The Pomp Podcast - #254: Ben Askren on the Evolution of MMA and Wrestling

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

Ben Askren is a retired professional mixed martial artist and former Olympic wrestler. In this conversation, Ben and Anthony discuss his views on Bitcoin, involvement in the NCAA and Olympic wrestling communities, challenges facing small businesses due to the COVID-19 outbreak, transitioning from wrestling to MMA, Jon Jones' arrest, and his take on rising stars in the UFC. =============================== CRYPTO.COM-----The only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. Download and earn $50 USD using my code ‘pomp2020’, or use the link http://platinum.crypto.com/r/pomp2020 when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. TAXBIT-----Refund-maximizing, cryptocurrency tax software you can depend on. Visit taxbit.com/invite/pomp and receive 10% off your tax plan today by signing up for a free trial. LEDGER----- Ledger hardware wallets empower you to optimally secure, own and control your crypto. Visit ledger.com and give yourself peace of mind by knowing that your cryptocurrencies are safe.

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Ben Askren is a retired MMA fighter and former Olympic wrestler. He's also the co-founder of Askren Wrestling Academy and a cryptocurrency enthusiast. I really enjoyed this conversation with Ben, just like every other one I've had, and I hope you guys enjoy it. Today's sponsors include Crypto.com, the all-in-one platform that allows you to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, and invest crypto all from one place. You can join over 1 million users on their mobile app for Crypto.com. If you download it today, you can earn $50 with my code POMP2020. They've also got

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going to taxbit.com slash invite slash pomp. Again, taxbit.com slash invite slash pomp. Taxbit.com slash invite slash pomp. Go check them out and get your damn taxes paid. All right. Our third sponsor is Ledger. They're awesome. They've got tons of custody solutions for your crypto. And I'm going to play an ad that they pre-recorded now, and then we'll get into the episode with Ben. Digital assets custody can be quite difficult to secure and hard to scale. Firms are often left with a difficult decision, having to choose between security or liquidity. At Ledger, we're obsessed that our clients' businesses succeed. That is why we decided to create a digital asset platform that would enable financial institutions and crypto firms

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strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. what's up guys bang bang i've got ben here what's going on man uh i'm doing pretty well obviously i've been quarantined i quarantined myself two fridays ago uh i've been in my mom's house and i go i got 11 acres so i go outside and i use my chainsaw cut my disc golf course in quite a bit and uh i've actually been listening to uh quite a few of your podcasts that keeps me busy trying to read books trying to get smarter it is hard with three young kids at home but doing my best awesome what uh why'd you quarantine yourself two Fridays ago did you feel sick no not at all I just felt it coming you know all the schools

here Wisconsin said this is our last day that was what Friday but it's today Friday March 13th all the schools Wisconsin said you know we're done for a while the colleges did so my brother and I decided, Hey, we should probably just close our academies and follow suit with the schools. There's no reason to try to stick out, you know, especially when, you know, I'm not an epidemiologist. I don't know how this is going to turn out. So I don't want to stick my neck out there and say, no, everything's fine. We're good. Like I don't have to know. Um, so yeah, I said, Hey, listen, I'm not gonna run my businesses. I might as well just stay at home and be, be extra safe. And then, you know, but by early the next week, man, everyone else was kind of

doing the same i was getting actually getting really annoyed that weekend that was march 14 15 because everyone was going out and partying and stuff and even though there's their offices were closed and school was closed like you idiots like this is the last thing you need to do just sit at home and read an effing book or something i love the kids that went to spring break they're like hey man listen spring break comes once a year we're going seriously they really were i mean for what it's worth at spring break it's all college age kids so you know the the that that group is very low risk for uh the covid so i guess as long as they don't see their grandparents they're all good yeah what um what's it like running the businesses right so you guys have

the wrestling academies and stuff what's it like ben uh that you got to shut down and how are you handling that well um lucky that friday we looked at our bank account it looked really nice So we said, you know, hey, we can afford a couple months of shutdown and and still pay our rent and pay our employees. But we've already had. So unfortunately, last month we bought a new we bought an existing wrestling academy to add to make it our fifth wrestling academy. And we also bought a building for another came that we were starting. So those are kind of not ideal time purchases, seeing as we shut down like two weeks later. But Bank of the West, they already reached out and they said they're going to do a 90 month deferment on our mortgages. mortgages so that that you know obviously makes things easier so we're just we're lucky we're in

a really good spot where you know we're not cash strapped where i i mean you know those unemployment numbers are crazy and you got to imagine that you know if this lasts we were i'd say we're kind of like two weeks ish into the nationwide quarantine maybe a little less than that dude i feel like if this lasts another month from now man there's gonna be a lot of people going bankrupt and so i you know i don't feel like our government's done a lot for the small businesses a 1200 checking and keep people out of bankruptcy so there i think there has to be some type of nationwide deferment on rent payments and then i also feel i call my wife this morning i feel like so it's 16 days from now so two two sundays past this one i feel like if their

business aren't reopening or in some way shape or form and maybe there are safety measures that people are start getting really really really antsy oh yeah i mean look part of this whole thing is uh if you're a small business um you know you've got maybe i don't know two three maybe four weeks of cash uh those unemployment numbers were people who saw the writing on the wall immediately and uh fired employees but how many businesses have held on to employees and said hey you know it's going to be a week two weeks three weeks but as they start to run out of cash they're going to get rid of employees as well right and so you're going to see those unemployment numbers stay pretty high i think if uh if this thing doesn't turn around but it's the balance between

the health crisis and the economic crisis i don't know if there's a right solution yeah i i agree it's between it's between a rock and a hard place and i i've been following this pretty close since it was in china and i i don't think their numbers are accurate i think that's probably highly highly unlikely at this point um although i don't know for sure and it just feels like um it's not nearly as deadly as was initially thought because they weren't testing everyone and stuff like that um it also feels it feels like there's a possible medication kind of on the horizon here you know there's that chloroquine shit looks like it's kind of having some positive results in some places that testing so hopefully we are getting a handle on this you know when you

put the brainpower of the world behind it uh problems can tend to be solved for sure what um what's the general census do you think in uh in kind of um the non-coastal elite areas right so you're in where wisconsin what are most people thinking are they quarantining themselves you know they're taking it seriously or or are they just like this is full of shit uh that's how they were initially and now you know i said everyone you know that weekend where they said all the schools are closed and everything else everyone went on party and i'm like golly what are you people doing and um now now i think there's been a shutdown non-essential businesses And so I think people are taking it seriously. People are worried, but I can go check.

But I believe the stats that world. Have you checked out that world? The meters website? I saw it once. I haven't looked at it recently, though. Yeah, it's fantastic. It gives a breakdown by by state by state, which, you know, New York and New Jersey are significantly over half of the total coronavirus cases. So Wisconsin still at 700 total cases in the whole state and 10 deaths. So, you know, when you're seeing those numbers, obviously there might be an uptick in the future, but that's still like a really, really tiny amount. Yeah, my father is in his early 60s and I called him and I basically was like, hey, man, you know, without freaking you out, can you just, you know, make sure you're washing your hands, stay inside, you know, maybe take some vitamin C, boost your immune system, like all the kind of normal stuff. And he literally said to me, he goes, I take a multivitamin, I'll be fine. Oh, man. Well, that generation, I feel like people were trying to shit on the millennials. I feel like that boomer generation is like, ah, whatever. I'm going to go out and eat. I'm going to go out and do whatever I want. F this thing.

yes i think it's pretty interesting and also the other piece of it is uh the gun sales like that that's the thing that surprised me the most when you layer in the health and the economic crisis gun sales have exploded across the country um and i don't know how much of that is like people actually are uh fearful versus just that's their natural response um but but that's usually not a good sign when it comes to kind of um social unrest and things like that right yeah well i i I think I think it's a fear response. You put that article out on the liquidity crisis, which I thought was really good. But I think it's definitely a fear response. I don't own a gun. I didn't go but didn't go buy a gun. Someone probably should have taken John Jones gun away. And so I don't see it getting that bad.

I mean, you never know. I guess we'll find out. Obviously, the conspiracy theorists out there are saying, you know, they're going to roll out the National Guard and do martial law and take all of our civil liberties away. i don't foresee that happening but yeah i guess you never know yeah let's talk about john jones uh he just got a dui uh with a gun charge all this stuff but my understanding is that he was actually sitting in the car asleep right he wasn't actually driving i don't think he was driving at the time but it sounded like he was sitting i don't think he was sleeping because they said they said the reason that the officers responded was because there was a gunshot which is apparently his gun because there was like i i apparently an empty casing or something found so i don't

know if he just shot in the air but the the part that was the most crazy to me is he said something like he was intending to drive again later like why would you tell them that like just make up just some kind of lie you know he said i was driving and i'm intending on driving more later and it's like oh for god's sakes just tell them like uh you know you came in here just to listen to the radio or i don't know make up some type of lie where you know your vehicle's not actually moving so you could probably if you weren't idiot you could probably argue that one away in court somehow i'm guessing i don't know yeah the uh i think it was you that just said hey why don't you just hire your buddy right and just be your driver for you for like 50k a year and just stay

out of trouble i said that the last two times i mean this is this is his third dui this is not this is not time number one this is time number three it's like and you know he obviously has other people with the best interest in him whether it's his coach his manager people who sponsor him Dana White the UFC president

you know if you can roll John Jones out three times a year it's gonna be a lot better today if you can't for a year and a half which dude I mean three DUIs I think that I'm pretty sure it's mandatory jail time in most states plus the add-on the fact that he had a loaded weapon and it was fired

um and he had weed and if they made him do a drug test he probably had more than that i'm guessing so uh yeah i mean how how they haven't found it i actually just did a live stream on this the other day i have this theory you want to hear my theory pump you definitely want to hear it okay i i have this theory and i i'm in the process of putting it all together actually you know who kind of inspired me i started i talked to a couple times with uh i listened to him on your show and i somehow connected with him on twitter was sam parr oh yeah yeah he's great him on the hustle maybe maybe yeah maybe two or three weeks ago you had him on and and then i listened to that and then somehow we connected through twitter and yeah we got on a

call he kind of like i've had this idea bouncing around my head for a while and he kind of pushed pushed me a little further into it but the idea is that success is a skill and you have all these mental characteristics that are necessary to be to be successful in something that being said different things take different sets right and the more of these so i have like five different categories the more these sets you can put together the better off you mean so for example being an athlete especially being a cage fighter something where there's a high level risk you need to be really low anxiety for example right this is what i was one trait of the many traits right but if you're all worried oh my god this guy could kick me or he could punch me he

could choke me oh my god there's 20 000 people watching me oh my god i could get knocked out right there's all these things you were if you're high anxiety you're probably not gonna have a high level of success so john jones is really arrogant low anxiety those type of things are great attributes to have in mixed martial arts and you know that i can't get in trouble no one can hurt me type of mentality great it's great that's great you want to there and so then i you know the argument i'm making is like well number one you should you should work on your weakness but And number two, especially if you're Jon Jones and you know you have these weaknesses. And I use a simple one for myself.

Listen, bro, if there's ice cream and cake and cookies around, I'm going to eat it. So when I'm dieting for a fight, my wife is not allowed to buy it. We do not have it in the household because I will eat it. I know I'm weak like that. So it's like, Jon Jones, you know you like to drink and you know you like to drive. Put some roadblocks in your way before. Because when it's 3 a.m. in the club and you're drunk and the car's out there, you're going to go drive. you're, you know, yourself, you know, you're going to do that. You don't hire yourself a driver,

have a couple of friends around that are really responsible and put roadblocks in your way. So you can't make these dumb ass decisions over and over and over again, which are in fact ruining your life. Yeah. It's pretty crazy because, uh, I think everyone knows kind of what their weaknesses are. Some people want to admit it. Some people don't, but if you are willing to admit it to yourself, then you can put those roadblocks in place and kind of prevent the issues from resurfacing over and over again yeah yeah i mean that's that's a huge one so yeah my my i need to put this in a i have a couple different like psychology theories that i don't believe have been written about too much and this is one of them and so you know

like another example would be um well you're going to be a husband soon right you got you got engaged in you yes i did not married right okay so like as a husband and then eventually if you're going to be a father you know for example empathy is like a gigantic quality to be able to have but as an athlete dude the more empathetic you are the it's going to be it's going to negatively affect your career so there's these certain qualities that are like okay if you're going to be a good husband and father this set of qualities is really really really really important if you're going to be an athlete this is really important if you're a businessman this is important if you're an entrepreneur right because entrepreneurs are different than employees

so employees are going to need a different skill set than an entrepreneur is and so the idea is that you know you got to mix and match your your mental qualities and then you know eventually um i think most people would probably like to be diverse enough to have success in multiple areas Like, you know, I got to assume even the guys making billions of dollars, but have just terrible personal lives. I can't say this for sure, but man, part of that, part of them, part of them has to be like miserable because they can't keep a good relationship. They they're distant from their kids, right.

Or whatever, because they have, they probably have these really great qualities that, that allowed them to make a billion dollars. And those also probably sabotage them in their personal life. So understanding when to use what quality where. yeah i think it's super uh super important i actually just saw it resurfaced a while ago somebody asked on uh quora what separated you know the elon musk's the jeff bezos etc from other business leaders and elon musk's ex-wife went on and answered and she basically was like it's obsession like you literally have to be obsessed with being great at what you're doing

and solving the problem and thinking about it 24 7 that also makes you horrible at other aspects of your life yeah yeah and that's where it's like for me i mean i guess that would probably be my my number one issue and i try to do a good job of it uh but but being aware that that it is your personality type and then that can be a problem and i always joke with my wife um not always joking because sometimes she gets annoyed with me but like when i was a high school kid or college kid i was obsessed with being good at wrestling and the fact that i didn't want to really go out and party and i was just worried about being good like everyone saw this that's freaking awesome like and you know you get a pat on the back for it then if you're 35 and you know you just want

to be obsessive about your work and your wife wants to go socialize with whoever or you know people see you as being like weird like why can't that guy go social mother effer i just want to be good at what i want to do but at some point that becomes unacceptable do you see what i'm saying it's weird it's all it's all priorities right i always tell uh people that some of my favorite advice is like you hear these you know somewhat dumb simple statements like you know the five people you hang out with the most is who you become show me your circle and i'll show you kind of uh how successful you will be all these things but it's true right it really is true yeah and i think that uh the other thing is you're getting judged by people who don't understand

that right the people who think it's a negative thing they don't understand kind of the benefits of it the people who do understand it they're like oh well duh of course you're going to want to focus on what you're doing and be obsessive about it etc yeah well so yeah i mean but so i do i see i definitely see my wife's point and i i think there's a balance to it so it's like you know especially with especially my kids you know i can't imagine not giving them attention so they're like you know i set aside points in time to give my kids lots of attention and then you know other people maybe maybe not nearly as much as i should or whatever but uh you know i try to do my best what's going on with the olympic wrestling i know that you uh obviously have a

storied career there and uh it looks like the olympics recently got postponed what are you hearing yeah postponed by a year i was really annoyed when they first said it because it was like uh it was what a week i think it was last sunday last sunday they said hey give us a month to see how this shakes out and i thought hey that sounds reasonable and then on monday canada and australia say we're out and then they said they canceled it by that night so it's like within 24 hours um all that happened and it's it's almost so wild how everything is going to happen actually i recorded my funky crypto podcast on tuesday and you know we actually put it in put out till thursday and we actually had usually been waiting tuesday and then putting out the following monday

that's six days and i'm like i don't really like that because so much can happen over the course of six days and then sure tuesday afternoon we record tuesday night they dropped six trillion dollars and it's like well that would have been relevant to talk about the thing to me that's so interesting about what's happening right now is exactly what you're talking about on the olympics people are saying the prudent thing to do and the non-emotional thing is let's wait a month and then we'll make a decision but then all of a sudden they're starting to get this pressure and it's like social pressure and then everyone gets really emotional and next you know band is canceled you're like wait a minute 24 hours ago you guys were singing a

different tune but that's not just happening with the olympics it's happening in uh finance and in the economy uh with businesses with the health response etc and i think people just got to kind of calm down and breathe a little bit before they make dumb decisions yeah i agree i mean just just be patient and it's like it's crazy because stuff changes so fast it's like every single week you're gonna know so much more about what's happening i mean if you think about where we're at last last sunday or friday i mean and and where we're at today and then think about where we're gonna be next friday i believe it's uh they're they're way different places um and i think it's that uh it's a little bit of that kind of woke culture where everyone's trying to be more

woke than the next person i feel like that's kind of the way that this is played out yeah and here's the sad part right it's like you almost have i take the uh coronavirus stuff take um like all the epidemiologists and the data analysis you get people who say hey we think 500 000 people are going to die in europe and 2.2 million in america and like basically the world's ending and then all of a sudden they come back and they retract it all and they're like well we actually think it's like 10 or less of what we originally thought so you get like that where people then get pissed off and they're like dude what the hell happened to your analysis but then you see a picture of a nurse with like a trash bag on or you know inside the hospital and you're like look this is real

right it's super dangerous but also what the hell's going on with this data analysis yeah i agree too and i think i think the thing to remember about that is um But, man, you know what? I have all these – I know these theories. I just forget the names of them. Do you remember the name of the theory that if you – say you're an expert. Well, you're an expert in Bitcoin, right? Say on the front page of the newspaper, you read an article on Bitcoin, and you're like, okay, that's bullshit.

But then you flip the page, and by the next page, you forgot that these people writing these articles aren't actually really experts, and you trust whatever they're saying on page two. Do you know what the name of the theory is? i i don't but it's definitely a valid theory because that's exactly what happens in the mainstream media okay well so that that is valid like that happens and so it's like um with with something like this it's something that's never ever happened before and so it's like okay you would say i'm an expert at mixed martial arts and then to you would say well i trust you to tell me how tony ferguson versus khabib is going to play out and you know what i'm gonna probably be able to give you a better guess than most people because i'm a pretty i'm

an expert but you know what it's also never happened before and if i'm totally wrong that could happen that's a possibility so i think i think the same way about these experts it's like they're going in there shooting in the dark they've never been through this before they can guess but they don't really know and so that's again when people take fire uh for sure action on stuff that is not proven not known you know people making their best guess that it can be dangerous for sure i um i keep going back to uh all of these people have opinions and they have their kind of expert analysis but whether they're right or wrong there's very little skin in the game right there's very little kind of negative uh impact if they're wrong but you and i are

sitting at home quarantine and so we're being negatively impacted whether they're right or wrong and so the the incentives are just really off yeah you know the one i like to think about on that one the people on tv have no skin in the game um is i've watched this really really interesting interview i can't remember who it was but they said you know insurance companies are some of the richest companies in the world do you really think do you really think they would insure all of these beachfront condos and apartments and properties if they thought they're going to be underwater in 20 years? No, they wouldn't. The people who actually have skin in the game aren't really worried about the sea level rising five feet or whatever. It's all the

other people. If the insurance companies really thought that was a possibility, they wouldn't insure any of these places. I'm like, oh, yeah, because they have billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars invested in this. It's so true. What have you been doing while on quarantine just playing with your kids and reading and stuff or you've been doing other stuff uh podcasting so i do the uh flow radio one i do one for rudis i do the funky crypto podcast and i i do funky and frb with brian which is our mma podcast um so i've been doing those done a few other interviews reading uh i said building my disc golf course and playing with my kids and yeah that's about it unfortunately even with our businesses there's like not any work to do because

literally nothing's going on we don't know when things are going to start back up so it's not like we can plan for it's not like okay april 13th we're going again we don't we don't know so it's not like we can plan for things in the future so yeah that's that's about the extent of it it feels kind of like groundhog day a little bit where you just keep waking up and doing some of the same stuff over and over again uh you you know you gotta do uh so i got two guys who've been helping me with all the audio stuff uh ryan and joe ryan's birthday was like five days ago and so every day i when we get on the phone i tell him happy birthday because it's basically groundhog day so you you gotta tell him happy birthday at some point

that that is funny yeah it does feel like groundhog's day a lot i mean it is like the same thing over and over and over at least i have my podcast to keep me on schedule because you know the flow one's every tuesday wednesday thursday so i got to get up and get going for that one um at least at least get my day started hey let's talk about bitcoin because you're smarter than i am and i was uh you know etoro did this uh group chat yesterday type thing i can't remember exactly what they called it but it was really cool because i got to get on there and there's a few people on there who i like i always search bitcoin twitter you know and just i don't may not follow them but i pay attention to them and i got to you know kind of chat with some of the people who i

follow on Twitter. So that was really cool. And I got to hear a lot of good opinions. So obviously, I'd like to hear your opinion, because everyone has one on why the price is not rapidly rising at this point. Yeah, I mean, look, it's a liquidity crisis, right? Meaning that everyone wants dollars. And so every asset is going to get sold off, whether it's stocks, commodities, Bitcoin, whatever it is, and people want dollars. But as soon as that liquidity crisis ends, either because there's a flood of dollars that enter the market through intervention from the government, or people realize, wait a minute, I don't need as many dollars as I previously thought I can now go buy other assets, you'll see those prices stabilize and ultimately recover. And so

the beauty of all of this is if you understand how money works, you don't get shaken out when the liquidity crisis happens, right? If you can kind of weather the storm and hold your assets. uh but also if you've got cash kind of cash is king right and uh he who has the cash makes the rules in the liquidity crisis yeah yeah i bought a couple more bitcoin at 5000 when it dropped down there i thought i thought that was a good idea i thought that was a really really nice price and i never thought i could get some at that price that being said you know what as i search bitcoin twitter i feel maybe more nervousness than i've ever felt from that crowd and obviously when you when you search that you're going to get all kinds of responses all over the board you know you're

going to have 27 people saying the price is going to 30 000 tomorrow you have 27 people say price is going to 9 000 tomorrow you know it's like people are all over the board but there is um you know not everybody but there's a certain amount of people who are nervous because and i I believe you said this also, but it's like, this is the perfect storm for Bitcoin. So either it's going to make it or it's not. Either it's going to prove that it is the safe haven asset and it's better than the USD or it's not. And we're going to probably find that out within the next three to six months. Yeah. So I kind of believe some of that, but some of it I disagree with. And so the way I look at it is it's definitely the perfect storm, right? You've got a quantitative

easing, you get the Bitcoin halving, all this stuff. With that said, I don't think it'll happen in three to six months. I think it's more of like a 18 to 24 month timeframe. And I don't necessarily think that if Bitcoin doesn't materially increase in US dollar value in that timeframe, that Bitcoin's done, right? Like, I don't think that it'll go away. I don't think that it will be, you know, kind of not secure, etc. What I think is people will have to go back and revisit what the thesis for the asset is, right? Because that wouldn't serve this idea that having an inflation hedge asset, et cetera, proved to be true. I'm still in the camp where I believe that pretty strongly, voting with my dollars that way and converting them to Bitcoin, et cetera. But we'll

see what happens over the next two years, give or take. Yeah. The other thing that I find interesting that people aren't really that they don't ever bring up on bitcoin twitter a lot of people bring up that the u.s is going to print six trillion dollars um but no one brings up the fact that bitcoin is a it's a worldwide asset and the number that all of the central banks across the world is going to print is way way way way more than six trillion dollars i mean i don't want to say every central bank is going to start printing money, but a lot of them are. And so the number is going to be, I don't know, double that, triple that. So there's going to be all this extra money floating around that could find its way into Bitcoin. Yeah. There's this guy, Brent Johnson,

that I recently brought on the podcast. He runs something called Santiago Capital. And he's got this theory that he calls the dollar milkshake theory. And it's this whole idea of everyone around the world, the central banks are making a milkshake. What they're doing is they're injecting liquidity into the market. They're printing money, right? And they're injecting it into the market. But only one country gets to have the straw to drink the milkshake. And he says that's the United States with the US dollar because everyone wants dollars. So everyone's injecting liquidity in and the US is sucking that liquidity out by bringing it all into the dollar. And so the reason why he believes that is he thinks the dollar will get much stronger, etc. But if you kind of take

that example a little bit further, you get this idea of, look at the Australian dollar. The Australian dollar has fallen like 30%, 40%, 50% in the last couple of weeks against the US dollar. So all of a sudden, if you're in Australia, it's not so much that you want to just get out of the Australian dollar. You either want to get US dollars or get Bitcoin. Well, a lot of times, Bitcoin is going to be more accessible than getting US dollars. And so I think that you're right in that like on a global basis there will be more demand for the asset as you see those currencies being devalued yeah yeah that's it's serious i i've been saying a bunch lately that i wish i had uh i thought i was gonna be the college wrestling coach in missouri and then i started

doing mma and you know my path my path to my life is probably not the way i love it but it's not the way i envisioned it now i always wish i would have taken some economics classes and i'm you know i'm doing my best to read up and you know listen to a good podcast but it's like there's so many opinions on what the six trillion dollars is going to do some people are like oh my god they're idiots uh the fed's gonna end some people are saying oh they have to do it you know and it's it's interesting because which one of these opinions is the right opinion and there's probably not one true or correct answer based on what your perspective is but i wish i had a better grasp on that one. Yeah. And I also think that, you know, there's a big difference between

what else should the Fed do? Like kind of they have no choice but to do this to solve the short term problem versus is this a good long term decision? So I think a lot of people yell and scream about, you know, hey, I like what they're doing. I don't like what they're doing. And it's a very binary conversation. But instead, if you look at it as the money printing solves the short term problems but it also that same thing that's good today may not be good in the long run both of those things can be true right now and that's my personal view is kind of where we're we're headed um short term they have to do this but long term um it's going to be detrimental yeah well how do they you know just like how do they rein it back in is it because uh you know

this is like uh when you go back to the success thing if you want to be successful at something and you get off track and you're kind of not doing that well there is always a period of pain to bring yourself back to you know whether it's like you're a wrestler and you got to make a weight class and you get extra heavy well there's going to be a period of pain where you're getting back into it right or you you're an athlete and you get out of shape and then to get back in shape is going to be extra painful than if you would have just stayed in shape so the period of pain is going to come in some way shape or form what that looks like i'm not really sure but i know that has to happen yeah so there's a really good example here um which is a crack addict right and

what ends up happening with the crack addict is at one point they're sober then they try crack for the first time they get high they like it they try it again they get high again next time they go to get high they got to take a little bit more crack right and over time it spirals into them taking more and more of the drug to get the same high and eventually they're a crack addict right And if they take too much of it, they can actually overdose. Well, the economy is no different, right? There was a period of time where there was no stimulus. Then we introduced stimulus once.

It worked. We liked it. Then there was another chance to do it. We did it again. We liked it. And you keep kind of doing it over and over again, but the numbers get bigger and bigger in order to get the same impact. So during the 2008 crisis, we were talking in hundreds of billions.

Now we're talking in trillions, right? If it happens again, we'll be talking in tens of trillions, then hundreds of trillions, et cetera. And so I think that once you get started, you can't get off of it. The only thing you can really do is try to control it or be somewhat prudent about when do you use stimulus and how much of it do you use? But once an economy is addicted to stimulus, there's no going back. But doesn't that. But then how do you. So obviously, like you've seen, let's say Germany did the hyperinflation in the 1920s and they got back on track somehow.

now right and and i i'm not i don't know the history of the german republic obviously i know there was a world war ii in there so i don't know if that was part of it um not sure don't want to comment uh but they they obviously got back on track to where say in the 1990s their dollar their their form of currency was pretty strong um so there was a hyperinflation at some point in their history and i know that's also happened to other countries so isn't there there has to be you know you say there's no way to get back, but there has to be a way to get back to sound money principles in some way, shape, or form. Well, so what usually ends up happening is there's a currency failure and a reset of the economy. And if you really think about it without going into too much detail,

there's a lot of things around defaulting around debt, you know, having like a reset of everything. You can even create a new currency. I guess what Venezuela is trying to do, right, where they're actually trying to create like this digital currency, that's a new form of currency. So so there's things that people can try to do, but it's just in the form that you started you, that will eventually fail. Um, and, and look, it's not just economies, right? Like take like the UBI thing. So in the current stimulus package, they're talking about a one-time $1,200 check, you know, or less to, uh, to adults. If they had instead said, uh, we're going to give a thousand dollars a month to people for 12 months, let's say, right. I don't think that we

could go back to not doing that but people would just get addicted to receiving a thousand dollars a month from the government right and so then all of a sudden next thing you know we have ubi and they kind of like backdoored it in um through through this emergency time period so i think people just kind of it's always great to say we're going to do something temporarily but normally we don't go back and this is how we got off the gold standard right is in 1971 we were going to temporarily get off the gold standard and we just never went back well isn't that uh personal income taxes also wasn't initially the what was the victory tax with world war one or world war two there was no personal income tax and then hey that that was nice let's keep doing that and then they

just kept it well now what people are saying is why do we pay taxes if they can just print as much money as they need right why do they need your money seriously seriously right let's keep on printing that shit absolutely so what um in terms of like uh the folks that you talk to on a daily basis i feel like a lot of folks are in you know sports wrestling uh mna mma etc like what are they talking about when it comes to the economy are they worried you know do they understand what's going on or is it kind of just hey i'm focused on myself individually and just gonna get through this um well i'm i'm not talking to very many people because i'm stuck in my freaking house uh but that being said i thought that you know peter peter shift brought up i can't remember

how he said it but he said essentially there's no more interest in in bitcoin there's no one new to come in which obviously i think is wrong um and so two two points that number one i thought it would be very interesting it would be very easy to go um ask exchanges well are you seeing more people sign up or more people google you or something like that right um and so i actually asked that question with etoro yesterday some of the you know some of the top people on there were and they said yeah we are absolutely seeing it we're not necessarily seeing a surge in buying from new people but we're doing searches and signups there's a lot of people doing that type of thing and then i don't remember who the guy was but he said on that day where bitcoin crash

where the whole economy crashed and bitcoin crashed he said the amount of bitcoin mentions was 4x the highest day in history on Bitcoin mentions on Twitter. And then what I'm seeing personally is that I've had more people ask me about Bitcoin in the last two weeks than ever, ever, ever, ever since I started talking about it in 2017. Yeah, I think people are starting to realize, right? Because here's the playbook. And this is the part that gets really scary for folks is when they do this quantitative easing, the people who get hurt the most are the bottom 50% of Americans who live paycheck to

paycheck and don't have any real assets, right? Because their dollars get devalued. And so I think it's going to be an education opportunity for a lot of people as to how they can protect their wealth from inflation and quantitative easing. So it shouldn't surprise us to see people already asking. And I bet you that those inquiries go up more over time. yeah i would guess and that's i think if there's uh especially if there's some type of breakout in price over the next say two weeks because i know well let me just check i think the dow is down again today um but it obviously had been up and i don't know why these idiots get so excited about oh my god it's the largest three-day gain in history well yeah dumb dumbs because it went

down the largest the largest two-week loss in the history right i mean obviously that's why it's up a little bit. I think there's going to be a huge amount more volatility, especially when you consider what the volatility of the Dow is usually like. I don't think we're done going down. At that point, when it stabilizes, that's when I think people are going to feel more comfortable moving their money elsewhere. Yeah. Did you see the chart? There's this guy, Tavi Costa. He shared a chart from the Great Depression. And in the chart in October of 1929, the S&P 500 plunged 34% in a month. And then over two days, it had this relief rally of 18%. And then it plunged another 26% over the next two weeks. And so it's kind of very similar. It's eerie how similar it is

to what's happening right now, where you go down a bunch over a month, get two or three days up, and then all of a sudden, it's likely you're going to go back down pretty substantially. And it just shakes people out, right? You just get people shaking out of their positions uh who were buying in over the last two or three days thinking that this thing was over yeah yeah i mean that's yeah i and obviously there's been a whole bunch of ups and downs over the last week and i again i'm not an economist so i can't can't say for sure but you know with the unemployment numbers going out when my wife and i went and walked our dog yesterday with our kids and it was like there's no stores open this is this is effing creepy it's

like they're probably not going to open for a while the the numbers on the money they're making the numbers on uh employment dude it's it's gonna get worse it absolutely is and so the the fact that you're seeing that you're seeing literally the entire economy shut down as i drive around but yet the stocks are going up like how the f does this work out like this this doesn't feel it doesn't feel right in any way shape or form yeah it's like the the fundamentals are getting worse but there's price recovery which means that there's even more dislocation and when you get the dislocation between price and fundamentals it means there's farther to fall right because basically that you know 13 or 10 or whatever has been up the last couple of days it's just

going to get taken back away what do your kids think right now like with the quarantine do they understand what's going on uh you know they we've told about you know people are sick and that's why we can't can't go around other people and so they get that part of it but i don't think They understand the scale or the scope and, um, you know, they're kids, they don't really get it. So they're, they're enjoying themselves for the most part. Yeah. They probably just enjoy not having to go to school. My daughter, my first grader, she's the one that really, she loves school.

Actually. She's like really sad. She can't go. She loves it. It's funny. She is, uh, one of the few, I guess. Right. yeah yeah absolutely that's for sure got it so what um what are you excited about once we get out of the quarantine stuff anything that you guys have on the horizon it sounds like you've got some more of the academies coming online uh but anything else going on yeah i mean we were so we in heartland here our first academy we're in our ninth year uh max and mekwan is in his seventh year and it's like we're still seeing this crazy amount of growth so we got after the high school season was over we got that one week of our kids before the quarantine thing hit and

it was like dude we see so many new faces people are getting excited about it so our businesses uh and you know wrestling is what i love we're going to new levels and we're really excited about that and so the fact that we had to shut it down was like was really really depressing so i'm excited for that obviously i'm excited for some type or form of stability to happen i'm excited to see when all these things are going to get rescheduled because we you know we had so many things that have been canceled um and so it's like there's it's just we're in this crazy time right now where we don't know when this is going to end we don't have any answers we don't know when anything's gonna get rescheduled or anything like that so it's just uh i think i like other

people are excited for some stability to come back into our lives yeah where's the interest from wrestling coming is it a lot of young kids who watch like ufc and they want to get into it or they actually see the wrestling and want to do uh wrestling not so much ufc in the future um yeah i don't see the ufc thing a lot i you know i think we are just doing a great job of marketing and we're giving kids great experiences and that's why our academy specifically are growing but if you look at like even let's say the numbers of big 10 viewers uh btn it was up like 40 from the highest ever and so i think that's flow you know directly attributing to flow wrestling and other businesses who are you know putting media around wrestling um when i was

a kid or even even when i was in college a decade ago uh you couldn't really watch live wrestling anywhere and now with all the live streaming solutions you're able to watch pretty much anything that you want to watch and so it enables people to actually be fans you know when you you or i were kids i think you're a couple years younger than me it's like we couldn't watch something that was not football basketball or baseball like we were fans that because because really literally because we had to be because it was the only thing on tv and now you can watch whatever the hell you want to watch streaming pretty much anytime you want to watch it and that's uh that really enables people to be fans i think that's what's happening in wrestling

yeah i remember the first couple of times espn showed like non-major for sports and people would be like wait what was that right where did that come from and it was whether it was but uh but they started to incorporate some of the other stuff and then even like the little league world series right when they started to kind of same sport but just get outside of professional and college levels i think people paid attention and now you know what's crazy is uh i saw that uh i think this past year uh lebron james and duane wade sons uh they play at sierra canyon uh high school they had more nationally televised games than golden state warriors no that can't be right can it or was it nationally smaller network or something

wow it's not on espn well but think about it right everyone on the world was heard right they had like kind of a down year yeah you gotta remember social media right i mean those kids probably have more followers on social media than some of the nba players sure yeah it's true it's true yeah you're right damn it's wild again i'm assuming a lot of the young kids in wrestling right and going into college etc they start to kind of build those social audiences and that drives the uh yeah the attention for the sport you know as well yeah yeah you're right i mean yeah you're totally right that's one of the arguments i made a while back with with the ufc is that um the ufc is a brand they have a baseline because people

like fighting but it's pretty damn low and stars are what drive events people love engaging with people and if you don't have those stars you're not going to drive numbers and that's just and i think that's been shown whether it was tiger woods in in golf right he drove huge numbers um or other people you know basketball you know you see all the time so star stars drive viewers and yeah i mean that's a good point about those guys and yes yes that is 100 happening wrestling i can say that without a shadow of a doubt who do you think the big upcoming stars in ufc and wrestling are that you're excited about maybe somebody that like

others don't even realize are going to be big stars oh my goodness that is uh that's a tough question well there's a couple wrestlers that are going to make their transition to mixed martial arts this coming year uh Bo Nickel and Anthony Kassar they're the only ones who have publicly stated that that is their goal I think they're both going to be really really good at what they do and you know um I think we'll see even more in the future where people uh in wrestling are are going to go early and earlier towards giving their intentions to do mixed martial arts as they as they get uh out of college and out of wrestling yeah how hard is it as a uh as an athlete to go from you know pure

wrestling kind of olympic style and collegiate etc to the actual mixed martial arts where they're striking and kind of the stand-up game etc is it really that hard no it's easy it's freaking easy uh most people who like wrestling are very combative they don't mind uh you know getting hit or getting struck and sometimes when you shoot in wrestling and you hit either a knee or a hip when you're uh taking a penetration uh man that's that's that's worse than anything that is like you catch a hip right to that like eye right there it was terrible and so you know i i think people um yeah people going from wrestling to mixed martial arts you you very very rarely see a guy who's a high level wrestler who does not have success in mixed martial arts it's almost unheard of

love got it all right well i appreciate you jumping on now what um where can people find you online so that they can uh they can they can track you down and uh and get in touch with you if they want yeah i'm just at ben askren on facebook twitter and instagram although i really like twitter i don't like instagram so much i use it a little bit i don't use it a lot bit um and yeah I got a bunch of podcasts and so you'll see me posting those on my social media. So you can find me there and I appreciate you having me on. I'm excited to see, you know, what happens with Bitcoin in the next month, two months, three months.

I think it's going to be fascinating to watch. Obviously we have the halving in 40, roughly 47 days. Yeah. So it's going to be fascinating to watch and see, see the future unfold right in front of our eyes. Long Ben, long Bitcoin and long the academies, my friend. we'll do it again soon. I appreciate it. You got it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Hey, everyone. Pop here. If you like this episode of Off The Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate,

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