference but if you try to come to one of our conferences and you literally write in an email we're going to come to the bitcoin investor week conference and we're not going to talk about bitcoin nah ain't gonna fly your watch is not gonna glisten in those lights so i very nicely this true story listen i'm just open book that's how i just say it how it is i went back to the guy who runs the crypto because this is a comms person you know comms people i like comms people but they could be a little uh you know they could have their own agenda whatever and i say to that

person hey just so you know here's what the comms person is saying no response i said okay that's fine no problem one day one day that group i promise you one day that group we're gonna take a company public we're gonna be doing a transaction they're gonna want to represent me they're going to do something. And I saved the emails. I got them. I got them screenshotted in a PDF and I'm going to send it back. And I'm going to say, I played a long game. You guys playing, I don't know what game this is, but that's going to come back. So it just goes back to this whole idea of why is that important? They're all in different stages of trying to figure out how to play in the industry. Some of them like JP Morgan are saying,

we believe x you believe y we are going to help serve our clients and let you do y others are playing you know play stupid games win stupid prizes over here oh taylor swift a little bit taylor swift did not make that up taylor swift that is a taylor i mean that's a classic taylor swift fan thing to say actually it's like oh taylor swift you don't want to go down to taylor swift stupid prizes she literally stole that did she give credit to the person who invented it the whole school somebody complaining about stealing her music she sure didn't didn't give credit for the person who stole that phrase i'm sure she just took the phrase but who said the phrase then i don't know i was just an idiom yeah all right go ahead what was the next topic

yeah y'all didn't know i got range i got the financial institutions i got swifties i got it all it's been used in tom clancy novels from the 1980s and 90s so tom clancy all right didn't get credit so crypto in dc let's talk about what's going on with crypto in dc scooter braun tom petty or tom clancy about to be dapped real quick okay so the senate advanced a crypto regulation bill on monday called the genius act which would create i know what you're thinking my daughter last night called me a genius and anthony was like oh no she she thinks i'm a genius um i wasn't actually think of that at all but go ahead oh forgot about that i was thinking about it okay so the senate advanced a scripted regulation bill called the genius act which would create a

regulatory framework for stable coins it was introduced by senator bill hagerty it began as a bipartisan effort with co-sponsors including senator sim scott cynthia loomis kristin jilly brand gilly brand jilly brand and angela also brooks the reason why i forgot she said that is like, it's kind of like a fleeting moment. A three-year-old says all kinds of stuff every day. You kind of just like ignore it all, whatever. Just the couple. But of course you remembered.

All right, so- Because I'm a genius. Genius act. Good idea. Good idea. Now all the details, whatever, like people smarter than me will figure that stuff out. Explain to me again what exactly a stable coin does.

It's stable. But what is it? It's a coin that's stable. Name in the name, stable coin. We're real simple people around here. The whole idea is $1 equals $1, right? And if things are priced in dollars, then you want to say, I got $10 in my pocket. I'm going to walk to the store. When I get to

the store, I still got the $10 in my pocket. It can buy whatever goods for $10. Well, if you have a coin for that, well, if you have, let's say Bitcoin or some other coin, you have, let's say one Bitcoin equals $10. You go to walk to the store. By the time you get there now, one Bitcoin equals $9 or it equals $11. There's volatility in the exchange price to dollars. So what somebody created is a coin that is backed by usually dollars, but you can also do it. There's euros, there's yen, there's won, pesos, et cetera. There's also ones that are backed by gold, blah, blah, whatever. But the whole idea is that it's stable. So now you can use these stable coins to move money around the world, purchase things, et cetera, the same way

a dollar can. You're just upgrading the technology. So the way to think about that is dollars used to be physical. Then we went to electronic dollars. How many people walk around with more than 500 bucks in their pocket i mean that alpha for all you young men out there always care always carry always carry 100 to 300 of cash always carry it with you you mean in cash not just like there used to be physical cash now everything you carry is electronic so i carry more than 500 in my pocket of course no but i'm saying that they upgraded but i'm saying like physical cash always have one to like maybe 300 on you you never know you might need to tip somebody you might need to get a taxi you might need to uh give it to somebody you know you just never know you

carry cash it's a nice gentlemanly thing to do all the older gentlemen that watch this show they'll be like he's right kid's right a number of times i'm like you got 20 bucks for something your wife may ask you for money you never know uh i mean all kinds of stuff at the nail salon nail salon right okay go on so uh stable coins are stable and they've exploded they are huge i think tether just crossed $150 billion just in Tether. And so then you add in Circle and Athena and all these different stable coins, they're flying now. And the whole idea is you're selling

one of the greatest product market fit products in the world. You're selling US dollars to people who want US dollars. What could be better? You're just doing it in this new technology form factor that the government hasn't created yet. And so you're taking dollars, you've put it in a new wrapper, right?

And then you're giving it to people to use. And it would make cross, like international transactions much easier because there's no- International, domestic, purchases, money movements, trading, settlement, whatever. It's all better and it's cheaper and it's faster. And so one of the crazy things is, it sounds stupid, but how many businesses in the world are like, ah, I got to get to the bank. I got to do the wire by 2 p.m. Ah, I got to get to my computer because I got to do it by 5 p.m.

Whatever, right? chill 24 seven where we can move money. Now we don't have these arbitrary hours of operations on Saturday. You want to do something. You can't do it. It's crazy. So where the world is going is that we are going to quote unquote tokenize all of these assets. Now, again, it doesn't mean that if you take the Amazon stock and you take it from an electronic QSIP to a digital token, it's still the same stock. There's no, in my opinion, there's no real like massive arbitrage opportunity or money making, whatever. So all the people who are like the tokenization stuff is like quote unquote shit coin. I just think of it as it's a new technology that has nothing to do with

crypto actually. Crypto to me is there's Bitcoin and there's a bunch of these alt coins, all that kind of stuff. But if you simply take the dollars or the stocks or whatever, you put them onto rails that now can trade globally 24 seven with liquidity at all time, like that is valuable to a subset of the population. And so I think that's where the world's going. Stablecoins are just getting us there. Now, what Hagerty said, he was on CNBC earlier this week, I think yesterday, he said that he believes that stablecoin issuers will be the largest holders of U.S. treasuries in the world, more than any foreign country or anything. Stablecoin issuers are going to end up saving the U.S. treasury market. That's my personal view. Hagerty seems to agree. He says

they're going to be the largest holders of U.S. treasuries in the world. And now, with a little kerfuffle in the senate they were all back and forth back and forth who's gonna get the votes who's gonna get the votes whatever wait before that some members of congress fear that the bill is a gateway for somehow for the trump family to fiscally benefit elizabeth warren stated a financial meltdown triggered by crypto instability is not some alarmist fever dream in fact it nearly happened just a few years ago crypto markets abruptly lost two trillion that's trillion with a t after the collapse of several major firms in 2022 two of the largest stable coins failed to maintain their picks so a couple things first of all this whole like

politicalization of this stuff anyone who's a rational person immediately take all that throw it out the window right there's no there's no place for that stuff right if you have a piece of technology like computers if you're like oh i think that this person if we approve the use of computers this person may benefit from yeah right well no shit but so will everyone else that uses a computer right so just throw all that nonsense out it's all noise then if you go and you look um yes in 2022 there were crypto firms that failed but guess what three of the five largest bank failures in u.s history also happened around the same time within like a year of that and so it was finance in general it wasn't specific to crypto it wasn't specific to outside of crypto there's

There's a whole bunch of factors that occurred, including the Federal Reserve told everyone they were going to keep interest rates suppressed for the foreseeable future, and they jacked them up at the highest rate in history, and a bunch of people got caught offside from risk management standpoint. So if you look at that, you say, okay, throw that argument out for a second. Stable coins are stable. There are people who have tried to do algorithmic stable coins and all this other stuff. I personally believe that U.S.-backed stable coins, U.S. dollar-backed stable coins, that

is going to be the product that wins. It is winning now. I think it'll continue to win. I think that Tether, there's plenty of people who are yelling and screaming about Tether. They think it's controversial. They think this, blah, blah, blah, whatever. What I know is that Tether has done probably more work

than almost any other private company in the world at extending the dollar adoption and the dollar hegemony globally. They are getting this in the hands of people. I think they have something like over 400 million users and they're adding some crazy, like 30 million users a quarter or something. They have $150 billion of stable coins issued out there.

It's insane how big this thing is. And now, a little alpha for everyone. So much alpha in this episode. The Tether guys, they were based outside the United States. They weren't coming to the United States. They weren't trying to get adoption in the United States. None of that stuff. That allowed the opportunity for Circle

and other stable coin providers to very quickly jump and grab adoption in the U.S. That is changing. Tether, you see the CEO, Palo is coming to the United States multiple times. They are engaged on this now. If I was operating a business, if I was a crypto exchange,

if I was a stable coin issuer, if I was running a consumer product, anything, the last person in the world that I would want to compete with is Tether because their balance sheet is the biggest. And if you've got the biggest balance sheet and you have a track record of execution in the way that they do, that's a nightmare to compete against. And so I think that the stablecoin thing, there will be other stablecoins that come up. We already see that circle.

It's done a great job growing market share. We've seen others, et cetera. But Tether, man, those guys I would not want to compete with. And so I think that that's just what you're seeing now is people are saying, all right, well, let's get some rules of the road. Let's get some regulation in here. Which is a good sign, right? Yeah, and look, plenty of people will say, oh, well, we don't need regulation for the dollars.

Like, why do we need, whether you think we need it, we don't need it, whatever. All I see in all of these developments- At least the conversations are happening. The incumbents are embracing the new technology. Are the rules going to be perfect? No. Are there going to be things that we wish we got?

Yes. Are there going to be things that they get wrong? Of course, right? Whatever. All I know is that five years ago, if you were in this industry and you went and you talked to, you know, you had a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you went over to the parent's house,

And they were like, I think that this person may be involved in bad things. How do I know that? Because her dad did that to me. But that was like a real thing. It was like, oh, like, why are they playing in this industry? I thought that industry was bad, whatever. Now, it's completely changed, right?

And so I think it's going to continue to change. And the only thing that I can continue to tell people is there's going to be no difference between traditional finance and crypto. It's all merging. Robinhood is a traditional brokerage exchange. They are adding very quickly, a lot of their growth coming from crypto.

Kraken is a private crypto exchange. They are adding US equities. All exchanges are going to offer stocks and crypto assets. Same thing is going to happen with the payment providers. Same thing is going to happen with all these different products. Yeah, I was just going to tell a little story for the people. When Anthony came to meet my dad,

I was already in Atlanta, like at my dad's house for the weekend. And I hadn't told him anything about what Anthony does for work. Um, but this was what, 2017. And, um, what happened in the night before Anthony came, my dad was telling me how he saw on the news, this new thing, this Bitcoin and how all these like silk road, he was telling me in these drug dealers and this like bad stuff. He was like, yeah, you know, so many things out there now. And I'm like, oh my god and then anthony comes the next day and i'm like the comms person at the financial institution

i'm like listen you do not talk about bitcoin you do not talk about cryptocurrency you know what i did i said evo you live in bulgaria you know what hyperinflation is let me explain bitcoin and i explained it to him by the end he goes this is a very interesting idea he goes how do i buy some of this yeah and then and then that christmas my dad uh we had like a christmas party and all his friends were there and I walk in and I see him pulling up a video of Anthony explaining Bitcoin to tell all of the Bulgarians about the value of Bitcoin. I was like, he is orange pilling everybody. Your dad's got more Bulgarians on the orange coin than I do. What else? OK, so Moody's announced a downgrade of U.S. debt, sending Treasury markets higher on Monday.

the 30-year note yield is above 5% and the 10-year note yield is up another 11 beeps. Bips. Bips. Bips. Damn, I should drop that one day. Just be like, yeah, no, no. The treasury rate went up three beeps.

I have no idea what I just read. What does this even mean? Bips. All of it. Why do we care about the note? Moody's. Oh, Moody's. No, I know what Moody's is.

All right, so let's just rewind. Why are we downgrading the U.S. debt? The Moody's thing doesn't matter. Oh, the Moody's thing is it's like, again, if you remember NBER, you remember me ranting two years ago, three years ago about NBER. NBER is a group that they claim that they have a monopoly on determining whether there's a recession or not. beeps. It's a made up nonprofit. They just made it up. And they, and then all of a sudden they say, well, we get to decide if it's a recession or not. Like, no, you don't. No, you don't. We don't have to listen to you. It's just made up. It's just like one of those false, you know, inventions in the economics that people all of a sudden, they just wake up one day and they're like, why do we have to listen to NBER? Isn't it just a two straight quarters of negative GDP?

That's a recession that happened. Why don't, why do they get to say it's not a recession? it makes no sense nber fake non-profit so if you go and you take a look at moody's why do they get to say what the ratings are well why do they get to say what the ratings are so again it goes back to it's directionally helpful right obviously they're like they're like sounding an alarm like hey guys this ain't going so hot right so like that is valuable but in terms of like what's the difference between triple a or double a or this like it's all just made up we just made up frameworks we had all this stuff whatever the thing that we should be paying attention to is government spending and right now there's a bill that has been proposed

i don't like it there's a lot of government spending in there so all you people who think that i just like some blind political luddite or whatever crazy things you guys say in the comments here you go roll the tape roll what do you not like they are exploding the national debt but scott besson's out here saying that he is determined to bring spending down and grow the economy he's trying to do that and the politicians are working against him he's treasurer secretary he at the end of the day he doesn't have control over that but he's doing the best that he can he's using economic policies and we've seen that we've actually seen in certain areas contractions we've seen them get rid of with doge etc they're trying what are they what are

they trying to spend on trust me if we go read the bill i'm sure there's all kinds of crazy stuff in the bill if y'all remember when i read the infrastructure bill i do remember that and i I found out that they were trying to get money to have people test driving high on marijuana. And I reminded everyone that we have plenty of people in the audience who will do it for free. It's just saved the government like $50 million. They were trying to study exotic plants

and the impact of them by building highways. I mean, just crazy stuff. They also were throwing a billion dollars to a nonprofit of the spouse of one of the politicians. I'm crazy stuff. And so every bill has crazy stuff in it. I've actually changed my mind on the whole pork thing, right? Pork is this idea that when you have a bill,

if there's pork in there, it's basically a negotiating thing. I hate that word. I'll allow you to get X in the bill. If you give me this other thing, it's like almost like horse trading or whatever. I used to be very, very against it. I think that although I am still against it in theory, I understand how it like gets these bills done

and is like a more kind of like in practice. Still don't like it. But at least I've changed my mind. I like I understand why they do it. And so if you look at this bill, it just explodes spending. And so guess what? Tell as old as time. Democrats, they spend money.

Republicans, they spend money. The national debt goes up under every single president that we've had. Whoever's in charge, who's ever in charge spends money. And so I don't like that. I think that we should have a political party that stands in there and says we are not spending more money. We're not doing it. And so I don't care how much you yell and scream.

I don't care how mad you get. I don't care about that, but whatever. We're not spending more money. We're balancing the budget, but it doesn't look like we're going to get there. And so I think that that is a big part of this is the Moody's downgrade is it's downgrading our debt. Now, I don't think that there's a lot of people

who were going to buy the debt that now aren't going to buy the debt because of Moody's. I think there's a lot of people who already weren't going to buy the debt because they were like, hey, I don't know if that's a great trade. And so I continue to yell from the rooftop. shop. Bonds are not a good allocation strategy. They, like your cash, are pretty much guaranteed

to lose money, especially over a long period of time. And so there's a lot of people who think that they are hiding in these safe assets. But go look at TLT. TLT is, I think it's the iShares 20-year treasury fund or something. Down and to the right. That is the story. That should be their tagline, TLT, we go down into the right. And so when you look at that, you say to yourself, look at it right now, type in TLT stock on the Google machine and see what is the five-year return of TLT. I bet you it's down some enormous number. It's down 48% in the last five years. It's down 50% in five years. And people are like, I'm safe. I'm hiding in bonds. No, you're not.

That's crazy. You're getting whacked. And so it goes back to this whole idea of they have to print money. They're going to devalue the dollar and the bonds are going to get crushed. What all time? All time, it's up 3.5%. Stop. How far does it go back?

Well, it only goes back to 2002, July. Okay, so 2002. So that means in 23, 24 years, it's gone up 3%. 3.5. okay? On a real basis, you're down a gazillion, right? You're just taking L's every day. And so it goes back to this whole idea of over a long period of time, holding bonds is not a good strategy. I understand why people do it. I understand what the old 60-40 portfolio, the whole point of it, I get all of it. It's just moving forward. The world has changed

and you've got to look at the world differently. And so that means that you cannot hold bonds the way that you used to hold bonds because they are a guaranteed way to lose money. And so I don't care what else you go by. I don't care if you go into equities. I don't care if you go into real estate, if you go into precious metals, you go into Bitcoin, whatever. I'm not here to judge people. I'm not here to give advice, any of that stuff. I just know that bonds are a losing strategy. And now the world is realizing that holding that debt may not be the best idea. Great. All right. You got anything else?

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