The Pomp Podcast - #1573 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Bitcoin EXPLODES To All Time High!

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Polina Pompliano and Anthony Pompliano discuss bitcoin hitting all-time highs, how we got here, where bitcoin goes from here, why retail investors love the stock market, and everything going on with Powell and interest rates. =======================Today’s episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN, rated #1 by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge. Without ExpressVPN, third parties can still see every website you visit, even in Incognito Mode. ExpressVPN is an easy to use VPN service that works on all devices hiding your IP address. Get an extra four months free and protect your online privacy TODAY by visiting https://expressvpn.com/pomp =======================Bitizenship helps Bitcoin-forward investors gain EU residency and a path to Portuguese citizenship in five years while maintaining exposure to Bitcoin. Their regulated fund qualifies you for the Golden Visa through an operating company focused on Bitcoin-native innovation. Book a free strategy call at bitizenship.com/pomp.=======================Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Created by Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, Polkadot empowers users to build decentralized applications with ease. Backed by industry leaders, making it a preferred choice for big names, Polkadot stands out as a leading choice for investors seeking a reliable, future-proof solution in the growing world of Web3 technology. Learn more at https://polkadot.com/.=======================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/

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on, guys. Today, we've got a great episode with Polina Pompliano. We talk about the Bitcoin all time high. How do we get here and where are we going? We then talk about retail investors pouring capital into the stock market and why they may be smarter than all of the big financial institutions. On top of that, we then get into what's going on with Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve interest rate cuts, and whether he's going to be around or not to see the end of his term. That and much more in today's conversation with Polina Pompliano. All right, Polina, what's the first topic? Okay, so Bitcoin yesterday hit an all-time high of $123,000.

Bang, bang. This is remarkable. Why did this happen? Well, there's a lot of things that happened. First of all, Bitcoin is the best asset for someone to put in their portfolio, my personal humble opinion. I think that it will continue to compound for a very long period of time, like I've been saying for a decade. On top of that, Bitcoin is the best barometer for global liquidity. That's my opinion. But also, there's data to prove it. Lynn Alden, Sam Callahan did an amazing study that showed it is the most sensitive asset to global liquidity and global liquidity has been expanding. So Bitcoin's price

is going to go up. On top of that, you have an entire generation that says, I want volatility. I don't want all this risk mitigation nonsense. And so when Bitcoin dropped earlier this year in April to about $75,000, the fear index went all the way down to 15. The greed index is back to 70 now. And it's because people are bullish and they realize just by the dib, all long-term prolonged bear markets have been outlawed. You ain't going to see that stuff anymore because they got the money printer. And so that is all like structural stuff. We also have an administration. They like Bitcoin. They love Bitcoin. They're being pro-Bitcoin. They're putting policies in place. They're putting the strategic Bitcoin reserve. But you've said before it didn't matter

what administration. Bitcoin is going to be successful regardless of whether the government is for it or against it, still going to be successful. So in that regard, doesn't matter. But if we get our choice, of course, we want the government to like it, right? Because it is a tailwind. And so that's what you're seeing happen and play out. On top of that, you have three things. First, Bitcoin ETFs. We saw something like $1.2 billion of inflows last Thursday. That was the second highest day of inflows in Bitcoin ETF history. We now have BlackRock's ETF that is about $90 billion. We'll talk about all of that. Okay. All right. And collectively, they're $140 billion, but the ETFs, they're very successful. They're rocking and rolling.

On top of that, we also saw that at the end of Q2, the expiration of options, for those that don't understand, options are an ability to go long or short. A lot of people are using them to suppress the price and hedge and do things like that. If the options expire at the end of Q2, that downward pressure gets relieved. And so now you've got kind of more buoyancy. You didn't know I knew that word. Kind of like taking a beach ball and holding it under the water,

remove your hands, up we go. And then if we move up quickly, guess what happens? There's lots of shorts that had piled on. And so those shorts were all sitting there and they were waiting because they thought Bitcoin was just gonna trade in this range. Go down to 100K, go back to 110.

Go down to 100K, go back to 110. If you traded the range, when it gets to 110 short, it's going back to 100, right? wrong. Bunch of liquidations. Bitcoin then gets into something called price discovery. Price discovery is when we try to discover what the new price of Bitcoin is going to be. Last time this happened was in November of 2024. Donald Trump got elected. We went through the 70k, which was a new all-time high, previous all-time high, $69,000. Nice. And from there, we went from 70 to 90. It's about a 28 to 30% move, depending on how you look at the data. If that was to happen

now 110 to about 140. I'm not saying that 140 is going to happen in two to three weeks. But I am saying that a move from 110 to 120, a lot of momentum. And so if you continue with that momentum, and you have a similar move to what we saw in November, then 140 would be within the kind of realm of possibility. And it could happen much faster than people think. So my whole thing is, we are now going up. I expect us to continue going up in the second half of this year, because they are printing money, because we are going to get interest rate cuts, because Wall Street now's full undivided attention is on Bitcoin. They realize Bitcoin is a winning strategy. They want to put Bitcoin in their ETFs. They want to put Bitcoin in their public companies. They want to

put Bitcoin in the real estate. They're going to put Bitcoin in their fixed income funds. They're going to put Bitcoin on their own balance sheets. Anything that they can do where they can take Bitcoin and put it into a traditional product, it is coming. And the second that you go from a contrarian trade to a consensus trade, get ready, buckle up. Bitcoin is going to do its thing. And Bitcoin is up over 100% in the last year. At the same time, Ethereum is down. It's negative. That is called the bifurcation.

I was just going to say that. Yeah. Bitcoin dominance was down at 38%, I believe, or 33%, something like that, back in 2022. It's now at 63%. Bitcoin's the king. It's going to remain the king. And I think that now Wall Street realizes there's Bitcoin and there's everything else. doesn't mean everything else is complete zeros but let's talk about the king is here

let's talk about black rock so black rock spotty spot bitcoin etf is now the company's most profitable etf just crazy so as you mentioned last thursday we saw an inflow of 1.2 billion into bitcoin etfs on monday the federal reserve and u.s regulators issued a statement saying banks are allowed to custody bitcoin and crypto oh that's big no oh oh okay that's one of those things that in the day it gets announced a couple people pay attention five years from now people look back and say wait so why did this i i mean i feel like it should have been a big deal bigger deal than just the bullet point the market is uh bifurcated in that you've got the hardcore retail bitcoiners who they believe in self-custody rightfully so people should learn self-custody

You should take control of your private keys. At the same time, there's a whole other class of people. They're not doing self-custody. A lot of them waited for the Bitcoin ETF. They didn't want to go set up a Coinbase, Kraken, whatever account. So what now is going to happen is people say, I don't even need to do this at any sort of other organization. I can just buy spot Bitcoin and my bank will hold it for me.

Sounds good to me. There's a bunch of people who are going to go do that. Whether people like it or not, this is part of mass adoption. You want people to be able to self-custody? Yeah. You want people to be able to use third-party qualified custodians? You want people to be able to buy via ETFs? You want people to be able to buy Bitcoin treasury companies?

You want people to be able to buy Bitcoin and hold it at their bank? Let them choose what they want to do. This is all about choice. And so give people the choice to do whatever they want to do and then go educate them. And if we want more people to be doing self-custody, then we must educate them on self-custody. What we shouldn't do is try to use regulation or market forces to prevent people from doing what they want to do with their money. Instead, we should say,

hey, you have all these options available to you. Here are the advantages of something like self-custody. But the banks, they're jumping in. They're skinny dipping in the deep end. They're so excited that they just stripped off all their clothes. They're jumping deep. You know, like when you go to the pool when you're a little kid and your parent tries to get you to go to the shallow end,

that's not what their banks are doing. They're not dipping their toes. The banks are swan diving right in. But I feel like up until now, the banks were like, no, no, no. because they do your clothes on no because they listen banks you ever seen um like uh what's that movie is it called the mask i think the guy with the green face and yeah it spins around yeah yeah jim carrey whatever right and he that's what the banks do let's just call a spade a spade if you're a bank guess what your game is your game is not in having really strong opinions about assets or

this you do what your clients want right and you want to grow your business well guess where the clients are going. They're going to Bitcoin. And so if you want young people, if you want new clients, if you want new revenue, if you want new assets, you embrace Bitcoin. Vanguard, let's talk about these. Let's talk about Vanguard. Vanguard said Bitcoin is not appropriate for long-term investors. Then Vanguard's not a long-term investor. But Vanguard has also purchased 20 million shares of MicroStrategy. Hypocrisy. That's Jim Carrey and the mask. Who do we want to be today? Right? So when you look at it from that perspective, it just goes back to, they're all going to say whatever they want to say. Don't listen to what they're saying.

Watch what they're doing. Right? And so you come back to what is Vanguard doing? If they're buying it for themselves, think about the arrogance that you have to have to be the person who says Bitcoin is not for long-term investors and turn around and be the largest investor in the Bitcoin treasury company guess what either you're not a long-term investor or you're saying one thing that you don't actually believe by the way who cares they're free to do whatever they want if you don't like the fact that they're not letting you buy bitcoin move your assets move with your feet somewhere else use your dollars to protest rather than say well i'm going to keep my vanguard account i'm going to complain all the time like this is a free market move your stuff let's go

make them feel the pain of customers leaving if they're not going to allow people to invest in Bitcoin. Guess what will happen? Other asset managers like BlackRock and others, they're like, hey, we're open for business. You Bitcoiners, you guys are crazy. We love you guys. Why don't you come on over here? Bam. Most profitable fund that they have in the ETF complex. Like overnight, 18 weeks or 18 months. In 18 months, they went from we don't have a Bitcoin fund to it's our most profitable fund. If you take your business and you plug it into the Bitcoin network in multitude of ways, it is good for your business. And BlackRock is proving it. Guess what? Fidelity, VanEck, Bitwise, all these other guys, they're doing a fantastic job as well. Their businesses

are better because they all created these Bitcoin ETFs. Guess what else is going to happen? Now you're having a bunch of other people show up and say, wait a minute, I should try to figure this out. GameStop, DJT, people are like, oh, those are like kind of one-offs. What are they really doing with this? Whatever. Well, what happens when all of a sudden you start seeing big companies? You think Facebook's going to buy Bitcoin at some point? I bet they will. You think Amazon's going to buy Bitcoin? I bet they will. Now, is it going to be tomorrow? Probably not. Is it going to be in five years? I don't know. But what we are watching is we are watching a rise of a new monetary asset, which happens, oh, I don't know, every maybe minimum 50 years, maximum centuries.

and we all get a front row seat, get your popcorn out, kick your feet up, put on your little 3D glasses that they give you at the 3D movie theater and watch the show. Because guess what? Bitcoin is going way higher. There'll be a lot of volatility between now and then. But if you think that Bitcoin is not going to be measured in millions of dollars at some point in the future, stop. Put down your phone.

Just take a deep breath. They're never going to stop printing money. Bitcoin is going higher. And all these companies, they're all going to capitulate. And Vanguard, it's going to be like chef's kiss when they decide to find a deal. Well, they have exposure. For themselves. Right.

Okay. Well, retail investors are kind of the backbone of this. Of course. Individual investors bought $155.3 billion of single stocks and ETFs in the first half of 2025, marking the largest semi-annual net inflows on record. um retail is dumping their money into bitcoin and tech stocks stand in contrast with warren buffett who's sitting on 5.1 of the entire u.s treasury bill market let's break this down for a second first let's go after buffett this guy dinosaur sorry love him great track record amazing questionable life decisions but as a investor great track record has not beat the

s&p 500 i think last 15 years like uh collectively by the way one of his core principles of his entire investing philosophy do not own non-productive assets own companies because companies produce cash flows okay gold that dumb shiny rock has outperformed the u.s stock market over the last 25 years 25 years ago if you bought gold and held it you would now have more money than if you bought the U.S. stock market. So the entire premise of Buffett's life's work has been invalidated because actually we no longer live in a world

where you are supposed to go and pick all these individual stocks. It's an intelligence test. If they're going to print money, buy hard assets. If they're not going to print money, then go play your game of all this stuff. But the stock market is being driven by inflation. So is gold.

So is Bitcoin. And guess what is happening? Is Bitcoin and gold are kicking the ass of the stock market. And so if you look at Phil Rosen opening bell recently had a chart that he pulled up somewhere, the S&P 500 in Bitcoin terms is down 85% since 2020. You should no longer start to measure assets in dollar terms. Start measuring them in the Bitcoin rate of return. What is the S&P's Bitcoin rate of return since 2020, negative 85%. So it brings me to retail. Retail, self-directed investors, independent investors, whatever you want to call them. They are smarter now than ever

before. I may even venture to say that retail is smarter than the institutions. Now, it's a little unfair because retail makes up the institutions, which people don't realize. If you go on X, if you go on Reddit, if you go on Substacks, et cetera, a lot of the people there, they are there in their personal capacity. They're learning. They're directing their own personal accounts. But they also, in their professional life, work at multi-strat hedge funds, big banks, big financial institutions, et cetera. So the same people who are learning online are the same people who are inside these organizations, not the younger people. And as the older people move on, those younger people are going to ascend up. And what you're

going to find is that there's going to be a convergence. But it's the retail folks' ideas that are now invading these big organizations. And so you can see it. Just look at this year alone. Stocks went down in April. I mean, your boy knew that stocks were coming back. April 3rd, stone cold bottom, basically. I tweeted and said, we're going back to all-time highs before the end of the year. Book it. Receipt season. And we did much faster than I thought. But in the recovery, historic recovery may add almost 30 up in 90 days uh what we saw was retail was plowing capital 155 billion dollars into single name stocks and etfs in the first half of the year record at the same time the institutions the hedge funds the financial organizations they have much less

exposure to the u.s stock market than historically they wouldn't necessarily have which means that they actually were sitting on the sidelines they were waiting for it to go lower they were didn't believe in the recovery etc retail understands the most important thing about the financial market prolonged bear markets have been outlawed dips are for buying that's what retail has been convinced of and whether you think they're right or wrong the data suggests that they are more right than wrong and they continue to outperform so it brings us back to the bitcoin story retail was first to bitcoin and a lot of the people that i know that are inside of these big financial organizations they personally bought bitcoin well before their organizations did so you can't say oh they're so

stupid they don't know what they're doing what they were doing is they're playing a risk mitigation game. They were playing a bureaucracy game. They were playing a completely different game, but the individuals knew where the value was. And so what we are transitioning to here is a world where the retail investors are going to beat the institutions to a lot of investments. And so paying attention to the retail flows is really important. I think retail right now is like 36 to 38% of the US stock market. I predict that will be more than 50% at some point in the future. And what we are going to watch is that the institutions are going to start following retail, not the other way around, Bitcoin being the first big winner. And I think that there are

many, many other stories like that that are coming as well. Great. Let's talk about your favorite narrative violation. A $27 billion surplus was recorded in June as tariff revenues grew to a record $27.2 billion in June following a $316 billion deficit in May. Customs duties totaled about $27 billion for the month, up from $23 billion in May. The government last posted a June surplus in 2017 during President Donald Trump's first term, and the fear of inflation never really happened because the U.S. inflation index dropped to 1.66 percent, according to True Inflation. Let's come to inflation in a second. First, let's talk about the Treasury surplus in the

month of June. Bittersweet. It's kind of like a consolation prize. I was very excited about the current administration, Doge, tariffs, et cetera, as a way to balance the budget. I do not believe that we will be able to get to a truly balanced budget over a long period of time. But, consolation prize, I believe two different months this year,

we have had treasury surpluses, which means that in those months, we collected more than we spent. Two is better than zero, but I still don't think for the year we're gonna get to a balanced budget. I do not think that it is possible regardless. Republican, Democrat, Independent,

Mom Donnie definitely ain't getting there and neither is anyone else that we put in the White House. It is not possible because of the structure and our unwillingness to actually cut expenses so we have to print money. But consolation prize, yes, in June we did have a surplus which shows you that there is a path if we could get our act together

and cut enough expenses and drive enough revenue, the tariffs, quote unquote, are working in that regard. Now, with that said, let's go to inflation. as soon as i hear cpi i shut my ears off just stop listening to him what are you talking about these people have no clue what the inflation number is based on their methodology if i have to remind folks they send people with physical tablets into grocery stores and they say go find the exact can of soup with low salt this sodium whatever and punch in the price of the soup and we're going to do that like every 90 days. What? Who in their right mind in today's day and age

with the access to the internet, real-time prices, real-time information, all this stuff would ever think to design a system to collect data, to send humans who are valuable, who make mistakes with physical tablets into the stores, random stores, and just figure out what prices. That is crazy town. So that's first of all, second of all, things like, uh, owner equivalent rent is my favorite one. They call people on the phone. They call like 2000 people or something. And they say, Hey, I know you own your home, but what do you think you could rent your home for? Well, if you ask me that shit, I think I can rent it for $10,000 a square foot. Right. Who's asking, are you interested? Oh, you'll pay me $10,000 a square foot. I'll rent

it tomorrow, right? Now, obviously people, they have no clue. So why don't we, instead of doing phone calls, antiquated dinosaur technology, instead go and look, we have websites. I spent too much time on them. Zillow's, uh, street easy, uh, red fin, all these different things. There is a section on these websites that shows you the last closed deals, the last closed rentals go and look at actually what things are clearing in the market and measure the rental changes from that real-time data rather than calling people on the phone. And so it comes back to like, why was the polling wrong in November? Same reason why the inflation data is wrong. If you ask people to tell you something, they got no clue. They just lie. They make stuff up. Even if they think

they're telling you the truth, they're wrong. So instead look at the hard data. That's why I like Truflation more than I like the BLS data. So Truflation, very interesting story, huge narrative violation was at 3%. They said inflation was in January. That was higher than the government data. So the government data didn't say it was 3%, but they said it was 3%. So they're not skewed higher or lower generally. They just say what they think it is in real time. At 3% in the middle of January, it crashed all the way down. I think we got as low as like 1.3 or 1.4%. It then rose back up. At the end of June, it was sitting at over 2%, and it's now back down to like 1.8%. So this thing has volatility to it. It's real time. They're showing you what's happening. What it shows is

that in the first half of this year, we went from over 3% inflation to 1.8%. Everyone who told you high inflation was coming, wrong. Everyone who told you the shelves are going to be empty, wrong. Everyone who told you all these things you're going to worry about from the tariffs, wrong. But here is the mind bender. I think inflation is going to go up in the second half of this year, but it's not because of the tariffs. The tariffs have been in place now in some cases for six months. How long do you want to wait? How long do you think that they're going to wait to raise their prices if they're already have tariff revenue coming in? Obviously, the prices that have been increased have already been increased. And so what you're going to see is you are going to

see inflation start to tick up, but it's not because of the tariffs. It's because of the money printing and so as i've said on from the desk from anthony pompliano which you guys should all go subscribe to that youtube channel also i have said this on twitter a gazillion times technical number a gazillion is milton friedman said it best inflation can only be created in one place and that is washington dc monetary and fiscal policy determines inflation if monetary and monetary and fiscal policy is not out of tune, then you don't get any issues. Everything's fine. You won't get inflation. But now what we see is that the money supply is starting to grow, not only domestically, but internationally as well. Global M2 money supply is shooting higher.

Well, why is Bitcoin going up? Why is gold going up? Why are stocks going up? We hit what I would consider, I used to think of it as the trifecta, but now I think it's the quadfecta, which is gold, Bitcoin, NASDAQ, S&P, check, check, check, check, all four all-time highs. Why? Because the money supply was increasing. And so, yes, inflation is going to come back. It has nothing to do with the tariffs. That is like a smooth brain elementary analysis. If someone tells you that the inflation is tied to the tariffs, instead, it is because now they are going to turn on that money printer. And when they do that, yes, it will come back. So the only way that they can prevent it is shut off the money printer, which doesn't look like they're going to do, or grow, grow, grow. And so

they're going to try to figure out a way to stimulate so much economic activity that they will be able to grow their way out of the problem, which is nearly impossible, but that's, they're going to be their strategy. And so that tells me that if economic activity increases, guess what's else is going to go up? Stocks, Bitcoin, gold, they're all going higher. Just don't be caught holding dollars. And I think that is going to be the story of the next decade. And unfortunately, half of the country, they hold dollars. They do not hold investment assets and they're going to get crushed and you're going to see the rise of socialism communism all this nonsense in our society but because those people feel like they're left behind but instead it's all a financial

education problem yeah but those people do have the ability they're not you know uh boxed out of like the bitcoin market like they could not box out of any market other than private investing where you have to be an accredited investor but any liquid market yeah they could go sign up for an account. That's part of why Robinhood has been so powerful, right? Public.com, Weeble, eToro, whatever. It's just like an information. It is literally. If you said to me right now, could you wave a magic wand and drastically improve the quality of life for billions of people? You get to tell them one thing. That's the thing you tell them. Do not save in a fiat currency. You have to have investment assets. That is it. And if they follow that advice,

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Polkadot seems to be the top choice for industry players. Go check them out today at polkadot.com. All of a sudden, the world does not get more expensive around them. it gets cheaper. If you look at in Bitcoin terms, I mean, how many times have I said 2016 average home in America, $280,000 in 2024 average home in America for $400,000. Everything got way more expensive. How do you keep up? Who got that big of a raise at work? Nobody. But in Bitcoin terms went from 664 to six. Yeah. Now I bet you that the average home in America is probably like three Bitcoin. You know, it's interesting. I'm working on an article right now about a professional

athlete who's investing in a lot of private companies um and also bitcoin yeah and uh so and so okay so so and so it's very interesting because when you look at how these like contracts are priced over like five or ten years or whatever they're in dollars and those contracts ultimately get devalued um so if you're expecting to make 10 million you may only make like five well you'll no no you'll still get paid the 10 million it's just that the purchasing power the purchasing power of the yep yep russell kong pay me in bitcoin he's the pioneer yeah the first professional athlete to get half of his contract or salary whatever in uh bitcoin but technically well they the nfl would not let him do it so he got paid in the dollars that got

yeah strike jack mallers um but he tried it but well he tried he went to the owner he said pay me and bitcoin um but the whole idea of the fact that as i was reporting this article there was a lot of agents to these athletes who one of them said this is very risky and very volatile good old american dollars is where it's at it's like who said that lee steinberg super agent i know who lee steinberg anyway i didn't know nice guy so much so i'm not gonna do it but somebody should dunk on him for that comment online well i'm including it in my article which you all should read uh but yeah but it's interesting that now there's this like bifurcation and i think a lot of the athletes are seeing like i'm putting my body on the line and my purchasing power is getting

taken away what can i do and even though it looks risky it's kind of a big opportunity for them well if you did it with real estate no one would say it was risky right right right right so it's risky to, I mean, let's just call a spade a spade. It's risky to the boomers who built their wealth in a world that no longer exists anymore. That's the truth. That's what nobody wants to talk about. That world does not exist anymore. If you hold dollars, savings, you cannot save your way to financial security. It's impossible. So yeah, could your grandparents have done it? Of course. They bought a little house. It was 20K. All of a sudden they turn around, they got $2 million. Like literally, they're out here just punting on real estate and stuff.

Great. But for an entire new generation, they say, I can't get ahead. Bitcoin is one path. There's many other assets that you could participate with, but Bitcoin is one. And I think that that is really where you're going to start to see a lot of folks say, wait a second, I need to reevaluate this. And individuals, companies, countries, it's all going to happen. Crazy.

okay and let's talk about jerome powell despite the fact jerome i know who he is why are you making me say it again no i just it made me think about uh our daughter recently learned uh who let the dogs out she just walks around the house saying who let the dogs out hey that's my girl right there i bark every once in a while anthony and our daughter are like best friends okay despite the fact that stocks and bitcoin are up and inflation is down interest rates remain unchanged trump again slammed powell saying if he would just lower those rates if he would lower the rates and i tried being nice to the guy it doesn't help he's like a knucklehead oh he's a knucklehead a stupid boomer like uh funny no that's not like a boomer uh what do they call it

like insults. Yeah. It's like telling someone, uh, you know, like, uh, the most offensive thing you can say to a grown man is you're silly. You're just silly. Not serious. Come on. You're silly. Right. But like, if you think about knucklehead, that is like what your grandfather says about somebody who like, he really, really doesn't like is he's like, ah, he's a knucklehead. Do you think Powell will be forced to resign? Forced? He has the choice. You can't force them to do anything. Right. But I don't think that jerome powell wants his legacy to be that he got run out of town so they could put all this pressure on him whatever why do you think there's no way to force him out why do you think he's not

doing it why is he not quitting cutting rates cut it well that's a whole different story um i mean look why was he cutting rates when inflation was higher uh right before the election hmm that seems suspicious at the same time uh it didn't work if his goal was anything on the political side. Is he political? I have no clue. I've never talked to Jerome Powell, right? Maybe he is just, hey, look, I thought that was the right thing to do. By the way, Jerome Powell doesn't operate unilaterally, right? There's the FOMC, there's all this stuff, but Jerome Powell definitely got a lot of decision-making there. But I think that if you sat down and people ask him questions all the time, why is he not cutting? It's because he thinks that inflation could come

back. But that's also like saying, I'm not going to go outside today because I could get hit by a us right makes no sense um and so it's like well what is your opinion do you think inflation is going to come back or not and let's hold people accountable that's what's missing in a lot of these kind of bureaucratic positions is take a stance do you think it's going to happen or not make a decision if you think inflation is going to come back then come out and say that say i believe inflation is coming back for xyz reason but whatever that's not really what he's saying instead he's like it could it's like a lawyer language it's like it could it could happen it could not happen it may happen it may not happen it this and that i may not show up to work whatever

now i will tell you big controversy bill pulte and a lot of these people online they're putting a lot of pressure on jerome powell and i think they got a pretty good pressure point on the federal reserve building is going through a upgrade a renovation some may call it 2.5 billion dollars i took 30 seconds i don't care what the federal reserve building whatever until i started to read they're putting in like marble floors and stuff it's gotta look nice i mean why why does it need to look nice united states of america you gotta you're gotta look nice oh come on what message would it send if you didn't have marble floors no well in the federal reserve building let me ask you this question why is it that the federal reserves got marble floors but they stuck elon

musk when he was going to cut government spending in a broom closet well that's because no no but this is the point is like actually your environment helps influence your actions so if we want them not to spend as much money maybe they shouldn't go to work in super lavish buildings make them go to work amazon style in the early days of amazon they had wood doors that served as their desks and you think there'd be a little bit more cost-cutting i'm talking about the federal reserve like message to the world you have what is the message we rich but the whole thing is that they're not rich they're bankrupt they literally are borrowing money about image baby anyway all right anything else no you should see satoshi's palace

where is it huh i just envisioned satoshi sitting there he's like god i would just like really love to know marble floors he's like please marble floors those are for peasants 135 billion dollars 135 big ones i need to get to the bottom of this on a tuesday whoever eventually figures out who she is i hope do you think they'll ever figure it out no i don't think and i think it's a huge advantage that nobody knows and i hope i hope that money never moves no it's not gonna move um i don't think it'll move uh i hope it's one of two people it'd be really cool if it was hal finney i think that'd be pretty uh pretty special took it to his grave or the second thing is i hope it's like uh that's why

the dorian nakamoto story was so amazing it was like just some like random dude answered this door we're like huh hey take pictures of that man huh bitcoin right um so i think that that's the whole thing is uh yeah i just hope it's like some unassuming person or whatever it'd be such a letdown if it was like the government well i mean you said that not me but like if it was just you know like one of the theories that people have it'd be so much better if it was just like a random person yeah who was like i saved the financial system yeah i just happened to possibly understand proof of work cryptography monetary policy why do you think that it's not how finney it could have been oh i don't know he received the first transaction uh he was pretty early

um he really understood a lot of technologies it could have been yeah but also um if it's kind of like an experiment it's a lot of steps to go through to like have a alter ego pseudonym that then you're interacting with like you don't even know if it's gonna work yeah that's true so i don't know and look we'll see kind of uh you know there's this movie um called god bless bitcoin that um brian nsds and off the chain team them all did good movie um it's like a documentary kind of uh but i think all the time like man god bless satoshi nakamoto and people will say like oh all the like people who bought bitcoin are like no no no like forget all that satoshi gave the world a solution

to probably the single most acute problem facing billions of people. And that solution does not discriminate by age, gender, religion, wealth, education, geography, language, any of that stuff. It simply just says, you can plug your economic value into this system and we got you.

And it's one of the most egalitarian. she didn't think i knew that word either egalitarian systems in the world which is like we all work together it's decentralized no one's in control very cool you work for bitcoin i work for bitcoin everyone watching and listening this they work for bitcoin too and we all get to work together we never even coordinated we simply all just had our own personal economic incentive to get to work that's it for today guys hope you guys enjoy this talk to you next time Thank you for watching.