The Pomp Podcast - Bitcoin’s Rally Today Just Confirmed Everything | Anthony & John Pompliano

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Anthony & John Pompliano discuss the state of bitcoin at $64,000, why the price has stabilized, and what it will take to spark the next bull run. They also break down the exploding cost of AI adoption inside businesses, the national debt problem no president seems willing to fix, and where investors should be putting their capital right now.======================Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates investment strategies across Stocks, Commodities, ETFs and Crypto. Whether you’re rotating into AI & Gold, allocating to the S&P 500, or accumulating Bitcoin, Arch Public executes your plan 24/7 without ever taking custody of your assets or funds. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com, and start your FREE automated trading strategy! ======================Uphold is the easiest way to buy and sell crypto unlike any other platform allowing you to trade in just one step between any supported asset. Check them out at https://www.uphold.com/pomp/ This video includes a paid sponsorship with Uphold. I’m compensated by Uphold for promoting its products and services and may receive commissions from referrals. Terms apply. Not available in all jurisdictions. Digital assets are risky and may result in the total loss of your capital.======================0:00 - Intro0:35 - Bitcoin at $64K, catalysts & future returns7:58 - Why every industry needs "bitcoiners"12:20 - National debt, government spending & why nothing changes17:24 - How much businesses are spending on AI20:30 - How to evaluate if AI is giving you ROI21:29 - Stocks, equities & conviction on AI23:16 - Year-end outlook

Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. New from Nespresso. Blend wellness into your coffee routine with a coffee plus range infused with functional benefits.

Choose the coffee you love with added B vitamins, like coffee plus B12 to help support immune function, and coffee plus B6 to keep your day moving. Or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight. Our new double espresso with ginseng extract. Whatever lies ahead, don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover coffee plus on Nispresso.com. Bitcoin does not need a narrative. I think that is probably one of my biggest takeaways over the last decade or so is Bitcoin just needs to continue to produce block after block after block of transactions and they just need the government to be dumb and keep printing money. As long as the government keeps printing money, Bitcoin will go up. What's going on, guys? Today we've got a great conversation with John Popliano. He interviews me and he's got some big, hard-hitting questions. In this conversation, we talk about artificial intelligence stocks. What's going on with Bitcoin? Why is the price so stable? Then we even talk about what I'm excited about through the end of the year, how I'm

thinking about the government printing so much more in this conversation. So here's my latest conversation with John Pompeiano. Let's go, John. Let's hit it. Let's hit it. What's going on with Bitcoin? $64,000. Wall Street's bullish.

Bitcoin's stable. I mean, that's what people want, right? They want a stable store value. So why is everyone so upset? Because that's 64,000. It came down 50%. But yeah, it's just chilling right in the mid-60s. Look, I think that most people are trying to figure out why is Bitcoin not going up or why it's

not going down more. Remember, there's a lot of folks who were predicting that Bitcoin is going to draw on 85% in a bear market like it's done in the past. But to me, I actually think that Bitcoin's kind of hanging out around where you would have expected. One of the best things I ever heard anyone say going into this bear market was Matthew Siegel over at Van Eck. He said, if volatility has fallen 50%, then the price of Bitcoin should probably draw down about 50% of what the normal drawdowns are. And that's where we kind of ended up, you know, ballpark. And so I know everyone wants it to go back up, but what has changed about the story of Bitcoin from six months ago to

today? Not much, right? The Clarity Act, which everyone is all worried about, right? That's not clear or past. There really hasn't been a change in terms of net new buyers coming into the market. If you go and you look at the macroeconomic environment, not much there has changed either. I mean, there was slight, you know, uptick in inflation, it came back down. Then you go and you look they're still printing money. They were printing money before. They're still printing money now. And so it comes back to like there has to be some sort of catalyst.

Now, the good thing for Bitcoin is that there's always going to be a catalyst within four years because you've got the halving. And so you'll get kind of this supply shock where you will cut the number of Bitcoin coming into the overarching supply by 50%. Okay, that's good. But is there some sort of environment type catalyst? Right now, there's not a lot of people who see any sort of catalyst that that's coming. I understand that people are, you know, antsy, but just chill. Bitcoin has a sense of doing what Bitcoin does. It'll go up over a very long period of time. The future return of Bitcoin, I think is going to be much lower than people have previously experienced. So I don't think it's going to compound it's 60, 70 percent, year over year for a decade. I think that it's probably 20 to 30 percent. And so there's a lot of people saying to themselves, okay, hold on a second, AI's hot. And I'm making a lot of money over there. So let me move capital. Let me chase returns. Then you've got a lot of companies that are saying, hey, I could

go buy Bitcoin or I can just grow my business more than 30% every year. And so Bitcoin's got to kind of find a bid, right? And obviously having BlackRock and others excited about it, that's good. But ultimately, you're going to need a catalyst to get this thing going in the other direction. Yeah. So one thing I wanted to really point out was BlackRock in one of their statements said Bitcoin has exhibited a dual personality talking about how is both safe haven but then at other times trading with due risk assets. How do you determine the Bitcoin narrative right now? Is it really a safe haven and that's where, you know, pensions of 401K should be looking at it? Or is this something that you think will obviously have that 20, 30% appreciation every year for the next 10 years?

As someone who's paid a lot of attention and known what the different narratives are at different times and been, you know, pretty involved in the minutia of how that has shifted, there's really only one narrative that matters. If they print money, Bitcoin will go up over a long period of time. Everything in the short term is noise. And I think that individuals and businesses have to decide If I have capital that is on my balance sheet or my bank account, where do I allocate it? Where do I put a dollar? And there's some people who are saying, I need one, five, 10% allocation to Bitcoin. A lot of those people already have that allocation, right?

And so then they're going and looking for other areas. There's other people who I would put in the hardcore Bitcoiner category. They're saying, I need to buy as many Bitcoin as I possibly can. And they just denominate it in Bitcoin. They constantly are accumulating. And then there's a third bucket that I would still put in the cautiously skeptical or cautiously optimistic bucket, right? They're trying to figure out, like, I understand it.

Maybe it's not for me, or maybe I'm not super excited about it. But, man, the government, you know, is over $40 trillion of national debt now. That seems like a pretty big number. How do we, you know, handle this? And so I think that it's kind of different flavors for different people, right? But ultimately, Bitcoin does not need a narrative. I think that is probably one of my biggest takeaways over the last decade or so, is Bitcoin just needs to continue to produce block after block after block of transactions,

and they just need the government, to be dumb and keep printing money. As long as the government keeps printing money, Bitcoin will go up, but again, I do not think the rate of return is going to be nearly as high as we have experienced in the past. Still, a 20 or 30% return is going to outperform the stock market, given its historical performance.

But I think people are just trying to figure out how much of my capital should allocate the Bitcoin versus other things. And that answer is very personal for each business or individual. And I think that's what people are going to end up kind of making decisions around. Ultimately, though, you need these portfolio managers, right, to kind of get involved in the institutional capital more than just the retail.

Maybe, right? Like, if you think about it, institutions buying the ETF is great. There was a bunch of capital that flowed in, but the ETFs got approved, and Bitcoin today is sitting at the same price it was five years ago. So did the ETF have an impact? Sure. It ran up to $126,000. It's pulled down 50%.

And so there's a lot of people who say, oh, well, the next leg up, right? Again, it goes back to it depends on what you think. the future return of Bitcoin looks like. And where does the net new buyer come from? Where does the catalyst come from? Again, I'm not bearish on Bitcoin by any means, right? If anything, it's better to buy Bitcoin at $65,000 than it is at $125,000. But I just think that when you look over the next six to 10, 12 months, the question becomes, where is the net new buyer going to come from? And you need a net new buyer in order to go and create that catalyst. Because if not, then you're going to be waiting for the having to occur. And then usually the market peaks 18 months after that.

So you got to wait all the way till the halving, and then you got to wait another, you know, six or 12 months before you really get into, you know, kind of the next bull market. It's a lot of time between now and then that people are going to have to figure out. Okay. So let's talk about what investors are probably doing with their money. 30-year treasury just hit a 19-year, all-time high. Across the world, we're seeing treasuries continue to hit all-time highs for different nations. Their treasury is a good buy right now? Is this $60-40?

It depends on what you're optimizing for. If you're looking for capital appreciation, no, absolutely not, right? Of course not. If you're looking for interest in terms of you need short-term interest, then, yeah, it pays 3.7% or whatever it is in short-term treasuries. I think that there's some people who say, well, I actually want to have cash exposure but earn a little interest while I'm doing. Okay, then treasuries become a really interesting thing. But if you're like, hey, should I buy stocks or should I buy treasuries, I'm going to hold them for 20 years? Like, of course you should buy stocks, right?

So I think that it really is just, what are you optimizing for? and by optimizing, you may actually go and make a different decision. And look, a big part of this is, I think there's a lot of companies right now that are trying to figure out how do I use these various assets? How do I use real cash? How do we use stable coins? How do I use treasuries? How do I use potentially tokenized treasury funds? How do I use Bitcoin?

How do I use these different kind of technologies and have it serve the purpose of the company? I think one of the things that people, you know, kind of get confused is, Not every individual or every company should be focused on just acquire as much Bitcoin as possible because there's a lot of stuff that could work or not work. But ultimately, we do need people and companies working on other things. And so I always say that what we want is we want Bitcoiners who are in every industry. It is valuable to the world and to Bitcoin to have Bitcoiners who work in oil fields. It's valuable to have Bitcoiners who are doctors.

It's valuable to have Bitcoiners who, maybe we're on a food company or who build homes or who work in an investment firm or, you know, maybe they are a school teacher. Having the Bitcoin mentality and values and ethos and all that stuff embodied in all of those different industries, it is net positive for Bitcoin as well, right? I think that Bitcoin is obviously a financial asset, but it's also an idea and it has a certain viewpoint of the world. And so, you know, if you get on the, you know, X or something, you'll see people talking about

fiat food. like that's kind of like a bit-oiner perspective on food. And so wouldn't it be helpful to have some people who are maybe like, you know, the seed oil thing, like, I don't know, maybe we shouldn't have seed oils. And you can see this, like, who is it? Is it in and out? I think is a... The tallow. Yeah, but they're big bitcoins.

I think they have Bitcoin on their balance sheet and stuff, right? But like you see the Bitcoin mentality, ethos and perspective showing up now in the product they serve to people using tallow rather than the seed oil. I'm not some like grand conspiracy theorist. around seed oil, it seems to be unhealthy for you compared to other things. Okay, great. Like, it wasn't there. Americans got overly obese in general compared to other countries. And so if we can shift that back, like, yeah, sure, the financial asset Bitcoin going up helps a lot of people.

But also, I don't know, ripping out seed oils from a lot of stuff also helps a lot of people, right? If you have a doctor who says, hey, maybe we shouldn't be in the business of being reactive to what it goes on in your life. instead maybe we should do preventative, you know, medicine or preventative care. And, you know, it would be really great. Maybe you shouldn't eat all those carbs and processed foods. Maybe you should eat more meat and protein. That's kind of a Bitcoiner perspective, right? Maybe you should work out.

Maybe you should go out in the sun, right? We can go through all these different things. And so I think that's another piece of this is we as an industry have to be encouraging of different people who have different perspectives or different kind of focuses with their time, energy, talent, and money. But also understand that the perspective. or the kind of viewpoint of Bitcoins is permeating throughout society. And if you just look, like, I would argue that the Bitcoiner perspective really forced the hand of politicians in D.C. Because three things happened.

There was a massive pack of crypto money that was very influential in the 2024 election cycle. You have a current administration that seems to be very pro-Bitcoin. There's some people who are disappointed that, hey, they're not buying Bitcoin hand over fist or whatever. but generally they have been more pro-Bitcoin than definitely the last administration. And then the third is the last administration and kind of the left-leaning parties, they're starting to realize, wait a second,

we should probably become sympathetic to this, we should encourage this because the people want it. And so you can see like the certain perspective of the certain viewpoint really permeated politics and people kind of had to get on board or get out of the way, right? And so I think that you're going to start seeing this in a lot of different industries.

Again, very small anecdotal example. today, but over time, you know, it only heads in one direction. Today's episode is brought to you by Arch Public. Arch Public has just expanded its agenic trading platform beyond crypto, so pay attention this is a big one. Now they are automating strategies across stocks, commodities, and ETFs, and I think that this is going to be huge. You can now automatically take profits when one market hits new all-time highs and

rotate that capital into other markets showing more opportunity. Whether you're rotating capital into AI stocks, gold, if you're investing in the S&P 500, or you're accumulating Bitcoin. Archpublic brings real discipline and automation to your investment strategy. Additionally, they've launched a powerful new tax loss harvesting tool. With crypto being so volatile and its exemption from the wash sale rule, ArchPublic can offset gains with losses without compromising your long-term positions. It's exactly what every serious investor does,

institutional-grade automation that works across every major asset class. There's no more emotional trading, no more missing tax opportunities, just smarter, hands-free execution of your preferred strategies. Go to archpublic.com right now. Connect with their team, set up a time, bring your account if you'd like, then you can learn what automated trading can do for you. Archpublic.com. All right, so inflation is still up.

Sean Frank, the CEO of Ridge, recently reshared one of Rivers' graphs. It's essentially every president over time over the last 10 or so and the national debt that has increased under their administration. It slowly just gets steeper and steeper. Does this train ever stop? Well, obviously not, but I think what it tells you is even the presidents who have come in and said, hey, we're going to cut spending, we're going to bounce the budget, all this kind of stuff. Like, it is not up to one single president.

It's not up to one single administration or even, I would say, you know, one Congress, right? These people cannot stop. They literally cannot put the genie back in the bottle. And so I, more so than anyone I know, yell and scream all time. National debt's too high. The interest expense now on the national debt is too high. we are just blowing out the national debt. They're going to debase the currency.

They're going to hurt all the people without investment assets. All that stuff's true. No one's going to do anything different about it. So you can yell and scream all you want, or you can go do something about it, right? It's the difference between competing versus complaining. And the reason why I maybe have kind of thrown my hands up and said, well, they're not going to do anything about it

is because I think, one, this administration came in with Doge and all this stuff. And whether you believe they were actually trying to do it or not is almost besides the point. There was more effort than not or than usual to try to try to, cut government spending. And even if you don't like their tactics, at least you got to respect the, like, you know, thought process, I mean, just didn't work, right? And some of it was because

there was fight internally from politicians. Some of it, frankly, was like, oh, we just owe a lot of money to, you know, people from Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare. And, like, we know there's fraud, but what are we going to do about it, right? Type, type thing. By the way, there's an immense amount of fraud, obviously. And then I also think that there's this element of, you kind of, you kind of I get into these negotiations. And when you see these things play out, all this pork gets added to these bills. And my understanding of it is basically people are horse trading. Fine, I'll sign on to your bill, but give my constituents a billion dollars, right?

Because we're going to do this, you know, program or we're going to do whatever. And like, of course, if you're horse trading and you're using someone else's money, you want a billion? Why not two billion? I give two billion. Fine. Vote for my bill. Like, that's what goes on.

And so it comes back to it's never going to change. They're all incentivized to do this. they know that somebody long from now is going to pay for that bill, and they're probably not even going to be in office anymore to even have to deal with those consequences. And you can go back. Do you hear anyone stopping George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush, or even Obama, and saying, you screwed up the national debt? No.

Now, they do people critique them all the time. Some people, you know, they don't like them or they don't like their politics or their party or whatever. But like, I've never seen anyone stop one of them and be like, I remember, hey, Clinton, in the 90s, you blew out the budget. Well, that's because they all pointed to the guy before him and say that's what he did. The last balanced budget, I think, was in the late 90s, if I remember correctly, right? But like, Bush, Obama, both sides of the aisle, everyone is contributing to this Trump, Biden, all of them. But it's kind of like, eh, we got this problem. Who's responsible?

It's like kind of all of you, right? And it's not even the president. Then it's like, well, it was the president plus the administration, plus, you know, the House, plus Senate, blah, blah, blah. And so it's just kind of like you can't attack one person because it's the blob. So I think they all, you know, kind of know, like, man, no one's going to really say anything about this 10 years from now. Which, you know, hey, maybe we as Americans should be much more, you know, upset about it and much more direct with them about it. But I think that most Americans have kind of resigned themselves to the fact that it's never going to be. get budgeted or something to get balanced. I was excited. I thought that the Trump administration

had a good shot of doing it because I thought bringing in the number one cost safer in the world. If you were going to create the like megatron of saving, it's Elon Musk, ripping out inefficiencies. Look where we are. Right. And so it's just like, yeah, man, train doesn't stop. Let's see what happens. Commended for picking up the soda can instead of kicking it, but then putting it back down and continue to kick it. And punting it. Yeah. It's like you can kick it on the ground, right? that would people be like, all right, you're just kicking the can. But if you pick it up and then you punt it, I mean, it depends. Maybe it goes further.

Maybe it doesn't, right? You don't really know. But it's, yeah, look, again, I think that we should absolutely commend the politicians for saying, hey, you know, that's what I want to do. But kind of like results speak louder than words, right? And by the way, I always go through the exercise of, let's say you and I, the Pomp brothers ended up as president and vice president of the United States of America. We're going to stop this. We're going to, you know, balance the budget. What would we do any different?

I don't know. Maybe we have some good idea. Maybe we would do a bunch of work and we'd figure out some ideas as to how to balance the budget. I just don't see, you know, a path given the information that we have today where it is going to actually get balanced.

And so dollar get devalued and let's roll. All right. Let's keep it on a roll. Let's talk about AI spending within organizations. The top 1% of businesses spend about $7,500, just under $7,500. per employee per month on AI, per employee per month on AI in July, very big number. But obviously, the smaller organizations spend less than that, right?

So the top 10% of organizations are closer to $500. Do you think that there is a correlation between spending per employee on AI and results that you get from the technology? They're saying $7,500 per month? Per employee per month, the top 1% of businesses. Oh, top one. Okay, yeah. So, you know, maybe there's a couple hundred businesses or 1,000 businesses or 1,000 businesses. that does that, sure. I think the average business, let's just kind of anecdotally go off of averages,

I think that the average business is probably paying for two or three subscriptions on AI, depending on what their businesses. They may have something like a chat GPT, a Claude, etc. They may use some sort of creative tools like a Higgs field or something like that. And then they probably have some sort of industry-specific thing. If you're illegal, you're using Harvey. If you're in finance, you're using Sylvia.cophosylvia.com, go check it out, right? And so you're trying to use kind of a different tool for the different industry. But let's just say that you max out all of that, right? Okay, what is it?

Maybe it is $200 per month per user? 600 bucks, $800, $800 seems really, really high. But by the way, if you're even spending $5,000 a year per employee, well, what's your average salary? I mean, that is an immediate cost increase for the business. Now, why are they doing it? Because they're obviously they think they're getting R-O-I, right? Or they believe they're going to get R-O-I.

And so that's why you see the ARR or these companies skyrocketing is because businesses in particular, and individuals, but most of businesses are saying, hey, I think I can get an R-O-I here. Let me go sync money into it and see what we can get. Today's episode is brought to you by Uphold. Are you someone who's tired of juggling multiple apps just to trade, earn, stake, or spend your crypto?

Then listen up, because Uphold does all of that in one single unified platform. You can access 300 plus crypto and fiat currencies with an interface that works for you, whether you're a beginner or an expert. Apold also features any-to-any swaps, where you can swap crypto to Fiat, Fiat to Metals, and tokens to tokens directly in the app. If you prefer self-custody, appold's vault gives you multi-sick security, key recovery, direct trading access, and peace of mind without giving up convenience. A Pold is also 100% reserved, meaning no fractional practices,

and proof of reserves are updated every 30. 20 seconds so you can verify your assets anytime. For U.S. users, you can even earn yield on dollars with a USD interest account. No fees, no minimums, and funds are insured up to $2.5 million through the Atomic Cashed Suite program. If you want one app for your entire digital asset life, check out Uphold today. Go to uphold.com to learn more. Uphold.com. Go check them out today. If you were a small business owner today, how would you evaluate that AI is giving you a positive of ROI. I am a small business seller, big dog. I think in a big business owner, just to clear the record. The way that I would think about it is I want to see directly attributable impact. So there's

some people who are just like, I don't know, man, it seems, you know, all my friends are doing it, whatever. That's not how I operate. I want to understand what are we spending? What do we think that the return on that investment is? Now, you may tell me, I can't draw a straight line from I use this product to revenue. Okay, well, that's not a good start. But you may then say, but I can draw a straight line from I use this product and I save three hours this week. Okay, I can work with that, right? Because that freed up three hours. Maybe you can go do something else. That's kind of an indirect line. Just cost savings, time savings, whatever. Okay, fine. So that's really what I would look for is, one, what's the revenue impact? But then two is what are the savings, either time, energy, money,

etc. And then I would put that together in a full picture and say to myself, all right, what's the deal here? How do we continue to invest in this and get an ROI? All right. Let's talk about stocks and equities for a minute. Higher. Just continue to going higher. Is it a similar thesis to Bitcoin where as long as they print money, you know, general equities will go up long term. Yeah, long term stocks are going up forever because they're never going to stop printing money.

So that's definitely long term. But in the short term, like, do you have more conviction today on AI or less than you did five months ago? conviction in what manner? Just the AI industry being a thing, being used, being around, et cetera. I have more conviction today than I had a consequence. Because you have, you know, at least half a brain, probably a full brain, right? Hope so. The people who are like AI is a zero.

Like these people are moronic. Like, what are they talking about, right? But again, hey, what do I know? I'm not some genius. They are, supposedly. And I think that's why these stocks have bids is because people are realizing, dude, these things are going to keep going up because there are three things that I use as a framework.

The first is there's shortages. So if you have a shortage, meaning you have more demand than supply, guess what? Prices go up. If prices go up and stocks go up, okay. Second thing is that there is massive asymmetry. Some of these markets are still very small, but they're going to become very big over time. Great. There's a huge opportunity there.

And then the third thing is that there is inefficiencies getting ripped out. People are applying these tools and they're actually making things more efficient. Well, that's going to rip as well. So I just think that people need to relax a little bit. And let's see what happens. but I just, I don't see a world where there were anywhere near bubble territory yet. There will be a bubble at some point, I'm sure. But that's fine.

If you bought things in the mid-90s, for the most part, if you bought good companies, went through the bubble, they crashed, and then they continued, and a lot of them are still around, not every single one of them, but a lot of them are still around. Like, it had been a good idea to buy Nvidia. It would have been a good idea to buy a lot of this stuff, Amazon, whatever. So let's see. Okay. Let's talk about end of the year predictions.

What are you excited about towards the end of the year? I'm excited about hanging out with you. I'm excited about doing this podcast. I'm excited about BRR and what we're doing with Sylvia. I think that Sylvia is still drastically underestimated, which I love being. It's whenever people underestimate something that we're doing. And then frankly, I'm excited that I truly believe the more people who use these technologies, Bitcoin, AI, etc., the better their lives will be on a net basis over the long run.

And so the more adoption, the more the people are using this stuff, I think is great. And it does come without risk. There's not trade, you know, of course there's tradeoffs, whatever, but I think generally it's a net positive. And so I'm very excited to see kind of how that stuff happens. And let's see if the money printer stays warm. I think it will. I think it'll actually accelerate.

And so assets, I think will keep going. I would like it for my portfolio. And I hope if you don't have any investable access, anyone listen to this to go get some. Because I generally agree with your take there. I agree. Thanks for doing this. No problem.