The Pomp Podcast - #622: Jason Williams "Bitcoin: Hard Money You Can't F*** With"

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Now let's kick this thing off. Jason Williams is an investor and entrepreneur. He has built and sold numerous companies, including an approximately $500 million exit in the healthcare space. Jason and I have also worked together to invest more than $100 million in the Bitcoin and crypto industry. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin mining, alternative power sources, renewable energy, tire recycling, Saudi Aramco, personal finance, real estate, and debt-to-income ratios. I really enjoyed this conversation with Jason, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors.

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Starting point is 00:03:08 You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion this podcast is for informational purposes only all right we're back for those of you that don't know jason jason and i have known each other for five years give or take maybe six years five six years uh we just get along we're like spirit animals like whenever we met we were just like yep we're gonna be friends that's great we've done a bunch of investing together over the years uh spent way too much time together uh i've got basically five people that I could just call at any point and they'll answer and I can just shoot the shit. Four of

Starting point is 00:03:48 them happen to have my last name and then Jason. So we're going to bring him up here and there he is. Jason. Yo, what's up? All right. Let's talk about PRTI. We were just talking about Saudi Aramco. So before I get your opinion on that, tell us what PRTI does and then how you guys got into the Bitcoin mining and crypto mining. Yeah. So PRTI is a really cool company. we were going after a global problem of what do you do with trash tires and light truck tires at their end of life um when you start to think about a circular economy the best thing to do with those trash tires would be to recover them recycle them and reintroduce them uh in some capacity um to be resold or reused right so prti takes these trash tires and heats them in a

Starting point is 00:04:39 patented process over about 11 hours. When you heat a tire, it's a semi-solid. So it'll go to a gas phase pretty quickly if you can get the temperature and pressures correct. And then at PRTI, we do just that. We heat these tires. We're able to capture that vapor stream. That vapor stream is full of calories. It's a synthetic gas. It's got methane, butanes, all the tanes in it. And then we just run a condensation reaction on the back end, cool that gas down, and we capture a fair amount of high sulfur oil. It's kind of like a bunker fuel or like a shipping fuel. And then the rest of the synthetic gas that we don't capture as liquid oil, we can combust and turn a generator, turn our liquid fuels back into power generation. Then we have a solid fuel. It's like carbon. It's equivalent to mid grade Appalachian coal. So we can also combust that as well. And then we have some steel that's in the tire and we just send that to scrap. So the tire is fully consumed and recovered. All of this is done under pressure, under a vacuum. So we're not having any escaping gases. so you've seen a lot of images of these massive tire fires or like a a tire pile on fire everything we're doing is under vacuum we're controlling all those gases and recovering all

Starting point is 00:06:13 the thermal and the energy inside the tire and you know we run the plant we have now with the the amount of energy that it would take to to run like a three-bedroom house for a year So it's super efficient on the front end. And then we get a massive amount of power on the back end. So that's really PRTI outside of any crypto mining. So when I think about PRTI, just from the power generation, what you're essentially doing is you're taking car tires, you put them in this process, and you are one getting them out of landfills, getting them out of the ocean, you know, like diverting them from going into these bad environmental situations. you then take it and you're basically getting oil steel carbon syngas right you're taking the oil and the steel you sell that uh through various kind of strategies and then we hold the oil pump or we hold the oil and use it for power right and then you generate power and then what you do with that power is where the the mining comes in but you could sell it into the grid you could mine

Starting point is 00:07:13 you could do all kinds of different stuff with it and so really what you have is you have an off-grid, renewable, alternative power source, and then you're vertically integrating it with a miner, right? Because you control when you give it tires or when you don't. So you've got some controllability there. And then it's completely off the grid, meaning that you're not reliant on the local electrical business. All you're doing is you're taking car tires and creating power. Fair? Yeah, very much so. So you have a decentralized power plant that doesn't necessarily have to have an interconnect agreement with the grid. You can wheel your power and use it 100% for parasitic load, mine cryptocurrency, wheel it to a power-hungry neighbor. It's a pretty

Starting point is 00:07:55 efficient little system. It generates 6.15 megawatts of base load power off of a feedstock that we get paid to take. So people also are saying in the comments that you have a windshield on your face uh with those glasses uh but um talk about saudi aramco like we were just talking and it sounds like it's a no-brainer for them to do this to basically take the waste streams off of their oil production and then mine bitcoin like you one would divert it from damaging the uh environment and two is you would have a really profitable uh revenue stream is that your read on this situation yeah i mean there's there's been a number of companies that have popped up and have hooked gensets up to flare gas in the Permian.

Starting point is 00:08:45 Some of your friends are doing that right now. And when you're talking about the world's, what, second or third largest oil producer in the world, they have a tremendous amount of flare gas coming off as a waste stream byproduct of oil refinery. So yeah, makes total sense for them to get in the space. You know, the operating conditions are pretty harsh where they're located.

Starting point is 00:09:10 But it's not impossible to set up, huh? Yeah. And when you think about PRTI or Saudi Aramco, both of these are power generation businesses and kind of have unique aspects to them. Is it your opinion that every single power generation business is eventually just going to go and have some aspect of their business be Bitcoin mining or crypto mining? Or do you feel like that's just a kind of Bitcoin and crypto dream that people think that's going to happen, but it's unlikely to actually occur. No, no. I think anyone who runs

Starting point is 00:09:43 a business, a for-profit business is looking to, you know, expand their margins and to create efficiencies. And if you're given an opportunity to take away stream, a real liability, actually, sometimes you have to shut down your oil refinery because you're not managing your flare correctly. So imagine if you can take that flared gas and combust it in a way that's, you know, EPA friendly, and also monetizable now. It's not something that's a loss leader or this environmental concern, but now you're generating revenue with it. It makes absolute sense that anyone in this business would connect the Genset to a mining rig and get in the business, set up a prop desk, and they already have a prop desk, I'm sure, but make that happen. Total no-brainer.

Starting point is 00:10:35 Yeah. And then what do you think is likely to be the downside to a decision like this, right? It's different for PRTI, for example, as a private business where you and a number of other shareholders that kind of you're close with are shepherding a business and building it from scratch to become successful versus a $1.8 trillion business that is watched by every single person in the world. What do you think some of like the decision making process is there or what are some of like the downsides? Yeah, I mean, there's a number of things, you know, off the cuff I can think of. One is scale. I mean, you're talking about such a massive business. Think about, I think, you know, check my numbers, Pomp, but if Saudi Aramco got in the mining business, they would contribute one half of all the power that the network is using right now. So just the scale is enormous. And they're not in that business. They're in the oil refining business.

Starting point is 00:11:31 So they're going to have to either acquire a company to come in, you know, buy versus build thesis. They've got significant, you know, regulatory pressures around the world. And, you know, they'd be creating a lot of money here if they were Bitcoin miners. So I'm sure they would have to deal with different regulatory pressures from their competing, you know, from the competition in the space. I think it's it's more complicated than even I've considered at this point. Yeah. What else are you excited about in Bitcoin crypto world? Man, there's a ton of things going on. Like, I know I take a lot of flack for being focused in the NFT space.

Starting point is 00:12:19 I think it's a huge innovation that's going on. I'm going to stand by that. I've seen probably three or four great disruptive innovations in my time. One was the first company I started. Second was the internet. Third was Bitcoin. And I actually think NFTs are a big deal. So I don't know. I'm not trying to make friends. Give us the 30 second pitch on why you think NFTs are the fourth technological revolution behind Bitcoin. Yeah. And again, I don't even know if it's behind Bitcoin. I don't know where NFTs will reside. It's probably not an efficient place to put them in Bitcoin's block reward. But beyond that, I think the fractionalization of assets is really intriguing to me. And, you know, I'm just watching it happen with silly

Starting point is 00:13:11 jpegs at this point yeah and so the idea around fractionalization is uh similar to like what the collectibles rally roads uh alts uh what other ones do we know like there's a bunch of businesses like that what masterworks etc like they're all creating fractional ownership of various assets what you're talking about is doing that for digital um assets through the nfts versus doing it with the physical like collector items or pieces of art yeah i mean masterworks doesn't have a blockchain behind it in any way at this point. They're just creating, they're buying a piece of blue chip art and they're making an LLC and distributing shares. Got it. And then in terms of how you spend your time on a daily basis, a lot of the young people who watch this, we talked

Starting point is 00:13:58 to them about personal finance, investing, et cetera. You're a wealthy guy who built an incredible business and have really learned how to invest. What are like the big takeaways in your mind for folks who are trying to figure it out, right? You spent a lot of time balancing being an entrepreneur and an investor, like any kind of lessons that you've learned over the years that you think are worth people knowing? Yeah. I mean, you and I talk about this a lot, but I think people focusing on debt to income ratio is a wonderful lesson that you can teach them. You know, if you're making $60,000 a year, don't spend 65,000, you know, I'm making it a hard, fast example here, but we can spend an hour talking about this, but it's, it's something worth

Starting point is 00:14:39 talking about really focusing on debt to income ratio, saving appropriately and living within your means. Joe, John, you guys got any questions? That was my question, but was what, what advice he would give him like things about like, he's obviously done well for himself, right? I'm talking to Jason now, but, uh, but yeah, it was just that, like, I think a lot of the younger people that watch the show, right. They come out and they say, uh, maybe I don't have a business idea. Maybe I'm not an entrepreneur. Maybe I'm just working, saving, investing, stuff like that. And there's no get rich quick, but what are the tools that I need to be able to invest intelligently? What should I be focusing on? Should I be just investing in the S&P? Should

Starting point is 00:15:20 I be looking at alternative assets, stuff like that? But it seems like Jason just wants the people to know not to spend more than you make. What do you think about from an investment standpoint jason what in terms of stocks no just like like the various asset classes like if you were 25 years old today how would you think yeah how would you think about making more money and then also where you would put that money yeah so for me like i i think people should feel very comfortable working more than one job again not popular people are trying to get that luxury life you know and they want to take it easy and travel and everything but for me um you know having one two three jobs creating multiple revenue streams creating passive income streams you know if you're

Starting point is 00:16:07 going to buy a place buy a place maybe that has two meters so you can rent one side of it out live in the other you know leverage uh that against the mortgage there's just so many different strategies i like real estate um but you know at this point i keep going back to bitcoin as like As digital real estate, as highly liquid real estate, not too much into the stock market, pulled everything out in like 17, 18. So I've been on the sidelines there for the most part and just got a bunch of venture, early stage venture, which is hard to get into until you make money. It's really hard to invest. But if I was a young person starting off, focus on debt to income ratio. Don't be afraid to work hard, multiple jobs,

Starting point is 00:16:55 always improving the job so better benefits better salary until you can get out of the job uh the job race or kind of the job cycle and have enough passive investments producing for you so that you can keep leveling that up people are asking at the moment where do you stand with el prez from barstool i see the barstool hat and uh i think they've seen the the gazillion memes lettuce hands the whole thing what is the current uh state friends frenemies yes so uh you know dave uh dave is holding a bitcoin uh i'm not a fan of the whole safe moon stuff but i'm letting that slide got a super hot girlfriend he's got the red rhino whom i'm a huge fan of as well i'm trying to get a job with him i need my eighth job so we're good i just need to get on that payroll dave let's go

Starting point is 00:17:48 how many jobs are you trying to get right now i told you i'm just trying to level up the jobs i get a better job i'll get rid of another job but no i don't mind working john what questions you got oh what's up jason uh i've actually never met you so nice to meet you virtually but uh one i love your uh bitcoin ticker i believe that you can see that clock the yeah the bitcoin clicker talk bitcoin clicker um whatever you know ticker but uh one thing i think we kind of skipped over not many people i don't think like know you and kind of like can you talk about your start and how you um how you got to this point in your life yeah so um my beginnings were in health care and uh thought i wanted to be a doctor uh became a pa was off to do a surgical residency at yale

Starting point is 00:18:37 And while I was there, I came up with the idea for retail medicine and urgent care, primary care that would be placed in an environment like a Starbucks that would provide 80 percent of the services that you'd find in a U.S.-based emergency department. And we would leverage advanced care providers to provide that care. So we would cut costs down. At the end, we were doing what you'd find in an emergency room, those services for one-tenth the cost. uh seven days a week with advanced care providers doing most of the care and uh ended up selling that business a number of times uh ending in 2015 for right about a half a billion bucks so it gave me an opportunity to hang out with pomp drink beers buy a mcdonald's turn it into a laundromat with some friends and learn about bitcoin mining and ethereum mining

Starting point is 00:19:29 the the mcdonald's that uh that we got he threw that in there very casually we went to uh charlotte and i'll never forget this we we pulled up to it and uh jason was like this is a good one and i was like what and it was like kind of run down he goes yeah let me show you and the three things that he he uh immediately called out was one it was like a structurally sound building it was really big the whole thing two was had a massive parking lot and then three was he's i remember he said something to the effect of like look around and we looked around there's all these other business he goes if everyone goes down we all go down together around here like like it's just like like if mcdonald's put it here right like they must have

Starting point is 00:20:08 done a bunch of studies and and all this stuff in terms of foot traffic and driving and and uh the demographics of the neighborhood like all that and uh mcdonald's wasn't leaving the area they were just going across the street so it ended up he like he was like yeah look you got a sound building it's really big it fits what we need it's got a big parking lot and like i think it was an acre or two that it come that it came with and then it basically wasn't mcdonald's so all the demographic studies. He's like, we just ride their coattails. Appreciate you studying the local area for us. Yeah. And it goes back to the original question you asked me around, like if I was a 25, 30 year old, what kind of strategy would I deploy? This is one of those

Starting point is 00:20:46 strategies because I'll ask Pomp as a young person who got invested in a pretty significant piece of infrastructure, commercial real estate, how many mortgage payments have you made on that Pomp? Zero. Zero. Zero. So you don't need money to make money. You just need to have the right people together with the right vision and the right business. And you can leverage all that up and do that over and over and over again.

Starting point is 00:21:14 Because not only did Pop and I do that with that McDonald's, but I kind of did that 127 times over with FastMed when we were building that. So a lot of, a lot of people don't know this about your story, which is, uh, everyone knows the fast med story, uh, was these, uh, kind of a chain of retail locations focused on urgent care, uh, Jason, uh, and, uh, and that company pioneered that model, but there was also a real estate element to it. So they would go and they would find specific types of pieces of real estate that they identified. They would buy it. Then they would lease it from the company, like this whole thing.

Starting point is 00:21:48 And so Jason, maybe talk a little bit just from like the real estate side, how you thought about like what locations to actually go into? Cause I think you guys were like going into like old banks or something. Uh, and then in terms of, uh, how you would try to finance those deals as a business owner versus just an individual investor. Yeah. So when we decided or got to the point where we were going to rapidly grow, we were very fortunate that as we were growing blockbuster video was collapsing. So we were able to kind of go into that market and, um, blockbuster video stores were in a, most of the time, a pretty acceptable location for us to place our fast meds. So man, we just went in and pre-leased and warehoused as many of these

Starting point is 00:22:31 blockbuster video stores as we could. If I could buy them, I'd buy them. If I had to just lease them, I'd lease them. But it turned out to be a really great opportunity and a good fit for us. We were going into secondary and tertiary markets, cleaning up real estate blight. This was just vacant dead property and we could go in and, um, and revitalize it. And, uh, those businesses exist today. Um, I think fast, but now, you know, since I I've been gone since 2015, but it's continued to prosper and grow. I'm very proud of that. And they have two or 300 locations now. And if you had to look at real estate and that strategy, like what would you do today? If you're a young person interested in real estate, like how would you think about where to actually,

Starting point is 00:23:15 uh, go look for real estate and then like how to finance it if you didn't, you know, have a ton of money to, uh, to go do it. Yeah. So if you, if you have a business, most of the time a bank will allow you to owner finance, um, a property. Now they won't let you do it over and over again until you start to generate real revenue in the company, but you, you should have a shot at, uh, at owner financing. Like I'm doing a startup right now, uh, with a hospital system. And fortunately or unfortunately, the real estate I've targeted are community banks. They're going out of business left and right. They fit perfectly for what I'm trying to do, which is an iteration of FastMed. It's called MyCare365. And we're able to provide primary care

Starting point is 00:24:04 services with extended hours nights and weekends seven days a week um in community banks which allows for the flexibility of a drive-through component uh if you can imagine testing for covid etc immunizations not having to come into the facility so it's uh it's been a lot of fun to uh to be on the sidelines for a little while but now uh come through and uh be able to uh do some cool things with telemedicine and primary care, for example. Before we let you go, what's going to happen to Bitcoin later this year? Bullish, bearish, sideways, backwards? Parabolic. Parabolic, some may say. Yeah. No, I got a pizza and cheesy bread, Domino's pizza and cheesy bread bet with Mark Yusko, that Bitcoin six figures. I got the six figure bet. This thing's going

Starting point is 00:24:59 uh, going to the moon. So, uh, it's, it's the single best investment that, you know, I've ever seen in my life. And, uh, I'm just excited to, uh, to have the opportunity to own a little bit of it. I, uh, uh, have to ask before we let you go going parabolic. When we first met your Twitter handle was something else. It was like Jay Williams or something. Where did going parabolic coming from? Cause that it might be outside of trillionaire energy. that might be the second coolest phrase that i've heard in a long time bro i don't know i think we were just talking about it the term parabolic came up and then uh you know my twitter handle was at j williams fast med f-s-t-m-e-d or something and uh no i just went with it it suits me

Starting point is 00:25:47 i like fast cars pit vipers bmx the whole nine yards man like you guys too All right. Any last words of advice for young people about Bitcoin investing, risk management? People want to know if Riff Raff is a Bitcoin investor and anything else? No, look, while you guys are young, you got to go for it. And I'm sure you guys talk about this on the show, but you've got time. And if you make some mistakes, small, big, you can recover. but you got to go for it. Because you can't get rich working a nine to five. You can't get rich doing a job. So, you know, you may have to go out there and be self-employed and then expand that business, you know, get some other people working for you, but you've got to take the risk. You got

Starting point is 00:26:47 to go for it. And that's the big thing that I get concerned about with young people now. They've seen their parents blown out. They've dealt with a lot of weird stuff with COVID and etc. And I worry that their risk tolerance is going to be kind of shut down a little bit. But you got to keep going forward if you want to be financially independent. Before I let you go, at going parabolic on Twitter. And then what about the book? Where can people go buy the book? Tell us about the book yeah amazon um it's uh i also have it on audible it's it's crazy man i wrote it one just for my own kind of selfish uh bucket list but it was also a great learning um opportunity for myself i'm doing something cool with it right now too so by the end of this year we'll have some

Starting point is 00:27:38 news on the book but yeah number one bestseller in macroeconomics number one bestseller in international finance you know that uh i only come strong so go check it out all right thank you for doing this i appreciate it mr science himself with the pit vipers i'm pretty sure that you're gonna be the number one marketer of pit vipers before the end of the year bro they don't even pay me they don't even pay me i'm doing it all wrong i know you guys got so fine your sweaters and sofi.com slash pomp is amazing everyone should go to sofi.com slash pomp right i'm not getting paid for nothing man i'm just out here uh repping things i like i love it i love it all right thank you so much for doing this we'll talk soon thanks guys take care

The Pomp Podcast - #622: Jason Williams "Bitcoin: Hard Money You Can't F*** With"

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