The Pomp Podcast - Bitcoin Crashes to $89K — What Happens Next? | Anthony & John Pompliano

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Anthony and John Pompliano dive into bitcoin’s latest price action — from the sharp sell-off and rising bear-market fears to what long-term investors should actually do right now. Anthony gets personal, breaking down how he invests, how he thinks about buying vs. selling, and why he separates the “gambling table” from the “long-term lounge.”======================Simple Mining makes Bitcoin mining simple and accessible for everyone. We offer a premium white glove hosting service, helping you maximize the profitability of Bitcoin mining. For more information on Simple Mining or to get started mining Bitcoin, visit https://www.simplemining.io/======================DeFi Development Corp. (Nasdaq: DFDV) is pioneering a new category in crypto investing with the first Solana-focused Digital Asset Treasury. DFDV offers public market exposure to Solana’s growth, yield, and onchain innovation, offering investors a leveraged way to participate in a trillion-dollar opportunity. Learn more about why Solana and why DFDV at ⁠SolanaTo10K.com⁠.======================Bitwise is one of the largest and fastest-growing crypto asset managers, with more than $15 billion in client assets across an expanding suite of investment solutions—including the world’s largest crypto index fund—plus products spanning Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, and crypto equities. In addition to managing assets, Bitwise helps investors stay informed about the fast-moving crypto market. Every week, CIO Matt Hougan breaks down what’s happening in crypto in five minutes or less. Read the latest at https://experts.bitwiseinvestments.com/cio-memos. Certain Bitwise investment products may be subject to the extreme risks associated with investing in crypto assets. Visit https://bitwiseinvestments.com/disclosures to learn more.======================Timestamps: 0:00 – Intro1:17 – Bitcoin: what is going on?8:31 – Comparing past cycles & long-term lounge mindset13:25 – Thinking through macro, liquidity, & gold18:18 – How average investors should think about bitcoin30:38 – Thinking through volatility & investing strategies36:51 – Will bitcoin be above or below $90K at end of the year?

Volvo is leaving the chaos of rush hour outside. Start by settling into your saddle-stitched Nappa leather seats. Notice the open space around you. Uncluttered, elegant, intentional, warm ambient light, and natural wood details to ground you. This is Volvo's Scandinavian sanctuary for every journey. Learn more at volvocars.ca. Optional features mentioned. what's up everyone this is anthony pompliano many of you know me as pomp you're listening to the pomp podcast which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them

for hours while i ask questions in an effort to learn so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform watch episodes on youtube and tell your friends and family about the podcast my goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. 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. What's going

on, guys. Today, we got a great episode with John Pompliano. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, the price crashing, whether the bear market is here and what you can do in your portfolio. And I get a little personal. I explain how I invest, how I think about buying and selling assets, and also how I think about portfolio construction and why there's a difference between the gambling table and the long-term lounge. You know where you'll find me. All that and much more in this conversation with John Pompliano. All right, John, what's the first topic. All right. Bitcoin, what is going on? Blood in the streets, $89,000 last night. People are very worried, rightfully so. There's a lot to unpack, but first we got to just say sentiment is

horrible. It's atrocious. It's never been this bad. You can go and you can look at hacks. You can look at what happened in 2020 on March 12th. You can look at FTX collapsing, all that stuff. That was all bad. I actually think sentiment right now may be worse. People were so bulled up. We're headed up. Remember, all those things happened when there was obvious catalyst. 2020, there's a pandemic. Everyone goes sit at home. You're getting locked in your house. Fearful, but you at least knew why. FTX, we'd gone down all of 2022, and then we had the final puke. FTX failed, right? All the chaos, et cetera. Here, the difference where unhappiness lives is the difference between expectations and reality and the expectation was we're going higher we're going

to 150 200 250 300 a million people are saying crazy numbers and instead what we got is we touched 126 on october 6th and bam we went down 30 from there and because everyone was bulled up everyone was excited that liquidation all that leverage that was excitement that was enthusiasm that was euphoria this was right in our face now second thing is i forget who showed this but i saw online. We can go, we can look at the last two 30% drawdowns. One took like 170 days. Another one took like 44 days. I'm sorry, 72 days. This one took like 44. So all of a sudden we're getting compression. It's happening faster and faster. We're getting these drawdowns at 30% during this cycle. What does that mean? If you go down 30% in 40 days, obviously fear is going to take hold.

And then it becomes this reflexive cycle. You're fearful. I'm fearful. They're fearful. Oh no, sell, sell, sell. People start selling, price goes down faster. You're more fearful. I'm more fearful, et cetera. So that's first. Sentiment is atrocious. It's in the toilet. Throw it out. Second, whales are selling, man. Now, whales could be OGs, could be people who have held Bitcoin for a long time, or they could just be people who bought Bitcoin recently. But people with large stacks, they had been selling. Now, one of the most interesting stats is short-term profit or loss if you look at coins that are on chain you can see how long does someone hold them for short term is usually determined at 155 days right 155 days so if you acquired something last

155 days a coin that you acquired 95 or more of those coins in the red underwater losing money that's really bad for sentiment all those people who are buying the last 155 days they're all underwater. Short-term loss, not good. On top of that, we do have older coins that are at least switching hands or moving. Now, does it mean that people are selling? Not always. They could just be moving it to a different wallet. They can move it to a different custodian. They could be upgrading the wallet, all kinds of stuff that could be happening. But we know they're moving, and a lot of times that is for selling. And so as people see that distribution happening, they say, hey, the ogs they're getting out now market is finally liquid enough there's finally regulatory clarity

there's finally things where they can go and they can take that money they can put it into a bank etc so like there's a lot of reasons why people are starting to do this but here's the thing here's the good news bitcoin fell 30 you know what it did chef's kiss right off of the cme gap that usually is a pretty good sturdy little uh floor there that's interesting second thing those whales those big bad whales hit 89 000 you know what they did let me come back for some more they started gobbling up bitcoin huge spike in the number of whales that started buying in the last 48 hours again doesn't mean that we can't go lower just means that the whales are back baby all of a sudden they say wait a second there's a price that i finally think is too cheap

right if you think of an asset the way finance works is there's an asset if it appreciates a lot in value eventually it reaches such a crazy level valuation wise that it is so overvalued that some people say i know more no moss no moss no moss we have the white flag can't buy it at that level right same thing happens on the other side it crashes i'd say everyone would you buy bitcoin at a dollar yeah okay would you buy it at 10 100 1000 10 000 50 000 there's some level where you're like, yo, this is stupid. I got to buy it. For the whales, it looks like just under 90,000, bam, they're back in the market. So let's see what happens. But the big question, is this time different? Is the four-year cycle over? There's people who I really respect that

think are very smart. They're saying, hey, no, it's not. October was the top. We're down only now. We're going to 60 or 70,000. Great. There's people I know who really respect who say, there's a head fake. All of a sudden, we're going to come ripping right back. When we come back, people are going to realize the four-year cycle was dumb, doesn't really exist. It got broke when Wall Street showed up, and now we're just going to keep grinding up. That could be true too. Maybe both are true. Here's a little scenario for you. There's a guy on Twitter who I saw he was talking about, hit 126, dropped 30%. 30% is a normal drawdown in a bull market. Drop 30%, chef's kiss right off of that CME gap. Well, step back in, go right back over 100K. Everyone goes,

hey, that was just a little cleansing. We're ready to rock and roll, go higher. But then Bitcoin says, ah, just kidding. I'm really going to a bear market. We go to 60 or 70. I have no clue. I have no clue what's going to happen. What I know is that the Bitcoin that I'm holding, my goal is to give that to my grandchildren. There have been times in the past where unfortunately I've had to sell some to buy or to pay taxes or do something right where I I literally had to do it every time I've ever sold Bitcoin throughout the decade or so that I've been doing this. It's like,

you're doing it and you're just like, this is so dumb. I know I'm going to regret this, but you see, you get a lot of life, man. And I think that's what a lot of the OGs are starting to see is like, yo man,

like, okay, cool. If you got a billion dollars of Bitcoin, but you live in a studio apartment and don't have a car, I'm not saying that's what they're doing. Right. But for illustrative effect,

You think maybe if you take 5 million bucks 10 million bucks 100 million dollars and you get a cool spot Quality of life, right? So we're gonna see what happens. But uh, everyone just chill out Here's a good piece of advice for you long-term investors should not take advice from short-term speculators bar Put that just put that on your wall If you're a long-term investor stop worrying about what the short-term speculators are saying And if you're a short-term speculator stop wearing what the long-term investors are saying you're playing two different games One of you's playing t-ball the other's playing major league baseball You guys can figure out which is which and so just play your game

If you're a long-term investor keep accumulating bitcoin keep dollar cost averaging and hold a great asset for a long time You're the next buffett. You're good If you're a short-term speculator, hey get out the charts man, let's go. Let's start drawing the astrology lines Let's figure out where's the thing going in the short term. Some guys are really good at that some are not that's not my game. When you think about the cycles, right? 2018, 2019, it ran up to that 18, $20,000 mark, went all the way up to, I think, 70,000, give or take a few thousand, and then all the way back down to around where it was in the all-time high before the pandemic. Do you see something similar happen where, hey, we draw all the way down to around $70,000 again,

and then that's kind of the baseline? Well, one of the things that's really interesting is, So 2018, 2019, we fell significantly from 20,000 in 20, let's see, in 2017, we topped out at 20,000. We dropped back down to 3,200 in 2018, right? Bottom there. Then we kind of went sideways and recovered and went all the way up to your point, 69,000. And we dropped back down to like 16,000. Now, wait a second.

We dropped to 16,000. The prior all-time high was 20,000. We had never seen Bitcoin drop back below its previous all-time high ever. Not a lot of data points. It's not like it happened a hundred times, right? There's like three data points, but we've never seen that before. Okay, violated that rule.

Now all of a sudden people say, well, it can drop back below its previous all-time high. Went 70,000, right? That was the previous all-time high now. Now we're up at 126. Could it drop back to 70? Sure. Could it drop below 70?

Sure. What's your time horizon? That's what people got to ask themselves. What is your time horizon? The US government likes Bitcoin. Like everyone in the cabinet has got Bitcoin. People who hated Bitcoin are finally capitulating, saying, you know what? I like Bitcoin.

Larry Fink is the CMO of Bitcoin. It is game on. Who cares what happens in the short term? Don't use leverage. Don't be a fool. As long as you live by that, you're good. Chill out. Everything's going to be fine.

If your house price, anyone ever go on Zillow? If you own a house and you look at it every day, it bounces around like a ping pong ball. One day is up. Next day is down. next day is up again, right? Bam, bam, bam, bam. You don't all of a sudden say, oh, let me sell my house. Let me not sell my house. Let me sell my house. Let me not sell my house. You just use it for utility. You live in your house and you know, you're going to hold it for a while until you're ready to move. Bitcoin's utility is that it's protecting your purchasing power. Who cares

where the day-to-day price goes? It's serving you utility. Hold it until you want to sell it. And if price is determining you selling or not selling, then you're a speculator. No problem. but you you go to the gambling table that's fine just understand that you know you may be the amateur at the gambling table there's a lot of people with a lot of experience a lot of technology a lot of data and frankly they got a lot of money they're dominating the gambling table i take up my little shekels and little coins right and i say you know i won't play at this table i'm gonna go over here at the long term lounge we don't got tables we're just sitting with a lounge sit down in a nice comfortable chair you just pop your feet up maybe get out a cigar listen to some

nice music chill who cares what they're doing at the gambling table we're in the long-term lounge and the long-term lounge is gravy it's chill see your friends hang out chill maybe they get a little drink get a little bit of food fine in the long-term lounge nobody's blood pressure goes above like 60. In the short-term gambling table, everyone's blood pressure is like 140. Lower your blood pressure. Chill out. Go to the long-term lounge. Relax. Today's episode is brought to you by Simple Mining. Have you ever been interested in mining Bitcoin? As a miner myself, I've been using Simple Mining for the past few months, and the experience has been nothing short of seamless. I mine with the pool of my choice, and the Bitcoin is sent

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With Simple Mining, they make it simple. So you're a big believer in most assets will go up over time because of the devaluation of the U.S. dollar, liquidity will enter the market. it. Fed has these new tools to be able to keep asset prices elevated over a long period, over a long time horizon. I just look at the math. Yeah. Yeah. I believe in math. How much weight do you put on these different things? So liquidity is one thing. Trailing gold would be another, right? These four-year cycles would be another data point. Where do you look at these data points and put different weight on each one? I like talking about this stuff because it is astrology for men, 100%, right? I like talking about what the Fed's doing. It's

intellectually interesting? What are they going to do? How's it going to work? I don't watch soap operas. I watch the Fed. I don't do astrology. I watch what's going on with the liquidity in the system. Okay, there's some relationship. At certain times, there's a higher correlation. At certain times, there's a lower correlation. If Jerome Powell came out and said, we like Bitcoin, would all of a sudden Bitcoin go to 120? Probably not. Would it go higher? Absolutely. If all of a sudden they just came out and said, bam, trillion dollars pumping into the system, would Bitcoin go higher? Sure. Is it going to go to 150? Probably not. So it depends. Now, if they'd done a trillion dollars when Bitcoin was at 10K, I think it would have

been at 30 overnight. So it's all about what is the size of the asset? What is the thing that's happening? How important is it? Right now, are we in a situation where the correlation is high or low? That's why it's interesting. It's a complex system. It's kind of like a puzzle. You're trying to figure out how all the pieces work together. You're trying to understand, okay, if this happens over here, what's the impact going to be over here? That's cool. It's fun. But the truth is, I don't make a lot of different decisions based on what's going on. Now, what I will say is, Um, I've been telling people all year that we were going to sell certain things as we were watching asset prices run up, right? This year we thought we were going to be at a bull market,

very different thing. Bitcoin. I look at that very differently than I look at anything else I had. So we have like venture funds from, I don't know, eight years ago, right? Where we invested in private companies, those private companies eventually went public. We were holding the liquid stock. I don't know. It's going to have a stock market. Could it go higher? Absolutely. Could it go lower? Absolutely. Guess what? I don't know. We are up on these things, right? We've held it for a long time. Hey, hedge, take some chips off the table, right? Guess what? We got investors. Our investors want money back, right? All this kind of stuff. So you look at this and you say, there's sometimes dynamics where if it was up to me and my partners,

we probably wouldn't sell it. Just say, just hold it, right? Let's see what happens. So over the next five to 10 years, these things are going to be worth more than they are today. But at the same time, you got investors, right? They want liquidity. There's things that drive the market that aren't just purely like people have a view on is the asset price is going up or is it going down, right? Now, what I will say is I think that there are certain things that people have historically believed that they're starting to question a little bit. Bitcoin and its relationship to global liquidity. I've been one, hey, anytime that you get this kind of alligator jaws where all of a sudden you see liquidity is running higher and Bitcoin's price is lagging, you expect that

to close. Either liquidity has got to come down or Bitcoin's got to go up. That hasn't happened. It's been going on for a while now. Now that could mean that there's this like super high velocity rise in Bitcoin's price to catch up. Or maybe the thing that we thought was true is not necessarily nearly as true as we thought it to be, right? So that's one. The second thing is, I think that there is a really big focus on the relationship between Bitcoin and gold, right? I mean, I was talking earlier this year. Gold runs 100 days later, Bitcoin runs. Guess what? That happened earlier this year. If you remember, I was off by like five days. Now, I'm not Nostradamus, right? You know who that is? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm not him. I'm not Albert Einstein, right? All I did

is I looked at a chart. I said, hey, about 100 days. Odds are it probably happens. Guess what? We're hitting around the 100-day point now. If we get to the end of the year and Bitcoin hasn't to run, a lot of people will say, hey, that thing that used to be true is not true anymore. That's what makes investing hard is something is true until it's not, right? These correlations, these kind of sequential trends, all this stuff, it's true until it's not. A great one, Carson Group's Ryan Dietrich, he'd been one of my favorite guys this whole year, right? He's been saying Monday's going to Monday. Monday's going to Monday. What's that mean? Every Monday for almost 10, I think it was 10 weeks in a row, every Monday, mark it up, mark it up, mark it up, mark it up, mark it up.

On the 11th one, guess what? People, let's go, let's salivate this. Hey, Monday's going to Monday, right? Monday's down. It's true until it's not, right? So when you think of that, you say to yourself, that is why investing is hard, is because you're playing a game

where you have imperfect information and you're trying to predict the future. By nature, humans are really bad at doing that. Now, a great way to do it is opt out. Just say, look, I'm just going to play a structural game. Let's ride with the structural game. And that's what I think Bitcoin allows people to do. I think whales in retail are playing a completely different game, right?

Whales have, they have to rebalance certain things. They have a lot more money that they can use, right? How do you think about the average investor, which is most people who listen to this podcast, obviously we got some whales listening too, but there's the average investor. How do you think, like, how would they think about their portfolio and Bitcoin as a tool or an asset within their entire portfolio?

Get in the long-term lounge. get off the gambling table and get in the long-term lounge that that's the whole thing right is i don't know many people who are very good at trading around different assets if you i mean just again just use simple uh analysis there are hedge funds that are paid in an immense amount of money to beat the index how many of them have consistently beat the index over 10 15 20 years. There's some for sure. Very few. Jim Simons, go. He did it. Great. So it can be done. But the average person, you're not a hedge fund. You don't have a team of analysts. You don't have all the tools and data and all this stuff, right? Now, by the way, actually, that may give people

an advantage because they're not trying to manage other people's money. They don't have certain thresholds in terms of ownership. They don't have correlation things. They don't have risk mitigation. They don't have rebalancing requirements, right? They don't have end of the year or let me go and crystallize some of the returns so I get my bone and all that kind of stuff. It may actually give them advantage because they say, you know, I'm going to run a super concentrated portfolio. How many people who are listening to this went, quote unquote, all in on Bitcoin five to seven years ago? At some point between 2017 and let's say 2021. I don't know what the number is, but there's a lot of people. People say it in the comments. How many of you

have more than 50% of your net worth in Bitcoin? There's a lot of people. I never recommended that whatever. But like people would be like, Oh, one to 2%, like I'm gonna put 50. Right. So a lot of people made a lot of money because Bitcoin went up a lot. Okay. Well, guess what? If you did that for the last year, you're flat. Right. So like at that time, it was really good idea for the last year. It hasn't been that good of an idea. All equities have ripped. Equities rip gold. How many gold bugs have a abnormal percentage of their net worth in gold? A lot of them. Well, it's up 50%. Congratulations. Right. You guys did a great job. You get the return. How many people I know one person in their portfolio they got two assets palantir and tesla this person is not a dummy

this person is incredibly smart palantir and tesla his entire net worth essentially is riding on alex carp and elon musk you know what long-term lounge like he ain't gonna trade right like by the way you might be in a broken chair. I don't think he is. I think that those are two great stocks. But in the long-term lounge, you make an analysis of the world. You say, hey, I think that these companies are uniquely positioned to fill some sort of gap, solve a problem, drive profits. Bam, I'm going to buy the stock. I'm going to go sit in the long-term lounge. I'm going to watch the gambling table because it's entertaining. I may comment on it, but I'm going to stay in the long-term lounge. And that's the whole key to this is I think for the average person,

they tend to be a little bit more concentrated they tend to have a little bit more of an opinion they tend to not be so uh kind of uh mispositioned based on rebalancing and all this kind of stuff but the problem is if you're very concentrated and you're wrong that's not so good so i know also other people i mean i got a long list of people i know who they bought an asset it didn't work it went down they lost a lot of money then they did it again then it's like i'm gonna make it all back in one trade that's not usually the way it works right it's like when you're playing blackjack and you lose a hand and you're like oh i'll just double my next bet you want to know uh i'll tell you guys a story that uh uh she gonna murder me for telling you guys this but today's

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That's bitwiseinvestments.com slash CIO memo. Carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing. Polina and I went to Las Vegas once. I had to speak at a conference. So I said, why don't you come with me? We were just dating at the time, you know, so you still got to like be on your best behavior. And so I said, have you ever been to the casino? And she said, no.

I said, me either. So let's go check it out for the first time together. He's like, table's over there. i don't know how this works let's go over and uh so we went and uh i i said to her i said there's a lot of games and stuff but uh the only game that i think she really felt like uh uh she had a handle on was blackjack i said okay let's go let's go do this and sometimes it pays to not be overthinking it right rules are pretty simple cards come out yes yeah but whatever so she had a stack of chips, not a big stack, but not a small stack either. She's sitting there,

she was playing and the stack started to grow. And she didn't realize that every time that she would win a little bit, when she was focused on the game, I would take some of the chips and I put it in my pocket. And so at some point, guess what happened? She was out of chips. And she goes, oh, we lost all our money. I said, yeah, that's a shame. I said, but good news is, and I reached in my pocket, I said, I got all this right here. She was ecstatic. She was like, where'd that come from? I was taking it off the table. And so it's easier to give that advice. It's easier to do it for somebody else than it is to do it for yourself, right? Especially when you're on a hot streak, right? You get on the blackjack table, you think, let's go, I'm smarter.

Of course, taking those chips off the table, now all of a sudden you knew when to walk away. So again, small dollars, right? Literally gambling. So that is ultimately investing-wise, how many people have the discipline to say, you know what? Something's run up significantly. If you bought, I don't know, some asset at 20 bucks a share, and it goes to 100, and you're like, I think it's going to 120, maybe. Maybe it's going to 60, right? Again, that's what makes investing hard, is it's not just about buying the right asset. I am now a very big believer that investing, the hardest part is not buying, it's actually selling. I cannot tell you how many assets that I have said, that asset's going to go up, and I'm willing to bet on it. And I bought it,

it went up significantly. And then I was like, uh-oh, what do I do now? When do I sell? I don't want to have the regret of selling too early and it keeps going. I also don't want to have the regret of not selling and then it goes back down. How do you know? So the selling is actually a very, very hard part. Now, again, people may look at their portfolio and be like, oh my God, I'm talking about selling. Oh, this is crazy. So he sells out. Again, think for a second. If you have a portfolio where you have real estate, you've got some public equities, maybe you've got some Bitcoin, right?

Maybe you've got some private investment you've made and maybe you've even got some collectible stuff. What you have to do is you have to look at your portfolio and say, it's not just about, do I buy or sell 100% of my portfolio? You have to think about, okay, well, what's liquid? What's not liquid? What could I get liquidity on?

What could I not get liquidity on? Okay, then you have to start thinking about, well, how do I want to de-risk at certain times? And guess what? There's a lot of people who would say, you know what? I'm not selling my public stocks, but I'll sell the collectibles I got. I don't know. My kid bought me a Charizard card and that's probably not going to be a thing in five years. Let's sell that thing. But there's other people who are like, you know what? I think that the public equities I own are too overvalued. So I'm going to sell that and I'm actually going to go buy another Charizard card. That's what makes a market. That's the beauty of a market

is that you have people with different things that they're optimizing for, different viewpoints, different decisions and they're all coming together and they're trying to figure it out. And so I just think that finance in general, the internet for sure, everyone is obsessed with buying. There is not enough talk about how do you sell well. And I'll give you this. There's a very famous venture capitalist that I was at a dinner with and I was thinking about this very aggressively at the time, maybe a year ago or so. And I said to him, I said, so-and-so, can I ask you a weird question? He was like, uh, sure. Which is a great way to ask a weird question. I don't know if you saw Bill Ackman, you know, like, may I meet you? Yeah. Yeah. The like intellectual version is like,

can I ask you a weird question? Immediately? They're like, uh, okay. And they're prepared, right? May I meet you? Can I ask you a weird question? So can I ask you a weird question? He said, yeah. I said, uh, how do you sell? So what do you mean? I said, well, you know, I'm convinced now selling is more important than buying whatever. And he said to me, he goes, when I invest in a private company, it goes public. I got a rule of thirds. Okay. What's He goes, on IPO day, I sell one third. He goes, I either sell it before or literally on that day. He goes, when the lockup expires, I sell another third.

And I never sell the last third. And he goes, so I'm guaranteed to get money when it's going public. I'll take what the market gives me when the lockup expires, usually six months later. And then I got a third where I'll never regret not selling that. And he goes, it could go to zero. It could go to the moon, whatever. A third, a third, a third. it's probably one of the best things that i've ever heard someone say in terms of how they

systematically think about it because i just remove all emotion a third a third a third now the whole thing about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is there's no private going to public there's no lockup there's all stuff right so you can do it time-based you could do it based on the percentage of your portfolio like well whatever your thing is but thinking about how do you do this now the opposite is also true you have dollars a lot of people need to be selling their dollars for something else right so to the people who have too much cash some people i know there's one guy i know who's a very good trader right made a lot of money for himself he's sitting in right now i'm almost 100 cash and he's just saying to himself he's like look man i don't know

what's going to happen i'm just sitting here and i'll figure it out there's a lot of people sitting in a lot of cash well money market funds obviously are high interest rates are up right you get uh the interest all that kind of stuff so i think that's what people are trying to figure out it's just like, what do I do? Right? When uncertainty rules the day, everyone asks themselves, what do I do? And the truth is nobody knows, but that's okay. Everyone just chill out. Be in the long-term lounge. Don't be at the gambling table. The gambling table is fun, but the house usually wins. So I agree that people should be long-term investors. In the long-term lounge. Are you in the long-term lounge?

I'm in the long-term lounge. Yes. I agree people should be long-term investors, but there's a school for thought where every time that you do not sell, it's a decision to buy and vice versa. Every time you buy it, you're actively saying I am not selling because I'm like participating in what I buy again at this level. Exactly. 100%.

Right now, that's not always true. Just caveat, which is like, for example, you may not want to sell because of taxes, right? You don't want to interrupt compounding all that.

But for generally, I agree with you that that is part of the analysis is like, would I buy this asset today at this price? So my thinking is how many times do you take your chips off the table? right? I love that analogy of playing blackjack and slowly slipping some chips into your pocket because at the end of the day, you're just like, hey, look, as long as I walk away from this table and I still got maybe my initial investment, I had a bunch of fun. I got some free drinks from the casino, blah, blah, blah. But when do you think about, okay, let me take my personal chips

off the table and say, okay, cool. I put $100 into an asset. It ran up to a thousand. Let me just shave a little. Let me just put a little in my pocket. Historically, I've been very bad at it because coming from early stage technology investing, you never sell. It's all a power law. And it's illiquid as well. Well, it's illiquid, but also just like, there's times, you know, secondaries, tenders,

things like that. But like, it's just like the power law is the best companies continue compounding and you will always regret selling. And the ones that are going to zero, you're not playing for a don't lose my money. You're playing for a, how do I get a thousand X? That's not really the game in liquid assets.

Very different. And so that has probably been one of the things I've spent a lot of time on over the last couple of years is how do you think about this, right? I mean, if you think about, you know, take, there's a lot of companies, right? I don't want to say the name of any. But if you bought the stock, let's say, you know,

sub $5 and it runs up three or 400% very quickly, do you sell? Do you not sell? Well, it's kind of like, what do you think is going to happen? How long do you expect to hold this thing, right? There's a lot of folks who would say, if I get a double in a week,

I'm out. I don't give a shit. If it goes up, whatever. Like my annualized rate on that is crazy. There's other people who look at it and say, well, if I get a double, I'm going to buy more of it because of momentum. There's other people who say, well, actually I'm going to hold this for a year regardless of what happened. Like everyone's got a different strategy. And so it's just like, what is your game? My game is long-term lounge. I generally found that a lot of younger people, Bitcoin was not a large portion of their net worth originally, but it grew to that. Right. And now they're sitting here thinking, okay, cool. I put 10% of my net worth in it, same random number.

And it grew to 50, 60% given the appreciation of the asset. And now they're sitting here going, okay, now it's back at 50. How are they thinking about it? I mean, look, if you're a young person, you got a lot of time on your side, right? And so if you have an asset that continues to compound, even at 20 or 30%, just let it ride. Like the other thing that I think people, especially young people, don't spend a lot of time on is if you've had some sort of investing success and you think that you're holding a great asset that you could hold forever, like let's say Bitcoin, too many people look at their portfolio

as a finite supply of capital and say, well, if I want to buy this other thing that I need to sell the first thing, do I really want to do that? That's one way to look at it. Another way, especially when you're younger is, okay, I bought Bitcoin, let's say it was 10%. Now it's 50% of my portfolio. I'm never selling it. I'm going to give it to my children one day. Okay. Guess what? I want to buy more assets. I got to go make more money. Let's grow the pie of assets that we have to invest. And when I go and I make more money via income or other things, then I know where it's going to go. And so I'm growing the pie over time, but I don't want to actually sell the thing that I want to hold forever because I don't want the tax benefit or the tax hit. I don't want to

have to actually go through the decision of selling and what am I going to replace it with all this stuff. So actually my game is I'm saving into my portfolio. I have a portfolio construction that I've agreed to. So I have, you know, 50% Bitcoin. I've got 3%, you know, whatever pound tier. I've got 5% Berkshire Hathaway. I've got, you know, some bonds in there, whatever. Right. And as I make income, I then put it in there and I invest it into that portfolio. That's a whole nother way to do it. So there's no one way to do it. Right. It's just like, what is the plan? and then be disciplined. And the problem is most people don't even have a plan. They're like YOLOing around like, oh, I saw this. My barber said this. I saw this on TV. John texted me.

Let me go buy this, whatever. So there's another school of thought that I think about, which is you don't actually need to worry about how do I get a thousand X gain? What you need to worry about is how do I avoid the 80% drawdowns, right? And actually avoiding the big drawdowns in your portfolio will be more beneficial than trying to go chase the asymmetric return a lot of the time. maybe in the long-term lounge that i'm in you know there's two sections in the long-term lounge one is uh uh the the boring people and one of the people who like you know they'd like a little excitement uh i actually want to see some investments i'm making go to zero or significantly draw down because i still want asymmetry so i'm okay if i made an asymmetric investment it was

just asymmetric to the wrong way. I was wrong. Okay, fine. Positioned it correctly. But what I'm looking for is volatility, right? And so it had volatility against me. Okay, I lost money. But that means that if I keep finding assets that have volatility like that and have asymmetry, the ones that go in my direction, I have one X downside when it goes against me, I have unlimited upside. Bitcoin was like the perfect bag, especially a couple of years ago, $3,000 Bitcoin, $1,000 Bitcoin, right? You could basically say, well, what if this thing goes 10X, 100X, right? Super asymmetric. I can only lose 1X on the downside. I have unlimited upside. It's kind of like venture capital where you're placing money out of a fund into, you know,

say 100 companies. You're expecting that two to three of those companies are actually going to provide all of the returns to the fund and the other 97 are going to zero. Yeah. I mean, look, it's very hard to describe my personal investing style because it takes from a bunch of these different disciplines and puts it together, right? There's a venture capital component to it. There's like a cashflow private equity component to it. There is what I would consider kind of like a retail driven social understanding component to it, right? All these things, you want to kind of put it together and make it your own. So my style is very unique compared to maybe somebody else. But there's plenty of people who

like, I got friends who are incredibly smart. They play games. I don't even understand. They start talking. I'm just like, let me get out the dictionary. It is do smart, right? Guess what? They got great returns. I couldn't even explain to you how they do it. Okay. Doesn't mean they're right and i'm wrong doesn't mean that i'm right and they're wrong it's just two different styles that's fine just find your game play it all right i think that's all i got for you all right can uh can we make a little bit of fun here at the end for people who made it to the end yeah bitcoin is higher or lower than 90 000 by the end of the year by the end of the year yeah lower lower i'm gonna ask you the same question i don't know that's what i gotta ask you first i actually don't

know i've been asking every single person that uh that i know basically are we uh do we top out are we going lower or are we going to see Bitcoin recover? I have no clue. I've been under the boat and I'll just give my thinking. I've been under the boat that things have been very elevated for a very long period of time, especially this younger generation has not seen pain like we might see. We might not, you know, assets could go up, equities could keep ripping, et cetera. But I just think that when you look at the 2008 crash, 15 years it took back to get to the same level. That's a lot of pain that the older generation has that they understand that the younger generation does not. Let's see what happens. All right, guys. See you next week.