The Pomp Podcast - 352: Congressman Tom Emmer on Bitcoin and Decentralization

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

Congressman Tom Emmer has served the people of Minnesota as their elected official in the US House of Representatives since 2015. He also currently sits on the House Financial Services Committee and is one of the leading voices for blockchain technology in the US government. In this conversation, we discuss wealth vs debt, sound money, the Federal Reserve, issues with centralization, the current economic situation, a digital dollar, the stimulus bills, technology trends, and Bitcoin. =============================== Our second sponsor is Choice, a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 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://www.pompletter.com

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Congressman Tom Emmer has served the people of Minnesota as their elected official in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2015. He also currently sits on the House Financial Services Committee and is one of the leading voices for blockchain technology in the U.S. government. In this conversation, we discuss wealth versus debt, sound money, the Federal Reserve, issues with centralization, the current economic situation, a digital dollar, the stimulus bills, technology trends, and Bitcoin. I really enjoyed this conversation with the Congressman, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors.

The first is BlockFi. BlockFi is an awesome company that I'm not only proud to be an investor, but also a user. They've got three products. The first is you can buy and sell crypto on their crypto exchange. You can deposit crypto and take out a US dollar loan against your collateral. Or you can use my favorite product, which is depositing crypto or stablecoin and earning up to 8.6% APY in an interest-bearing account. Go check out BlockFi.com to learn more. Again, the 8.6% APY on an interest-bearing account is an incredible product, in my opinion.

There's risk, so do your own research, but go check out BlockFi. BlockFi.com slash Pomp. Our next sponsor is Choice. Choice is a new self-directed IRA product. And if you're listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million Bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not Bitcoin. I used to be in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax advantage dollars to do it too.

That's right. You can set up a new self-directed IRA account with Choice that allows you to buy Bitcoin, hold your private keys, and use tax advantage dollars to do it too. It's an absolute game changer. RetireWithChoice.com slash POM. Again, retirewithchoice.com. You can now put Bitcoin in your IRA and hold on to the private keys. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while

sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, Pompletter.com. All right, let's get into the episode with the congressman. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a

particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Congressman Emmer here. Thank you so much for doing this. Hey, Pop.

Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So for like the five people watching who don't know who you are, give us kind of a quick two minutes, what you did before you got into politics and then kind of what you do today. So I was, well, what did I do? I played hockey through college. I was going to head to Europe, wanted to play in Europe. and met the girl when I got back to Minnesota before I made the next step, met the girl that

I knew that night I was going to marry her. It took her a little while longer, but I knew we just celebrated our 34th anniversary last weekend. We have seven kids, six boys and a daughter. I was doing this thing, pop raising them like we do. You know, we moved to a small town about 40 miles west of downtown Minneapolis. I got an 80 acre farm behind me. You know, we're on an acre lot. The kids can bike, they can go to the local meat market. I mean, it was great growing up and I was doing what, what a lot of Americans do, right? Coaching all their sports, being involved in all this stuff. And then something happened back in 2004, where I'm sitting on the front sidewalk, my wife and I, after church had left those guys to do their

chores on a Sunday morning, drove to a neighboring town, grabbed a cup of coffee and we're reading the Sunday paper. I said, look at this, look at this, the guy who's our state rep, he's, he's not going to run again. Surprise, surprise. I mean, it might have something to do with carrying that loaded gun through the airport, but that's neither here nor there. What happened at that point is my wife looked at me and said, you should do that. And I laughed. I said, you gotta be kidding me. Why would, I mean, we got seven kids, peak earning years. Why would I ever run for the state legislature? My wife is a beauty. She says, hey, aren't you the one that says you shouldn't complain if you're not going to do anything about it. So I ran for the state house back in 2004

in Minnesota. I'm a Minnesota kid. My wife's a Minnesota kid. The only thing that's unique is I'm a graduate of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I lived in the woods in a cabin with no running water, outdoor plumbing, and wood heat, which some of my old teammates tell me prepared me for Congress. But anyway, fast forward. I ended up running for this seat in 2004, was elected in 2014, elected in 2015. And it's been a unique experience. I wanted to be part of the Financial Services Committee because I believe our monetary system, our opportunity, our financial system, at least in the past, has been what separates the United States of America from every other country on the face of the planet. It is the definition of our freedom.

This is the only country where you and I, at least we used to be able to, it's getting worse because these do-gooders with election certificates keep rushing in to save us all from ourselves, and they cause more trouble than they do solve problems. But this has been the only country where a dumb schlub like me can come up with a great idea and go sit down with a local banker. it used to be. Now we've got all kinds of options, one of which I don't want to see government screw up, and that's the crypto area. But we can sit down with somebody that wants to join us in taking a risk. They want to help us by providing necessary capital that allows us to open the next great Harley Davidson in our garage, the next great Medtronic in our garage, Walt Disney. I mean, every one of these companies that started with an idea in the garage, that's what makes this country, frankly different from every other country in the face of the planet. And it's funny,

I'm going to tell you as a side story, Pomp, that I got here, I get on the Financial Services Committee. One of the first things we got was a meeting over at the Federal Reserve with then Chair Yellen and Dr. Stanley Fisher, one of the board members, and Jay Powell, who was then one of the governors, whatever you call them, their titles. And I asked him what they were doing to create more opportunities in the financial services industry. And back then, Pomp, I was talking specifically about bank charters, right? Which, by the way, I think the action by Brian Brooks last week could be very good when we talk about banks, but we can get to that in a minute. I said to him, you guys have been suffocating the lower end of the financial services spectrum.

Dr. Stanley Fisher, God bless him, I don't really know him. But he told me his response was, well, you know, it's it's because they can't keep up the smaller banks can't keep up with the with the computer technology. And I said to him, hey, man, why don't you come to Minnesota, and we'll go up to Halleck, where I think they're still using the old-fashioned ledger, and they're keeping track of everybody the old-fashioned way. No, you guys got to get out of the way. You get so involved. And here's what scared me. The meeting ended, you know, and we're kind of socializing around the table. This was an amazing room. Talk about the star chamber the Federal Reserve is.

I mean, I'd heard stories. I had to see it myself. This is the room that I'm told where the Joint Chiefs of Staff would literally meet during World War II. So we're standing, having side conversations. Dr. Fisher comes over to me, and he says, I don't know what you're so worried about. He says, this is exactly the way they do it in Germany, and it works just fine. And I said, that is what's scaring me, okay? I you the idea and when we get into what you want to talk about, which is this exciting area, which, as I told you before you turn on the tape, I'm never going to claim to be the expert.

I'm never for me. It's kind of like doing this by the Braille method. You know, I got a great staffer here that's a Minnesotan who's been interested in this stuff since I came to Congress. And he made the mistake, or good fortune, of handing me a book called The Age of Cryptocurrency about, I don't know, four years ago, five years ago. And I read the book. I told him afterwards, I don't think he ever expected me to read it. I read it cover to cover. I went back to him and I said, you know the problem with this book? There are not pictures.

I'm in Congress and you didn't get me a book with pictures. But after joking around with him a little bit, it was like, I got to know more about this thing. I know the way I've been raised, Pop, I see things in one and two dimension. We were just talking about computers the other day. You know, I started in a law office where everything was in paper. And what separated you from other lawyers was you could find that one piece of paper in a banker's box or four, and you could find it in 20 seconds, right? Because that's the one, the guy in the stands lying about it. Let me ask you about this. Guess what? You guys, you've been raised totally different. You see the world in this abstract.

You're able to be out here. My kids do this, right? They see it in two and three dimension, and I fear perhaps even beyond that. I watch what you guys are capable of doing, and two things, and I'm excited to be doing this with you because as we go forward, people in this place called Congress have to start catching up or just get the hell out of the way, all right? Because if you're just going to frustrate things because you don't understand what's going on, or you're not willing to open your mind up to the possibility that the next great advance

is out there. And I'll stop there, Pomp. I'll let you drive it, because here, we're coming out of a crisis, and I do think we're coming out of it. For anybody listening, I think you're going to hear about a vaccine shortly. More importantly, I think you're going to hear about therapeutics, right? We're going to be able to treat people in certain demographics who right now, this virus is fatal to them. If we can treat them so that they can recover, that is good. I mean, not as great as a vaccine, but you're saving lives. And I think we're going to get there. But think about what we're going to get. We're coming out of this thing. We've now been forced to work remotely. We've now been forced to learn remotely. We've now been forced to treat with our health care providers

remotely. And the list goes on and on. So now two things have to happen. One, we got to build out the next great transportation system in America. And forgive me, but I am competitive. I think it should be here. And I think it should be the best. And I don't mind if our Canadian friends and our Mexican friends and everybody else comes along with us. But we are the best place for this to happen if those of us that have election certificates and the regulators would just get up to speed or get out of the way. The key though, we're not going backward. We're not going to go back to a day where you got to go see the doctor to have them tell you what you already know. Oh, yeah, you got a cold. Let's see. I'll give you this. We're going forward. And that means we're

going to have to build out the rest of this internet highway. We're going to have to increase the speeds. And we're going to need, I'm going to tell you, we're going to move into this area. I don't think cash has ever gone because I'm also one of those guys that I don't like the government following my every move, as you might guess, despite my white hair. You probably know my attitude. It's more libertarian, I think, than anything. But this, this is the future. It's called valuable exchange between human beings without a middleman.

Why not? So one of the things I want to talk about before we get into Bitcoin and kind of cryptocurrencies is there's a lot of people who are looking and saying, we've got two financial systems right now and the legacy one is under duress, right? So there's this virus, we go through the government mandated lockdowns at the state levels, and now all of a sudden it leads to this financial crisis. And as you mentioned to and alluded to earlier, the government response and the Federal Reserve response in these situations is to just start printing a bunch of money and handing it out in every nook and cranny and every exotic way they can think of. Just talk a little bit, I think,

about kind of how you view the response so far, where we've made mistakes, and kind of what can we do from here moving forward in the legacy fiat world to address the issues at hand? So let me start even earlier. Let's go back to the early 70s, 1972. And I'm going to talk to you not as a professor in finance or a master's in finance, because I'm not. I'm just a guy from the Midwest who's kind of learned it by the Braille method, right? 1972, kind of interesting why did we take the dollar off the gold standard? Why? Well, because they wanted to grow the pie without any regulation. And that's a problem because that's the date I believe, and you don't have to agree with me, those listeners of yours, those six people that are out there, they don't

have to agree with the thing I say, but I believe that was the beginning of where we went from being a country and an economy that was based on the creation of wealth, wealth creation, because the idea is if Pomp is creating wealth and Tom is working or involved in commerce with Pomp, oh, my goodness, you lift up my standard of living, too. And it's all based on the creation of wealth, wealth creation. The problem was when you took it off, you no longer pegged the currency. Now you can do with it whatever you want. It's all hocus pocus.

And what does it become? Now we start creating debt. Instead of wealth, it's debt. Imagine the greatest generation that came out of the depression, how they felt about this. They knew how to save, they knew how to plan, they knew how to be ready for the next great whatever it is. This group, they're so highly leveraged right now, and this is a problem all the way around the world, that all they're trying to do is protect themselves. I mean, this is not about, well, maybe it is about you. Maybe you and I are in that, whatever. But what's happened over time in my lifetime, and this isn't Republican or Democrat, this is monetary policy. The rich have gotten richer. The middle class has gotten poorer. There's a bigger gap between the two.

Why? Well, it's the same reason, and I'll use it with the great Dodd-Frank law. Okay. Unlike some of my Republican colleagues, yeah, there probably should have been some better regulation applying to some of the largest, most integrated financial institutions on the planet. And yes, we do have a need for financial institutions to be able to cross borders and do things that are worldwide as opposed to local. So there's an argument that you need to have everyone in the financial services food chain. But when you pass Dodd-Frank and you applied the standard that was intended for the Goldman Sachs, the JP Morgans, the Citibanks, the Wells Fargo's, when you did that and you applied it all the way down the food chain, the only way you can survive is if you get bigger and bigger.

So no, we don't have bank failures going on, but we had over 9,000, I think it was, community banks at the time of the crash, the last crash in 2008, since Dodd-Frank has been, by the way, a year after the crash, we still had roughly the same number of community banks. Since Dodd-Frank was passed, we're now down to 6,000. And you don't have bank failures going on. No, what you have is absorption. All right. So anyway, that's what's happened. You went off the gold standard. It doesn't have to be the gold standard it's pegging it to some responsible number so it has meaning as opposed to just people playing with it and has some of us wondering why right so over time in order for you to be successful you have to be able to hedge that debt you have to be able to

have enough resources to play that game and that's why the game gets smaller or the gap gets bigger I'm sorry. Uh, so now, uh, you're right. We have responded in a very unique way. I believe it's to protect a lot of investments, but I also believe that it was much more serious in April. This time they played the game up to the point. And again, this is my opinion. I don't have any basis except for this life experience. And what I'm feeling is I watched this happen because I actually published a thing the night before the CARES Act that said this vote is the classic Hobson's choice. The number one issue. I hadn't voted, as far as I know, I hadn't voted to increase spending at all since I got here. The debt to me is the issue, right? But I wrote it's the classic or

ultimate Hobson's choice because on the one hand, we can't be doing this. I mean, this is morally not responsible. It's not just our kids that we're stealing from right now. It's our great grandkids and perhaps our great, great grandkids, if they ever get to see the light of day under what we're doing. So it's not just that, but the other part of it was, okay, so you vote against it. And all of these people and entities who have built their entire world around debt creation and this semi, to me, fantasy-like system, it could all crash. And if it all comes down, this isn't just like 2008 where it's the banks, because I think there was a different way to handle that one.

This one is our food supply. This one, I mean, it is everything. People's retirements, we've wrapped up in this thing. So we do need to find our way through it. And I think we're going to. I think you're going to hear, like I said earlier, therapies, vaccine. We'll start to get back to work. We're going to have a lot of work to do. And then it's going to be up to a lot of us to be voices in here trying to convince these people it's time to get back to wealth creation, and it's time to look at new forms of transfer. yeah i think one of the interesting things a lot of people don't know but i spent a lot of time talking about this is the last six uh fiscal years we've actually had record levels of uh

income tax revenue for the government yet somehow the deficit gets bigger and bigger and it's this whole idea it's not a thing of can we collect more money it's just the more money we collect we keep spending more and more and so that seems to be this this debt-based system that you're talking about. And you're leaving out the tariffs. I mean, we're not just income tax. We've been collecting all these tariffs. A ton of money has been coming into the treasury. And I've said this to the administration. I said it when they first got here. And they said, well, we need you to vote for this. I said, I can't. Well, why? I said, because you have to give me a plan on how we're going to pay this off. If you have a plan that I believe is credible, I can go home and sell that.

Otherwise, I'm not playing. They told me then, and I took them at their word, right? You take over in 2000, what was it, 16 when they took office? They take over and they inherit an economy that is really churning at less than 2%. It was probably 1.7, 1.8%. And the thing that we don't talk about enough is that number that includes government spending, which, you know, I don't know, maybe, maybe you'll like the analogy. And if you don't correct me, because I've been using it for years, and I feel like people don't understand it. So we lump both of these together, the private sector, which is actually generating income, right growth, and the government sector, which is literally taking that money out of the private sector, and then putting it back in. It's like

living in the same room with all the ventilation closed off and the air is just getting old and stale. And by the way, I was told by one witness when I first got here in the financial services committee that government spending could be as much as 1% of GDP. Well, if that's the case back in 2016, so you got 0.7 growth. I mean, cause that's really the, you know, the growth that funnels the new and grows the pie. And, uh, I told him back then we, they told me we got to have growth right now. We don't have enough growth. Okay, great. But pump, when you get to 3% or better, when you're humming the way they were humming, we should have had a plan. I believe last July, show me how we're going to pay it off. And that's kind of where I am right now.

I, and I know I'm probably going to be in the minority, but we've spent way too much money. I mean, when there's $1 trillion still sitting out there and it hasn't even been deployed, right? And that doesn't even include, you know, my state, they put $2.1 billion into the Minnesota state treasury. How much of that has been spent yet? I don't, maybe half. I mean, you got all this money still sitting out there and the do-gooders with election

certificates are playing all kinds of politics, which I don't know why we're so arrogant as to believe we can't be the Soviet Union or the Weimar Republic. And it's going to be really interesting as we go forward to see what, as you call it, the legacy system, what it's able to do. Because remember, the other piece of it, before Trump, Trump's been separating a lot of these, but it was so intertwined globally. And I think, you know, we, you look at the European Union, man, my mother had a phrase. People want to leave fast. Yeah, I'm telling you, you may appreciate this. my mother had a phrase for me when I was a kid. It was, Tommy, you're way too smart to be so darn

stupid. So. I love that. So the reason I wanted to talk is the Twitter hack happened where basically people took over the Twitter accounts of many well-known people and they sent out a Bitcoin wallet address and said, send me money and I'll send you more back. So it's obvious scam. And you tweeted out and said, Bitcoin isn't the problem, centralization is. And so maybe talk a little bit about kind of what you meant with that tweet, and then we'll parlay that into a conversation about Bitcoin. Well, two, and I was counseled again tonight by Lan, and hey, we've been very careful. We've been critical of some of these big tech folks when it's appropriate to be critical. Look, Twitter's the problem. They're the ones that screwed up. Bitcoin didn't

screw up. Twitter, your security was not adequate. They hacked Twitter, and you're going to have bad guys all over the place. So my view of it is the centralization, which, by the way, reminds me of something I wanted to bring up to you about the future, right? Because you see what governments are doing that are working on fiat currency. You know, it's right now, they can't really control it, but they are because they're controlling us. But we've got to be careful when we, and this is why I don't like centralized control. This is where this goes. You realize when COVID was in full bloom in China, that the government basically shut everybody down. You're on a, you know, crypto is not the right word, but you're, the government has your currency

all on a card. And guess what? If you lived in Wuhan, it shut you down, man. You couldn't get a ride out of Wuhan to another city. You couldn't go get some groceries unless the government released you to go get the groceries. So need I say more about what I don't like about centralized control? It's kind of like Libra was proposed. Oh, great concept. Wonderful. But somebody's got to be in control, right? And I want to just take it back a couple notches and then superimpose the centralization within the crypto area on this. So Hayek is an Austrian economist who wrote a nice little story to his intellectual elite buddies during World War II when he was not living in Austria. He was living in London. You might be familiar with the road to serfdom.

He talks to his elite intellectual buddies because they all want the same thing, right? I want you to be happy. I want me to be happy. I want you to have the basic necessities of life and be able to, because we can all live here happily ever after, and we can support each other, this whole thing. He said, it's great, but you're forgetting this concept of scarcity. And I'm really going to condense this. But scarcity is this idea that resources are scarce. And the free market, it's your effort, it's your ingenuity, etc., that allocates those resources. But in this socialized atmosphere or centralized, there has to be someone or some group that decides the allocation. Now, that works out pretty good if you're the one that's in that group or is that guy. But after a while, if you're not in the group, if you're not the one making the decisions on the allocation, this thing only ends one way.

And it has never been good, no matter where it's been tried. I think we're just moving into that next phase, which is why crypto, the area, excites me. Because do I think that government has a role? Yeah, I'm not going to say no. I don't think it has a big role. I mean, I think government has a, I think people can police themselves, right? I don't like the fact that my colleagues think everybody is so dumb, they're all going to get fleeced all the time. And my goodness, we got to rush in, you know, the greatest gain is through the greatest risk. The greatest thing about America is we are supposed to be free to take those risks. And by the way, unlike these other societies, sometimes we fall off the mountaintop.

We end up laying in the valley. But the beauty is we can get up tomorrow and we can start climbing again. I just, so no, I'm sorry, but the centralization thing, to me, it's just much bigger than why do you not like centralization? It's a whole concept of where this thing ultimately leads. Somebody is in control. And so obviously, Bitcoin is the complete opposite of that, right? Kind of fully decentralized. It is 21 million artificially capped and as scarce as any money in the world. Many people, I think, in the Bitcoin world would just call it the soundest money history's ever seen. How do these two worlds either coexist or is there a transition later? How do you think about this idea of Bitcoin having properties that are interesting and

attractive, yet basically the entire world being built on this fiat system that is debt-laden and really kind of majority of people have just bought into. And as you said earlier, if it was to fail, there would be catastrophic kind of effects from that. How do those two systems move forward together? Well, see, you know, I know that the statement that it is the majority of the world is true. Whether it's Europe, the US, Canada, I mean, pick your country, it's the traditional fiat currency is out, they don't all manage it. Well, I think I had at one point $100 million Zimbabwe dollar that was worth like 36 cents or something. I don't even know if it was worth that. But here's where I push back just a little bit pomp. And I don't mind if you if you get critical

of me and push me. But you go to Africa, Nairobi, the biggest slum ever. They're using cash on electronic cash. I mean, their system, it's advanced beyond where we're at. Now, granted, it's centralized, right? So that's a different issue. But you also have cultures, Somali culture, for instance, where there's a lot of there's a lot of fear, there's a lot, you know, people are unbanked. It's still traditional forms of exchange it in cash, right there. They found other ways to deal. Look, I hope the traditional fiat currency survives. I hope that we never get rid of completely a tangible form of exchange because I and somebody they haven't passed a law against me saying it yet they might but I don't need the government tracking what I'm doing they have no

right to know what I'm doing and you know what frankly they they have too much information already I I prefer to keep that separate this I see the future and I know a lot of my colleagues don't. And if any of them hear this, they're going to say, oh, I see where he's going. But I prefer to have the government out of the middle, right? Our government is supposed to be severely limited, severely limited. And we've allowed it to become this huge thing where, you know, we're going to have the opportunity if we do this right in the next 20, 30, 50 years, you're going to be able to live wherever you want to live. You're going to be able to treat with your doctors. You're going to be able to get, because of robotics and the advances, there's

going to be a day where you're going to get surgeries. You're going to get everything and you're going to have, for instance, you got to have a new hip. It's going to be printed up by a 3D printer and you're going to have the surgery right in your home. I mean, there are things that are going to happen going forward that are going to, in my mind, not just disrupt the centralized nature of our society. You remember, when people come to this country, it's very spread out. I mean, you had your centers, but why did you have your urban centers? Well, primarily because you were bringing in agricultural product to the urban center to be packaged and then shipped out on major waterways. And then later, when you had the Industrial Revolution, now the labor came in

from the rural areas and was concentrated in the factories in the city so that you could use the same transportation methods. We're just about to blow that whole thing up. We are on the verge because of this pandemic, I believe, of starting to really think differently. And it's not going to be me. It's not going to be me. I don't have the ability to grasp this thing. But I do have, I hope, enough sense to recognize that even though I don't like change, I'm going to be able to live my life in the way that I've lived it. If the government doesn't take it away from me beforehand. I'm sorry, I'm not wearing my mask to I'll have to get that on later. I told him, I told him I need to, you know, don't tread on me and then the foobar and all these other things. It's

very politically incorrect. But I see a day when that total, you know, decentralization is possible. And now what you're talking about, it's not just cash, right? You've got to have this other system. And it's either going to happen because we have people who are visionaries, who are looking beyond and working with people who are smart enough to tell you, hey, this is how we could do this. Or I'm afraid you're going to have to have a catastrophe that forces it to happen. I mean, you know better than I do. The reason I read The Age of Cryptocurrency because this mysterious Satoshi, because of the last crash in 2008, didn't think we were going to have fiat currency. We better get to work, right? Well, we're not that far after that. We're just

12 years later and we're going through this pandemic. Kind of funny. Landon was telling me today that Bitcoin traded up. I think a lot of people who end up being a fan of sound money in general, they basically look at the macro system today and they say, hey, we're printing a bunch of money, whether it's Bitcoin or gold, you're going to see those things increase in US dollar value. We're devaluing the dollar, and obviously, those things are going to increase in value. There's people in the gold community that say, oh, the solution to this is to go back to a gold standard. I tend to think, eh, unlikely that that will happen, although I understand the argument. What's more likely is that every fiat currency in the world just digitizes. So you get

digital dollar, digital euro, digital yen, yuan, all the way through. And then you basically don't have competition at the technology layer because now whether it's Bitcoin, it's a private currency like Libra, it's a digital dollar, it's all digitized. And where the competition plays out is at the monetary policy level. Is that in line? I know that you've done a bunch of work on the digital dollar and in the blockchain caucus and kind of all of that work, but just how are you guys thinking about digital dollar, Bitcoin, Libra, and kind of where that competition plays out? Well, so two things. First, you talked about devaluing the dollar.

I'm going to suggest to you that there may be people here in Washington right now that really think they can play with this funny money all the way through the end of the year, and they can continue to print trillions of dollars because they'll say two things. One, well, we'll just devalue the dollar. And when you complain about it, you know what their answer is? Yeah, but our exports. I mean, people buy a lot more stuff. that's not the answer pop that's not monetary policy that's greed that's just uh you know and

that's also just kicking the can down the road for tomorrow um but the digital dollar first off i i don't like the idea of uh every country and that's what we're looking at i mean i can tell you that the bankers that i work with good guys one of my colleagues has really done some work since we got here on getting up to speed on this cryptocurrency area and what it means. And he's a traditional banker. And he did not start with that view. But I don't think he'd go where I want to go. And where I want to go is, you're not going to get competition if you turn it over to the government. You're going to get what they see in China. Because remember, Pop, somebody has to be in control. I prefer that if we're doing a, if we're working in cryptocurrency, you're in control of your wallet, I'm in control of my wallet, and you and I are doing the exchange between us, because I don't need big brother one watching what we're doing to, I don't need, and I know this whole bit about know your customer.

and that's just gone way overboard that's you can become a prisoner of your own safety and security and that is what we've done we just keep putting up these we got more people to come in and you know it's like we have to do this because you know what pomp is gonna the chinese are gonna do this to them or they're gonna steal whatever or this terrorist group uh no no i i don't think so um I just don't see it. And while there is a place for it, again, you can probably tell, I tend to not, my view, by the way, I'm in the minority at this point. I'm in the minority. What would it take for a single state? So we saw the state of Ohio, for example, the treasurer's office said, hey, we're going to accept Bitcoin for taxes. When that treasurer transitioned out, it basically was reversed almost immediately. I joked with Josh Mandel, who's the treasurer who did it. I said, it was like a one-man show who got something through. And then the second he walked out of the room, everyone rearranged the room back to how it was before. What would it take in your state or another state to really kind of adopt some of this stuff as a second currency? Is that something that has to have buy-in across kind of everywhere from the local all the way up to the state?

Is that a state, you know, top-down thing? Like, how does that work? Oh, I think it's going to have to come from the bottom up. And it's actually both ways, right? And I'm just looking because we've got a bill that we did on state licensing. I think it starts with stuff like that. might seem not very sexy, right? But wait a second. If the federal government creates a one-size-fits-all when you're dealing with the exchange of crypto, and you now don't have to

get a money-transmitting license in every single state, and then they start micromanaging because you got people in those offices that don't know what's going on. So you create that. That type of stuff, one, will allow, it will take away the 50 state patchwork, right, in the district. That will help. But then you're going to have to have pressure from the bottom. And the pressure from the bottom, we've got talent, right? And we've got capital that will, one, both leave this country. They will go find a place for this to work. The dollar or the Bitcoin will always follow the path of least resistance. If we want to be behind the eight ball, which we already are in some cases, we can continue to let this go. The second thing is, once you start doing money

transmitter license bills, once you have Brian Brooks, what he did last week by allowing banks to actually take custody of crypto assets, what he did there, that signal really gets the ball rolling. Now, we got a problem with maybe the Secretary of the Treasury, maybe a former SEC advisor or secretary, whatever you call them, chairman. But you've got a lot of people and it's growing on the inside of these institutions. And that's why Brian Brooks, I met with him a few weeks ago and just so grateful that they put him there, right? But it has to pick up momentum because here's the other thing. And you work with the people in this area a lot more than I do. I get to meet them. They're interesting. I mean, I love the ones that go out and start a

trading platform that's worth millions and they never graduated from USC. But guess what? USC invites them back because they want to give them an honorary degree and have them talk to their students that are paying an exorbitant amount for a worthless education much of the time you know it's that old how much do you spend for your college education uh 250 000 and what's your daughter doing welcome to arby's can i take your order um but the uh i think once it it starts to roll and you get the pressure here's the other thing i'll leave it with this you got really smart young people in this area, they're going to figure out a way to get around the rules. This is where, I've said this in other places, this is where the Roman Empire went when the

citizens didn't know and didn't care for years that the government had actually fallen. I mean, think about it. Was it Spain just a couple years ago? They didn't have a government for over a year and their economy was actually improving. Huh? That's a head scratcher. Not really. Um, so it's people that you're interviewing all the time, it's people that you're intersecting and interacting with, they're going to figure out how to do this. And government can actually help facilitate it. And then make sure you know where and I think the community is the best to help us with this, where we need to lean in, right where there are dangers where there are bad guys where there are the thing that bothers me the most and sorry, it just triggered me when I said bad

guys. It seemed at the beginning, like all of my colleagues, Democrat and Republican alike, every time you mentioned Bitcoin or crypto, all they heard was Silk Road. That's why bringing up Twitter, I'm very grateful of because they did it again. Right? It wasn't Bitcoin that caused the problem. It was Twitter. And it's like every time there's this, maybe it's because of the name, Maybe crypto just gives it a bad, you know, ooh, there's something bad going on there. It's cryptic. Well, I think one of the other key pieces to this whole thing is five years ago, most people in an elected seat knew absolutely nothing. And fast forward now, it's still not prevalent, I think, with everybody, but obviously, you are very up to speed on this stuff. And folks like Warren Davidson, and if you go down the line, there's a number of people who have really spent the time.

David Schweiker. Yeah, and can not only articulate, here's why this stuff is important. I think the part, at least coming from the Bitcoin community's view, is when the Libra hearings were going on, to see multiple elected officials say things on the congressional hearing floor or whatever, like you can't stop Bitcoin, right? You cannot shut it down. And to kind of have those things said out loud publicly from elected officials, it shows that, wait a second, the same thing that, you know, the computer kind of nerds and then the entrepreneurs and the investors, and it kind of spiraled out to the rest of the world. Every single one of these groups has had this aha of this is what this thing is. And now it's literally seeping into the halls of government. And when you kind of

see somebody flip over and say, wait a second, like, this is really interesting. And this is the value prop. I think that that eventually it's 100%. Everyone understands it. It's just how long does that take? Well, it's so I wish I could answer that question. But what you just said, so I told you when we started tonight that I read the book Age of Cryptocurrency. When I gave it back to Landon, I said, after I made the joke about the pictures, I said, this is one of the most interesting things I've ever read. And I actually met the authors in New York a couple years ago, and I told him the same thing. But it started me down this road, and I told him I need more stuff. Landon looks at me and he says, you realize that if you're

not the most educated, you're in the top five when it comes to this right now in Congress. And I said, there's no way. He said, look, there's Polis from Colorado, there's Schweikert from Arizona. There's Mulvaney. And I don't know how educated he was, but this was Mulvaney's deal. He's one of the founders of the blockchain caucus, which I now have the honor of being one of the chairs. And why is that important? Because we were talking about three, four, five people five years ago. Take a look at who's in the caucus now. It's grown much bigger. And I I mean, I give Bill Foster a hard time behind his back. So if he listens to this, it's great.

He's not exactly the most charismatic, vibrant, you know, and he always says, I'm a scientist or whatever it is, his PhD, he's, he's bright. But even Bill is like grabbing a hold of it and, you know, trying to understand it. Steve Lynch, not quite there yet. Right. But I think he's doing the work. And so the fact that he starts out from a place that may not be what we agree with, the fact that he gets into it, I got to tell you, Pop, if you do your homework, if you start getting exposed to the people, it'll change quickly. So, you know, that's three years now, three, four years. I don't know, though, that, you know, somebody told me when I first ran for office, you're not going to be very happy because getting government to move is kind of like turning a super tanker at sea, and you want it to like turn on a dime. I just don't think we can afford to let this go six, eight, 10 years. It's just not. I think

the number of people, and you've got some Democrats now on the other side that are really smart financial guys. I'm not going to give you the names because I'm just not going to give them the ability to say, hey, Tom Emmer says I'm this in their next campaign, but they are. They're good, okay? And I think that combined with the growing number of Republicans, I think you're going to get, and by the way, end the crisis. Because as we come out of the crisis, Bitcoin ain't going away. It's going to get stronger. And now Brian Brooks is saying, hey, institutions, you can start banking this stuff, right? You can provide a home for it. You can start working with it.

Number one issue, when I was in the last campaign, I go to Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, I think it was, which a lot of banks, a lot of insurance companies, very understated. Most people don't know that it's a big center for financial stuff. I had a roundtable. I had a couple of the bigger insurance companies, their leaders. I had three or four banks, and there were three young guys sitting right next to me, and there's tables that are in a square. And I don't know who they are.

I mean, they're a little older than my kids, but definitely they don't look like this. They got the good, nice hair. They're young. And this whole meeting's going on. I'm about halfway through. It comes out. These guys are in the blockchain space. These guys are in the crypto space, and they instantly start pointing the finger at the banks.

You aren't helping us. We're going to London. We're going to wherever. We're leaving because we can. And the banks, of course, pointed at the OCC. I think Brian Brooks, so short answer to your question, all these things are starting to come together right now. He is, we have got to continue to raise these voices. because you get the momentum, and we're going to have this ugly election. It's going to be so

terrible, and I mean, don't, anybody who checks me out, I am definitely involved in the election process, and I definitely have a perspective, but I'm not looking forward to it. For our country, I'm just not. You know, after Labor Day, everybody's going to strap their helmet on, And it's going to be this bloody, brutal death. But when we get through it, I really, you know, combined with what I told you earlier about therapies and vaccines, when we come through that, I'm hoping that much like a forest fire, You see this beautiful new growth start to come out the other side in the springtime because we just can't keep doing the garbage that we're doing at the federal level and expect this country to, one, actually find their government credible, or two, survive the way we want our American way of life to survive. And that will be the opportunity, Pop. I believe that's the opportunity when we come out of that, as long as we have new leadership and people are talking to each other again and, you know, you stop this lockdown stuff and just making everything about us and them instead of about we. I think we can make a big gain because tied together. We're not going backward when it comes to the internet superhighway. We're going to have to go forward.

Completely agree. We've got about four or five minutes left and ask everybody the exact same question to end, which is aliens. Usually I ask believer or non-believer, but you are a elected member of the US government, and there's been lots of UFO talk recently. What's your take on aliens, UFOs, and any of that stuff? look man i'm i'm uh i'm 59 years old i got a tough enough time with my own i hope there are i hope there are how's that i mean how cool would that be that there's a civilization somewhere else you know i'm i'm to that point in my life that i'm not going to be walking on another planet but you might still have that opportunity and yeah i don't i and this is going to be embarrassing but I haven't seen the recent UFO talk. Was it a, were we talking about a presidential campaign or? Well, so here's the crazy part, right?

Is I've asked the 300 and something number of people this thing. And usually the most popular answer is some form of, we would be ignorant and arrogant to believe we're the only intelligent life in the galaxy. Who says we're intelligent, Pop? That's a whole nother conversation. But I think that the thing that's so funny is the UFOs, everyone immediately thinks aliens and all i keep telling people is wait a second a ufo just means

that we can't figure out how something scientifically works right but at some point there was in human history people who didn't understand gravity and then they figured that out right and so there's this whole balance between like aliens and ufos that other people you and me were meant to talk today because earlier today people were talking about some of the strangest things that you encounter when you're doing the job that i do and i got the guys who are you know every i go to this place a little legion uh in my district and there'd be this guy waiting for me with a stack of papers i want to talk about gmos and i'd be like well genetically modified whatever you got to understand they're just speeding up the evolution no man no and then it'd be like you

got to be against fluoride you got to be and by the way the mercury that's in the uh this is uh it's every conspiracy thing that we could think of and i told him when i was doing radio a few years ago, you'd get the call in and say, did you see the big all-white DC-9 that was flying around downtown Minneapolis? No. Tell me more. It was chemtrails. That's what they were doing. Tell me more. Tell me more. No, it's, look, I had a friend in the legislature, a great Democrat, he's dead now, Tommy Rukavina, we called him Tommy the Commie, he was a great guy. He once told me, He said, Emmer, we all believe in black helicopters. We just think different people are flying them.

Look, it's true, right? I joke all the time. Marketing and propaganda is the same thing. It's just which side you believe. Yeah. And what are you trying to accomplish? Absolutely. If you can leave everyone with one or two sentences just on kind of how you see Bitcoin

blockchain and America's future, what would it be? Two things. One, Bitcoin blockchain. it's not going away. It's going to continue to become more and more important, and it's going to advance. You just watch. It has value, and when something has value, people are going to take more risks, and it's going to advance. And for America, the sun's going to come up again. It's going to shine again, and not just here, but around the world. We got some troubles, there's no question, but this happens in the world, in world history. You just got to remain positive. You got to be

grateful for every day you're given and you got to know we're lucky to be in this country despite the challenges we're facing because nowhere else could you have started this uh bitcoin the way it started in my opinion and nowhere else would you be able to race towards a vaccine like we're able to do in this country and by the way i think ultimately i wish somebody pick up the tagline that every one of us americans should be interested in making the world great again that's a great way to end it congressman um if people want to find out more about you and uh and all the great work you're you and your staff are doing where can they go emmer.gov.us uh i'm not going to send you to emmer for congress there's all kinds of social media

all that stuff all you got to do is type in emmer and don't ever don't ever emmer forget me you'll remember. Awesome. Listen, thank you so much for doing this. I think people are really going to enjoy it while I do it again in the future. Thanks, Pomp. I look forward to meeting you in person and stay healthy.