What Comes After Crypto with Anthony Pompliano

19:32Alex Thorn:I mean, I remember there was, you know, we used to joke there were more token issuance platforms than tokens back in like 18 and 19. But it seems like that is back. You know, we tokenize Galaxy stock. There's equity security tokens are exploding. People came up with a new term for it, RWA. What do you see here in this spot? And is this something, is this, you know, where crypto and traditional markets are finally going to merge together? Well, if you go back, I can't remember when I wrote it, but 2017, 2018. My basic framework was we were going through a transition period that was very natural in financial markets.

20:07And we went from what I called the analog age to the electronic age. So there used to be these analog assets. You used to have physical stock certificates, physical bonds, physical deeds to your home. Everything was paper, a filing cabinet, right? I mean, it was very much an analog world. And the transition in the, you know, pretty much like the 80s into the 90s was we went from all that physical paper or analog to electronic Q-sips. And the electronic Q-sips were revolutionary compared to the paper. You can now move them around. And who cared if those two-day settlement times, like the fact that you could send something to someone else in the world and didn't have to physically mail it.

20:43All that stuff was very valuable.

20:44Alex Thorn:Game changer. Correct. And so my framework was we were going to go from the electronic age to the digital age. And the digital age was going to involve everything being a token that could now move freely around the world without the two-day settlement times. It was cheaper. It was faster. It was better. Now, this famous Bill Gates quote that we kind of overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in 10. And after about a year of talking about this, I pretty much came to the conclusion this is going to happen. It's going to take way longer than I thought. So I stopped talking about it because I felt like being too early is just the same as being wrong.

21:18Yeah. Right? And I realized that it wasn't going to happen in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021. Right? Right. So fast forward to 2025, like now it kind of feels like, okay, there's enough here. Now I'm very skeptical because of my prior experience. I have a bias to say, prove to me that there's volume. Prove to me that the investors actually want this. and you know it falls into this second framework i have which is um crypto is going to be dead in 10 years and when i say that what i mean is that crypto and the traditional financial world are merging together we are no longer going to talk about crypto in 10 years people are going to be like remember when we used to call it crypto now it's just assets it's just finance right there's equities there's bonds there's currencies there's commodities all this stuff it's no different than people used to be like internet finance right yeah and it's like the worldwide web yeah and it's just like this new thing that everyone's fascinated web now you'd be like wait you don't use the internet like like we talk about you know buffett doesn't have a computer and we're like wow i know like crazy and so i think that you know we have platforms today where people trade on their phones yeah everything has become the internet yeah the internet finance era died it just became finance same thing here crypto is going to die over the next 10 years uh and that's part of mass adoption is once it becomes pervasive, it's no longer new.

22:35It's no longer novel. And it's just the standard, which means that crypto wins. We get to plant our flag on Wall Street and say, we have won. It's just not in the way of we have conquered and destroyed your system. Instead, it is kind of like we got, you know, kind of incorporated into it. And now we all live in peace and harmony together on Wall Street. I think that makes sense.

22:55Alex Thorn:You even have, I mean, how much of that was regulatory changes that we've seen, you know, this year or versus is just maturation and, you know. Yeah, I think regulation is some of it. I think people really, you know, and I've spent a lot of time going back and looking at how did the internet get adopted? So not just the tech out, but the consumer adoption of the internet, a very large part of it is that you have to allow for young people to become middle-aged people. You have to allow for preferences to change. You have to train someone to actually not go to google.com, go to chat GPT, right? There are things that occur over time, and it's a familiarity to it.

23:35And so the good news is if you think today, somebody in the United States who is under the age of 18 for the most part doesn't know or whatever, 16, doesn't really know a world without Bitcoin. The history of Bitcoin versus fiat currency in their mind is both. They've been around since I was born. It's crazy. Right? You and I know a world before Bitcoin, right? But there's a lot of folks who are older, they actually know a world before fiat. And so it's all about these kind of age demographics. Now, if you also think about Coinbase, there's a guy, Max Bransberg, there who's got this great saying.

24:12He says, you know, DeFi mullet. And the whole idea of a DeFi mullet is the front end looks the exact same. In their case, they say, you know, kind of the trusted front end of Coinbase. It could be any service. but the back-end plumbing now starts to become more DeFi-oriented or crypto-oriented or token-oriented, et cetera. We will not have been successful until the user is using a product they don't even know they're using. If I have to go to a separate account, if I have to go to use something where my heart starts pumping a little bit more because I'm like, oh, am I really going to be able to send the stablecoin to Alex?

24:49What I want to just be able to say is send it. Now, I say that. Remember, the banking system is not completely insulated from this. There's account numbers and there's ACH numbers. There's SWIFT. There's name of the account. You have to put the address of the account to do a wire. Yeah, why do you have to do that, the address? That doesn't make sense.

25:08Alex Thorn:It's just the system that was built. It's very strange, though. So we're headed in the right direction, but there's still quite a bit of, I think, kind of work to be done there. And so you need consumer preferences to change. You need young people to kind of move into the cohort where they actually have assets. And then you also need the technology to continue to innovate. The next 10 years or so, I feel like all of that kind of comes to a head. And you see the big institutions. Like a lot of these folks are doing things that they are not announcing publicly. And they're playing. They're tinkering.

25:36They're trying to figure out where's our spot, right? And, you know, if you think of like a Citadel with payment for order flow, where's our spot? Oh, this Robin Hood thing? Maybe it'll get big. Let's go into it, right? Now everyone wants to play that game. Well, that is going to be the future here, whether it's tokenizing equities, whether it's bringing funds on chain, whether it's some sort of payment system that is like streaming payment. All of that is trying to be figured out. And you now have not only the kind of early adopter technologist types that are pushing this forward. You now have JP Morgan.

26:10You have BNY. NASDAQ. You have NASDAQ. They're all playing. Yeah, yeah. Come on. It's going to get figured out.

26:16Alex Thorn:Yeah, I think three of the four biggest custody banks, so State Street, BNY, Citi, and JPM, all of them except for JPM have announced or launched crypto custody already. So BNY is live. I think State Street and Citi both said they'll be live next year. JPM has actually said, like, we're not currently looking at it. But that just means currently, probably like in a month, they'll be like, okay, we're looking at it, right? One acquisition away from being in the game. Yeah, exactly. Jamie will finally capitulate, I think, on this. He still calls it Satoshi. It's actually on the intro of this show, if you're listening.

26:51Alex Thorn:We have that quote of Jamie Dine. He said, Satoshi's going to come back. Poof, all the Bitcoin will be destroyed. SoFi now is a bank that is allowing crypto trading. I think it's the first federally registered bank to allow crypto trading. Interesting. Right? So, like, okay, does that mean that eventually in my brokerage account? And everyone's applying for that OCC license. I think Anchorage has it as well. They snuck in under Mnuchin, the prior administration. I can't imagine what they had to go through under Biden's presidency to maintain that license. But, yeah, everything might – well, now you can be a bank, right?

27:27Operation Chokepoint is not in effect as far as we know.

27:30Alex Thorn:I think that it's still going on. Yeah. We have a lot of companies. We have a lot of investments. We have a lot of accounts for people on our team or in our ecosystem. system, I consistently hear stories of companies being denied bank accounts. I've heard stories of publicly traded companies being denied bank accounts at certain very large financial institutions, and they don't want to put it in writing, right? But it's not the like relationship manager making the decision. It's somebody in a risk department somewhere still being uncomfortable with doing it over time, I think that that will change, right?

28:10So, you know, it's kind of, again, you're on the cusp of this transition from a hardcore choke point 2.0, you can openly do this stuff, and no one cares.

28:19Alex Thorn:Now it's behind the scenes, but it still exists. It's the remnants. Yeah. Right? And so two years from now, it'll be over. Like, you're kind of decaying away the, like, you know, woke ideology, the anti-crypto ideology, the, you know, just all these things. And it just takes time to thaw, you know? We're thawing the chicken right now. So let's talk about Bitcoin specifically a little bit. You're one of the most consistent and loudest advocates of Bitcoin, I think. And one of the places I'm going to ask you about CNBC is on Squawk Box. You're a regular fixture there. And I see you're wearing the same.

28:55Alex Thorn:So you must have like five of these suits, right? Because this is the look. I've been wearing this tie for a decade. It's almost over. We're going to have to find another one. So where does Bitcoin fit in in this tokenized future or this merger of crypto and traditional where it stops saying crypto? What is your long term case from sort of today for Bitcoin? Is it debasement hedge? Like, what is it? What is Bitcoin? I think Bitcoin is different things to different people, right? Some people really care about the debasement of the fiat currency. Well, if you're in certain areas, that's the single most important problem that you face.

29:28And so Bitcoin is a great solution. I think there's other people who could care less about debasement, but they really, really need to be able to move assets without being censored. Or they may need to be able to hold economic value without having it seized, right? There's all these kind of different things as to why someone may hold Bitcoin, use Bitcoin, or mine Bitcoin, et cetera, right? Now, with that said, I believe that the digital world is actually exactly like the electronic world. So if you think of the electronic system that we have today, as an individual user, I have a savings account, I have a checking account, I have a brokerage account.

30:02In the digital world, I'm going to have the exact same thing. Bitcoin is my savings account, stable coins are my checking account, and then I'm going to have a brokerage type account where I can do all kinds of crazy stuff I want to do that try to outperform my savings. Now, what we have seen so far is that Bitcoin is a very radical departure from a traditional savings account, right? Historically, in a savings account, you saved in the same asset that sat in your checking account. It was just treated differently by the financial institution. What the digital world allows for that I think is a very profound improvement is the switching cost, the friction between going from one asset to another has significantly dropped.

30:41And I always use currencies as an example. You used to have to go, and many people still today, if I want to go to Mexico, I need pesos. Okay. Well, if I'm going to go get those pesos, where do I go? Either go to the bank and hope they have some, or I get ripped off at the airport, right? Or I go to a money changer and get ripped off.

30:55Alex Thorn:Usually I forget and do end up getting ripped off at the airport. Of course. So that friction is very high, both in terms of cost, but also I have to physically go somewhere to get the physical asset, right? Now, if you go and you look at, in this digital world, I can press a button on my phone. Near zero cost, instantaneous. At any point, I can switch back and forth between these currencies. So if you lower the friction between switching costs, now all of a sudden, you're going to have a lot more people switching. Right? And capital is going to flow between these things. So Bitcoin as a savings asset all of a sudden now becomes really interesting.

31:27Stablecoins, I want to spend the thing that is going to be worth less in the future. Always. And so naturally, the dollar is really good at short-term stability, long-term kind of detriment. And so I think that that will continue. And then you get this kind of token-based system. Now, again, Apple stock, it doesn't matter if I have the physical stock certificate, the electronic QSIP, or the token. I have Apple. I have a claim on cash flows. I have certain shareholder rights. I've got the capital appreciation or depreciation of my investment. All these things that come with owning Apple stock. I think people who critique that kind of token-based system, they're like so deep in the weeds that they don't realize the end user is not going to even know.

32:06They're just going to be on a platform and they're going to be switching between all these different assets. And you see it, whether it's Coinbase, whether it is Robinhood, I'm guessing, I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing Galaxy One and some of the stuff you guys are doing there is going to eventually all try to go after this. Like we want to be a market. And that market is for everything. It's for equities. It's for crypto. It's for prediction markets, right? All this stuff can be done in one single place. And if you do that the right way, I think that that's where you start to see a pretty interesting, better future for the end user.

32:39Yeah, it makes sense.

32:40Alex Thorn:So you talked about how you have a lot of companies. You've done a lot of investing. What are you doing now, the entrepreneur? I know you've got a couple I want to ask you about, but I'll let you set it off. Procap, I see you talking about Sylvia. Is that the CFO, the AI base? Very interested to hear about that. But what are you working on right now? I know you've got a lot. You've always been working on a lot, by the way. I think people are – I've always been very impressed with your energy. Well, I just think in the future, there's a very unique spot that someone can fill where if you can operate companies, if you can allocate capital, and if you can create distribution online, that is – each one of those things is very difficult.

33:18If you can put all three of them together, I think that it's very hard to compete against, right? Because you have the ability to allocate resources. You have the ability to actually improve and grow things. but then you also have the distribution, which brings down cost in terms of actually getting adoption of certain things. So that's really the framework that I use is being able to invest, operate, and create content online. If you think about what we do on a day-to-day basis, we run an investment firm, right? That investment firm is -

33:46Alex Thorn:That's professional capital management? Correct. It's somewhat unique in that it is a permanent capital, private vehicle. We've got a great list of investors who I've partnered with to go and build this. And we started out incubating companies. And I think that most folks are looking to allocate capital and they have kind of a GPLP structure. It's very focused on capital appreciation. There's a lot of illiquidity. And it causes them to constantly be out fundraising because they need more capital to replenish what they put out. By incubating cashflow positive businesses, what we were able to do is now we basically had a source of non-dilutive fundraising.

34:27And so we then had this cashflow that we could then use to go and do what we wanted to. So we put on the balance sheet, we could invest it, we could use it to fund new companies, we could reinvest in the company it came from. There was kind of optionality. So starting these businesses, our model essentially was we would go and we would find somebody who was an expert in a certain industry, we would partner with them, we would provide the funding, a lot of the infrastructure, they would do the thing that they're really good at doing. And it was a one plus one equals three scenario. And we could really accelerate these companies.

34:57And we've done it in many different industries, everything from residential real estate analytics, a company called ResiClub, kind of built like a Bloomberg terminal for residential real estate. Pretty cool. To, you know, we've done it with the AICFO, right? And our entire model there is to find something in the world that we think is a problem, that we are uniquely suited to solve that problem between us and our partner, and to go and attack it, right? And it's taking this idea of entrepreneurs are really just problem solvers, right? And so find the problem, go solve it. If you solve it, people give you money, you can build a business.

35:34Sounds really fun.

35:35Alex Thorn:It's a blast. Because you're, yeah, you've got the whole, the whole world is your oyster. Well, if you were to break down in these major themes, right, I have a couple of major problems I think exist in the world. I think that affordability is a massive problem, right? When we announced Resi Club two years ago, before the world was talking about affordability, I, in that piece, wrote about the fact that home affordability was eroding. It's a massive problem, but you can't solve the problem until you understand it. In order to be able to understand the problem, you have to go and get data. You have to be able to analyze it and drive the insights and inform people.

36:07And so I look at that specific business as a way to have maximum leverage. If we can go to hundreds of thousands of people who all are in a sector and say to them, there is a problem going on. Let us give you the information to then use to go solve this problem. It's a force multiplier. And so, you know, that business is run by a guy, Lance Lampert. He used to be the real estate editor at Fortune Magazine. He's excellent, right? He's an expert. People understand that he's probably the number one residential real estate reporter in the country. We've really been able to go push that forward. Another problem is that we have a lack of financial education in this world, right?

36:43And so, again, affordability, financial education, all these things are kind of interrelated. But Bitcoin is a solution because it can help insulate you from the currency debasement. Sylvia is able to take all of your financial information. So you attach your bank account, your brokerage, your crypto accounts, your credit cards. You can upload private startup investments, your real estate, your cars, any asset you have. It'll track your net worth and stuff like that. But then we've built a bunch of these state-of-the-art AI models into the product so that you can actually start to talk to Sylvia.

37:16Sylvia's a CFO. And you can ask simple questions like, you know, what's my cash balance, debt-to-equity ratio, things like that. But then you can do really, really complex things, including we've taught Sylvia how to code. So any question you ask, Sylvia can get the answer because she can write code for herself custom to solve the problem. So - I need this. Yeah. If you say, listen, I want to run a Monte Carlo simulation on my portfolio, run 100 ,000 simulations and tell me where am I likely to be in 10 years? No way. In like four or five minutes, she will come back and be like, hey, I ran 100 ,000 simulations.

37:46Here's everything you need to know.

37:47Alex Thorn:This is amazing. This is like what QuickBooks should have been. The whole thing is these AI models need the proprietary information. But here's the thing. People don't want to give the models the proprietary information. So we've gone, we've negotiated these zero data retention policies with the models. We're able to hook these up. And the promise of the product of somebody is right now the core product is completely free, right? I don't want to put a barrier for somebody to be able to get the education and insights that they need. And so once they attach their information, it gets encrypted, it gets anonymized, all the kind of privacy protection.

38:24My data's on the platform. I don't want that stuff out there, right?

38:26Alex Thorn:Right. And then you start to let Sylvia go to work. And what we came to the conclusion of is she's smarter, faster, and cheaper than a human. Where do you think the world's going? It seems like a compelling... Yeah. Now, here's what's crazy. And I think this feeds into this kind of the more macro conversation. Everyone's like, oh, the job market's weakening all this stuff, right? We've had a ton of RIAs and financial institutions reach out to us and say, we want to incorporate this into our day-to-day. And so the positioning to the user is usually like kill the financial advisor, right? Like you trust the software more than the human.

39:00The financial advisors understand that. They're like, wait a minute. If I could get replaced by this thing, what if I actually embrace it? Right. I give access to my clients. So now they have the real-time information. They can ask all the questions that I don't want them to ask me to the software. And then I get more data because I get to see what does my client care about. I can better, oh, they're looking for a house. Maybe I should help them right now because this is a really important point in their life. That's brilliant. And so I just think that, again, as we build these companies, you just pick these really big problems and you kind of attack them in different ways.

39:30And then that informs how do you invest, right? And so what we've realized is you can do stuff in the private market, but now we're expanding into the public markets. And we think that there's a lot of things that you can do kind of at scale in a very similar way. And we'll see, you know, see how it goes.

39:44Alex Thorn:And then the last one, ProCap, what are you doing? This is your Bitcoin company. Is it a treasury company? What are you guys doing with ProCap? I don't know how people define, you know, all these companies now. I feel like every person. We're evolving. Yeah, I think everyone's got a different thing. The way that I look at, you know, I, at my heart, am an entrepreneur, right? I am somebody who understands finance. I enjoy investing. But at the end of the day, I've spent my entire career building companies. And when I look at building of companies, I always look at it as who is the customer. And I think that when you look at the kind of playing field of all of these companies that hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

40:26Remember, Tesla holds Bitcoin on their balance sheet. Galaxy. Figma. I mean, all these different things. So, like, everyone's got kind of a different reason why they're doing it, how they're holding it, whatever. There is a cohort of companies that a lot of people that I really respect, I think are very intelligent, who frankly are much better served to build these businesses, where they have said, we are going to go and we're going to build digital credit. We're going to go and we're going to be able to grow Bitcoin per share and do things that I think people look at as, there's a finance component to it that is a way to accretively get more Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

41:00I look at that stuff as like inorganic growth. It's, you know, there's roll-ups. There's all these ways to build companies, right? That stuff's going to work. They're putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet. Like Bitcoin's going to go up, right? Anyone who is critiquing them, unless they take on massive amounts of leverage or mismanagement in some way, like that's a winning strategy in my mind, right? And so those guys are going to go do that. What I'm personally interested in, what I think I'm best suited to do is what I think of as more of like an organic growth story, right? So how do you go and build or buy some sort of cash flowing business and then you use that cash flow to continue to grow the Bitcoin pile over time.

41:34Now, neither one is right or wrong. Neither one is better or worse. There are two different approaches, no different than some people build companies from scratch. Some people go and they do roll-ups and buy a bunch of businesses. There are certain trade-offs in terms of capital needs, speed, size, all that kind of stuff. I do think that the organic growth is a little bit unexplored so far. And it's because you kind of need someone who understands Bitcoin, understands investing and understands how to build a company. And so I'm really excited about going and doing that. We've put together a great team of people, I think, that can kind of help build that business.

42:08But, you know, that story is not told yet. Right. And I think that that's part of the excitement is when you have kind of a new vertical, a new category, how do you help tell that story and become a leader in that? And I think that's what we have to show the public markets. Because the other thing about public markets, I think a lot of people in the Bitcoin world are learning wall street traditional finance the public markets that's the big leagues oh yeah right it is almost like our industry we've been playing like single a or double a baseball we're really good at hitting 84 mile an hour fastballs yeah 97 mile an hour fastball that's a big jump that's a little bit harder it's a different ball game there are going to be a lot of people who make it to the big show and they're going to do fantastic on that some people aren't going to make it though.

42:53And that's okay. That's normal. No different than a traditional private tech company going into the public market. Now these companies and these executives and these founders, we're seeing this across the industry. It's not just Bitcoin treasury companies. You're seeing this with altcoin treasury companies. You're seeing this. I mean, how many companies are in the public markets now? You have Coinbase, Circle, you've got Gemini, you've got Bakkt. I mean, we just go through all these companies. You've got the miners, all this stuff. The public market is

43:19Alex Thorn:ruthless. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good. Perform, or they're going to come for you. It's another step in our maturation. Yeah, and the other thing, too, that I'll say is I think the crypto community is so used to things moving so quickly, it's very easy to become very short-term oriented. You know, the famous Buffett quote of, like, the market is a voting machine in the short term and a weighing machine over the long term. Like, the weighing is what matters, right? Now, there's going to be lots of this volatility, and I think that people are going to have to get used to the fact that there's lots of scrutiny.

43:53There is a lot of volatility in this industry. Volatility is a good thing, but what really matters is what kind of business do you build over the long run? And the beauty is that from an investor standpoint, there's a lot of options, right? And I think the more options that investors have, the better. And also, I talk to a lot of the CEOs of these companies. They enjoy the competition because it makes them better. And it's kind of the beauty of a free market is you actually want really talented people competing against you because it makes you better, which then enforces them to be better. And overall, the end consumer, the end investor, they get the best of whatever is the competition.

44:31Alex Thorn:You were at President Trump's visit to PubKey. I think people were pointing out that video. I like one of the only times I wasn't at PubKey. I unfortunately was in Singapore when this happened. Thomas was like, cancel the trip. Like, I can't tell you exactly why, but you got to come. What was that like? Because that was during the campaign. I think that was in late September of 2024. And it's just funny. I only point out that you were there. Many people were there. But you were in your suit. And I think my wife saw it and was like, she knows who you were. And her friend was like, is that a Secret Service guy?

45:04Alex Thorn:Because it's a Bitcoin bar. Most people were not in suits. Yes. But you were there. What was that like? Well, Thomas was very tricky. So I was there. There was a lot of people there. And, you know, I mean, look. Did you know that the president was coming? Yes. Yeah. I mean. Not that early, but yeah. Well, you had to get past Secret Service. It became pretty obvious. The whole street was shut. Yeah. When I was walking in. They had the awning out and stuff, right? Well, I was walking just onto the street and I had a suit and tie on. I'm walking. There's protesters outside. Immediately. They knew that Trump was coming.

45:42They somehow knew that Trump was coming. And, you know, I'd never walked through an anti-Trump protest before. Very interesting kind of crowd. And, you know, I think I got called a white supremacist, a bunch of stuff. And I was, hey, man, I want to go get a burger. You want me to bring you one? Like, we can be friends. And so when I was in there, I don't think that I understood the concept of kind of the press pool, where the camera was going to be all this stuff and um sure enough he walked in walked right in front of me stopped at the bar and next thing i know my phone just starts blowing up because you're just in all the pictures and videos of him i mean i uh yeah that's i mean it was great i mean

46:28Alex Thorn:i i loved it i mean i in we laughed so hard at this video dude i mean i've been friends with thomas for a long time i'm a big friend of the pub and i was just like dude this is actually hilarious watching him he's handing out burgers you get a burger you get a burger he the one thing i will say is um uh i had been in a room with uh with trump i think two times before that but uh that was the first time seeing him kind of in uh what i would consider a uh much more like real scenario right it's not like inside of right like at a meeting room or something correct and so So I think the kids would say he's got aura, right?

47:06And the guy walked in, and it's just people who don't even like him. All of a sudden are just like, damn, right? I know. He's also a big guy. He's tall. Yeah, well, I do think that they claim he's like 6 '4". I don't know if he's 6 '4". If he's 6 '4", I'm 6 '2", so we're good there. But he's very fit, though. You know what I mean? He probably got a six-pack under there. And he was signing stuff. I mean, it was a whole thing. And so my takeaway, though, from the whole situation was how about Thomas, Megan, and the entire PubKey team years ago saying we want to create a physical space and somehow the president of the United States ends up showing up.

47:48It's unbelievable. Right? It's kind of like the build it and they will come. Yeah. Like that place has become a institution, I think, in New York. People come from all around the world.

47:56Alex Thorn:It's a mecca, truly. People literally trek across the world to visit it. Yeah, now they're going to be opening up a second location in D.C. I don't know if that's public, but there you go. I think they've said that they're working on it. I think it's well known. But, yeah, I don't know when it opens. But I think that's going to be really fascinating to see. Somebody should create a prediction market on when it's going to open. We should create that, Thomas. I'm going to tell Thomas and Megan that we are creating that. Maybe make the date December 31st before or after. Good question. I thought that was so interesting, and I loved seeing you there.

48:26Alex Thorn:And it has become a Mecca. Before we wrap, I've got to ask you, who's your favorite, Becky, Andrew, or Joe? All three have different great qualities to them. You've got to be one of the most prolific recurring guests on that show. How often do you go on Squawk Box? Like every two months? I don't think that's true. Yeah, I don't think that's true. Or who's on more? Well, I mean, there's people who are running multi-billion dollar companies. I mean, they're on period. Okay. Yeah, all right. There's a lot of people who do. Do you go on every quarter? It seems like you're on at least every quarter.

49:01The thing that I will say about that show is it is very rare in business in general, let alone in media, to have people who get along but disagree. Right. Right? There's an element to that show that is good television.

49:20Alex Thorn:Yeah. And I remember in 2018, I went on two times. It was the first time that I ever went on television. And the first time was, like, pretty unmemorable, right? I kind of went on. I didn't make any mistakes. I didn't say anything too crazy. Okay, fine. And I kind of felt a little bit like a robot. You know, I asked the questions. Okay, let me say this. Explaining Bitcoin. What I didn't know is I was actually there because I was the whipping boy. Oh, I see. Like, it was, like, 2018 Bear Market. Sporkin wanted to yell at you about Bitcoin and crypto. I didn't even know if he was on that day or whatever.

49:50But, like, whoever was on. But they were skeptical. Very skeptical. Yeah. The second time, though, I will never forget. Because on my way to the show, I pulled up on my phone. I was watching the show. And I heard Kevin O 'Leary on set say, crypto garbage. Oh, my God.

50:06Alex Thorn:Here we go. This is this guy. Well, he must just be on the segment in front of me. And so I'm going to go on after him. Right. I get to the studio. They do the makeup and everything. I walk out there. He's still there. He's a guest host. Oh, Lord. And so I never met him at the time. Yeah. And I go to sit down. And he's sitting there. And he just gets a smirk on his face. and he looks over at me and he goes, you like this Bitcoin stuff? And I say, yeah. He goes, how much are your does in it? And I say, and I panicked and I lied. And I said over 50%. It was like 95%. And I just, I couldn't tell him.

50:39I just said, over 50%. And the look on his face, he like fell out of his chair. He's like, oh my God. So he doesn't say anything else. Turn on. First thing this guy says to me, he goes, how much are your personal does in this? and sign over 50 percent and he literally is almost like standing he's like i forbid that that is crazy and he's yelling at me and i remember just sitting there and there was just a trigger i grew up in a family of five boys you know uh talking shit is a pastime in our house yeah and i was just like i'm not gonna let this man talk shit to me on national television and my brothers are gonna mock me later and so i just started firing back at him and uh i pretty much thought i was never gonna get invited back on the show right now this guy's yelling at me i'm yelling back Whatever.

51:21And I walked off and the producer came up to me and goes, that was amazing. That was great. That's exactly what they wanted. And I was like, oh, all right.

51:28Alex Thorn:I now understand how this game is played. And so I now, you know, Kevin O 'Leary is obviously into Bitcoin and crypto. Yeah. I always tell him that he owes me half his profits because I convinced him. I feel like you must have had a big impact or maybe you did on Joe Kernan as well, because he's been a steadfast advocate for Bitcoin. One of my favorite. In fact, he just finally went to PubKey, I believe, like last week. I think Joe's worldview aligns with Bitcoin, and it took a minute for him to realize, hey, this Bitcoin thing is part of the solution to the world that he had been talking about for a long time, which is very natural, I think, for a lot of people.

52:02Andrew Ross Sorkin said something to me once that is always stuck in my head, and I thought it was a very profound kind of insight from him. He said, you know, we talked to a lot of different people. He goes, Bitcoin is the one asset that if I brought 10 of the smartest money managers in the room, and I said, okay, I'm going to leave the room. whoever believes in Bitcoin over here, whoever doesn't. He says, I'll leave, I'll come back in 20 minutes. Five will be on this side, five will be on that side, and they'll think the other side has lost their mind. He's like, I don't understand it. He's like, for whatever reason, this asset.

52:32And I've seen it. I think that we've all kind of seen it, but over time you slowly get more and more people on the side of, this thing isn't going away. And to, I think, Andrew, Joe, and Becky's credit, I don't know if they've ever been anti. I think that they've always been cautiously optimistic. And interested.

52:51Alex Thorn:That's one thing about Andrew. I mean, some people think he's a critic. I think he's always been very interested in it. I think he's been, to the extent he has been critical, I think he's been fair. He's also an extremely bright guy as well. I just got his new book, 1929. I haven't read it yet. I've heard amazing things about it. I just think that... He's got Deal Book Summit. You know, look, I'm married to a journalist, and one of the things that we always talk about is a lot of folks that operate in the business world, they are confused. They think that the media is, you know, their PR machine, right?

53:21We get to a very bad place as a society if journalists don't do their job, right? And the journalist's job is to be skeptical. It is to question things. It is to hold people accountable. It is to make people uncomfortable at times, right? I've been on the receiving end. It's not fun. I don't like it. But also, I understand they're doing their job and they're doing what they're supposed to do. And so that is, you know, kind of the healthy tension, I think, is, you know, people are going on television. Well, what are they doing? They're talking about things they believe in, where they're putting their money.

53:50You don't want a show where people are just like, you're a genius. Everything's going up. You want a show where there's debate and conversation and people question things. And frankly, when people say crazy stuff, they push back and they're like, that sounds crazy. Like, what are you talking about? Right. So I think that's why that show. I mean, I think they just celebrated their 30 year anniversary. I mean, it's crazy. That's nuts. It's a great show. That's nuts.

54:14Alex Thorn:Yeah, it's nuts. Right? Well, we're at sort of time here. This has been awesome, Anthony. And I did want to say, I know we're recording this on November 12th, Wednesday. Yesterday, though, was Veterans Day. You are a veteran. Thank you for your service and the work you do with the Navy SEAL Foundation and the CryptoMURF and all these other things you do. But this has been awesome, Anthony. And we're going to have to have you back. But we've got to wait long enough because I want to see when we're no longer the early adopter era. We're mass adoption. No, we're in mass adoption now. All right, so we'll have you back.

54:41I don't know what happens after mass adoption, right? Maybe then you become dinosaurs, right? We got to fight that off.

54:47Alex Thorn:Yeah, then you just become like the traditional system, I guess is maybe the thing. So Anthony Pompliano, ProCap, Sylvia and professional capital management, entrepreneur and investor, thank you so much for coming on Galaxy Brains. Yeah, thanks for having me. That's it for this week's episode of Galaxy Brains. Thank you to our guest, Anthony Pompliano from ProCap and Sylvia and all the other things that he's building, entrepreneur, investor, and our friend, the bear, Bimnet Abibi. everyone have a safe and happy weekend we will see you next week

55:18Alex Thorn:thanks for listening to galaxy brains the weekly podcast from galaxy research if you enjoy the show please like rate review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to follow galaxy research sign up for our weekly newsletter at gdr.email read our content at galaxy.com slash research and follow us on Twitter at GLXY research. See you next week.