The Pomp Podcast - Why $1.6 Billion Is Flowing Into Crypto RIGHT NOW | Mike Novogratz & Kyle Samani

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Mike Novogratz is the Founder & CEO of Galaxy. Kyle Samani is the Chairman of Forward Industries and the Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital. In this conversation we talk about ...the $1.65 billion fundraise they recently did, how big these treasury companies can get, why they love Solana, tokenization, plans for the company, risks, and how they are going to generate shareholder returns. ======================Check out my NEW show for daily bite-sized breakdowns of the biggest stories in finance, technology, and politics: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://pompdesk.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠======================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/======================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.======================TimeStamps:0:00 - Intro 2:00 - Raising $1.65 billion for the largest Solana treasury company 5:12 - Explaining market cap vs price of token 6:10 - Why volume is so important for a public company 8:27 - Forward launching tokenized shares on Solana with Superstate 9:23 - How big can altcoin treasury companies get? 14:13 - Crypto entering Wall Street and plans to create value 20:28 - What are some risks? 26:47 - Is the 4 year bitcoin cycle over? 30:36 - Advice and how to think through investing in crypto

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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
Starting point is 00:00:40 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've got a great episode for you. We've got Mike Novogratz, the founder and CEO of Galaxy. And then we also have Kyle Simani. He's the chairman of Ford Industries, and he's the founder and managing partner at Multicoin. In this conversation, we talk about a $1.65 billion fundraise that they recently did for Ford Industries. What's going on with these treasury companies? What is their plan with the Solana-focused treasury company? How is it going to work? What the risks are? And how are they
Starting point is 00:01:17 actually going to generate shareholder returns? That and much more. Here's my latest conversation with mike and kyle solana at this point is the fastest now listen there's a big debate you can say okay ethereum's got level twos on top of it and listen this will be debated right there's there's never a a uh declared winner before the race finishes uh we think uh solana is in the lead in terms of speed and processing and has a great shot at at being a winner how do you guys think about uh i think solana's market cap is like two times higher than it was last cycle but the coin itself is uh about all-time highs you got a stake yeah like how do you get your coins yeah so explain this a little bit like what's happening there all right kyle and mike uh this is a big day for you
Starting point is 00:02:03 guys um you guys have made a bunch of announcements kyle you guys raised 1.6 billion dollars to create the largest solana treasury uh company in public markets why solana and why'd you raise so much money it was 1.65 billion pump uh thanks for having me here off to a fast start all right uh let's hit it um yeah look we got to meet mike and the novo team and galaxy team excuse me and and the jump guys and we all kind of looked at each other as a few months ago and we were like there's an opportunity here to knock this out of the park so made made a deal happen between the three of us um the reason we're doing this on solana is because we all believe solana is going to be the world is the world's most performant blockchain um that's clearly true today you
Starting point is 00:02:43 look at all the usage metrics performance trading volumes all that stuff it's all there ultimately uh we believe that we're going to settle not only securities markets globally on solana but commodities fx derivatives you name it we think there's an opportunity to truly move uh off of tradfi rails and off of nasdaq and izzy and on to internet capital markets you just want to completely take everything off of the traditional rails and you think you can put it on solana yeah i mean look like we have newspapers we have paper and today newspapers are what one percent of news being read and 99 is on the internet it took 25 years but same thing's going to happen you think it's possible what's interesting the head of the sec right paul atkins paul atkins
Starting point is 00:03:21 came out and said i want markets to move on shane i was like did he actually say that rewind do it again like paul atkins said he wants markets to move on shane that's a radical departure from where we were with gary gensler uh and so if markets are moving on shane and i think this is I'm not going to move on Shane overnight. It's going to take a while. We tokenized Galaxy stock. We're tokenizing Ford. We announced it today.
Starting point is 00:03:45 You know, volumes start slow until they get into the DeFi channels and then they'll go faster. There's going to be a big fight on what exchanges security tokens can trade on. Once that all gets worked out, they're going to trade over blockchains. What was unique about bringing Jump Capital into this? Like, there are three or four guys in the world that are A++ at infrastructure, right? Jump, Citadel, Jane Street, Tower, jumps one of them. And when it comes to infrastructure in crypto, jumps a one-on-one. And so, understanding what is necessary for high-frequency trading, for transacting thousands, millions of transactions a second.
Starting point is 00:04:31 And let's get real clear. when AI starts transacting, and it will, when we have agentic, both traders and agentic shoppers and agentic everything, sending stable coins, they're going to happen over blockchains. And so partnering up with Jump in this thing and saying, hey, Solana, at this point is the fastest. Now, listen, there's a big debate. You can say, okay, Ethereum's got level twos on top of it. And listen, this will be debated, right? There's never a declared winner before the race finishes. uh we think uh solana is in the lead in terms of speed and processing and has a great shot at at being a winner how do you guys think about uh i think solana's market cap is like two times higher
Starting point is 00:05:15 than it was last cycle but the coin itself is uh about all-time highs you got a stake yeah like how do you get your coins yeah so explain this a little bit like what's happening there yeah look so all of these networks have permissionless global consensus and bitcoin you have the miners obviously very famously a lot of them are publicly traded um and proof of stake networks like ethereum and solana you don't have to have all this heavy mining infrastructure uh the simple of it is you can take your coins let's say you have 100 coins and you can click a couple buttons on the screen and stake your coins and once you do that you'll earn uh the kind of headline rate of inflation which today on solana is sorry headline rate of yield excuse me which is roughly
Starting point is 00:05:53 seven and a half to eight percent and so seven and a half percent in eight years basically doubles you you you can almost consider that the risk-free rate of solana that's you know not a perfect comp to u.s treasuries but pretty close for for understanding all right so you became the chairman of this company uh ford industry how do you guys determine just whoever had more hair or i'm already the ceo of galaxy and you know out there uh it takes a lot of energy to try to keep the, the, listen, the, the key in being a public equity, and I've learned this both the hard way and I'm starting to learn it the easier way. And the key to being a successful dad is to get volume in your stock. And there's a magic formula that no one tells you and you still
Starting point is 00:06:40 don't know. Some stocks get it overnight. You're like, how did they get so much volume? Why volume? because volume is energy volume is people caring about your story right think about the biggest stories in the world apple everyone cares about apple they launched a new phone you found an opinion every guy in the streets got an opinion that's why it's got that's why it's got volume and with volume often comes price volume comes volatility and that that creates energy and so why kyle is because he loves fucking solana and we thought he'd do a good job he does love solana We thought he would do a great job of bringing energy to our stock. But listen, this is the challenge for all treasury companies and for all public companies.
Starting point is 00:07:20 And I look at Circle, they, overnight, because they launched at a perfect time, they gave a lot to retail, they've got a really simple story, right? We're a stablecoin company in a world where stablecoins, right? We just had the Genius Act passed. And overnight, they're one of the highest volume stocks in the whole crypto space, if not the highest volume like i'm jealous you know my job as ceo of galaxy is to bring people's energy to galaxy and the same thing with ford we need to bring because if if not listen we have a bunch of assets we think we've got the smartest team around on how to stake them on how to create
Starting point is 00:07:59 defy yield and how to do other smart things but what we really need is volume because with volume comes more selling and and then more assets coming into the system and you listen tom lee's done it in bnmr brilliantly uh sometimes it's lightning in a bottle sometimes it's a strategy but the only thing i think we can add is energy energy telling the story energy bringing people into the tent energy for awareness of why we think this is an interesting place to put your money all right so you guys are going to hold let's say billions of dollars of solana uh you're going to stake it i'm assuming um that means you're going to get seven eight percent uh off of that that's free cash flow what else are you going to do? Yeah. So this morning, actually, we announced some news.
Starting point is 00:08:40 We announced that we're tokenizing our stock using our partner, SuperState, natively on this line of blockchain. And as part of that, we actually negotiated an ability to get equity in SuperState for basically being their flagship customer. Forward Industries is not laying out any cash for this equity. We have said to our investors publicly, and I've talked about this on Twitter and other podcasts, that we're going to use our reputation, our scale, and our willingness to do interesting things to negotiate creative economics for our shareholders. We've been live for two weeks. And today we announced our first deal that effect. We've got a whole bunch more in the pipeline. But being able to use our scale to
Starting point is 00:09:20 actually get better economics, we think is a phenomenal way to deliver shareholder value. And how big can these things get, right? Like we obviously seen strategy, we see meta plan, we see some of these, you know, really large companies, but how big do you think that the altcoin treasury companies can actually get i think they can get a lot bigger than they are now uh i was skeptical to be fair when michael strategy started michael saylor started it you know micro strategy i was like okay i got it it's bringing people that couldn't get into the space but when the etf came out i was like well why and michael did an amazing job of creating energy around michael's micro strategy created all kinds of different avenues to open the aperture of
Starting point is 00:10:00 of people that would look at his stock from the converts first to the preferreds uh and when you think about why treasury companies have worked better than a skeptic would have thought they would because there's a ton of skeptics around treasury companies and i was one the amount of people that have access to fixed income and equity accounts is so much greater than people that have already set up crypto wallets and for right this moment in time right now with with the fed cutting rates with a government that can't seem to stop spending money uh a perfect narrative for crypto with equities at an all-time high gold at an all-time high crypto at an all-time high opening up the aperture bringing money into the space it's happening through these treasury
Starting point is 00:10:49 companies. And so when they trade poorly and they start trading to discounts or flat, it's bad for the overall crypto market because that's where the buyers have come from. And so we watch that carefully. But that was part of it. And so again, this debt can be a whole lot bigger than it is today. But predicated on that is us doing a great job of convincing people there's value added with this team and a bull market it's hard to make a much bigger and a really bad market today's episode is brought to you by simple mining have you ever been interested in mining bitcoin as a miner myself i've been using simple mining for the past few months and the experience has been nothing short of seamless i mine with the pool of my choice and the bitcoin is sent directly to my
Starting point is 00:11:35 wallet simple mining which is based in cedar falls iowa offers a premium white glove service designed for everyone from individual enthusiasts to large-scale miners they've been in business for four years and currently operate more than 20,000 Bitcoin miners, including mine. Their electricity is over 65% renewable thanks to the abundance of wind energy. Not only do they simplify mining with their top-notch hosting and on-site repair services, but they also help you benefit financially by running your operations as a business. This approach offers 100% bonus depreciation to optimize the profitability of your investment. Do you ever worry about the completion of maintaining your mining equipment? They've got you covered there too. For the first
Starting point is 00:12:12 12 months, all repairs are included at no extra cost. If you experience any downtime, they'll credit you for it as well. And if your miners aren't profitable at the amount, simply pause them with no penalties. When you're ready to upgrade or adjust your setup, their exclusive marketplace provides a seamless way to resell your equipment. Join me and many satisfied miners who have simplified their Bitcoin mining journey. You can even get started today with a seven-day miner trial visit simple mining.io slash pump to get started today that's simple mining.io slash pump to get started today with simple mining they make it simple do uh do you guys think that you'll go and you'll buy other uh solana based uh treasuries like we just saw the
Starting point is 00:12:52 uh recently strive announced that they're buying similar um there i know there's other solana ones out there would you buy other ones if they're trading at a big enough discount of course you it yes and not only solana ones but any asset it doesn't matter if our stock is trading at 1.5 someone's trading at 0.7 there's a creative transaction for both parties and let's say in that scenario let's just say it's another altcoin treasury that's doing that would you go and try to buy it and then sell their coins to buy more solana or would you hold on to their coins or like how do you think through some of the nuances forward industries as a slot of that okay so you like go raid other altcoins should they fear kyle simani i i would call it it's an accretive
Starting point is 00:13:31 transaction for both shareholders you sound like a public company ceo already all right perfect um when you think about uh solana in the public market there is that yield you guys have done a pretty good job in capital markets at galaxy do you see an opportunity to start uh with bonds and things where you can actually pay and have that uh liability because you're able to drive the actual yield yeah i think listen you know and and hats off to michael saylor because he gave a pretty good road map first you got to establish yourself as the dominant player so that's role one for us uh be the dominant player be the apex predator and sell a lot of debts uh be able to raise capital just through equity i'm laughing because we've all known each other for a long time now
Starting point is 00:14:16 the fact that we're now talking about like the crypto industry assaulting public markets and being the apex predator and the verticals i know there's wall street guys like these fucking guys right like they've got to be like i spent my life as a wrestler so that you just think that way it's a physical sport but i do think that i mean the essence of this point is that you guys are essentially using what is something that's native to this new digital world and you're essentially arbing the fact that wall street will give you a bunch of money if you can then turn around and pay them yield back that you're able to generate in the digital world like there is this very interesting uh symbiotic relationship but you want to establish that you can raise capital
Starting point is 00:14:53 and lots of it and then you take the next step so now let's put some data you don't put that much leverage on the thing but there's plenty of leverage you can put on i mean like i mean just you could put seven percent leverage on with knowing you're going to get that seven percent back just in yield right and so there's a level of leverage you'll take and you know if you if you build a good enough story uh then you can maybe do what michael does and raise raise preferred like that's a genius move uh it took michael four years more maybe four years uh and what was interesting about micro strategy it became its own community like these work if they become communities you think about what the core value prop in crypto so far has not been utility it's
Starting point is 00:15:41 been community right you're part of the xrp army a lot of people don't use the xrp blockchain but they really like the coin right what does what does it mean like the coin mean they like they trust the community to to to hold their value that's what it is and michael saylor created community around micro strategy which was different than bitcoin people are micro strategy guys they like it they in and out performed and so the job is community like that's what creates the value is there is there a world where you guys are so successful in the public markets that actually takes away capital flows from solana like could that could it uh become this like fragmented capital flow no but this brings if you think about it the thing of like was micro
Starting point is 00:16:26 was micro strategy good for bitcoin or bad categorically good oh of course michael saylor deserves two kisses and a hug uh he might not take that well he but why because he brought people into the Bitcoin ecosystem. He bought more Bitcoin than anyone else. That's energy into the ecosystem, right? I mean, in lots of ways, this whole crypto thing is about who can bring energy into those ecosystems, right? It has been a narrative business until recently. It still is a narrative business. It will change in the next five years to a performative business, right? To utility, right? We're starting to see it already in some ecosystems, but we're really early right i talk about agentic ai using stable coins it ain't happening yet you know it's going
Starting point is 00:17:14 to uh it's not happening we're not buying our us open tickets on a decentralized ticketing space we're buying them through ticketmaster still like and so as we have this revolution go from narrative to utility like what does that mean well when we have more and more stable coins operating on blockchains that's going to take money from bank deposits by definition even though they're not allowed to pay interest they're going to pay interest they're going to money market funds here and stable coins here and they're going to instantly uh transact and so you'll be able to have in your wallet your cash or your or your your what you normally put in checking and savings earning zero at jp morgan earning four and a half percent or whatever the
Starting point is 00:18:00 the Fed funds rate is, and use it to buy stuff. Well, so as bank deposits go down, what goes up? Where does credit creation come from? You're going to see private credit tokenized. That'll be one of the first big uses of real world assets. And banks are going to be replaced by stable coins and private credit. And you're going to buy private credit and tokenize for them. uh like that's gonna happen is it gonna happen next year no it's gonna start happening next year right you saw figure went public with a big freaking nice multiple congrats mike agni uh right he's tokenizing private credit uh galaxy is going to get into tokenizing private credit we've done some small uh examples of it already uh but as those things happen they're going to
Starting point is 00:18:50 happen over blockchains and we think solana is going to be one of the blockchains that gets the lion's share of the financial market stuff because it's kind of tailor-built for financial markets what do you think yeah your original question was like you know how do we interplay with solana itself and i think to mike's credit this is extremely uh positive sum you know i think the other thing that's hard for people to appreciate is you know if you look at bitcoin there is no bitcoin foundation um just random miners and whatever around the world um if you at ethereum and solana they both are stewarded by these swiss-based non-profits um and they act as swiss non-profits um we actually live in a very uh symbiotic relationship with the solana foundation
Starting point is 00:19:33 now um we are the largest u.s largest salon of doubt in the world but also the largest one in the united states and so we are now in a position to basically engage and work with u.s capital markets, U.S. regulators, to further advance the interest of Solana in the United States. We see other DATs, too, in other regions. There's ones in Asia and the UAE and other places. And yes, they are our competitors, but they are also accretive for Solana. Forward Industries is never going to be the leading DAT engaging with UAE or Middle East jurisdictions, regulators. We're not going to be that in Asia either. We're going to be that in the United States. That's where our bread and butter is. And so there's this very healthy
Starting point is 00:20:13 dynamic where we have this Swiss nonprofit that stewards this credibly neutral, permissionless, open global system. And then you have these capitalist enterprises on top who are out to advance the interests of Solana, but also through the context of driving value for shareholders. How do you guys mess this up? You raise a ton of money, you're buying an asset, you're driving the yield, all that makes sense. Obviously, if the price goes down a lot, that wouldn't be fun, but still you'd hold the assets, it would still yield, whatever. like how does this blow up it doesn't blow up like the downside scenario for our dat and for all that's is that at one point this beautiful lovable likable crypto bull market comes to an end
Starting point is 00:20:56 and we're like oh you love this one this one is uh not really uh kicking off yet no but i this this well listen we've all made we're all a lot richer than we were a year ago uh anyone in this space if you're not you should just quit the space and actually become like a sower or something i don't know uh like if you have not made money in the last 12 months uh you don't deserve being the crypto business um but at one point bull markets end who knows why they run out of steam the fed pivots and says i'm like we can't cut rates anymore like this was crazy we shouldn't have been cut in the first place like there's all kinds of scenarios where the bull market ends and in a bear market these things trade back to parity or even to discount a book and
Starting point is 00:21:42 you just write it out yeah it's not it's there's opportunities to do there like we're an asset manager right kyle is the chairman of a company with 1.7 billion dollars assets uh that's a lot of assets uh galaxy's managing those assets right now uh there's a board that thinks of strategic of things to do. There's ability to raise capital privately. There's ability to raise capital through ATM in the public markets. And so you do well like any other company would do. It might be boring for six months or a year because you're, you know, less ability to bring in new capital. But it's still a substantial company. One of the reasons, and we debated, we wanted to start bigger is because we want it to be substantial. Like, a $1.7 billion asset manager is a big
Starting point is 00:22:32 enough company as is. We expect this to become a $10 billion asset manager. That's the goal or higher. But if we got timing perfectly wrong and we were stuck here for 18 months through a cycle, it's not the end of the world. There's not a disaster scenario for this. Yeah. The other thing I want to flag, Pomp, is this is a publicly traded permanent capital vehicle. And ultimately, it's going to be up to the management team and the board to make capital allocation decisions to drive long-term value for shareholders. We're really fortunate between Multicoin Jump and Galaxy to have probably the three groups that are the most long-term oriented around thinking about Solana. I was very fortunate to meet Anatoly and Raj,
Starting point is 00:23:21 and I led the Solana seed round back in early 2018. We have bridged the Solana team when they were running out of money way back in the day. We are one of the most active investors across the Solana ecosystem today. I think we've invested in 25 or 30 different Solana-based teams. And we have a very long-term view
Starting point is 00:23:37 on how this stuff's going to play out, how value is going to accrue, how market structure is going to change. We're placing all these bets, have been through Multicorner now as well through Forward Industries and guiding that. And at the end of the day, when you judge us in five years,
Starting point is 00:23:49 the primary thing you should be judging us by is did we make good capital allocation decisions given uh the knowledge base uh of the of the core teams here between multi-coin jump and galaxy uh i feel pretty good that we're gonna be able to navigate this well and knock it out do you have to outperform solana for it to be a win right like i think that we think about this strategy didn't outperform bitcoin people be like i should have just bought bitcoin yeah they outperformed i think is like a big driver the north star for ford industries is sold per share so yeah we think about soul as the as the denominator and we should be able to just buy the staking alone um but listen there's lots of galaxy does a good job we will uh listen there's lots that goes into
Starting point is 00:24:32 this uh if the soul price itself doesn't go up it's not as fun you know just being you know doesn't mean it's a terrible business no it's not a terrible business at all and if you didn't believe that in five years, the sole price would be substantially higher, you shouldn't be participating in the sole ecosystem. We're in three years, right? I mean, listen, there's plenty of trading opportunities, but like we are long-term bullish this space. I would not have taken Galaxy public if I didn't think crypto would be more relevant in the world in five years time than it is today. Will you sell Solana if let's say you think that the market's going to go down or you see some other reason?
Starting point is 00:25:12 Or is this something where you're like, we'll never sell once we buy it and then there's other opportunities we have? Yeah, we're not here to play hedge fund trading sole USD. We think about driving value to shareholders in sole per share terms. Yeah. All right.
Starting point is 00:25:28 Today's episode is brought to you by Zappo Bank, where eligible members can unlock the power of Bitcoin without selling it. Need cash fast? With Zappo Bank's Bitcoin-backed loans, you can access 40% of your Bitcoin's value, borrowing as much as $1 million for a full year with low interest rates, zero fees, and no early repayment fees either. Now, here's the best part. You keep your Bitcoin, meaning you get to watch
Starting point is 00:25:49 your holdings grow as the price of Bitcoin increases. Whether you're looking to buy a house, fund your child's education, or seize an exciting investment opportunity, these loans give you the flexibility to access cash without selling your Bitcoin. Unlike traditional loans, Zappo Bank's Bitcoin-backed loans have no minimum repayments, no early repayment penalties, and the flexibility to settle your loan in USD or Bitcoin whenever it suits you. It's liquidity entirely on your terms. Zappo understands the unique needs of Bitcoin holders. That's why they have developed a product designed specifically for you.
Starting point is 00:26:19 With over a decade of experience in the Bitcoin space, Zappo Bank has been a trusted partner for those looking to make the most of their Bitcoin while keeping it safe. Your Bitcoin stays safe in your vault, untouched, never lent out, and secured in a global network of military-grade bunkers with cutting-edge security technology. head to zappobank.com forward slash pomp to learn more that's x-a-p-o-b-a-n-k.com forward slash pomp go check them out at zappobank.com slash pomp today do you guys think the four-year cycle's over for crypto in general or do you think that like end of this year there's some
Starting point is 00:26:53 sort of top and next year is back into a bear market it's a great question i spent all night thinking about it don't worry so do i of course the market got the living shit kicked out of it today right uh so i guess we should have sold it listen these are very hard calls um we are moving into a world where we've got central banking independence really a question we've never had that in my 40-year career in wall street and so depending on who trump picks as the next fed governor it could kick off a whole freaking mega cycle right we throw some of my independence into the end of the toilet and crypto's going a lot higher right and so the political situation makes that prediction harder uh the fed just cut rates they're going to cut at least one more time
Starting point is 00:27:46 probably two more times uh is it strange they cut rates when the stock market's on an all-time high gold is on an all-time high crypto's on yeah it is there was political pressure some uh but they also wrestling with this thing we never had to think about before, which was AI, the great job destroyer. And it's going to destroy jobs. You can see it already, especially young people's jobs, high paying ones. And so what AI does to this world, if anyone thinks they really know, they're out of their minds. It's so complicated. And so there's a lot more uncertainty in macro than I've ever seen, which makes calling the top of the cycle much more difficult. The other thing I would add is Mike just touched on executive branch, Fed independence.
Starting point is 00:28:34 But I honestly think what might end up being the biggest thing when we look back in 20 years is Congress. And we just passed the Genius Act a couple months ago. Stablecoins are now recognized by the United States Congress. I think we're going to get the Clarity Act passed hopefully in the next couple months here. Fingers crossed. I was in D.C. last week talking with Senator Scott and a bunch of others on some of these issues. and uh and then of course we have chair paul atkins who announced project crypto and he said unequivocally uh we're going to move u.s securities markets on chain it's with that backdrop it's you
Starting point is 00:29:07 know i think probably the right historical comp to think about here is the telecommunications act of 1996 and when congress passed that act and president clinton signed it that is really what laid the groundwork for the internet to grow it gave companies the confidence to build fiber for guys like Cisco to build all the routers and the infrastructure for Intel to build all the chips and all the memory and all that stuff for Microsoft and all the software makers to make all the apps.
Starting point is 00:29:30 And I think the Genies Act and then soon the Clarity Act, when we look back 20 years from now, it's going to be pretty obvious that that was the watershed moment. And so, yeah, we just feel incredibly excited about this. I'd say the last thing I would say is, there's like, I think 6 billion people have a smartphone today in the world,
Starting point is 00:29:47 something like that. There's 8 billion people on the planet. Obviously, that'll get to $8 billion here in the next few years. And Google and Apple were never going to add native support for stablecoins in iOS and Android until stablecoins were fully blessed federally to be legal. That's happened. I don't know when Apple and Google are going to enable stablecoins as a first-class citizen in iOS and Android. But at this point, you can kind of assume the probability that that's going to happen is 100%.
Starting point is 00:30:13 Maybe it's in 26. Maybe it's in 27. Maybe it's in 28. I obviously don't know anything about their timing. But, you know, we've got David Sachs as crypto czar in the White House. Guarantee you he's been calling folks at Apple and Google and telling them, hey, guys, this is a matter of U.S. interest to promote the growth of stable coins around the world. Build this into iOS and Android as a first class primitive. Were you trading when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 happened?
Starting point is 00:30:41 I was a macro trader in Asia. Do you remember anything that's noteworthy? you know i was i'll tell you a funny story i was uh i was trading the thai bot asian interest rates s&p so pretty much macro focused on curry currencies and interest rates derivatives and my mother called me up in late 99 and i made partner at goldman sachs congratulations feeling good i was rich for the first time in my life and i was feeling like a middle-class kid. My dad was in the army. My mom's like, all my friends own Amazon. And you didn't tell me about Amazon. And everyone on the street's making money on Amazon. And I'm making nothing.
Starting point is 00:31:21 And I'm thinking on the street we lived on, the biggest Amazon position was probably $2,000. But I was like, geez, I did miss the entire internet. And so I decided I was not going to miss the Chinese internet. And I made a huge investment in a guy named Micah Truman. Dumb idea. Coke bottle glasses, white guy, spoke perfect Chinese. And he had all these email addresses 20 million chinese internet email addresses there was only 30 million chinese internet users at the time and uh of course that went to zero and i thought to myself uh later i was at goldman sachs in our office one floor up alibaba was coming through tencent all the great chinese internet companies were getting started right about there i could have like
Starting point is 00:32:05 put a hundred thousand dollars in six of them instead of six hundred thousand dollars in one and probably throw a dart at the dartboard. I think I hit the only zero. They all actually exploded up. And so I've always come to the conclusion early on in these moves. Like when I started in crypto, I was in all kinds of ecosystems.
Starting point is 00:32:24 I still think, don't be so arrogant that you're going to know exactly how it plays out. Spread your bets a little bit. This is going to be a wild, I think Kyle's 100% right. This is going to be a watershed moment. And up until now, crypto has been a story. It's been more than a story in that Bitcoin is a store of values and stable coins overseas are a big deal.
Starting point is 00:32:46 But broadly in the U.S., it's been a story. And we're going to go from story to rebuilding infrastructure. And that's going to happen in the next two to 10 years. And as that infrastructure, as things move on chain, things are going to change much faster. think of a company like Pump.Fun, which runs on the Solana blockchain. That thing exploded. They've got a great token. I was talking to the founder at a party my son threw. The guy's 20, 21. Good dude. And I'm like, you're the pump guy? And I was like, what's the next iteration? And if you think about what meme coins have done on the Solana blockchain is they gamified in lots of ways
Starting point is 00:33:26 attention well where do most kids spend all day on tiktok in reels and instagram and you watch you're going to gamify reels you're going to gamify tiktok you're going to gamify all of it uh you can have instant tokens on every freaking tweet you do uh that stuff millions and millions of transactions i i don't know if pump's going to be the one who does it someone else's uh again solana blockchain perfectly suited for those those use cases but as we move into a more digital world where everything is also gamified because you're seeing that happen like i just think the utility case for blockchains and then that case for bringing people into the community so like oh i build on this and that so that's like utility plus
Starting point is 00:34:18 narrative as opposed to just narrative and that's going to be the big change i want to add something about you know live streaming i think it's a super underappreciated element of these systems um so one of the taglines of solana is internet capital markets uh we certainly believe that folks at galaxy and jump to as well and i think this this kind of live streaming example that mike was just talking about with pump kind of illustrates that most people look at you know with pump throughout anyone can go on there do a live stream create a token engage with your fans and your followers and it's a wild time people have a ton of fun and i think most people probably people who are listening to the pomp show probably look at this and they're like i have no idea what
Starting point is 00:34:57 this is i don't know how to make sense of this and i think the way i help people try and understand what's happening is to think about entertainment finance um entertainment finance 1.0 was jim kramer like he was the first uh and he figured out his formula and look you you are now to your own version of that um different kind of entertainment right different different style you've got roaring kitty you've got dave portnoy you've got all these different flavors of it um and much in the same way that we went from with media where there was just you know five tv channels to now you've got social media where anyone can have a twitter account or an instagram account um the same is happening with these content creators and now asset issuers um and it
Starting point is 00:35:39 is it is really the forefront of entertainment finance and so when people look at this i encourage you to try and really think about like how is this evolving and uh it's actually incredibly exciting to see what happens when you can unlock finance as a true first-class internet native primitive and it's really all happening on salon we can launch a meme coin for every pomp episode no we can't do that and we can't and then like all right we're we're kyle and no regrets interesting or not or does this thing fucking tank or people start if this if the episode goes viral the meme coin goes up but then like the thing about meme coins is very few have long-term longevity, right? A few have, right? But there's a way that people get to gamble
Starting point is 00:36:20 or speculate or gamify their concept of what's going to work. And that makes them feel good, right? And in a world where AI is going to replace a lot of other jobs, that consumption is valuable to people. Now, you could argue, is it great for society or not? I'm not making that argument i'm i'm arguing that it's happening it's happening with sports betting it's how my my my son and his friends who are all like 27 year old knuckleheads and they're the perfect age for this stuff they don't watch a sporting event without like 19 bets on it and that's become commonplace across america didn't exist on that way didn't exist when i was young yeah we just rooted for our damn team uh now you're rooting for you know each field goal and each touchdown
Starting point is 00:37:06 and he, you know. Hit the coin flip. Well, yeah, the coin flip is a big deal, you know. But we're moving to where we're gamifying lots of stuff. And so this ecosystem of crypto, I mean, and Solana literally tailor-built for this, is, again, I think we should tokenize Pomp episodes. Where can we send people to find more
Starting point is 00:37:29 about foreign industries? So our Twitter handle, you should go there, F-W-D-I-N-D. You can also go to sol.forwardindustries.com. That's kind of our core website with all of our Solana stuff. And of course, follow Mike and I on Twitter. We're both very colorful characters there.
Starting point is 00:37:45 All right, guys. Thank you so much for doing this. We'll do it again in the future. Pom, thanks for having us. Love you.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.