The Pomp Podcast - Has Bitcoin Finally Bottomed? | Anthony & John Pompliano

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Anthony and John Pompliano dig into whether markets have truly bottomed or if more pain is coming. They break down the economy, inflation, rates, politics, and immigration — and how all of it is shaping investor psychology right now. Plus, they unpack Mike Green’s argument that America’s real poverty line may be closer to $140,000 than $31,000.======================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 – Intro1:16 – Has Bitcoin actually bottomed?12:38 – Why do we need a rate cut?21:29 – How lower rates + AI fuel growth26:24 – DOGE and political mismanagement31:25 – The real solution: financial education36:13 – The $140K poverty line debate45:05 – Tech lowers costs; government raises them

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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 conversation with

John Pompliano. We talk about is the Bitcoin and stock market actually bottom or should we expect more financial pain? What's going on with politics, the economy, inflation, interest rates, immigration? And then, of course, the great piece by Mike Green, why the poverty line shouldn't be thirty one thousand, but maybe it's closer to one hundred forty thousand dollars. All that and more in this conversation. Here's my latest conversation with John Pompliano. All right, John, what's the topic. Has Bitcoin bottomed? We're at like 85,000 right now. Well, I think that you got to look at Bitcoin stocks generally the same, right? If you go back and you look, the fear and greed index is actually very, very useful in moments of extreme panic, which is what we had. I saw the equity

fear and greed index. CNN has a great one. Got down to six. I'd never seen it that low before. The Bitcoin one got down to eight. I'd never seen it that low either. These are numbers that are lower than during COVID or during the FTX collapse, et cetera. And the reason why I say that that is a really good metric is because it's essentially measuring sentiment and sentiment can't stay at six or eight for weeks on end. So what you get is you just get max fear. It's the whole point of the measurement. And then of course, people say, well, maybe it's not as bad as we thought it was going to be. It could still be bad, but it's just not that bad. It's not that extreme. And then you'll start to see kind of money come back in. The second thing is I recently interviewed Matthew

Siegel from VanEck. And one of the things he brought up that I thought was really fascinating, but thinking a lot about it over the last couple of days, is Bitcoin's volatility has fallen in half. It's basically been cut in half over the last couple of years. So if Bitcoin's volatility went down by about 50%, and Bitcoin's big bear market drawdowns used to be around 80%, well, half of that is 40%. Now, again, these are kind of round numbers and somewhat just used for illustrative purposes, but if Bitcoin's volatility has been cut in half and the drawdowns used to be 80% in the bear markets, then you would expect the drawdown maybe is only 40%. Now, why is 40% an interesting number? From 126, which is the previous all-time high or current all-time high

of Bitcoin, down to about 80K, that's just a little bit less than 40%, you know, 36, 37%, depending on the exact numbers you use. Now, why is that important? Well, because you almost got down to the full 40% drawdown. So, do I think that we've bottomed at least in the short term? yes i do think that bitcoin you know kind of hit this max drawdown period uh draws down you know almost 40 percent in a month and a half it's a pretty big number it's pretty fast um and then it has kind of had this like little relief now the question is are we going straight back to all-time highs like you know what is the most entertaining outcome is the most likely like welcome to bitcoin wall street right imagine all of a sudden these guys they launch their etfs they

They get the government on board. They're all sitting there, fat, happy cats on Wall Street saying, ha, ha, ha, we've got new revenue. We've got new customers. We've got all kinds of new assets. And then Bitcoin does Bitcoin things. It runs from 69,000 in November up to 125, back down under 100, back to 125 to 80, and then goes all the way to an all-time high.

All of that happens in, let's call it, 13 months. That'd be a Bitcoin thing to do. I'm not saying that that's for sure going to happen, but I think that when you start to play in Bitcoin, Bitcoin welcomes you. And the only way it knows how is that volatility bull. It starts bucking around, moving, and people are saying, what is this thing? Do I really want to hold it? Do I really believe in it? Do I really think it should have a part in my portfolio? And when you're an individual, you can ride the bull. You just strap your hand in, you hold on, ride it, see what happens. It's going to go up, it's going to go down, it's going to go sideways.

But if you're an institution, you're doing it with somebody else's money. They don't want to see we're up 40%, we're down 60%. Oh, wait, we're back up 30. Now we're back down 10. That's not what these people are paying these institutions to do. Usually people are not giving their money to somebody else for total return. There's usually some sort of risk mitigated return. Now, I'll make the argument that putting Bitcoin into a portfolio actually improves the portfolio.

You tends to be non-correlated over long periods of time. It tends to increase the Sharpe ratio. it tends to actually make the portfolio much more resilient, much more asymmetric, all these things. If you add even a little portion of your portfolio into Bitcoin, it can actually drive a higher return and do it with less risk, which is what these people want. But the average person, all they see is this statement I get every month keeps showing me a number that's up, it's down, it's up, it's down, it's up, it's down. A lot of people don't want to keep talking about it, right? If you're a financial advisor, do you want to spend your time saying to your client,

Hey, stock market's up, right? We're making money in the stock market. It's up 15% this year. We're killing it for you. Or do you want to keep talking about the half a percent or 1% allocation to Bitcoin that's going all over the place and the client keeps wanting to talk about it? That's the stuff that you're starting to figure out here.

And so do I think we've bottomed? Yes, at least in the short term. Do I think that we're going back to all-time highs? I have no clue. Could we go to 60K? Sure. Could we go back to 125, 130? Sure.

It's kind of a jump ball to me. and i think that really uh fed rate cut we need the rate cut so in december if they all of a sudden pause rate cuts which would be absolutely insane and dumb but if they did do that i think that could be a headwind for bitcoin uh the second thing is um i think that there's a lot of people who going into the end of the year they're up big people go starting in november maybe even in october kind of q4 if you're up big you go into turtle mode turtle mode you know what that is You know how a turtle walks on the ground, it's got its head out, arms and legs out, but it's got a big shell? Turtle mode is the second you think you got something, like a big return year, and you know your bonus is tied to it, your arms and legs come in, your head comes in, you use the shell to protect you.

It's turtle mode. I ain't doing nothing. Give me my gains, give me my bonus, and I'm out of here. I'll see you in 2026. right so if you think about that that turtle mode a lot of portfolio managers start going into turtle mode some people call it hedgehogging right all of a sudden you just get real tight i don't want to take any risk defensive instead of all that yeah i just i don't want to take any risk i'm up 20 30 for the year i'm killing i look like a genius internally if i go up from 30 to 35

percent i nobody is like he's a bigger genius the only thing that can happen is i can go from 30 to 20 and they go, oh, that genius is really just above average. So that's what's starting to happen here as you're seeing some of this. Now, Bitcoin was up on the year and now it's down on the year. It's kind of like flattish to down. So now all of a sudden people are saying, wait a minute, that's a tainted asset. That one didn't go up this year. I don't want to buy the falling knife. I don't want to go step in on something that's down 40%. Now, of course, when's the best time to buy an asset when it's down 40% in six weeks, right? And so that's where I think you see there was tons of volume that came in. So you saw capitulation of like the short-term

tourist in Bitcoin. You saw tons of volume come in, in terms of people starting to buy again, both on Binance, Coinbase, a bunch of these exchanges. You also in the stock market saw lots of volume come back to things like ETFs, etc. And so I think that people finally put all of this in the back of their minds the odds of a december rate cut went from like 95 to 40 now it's sitting around 70 just kind of normalized like hey we're probably gonna get it if you notice that jerome powell he ain't been talking in the public this man cut rates on like whatever october 29th he zip it he ain't talking he's letting people disagree out in public he's letting them all squabble it's like a bunch of turkeys running around all yelling at each other

And then the big boss is going to come in and say, we're cutting or are we not? Now, I think that we will get the cut. Jim Bianco has it right now at 7 to 5 in favor of a rate cut if the votes were drawn. But when politicians go and they try to pass a piece of legislation, you know how legislation gets passed? Somebody drafts it up. They circulate it among a close group of friends. They build a little bit of support. If you can go ahead and recruit a spy from the other side of the aisle onto your team, right?

Okay, now it's bipartisan. Congratulations. You put it forward. And then you go and they do what's called vote counting. You go and you say, do we got the votes or not? Because you don't want to lose a vote. So what do you do? You go talk to people.

You say, John, see this bill I got right here? This one's a good one. It's going to help people. It's going to help your constituents. You're going to look like a genius. People are going to say, John's a great guy. John's a good politician. John's going to get reelected if he helps pass this bill.

And they say, John, do I got your support? You're going to vote for this? And you say, yes or no. Sometimes you tell the truth. Sometimes you lie, right? Sometimes you switch your mind. Sometimes you flip flop, right? But this is the game. They're counting the votes. And then only when they think they got the votes, do they bring it to the floor and they say, let's vote. And so at that point, it's pretty much just a formality. They already know they got the votes. Well, now what's happening is we're moving from a world where the Federal Reserve, it was all consensus driven, right? it is famous that in 2010, Thomas Honig, he dissented eight different times, kept raising

his hand and saying, this is crazy. This is crazy. I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. But everyone is consensus driven. Jerome Powell has actually had some of the highest percentage of consensus during his tenure as the Fed Reserve chairman of any other Fed president in recent memory. But now it is a full blown revolt internal in the Federal Reserve. And so you have these two groups that are coming together. You've got the people who think that we should pause or even hike. I mean, these people are financial terrorists. What are you talking about? Second is you've got groups that are saying we should 25 or 50 basis point cut. Again, the turkeys are squabbling. They're letting them all go out there and say what they think.

But I think we're going to get the rate cut because the data supports a rate cut. And so if we do get the rate cut, I think, and the market believes we're going to get the rate cut, you see confidence come back into the market. You see people say, okay, you know what? This thing isn't as bad as everyone thought. I do think that we're still in this risk on global bull market. I'm going to put money back in the market. And so if you've got people putting money back in the market, you get a stabilization in these prices. That's what's happened with Bitcoin. That's what's happened with stocks. And then we kind of go from there. Today's episode is brought to you by Simple Mining. Have you ever been interested in mining Bitcoin? As a miner myself,

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Visit simplemining.io slash pomp to get started today. That's simplemining.io slash pomp to get started today. With Simple Mining, they make it simple. Why do you think we need a rate cut? Well, if you look at three things that really matter, inflation is coming down. People will yell and scream and say inflation is going up. Inflation is not going up. Inflation started the year, according to Truflation, at over 3%. Over 3%. We currently now are sitting somewhere in the 2.3 to 2.5 range on Truflation on a day-to-day

basis. I do not care what your CPI metric says. Why do I not care? Because CPI is nonsense. And anyone who cites CPI without acknowledging that there is more accurate data out there is either lying or dumb that's it point blank period why look at the inputs to the cpi metric 40 every 10 items that they measure 40 of those four out of 10 they are guessing they're estimating what they think it is it's not like they're saying okay you know what we're going we see what the prices are and then maybe our collection is flawed which it is or maybe our methodology of calculating is flawed, which it is, but at least the prices that we're actually citing is accurate. Then you would just say, okay, maybe it's a collection and a methodology issue. But before you even get to

critique all that other stuff, four out of every 10 items in the CPI right now, they are guessing what the prices are. That is crazy. There are trillions of dollars being wagered every single day. And 40% of it is made up. You can call it estimating. I call it made up. Because if you put a bunch of economists in a room and you say, what do you think the price is? You'll never get the right answer. So you back out. Why is Truflation so much more interesting? Truflation isn't estimating. It is looking at real-time prices. And now they're expanding. They're going not after inflation only. Now they have a labor index. They have a breakfast index. They're doing eggflation. They're going into all these products and they're saying we can use technology to do

this better. This is a classic David versus Goliath story and trueflation is going to win. That in my mind is a perfect example of the private market is going to solve a problem that the government created. The government has not invested in updating this information. The government has not updated it in terms of actually being able to use the methodology that makes sense. And the government is still using antiquated methodologies like sending humans into the freaking grocery store with a tablet and saying, let me manually punch it in. That is crazy. So go back to why do we need to cut interest rates? Well, if inflation is actually not at 3%, but it is at 2.5% to 2.3% and coming down this year because it started at over 3%,

that completely removes the narrative of inflation is going to be a problem. The second thing is the Fed finally now admits, the Fed, this is not me talking, This is not you talking. This is the Federal Reserve finally is admitting that the tariffs did not create inflation. They do not see being passed on to consumers. All the people who are predicting the tariffs are going to be horrible, the tariffs are going to create empty shelves, the tariffs are going to raise prices. The Federal Reserve is telling you, Jerome Powell, out of his own mouth, said the tariffs are not getting passed on to the consumer. So now we understand that that's not an issue. On top of that, we know that the labor market

is weakening. The labor market, a lot of people, they don't realize this. Yes, there's a big technology story going on. But we also have a huge deflationary trend in that we are deporting a ton of people. Those people are here illegally. And so you are taking people out of the workforce. I believe that Joe Biden and his administration, they opened up the border intentionally, specifically because they believed that they needed more workers in the U.S. I disagree that that was the right thing to do. I don't think that they should have broken the law. I don't think that they should have just said, hey, anyone from anywhere can come here.

There's massive second and third order effects of this that are a huge problem. But I believe that that is ultimate. Everyone's trying to get, why would they do this? Why would they? Do you remember the, did you see the video of the Texas, I think it was National Guard, went to the border and they laid down a bunch of constantino wire you know like the razor wire yeah on the ground the u.s government federal government under joe biden sent a group down there and they took a forklift and they lifted up the constantino wire and people were running

underneath it's crazy it's like me saying you know what at a prison right hey let me just unlock your uh cell and leave it open go ahead leave right people be like well that's wrong same thing here. Now, again, why were they doing this? And again, you can get into, oh, they're going to drown in the river. They're this, they're that, whatever, right? I ultimately believe the only conclusion I can come to is they were letting in millions of people because they believed that we needed more people in the labor force. The problem is that that is an analog view of the world. There is going to be labor done by technology, robotics, all the manufacturing. Look at a Tesla factory. There are robots everywhere. Right now, I think Amazon employs 1.5 million humans and

750,000 robots. Over time, that is going to flip. They will employ more robots than humans. That is where the world is going. You do not solve a problem in the labor market by breaking the law and endangering Americans. Instead, you use technology. You solve the problem from a first principle standpoint. So I think that's what we're getting back to. Now, again, I said it was a deflationary force because guess what's starting to happen? Real wage growth is actually going up for a large portion of the last four years. Real wage growth was not going up. So that means that inflation is actually growing faster than your wages. Well, if that's the case, not only are you already in a dire financial position, but you're in a situation where it's getting worse.

you're falling further and further behind the second you get real wage growth going now it's game time so i love it on twitter people will be tweeting all kinds of crazy stuff and maybe like oh have you seen the price of and they'll pick like alaskan uh jackets with uh bunny rabbit tails hanging off the shoulder shut up look at gasoline prices gas is flat over the last year there's no inflation in gasoline prices in america for 12 months think of how crazy that is Everyone is worried about inflation. Gasoline, one of the single most important inputs to what people do on a day-to-day basis.

It not only affects the gas in their car, but all kinds of other parts of the economy, flat. So why do you look at this? Well, if you go and you look at interest rates over time, they go up, they go down, they go sideways. What is the average interest rate over the last couple of decades? It settles in somewhere between 2.25 to 3%.

2.25% to 3%. Let's just call it 2.5% for easy conversation. Are we at 2.5%? No, that means we're above average. If you're above average, you have a weakening labor market. Inflation is not a concern. Immigration is now shut, so you have a deflationary force hitting. And then you have AI coming over the top and actually being a second deflationary force.

You can look and say, we shouldn't cut rates because of this or that or whatever nonsense. It's like they pull out their spreadsheet and they're trying to calculate, can I walk across the street fast enough? Well, a semi-truck's going to hit you. Get out of the spreadsheet and look down the street. There is a massive deflationary force that already is hitting the economy, but it's going to continue. So you have to cut rates because you have to get the cost of capital down where people want to borrow, where people want to invest in R&D, where people want to create jobs, et cetera. When you lower interest rates, what you do is you put liquidity into the economy. That liquidity can go into two different people's

hands. What happened over the last four or five years is we printed a lot of money, trumped it at first, and then Biden took it to like a whole nother level and handed it to everybody. When you do that, what do those people do? They go and they consume. The point of that stimulus was for them to go consume. If you instead lower the cost of capital, it's not like the average person is going and borrowing millions and millions of dollars. The only time that they kind of sort of do that is when they're getting a mortgage so they can go and buy a home, right? And it's usually not millions and millions of dollars. It's usually whatever the cost of the home is. Who is borrowing lots of money when you lower the interest rate? Businesses. What are

businesses doing with that money? They're investing it. They're investing it in R&D. They're investing it in creating jobs. They're investing it in scaling their products, doing all that stuff. So by lowering the cost of capital, you are incentivizing people to use that capital in the market to go and create some sort of profitable venture. Now, if you add that in with AI, you're getting increased inefficiency. Increased efficiency means more productivity. More productivity means you get more profits. More profits mean you get a higher valuation. And so that's where you'll see this force playing out. And so the Federal Reserve lowers the interest rate. All of a sudden, the companies have more profit. If the companies have more profit,

What do they do with it? They either give it back via share buybacks and dividends or they invest it. That's it. This is not hard. People have known this for decades. So this whole idea that, oh, you know what we should do is we should keep interest rates high. You are destroying value in the economy. Get the interest rate down. I think that we should get below 3%. Again, we can debate, should be 2, 2.5, 2.75, below 3%. If you're above 3% right now in today's economy, it's a big problem. That's where we are right now. We got to get it down. Today's episode is brought to you by DeFi Development Corp. Global wealth today exceeds $500 trillion, yet crypto still represents less than 1% of that total. DeFi Development Corp, NASDAQ ticker DFDV, offers investors a new way

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There's so much noise and the space changes so quickly. That's why every week I write a five-minute memo on the biggest stories impacting crypto in plain English. Why is Bitcoin up or down? What are people missing? Where should investors look next? Get the lowdown every week. Sign up to get the weekly CIO memo delivered straight to your inbox. Go to bitwiseinvestments.com slash CIO memo. That's bitwiseinvestments.com slash CIO memo. Carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing. how much do you wait uh the interest rate change so it's at what 25 bps right now um doubt it will be 50 and maybe it will be zero they bring in a little water gun yeah yeah 25 basis points what

would you do if you were the fed chairman 50 basis points december 10 50 basis points rip the band-aid off and come out and say we're going we're growing and what do you expect to be the reaction there i think that everyone who hates uh the current administration they'll be yelling and screaming and going nuts. I think a bunch of investors will be like, whoa, they're serious. There's a Fed put in the market. Game on. But if you look, GDP now, which comes from the Atlanta Fed, I think the latest reading has GDP growth projected at 4.2%. There are only two things that we can do as a country. You can either stop spending money or you can grow your weight out of the problem. Newsflash, they're never going to stop spending money because every single politician that is

needed to vote to stop spending money, sees it as if I stop spending money, that means I'm taking money away from my constituents. This, everything you can tie back to is high school. Everything in the world is just high school on steroids. What does a politician do in high school? I'll give you free candy. I'll get a vending machine. Maybe we'll get out of school 20 minutes early. They can't do any of that stuff. Guess what a high school president never says? You ever heard a high school president promise? We're going to tighten our belts around here. We're going to go to the school and say, we got to get the budget back in order. No, they're trying to spend the school's money, right? They want to give the students stuff. That's the whole pitch. It sounds

great, but guess what happens? They get elected, they do nothing. Maybe they get like an extra recess day or something, right? They get nothing done because the school is like, dude, at the end of the day, this is math. You're operating on emotion, but the math still prevails. What is happening now is actually that the politicians are saying, the math, we can actually have a third lever, which is we can just debase the currency. If we debase the currency, who cares about the math? So that's what they've been doing, and they've been doing it for a long time. If you want them to actually balance the budget, that means they got to take something from the constituents, which means that the constituents don't like them, which means they're not going

to get reelected. Follow the money, follow the incentive, I'll show you the outcome. So instead, and you saw this with the White House, they went, do you remember back in the beginning of this year, how gung-ho they were. And I think me, a lot of people were excited. We're going to balance the budget. We're going to save costs. Doja is going to go in there. I remember turning on the television because I saw on the internet that there was a protest. And so I turned and I said, what's going on down there in DC? And there were politicians. These are grown ass adults that we've elected to be our representatives standing outside of a building, pounding on the door trying to go after 20 something year old kids who were in the building

looking for waste they were trying to physically stop them they were screaming things like elon come out here and talk to us it's crazy it was insane and what you realized is they're why are they out there it's not grandstanding nobody's watching these idiots do this stuff it's not virtue again nobody cares name one politician that was out there most people couldn't even remember who was out there it was all because there's a financial incentive the financial incentive trumps everything right and guess what they won that people don't want to say that but like they won is it that they won or that the administration just realized how many roadblocks like elon talked about it on doesn't matter commission or omission they won yeah right the

blob was able to stop the cost cutting and they'll say oh there wasn't that much cost to cut i got a lot of friends who went and were working on those teams. The stories I have heard are insane. Here's one for you. You ready? I never said this publicly. This is probably one of the biggest national scandals that no one ever covered. There's an organization that had a budget, okay? That budget is approved by politicians. They then went and they looked and said, what was the budget? Okay, x dollars okay then they went and they went to the treasury and the fed and they said how much money did you give to that organization and they said the number 2x the numbers didn't match wait what happened the budget that was approved was a different number than what actually got sent

which one's accurate is the budget number right because that's the number everyone uses for the calculations? Or is the transfer payments, the amount of money that actually went to the organization right? Is that fraud? Is that stealing? Or is that just mismanagement? I don't know. I don't claim to be an expert. All I know is that the average American, if you go out on the street and you say, hey, if there's a budget that's approved by Congress, do you think that there's more spending than that allowed? They'll say no. But from what I understand, there was a lot of incidents where there's budgets approved and there was more money that was sent and spent so you say to yourself okay just put aside for a second you're never gonna solve it it doesn't

matter republicans and democrats are gonna spend money it does not matter so then you saw in kind of q2 time frame all of a sudden it was like remember like it was like in 48 hours everyone switched cost cutting what uh no hablo english right they just flipped around and all of a sudden they were like we're gonna grow we're gonna grow we're gonna fire it we're gonna run it hot right we're going to grow out of our problem. And you're just like, yo, are you guys the same people? What happened? And guess what? Guess who's winning now? The administration's winning because inflation is down. Immigration, they did close the border. Interest rates are coming down. Real wages are going up. GDP is flying. So you look at it and you say, wait a minute. In the showdown between

the incumbents and the challengers. The incumbents won on the cost-cutting measures for the most part. But when you look at it from what actually matters in terms of economic growth, the challengers are kicking everyone's ass when it comes to this data. And so again, you look and you say, well, I already told you all the economic data is super skewed. It's really inaccurate. The exact numbers, you're never going to get right. The numbers are wrong, right? All you have to look at is direction of travel. And that's why these alternative metrics are so important. Because the alternative metrics are actually confirming that interest rates are coming down, that inflation is coming down, that immigration did stop, that you do have GDP

accelerating, et cetera. And so you have all the ingredients for an environment where this thing should be rocking. And I think that that is ultimately why you need interest rates. You don't need them to go to zero. Going to zero is wrong. So just to be clear, anything in extreme form in monetary policy is bad. If you go to zero, it's bad. If you go to 5%, it's bad.

You should be somewhere in the middle. Oh, zero to five. What's the middle? Two and a half percent. Shocker. So that is ultimately the key, in my opinion, is get it down to kind of a normalized level and allow these economic policies to work. If you do those things, we're going to be great.

Everything's going to be fine. Assets are going to continue grinding up. And then the last thing I'll say, you really want to help American citizens? You know what you should do? Teach them personal finance. You don't hear anyone talking about that. How is it that half the country knows own assets and the other half is still saving in dollars?

People say, oh, it's because, you know, they're in a bad financial position. They're this, they're that, bullshit. You're telling me no matter who you are, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, right? Teach people here is what you need to do. I have spent an enormous amount of time. We've run programs.

We've spent time with people, et cetera. If you teach people what they can do to better their financial position, most people, not everyone, but most people say, thanks, you gave me the blueprint. Let me get, let me get to work. Right. And it's super frustrating, right? I spend time with people who literally there's, um, I'll, I'll tell you one story. There's a program we ran at one point where we basically said, uh, we're going to do this financial education completely free. And we are going to help people understand exactly how they can improve their financial position. And we're even going to mimic for a couple of months,

saving money. So we're going to give them a little bit extra money so that it says if they save, they don't have to change any of their spending patterns. But imagine if you had an extra 500 bucks a month, give them the money, do the education, whatever. I remember one of the sessions, a woman joined and she joined to learn and her camera was on. She was moving around a bunch. What is this woman doing? And all of a sudden I realized she was at work in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant and her phone was propped up on the counter. And she was there with one iPod or AirPod in learning, trying to better her life while at work in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant. People want the information. They just don't know where to get it. They've

been told all kinds of nonsense, right? And many times they're just told they're dumb. They're just told, don't worry about it. It's just the rich people are evil. But if you actually look at it, most people I know who have any degree of success, they get the information out for free. They just, they're trying to tell people, hey man, this is what you got to do.

You got to own assets. You got to learn how to invest. You got to learn how to spend less than you make. You got, I mean, these are like timeless investing principles. They're not trying to give out hot stock tips, but that's a part of the conversation no one talks about. And so it's like all about affordability, et cetera. Everything that politicians are talking about

is giveaway free stuff, or there's some super secret magic silver bullet economic policy. How about we start with just teach people personal finance? Mandate it in all 50 states. I think right now only 14 states mandate it. Mandate in all 50 states you have to teach personal finance. Make it so that people understand you cannot save, you have to invest. You have to own assets. Get them from the bottom side of the K economy to the top. If you do that, capitalism works. The problem is there's a bunch of people standing outside of the capitalism tent, and they're like, I hate capitalism because they're not in the game.

Get them in the game and it takes care of itself. Most people who watch this channel are on the right path because they're trying to learn and they're watching content that is a little more informative than just watching Netflix or something. I thought they were tuning in for you because they were like, damn, that guy is so attractive.

What are a few books that you would recommend that they recommend to people who don't have investable assets or want to learn about personal finance or honestly something that's entertaining and they could get some value out of and, you know, put them on the right path. The three books that I read that really changed how I thought about it. They don't teach you, you know, buy this stock, don't buy this stock or

anything like that. But the three books, uh, I happen to be very fortunate and read them in succession one after the other. And I read it when I was, uh, 20 or 21 years old. She read it when I was in the desert in Iraq of all places. I had a lot of free time. Uh, and, um, I read a rich dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki. I read Thinking Grow Rich, and I read The Richest Man in Babylon. And those three books all have a similar type of message, but it's very much focused on how to think about investing and money and building a life of financial security, et cetera, more so than it is like, here's five actionable tips on blah, blah, blah, whatever. And I think that those three books I credited a lot with kind of laying the foundation to help understand, okay, there's

a different way to think about this. There's a different kind of path to pursue. Um, and then from there, I just started reading, you know, I mean, I remember Googling, you know, if I like these three books, what are three other books I may like, you know, whatever, right. You find lists of, Hey, here's the top 10 best personal finance book, whatever. But those three books for me were, uh, were, were probably the most valuable. Those are awesome. Those are good ones, right? Those are good ones. Um, all right, let's talk about one other thing before I let you go all right mike green said came out said talking about 140k is the new poverty line do you agree with that statement so let me uh give some background on my relationship with

mike green mike green has spent uh the last five years i live rent free in that man's head um he uh his wife who's a better investor than him uh told him to buy bitcoin at 25 and he didn't do it and that set him on a path where he just cannot admit that he was wrong and that Bitcoin is valuable. He still to this day will tell you how Bitcoin is not valuable. Mind you, he offers Bitcoin products, but you know, he'll say, oh, the customer should have choice, even though I disagree. Okay. Second, I've had multiple debates with him. If you go back and watch, I mean, i'm biased but in hindsight you know the benefit of hindsight it looks like i you know time travel and this guy was stuck in dinosaur age so now we put that aside you know i don't like people who

actively worked to hurt people and try to convince them not to do something that ended up actually being the right thing it's one thing at one point i was skeptical of bitcoin i have messages with friends 2012 and like i don't know i'm not into that stuff right 2014 i remember hearing about it at facebook turn to somebody hey is it you know is this like worth spending time i said it's dumb okay fine whatever but i didn't spend my time and effort out trying to convince people that it was a bad thing or it was dumb or any of that stuff right and so um with that said i hope that i'm intellectually honest enough to say i pretty much don't agree with this guy on anything but he wrote a fantastic piece it's like uh you watch a sports game and you know you're playing your rival and

as a fan you're like i hate that team but the quarterback you know he drops back those 70-yard bomb drops right in the bread basket you can say i hate they scored a touchdown but that was a good throw like dang that was nice yeah right hey i'm a hater but i respect it right my green hater but I respect the piece. So, uh, I, uh, I try to be as intellectually honest as possible. He wrote a fantastic piece. I disagree with some of the specifics, but to me, the reason why it's such a good piece is because it ultimately highlights two things. Most of the people who are looking at the data don't realize the data is lying. So that's once you kind of understand that. So the example he uses, he says, uh, people look at the poverty line, these famous charts of like the

number of people in America who live under poverty, under the $31,200 level, has been declining. Fantastic. Everyone would like fewer people in America or around the world to live in poverty. That's a positive development. Great. The problem is, the way that the poverty line is calculated is they took, at the time, people used to spend about 30-35% of their income on groceries. What they did is they just multiplied the amount of money spent on groceries by three and they used that. This is 1963, they started doing this. And they have used the government metrics of inflation

to continue to move the poverty line up. So today the poverty line is struck at $31,200. The problem is that people today don't spend 30% of their money on food. They spend somewhere between five to 7%. So now his point is you can't multiply by three, you gotta multiply by 16. And the reason is because things like childcare,

healthcare, transportation, everything else got way more expensive. So it became a bigger part of your personal spending budget. So Mike's point is if you take the amount of food the average person consumes, you know, a monetary amount, multiply it by 16, then you end up at $140,000. Now, the reason why I don't agree with the specifics is I think that there are a lot of people that live in the United States that don't make anywhere close to $140,000 and they feel like they're living a very financially secure, comfortable life.

I'm not saying it's a lot of people. I'm not saying those people don't want to make more money. But I'm just saying that there are plenty of people around the country, for example, who make 100K who feel like, hey, I could be doing better, but they don't feel like they're living in poverty, right? Now, there are some places in the country where it's really, really expensive. And if you have dual income household and all these expenses, then there's actually a really strong argument that you got to be making a lot of money, right? And so I think that it's very hard to use a generalization and apply it to 330 million people. But I think the point of his piece that I took away, the data is lying.

And two is something like the poverty line is way higher than 31,000. Should it be struck at 60 or 90 or 120 or 140? Again, we can debate that all day long. It just shouldn't be 30. And so let's just say that we meet somewhere halfway. He says 140. You know, the poverty line now is 30. let's just use a round number, say 100, kind of sort of in the middle. Okay, well, how many people

in America make more than $100,000 in their household, right? And his point was, one of the things is you used to be able to make enough money to be financially secure and enjoy the fruits of living in America and chasing the American dream on one salary. Well, now a lot of families, what do they do? They have two salaries. When you get two salaries, that means you're taking one person who was actually at home and you weren't spending money on childcare or other things and now you're putting them into the workforce. And so you've got to replace some of that productivity that they had in the household, whether it's actual childcare or other things, and now you've got to spend money on it. And so, I mean, I was looking at some of

the childcare numbers in like not urban area. You know, you think of like New York, LA, San Francisco, some of these cities, it's just like, you just know everything's way more expensive than the rest of the country. But if you go to like random states that people would not think are expensive, child care is $25,000 a year how do you how do you if you're a single uh income household with two kids three kids how do you afford that right even if you get a discount and you say hey three kids are actually only 50k what yeah that's crazy right you're gonna spend $50,000 on child care what's that for a full-time child care again it depends you send them to daycare right or you So you start to realize that there are real costs associated with many things that today

are much higher than they used to be. So I think his point is very, very strong. And the way he writes, again, disagree with the man, like the ideas, right? The way he writes is incredible. He is a very good writer, right? And so the way that he wrote this piece in particular is just an emotional charge on top of eye-opening data. And I think that's why the piece has resonated so well. And so, you know, anyone who hasn't read it, you should definitely go read the piece, just search, you know, Mike Green poverty line, and I'm sure it'll come up. But I think that if you kind of bring it all the way back full circle, the fact he understands this, the fact he's writing this, the fact that he's right about the directional, you know, thing is even more reason why it's crazy that he doesn't see Bitcoin as any potential solution.

right it's kind of like you know my boy shift i'm me and shift we're good you know we we uncle pd and i we we uh we're chill but he understands the problems in the u.s economy better than most people it's just that then when he's like bitcoin he's like oh what you know no hoblo english right he's like that's not my thing i like the gold thing so again you you can even find people who really can diagnose problems but they won't acknowledge potential solutions and so um you know i again i tweeted it right so that's how you know look me and mike green actually as much as i disagree with them i actually enjoy debating them it's kind of fun but more so is like you're like i'm talking to a smart person this person's not dumb this person's not somebody who's

ill-informed right they're just making the wrong conclusion which means i'm right they're wrong and so you know it's fun to go beat them but you're talking to a smart person i learned from him hopefully i don't know if he'd say he learned from me in the past but i've learned things from him This piece is, I think, a great example. And so I just think that people should read it. They should understand Mamdani getting elected, Trump and the populist movement, Mike Green's piece about the poverty line. All these things are connected. It's different ways to talk about the exact same thing that's happening, which is people are feeling economic pain in this country and you can either give them things

to try to solve the problem, but worsen it over the long run, or you can use free market economics, financial education, all these things to actually improve it. And the last thing I'll say is, if you want prices to come down, usually technology is the best way to do it.

Why is a big screen TV 200 bucks? When we were kids, $1,000, $2,000, it's $200 now. Why is it $200? Well, it's because we use technology to improve the product and drive the cost down.

A car. Elon's selling self-driving electric vehicles for $30,000. That's crazy. You know what's not getting cheaper? Healthcare. You know why? Government's got its greasy little fingers

all up in there, right? You know what else isn't getting cheaper? Homes. You know why? Because local city councils got their greasy little fingers all over zoning and regulations and stuff, right? So it's whenever the government's involved, prices tend to go up. Whenever free market private enterprise is involved, prices tend to come down.

It's the difference between economic incentive versus not. And so I just think that if you want to take a sledgehammer to affordability and actually improve the situation, like break glass for emergency, drive technology into the market, get the government out of the way and then go and actually use financial education to get people so that their asset side of their balance sheet is growing and put them in a better position and i think that that ends up being a much better solution than like we're going to give you free things i tend to agree with you all right that's all i got for you all right we'll see you guys next week happy thanksgiving