The Pomp Podcast - Bitcoin Is Just Getting Started (Most People Don’t See It Yet) | Natalie Brunell, Russell Okung, & Bill Miller IV

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Natalie Brunell, Russell Okung, and Bill Miller IV join this panel recorded live at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin as a long-term adoption story, why it represents sovereignty and “freedom money” for many, and how athletes and traditional finance investors think about allocating to it. We also cover common criticisms, the education gap, bitcoin vs. gold, and why the panel believes we’re still early in a multi-decade trend.=======================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/pomp=======================Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates the buying and selling of your preferred crypto strategies. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com and start your automated trading strategy for free. No catch. No hidden fees. Just smarter trading.=======================0:00 – Intro: Bitcoiners vs the World 1:00 – Russell Okung on taking his salary in bitcoin4:44 – Natalie Brunell’s bitcoin journey7:25 – A traditional finance view on bitcoin9:08 – The bitcoin mindset & sovereignty14:45 – Bitcoin, hope, & the American dream17:28 – What institutions think about bitcoin19:32 – How to talk about bitcoin to different audiences

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Whereas Bitcoin rewards value. It's a slow process, but look how far we've come in 15 years. 15 years ago this week, Bitcoin was $1. When I got into Bitcoin and when I explained Bitcoin to you, look, when you own this asset, you are sovereign. You know, it took 100 years for running water to go from being a possibility to being ubiquitous in houses. I see this as a multi-decade trend and I think we're just getting started. When we when we decided to do this, I was trying to think about what should the title of this panel be? And the thing we came up with that I think just embodies all three of you in different ways is like Bitcoin is versus the world. I feel like all four of us, frankly, on a day to day basis, you hear Bitcoin is dumb.

Bitcoin doesn't work. Bitcoin is going down. All like the normal stuff. And that comes from like the Twitter verse. Then you've got to deal with the smart people who are like Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. Bitcoin is this. Bitcoin is that. And I feel like this is brothers and sisters in arms up here of pushing back and saying, you know, hey, everyone calm down. Russ, maybe let's start with you. You were the first professional athlete to really, I think, advocate for getting paid in Bitcoin. It's one thing for, you know, anonymous accounts on Twitter to say it. As an NFL player to say it, I think people are like, oh, hold on a second. Is he crazy or, you know, is this going to catch on? Just talk us through a little bit as to, you know, that experience, what people were saying and how you guys kind of navigated it. No problem. And definitely crazy. I'm not going to dismiss that at all. I think the best way to think about sports is oftentimes, particularly after the Super Bowl, we're very enamored with the game itself. But oftentimes we miss the men, the women, the people that are actually involved into the sport. You know, and if you think about it, football essentially is a game of percentages, right?

So, you know, imagine you are 10 years old and you have displayed exceptional talent, right? And you then start playing football, right? And then you move on to the high school level. That means out of all of the people who played, right, and picked up a helmet, you are 1% of people who have made it to the high school level. and then subsequently if you want to make it to the collegiate level it's essentially the same thing you become one percent of all people who have went from the high school level to the collegiate and then even on the elite level it's the same type of percentage that exists there now when you finally make it to the nfl right and you are you think you're living your dream you

hear another stat which says, well, 70% of all athletes will likely be broke if not go through some form of divorce. And it's very difficult. And maybe perhaps I'm telling my story here because you have done everything, right, to make to this level of you've essentially beat all the odds. And you're looking at a very high likelihood, a very high probability where you will most likely be broke. So what do you do? What do you do with this information? On one end, you have a series of financial advisors who, by the way, have never actually seen a check as large as you have, right? That are telling you how to invest your money. You have an agent who is, you know, they want their percentage. And then you have family who, by the way, you very love that they

they need loans. They need to be taken care of. So what do you do? What do you do with this information? What do you do when you've committed your whole life to a craft? And now you're faced with the reality that your blood, your sweat, your tears cannot help you use the brute force on the field or on the court, right? In the economic realm. And when I really connected with Bitcoin. And Pom, I'm going to give you a little shout out here. I was actually listening to one of your podcasts around the time that I ended up sharing with one of my teammates is this at Bitcoin is time. And it was a very important line for me because I'd spent so much time trading my, my health for wealth. And, uh, when you do that much trades, you tend to forget,

You tend to forget that one day, right, you likely may not have the opportunity to enjoy your wealth, right, which is really healthy at the end of the day. You know, so when I saw Bitcoin, it was crazy how simple, how simple it was just to buy self-custody and hold your Bitcoin, right, and that you could change the trajectory of your entire lives. And that's what I've tried to share with many of my teammates, people I respect and trust. I think you've done a pretty good job. Natalie, you came at this from a different angle. I think that your family has a very unique story. You guys immigrated to this country. You're working in the media.

Newsflash, the media has not been very kind to Bitcoin over the years. They're loving it this week. Yeah, they do like it when it goes down. Then they are Bitcoin's friend. But you actually not only, I think, kind of got orange-pilled, became a Bitcoin believer, but also then got the confidence to leave your job and really kind of go on your own and do the things that you thought that you were going to enjoy most. So talk about how kind of Bitcoin, coming from an angle of every single one of your colleagues, was probably advocating for the exact opposite of the conclusion that you came to. Yeah, but I want to start, I guess, kind of earlier than that, to your point. I mean, I think my family's background and my story of financial loss at a young age really informed and shaped me in so many ways.

And we're so fortunate here in the West to look at Bitcoin only from a price angle, because I think so many times about how if Bitcoin existed when my parents were growing up under communism, they could have converted any money that they had saved into Bitcoin and they would have been able to flee with it. And instead, they could only bring whatever they could fit in two suitcases after waiting decades to be able to come here to start over and pursue the American dream, not having any guarantee of what would happen and then to watch them work so hard. And when I went off to college, have the great financial crisis hit and have them lose everything and see the rug pulled out from under you and the bankers get bailed out on Wall Street. That's why I'm a Bitcoiner, because it fixes a system that's so broken that incentivizes the worst of, I think, human behavior, whereas Bitcoin rewards value. And it's it's a slow process. But look how far we've come in 15 years. 15 years ago this week, Bitcoin was one dollar. And now it's trading in the 60,000s.

It's gone all the way up to 126,000. We have to zoom out a little bit. I'm not discouraged. And of course, in the media, they're loving it this week right now. They're talking about how it's dead. They're bringing on all the Bitcoin bears. But I think the hard work happens now

where we get to educate people. They get to accumulate and come in at a lower cost basis and tell them how important this is as not just number go up, but as a freedom technology for all of us. because gold, OK, it's got some great features, but it has a central flaw, which means it's physical. You can't transport it. I can't send my golden bar across the world in a matter of seconds and have it settle. And that's why it doesn't represent freedom. Bitcoin is freedom

money at any price. Bill, I think you came at it from an even different angle, which is you have a very strong training in traditional finance and you really understand probably more so than almost anyone in this room, if I sat down with you and we looked at a company, you would start talking about cashflow analysis and assets and enterprise value and all the things that go into analyzing a business. You're one of the most hardcore Bitcoin believers I know. Talk about this almost dichotomy, right? You understand the traditional world and maybe all the critiques that somebody would have of Bitcoin, yet still come to the same conclusion as Natalie, Russ, or myself. Yeah, I think it comes down to just understanding at the fundamental level what

capital is what it should be how we account for it and then when you just think about what natalie was saying a second ago about gold and how bitcoin is a vastly superior technology to gold even though it hasn't correlated with gold over the past year or so that's where all the opportunity is um it's more liquid it's verifiable it's auditable uh it's harder to steal um and it's it's much more scarce on a supply curve basis. So it's understanding what we're trying to do fundamentally with the money, but it's also thinking about value in a flexible way. And just because everyone hasn't come around to the same view that we have yet, doesn't mean that they won't. I mean, you look at what happened over the past 15 years to go

from a dollar to now it's $66,000. I mean, there's enormous signaling value in markets and in free markets. And so, you know, it took 100 years for running water water to go from being a possibility to being ubiquitous in houses. And so I see this as a multi decade trend. And I think we're just getting started. Now, each one of you, I think in your own unique way, if I was to say you're a Bitcoiner, you have a very specific kind of worldview, maybe a distrust of certain institutions, organizations, etc. But also there is this deep loyalty and, you know, kind of family driven approach to life in general. And, you know, Rush, you were talking about kind of health is time and wealth is time, et cetera. But I think each one of you in a very unique way, think a lot

about a long-term impact, both on your families and yourselves. But it seems that the Bitcoiner mindset seeps into other aspects of your life, right? You know, I think the journey that you've gone on, like, I don't know if you go on that journey, if you don't start thinking about Bitcoin, right? I don't mean you tell me, but can each of you kind of just talk about like the Bitcoin or mindset outside of just the financial portfolio component? Yeah. Yeah. I can definitely try to take a swing at that. So I think the best way that I've really tried to navigate this, and maybe I can share a phone call that I received this past week as the Bitcoin price rolled down. It's always very frustrating, right? And it's not frustrating

for the points in regards to just the price, but it's frustrating because, look, Wall Street is going to do what wall street does right so to expect anything would happen that separate of derivatives and financial products being built on top of bitcoin is it's just like mind-blowing but i remember receiving a call from one of my friends and you know he's worried about what the price is going to do and and i'm i'm mad at him because i'm just like look have i not expressed to you what bitcoin is right look at it from this perspective do you own bitcoin or does the price of Bitcoin own you. Because at the end of the day, when I got into Bitcoin and when I explained Bitcoin to you, it's to say, look, when you own this asset, you are sovereign. You are sovereign.

That means it's not just about, hey, I can take this Bitcoin into self-custody, but now I need to exhibit levels of self-control over my entire life and my portfolio. These two things work together, right? And, you know, whether it's my emotional sovereignty, my personal sovereignty, or even how I look at my family, right? Bitcoin has legitimately set us apart where now I can think long-term. Now I want more time with my kids. So now I think about my health in different ways. I want them to have a very independent and first principled way in which they look at education. So now we homeschool our kids, right? We look at things in such a different way for the points you made, Pom, because now with Bitcoin, we can take a step back and we can actually

evaluate and look at our lives, which to me, that's the point. That's the point. That's what Bitcoin gives you. It gives you time. Why do you need time? Because we need to reflect. We need to think about our situation. We need to observe ourselves, right? So Bitcoin has certainly allowed me to do that in the world where, which was complete dog eat dog. And I could have just kept playing and doing things forever and been on the hamster wheel for my entire life you know so i'm very grateful for bitcoin in that way today's episode is brought to you by simple mining bitcoin mining has a reputation for being complicated risky and hard to evaluate as a real investment if you're considering mining in 2026 what actually matters isn't headline profitability

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partner of Coinbase, Kraken, Robinhood, and Gemini, ArchPublic offers a proven track record of security and performance so that you can trade with confidence. Sign up today at archpublic.com and start your automated trading strategy for free. No catch, no hidden fees, just smarter trading, your crypto, your exchange, your profits, ArchPublic. Go to archpublic.com and tell them I sent you. Natalie? Bitcoin restored hope for me. And I think hope is the most important motivating force in economics. And I think it also encourages people to restore a sense of agency. One of the things that makes me the most disappointed when I look out at our social circumstances right now is just how so many people have absolved themselves of responsibility and they're

looking they're crying out for someone to come save them whether that's the government or whoever they are no longer sovereign and they no longer have hope and I think a lot of it is rooted in that feeling that feeling of frustration that I played all the rules I played them the right way I followed them I did the school I got the good degree I worked hard I'm putting in extra hours I got the side job and I still can't afford what my parents or my grandparents could on the same income. And I think that that changes people and it makes them feel frustrated. All of a sudden, they're encouraged to compare themselves and their lives with others that

are doing much better. And of course, with social media, it's very easy to see people that are on the surface. They're doing great. They own all the assets. They're happy. but if we look deeper I mean the thing that connects us is this universal feeling that the American dream I think represents which is that if you work hard you can do anything if you just have a shot if you if you put all of your perseverance your innovation if you are able to

just have a shot you can you can do whatever you want to accomplish and and I think that that has no longer been feasible for a lot of people in America. And they feel like no matter how hard they work, it's out of reach. And that's how I felt. I felt that way when I was working in news. I was extending in my career, getting my raises. I had a solid job and a stable salary, but I felt like I was never any closer to having my dream of buying a home or starting a family and slowing down and wondering what life is all about. And Bitcoin changed that for me. And despite all this price volatility, I feel like it made me aware of the possibility of us coming together on something where, again, the rules are fair. And you would probably agree with this. If we're all playing

in this game of life, but the rules are rigged to give an advantage to some people, you're not happy for the winners. You kind of resent them. And you look to them and you think, well, you wouldn't have won if the system was fair. And I think that we need a more level playing field where more people have an opportunity to play a fair game and it's not going to be equal outcome, but it'll be a more fair, accessible system of opportunities for everyone.

Bill, what about you? I saw you on CNBC yesterday having a field day with these people. You were enjoying yourself as they threw all these dumb ideas at you. I was trying. So everyone in this room was, everyone in the world

is born to a system of capital governance that they did not choose. And so for me, opting into Bitcoin was a pretty cool thing. A new technology that really didn't exist until 15 years ago and was not even possible. And so today it is possible. And so opting into that system has been cool for me. You know, from an active fund management perspective, outperforming the market is a very hard thing to do. And you have to take active risks that other people don't take if you want to have a chance at doing that.

And so when I look around at all the opportunities that you could choose to invest in over the long term, they give yourself a reasonable chance at outperforming the overall market. Bitcoin is that choice for me, among a handful of other things. Obviously, we do. But that's a big part of it. And so that's how I got there. And again, it just comes down to understanding fundamentally the why's. Why are you why do you own Bitcoin? Well, it's a better system of capital governance. People will eventually realize that just as they have for the past 15 years, they'll continue to come around to it.

It will continue to be volatile. Once the volatility is gone, there won't be any opportunity. And so we're in it for the long term. Well, when you think of the market structure, I think that the critics would point to a bunch of data points, right? They'll say, oh, hash rate is down 40 percent or they'll point and say, oh, you can't buy a coffee with a Bitcoin. Right. And all these kind of components that people have been saying for years and years. When you're talking to other fund managers or institutions, what are you hearing there? Has there been any movement in their kind of acceptance of Bitcoin or what are those conversations like behind closed doors? I think one of the dirty secrets is I think a lot of fund managers that can't own it in their own funds.

There still are legal challenges to owning in a mutual fund, by the way, but they own it personally. A lot of fund managers just own it personally and they can't do it in funds. So I think that's important for people to be aware of. Natalie, what about you and your conversations? You go all around the world, you interview all these people. it seems like there is this like persistent optimism from the Bitcoiners. But what about the people who don't hold Bitcoin? Is it still a belief like this thing's going to zero and this is just a Ponzi scheme and we're all idiots in this room? Or is there now at least a belief of

like, okay, maybe it's not worth, you know, a million dollars, but it's also not going to go to zero. I try to always focus on how much progress we've made, but there's still such a huge education gap. There really is. It's one of the reasons why I wrote the book, Bitcoin is for Everyone. I just wanted something that spoke to the average mainstream audience member. And those are really the people I used to speak to when I worked on camera and news. It was like, they're probably at home at 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock at night. They've just come home from a really crazy day. And I have to inform them. And I have about two minutes to do it. And the most important thing I need to do is make them feel something, which is why I always

try to go back to that human experience angle of Bitcoin. And that's what I touched on so deeply in the book, because at the end of the day, this isn't just about numbers on spreadsheets or balance sheets for me. This is like truly about freedom and sovereignty and taking back control over your future, which so many people, again, just feel like they're treading water, they're drowning. And we're all in this system. And so when very few people are at the top and own everything and it's very lopsided in terms of equity, that's a system that's very unstable for everyone. If you're part of the 1%, yay, lucky you, but you're dealing with 99% of people who feel so angry and upset and they're pulling apart and we're having all sorts of civil issues that I

think are symptoms of this deeper problem that people just don't feel empowered. So I want to empower people. I think that that's the message. If we keep educating and it's going to be a slow burn. But if we just keep doing our part to educate people about how this system works, what money is, why it doesn't hold value, why it's designed to destroy your purchasing power and what solutions exist, obviously Bitcoin, I think being the best one, then I think slowly but surely we're going to get the world on the Bitcoin standard. Russ, maybe we'll finish with you talking about, you've already mentioned very diverse audiences, your kids, professional athletes. Maybe those two groups are more similar than we would like to

think. But talk a little bit about when you're talking about Bitcoin, there is a way to talk about this that resonates with a person, right? It's not like two plus two equals four. It doesn't matter who you are in the world. Bitcoin is kind of different things to different people. How do you approach these conversations, especially when it's not people from a financial standpoint? Because I think the financial conversation is very clear. Hey, the number does this thing and it goes up for these reasons, whatever. When you're talking to it about sovereignty and some of these more, you know, kind of qualitative aspects is a different conversation. Yeah. Really good question. I guess I would frame it this way. I've been a team captain

on every team I've been on. A little bit. I've, and what that means is that I've been elected by my peers to represent them on the field. And when I think about the relationships, the opportunities that I've had to share Bitcoin, a lot of it's come from having that platform is that they can confide in me and they trust me. They know that I've done all the diligence that I possibly can to provide them the information to have the right type of vantage point when it comes to Bitcoin. And I think that's where it starts is before you start talking about bitcoin and all its qualities right can that person trust you can they trust and know that you have you know their best that you have their their best um so what i'm looking for

you have their best financial health in mind right their best economic health in mind you care about them as a person you know so when i've uh talked about bitcoin a lot a lot of it's kind have been that you know a funny quick story and i think this is important for uh for you know people like you is i've been trying to convince some of my family members to get into bitcoin and my uncle finally calls me he's like hey i finally got into bitcoin oh cool do you need a wallet whatever he said yeah well i bought a bitcoin treasury company i thought it was an important lesson that as much as i may want to advocate for bitcoin and i want to talk about why bitcoin matters for for some people, having exposure to Bitcoin is just going to make a lot more sense. You know, so I think

that's just the reality that we should all, you know, deal with is just meet people where they are. Makes sense to me. Bitcoin is versus the world. I'll take us all day long, my friends. Thank you guys very much. Thank you.