“Prepare NOW!” Eric Trump’s Shocking Prediction For Stock Prices, Bitcoin, & The US Dollar

18:06Eric Trump:You fight back. You don't give up, you fight back, right? And that's this story, guys, right? They wanted to destroy us. They wanted to bankrupt us. They wanted to have our family get separated. They wanted certainly my father to get divorced. They wanted to see us voiceless. Hence the reason we all got stripped off Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. You know, they turned down all of our dials. It's one of the reasons you guys are as successful as you are, right? Because people are sick and tired of, you know, they want to hear independent media versus, you know, the nonsense that ABC and NBC and CNN and everybody else was shoveling for years.

18:39Eric Trump:I mean, they wanted to see us dead. They wanted to see us in a jail cell. And when none of this worked, you know what they did? they tried to shoot my father right not only the first time in butler but then they tried to get him eight weeks later you know about four miles away from here at trump international they wanted him off of the stage because they couldn't control us right you know we weren't one of them we weren't the establishment uh they couldn't believe that we beat them at their own game i mean guys we self-funded our first campaign hillary clinton raised 1.5 billion dollars and actually knew what a delegate was and we still beat her.

19:12Eric Trump:Right. It's it's kind of a remarkable thing. And we love this country. We love our nation. We love the Constitution. We love God. We love faith. We love freedom. And our country was going to hell. And so guess what? We fought and we fought relentlessly. And I talk about in the book, it was guys, we either won the White House or we were going to be in jail for doing absolutely nothing wrong. You know, like that was that was the pendulum that was the Trump life. And I said that to my father in the car one day, we were in downtown New York. And I go, it's either 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or you and I, for doing nothing wrong, are going to be in two jail cells because that's how bad the system was weaponized.

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20:52Graham Stephan:So use the link down below in the description, or again, head to Gemini.com slash iced to sign up today. Check out the rates and fees down below in the description. Thank you again to Gemini for sponsoring this episode. What do you think is the main thing people get wrong about the Trump family?

21:06Eric Trump:The closeness of our family is remarkable. having gone through the fights that we've gone through they would have otherwise destroyed every single one of us I think conventionally and I really mean that I'm not sure how many other families could have taken what they put through us you know thankfully we had the checkbook that we were able to fight you know the legal battles I mean guys we spent over 400 million bucks in legal fees right just fighting off you know the Russia hoax and the dirty dossiers and everything else that they threw at us you know thank God we also had a voice and that probably came a lot from The Apprentice and being on TV before politics you know being pretty comfortable in front of the microphone before but we have a family that fights together that's always stuck together uh that was unbreakable um we're a very very close knit group of people and um and honestly it's probably the only thing that kept us alive

21:52Graham Stephan:that reminds me of what i thought was one of the most pivotal moments of the first candidacy which was in the debate with your father and hillary clinton and they were asked to compliment each other. And Trump said, oh, she's a fighter. She'll never give up. And she said, oh, you have great kids, which is kind of like everyone thought a backhanded compliment. It's like, well, you're not really complimenting his character. You're not complimenting. You're just saying, oh, you have good kids.

22:18Eric Trump:I'll take it as one of the kids is one of the benefactors of the compliment.

22:22Graham Stephan:But I'm curious, what is something that you learned from your father that's outside of politics, outside of business, just purely on a human level?

22:31Eric Trump:I think whatever you do in the world to be myopically focused on it, right? And that probably goes back to what we were talking about with business. You know, everything I had ever seen him accomplish, you know, when it was a residential building, he was myopically focused on the residential buildings, you know, building Trump Tower, right? And he just, it would be the only thing that was in his mind. You know, when he got to the golf courses, he loved doing the golf courses and me and him were myopically focused on it. It's all we thought about, it's all we did. It was literally occupied 95 % of the same thing with the apprentice cycle.

23:02Eric Trump:when I was an apprentice, just everything was ratings. It was the cast. It was, you know, the filming, but you were just, nothing else came in the way. He was always incredibly focused. When politics came around, his only focus was politics, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. And every single thing that he did, he turned to gold, right? And I think when somebody becomes myopically focused on their passion, whatever that might be, and for whatever reason they're trying to do it, I think it's awfully hard to beat them. I think kind of the weekend warriors are very easy to beat. And the people who are lazy, the, you know, people who show up at work at 1030 in the morning and go home at three o 'clock in the afternoon, they don't stand a chance against that person who's driven and will go through every single wall in order to get to their objective.

23:46Graham Stephan:But there's no denying that people like that exist. Do you think that they're just a product of their environment where being lazy is totally fine? There's no real push to be exceptional at anything. Or do you think that, you know, they're making the active choice and they're just like, it's nobody's fault, but their own. For example, we have a question we asked on this podcast. We used to ask it quite often, which is if you're poor between the ages of 25 and 45, do you think that it's your own fault?

24:10Eric Trump:You better find a different career path and you better harness, you know, whatever your talents are and you better run at those talents, you know, as hard as humanly possible. And listen, there's a lot of people have advantages right in the world. There's a lot of people that that have opportunities and there's a lot of people who were given nothing, who became the wealthiest people in the history of this nation out of out of nothing. I mean, you know, know, I know so many of them, right? And didn't graduate high school and built billion dollar companies and have done tremendously well. And so I think if you're ever in that spot where your board is held and you're not moving forward, you should probably pull the ejection seat and get out and find something that you're you a love or you're passionate about something that has high growth, something that you're able to monetize.

24:55Eric Trump:And I would I would sprint toward whatever that might be in your life. And what that is for you is probably very different than it is for me. And it's probably very different than it is for you, right? It's, you know, I think people have to harness their skills, skills come in 1000 different forms, you know, and ultimately monetize them. If you're not passionate about something, and you really are working, you know, three hours a day, and you know, don't don't give a damn about whatever you're doing. You're not going to break out from the pack. It's just it's very hard. Statistics will show you that it's going to be next to impossible for you to, you know, overachieve.

25:27Graham Stephan:What separates the people, though, that are not self-motivated, but those who are?

25:31Eric Trump:Listen, maybe it's attitude. You know, I would hope, and maybe the utopian view would be that, you know, everybody could self-motivate if they found the right thing that motivated them. And I would hope that'd be the case. I'm not saying that's the case. You know, you probably have people in society who are lazy. I hate to say it. In fact, I probably know a couple of those people. And then I certainly know those people who are absolute overachievers and everything they want to do, they want to do to 110%, no matter what it is, where it is. And I think those people are probably, you know, will overachieve.

26:04Eric Trump:As kids, we didn't have the opportunity. It was, we didn't have the opportunity to be lazy, I should say. You know, we were put on construction sites when we were 11 years old. You know, if we wanted a bike, congratulations, go work for it. You know, go earn money. And, you know, we were spoiled as hell in the conventional fashion. We had, you know, a warm roof overhead. We were always fed and we have had great education. But, you know, if anybody thought that we were rolling around with$100 bills in our pocket, you know, we weren't. We were working on, you know, I was doing demo all summer. And again, you wanted a fishing rod.

26:36Eric Trump:Congratulations. You used the money that you earned, you worked for, and you went and bought it.

26:40Graham Stephan:But what was your attitude towards the work when you were young? Were you excited? Because you right now seem highly industrious, highly productive. You love what you do. But back in the day, it'd take a while to foster that sentiment.

26:50Eric Trump:Well, I loved it. that I probably would have done it. So you always loved it. Yeah, honestly, I probably would have done it for free, right? And so back to your last question, was that built into your DNA? Was that nature? Was that nurture? I don't know. It was built into my DNA. I loved it, but it also taught me the value of dollar. It taught me the value of hard work. It certainly taught me a skill set, right? Which is kind of building blocks to what I do every single day. And by the way, it tired out a young kid. You know, if you're a 13-year-old kid or a 15-year-old kid and you're type A, do me a favor.

27:21Eric Trump:don't give them money and don't give them a lot of free time because bad things are going to happen. Right. Like, yes, I get terrible recipe. And so my parents were exceptional. We're exceptional when it came to that.

27:31Graham Stephan:You know, we asked Dave Ramsey the same question, and he said the reason a lot of people aren't motivated or they feel hopeless is that they believe that the work they put in is not going to have the result that they want. And I think for you, you could very well see that if I do this, this is what's possible. And you see the reward of that light at the end of the tunnel. I think a lot of people in America feel like they're hopeless, that they can't get ahead, that they feel like housing is too expensive or the stock market's overvalued or that crypto, they could have gotten in at$1 ,000 and now it's$110 ,000.

28:03Graham Stephan:I feel like they can't do anything to get by. What would you say to those people?

28:06Eric Trump:Yeah, well, I think you have to find the industry that you're good at. And I think you have to find the job that you're passionate about. And I think you have to find the opportunity, whether it's self-employment or not. But, you know, I mean, I can't tell you how many friends I have who started, you know, small electrical companies. You know, they were electrical foremen. And, you know, they worked their way up and then they went out and they started doing their own jobs. And all of a sudden they're running 30, 40, 50 crews with unbelievable companies and they built it from nothing. And it's hard to get there.

28:35Eric Trump:It's really hard to get there. But, you know, I think you have to take the initial step. I think I agree with Dave. But what you have to do is you have to take the initial step toward whatever that is that you're ultimately passionate about. you know, so oftentimes it's, well, the market's not right, so I can't do it right now, or life's not right, or, you know, it's a hard time or this or that, you know, you have to take the step, you have to be able to take that initial leap. And I encourage people to do that, you know, follow their hearts, follow their passions, you know, preferably in an industry that has growth or that has, you know, real kind of potential.

29:09Eric Trump:Do you think the national debt affects the average person out there?

29:12Graham Stephan:Yeah, of course it does.

29:13Eric Trump:And what does that look like to the average person? Oh, listen, you have a national debt of what, 37 trillion right now? Yeah, you better believe it does because it hangs over everybody's head. And whether you like it or not, at some point, everybody's gonna have to pay that national debt and it's compounding rapidly. So in some way, shape or form, you're going to pay that in taxes. And maybe we didn't have national debt, your taxes would be substantially less than what they are. That means you could probably afford a nicer home and more belongings and to take a better trip with the kids. And yet every single year, this thing goes up by an absolute fortune because the government's out of control and has been and absolutely rebels against people who try and cut the hell out of it.

29:53Eric Trump:And you see what's happening right now with the government shutdown. You know, they want an extra, what,$2.7 trillion for health care for illegal immigrants. You know, and when you say no, not a single Democrat comes out and votes in favor of reopening the government. Right. Among other things, by the way. But yeah, I think it affects everybody that lives in this country. There's no question about it. And in fact, it might be the greatest risk that we have as a nation, you know, outside of serious armed conflict.

30:21Graham Stephan:How do we solve it? Is there any way out of 37 trillion? Because I've heard either you have to let it inflate away or you hope it doesn't go up so much that maybe AI could help boost our economy and make enough money to start shipping it away. Like, can we ever pay this thing back?

30:37Eric Trump:Yeah, you have to grow out of it, right? I mean, anybody thinks you can cut out of 37 trillion, you can't. I mean, will cuts be important? Yes, you need to get rid of fluff and garbage and fraud, waste and abuse, no question about it. At the same time, you have to have unbelievable growth. And I think that's what we're seeing. And how do you get growth in society? You need the lowest energy costs in the world, right? You need to be champion of industry. I think my father did that better with crypto than anybody before. The entire world is following us. America is the crypto capital of the world by far, and we were losing our standing there.

31:07Eric Trump:we're also losing our standing on energy i mean look at look at nuclear power we haven't had nuclear power plant in this country built in in 30 year period of time and we are the ones that championed nuclear power i mean for a long time france had more expertise in nuclear power than the united states america did you know how embarrassing that is you know what's france in terms of economic power of of of the world what like 13th in terms of gdp you know it's a joke america has to be number one at absolutely everything we do we have to be number one and energy and it's not just nuclear that's oil and gas and everything else you know any country that has low energy costs you know has has much better productivity that's just it's pretty simple correlation that i think you know anybody can can can understand we have to champion the industry we have to win the ai revolution we have to continue to win the space revolution you know we have to be the most business friendly country on on earth we need to maintain the reserve currency under and by the way we are the reserve currency that no one can argue that it's not even close.

32:06Eric Trump:No one wants any of the Asian currencies. No one wants any of the South American currencies. Certainly no one wants the euro for obvious reason. No one wants the pound. So I think it's great advantage. And we better maintain the greatest rule of law, an honest rule of law, because it's why we have so much direct inward investment in the United States of America. They look at their own countries and they see no promise. They see no future. They see massive government corruption. They know all of it can disappear like that. And guess where they park their assets. They park in the United States of America.

32:35Eric Trump:We better maintain that safe haven for people parking their money. And so long as we do, we'll maintain the greatest economy ever.

33:03Graham Stephan:responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. It's like energy is going to become a major issue over the next 10 years. Why aren't we going heavier into nuclear energy today? Well, I think we are.

33:15Eric Trump:I mean, I think, I think my father, what was his exact quote? If you propose a nuclear plant, I'll give you approvals in seven days. You know, I mean, my father's the biggest proponent of nuclear energy. How many people applied? In terms, I have no idea. But, you know, I mean, these are big because these things cost 30 billion dollars to build but i understand you know you've how many times have you heard drill baby drill right and people are drilling i mean we're exporting energy for the first time again we're exporting in the first administration then we stopped exporting in fact we became an importer of energy now we're exporting again and and that's not just oil right that's that's natural gas you know you've got states look in new york with marcellus and utica and you've got the the greatest natural gas you know shale anywhere on earth you know it makes saudi it makes it makes see UAE like look like small potatoes in upstate New York, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, they're not even tapping into most of it.

34:06Eric Trump:Right. And so we need to drill. We need to be energy independent. And by the way, there's a there's a ton of other forms of energy as well. I mean, solar is doing great. Right. We're in Florida right now. Every every day there's another solar field and, you know, it's working great. It's it's augmenting the grid and, you know, it has its purpose. But nuclear is going to win the day, especially these small nuclear reactors that are coming out, these SMRs and it's fascinating what's happening.

34:28Graham Stephan:So we're huge advocates for financial literacy. I mean, that's what Graham built his entire brand on. I joined because I became financially literate because of his content on YouTube, helped us create this podcast. And I think that that is pretty much the main thing causing people to go poor or some people to go wealthy. Why is financial literacy not taught in schools? Some people speculate that there are elites that want to keep people poor so they can keep them under their thumb. Why is it not taught in school? It's the simplest thing. We learn the most. It's useless. It's useless. I zoned out in high school.

35:02Graham Stephan:I hated it. Then why do we teach anything in high school? It's such an obvious.

35:05Eric Trump:It's such an, I mean, I agree with you guys a hundred percent. It's because our educational system is absolutely broken. I mean, I went to a school where I was taking Latin classes, you know, no disrespect to, you know, formation language, but, you know, give me a break. Right. I mean, you know, a hundred percent i mean i listen i went to georgetown georgetown's what top 10 school and in the country and in the world it's you know it's up there every single year you know i can't tell you how many nonsense classes that we took on in in you know i don't want to disrespect um you know i mean i could go down the list of of worthless classes that i took there but you you had liberal arts majors who who couldn't calculate mortgage who had no idea what the difference between principle and interest was right i mean compound interest is probably less

35:48Graham Stephan:Less than 50 % of people know about compound interest is a crime. What do you mean a credit score? How to get an 800 credit score?

35:53Eric Trump:How to open up a home mortgage, how to get a car lease, how to exactly the difference between interest principle or how to calculate any of it, right? I mean, how the stock markets work, how the bond markets work. And I'm not talking about complicated quant, right? I'm talking about just the fundamentals of all of it. Yeah, exactly. How the FICO system works and why you might want to actually maintain a high score. And no, and by the way, even just basics, how to open up a bank account, savings account, all right? What a 401k is and how to utilize it effectively and what you should be doing with it.

36:28Eric Trump:No, no, we are grossly, and by the way, and that's before you get into just basic concepts of economics and other things that can help in your daily life and business. But why is that not taught? Because we have an incompetent educational system. I mean, guys, we have an educational system in our country that's ranked 10th, you know, 30th in the world. And we spend like, you know, seven to 10 times the amount per pupil, you know, educating people, right? The curriculum, I mean, this is something my father's fought so hard against, right? I mean, look at the DEI curriculum that you've had over the last in the woke curriculum.

37:00Eric Trump:I mean, they're teaching revisionist history. We couldn't get past the fact that they were going up to first graders, you know, drawing a line across a chalkboard, you know, male, female, you know, little Johnny, Go put your mark on the line as to where you think you are on the spectrum of confusing. I mean, we got over that about eight months ago when my father got into office and absolutely killed that entire curriculum. But this is where our country was going in terms of the educational teachings, let alone trying to teach him financial literacy, which there is nothing more important to the world.

37:32Eric Trump:Let me just let me say that there is nothing more important. I would get rid of half of the curriculum and I would translate that over to. And by the way, you know what else should be taught? basic traits, right? I mean, I have some of the smartest friends who do exceptionally well, who couldn't hang that picture on the wall. Zero chance. Zero chance. And if they did, the thing is going to be crooked as hell. You know, they're certainly not lining up two pictures and having them be within an eighth of an inch of one another, right? They would have zero chance of being able to do it. Like, how about actually teaching some people some real world skills so when they move into their first apartment, you know, they can mount the TV and actually find to stud in the wall, right?

38:08Eric Trump:And I think our educational system is broken and it's a great shame.

38:13Graham Stephan:Well, we were thinking that's something we're extremely passionate about. And if there ever isn't an initiative to increase financial literacy in school, there's any way we could be included. Oh my gosh, that would be a dream. That would make our dreams come true. We'll work for free. We just want to make sure people understand the basics of investing in the safe way.

38:28Eric Trump:I'll partner up with you guys.

38:30Graham Stephan:That would be incredible. He's already taught millions of people. Like people come up to him on the trail this time. Thank you. I opened up a Roth IRA because of Graham, you know, simple, simple thing. I would love to see. I did a whole analysis on this, and it seemed like once the government began subsidizing a lot of public schools and colleges, the amount of money per student stayed the exact same, but the amount of money for administrative and staff skyrocketed.

38:52Eric Trump:Have you ever actually seen the charts where they take the amount of student loans, meaning the actual monetary supply of student loans outstanding, and they actually track that to college tuitions? And the more money that they put into the system, it almost tracks. perfectly. It's like Bitcoin and M2. They almost like to attract perfectly. Who would have thought? No, it's crazy. And you know, it'll be charging$90 ,000 for a degree and somebody will come out with a basket weaving major and you're sitting there saying, I don't know, like maybe some of these schools, especially when you're getting financial assistance, maybe they should actually peg it to the amount your career will pay when you come out of that very institution, you know, based on that respective major.

39:33Eric Trump:Because it's, I mean, how many times do you hear somebody coming out of school with a given degree, you know, and they're making$25 ,000 a year and they spent$80 ,000 a year for a three-year period of time, four-year period of time to get that respected major. And they just never give you a payback. You're giving the person, you know, the chance of either you default, you know, on your student loans or just never fill it and live behind an interest clock and, you know, and interest payments for the rest of your life. I mean, it's...

40:04Graham Stephan:Now, what's also interesting is that also correlated with mortgages as well, that the overall size of someone's mortgage was correlated almost exact to the amount of government loans that were issued. Yeah. So that's also something that I find kind of interesting that housing prices also went up along the same as what they were able to get as a mortgage.

40:27Eric Trump:I'm the biggest proponent of higher education, right? The biggest if done right. I can make a solid argument and it hurts me to say this but I can make a solid argument for what the price of a lot of these colleges are charging and for the product that they're putting out you know you'd be much better off taking the$300 ,000 that that education would have right? Oh yeah 100 % put in an ETF anything else do anything else yeah yeah put in an ETF you know attracting the S &P 500 down payment on a house yeah make 12 % a year every year for you know in perpetuity you know Add to that every single day by going on, you know, saving, you know, starting a career saving.

41:05Graham Stephan:And it's four years of time, too, that you're sinking into it. Yeah, 100 percent.

41:08Eric Trump:Yeah. And get a great jump start. There's almost no question about it. I think our colleges in this country have a lot of soul searching to do. A lot of soul searching to do.

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42:25Graham Stephan:Again, that's drinkfirstleaf.com slash ice to save 30 % off your first month subscription, or the link is down below in the description. Thank you so much to First Leaf for sponsoring this episode. How has the quality of your life changed over the past few years?

42:38Eric Trump:I started fighting for a cause that wasn't monetary, which is very different, right? I always wanted to build great buildings. I always wanted to have unbelievable teams. I always wanted to recreate skylines and landscapes, and that's what we do in hard asset space. And I was dead serious about that. And then all of a sudden we were fighting for something that was a little bit less tangible. We were fighting for the American spirit. We were fighting for the American flag. We were fighting for our constitution. We were fighting for our nation. And it changed in that every single day I started taking arrows for doing something that I thought was noble and righteous and right.

43:14Eric Trump:um i never thought that because you love america and you wanted to fight for its betterness you would start becoming the most subpoenaed person ever i never thought that you would have to spend 400 million dollars defending yourself from shams because you know hillary clinton made up a you know russia hoax and you know i just i never thought that we'd be there but it's also been really kind of rewarding i have this 99 year old grandmother who always has a saying she goes how many steaks can you eat and i it means a lot to me um or you know a certain point it's not monetary it's not about succeeding in business it's about it's about doing the right thing you know how many how many steaks can you eat and and uh i think um it's it's changed me in that i think i have multiple purposes in my life now one's certainly a company that i love and one of the great real estate companies anywhere in the world but also one you know fighting for american spirit and American people that I adore and in a movement that has become, I think, the most powerful political movement on earth.

44:12Graham Stephan:You mentioned that you're very lucky that you were insulated from a lot of these attacks because of your pocketbook. Basically, you had the money to stay protected from all of this stuff. Would you say money buys happiness?

44:24Eric Trump:No, money definitely doesn't buy happiness. But hold on one second. I got to go back to the insulated. We were far from insulated. They wanted us imprisoned and they did everything they could to effectuate that. And the only tool that we had was the fact that we had enough monetary means and allowed enough voice to be able to go and fight back against an incredibly rigged system. If we didn't have the voice, we would have lost. If we didn't have the monetary means to pay a lot of lawyers, we would have lost. And it was touch and go. You better believe it was touch and go. So I will tell you some of the most miserable people in the world are some of the wealthiest.

45:01Eric Trump:And, you know, I've met people who have achieved every milestone in life. They have their private planes. They have their this. They have their that. They've got their beautiful houses. They've got their trophy wives. They've got their trophy husbands, right? And yet they're still miserable. So no, I don't think money buys happiness. I think being a great person, I think being mission driven, I think loving what you do. oftentimes I think it's when you lose the passion that you find the misery. The people who have done extraordinarily well but are passionate about what they do are normally incredibly kind of happy people versus the people who are now sitting on tremendous fortune with idle time are typically the people who go down the other path.

45:47Eric Trump:And I've seen that a lot and it's a shame.

45:49Graham Stephan:So what would you say for yourself are your primary sources of happiness? Yeah.

45:54Eric Trump:I've got two unbelievable kids, Luke and Carolina. They are absolutely my joy in life. I've got an unbelievable wife, Laura. You probably know her from, she's become a superstar in the world of politics and on Fox News, and she's amazing. I love building, meaning in my free time. I love projects. I love the shooting sports. Love the outdoors. Love being outside. I love dirt bikes, grew up on dirt bikes and still doing a lot of the ATVing stuff. So I just, I love the outdoors. I love waking up early. I'm up at five o 'clock on a weekend, normally my truck and, you know, watching the sun come up and I love fishing and skiing.

46:32Eric Trump:I mean, how do you even find time to do that stuff? I don't, I don't, but I try and carve out a day a week. Is this a recent thing?

46:37Graham Stephan:Oh, a day a week.

46:38Eric Trump:So you have like a schedule? No, it's a, listen, you know, if I'm not traveling on a Saturday or Sunday, you know, I try and find some time for myself. and no, listen, it's difficult, right? I run a very big company and work very hard and don't sleep a whole lot and, you know, always get interrupted no matter, you know, what I'm doing and that's fine, right? It's the life I love and it's a life I enjoyed and I think if I ever had free time, I'd probably be miserable and incredibly bored, right? You know, I think there's certain people who are, my grandfather had this great expression, it's to retire is to expire and I think we're all built that way.

47:13Eric Trump:I think humans are probably actually built like that. But no, I like to run hard in everything I do. And I can't tell you how many times I'll come off a plane at one o 'clock in the morning and I'll be up at five o 'clock and, you know, in the morning to try and get a couple of free hours of free time. So I think what actually gets compacted in my life is actually probably sleep, but that's OK. We operate on very little sleep anyway.

47:33Graham Stephan:Would you ever run for president?

47:35Eric Trump:I retired from politics. I called my father the morning of the election after we won in November 6th. And I said, pops, I love you. I'm going back to the company. I'm going back to the people I love. I'm going back to, you know, doing this. You know, I'll run this side of life. And, you know, you do a great job for the country. And you won't need to worry about anything over here. And, you know, I know the country is in great hands. And I never thought I would have been in this race. I never thought I would have been a major player on that stage. And I was. And arguably, without me, my father couldn't have done it, right?

48:06Eric Trump:Because there would have been no one watching over the actual company. And, you know, that was everything he had ever built. Everything he had ever created is a major. And he had an answer back in the 80s, which is, you know, if it ever got so bad that we had no other choice, I would do it. And that would probably be my answer as well. I've seen the best of politics. I've also seen the worst of politics. I've seen how they can try and destroy a family for doing absolutely nothing wrong. I see how they can lash out and try and imprison you and bankrupt you and then kill you as they did to my father twice.

48:36Eric Trump:at the same time I see this kind of amazing transformational change that he's making every single day right I mean peace in the Middle East who the hell would have thought right look at where our economy is look at where our world is look at our standing around the world and so you know the good news for the first time I can see you know I really see people who are making a difference he's making a difference and I think that's a beautiful thing for a nation and we better have good business leaders running this country and not these bureaucrats who have been I mean can you imagine if AOC ran a 32 and a half trillion dollar economy yeah well it's deloitte they're polluting the uh the oceans did you see that yeah i i mean i put but like i mean look at look at look at you know kamala right i mean she goes out and talks her big economic plan was to stop the price what did she say gouging no no she said gauging price

49:24Graham Stephan:gauging oh sorry price gauging at the uh grocery stores yeah price so she wants her economic plan

49:29Eric Trump:for this country is to stop the price gaging. Now, I got -

49:32Graham Stephan:Have you seen the margin, though, that they have at?

49:35Eric Trump:Grocery stores are making a ton of money.

49:37Graham Stephan:They're making 1 % margins. Yeah, I mean, those guys, if anyone has money,

49:41Eric Trump:it's the people that run the grocery store owners. You know, Casimatidis is a friend of mine, right? I own Scostidis and Degastinos and all those. And a lot of places are not even making that. You know why? Because of the theft in some of these cities, right? When you used to have a theft rate of, you know, half of 1%, and now all of a sudden, you know, you have 7 % of product walking out of your stores, in high-tax environments, you know, with spoilage and everything else that you have in the supermarket business. You're not making anything. And the hardest business, but yet Mandami wants to go and nationalize grocery stores.

50:09Eric Trump:So, you know, in all the infinite wisdom of City Hall in New York, I mean, I've saved them more times than you can count. We saved them on a skating rink in Central Park. We saved them on a golf course, which they spent 30, not three, 30 years trying to build at a cost of almost$300 million to build a golf course. And I got the thing done in 18 months, right? And yet in City Hall's infinite wisdom, They're going to go nationalize grocery stores and make these things profitable. Give me a break.

50:31Graham Stephan:How are you going to save New York in a sense? Like, it seems like he's getting a lot of attention. And I would even love to have him on the podcast. Guys, we try to have people on the left on this podcast all of the time. I'm not just saying that. Seriously. They don't do it. They don't do it. We want more people on from the left. We have Eric Trump here right now, guys. If we could just get Mondani, if we could get Kamala, if we could get anybody. AOC, Bernie Sanders, please. Ask her all the same questions you asked me today. What's funny, we've thrown out the offer for years and zero response back.

51:05Graham Stephan:So if you could help, because I'm in real estate. Are you guys on talking terms?

51:09Eric Trump:Well, I mean, can I be honest? I'm in real estate, yeah. I mean, the reason they won't do it is, you know, they don't control you. They control ABC. They control NBC, right? I mean, network TV became kind of the PR arm of the Democratic Party. Everybody knows that, right? And, you know, the reason you guys are doing great is you have an independent voice and you can ask questions and you can ask them uncomfortable questions. And because of that, they won't go on your programs. Right. Like if they go on CNN, they're going to just they're going to hold up little fluff T-balls, you know, and let them kind of hit it out of the park all day long with nonsense.

51:40Eric Trump:And in the case of ABC, you saw what they did with Kamala's interview. They literally edited all the questions to make her try and sound intelligent. And they took questions, they edited her answers and they tried to make her sound intelligent. Like this is and that's the reason these people won't come on your podcast because they have to do what I've done for the last 90 minutes where you actually have to be intelligent and run your mouth and, you know, know the answers to kind of far reaching topics of which these people don't because they've never lived in the real world. And as I said before, most of their votes have always been, you know, yes and no.

52:12Eric Trump:But seriously, that is an honest offer.

52:13Graham Stephan:So if anyone, you know, if you know Kamala, let her know. Are you worried about him getting elected and destroying a city and putting these policies in place and driving people out? He was talking today about a 52 % tax rate in New York City. Well, listen, guys, I left New York.

52:29Eric Trump:I left New York because of the weaponization in New York, but I left New York also because of the taxes. I mean, between, you know.

52:33Graham Stephan:We left California because of taxes. We left back in 2020.

52:36Eric Trump:How can you blame me? I mean, let's just take a tale of two cities, right? New York, which was our entire life. I still have a lot of assets in New York. And let's take Florida for a second, right? you know, New York is thinking about increasing property tax, you know, just taxes generally more. You mentioned the 52%, you know, kind of marginal, right? Yet DeSantis is coming out every day saying he's going to eliminate all property taxes in the state of Florida, right? You know why DeSantis has that much cash? Because everybody left New York and they all came down here. There's an article in New York Times saying that the top 18 ,500 taxpayers in New York City paid 85 % of the taxes.

53:08Eric Trump:And they all left. They all left. And now all of a sudden they want to raise taxes again. You know what they should do? They should go the exact opposite way. Cut wasteful spending, bring down the tax rate, and no city in the world could compete with New York. I love New York. New York's amazing. I love New York. I love everything about the city. If they had, and I'm not talking about bringing it down to zero, but if they brought like, you know, state and city tax down to like what North Carolina has, you know, 4%, 4.5%.

53:34Graham Stephan:Oh, it would crush. Same with California. So many people would move back to California.

53:38Eric Trump:People would pay the marginal difference, 100%. You couldn't compete against New York. You could pay a little more, but, you know, what's going to happen? He's going to come in. Your streets are going to get dirty. Your streets are going to get unsafe. You know, he wants to defund the police, as you know. You know, he hates the Jewish population. I mean, he says he's, including last night on Martha McAllen, he said that he wants to imprison, you know, Netanyahu if he ever came into New York. So Netanyahu comes to speak at the UN, and you're going to have the mayor of New York imprison him? This can't be serious.

54:03Eric Trump:This can't be serious, right? So congratulations, you're just going to have a major world leader that doesn't come to the UN, which is going to diminish what the UN function is, which is going to only diminish New York. It's hard to believe we're here. It's incredibly... So what are you planning to do? If anything... Listen, I no longer vote New York. I'm a proud Florida resident. I love it down here in Florida. It's sad, again, I have a lot of assets in New York, and I only wish the best for the city, but it's... But you do have a big platform and a big voice. Oh, and believe me, I use that platform and voice.

54:34Eric Trump:And, you know, it is hard to run against somebody who promised everything for free, right? It's kind of, you know, one of those life lessons that I think we've learned over hundreds of years, you know, somebody goes around, you know, promising, you know, the world for free. I mean, it's easy to promise something until you actually have to pay for it. And I think they're going to run into that in the hard way. And I think if he does, in fact, increase taxes again, I think you're just going to see another exodus from New York to Florida. And I think that's just going to continue to make Florida real estate more expensive.

55:00Eric Trump:So guys, honestly, I want to bring in Asher Gnude. He's one of our partners. He's part of American Bitcoin. This company that we started, we just listed. I've never been more proud of a company in my life. Again, as I said before, we're literally mining Bitcoin at$0.50. I believe in the future of cryptocurrency probably more than anything I've ever believed in my life. I think it's the greatest complementary asset to hard assets, which is what I do every day. And we should have him join. No one's a partner in this space. Fourth of July savings are happening now at the Home Depot with select appliances starting at$398.

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55:58Graham Stephan:Real talk for a second. If you're trying to grow on social media, short form content is literally digital gold. It has been one of the biggest drivers of success for the iced coffee hour. We just take our best moments from the podcast and we can clip them up for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, you name it. But let's be honest, it takes a lot of time to do that properly. And that's why tools like our sponsor Opus Clip are a total game changer. For those unaware, Opus Clip isn't just a clipping tool anymore. It's a full on AI powered video editor built for creators. So incredible that it could automatically pull in your long form YouTube videos, find the best moments, add captions, B-roll, and even schedule clips to post while you're away.

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57:07Graham Stephan:So if you want to get a bunch of content super fast built by AI, I highly recommend Opus Clip. Thank you so much to Opus Clip for sponsoring this episode. Although really quick, let's be honest. The big phone carriers are all stuck in the past. I mean, over$100 a month for a phone subscription that barely changes is insane. That is exactly why our sponsor Helium Mobile is flipping the script on wireless, and you can actually get a phone plan for free. With this, their Xero plan gives you reliable coverage for$0 a month. No contracts, no credit card required. Plus, you could also bring your own device and phone number.

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58:13Graham Stephan:That's exactly how they keep it reliable, affordable, and yes, even free. So click the link in the description or download Helium Mobile on iOS or Android today. Skip the contracts and try the plan that's reshaping how everybody connects. Thank you again to Helium Mobile for sponsoring this episode. So now we're going to be adding in Asher Januot from Hut8. He's the CEO of Hut8, which builds and operates data centers.

58:36Eric Trump:How did you guys meet? Got it. It seemed like we had every mutual friend in the world who goes, Eric, you need to meet Asher. And then I think they were saying to Asher, Asher, you've got to meet Eric. and the rest is history. We've become dear friends and no one better, smarter, no one better in the energy space, no one better in the crypto space anywhere in the world. And we started American Bitcoin together. Yeah, Mike and I were chatting about this actually last night. We were saying that one of the first nights that we met, we had like a pizza party and we were chatting about just what drove us and kind of what was the kind of intrinsic driver.

59:08And I think we connected really well because mining lives in the center of real estate development and also in this crypto world. And so we started talking about it and he's like, look, I grew up living on development sites. I grew up building these buildings, these real estate properties. And so we connected a lot on kind of our both of our passions to build infrastructure.

59:26Graham Stephan:Okay, so in the simplest ways possible, because we're going to do a deep dive on crypto. That was one of the main reasons we wanted to film this episode was to talk about crypto and its involvement in the United States. Explain what it is exactly that you do and how it ties in with what Eric does. Sure. So Hut8 is an energy infrastructure company. And the idea is we're harnessing power to push technologies of the future forward. And what that exactly means is we're investing into power infrastructure. So that's power generation, interconnection to the grid, and then we're building data center capacity.

59:56Those are data centers that support Bitcoin mining compute. Those are data centers that support AI compute. And so when we formed American Bitcoin, Hut8 was one of the first Bitcoin miners out there, one of the first companies that was publicly traded to own Bitcoin on the balance sheet. And we said, as we continue to become more and more of an energy company, we need to separate kind of the Bitcoin in the energy businesses. And then so HUD-8 basically builds and operates all the data centers. And then American Bitcoin owns the actual servers that mines all of the Bitcoin and is able to produce the Bitcoin.

1:00:25And so if you think about American Bitcoin, essentially the business model is we're increasing the amount of Bitcoin we have. So our shareholders increase their Bitcoin per share. So essentially it's like a Bitcoin yield if you were to own Bitcoin directly versus owning a percentage of the company.

1:00:39Graham Stephan:How profitable is it to mine Bitcoin? Depends on when. Right now it's been really great. I mean, we have over 50 % margins right now in terms of how we're mining. And the unique thing about our business is I think our competitive advantage is that relationship with Harit. Hadit is a large shareholder in American Bitcoin. So I obviously serve as a CEO of Hadit and also the exec chair of American Bitcoin. And so there's this natural synergistic relationship where American Bitcoin doesn't have to go spend the money on all these lower yielding assets. So when you invest into a substation or into a building, you're not expecting to be paid back in two or three years.

1:01:14When you're investing into Bitcoin servers, you're expecting to be paid back really quickly. And so we have this unique relationship between the two companies that allows American Bitcoin to have these vertically integrated cheap economics without having to put out the capital spend up front and then without having this kind of large team and overhead that we have to carry. So when did the both of you first learn about Bitcoin? You go first. You go first because you were first. All right. So, I mean, I learned of Bitcoin itself early on. I mean, we have two people in the room today who are partners in American Bitcoin as well.

1:01:48So early on Bitcoin and then crypto in general and Ethereum. I remember when Ethereum was sub$100, Matt Prusak, who's our president, sent me a long email and like, if Bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum is digital oil and kind of the whole presentation. And then in terms of mining specifically is our CEO, Michael Ho. And he started mining really, really early on, 13, 14 as kind of a hobbyist and then really 15, 16, 17 on industrial level. And so when we started kind of the business, the idea was, Bitcoin mining is now an industrial scale business and we can go and build a blue chip company within the sector and within this ecosystem.

1:02:26And that kind of, so really early on from buying interests, hobbyists of buying GPUs and plugging them into racks and mining Bitcoin to now large scale infrastructure projects.

1:02:37Graham Stephan:But how early on, like what age were you? What was the price? Yeah, what was the price? The first time you bought Bitcoin. So my story is a little bit different because my story was when we started, so we started a company called U.S. Bitcoin Corp. It merged into a company called Hut 8. And so we run Hut 8 today. And then we spun out American Bitcoin. So there's a lot of U.S. America in the story. But when we started the company in 2020, that was basically, my approach was very conservative, which was, I don't know Bitcoin that well. It's this awesome store of value. But there's also in crypto, as folks I'm sure are listening, for every one or two great projects, there's 100, 200 not great projects, right?

1:03:15And so actually understanding which projects to actually invest into, what are the long-term stable assets. So Mike has owned Bitcoin since, I don't know, 2012, 13, if not earlier. And then my experience coming into it was very different, which was, okay, if I invest in Bitcoin, I'm taking volatility risk. It can go up, it can go down. And my thesis in Bitcoin grew as we started building the company. And the reason we started mining company was if Bitcoin doesn't go to zero and we're one of the best operators, we'll always make money. When times are good, we'll make a lot more money. When times are bad, we'll make less.

1:03:48We'll always make money in betting on kind of this asset class. And so I have a very different and unique way of entering the space. It came from a energy background of if we understand energy and energy is the thing that produces Bitcoin when you're mining and we're a low cost operator, then I have a different. So I'm not the bot Bitcoin super early on, have believed in Bitcoin for the last two decades. Mike, our partner, is much deeper. I came from very much the power story, which was how do we invest into Bitcoin in a kind of de-risk fashion? And how do we manage through kind of volatility?

1:04:22And obviously, since building this and growing, we've become only more and more passionate about this asset class.

1:04:26Graham Stephan:When did you first learn about Bitcoin?

1:04:28Eric Trump:I really got into crypto when we started getting debanked. The same people that were coming after us were going after all the crypto people. The same people that were shutting down our bank accounts were shutting down the crypto people's bank accounts all because those people believed in a different type of finance, a different way to move money. Think of Bitcoin. I mean, I think it's really important for people to kind of, you know, zoom out. We have a company that literally can mine any products for roughly 50 cents on the dollar, right? So the spot price of Bitcoin right now is, you know, 115 ,000 roughly, you know, and we're mining it every single day for roughly 50 % of that.

1:04:58Eric Trump:Go talk to anybody who does copper. Go talk to anybody who does gold. Go talk to anybody who mines lead. Go talk to anybody who mines silver. Most of the time, they're actually mining at about par. And then they're using complicated options and financial kind of mechanisms to otherwise get, you know, they're selling futures and all sorts of other things in order to make their profit. You also have a product that's limited, right? And I think it's the only commodity in the world, the only product, the asset class in the world that, you know, can't grow. You've got 21 million Bitcoin, slightly less because some of it's been lost over time, but you have 21 million Bitcoin.

1:05:28Eric Trump:If the cost of gold ever went up to$20 ,000 an ounce, I would break down this wall. There's concrete behind it, you know, and we would extract gold from those columns because there's gold and you know virtually everything right as price goes up elon will put a spaceship on mars and he'll extract gold and and the supply of gold will go up that can never happen with bitcoin right so it's just it's this unbelievable asset but it's global it has media liquidity you know try walking through an airport with a gold bar right they're going to arrest you and they'll probably call the irs even if it's your own money.

1:06:04Eric Trump:You know, around the world, it's become such a powerful tool, even maybe more so outside of the United States in that you've got absolute government corruption all over the place. You've got massive inflation. You know, I often use Zimbabwe because I've been there and I've seen it. But I mean, you had Zimbabwe, you had inflation that was going up 1000 % a year. You had inflation that was actually going up more than that during certain periods of time under Mugabe. I mean, imagine getting a paycheck. You work in Zimbabwe. The second you get the paycheck, It's gone. Set it on fire. It's gone. Now, all of a sudden, with a with a basic phone, being able to connect to, you know, the Internet, which virtually everybody has in the world now, you can buy an asset class that is has 24 hour liquidity.

1:06:43Eric Trump:That's global. That's incredibly in demand. That has a limited supply that can never be taken from you. That can never be confiscated from you. You can't get debanked. You know, you can't be burned. It can't be taken out by a tornado or a hurricane. you know it's not subject to your little local branch that can be robbed um bitcoin has become an unbelievable an unbelievable asset try and transfer money we transfer a lot of money and because we're a very big company try and transfer money at 5 0 1 p.m on a friday afternoon now through the swift system that money won't get to its intended recipient until you know monday afternoon maybe tuesday morning why isn't finance 24 7 why isn't it immediate Why is it that every bank in the world has to have their fingers in absolutely everything?

1:07:28Eric Trump:If I want to go buy a watch out of Geneva, why do I have to transfer money from Chase here or whoever the hell I bank with to Geneva? You have currency exchange fees. The bank's going to have his finger in the transaction. Why? Why can't you just send me a link, a link to your wallet? And instantaneously, you receive the funds at virtually no cost to move that money. and instantaneously that watch is in a FedEx coming over to the other side of the dollar.

1:07:55Graham Stephan:So how does this compare then to the dollar? Couldn't the dollar be digitalized in such a way that it could do the exact same thing?

1:08:02Eric Trump:It is being digitalized.

1:08:03Graham Stephan:Right.

1:08:03Eric Trump:It's called stablecoins. But you're then betting on completely, you're betting on the dollar, right? I mean, Bitcoin is a store of value. It's digital gold, right? That's here. Stablecoins is obviously, you know, digitizing obviously a currency. It doesn't have to be the US dollar, but the vast majority of stable coins is the U.S. dollar. We have USD1, which is the fastest growing stable coin on Earth right now, and it's pegged one-to-one with treasuries off of the U.S. dollar. And so there's no question that the SWIFT system is going to disappear. There's no question that finance is going to become 24-7.

1:08:36Eric Trump:There's no question that you're going to have this DeFi atmosphere, you know, using blockchain and smart contracts that can play a major role in the role that traditional finance is playing right now. If you have a million dollars worth of assets, right? And they're in JPMorgan Chase. Why are you going to JPMorgan Chase to ask them to give you financing? And why does that financing take you 120 days to get after going through paper contracts and know your customers while they have every skyscraper in every city around the world? Why can't you just go on there and say, I want to borrow against my money.

1:09:07Eric Trump:I'm going to do this in a smart contract. And three seconds later, it's in your bank account, right? And that's what's going to happen to finance. We are on the one yard line to something incredible. I mean, But listen, crypto and what we're doing, it's growing faster than the internet grew in the 90s. That's just a fact. When you look back in five years and 10 years, the entire financial landscape is going to be much different. And that's all because of cryptocurrency. And that's why I'm so damn excited about it. And I would have never gotten excited about it had it not been for this, had it not been for a siege, had it not been for a debanking, had it not been for deplatforming and realizing that there are a couple of people, you know, sitting in their ivory towers that can control what you do, what I do, what all of us do.

1:09:49Eric Trump:He's been on the receiving end of being deplatformed all because he believed in industry that was a future of finance. And we've all been there. And I really believe it can never happen again based on the moves being made in crypto.

1:10:01Graham Stephan:What does it mean to be debanked? Is that just something that happens overnight? You check your accounts. There's no money in it. I'll give you an example. His is much more extreme, but we started the company. We were young entrepreneurs, just raised our Series A, right? all of our money was in Bank of America. All in one bank, one bank account. We were just starting the company. We didn't have a bunch of different bank accounts. And we get an email and said, your account is shut down. You'll receive a check in the mail in the next four to six weeks. And we just said, what?

1:10:32Eric Trump:Four to six weeks. We have to pay bills. We have to pay employees. We have to pay our vendors. We raised the money to go buy equipment to go build a facility. And so we had this period of time where people said, do you actually even have money? Are you a real company or not? We're like, we do. We just don't know what's in the ether. Who decides that at Bank of America? It's crazy because you go into the branch and you say, where is my account? And they look it up and they say, it doesn't exist. We can't help you here.

1:11:00Graham Stephan:But then what does that escalate into? You say, okay, well... You literally just wait and check the mailbox every single day. There's no person you can contact. It's insane. You go into the branch and you're not in the system. So who's making that decision then?

1:11:12Eric Trump:Bureaucrats. People who can hate you because you believe in something that they don't, which is exactly what's happening to us. So you were posing as competition for Bank of America, I'm guessing. I think it was just because we weren't even buying Bitcoin. We were in the business of buying equipment that were building data centers to support the Bitcoin ecosystem. So it's funny. Imagine getting a call in the middle of the night. I did. In fact, I got a letter in the middle of the night. I got it from Capital One. I got it from all the banks, but the biggest one was Capital One by far. Eric, your accounts are all shut down, right?

1:11:42Eric Trump:You know, where you give you a couple of days to migrate your accounts. but they're all shut down. Now, think about a company like ours where you have some of the biggest commercial buildings in the world, some of the biggest hotels in the world where you have thousands of vendors, thousands of tenants. You've got lockbox provisions and loan documents, right? Where, you know, money has to flow in and out of certain accounts, right? So, you know, mortgages can be paid first after taxes and everything else. And then it can waterfall. You've got ACH payments coming in from every direction. You've got real estate taxes.

1:12:07Eric Trump:You've got, you know, you've got hundreds of employees. You've got every cost imaginable, right? Thousands of inputs. This isn't a personal account where you pay a credit card out of and you pay, you know, a couple of bills, a couple of homeowner bills. You have thousands and thousands of inputs. And then you take that and you spread that out to 300 accounts that all have that scenario, that all have that Christmas tree. And they call you up saying, congratulations, you know, you're done, you're closed. Or he gave you a couple of days, the accounts are closed, go somewhere else. Right. They wanted to take the rails out from under us.

1:12:37Eric Trump:Right. They wanted to see us bankrupt. They wanted to see us gone. They didn't want us to be able to, you know, to conduct normal business. These are for condominium associations. These are for golf courses. And who is they? Who do you think it is? Well, I mean, two things. In a lot of cases, it was the actual bank and the higher ups in the bank who simply didn't agree with let's make America great again. Right. And they weren't wearing the red hat, you know, and they didn't like my father's political views. And the fact that I was standing on that stage shows. So they ascertain them. And then I think in a lot of cases, it was it's not that I think I know.

1:13:09Eric Trump:it was government regulators going in and you know they happen to flip to page 17 or whatever the hell page it was oh interesting you have the trump organization i'd be very careful doing business with them because we're the regulators and you know we we will you know start looking i can't tell you how many of my friends ran ran big banks and they were shaken down by the government saying i hear you bank trump and you better not do that anymore guys this is real world stuff this isn't this isn't make-believe this isn't and i would have never believed it could have happened in the United States of America if it didn't happen to me, right?

1:13:40Eric Trump:If I didn't see assets that had no affiliation with politics shut down in the middle of the night for no reason whatsoever other than political affiliation.

1:13:50Graham Stephan:What banks shut you down?

1:13:51Eric Trump:Oh, let's start. Capital One, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, First Republic. First Republic was big, right? And then about, you know, 12 others behind then. But beyond those, you know, I'd say just about every major financial institution in the country. But then you had the Aon insurances of the world. Then you had the Shopify's of the world. I'll never forget, you know, all our e-commerce platform for Trump was on Shopify at the time. And, you know, congratulations, you're here by closed. Why? Like, why are we closed? Because we're selling golf polos to say Trump National Golf Course on it, right?

1:14:26Eric Trump:And that's when you realize that there's nothing that can be done in that world that can't be done better on blockchain. Guess what? Using smart contracts, they can't do that to you. How is your relationship now with those banks? Well, they all kiss their ass. I mean, what do you think they would do now? You know, how many of them have come back to me and licked their wounds, you know? And how does that look like? Do they just apologize? Do they ever give you a reason? Yes, normally, you know, we very much, you know, Eric, it's so great to see you again. You run into them at like, you know, cocktail party or a lot of times they'll reach out to you.

1:14:52And, you know,

1:14:53Eric Trump:we really like to bring the teams back together. You really have an amazing company. We're really proud of everything that you've been able to accomplish. And I'm sitting there gritting my teeth saying, you dirty. I can't say it on the podcast because, but you can only imagine my anger when I had hundreds of employees who didn't sleep for months on end, you know, as, as, as we're working on, on Hail Mary after Hail Mary to find, try and find every little small regional bank who, by the way, loved our accounts, right? Because of the value of them after being thrown off for dogs for doing absolutely nothing.

1:15:25Eric Trump:wrong.

1:15:25Graham Stephan:Could you ever talk to him and be like, hey, man, let's just like go off to this. What happened? Like, who told you this?

1:15:30Eric Trump:Yeah, but my conversations aren't. I think the conversation you would have is probably exponentially nicer than the conversation that I would have. Right. And I think maybe that's a little bit bitterness over what happened. Sure. And you'd probably be in the same seat if they did the same thing to you.

1:15:42Graham Stephan:What's funny, my Bank of America account was shut down. This is back in 2020. And my theory and I've had this account, by the way, for 15 years and I had a mortgage with Bank of America. And my theory was that I had too much money going in the account that it flagged it. And they gave me, thankfully, 60 days. They said, you know, after 60 days, we have to shut down your account. I was very kind of them. But I had everything going into one account, but I think too much money was going in. And then I would transfer that to investments. And I think they saw like big transfers in and out within 24 hours.

1:16:13Graham Stephan:I guess it was that. I'm not sure. I never found out. Exactly. Yeah. It was just, it was a letter I got in the mail. I reached out and they say, oh, your account has been flagged for something. I looked it up online. I couldn't find exactly what it was.

1:16:26Eric Trump:The employees at those banks, right? Obviously, on a smaller retail account, you probably don't have an exact account rep that just kind of owns you. I remember calling some of our account reps who would be crying, which is like their entire livelihood was managing the Trump accounts at these various financial institutions, and they were gone. They were out of work. I mean, everything that all our accounts were just closed down for no reason other than some call from above. It can't happen. It can't happen. And I'm proud to say I've held a lot of banks accountable. I was one of the first to start talking about this.

1:16:58Eric Trump:Asher is the first one to say, he's like, I never talked about this because I always found it embarrassing. And then by the way, back in the day, I almost found it embarrassing too. Like, how can you lose a bank account? Like, we're a great business. We're one of the greatest real estate companies anywhere on earth. How the hell do you lose a bank account? Like, it was almost like a mark of shame. And now, honestly, it's like almost like a badge of honor that we fall through it. And I've held every single one of those banks accountable. And there's probably one that I'll sue next week. So, OK, but honestly, just to make the point, guys, it wasn't just us.

1:17:26Eric Trump:They were doing this service all across the country, right? Like, again, not not not back to this, but the sole concept of what I wrote about an under siege, it's they were coming after all of us. They had they weaponized the IRS against, you know, churches, right, against conservative causes. They weaponized every aspect of this system. The fact that both you and you have been debanked and I've been debanked, like, that's more than coincidence, right? I mean, this was happening to a lot of people that they didn't like. And so to crypto, why am I such an advocate of Bitcoin? Why am I such an advocate of blockchain and DeFi?

1:17:59Eric Trump:You know, I would love to see so many of these banks fail to exist.

1:18:03Graham Stephan:Can you make the argument that the government should be buying Bitcoin and putting that on their balance sheet? Yeah, 100%. Why aren't, why is the government not getting involved? Why are they simply, taking crypto and holding it rather than actively for both sides right please why should any

1:18:20Eric Trump:government be buying bitcoin because it's the single greatest performing asset over the last decade increasing in value 70 a year year over year every year like germany a couple years ago there's a great article you'd probably you might know the exact numbers but germany had like 30 000 bitcoin or something along those lines and they sold it right away they monetized it into you know their currency and it was like the worst investment ever made by a government and by the way that's a pretty damn low bar as you know right um the government should definitely have have um certain crypto assets on their on their balance sheet mainly mainly bitcoin and actually the united states government does right you have a lot of forfeitures correct and and they've taken a great stance saying that we're not selling any of it um you have a lot of countries around the world that are actively buying if you go to you know the uae if you if you go to a lot of countries they are actively putting that in their treasuries and you look at the fortune 500 companies they are actively hoarding bitcoin the biggest families the biggest companies you know countries sovereign wealth funds and individuals are all hoarding bitcoin right it's why it's been as explosive as it is and it's funny people like oh well bitcoin's down like three percent now it's like this time last year bitcoin was at like 55 000 or 60 000 roughly um it's had unbelievable explosive growth why is the country not just going out and taking billions to go buy it because america kind of doesn't work that right you have sovereign wealth funds in other countries and they go out and they make investments on behalf of that country.

1:19:41Eric Trump:And honestly, I wish America had a sovereign wealth fund. I think it'd be the greatest thing we ever did. But America doesn't kind of work that way, right? America's pretty myopic. You take in tax revenue, you pay the expenses, and you let capitalism in the private industry reign. Most of these other companies, you don't really let capitalism reign or countries. You kind of let government take every penny they can, invest it on behalf of the country, and then pay out dividends. And so it's a little, America has a little bit of a different way of thinking. And obviously, thus far, it's served us well.

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1:20:35Graham Stephan:so what percentage of both of your portfolios are in bitcoin and or crypto and for the average person out there the average listener what percentage do you recommend that they would have reflected uh of bitcoin in their portfolio so i have a pretty large percentage of bitcoin i am a large owner of hot eight hot eight has a large owner of american bitcoin we hold over 10 000 bitcoin at hot eight we have a lot of bitcoin we're accumulating at american bitcoin we I haven't shared the updated numbers yet, but I would say it's really, what is your investment horizon? If you buy Bitcoin, you're buying and holding it and you don't want, you don't want that liquidity.

1:21:10And I think that's key. And so everyone has to think about, all right, what percentage of my portfolio can I just buy and hold? Like Bitcoin is a volatile asset. Over the course of the last decade, it's compounded at over 7 % on kind of an average annual basis. And so, but there are years where there's pulldowns and you have to be able to withstand those pulldowns and not sell. And so I would say, I mean, if you're just kind of passive and you say, hey, I want to dabble, have a couple percentage points, 5%, potentially even 10%, and just hold and leave it and pretend that that capital doesn't exist.

1:21:42And in 10 years from today, you'll be very, very happy. Right? On the other hand, if you're younger, you're a bit more risk-taking, and you want to build more generational wealth, then you can increase that percentage because you're a large earner and can have new income coming in that you spend instead of your assets.

1:21:59Graham Stephan:And also, where do you hold your Bitcoin? Like, do you have it in cold storage? Because I mean, I don't maybe want to say exactly. I have my new Coinbase. I don't know, like, you know, how secure that is. This is like a very novice question. But for the people out there that want to buy Bitcoin, what's the easiest and best way of doing it?

1:22:17Eric Trump:You know, the amazing thing now, you can buy Bitcoin in a thousand different ways, right? Go back five years, you had to buy it on a ledger and you had to kind of put it in cold storage. You were buying it mainly on DeFi and it was a complicated process. It lost a lot of people, you know, and it was hard. Now it's easy. You can go to Fidelity and you can stand up a digital asset wallet in three seconds. You can go to Schwab. You can buy ETFs. You can buy American Bitcoin. I mean, we're listed, you know, so your stock account, you can literally go buy American Bitcoin on the NASDAQ as of, you know, six weeks ago when we listed the company, right?

1:22:48Eric Trump:I mean, you can buy it through most of the financial institutions. And if you can't, you can buy spot ETFs. And if you don't want to do that, you can buy pure plays like us and, and, you know, or you can go to Coinbase, or you can go to a Kraken, or you can go to Binance, or you can go to, you know, 1000 other, you know, places, or you can go back and do it, you know, the traditional way and own it on Ledger, if that's what you choose to do. But, you know, Bitcoin has so many different kind of ways you can can own it relative to where we sat five years ago. And I think it's one of the reasons that all of crypto has exploded the way it is, because a lot of people just didn't want to go through the hassle.

1:23:22Eric Trump:A lot of people didn't want to go through the pain. And now guess what? The market opens up at 930 in the morning and, you know, you can put$10 ,000 into something that you believe in. But, you know, I think Asher said it best. You know, there's a lot of people who love crypto and they'll hop in and they'll ride it up, they'll ride it up. And they're seeing these compounding returns that are insane. 70 % year over year, as Asher said. And then all of a sudden it draws down 10 % or draws down 20%, right? And they lose their minds. They can only see a one-way arrow. And I think you have to have, you know, They call them diamond hands, right?

1:23:51Eric Trump:But like you've got to be able to hold and you've got to be able to understand that you might have five, six X to return, but you also might have five, six X to volatility. And volatility is actually what's amazing in crypto. Go buy the dips, right? The people who have been successful in crypto or the ones who bought in here, wrote it up. It might come down. And guess what? They dollar cost average back in, wrote it up even higher. It comes down. They buy back in. Buy the dips in crypto. And the people who have done that historically have made an absolute fortune. How manipulated is the price of Bitcoin?

1:24:24Graham Stephan:Because I see all of these charts and analysis on Twitter and they say, oh, this Bitcoin whale just came in and like shorted the market and then bought the dip perfectly and like all of this stuff. And now there's this narrative out there that like someone's behind the scenes, like, you know, being able to influence the market up or down like 10, 20 percent.

1:24:42Eric Trump:Well, I think it's certainly easier to do with meme coins, right, than it is Bitcoin. I mean, you know, what's the average liquidity? Michael, our partner, would know this right behind us. Michael, what's the average liquidity of Bitcoin on$60 billion a day? So, you know, somebody going in with$100 million and moving BTC at all, right? And by the way, yeah, there are people who take these wild bets. And by the way, I've seen as many go right as go wrong where somebody goes in with 20x leverage on a BTC bet, right? And then, you know, BTC goes down$1 ,000 and they get totally liquidated. Like that's not how you play this game.

1:25:16Eric Trump:In my opinion, I would never play the game like that. I really do believe in buying and holding long term. And I think if you buy Bitcoin and you buy and hold and you buy into some of the dips at obvious times and you open up your eyes in a four or five year period of time, I think you're going to have done exceptionally well.

1:25:34Graham Stephan:You know, what's funny is, have you seen the stuff online where people are speculating that Barron is like a secret crypto whale? People on Twitter are like posting that.

1:25:43Eric Trump:Yeah, it was really bizarre. The same tweets that come up about Baron come up about me in the exact same verbiage with the same images, just with a different face. I mean, apparently last week I bought a billion-dollar yacht. I'm not sure if you saw this.

1:25:55Graham Stephan:Oh, how is it?

1:25:56Eric Trump:You know, I've been really, really busy with under siege. So now this is how you relax?

1:26:00Graham Stephan:No, no, I guess I just forgot

1:26:02Eric Trump:that I bought a billion-dollar yacht. I guess I didn't know about that. I don't know the name. I don't know where it's being built. I know nothing about this yacht, but apparently I bought a billion-dollar yacht last week. Congrats. You know, so you guys will be the first guests when we get this. Thank you. No, it's a joke. And then I'll see the exact same picture of the same fictitious yacht. And, you know, Barron Trump just bought a yacht. And it's, don't believe what you, you know, believe credible people. Don't believe what you read on the internet, right?

1:26:24Graham Stephan:That's what we've come to experience as well. I think people like to think, though, that Barron's behind the scenes. Like, I see him next to Trump as like, Father, buy now. Or like, Father, time to dump. It is funny. And I think people like it's a bit mysterious. Yeah. Like, people don't see him.

1:26:39Eric Trump:Barron's a sweetheart. and he's a great friend of mine. And he's really, I brought him into a lot of the crypto projects that we've done and he's done great for himself and we've had a lot of fun doing it together. But I can tell you that I look at those memes and I literally, I laugh, right? And by the way - They're hilarious, yeah. You know, a meme is meant to be funny, right? I think sometimes, I hope serious people or people who are trying to get into a space don't take this crap literally. because I think that's dangerous. And I think, you know, once in a while, the industry has to mature a little bit.

1:27:15Eric Trump:It's matured a lot. I mean, over the last five years, it's matured a lot. You have serious people. I like, I am dead serious about replacing traditional finance with cryptocurrency. I'm dead serious about this. This isn't fun. This isn't trading meme coins. This isn't screwing around. This isn't gambling on brands. Like, I am dead serious about the rails of what cryptocurrency will do and having America lead the way and curing so many of the wrongs that have been perpetrated against so many people, including both of you and me, based on what you just said. And so there's a lot of people. Asher, I mean, he's building, spending billions and billions of infrastructure, electrical infrastructure, the heaviest gauge wires you've ever seen behind the biggest energy, you know, formulation.

1:28:03Eric Trump:I mean, you know, in the greatest complexes you've ever seen, You look at one of our sites that mines Bitcoin, right? Every one of these computers is literally running underwater. They're all liquid cooled. All the chips are liquid cooled. I mean, this is space age stuff. It is real. It's tangible. It serves an amazing purpose. And it is the future of finance. There's just no question about it. And you have to be able to differentiate that from the garbage and the meme warriors and the people who haven't left their grandmother's basement in a long time and just want to spew nonsense and make up facts and, you know, claim that Barrett and I both bought the same for a billion dollars last year.

1:28:42Graham Stephan:We're going to be giving away a hat to one iced coffee hour member. So this is it. One of you will win. Pass me those other two books. Yeah, dude. Okay. So this is for us. Eric, thank you. Guys, thank you. Great being on. Thanks. Thanks, guys.

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