The Pomp Podcast - #628 Bitcoin Is Inevitable with Max Keiser

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

Max Keiser is a bitcoin maximalist who first started buying the digital currency around $1. He has a popular podcast called the Orange Pill Podcast and co-hosts the Keiser Report with Stacy Herbert on RT network.  In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin, economics, geopolitical strategy, mainstream adoption, decentralization, a list of famous people Max told about bitcoin under $10, and his price predictions.  ======================= Whether you're an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With the new Kraken app, you can easily buy and sell over 60 of the most popular cryptocurrencies in just a few minutes. Featuring a sleek new design and an easy-to-use interface, you can now take your crypto portfolio with you on the go, 24/7. Visit kraken.com/pomp to learn more or search "kraken" in the app store. ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp

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. Max Keiser is a Bitcoin maximalist who first started buying the digital currency around $1. He has a popular podcast called the Orange Pill Podcast and co-hosts the Keiser Report with Stacey Herbert on RT Network. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, economics, geopolitical strategy mainstream adoption decentralization a list of famous people max told about bitcoin under ten dollars and his price predictions through the end of this year i really enjoyed this conversation with max and i think you will too before we get into this episode

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Kraken.com slash Pomp now to learn more or search Kraken in the App Store. Again, K-R-A-K-E-N, Kraken. Search it in the App Store or go to Kraken.com slash Pomp. Next up is LMAX Digital. They're the number one institutional crypto exchange, offering clients the deepest pool of crypto liquidity on the planet, underscored by a 100% uptime track record through volatility spikes. Leveraging LMAX Group's liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology, LMAX Digital is the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading and custodial services. Featuring a central limit order book, streaming spot Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets, all paired with US dollars, euro, and yen, just cross-connect at their LD4 or over

the internet to execute your crypto trading strategy with precision. LMAX Digital, if you've never heard of them, it's probably because you're not an institution. They're the number one institutional crypto exchange. They're secure, liquid, and trusted. You can learn more at lmaxdigital.com slash POMP. Again, lmaxdigital.com slash POMP. All right, let's get in this episode with Max. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony Pompliano runs POMP Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy,

but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Max, what's up, man? Pomp, pomp, pomp it up. During the break, when I was making sure that everything was good here, you were telling me that you don't follow me on Twitter, but you follow my brother, Joe. Yeah, Joe's the brains of the operation. You know, he's got all the sports stuff. I follow Joe. He's a mature guy.

You know, he's the guy to follow, Joe Pompliano. I mean, the fact that you figured that out so quickly shows your intelligence level because you're definitely right there. All right, I'm going to talk Bitcoin. For those that don't know you and your story, give us kind of the 30, 60 seconds on when you discovered Bitcoin

and how the hell you had such deep conviction so early. I was gangbanged by Satoshi and that impregnated me with the idea of Bitcoin in 2011 when it was a dollar. And I had already been involved in digital currencies going back to the mid-90s. I invented one called the Hollywood Stock Exchange. So when I heard about Bitcoin in 2011, I was already prepped to dive into it. And so I started buying it at a dollar. As you know, we started covering it on Kaiser Report, the first TV show in the world to do so. We covered it all extensively. So millions of people, the first time they heard about Bitcoin was through Kaiser Report with Max and Stacey. And we started aggressively buying into early

stage Bitcoin companies in 2013 with a venture capital fund we started. So we are early investors in Kraken, Bitso, Shapeshift, Bitfinex. We just made some investments recently in Casa and Swan Bitcoin and Infinite Fleet, which is a Samson Mao creation. So we've been really deep into it, as you know, Pomp, for 10 years now. And that's our story. So when you first came across Bitcoin, you already had kind of this mental framework to think about digital assets, digital currencies. Other folks like Jesse Powell, etc., I think very similarly. They've been doing things in video games. And so when they saw this, it just kind of fit into this worldview. What was it for you? Because I think you were into gold quite a bit

beforehand. Then when you saw Bitcoin, was there one or two specific things where you're like, bam, this is it. This is going to work this time? Well, a couple of things. So I kind of quickly figured out that this was a new asset class. I started my career in the 80s as a stockbroker. So I'm sensitive to looking at asset classes and what is an asset class. With Bitcoin, is it a stock? Is it a bond? Is it a commodity? Where does it fit as an asset class? And then you realize that it's actually a new asset class. And if that's true, then the world money management, which is huge, there's $100 trillion worth of funds looking for investment. If they get into this, it's going to be huge. The second thing is my background in digital currencies and

gaming uh back in the 90s i know that virtual currencies to the mind of people online there's no differentiation between a digital currency and anything else it's it's money to anyone who's in the gaming world in the 1990s uh you know you once you get into it whether it's second life which had the linden dollar or the world of witchcraft had gold swords and things like that Once you cross over, your mind starts thinking about this in that way. You just adopt it as money. So I knew that people would accept this as money. So you put those things together and then the price action just keeps going up.

So that's that number go up technology. And you keep going down the rabbit hole, keeps pulling you down the rabbit hole. Even today at these prices, we're still stacking sats because it just seems like the only logical thing you can do. it's like a bulwark against the insanity that's going on in the world, you know, in Washington and elsewhere. When you stack sets, it's like a calming thing that you do to ground yourself in the Satoshi Bitcoin reality. So one of the things that's fascinating to me is most people know you for all of the crazy antics. People have seen the videos of you ripping up the $10 bill or

at the Bitcoin conference, yelling and screaming with Michael Saylor, etc. Right. Which as I've gotten to know you, I think, is part of the magic of Max and Stacey. But when you think about it from a pure investment standpoint, most great investors would tell you that in order to be great, you have to cut your losers faster than anyone, and you have to press your winners harder than anyone else. So from a pure capital allocation standpoint, you all started buying Bitcoin at a dollar and have continued to buy since then. Now, the reason why I bring that up is because there's a lot of people who discovered Bitcoin early on. Maybe they didn't have the conviction to buy a lot or along the way they said, hey, I bought it at a dollar. I went to $5, then they sold it.

And so what is the thing that has kept you kind of so convicted to not only see it early and have the conviction that this could work, but also to ride the most volatile asset over the last decade to what became the best performing asset over the last decade as well? Yeah, you know, Bitcoin has the ability to work on you, the investor, in many different ways. And part of it is psychological, and part of it is just from a pure money management perspective. How much do you want to allocate? How much do you want to go into this? And as you get deeper into it, you realize that other people that are talking about it, their arguments are terrible. And that adds to my conviction. So, for example, I don't want to go on

a huge Peter Schiff diatribe here, but his arguments are terrible. And I told Peter to buy it. I sat down with him at his house in Connecticut for a couple of hours and walked him through it when Bitcoin was under $10. And every single year since then, over 10 years, he still, he mentally can't get into it. And when I see somebody like that, you know, I'm open to any argument against Bitcoin. I listen to everybody every single day. Give me the argument against it. And every time I hear something, it doesn't work. The FUD, it never works. And it just increases my conviction. And it increases the idea of what is the total addressable market of this asset class? And certainly Michael Saylor has done a great job in saying that melting ice

cube on the balance sheet. You look at the corporate world, there's trillions of dollars. you look at the money management world, there's trillions of more dollars. You look at it versus gold and is it going to capture part or all of gold as monetization? That's a $9 to $10 trillion market cap. Yeah, that's all happening. So the price is still cheap. And then as a money manager, you figure, I got to own it. You got to keep nibbling at it. It's still cheap. Bitcoin at this price is still incredibly cheap. Yeah. You came from a fascination and interest in gold. obviously now have pretty much hard right into Bitcoin for a very long time now, probably one of the earliest people I know of that had conviction and held on. When you think about

gold today, is it just writing on the wall? It's over? Do you think that it still has a place in some people's portfolio? How do you think of that specific asset? Well, I think we're seeing a migration out of gold into Bitcoin and the ETF market proved that. The money flows, the reports you're getting from brokerages tell you that money is being dumped from the gold ETFs and moving into Bitcoin, Bitcoin surrogates, GBTC, and other areas. So we're seeing that migration happen right now. And it makes sense because it does everything gold does, but it does it a lot better.

It's absolutely scarce, whereas gold is only relatively scarce. It's obviously more portable. It's more divisible. It's more useful. and it's unconfiscatable which is gold doesn't have that attribute people can confiscate your gold it's cheaper to own than gold you know gold has insurance costs it has storage costs it has verification costs you know every time you do a major gold play you've got to get the gold verified by a third party with bitcoin the transaction is the verification i mean that's a phrase that

i picked up on early on and as a former stock broker you know you realize that a lot of the cost that goes into brokering is in verification of the transaction there's a huge what's called the back office just hundreds of people back there verifying trades and doing all the paperwork with bitcoin that completely taken out of the equation the transaction is the verification that right there you know eliminates an enormous amount of our current financial system uh so you just uh compared to gold it just again it just stacks up it gets better and better uh and i think that trend will continue certainly in the millennial and gen x they're totally unsold on bitcoin they're never gonna adopt gold uh and in the only buyers left for gold are really the sovereigns

you know russia china and others and there i think one when one of those uh sovereigns breaks rank And it says, you know, we're putting Bitcoin on our balance sheet. That's just going to be another nail in the coffin of gold and another huge boom in Bitcoin. So we're seeing a once in a thousand years migration pump from the perception of the premier store of value, number one global top tier money into something new. And it happens to be Bitcoin. So before we talk a little bit more about the geopolitical landscape, which I think is probably the most fascinating conversation right now. You were so early, but you also tried to orange pill a ton of people. You mentioned Peter.

Are there other folks that you went to that people either don't know about or folks that you had conversations with that just didn't get it, still don't get it? Like any stories from the very early days that would surprise people? Right. You know, as I've said many times, I was really hard trying to get Russell Brand, who's a famous guy in the UK, into Bitcoin. you know, he was not really able to get what it was all about. This was, again, when it was, you know, 50 bucks or so. I gave him some Bitcoin. I don't know what he ever did with it. I'm pretty

sure he lost it. I saw him recently on his podcast asking people to explain to him what Bitcoin is, you know. We had, if you look at Kaiser Report, we had several shows in his actual flat in London talking about Bitcoin. So he must have amnesia. My friend, Alec Baldwin, who I knew from New York University, when Bitcoin was under 10 bucks, 20 bucks, you know, I was talking to him about it and trying to get him into it. Alex Jones, of course, when Bitcoin was under five bucks, I offered to give him 10,000 Bitcoin to give to his audience as to spread the word because, you know, back then in 2011, a lot of people were giving away thousands of coins as a way to spread the word you know when it was cheap like that it was easy to do so he alex jones uh he

rejected the idea and said no no that's that's that's a that's some kind of uh cia coin i don't want it so he rejected it he rejected that offer of 10 000 coins um and the list goes on from from there you know everyone i met i was trying to get and get orange pilled as we do and i guess those are some of the celebrity instances how much bitcoin do you think you've given away over the years i don't want to know how much you have but how much do you think you gave away in the early days when you were trying to help people spread the word or drive adoption it tens of thousands of bitcoin thousands thousands i mean when you think back to that worth it well You never have enough.

I mean, it's, you know, what can I say? It's in some, you know, the Bitcoin phenomenon, ultimately, you know, I like to think about Buckminster Fuller. You know, Buckminster Fuller was a visionary thinker, and he made a decision early on in his life that he wouldn't do anything in life that wasn't beneficial for humanity. And he created the geodesic dome. he created the first electric car or one of the first electric cars and he thought strategically about humanity and bitcoin is something that's pro-humanity is paul tudor jones even said that

gold is a bet on disaster bitcoin is a bet on humanity that it's going to get better so i mean this is part of this is being involved in something that's going to improve humanity improve um what our experience as humans you know on this earth because bitcoin d monetizes violence whereas fit fiat money really monetizes violence you know the the petrodollar and the whole war industry and it's all based on fiat money and money printing and the ponzi scheme of money printing it's a very violent area fiat money is is the source of violence bitcoin is demonetization of violence so in that context you're like well you know i'm doing something i'm part of a bigger thing and and with bitcoin everyone who gets involved to it and with a big in a big way

really learns to get humble and say you know what this is bigger than me and there's something potentially that could be great for humanity here people who are narcissistic egomaniacs have a big big difficulty getting into Bitcoin. I think that's the Nassim Taleb story. He's rightfully proud of the work he's done with his books, etc. But he developed this narcissism that prevented him, it prevents him from seeing the humanity of Bitcoin. And so he's essentially committed professional suicide with his antics of the past few months. And we see that with Nouriel Roubini or Paul Krugman. They've committed professional suicide because they don't have the humility to approach Bitcoin on that level. So to answer your question, sure, I gave away

thousands of coins, but it's part of the journey that if it ends up being beneficial to humanity as a whole, then I think that that's something we can all be proud of. I completely agree. And I think people probably don't thank you enough, along with a bunch of other people from early in the day of the work you did to drive adoption. Frankly, we can't know for sure, but we may not be here with some of those efforts. So it's pretty incredible. When you look towards today, we talked a little bit about geopolitical landscape. We had El Salvador obviously embrace Bitcoin and create this legislation around legal tender. I'm assuming that with the nice El Salvador hat there, I'm assuming that it is your opinion, but correct me

if I'm wrong, that this is just one of many countries that will ultimately make this move. How do you see this playing out? And is there a number of countries or a specific country that ends up being like an inflection point or a tipping point where there's no kind of point of return? Yeah, well, the game theory, it's baked into the protocol. So the protocol is essentially a three-sided piece of the protocol with the developers, the speculators, miners, and the incentive is perfectly balanced to create this uh beautiful perfect money that has within it this game theoretical aspect that's a track that keeps moving up the the ladder in terms of attracting more more enemies if you will you know bitcoin is attract is built is designed to attract

attacks and um we saw it uh play out recently in the geopolitics of mining in the mining concentration. Remember, the idea was, oh, China is too concentrated, there's too much mining in China. We saw that resolve itself by the distribution of mining, etc. And so, as we move up to get into a nation like El Salvador, then El Salvador has been the victim of U.S. foreign policy for decades, as has been the entire region. The U.S. essentially treats that entire region as a vassal state. They use it for, as Jack Mollers eloquently describes, you know, the dynamics politically between latin america in the u.s and how the remittance model is really just it's kind of a slavery model and it's gross it's disgusting so uh jack mallers goes there he spends three

months in el salvador and he is jack is so fully you know within the bitcoin ethos and you know him you've met him i know you guys are pretty tight and we've met him and his family and his dad, who's a thoroughbred from Chicago, futures trading, and the whole family is completely inculcated in the ethos here. And he went there and essentially orange-pilled the president. And then the president now is dropping this huge bomb of Bitcoin as legal tender, and that immediately spread throughout the region. So now you've got eight countries in total in the region that could go to bitcoin as legal tender then on the other side of the world you've got nigeria which uh is going hyper bitcoinization uh companies like paxful uh which

is huge there and so now the country has also kind of come out and said we can't stop it uh we don't know you know we just got to go with the punch so there's nigeria with 200 million people uh huge mobile phone penetration they're going to go fully bitcoinized so these two areas are exploding in bitcoin and that and that's part of the game theory is that they want to become um they're competitive you know this is the thing about america america thinks that it's really this entrepreneurial super competitive place that's running the world it it's when you compare it to like a nigeria with the average age is less than 25 and you've got people now hyper bitcoin asized and there are they're out hustling like unbelievably every single day they're they're

like mad if you've ever been to countries africa as i have or the middle east as i have or different countries all over the world there's a different perception of what constitutes hustle right i mean these people are mad hustling absolutely 24 7 working it and now they've got bitcoin so these economies are going to grow really fast uh pump and that's going to attract and the game theory is it attracts other countries and other people and they're on the phone and they We're we're doing it. So that's how the Bitcoin revolution is taking hold is totally peaceful without a shot fired. The Bitcoin revolution will take hold. And so I think that Africa is as a continent. You see it spreading wildly in Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria.

You know, that's where this is. This is really where the huge revolution is taking place. And then Latin America, I think the U.S. is one of the last countries to really get into it because we're the beneficiary of having the world reserve currency, the U.S. dollar. You know, we're basically running this colonial U.S. dollar hegemony nightmare for decades, certainly since 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window and it went on the petrodollar. So the U.S. is kind of the last country to get on board, I think, sadly. And we see that being played out in Washington, D.C. right now. You know, Bitcoin hit Congress, you know, Bitcoin went to Washington and we're seeing the dynamics play out. And so you stack up, stack what's happening in Congress this week versus Nigeria, versus El Salvador. And you see that. And Senator Lummis makes this excellent point.

You know, she says the U.S. is way behind. Right. That's exactly right. The U.S. is way behind. So is it going to catch up? Well, if it is going to catch up, it's got to start making some moves fast, quick. If you were the US, what would you do right now? Is it a, hey, go spend a bunch of money in the infrastructure bill to set up mining operations? Do you make Bitcoin legal tender? Do you buy Bitcoin and put it in the balance sheet? What would you do if Max Keiser is president and wants Bitcoin to be successful?

What does Max Keiser do? Well, I think I was the one who coined the phrase hash war. uh maybe two and a half years ago that countries would get into competitive hashing and because the idea is that government's not going to ban bitcoin the smart governments are going to start hoarding and and mining bitcoin so to the extent that the u.s becomes competitive they would have to immediately start to underwrite mining right so i mean uh that's what you'd have to do right away. And that's the way to build a solid economy going forward. So I would start directing funds toward mining. And I would obviously look at a place like Texas, where

the cost of energy is competitive globally, and build that out right away. He who has the Bitcoin makes the laws. And the countries that are really active in this the most are going to be extremely happy that they did. Those countries that lag behind are going to be part of the new second world. We're reordering what constitutes a first world nation. The first world nation will be heavily into Bitcoin, and then the second and third world will be lagging in Bitcoin. So if the US wants to be competitive, they need to immediately start directing resources in multiple ways to start to accumulate and mine Bitcoin. My brothers have a couple of questions for you, but before I let them ask one more for you is the difference between the federal government

and the states. It seems like states seem to be taking the lead here. Is that a good thing? Should we encourage more states to do that? How do you see the difference between the two and how that plays out for Bitcoin? Right. Well, the US has an advantage over Europe in this regard, that the states have autonomy to a large degree, and they can push through laws and make big differences. And we saw that in the marijuana industry, the states got onto it first, and then it's heading up to the federal level. In Europe, though, it's generally more of an autocracy top down from the EC, the European Commission, and there's very little room to maneuver. And Europe is in a really bad shape pump. I mean, I see in Germany right now,

the entire yield curve is negative. And many, many banks, almost all the banks now are charging customers negative interest rates to hold their cash. Europe is in deep, deep problems. But in the US, as you point out, you do have the states. The states are somewhat autonomous and they can take the ball and run with it. And we're seeing it in Wyoming. In Miami, the mayor is pro-Bitcoin and that has a huge impact. So we can see if Wyoming suddenly steals a lot of business from delaware where a lot of companies incorporate in delaware and they start grabbing that whole business and you see a migration to wyoming that would have an impact uh the miami economy is set to do well based on the bitcoin um in um you know activity there and austin texas is becoming a huge

bitcoin hub texas is becoming huge texas if the governor of texas could could really break away and say, we're going to start mining Bitcoin on the state level in a big way. And it's a big state. They're attracting congressional seats. They're pulling congressional seats away from California because so many people are leaving California. And they're becoming more of a political powerhouse. And if they go full on Bitcoin, you know, that's going to be a huge difference. I mean, maybe that's where I would put my efforts, you know, more strategically is to get one big state fully onto Bitcoin instead of trying to get the federal government onto it. And I think that's a good point. I think that's a good idea.

Joe, what questions do you have for Max since you're the favorite pomp? I was just going to say, Max and I are already friends after that intro where he gave me a shout out. I appreciate that. Max, you're someone who was buying Bitcoin at a dollar. You said earlier that you continue to buy Bitcoin even at the prices of today, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000. What is something when you look 10, 20, 30, even 100 years down the road, what is the bear case for you? What is something that keeps you up at night? What could go wrong? What stops total adoption? Is there any scenario where you see Bitcoin doesn't become the global reserve currency? Here's my bear case, is that humans will become extinct before they realize

the benefits of bitcoin and let me explain big nothing's going to stop bitcoin you know it's on its own vector and it was the discovery of uh absolutely scarce synthetic digital commodity that can only happen once everything else but that's not bitcoin is a security and should be looked at as such and it's powered in a way that it can now grab that energy from wherever it gets it through solar, et cetera. It's almost to some degree self-aware to some degree. I don't want to go too far down that path. But humans on planet Earth seem to be on another path of self-destruction. I mean, humans seem to be really anxious to get into another world war. We seem to be on a course to tragically destroy whatever biosphere we have left. So the

humans seem to be really messed up so you know the bare case is that humans actually go extinct while bitcoin's still powering forward that's the bare case the bare case is that humans never figure out that they can solve the problem that they're experiencing here by adopting a bitcoin standard that's the bare case john yeah max thanks for doing this nice to meet you um i'm also on twitter if you want to give me a follow but so you started learning about bitcoin around 10 years ago around a decade ago where do you see bitcoin going in the next 10 years right i see it i see fiat money all fiat money for the past 300 years has gone to zero or lost 99 of its purchasing power fiat money has never worked uh and and so now we see something

that's come along that's going to eat gold's lunch. So that gold Bitcoin competition is very active. So that means that Bitcoin is going to eclipse gold. That means that it's a $10 to $11 trillion asset, right? So that's a huge move still to come. And then if you look at the bond market, the bond market's in horrible shape. It's all 0% and going negative. So you could see a migration out of the bond market the bond market's a 200 trillion dollar global market so that that money could come into bitcoin uh the total addressable market for planet earth of stuff that people invest in property precious metals stocks bonds etc it's like 400 trillion dollars it's enormous uh you know that's the total addressable market of bitcoin there's nobody there's no you there's

no reason why anyone who who is investing in something as a store of value would not want bitcoin and there's no way to show that it's not superior to anything out there as a store of value in terms of the penetration that it will make in the market going you know the next five years uh i mean the the heavyweight asset over the past several hundred years has been the ming vase you know and as a stock broker you'd always hear the story about the best performing asset ever has been the ming vase the ming dynasty vase has been you know compounding at a great rate for like 400 years you know it's been the the heavyweight champion people still buy the main vase you know bitcoin will eclipse the ming vase you know it'll be the champion heavyweight

compounded annual interest return uh of any asset ever in the history of the world it'll outperform the fabergé egg it'll outperform the van gogh it'll outperform a madigliani it'll outperform everything and that that that attract because it's perfect and and and so that is going to keeps attracting people into it it's the black hole of bitcoin is sucking in every single possible uh value of anything everywhere uh and so that's where we're heading and and it's it's unstoppable it's unconfiscatable it's uncensorable and it's available you know you can still buy under under 100 000 a coin that's a freaking bargain max my brother john has one more question for you and then i got a couple to finish up uh prepare yourself though because i don't want you to

hurt yourself when you answer this max i got my money gun come on come at me come at me I think he's sweet. So my question is, I don't own any, but I know some of my friends do own Dogecoin. What are your thoughts around it? What would you tell them? What mistakes are they making? He's 25, Max, and a bunch of his 25-year-old friends, give or take, are buying Doge. right well understand that uh you know bitcoin as i said before it was the discovery of an absolutely scarce synthetic digital commodity that is perfect in many ways and everything else is is less than or even everything else can be seen as a security and everything else is centralized to some degree right doge is centralized to the degree that it revolves around a character a charismatic character elon musk said that's a that's a point of centralization

if elon musk were hit by a bus today you know doge would collapse because there's no there's no competitive um reason why you would own uh doge over over bitcoin uh because it doesn't offer anything um that in in that sense so it has a it has a flaw a fatal flaw of it's over centralized everything that is not bitcoin is either absolutely centralized like ethereum now has become absolutely centralized or it's relatively centralized uh in depending on how you look at it so there there there is no um there there there is there is no happy ending for doge owners um the the but this is a the learning curve that people go on there's no way that people are gonna not decide that they know better that this looks cheap or they think you know the person at

the center of it is a charismatic genius and therefore they're going to participate and they're going to get wrecked so getting wrecked is part of the learning curve and you know that's true of anything you know the wright brothers had a lot of failures and um every major entrepreneur you know you're you you entrepreneurialism is not about being successful it's about dealing with failure because you know for every success you have many many many failures uh and yet how you deal with failure determines your success that's so you know you're gonna have you're gonna get wrecked with those you're gonna get wrecked and you're gonna learn from it and you're gonna end up in Bitcoin. So you can save the tragedy by just going directly into Bitcoin now. But I mean,

there's that show, remember, on TV called Jackass, where guys would drive a car into a cliff and set themselves on fire. That's what people do. They like to get wrecked sometimes. So that's what people do. You mentioned that Ethereum is centralized, and I'm scared to give you the floor, but explain what you mean by that and maybe the way that you view the smart contract platforms and the inevitability that they all end up being centralized. Well, it's not decentralized for a few different reasons. First of all, you don't have the ability to run your own node like you do in Bitcoin. It's a huge albatross. It's not workable. Nobody runs their own node. They're all outsourced to centralized locations. A lot of them are on AWS,

America, Amazon Web Services. Number two, we know that transactions are reversible. That's happened before. That doesn't tell me it's decentralized. That tells me it's more centralized. They keep coming out with these upgrades. That's not decentralization. That's centralization.

They're moving to proof of stake. Proof of stake is just fiat money version. Anything proof of stake is not any different than the fiat money world where your stake essentially gives you governance priority, which is very similar to what we have in the fiat money world. So you go down the list and you're like, you know what, this is actually not a decentralized protocol. I'm sorry, this is, yeah, it's not decentralized, it's centralized. And this is true. You can make the same case for just about anything else out there, everything that's not Bitcoin. Give me five minutes and I'll tell you the point of centralization that disqualifies it

decentralized protocol to the extent that Bitcoin is decentralized. So that's just the beginning of that argument. I think that you do a fantastic job articulating this. You've been doing it for a decade. But what everyone wants to know is price prediction for this year, price prediction for 2030. What do you got for us? Well, my 2021 prediction is still the same as it was on the last day of last year and that's 220 000 for bitcoin in 2021 so i'm still holding to that prediction and um after you know i mean i'm using this four-year halving cycle where you see these types of moves and it's kind of fitting into that scenario right now and um following 2022 let's say getting into the 2023 2024 period at the moment my feeling is that it might not be a great year

actually we might see more of one of our historic pullback years that we've all i've been through three 90 corrections in bitcoin going back to 2011 you know i've seen we haven't seen you know those are very very damaging um or you know to one's spirit but nevertheless um for 2021 now I'm still very, very wildly bullish for 2021. I think we're now starting to see this crossover from the 200-day moving average. You're starting to see that the Washington, D.C. experience has shown people that, you know what, Washington's actually powerless against this thing. You know, everyone is hoping, oh, you know, we're going to outlaw, we're going to ban

Bitcoin. And they all went there and they had their meetings and they had their votes and they had their sessions. And then Bitcoin, you know, tick-tock, next block. It doesn't stop. And I think people are scratching their head like, wait a minute. You mean the U.S. government really can't stop this thing? You know, I'm going to buy more.

So we're seeing the U.S. kind of fail in its attempt to stop it. And that's bullish. And so that's going to offer a lot of price support. The Michael Saylors of the world, you know, he is he's orange pilling trillions of dollars worth of cash on the sidelines. You know, Michael Saylor is, you know, has got the best pitch. I'll say that. He's got the best pitch of anybody, which is great because he's got a lot of money and a lot of Bitcoin. So we've got like Ted Williams in the batter's box right now, you know, or Gordie Howe or Wayne Gretzky or whoever you want to use.

I'll use a Joe sports analogy because I know he's into sports. but you know we've got the babe ruth of uh you know pitching uh bitcoin pitchers uh you know there and doing his job and that means a lot of companies all over the world the dominoes will fall just like countries will fall i think one all we need is one other country to announce bitcoin legal tender in a big way or one major company with multi-trillion dollars on the assets balance sheet that they're going to go Bitcoin. Only use one more in 2021 and you're going to see a 40 to

50,000 point gap dollar gap in a week. So 2030, what's the price prediction? It's a good decade from now. Yeah, again, you get into a different kind of thinking when

you look over that period pump because because we're talking about a world where fiat money as we know it is no more and that's a very very different world it's a you know it's it's it's a world where you have consensus that's built into the bitcoin protocol applied to society at large and countries in the world that's that's we're headed so it means uh just a completely different world beyond the price i think we're getting to a point in by 2030 i think people the last thing people will ever talk about when they talk about bitcoin is the price because they'll just be living inside the protocol so to speak

they'll be they'll that protocol the genius of the incentive model the protocol will will will bring in our society you know we we all have this kind of uh not to get too metaphysical here but we all live kind of with this common unconscious or combine you know the the collective unconscious that's a completely unexplored area we know as a human species we're all one but we act as if we're different and we're always in contention okay put the perfect consensus protocol into the societal mix of humans and see what happens and i think we're going to see war and violence completely weeded weeded out of the situation we're heading to a very loving and peaceful future that's where we're headed and within 10 years potentially so all the prophets from all

the ages going back a thousand years who spoke about potential in these terms they weren't wrong uh but they never had bitcoin i think that you are not only directionally correct through the end of this year very bullish i do think there's a point in the future who knows if it's five years or 50 years from now where the u.s dollar exchange price doesn't matter anymore uh and i think one piece that when people hear your um kind of monologue will focus on is price but the idea that this is all done peacefully, right? Basically, this asset with no bombs, no bullets, no soldiers, no anything is going to be able to bring financial security and really, frankly, close the wealth inequality gap in a material way, because you take away that debasement of

the currency. There is a philanthropic element to this that I've said before, you know, will outweigh all philanthropy combined because you actually from a first principle standpoint get at the root cause of what drives the wealth inequality who drives a lot of the violence etc i think that's exactly what you're articulating here yeah if you ask anybody in the in the anybody anywhere you know what will give what price do you assign to the love you have of your significant other your wife your husband or your family what what what price would you give that they'd be like that's crazy you know it's priceless i wouldn't give a price to it it's beyond price and people understand that on an individual level with them their loved ones their family now apply that

globally there's no price to it and we could potentially be entering it you know the bitcoin singularity which is approaching within the next 10 years is a love bomb essentially that unites everybody on that that base layer of humanity that is love that we've all been we all know about it and we all we we have it's it's spoken about through uh art and through even science you know science is an expression of love in many ways you know i think copernicus or galileo or einstein they loved what they did and the the pro and they changed the way we think right and einstein introduced an idea that completely changed the way we orient ourselves to the universe or buckminster fuller or galileo or copernicus and the artists like a picasso or the other artists

We change the way we see as not only an individual, but almost as a globe. So now take perfect money, take the Bitcoin protocol. And the most fundamental aspect of anyone's daily experience is the interaction they have using some kind of medium of exchange or a store of value. That's how we quantify our lives once we made the transition from, you know, from just a nomadic tribe out there wandering around. You know, I saw something very, very interesting, Pomp, that according to archaeological studies, it was approximately 400,000 years ago when the idea of fire went around the world like fire. So, in other words, the population of the world was all separated, all tribal. And then the tribes started to press in on each other, and there was a lot of mistrust.

They didn't really trust each other. But then that crowding in on each other got to the point where they were kind of like forced to consider the other tribes around. And so, the idea that one tribe had, which was using fire constructively, using fire to cook, using fire, taming fire, caught on. And it went global. and so the similarly with bitcoin you know it's it's it started off very tribal you know the the geeks the nerds uh the freaks uh the cypher punks with with bitcoin uh and now it's getting to the point where it it becomes so obviously utilitarian so obviously beneficial such a leap for humanity that it's undeniable it's unstoppable it's unconfiscatable it's uncensorable

and and so that's the moment and the threshold we're on you know you me are in an incredible moment in not only history uh in terms of the last few hundred years but in the in the history of our species i mean why were we born to witness this i mean we are seeing something i i remember 1969 when men landed on the moon yeah you know that was something that took a hundred thousand years to figure out and and here we are in 2021 and we're about to plant our flag on monetization of the global unconscious on the base layer of love with bitcoin and we're gonna have a fucking party okay before i let you go uh you have a whole bunch of stuff going on you got podcast you've got the show and then you've got this party coming up uh maybe start in reverse

order where's the party when is it how do people get tickets to it tell us about that and tell us about the uh the content right so i've been doing these parties um maximalist parties i think bitcoin maximalism or so-called toxic maximalism gets a bad name i think there's a place i'm i'm I'm trying to like almost brand toxic maximalism. I got another hat here. I got this from Samson Mao, this toxic maximalist hat. But I think there's a place for it. And so we've been doing these parties.

We did one in Austin recently. This next one's in Phoenix on August 19th. You can get tickets. If you follow me on Twitter, there's always links to the tickets. There's still a few tickets left. so it's um it's like a meetup meets um like a punk punk rock i mean it's like it's a the bar is open uh you know it's it's a conference without the without the conference it's just the party part of the conference so we have uh like will reeves from fold it's going to be there talking about

fold we've got other people in the bitcoin space that are going to be there we've got the local bitcoin crowd is showing up to this so it's a way to go into town get all the bitcoin folks there have a huge meetup but add some booze and i do like a 30 minute rage where i just go nuts for 30 minutes uh which i've been doing for many years and it's developed its own unique art form the rage as an art form uh so we've been doing more and more of these and it's called uh you know this is kind of the title of it you know we we go after elon because uh you know he's kind of a clown in a lot of ways and he said some nasty things about uh about el salvador and about node operators and you know i we have some fun with it but anyway that's coming up on august 19th

in phoenix tickets are available all right and then what's the uh show on rt and uh and the podcast right so the podcast is the orange pill podcast on youtube that's max and stacy and we do two of those a week sometimes three a week uh the rt show is still going it's uh on rt you can find it on youtube it's been going on for 13 years we've done over 1700 episodes three or four years ago they started to dub that show into spanish and now it's the most watched show on the entire rt network both english and spanish it gets 20 million viewers a week uh it gets a lot of times one or two million views on youtube it's it's uh and as you know we've been talking about bitcoin this whole time uh so it's we've had everybody who's ever you know the

players on bitcoin we've always had them going back many years and um so that's that's the the rt show and if people want to follow you on twitter for obviously all of the articulate content that you have there where can we send them yes well admittedly a lot of the things i say i'm doing twitter are uh you know not don't qualify as uh articulate but nevertheless uh my twitter handle is max kaiser stacy herbert is stacy herbert absolute creative geniuses both of you listen thank you so much for uh for taking the time to do this people absolutely enjoyed it and uh i think that the same message you've been saying for a decade more and more people need to hear it so thanks so much for uh for all the efforts you and stacy both had early on

and the work you guys continue to do. We all just appreciate it. Well, it's great to meet John Pompliano. Well, if you don't follow him, he's going to be really heartbroken. I'm definitely going to follow him. Prepare to get a thousand new followers, John. All right, Max.

Thank you so much for doing this. We'll definitely do it again in the future. All right. Thanks so much, Pom. See you. Bye, guys.