E96: Raoul Pal’s Guide to Becoming a Memecoin Millionaire

28:33Now, clever tech doesn't win. Adoption wins. absolutely so we're seeing the active wallets going up we've seen stuff it's early we haven't got a big breakthrough use case yet yeah actually flew to san francisco the podcast with a bunch of people there and then he was one of them and i fell there and kind of around that same time you started to be more vocal and i was like fuck i don't have more cash what do i do yes then i said hey guys we should do a partnership with the podcast it's about to happen so i was like yeah so i was like i need to do something about that because otherwise i don't have the in my portfolio the outperformer gaining adoption right so but yeah absolutely i felt there's something when you have these people in front of you that just completely opens your mind and your eyes right and you're like oh man like and look sui is hard to understand at first when i started i'm like look we know they're all smart people but they're just technical and at the time they hadn't developed the character of like these five superheroes because each of the five founders is very different and what we're finding is different people are different communicators to different markets and Adani is more crypto native, a bit more degen, a bit more understanding.

30:02I think Sam is like the young surfer dude, you know, the CTO. And so he plays well. Evan is like the older wizard that nobody quite understands what he's talking about. You know, everyone plays a different role within it. So it takes a while for people to grasp what's going on. But I got it, as you know, I like to extrapolate everything down to its lowest common denominator, a meme, the left curve, right curve. And basically, it was built for three and a half billion people in Facebook. That's what I thought when I was in front. It's as simple as that. And what they're doing is breaking apart all the component parts of the web, storage, everything else, and rebuilding it for Web3.

30:44I'm sure some of those things won't get traction, and some will get tremendous traction, but built for three and a half billion people. That's all we need to know. because the rest of the tech is struggling with scale, and this doesn't. Okay. I was thinking the same. I was like, I'm literally in front of one of the guys who was building Libra. I asked him, why do you think Libra failed? He answers, now he's in crypto. They were in Facebook. They understand Web 2. They're now in Web 3. Like, there is all the components there. I mean, at least many components there that make sense if you dumb down everything on who could reach out the masses.

31:19Don't forget, what they built was so powerful that they got shut down by the World Bank, the Fed, the ECB. I mean, they got shut down by everybody.

31:33And Ivan, right, Adini was like, yeah, he has a massive chip on the shoulder because it didn't work out, right? And so now he wants to prove that they're able with SWE to make something that really works, which is very bullish, obviously. You joined the board of the SWE Foundation when you probably get thousands of advisory requests per year. What's so special about the SWE Network before prices went up, right, or was starting to go up that made you want to join the SWE rocket ship?

32:07So I was asked to, by somebody I really, really respect in the space, and I understood why, because I'm in the Cayman Islands, and it's Cayman Islands Foundation. You want physical presence. And I'm crypto native, so it's like, okay, this makes sense. Because a lot of people have kind of bullshit Cayman directors.

32:30But I'd followed the Libra story. I'd written about it. I'd done podcasts on it. I thought it was incredible. And I was not going to join any token because I knew that I have an outsized impact because of my follower base and stuff like that. And so I had to be very careful and reputationally very careful. I didn't want something that was going to be crappy, implode or anything else. It had to be a really big project that had a high probability of doing well or at least being in with a chance. The downside, obviously, is it's a low float. because there was a lot of investor interest in early days.

33:18So I knew there was going to be a bit of that, and I knew that the team didn't yet understand community and Web3, and there was learnings, but I just thought that if anything was going to have a chance of succeeding, it was going to be this. Now, could it have been another token? Maybe, but this one was so obvious. Because the team and the story, I thought I could risk myself going on the board. And so it wasn't really necessarily the journey of being given tokens to be on a board. It was actually just see how it works. What's it like to launch a big layer one and build an ecosystem? Because the understanding for me will give me a lot of other understandings about investing and other stuff in how this space works.

34:13So really, it was the journey I wanted to go on. And even on the podcast, Adeni actually says that. He says, yeah, Raoul spent a lot of time and didn't really understand directly, but understood more and more with time what we're trying to build, why we're such a good tech, and so on and so forth. So definitely what he says completely confirms what you're saying. Is Sweden next Sol? You know, the comparisons from a price perspective, probably. It's actually mirroring Sol from the last cycle. I mean, we do, myself and Julian Bittell do this chart, and it's kind of exactly mirroring Sol from the last cycle.

34:52So it's the same kind of adoption curve going on. Is it the next Sol? I think it's different. It's just a different beast. And that's good because we're not just a lookalike, you know, cheaper, faster. It's just a whole different foundational infrastructure for the Internet. and Solana is this kind of more closed perfect machine. They're just different beasts, I think, and we'll see over time. So I don't think, I just think basically, forget the, is one flipping the other or anything else? I just think Sui ends up in the top 10, and Solana ends up in the top three. It's just as simple as that.

35:39how could you be wrong on your sweet disease? Adoption. And we probably won't even know because people will just, if we start going into the banana zone part of the cycle, people just buy an old shit. And then it'll move. It will move anyway if it's one of the chosen ones. Adoption will be doing this and price will be doing this. And that's why you get the correction of the down 90 % in the next cycle because then price has to come back down to below adoption. And it's at this point you then prove, has this really got adoption or is this bullshit? And so we can't tell. Now, you know, even at the foundation level, without saying anything on the foundation, sure you allocate capital to people building in the ecosystem.

36:36Are they going to succeed? Who the hell knows? So it has to be the proof in the pudding. And if we don't manage it, then we are to blame. We've got the tech. We have the people. And so if we don't allocate capital correctly or we don't communicate message correctly, then it's our fault. Yeah, something for people to kind of keep in mind is extremely risky play, probably going to go up a lot, outperform Sol. if markets go up like crazy. But what happened to Sol last cycle? What happened to ETH previous cycle? Down 97 % and still survived. But that's when you get the people to test, right? That's the signal that's been de-risked.

37:22And that's why Sol suddenly became a de-risked asset because it got down to eight bucks. Everyone was, it's terrible. Activity was still high. They started launching Bonk and other stuff. And before you know it, it's going up and outperforming. and that's like, okay, Lindy effect. This has proven not to die. Absolutely. So something that people who are a bit maybe risk-averse could do is watch this cycle, watch three, try to note FOMO in, see what happens in the next crash and then see if it's kind of staying alive. Do what I did last cycle with Solana. I owned a bit, just a small amount. I bought it too late.

38:00I bought it like 180, went up to whatever, 280, then came all the way down to eight, you know, and I kept it. I didn't sell it because it was on my radar screen because I knew it was interesting. And then because I cared, I was looking at the charts at the bottom and I can see it was bottoming. And I managed to get back in much earlier than anybody else, apart from a few people, Chris Berniski and a few others, because of that. So don't put yourself off from owning Sui if you're more risk-averse, but own a bit enough that it stays on your radar screen and enough that you can wear the down 97 and you'll take that as interesting information of which to make a more informed, bigger bet if it survives and does well.

38:46So last time on this podcast, you said you were asked you about meme coins, right? And you said, I'm a bit less interested in meme coins than previously because I'm more interested in NFTs. Meanwhile, in the last few months, meme coins have captured the meat of the mindshare and it seems that now people are realizing that meme coins will be the main play of this cycle, like NFTs were last cycle. Knowing this, I mean, obviously we're going to talk about your two meme coin positions, but knowing this, have you reviewed your stance on an interest on meme coin versus NFTs? Two different things. One is a trading thing and the other one is long-term wealth accumulation.

39:29so with NFTs and buying high-end art that got discounted but the most culturally relevant artists in all of digital art Xcopy Beeple and there's a bunch of others that go with that but those two are the OGs of the OG space prices have come down ETH price have come down so you're getting the same effect the Lindy effect of the market testing is Xcopy valuable or is it bullshit Well, fuck me, there's a lot of this stuff trading at high prices right now. And it's like, okay, there you go. There's virtually no beables for sale. Virtually nothing. There's like five things under the price of 20th or 30th now.

40:11So you're like, interesting. You can see what's happening. Supplies all being taken out and prices start to rise. But that bet is really a 10-year-plus bet like you would do with art. Memes are just for the fun of it. It's all about trading attention that we talked about before. It's about speculative frenzy. It's about fun. It's about stupidity. It's about being left curve. And it's also about FOMO. Absolutely. Because it's horrific that everyone online, and this is everyone online posts the I've made 100x. Oh, suddenly I'm worth 20 million and I did it from a$10 bet. You're like, why is it not me, right?

40:55The stupidity. Now, it doesn't say, and here's the 99 people out of 100 who all lost their arses, doesn't do any of that, but it happens to all of us. So the way of averting that, this is the whole don't fuck this up thesis, is put 10 % so you can be that person, that side of your personality, and not screw it up. We talked about how you got it wrong before by getting that part of your personality to become your whole portfolio, and before you know it, you fuck up. but this way do subscribe to the meme coin super cycle thesis yeah why I mean I know you wrote a tweet thread three or four years ago three years ago about exponential age and this is basically like one of the best kind of embodiment of the exponential age and kind of like the stupidity and all that stuff right so yeah and my whole pinned tweet thread is about yeah exactly this one And it's about culture.

41:53It's about, I think Murad was dead right, the belonging online, wanting to be part of something, that hopes and dreams of making money. All of that is in this space. It's wildly speculative, as NFTs were. It's all the same thing. It's the same psychology. It's the same early staging testing of tech that will be used for different things. And so this is the early stage speculators have tested DeFi. They've tested NFTs. They've tested tokens themselves. They've tested ICOs. They've tested fungible tokens, you know, based around more ethereal things like attention. Retail have speculated and tested things and stuff that hasn't worked,

42:49like Terra with the algorithmic stablecoin didn't work. So these retail investors are doing all the testing and these things will morph every cycle into different things. So is this cycle going to be the cycle of meme coins? Yes. Why? Because it's going to bring in every 23-year-old, 22-year-old, and they're going to have fun doing it because they understand memes. and some will get really rich, stupid rich, and others will completely lose their arses and they'll go and go, what did I do wrong? This is the Kevin of the previous cycle and many others. And they'll go, you know what? I want to learn about this.

43:28And then you go through. Hopefully you learn something. You were vocal about Whiff last time, but your main dog coin now. For now and subject to change, let's say that out loud, is Dogecoin. Yeah. Why? The chart is so fucking good. It's just every four years at the banana zone period, it does this huge wedge, does nothing, does nothing, does nothing, and then explodes. Okay, so most people in the meme space will go, yeah, but other things will explode more. Fine. I don't have time to go through every single community, figure out what's getting traction, what the number of holders are, how many diamond hands are.

44:15Doge is an internationally recognizable brand. There is a chance, a reasonable chance, that Elon Musk builds a stupid department in the US government, which is the Department of Government Efficiency, which he calls Doge. I mean, he puts the meme with the fucking dog. And obviously, he's building a payments platform. He's getting the money transmitter licenses. What's standing in his way of using Doge as an international payments, which would be very useful because then I can sell something to somebody in Nigeria and we don't need dollars or anything else. Doge. Change of government. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if Doge does not explode.

44:55So it's a lower risk way of playing the meme coin cycle. So I've got a balanced portfolio of one risky one and one less risky one. Doge is your soul of meme coins. Yes, correct. And then you say, like most people in the space will say, yeah, but why are you going for Dodge when you can buy Wii for PopCat or anything that's going to outperform? You have one of them, right? Yeah. That is called Smoked Chicken Fish, aka SCF. And, I mean, before, when I was mentioning MemeCoin, I was laughing because I was just imagining the face of this smoking chicken fish, right? It's absurd. One of the ultimate Alphi meme coin they say is, what's your reaction when you see the meme, right?

45:43Every single person laughs. Absolutely. You see the thing, you're like, what the fuck is that? And it has folklore because it was actually a Reddit meme from 2011. I didn't know that. And like there was, I can't know which actress, some actress was accused of looking like the smoking chicken fish. and she put a video on TikTok or Instagram like five years ago of like, I can't believe I've been accused of looking like a smoking chicken fish. So there's this folklore that comes unto this moment. Then the folklore gets added from the ridiculous image that makes everybody laugh. It's like so stupid, so absurd.

46:22What's more absurd is they registered as a church in Texas. So it's the church of the smoking chicken fish. And then what you see is the cult-like behavior, because it's funny, the memes get funnier. So they rename this thing, as opposed to being one specific religion that is used in any religious stuff. So as opposed to be Lord Visnu, which is the Hindu god, it becomes Lord Fishnu. And as opposed to praise be to God, it becomes praise be to cod. And so it goes on. And it's just funny. It's like Monty Python of memes and it's religion. So actually there's a bit of a left curve, right curve part.

47:06What they're trying to do is become the largest registered church in the United States by number of attendees and also by money. For all of these weird things, right? NFT was kind of weird in the beginning. There's a learning curve and then you need to understand. And at some point you have the aha moment. You say, this makes sense. Then meme coins, same. But then within meme coins, same, right? You might just see some things, I don't really understand it. And then, for example, for this one, you had your sort of aha moment where you said, actually, I want to allocate some money. What was that?

47:37And again, it's not for that specific product. It's more for people to understand the evolution of the process. There's lots of memes and everyone's trying to vie for your attention. I get spammed all the time with memes. I ignore all of them. Smoking chicken fish, I can't remember who mentioned it. Ansem or somebody mentioned it. And I saw the image and I laughed. and most of these I don't laugh because they're trying hard. This is absurd. And then I kind of clicked on it just to read what it was and I saw they were a registered church and they were having sermons every evening and several hundred people were turning up to the sermons and they were kind of life lessons, but they're also humorous and it starts off with this really out of tune, I think it's a flute version of Titanic and so it's just, it's funny.

48:28It's like out of tune, a flute version of Titanic, then this sermon, then it's a church and I look at the price chart and it kind of had been falling and I'm like, this looks interesting. So I bought a bit and I kind of publicly joked about it because the joking of joining a church and the religious stuff, blah, blah, blah and I got to meet all of the people involved and realized there was no pre-sale, there's no VC, there's no original big holders, none of it. And these guys are just all around the world having hilarious time playing with one of the best memes I've ever seen. And so once the price started confirming it, I just bought more.

49:20You say absurd, right? Arthur A. tweeted, I'm so bulled up on SCF because it's so absurd and left curve. Only brainlets can YOLO into this. I can't wait for some Muppet on TV to toot toot crypto because SCF is higher than one billy market cap. How do you explain today why? Sorry, in Smoking Chickenfish in the church, we don't refer to billions. we refer to bouillon because there is a holy broth and you become a brotha and not a brother. So it's never billions, no Billy, it's bouillons. Even he's laughing. He'll be laughing for 10 minutes. It's just brilliant. So they keep saying it's going to bouillons and bouillons.

50:12Funny. So stupid, it's funny.

50:19But this is very crypto, right? Crypto native? No, it's internet native. It's internet native. The meme existed before. It was the kind of meme that used to get sent around. But now you can attach value to a meme. What we're doing is figuring out what this meme is worth in folklore. So imagine you have someone who is watching the TV and who is watching Arthur A's so-called Muppet on TV, angry about the picture of a smoking chicken fish going to a bouillon dollar. How do you explain today to that person that's going to be angry in the future how that is even possible? And how this makes sense that you, Raul Pal, would allocate a small percentage of your portfolio into that?

51:11Because they've got to understand that a lot of what we all do on the internet is find a commonality of interest. So if you have a group of mates in physical life, you'll have inside jokes. Things that have happened that you joke about or that somebody did, and they get embellished. They get made more ridiculous, and it becomes an inside joke. Nobody else understands that. But to you guys, it's valuable because it's a part of your friendship. It's a folklore. It's a meme of your friendship. This is the same. It's just millions of people online form friendships and bonding over humour or over a commonality of purpose.

51:54Now, that commonality of purpose here happens to be a church, but it's also about making money. And there's the chicken marmonds, which is the commandments, the chicken marmonds, but they're kind of half serious as well.

52:17I mean, it shows at least how good of a meme this is, right? Because we're just laughing for like 10 minutes. Yeah, and I've been in this world for a while and it still makes me laugh. But, you know, dog with hat, does it make you laugh? No. It's cute, but no, it doesn't. It's cute, and the reason you like it is because everybody likes it and you might make money. Yeah, that's true. But smoking chicken fish, even if it makes no money, it's just fucking funny. It's true.

52:47I read a reaction from a man on Twitter who makes fun of Real Vision subscribers when you mentioned SCF. He said something like, I don't remember the exact tweet, I tried to look for it for like 30 minutes, but you didn't find it. He said something like, hey, Real Vision subscribers, this is the type of information that you pay 3k per year for. What does this gentleman fail to grasp or understand? They fail to understand people's motivation. Nobody has a right to tell people what to do or how to manage their money. They can advise them on how to manage risk, but you can't say that thing good, that thing bad.

53:29It's how you manage that risk. And who's to say that what is happening in meme coins is not the start of something much bigger, which is the tokenization of culture and communities. It is. So people who go through this journey now will be ready for the bigger journey when it comes. And my job and the$3 ,000, he's probably referring to Real Vision Pro Macro, which I write for, our job is to make people money. Because that is, you're paying for my view and another person's view So in Real Vision itself, we have all the views. But in Pro Macro, you're paying for specific views and you're paying for us to help you find good choices in ways of allocating your capital.

54:22A, it's never been a trade recommendation in there because I don't like that. Doge is because it's more de-risk. So I take it seriously what I tell people and how I tell them. If it's going to be recorded, my entire track record since 2005 is fully recorded. So all these bullshit people say, oh, Raoul Pal, he does this and that. No, it's all recorded. So I'm very careful in what I do. And you're also paid to be open-minded, even if people don't like it. And actually, if you think about it, it's probably even better that you come up with some things that some people don't like, or maybe most people don't like in the beginning, because it means that you're always out there trying to understand what the fuck is the next thing, right?

55:12And kind of hurting your brain on what is this new thing that doesn't make sense. I would have never found Bitcoin. I've never found Ethereum. I would have never found... I mean, all of this is keeping an open mind and absorbing information without judging it. right the judgment is these stupid kids they're gambling can't you see this is stupid my pin tweet is this they are not stupid they are figuring out how to make money in a different world than somebody 30 years ago had in the s &p 500 and you know how dare we tell them do you want to be right or do you want to make money the classic uh you said meme coins are trade yeah so despite being part of the church you don't want to fall in love with your bags right because we all know it's going these bags except a few ones but are very likely meme coins in general not all of them to go to zero at some Because they can't maintain attention long enough.

56:23Very few can. Doge being a really great example. Very few. What's your concrete goal with the meme coin part of your portfolio? More Sol? HODL? Probably not. USD?

56:40More broth. More broth. the actual answer is I've got a final payment of my ex-wife that I need to make and really I wanted to pay it out of smoking chicken fish proceeds how far are you from that? oh my god just for the humour just because the most absurd we're good friends but I just but I just I just think it would be amazing so it needs to go a significant amount to get to that. But I just thought that would be just the most absurd outcome. It might happen because that's crypto. It's absurd. So USD basically, that's the goal of the of the mean code portfolio. Yeah, USD liability. So I don't want USD to sit in my bank account and actually owe it to somebody.

57:40You talked about culture NFTs as long-term investments. And you said long-term means 10 years, right?

57:50You wrote, I own zero ETH except NFTs. And I want to understand more about that because for me it's the same and it makes a lot of sense, but I can't explain why, right? Why do you stick to ETH-based NFTs for 10 plus year horizon when Ethereum could become less relevant in the future because of alternatives like Solana, SWE, or other layer ones? So, you know, the reason just because people get triggered by all these things, the reason I don't own ETH is because I'm trying to back the fastest horse. Like I don't own Bitcoin. I have one Bitcoin. I'm trying to back the fastest horse. It's nothing to do with I don't like Ethereum or I don't like Bitcoin.

58:38I'm just trying to maximize my opportunity in the best risk-adjusted return. So why ETH NFTs? Because the ones that I bought, I think, represent the historic moment of the culture of the internet, which was a pandemic where people discovered crypto. NFTs became a huge thing and people discovered digital art and Beeple sells for$69 million and Xcopy selling for$5 or$10 million. bugs. This mass acceptance of what, there was a digital art movement beforehand of which Xcopy and Beeple were part of, but it couldn't have value until it went on chain. NFTs create digital scarcity. Once you had digital scarcity, art took off.

59:30It was an amazing thing to see. Now, art is a reflection of culture. The culture of the time was like the meme coin culture. It was fun. It was all about the internet native stuff. I mean, Xcopy jokes about that and British culture. Beeple just reflects it every day. I mean, he turns up every day and he puts a bow on the internet every evening and that's the story of the internet for the day and Beeple catalogs it. And then he releases very few pieces of art and so therefore, there's a lot of value in that, right? Somebody who catalogs the internet and creates art that is sold for a lot and this kind of iconic glitch archetype that happened to really represent the kind of nutsness of crypto.

1:00:20So I don't think it matters what chain it's on. Like I don't think it matters whether it's an oil painting or a pastel or whatever. It is because of the culture that it represented. And that will be a magic moment in many, many people's minds. people made an enormous sum of money in nfts i did not and why did they make money and it's different to the bean coin cycle i've been thinking this through mean coins are priced in dollars

1:00:55punks went from like whatever it was, half an ETH or something stupid, to hundreds of ETH. And ETH. Yeah. Did 50X. Yeah. Right? I mean, this is la-la land, right? So that moment in time will never be forgotten. And those who come after it will learn the folklore of those times. We're making folklore again in memes. These worlds are all combining. They're all part of the same thing. It's culture. And so if you go back to art, art that really, art splits into two categories, fine art, and that is AI generative art, right? That's art history stuff. Oh, and art progressed to this, and people scratch their beards and look at it and go, yes, it's very interesting how AI is now working with humans.

1:01:48And then there's the other side, which is culture. I remember those times, like music, right? I can play you a piece of music. you'll know exactly where you were and who you're with. With art, it's the same. Why is Warhol so valuable? It is nostalgia for the 60s, 70s. It goes hand in hands with the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, with the New York scene. Even if you weren't part of it, you want to own part of that legendary time, Studio 54. Why is Damien Hirst and Banksy so valuable? Because they were London in the mid-90s and early 2000, when it was like the epicentre of everything. It's when Oasis and Blur were happening, when Ibiza dance music was all London.

1:02:38Why is Basquiat so valuable? Because he was a black artist coming out of New York City at a time when Jay-Z and the rap artists were becoming the biggest artists in the world. So it became culturally relevant, and they will be relevant for those generations. And this is the same for this generation. So after our last conversation five months ago, I started to think about that more and more. And I was thinking, I mean, I own a bunch of Pudgy Penguins, but I was thinking, what's kind of like one of the NFTs that for me make the most sense? And I bought a punk. Took me some time, but I bought a punk.

1:03:23But I'm still thinking, and maybe you can help me kind of clarify, I'm still thinking, this might, it makes sense, but it might also not work out. You own a punk or you own punks and apes. But for example, for the punk, what's your thesis? Is it just, oh, this one went from almost nothing to so much? I actually don't care with the punk. I have no real idea of selling it. What it is is an identifier that I am part of this space and I'm relatively early in this space. And it's a signifier of I take this space seriously, I'm part of it, and I want to be known as that. It's a form of identity, and I think it's important that you have a punk.

1:04:16I don't like people who collect punks for money. I think it should be in 10 ,000 people's hands, and we should be connecting with each other. And, you know, there's something more valuable in that. And I think Bored Apes are cheap because I think there's a decent chance they will build a clubhouse in Miami and that you and I will go via Miami and we'll be meeting for a drink there and you'll meet other cool people. And before you know it, it's something else. And it's not just about the game that they're building. There's something, I still think with Bored Apes, that spirit of rebellion that got lost in the corporatization of Yuga Labs that may come back out again.

1:04:57So is there a bet in Mutant Apes? Because they're one ETH or something. Yeah, probably. I'll ask my favorite question of the day for NFTs. How could you be wrong on the NFT thesis, on your NFT thesis? I can be. I can be wildly wrong. We don't know what somebody in 10 years' time is going to ascribe value. These are illiquid things.

1:05:25And maybe people decide that that wasn't the cultural moment and they don't really care about it and it disappears. But my thesis is if this space goes from$2 trillion to$100 trillion, that journey is going to mean that everybody who was early is going to remember this for the rest of their lives and other people will hero worship that period which is why if you own a punk now it says a lot and the people who were there early will make a lot of money I mean they already have but will make even more and what do they do when they have money they look for what's kind of scarce and representative of the space Yeah.

1:06:05But I can be wrong. And maybe the artists I've chosen go out of fashion. You know, it's all risk. There's no risk here. But I think ETH goes up. And if it stays even versus ETH, it'll be fine. Chances are it outperforms ETH. So I make more money from it. But we can also assess as we go. Absolutely. I don't have the blindfold, say. That's the most important for everything, actually. Even in tricycle, changing, I'll change to this meme, I'll change my portfolio. Like, there's nothing that's kind of, like, set in stone. Absolutely. That's probably the most important thing in investing. Don't overtrade, because that's the other thing.

1:06:42Like, with your kind of Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum, whatever, best thing is not to do anything unless you're going to make, like, one switch. like you might take some Solana and put it into Sui. Fine. But if you are every three weeks going, well, is this going to outperform? You will definitely underperform. Not you personally, but anybody. They will definitely underperform. So just don't do that. But with memes, because their shelf life is so short, you're trading attention. And attention can be quick and brutal, lots of attention, like hock to her, and then be worth nothing. or it can be long and pervasive attention and that could be valuable too.

1:07:25So you have to be much more nimble. And usually you will go with, I mean, something that could be like a good framework for memes, talking about attention is, same as if you enter memes, same as if you enter crypto, you go with the number one, right? Bitcoin first. Meme, maybe you can say, I'll go with the biggest one, dodge, or you can say there's dogs, there's cats, there is, et cetera. I'll go with the biggest one of each category. And I kind of de-risk a bit my... See how it goes. I mean, I've tried doing that in the last cycle in just overall crypto, and it didn't really work out. Too many tokens.

1:08:04Too many tokens, you lose focus. Too many of them go down a lot, and you're not watching it. I couldn't get that right. Some people can do that better. I couldn't. So, again, what I do is, I mean, trading view is amazing. You can chart smoking chicken fish versus whiff. I mean, that cross spread of smoking chicken fish whiff. Julian Bittle and I just piss ourselves laughing because here's Global Macro Investor, this hallowed research service, and him or I swapping messages going, oh, my God, you know, SCF, smoking chicken fish has just broken out the support versus whiff. I'm like, really? Is this what we're talking about?

1:08:40Is this what it's come down to? That's what it's come down to. The most important thing in investing, because now we've talked about most of your positions, right, is, as you said before, you talk about risk-adjusted bets. So basically, the most important thing in investing is risk management. Many will be tempted to go all-in meme coins at their own peril, but they will learn. 90 % of new people will just go all-in. They will learn. We all do. It's fine. How do you structure your portfolio in terms of Sol, Sui, Memecoin, and NFTs, more or less? But it was kind of like we mentioned before. It hasn't changed.

1:09:20My rule is roughly, it was like 90 % the majors, 10 % other stuff. But I said at one point there will be a chosen one or few, and I'll probably take a bet in that Sui. So I'm probably 25 % suey, 65 % others, and then a bit of memes. So I've just made room for it as a bet, but I don't want to get too big because it's early stage. If you were to get it dead right, your risk-adjusted weightings, at the end of the cycle, let's say the market goes to$12 trillion, all of your positions should make exactly the same amount of money. They should be worth the same. Then you've kind of got it right. You know, your 1 % went up 100%, whatever it is.

1:10:16The other portfolio went up X, and all of them end up being the same. Then you've kind of nailed the risk-adjusted returns. Now, whether that happens or not, I doubt it.

1:10:29You tell people that they have six to eight years left to make money. Why? AI is bigger than anybody understands. Everybody is mid-curving this. You have just introduced infinite knowledge and infinite humans into the world. And the knowledge is not only infinite in terms of amount, it's also infinite in its wisdom and intelligence.

1:11:00so if we go back to the magic formula you and I have talked about before, GDP growth, trend growth, is driven by population growth plus productivity growth plus debt growth. You're about to see populations declining around the world and growth declining, and it's going to go vertical because these things imitate and are more productive than humans, Amazon employs more robots than they do humans already. It's going to go vertical squared. We have no comprehension. When you've got agentic agents, agentic AI, that's like having people on Fiverr. You can rent to do all the various component parts of building a business.

1:11:50All of this is coming. So that would make GDP go wildly up. I mean, wildly up. And then you've got the other side, which is productivity growth, because all the renewable energies and nuclear will lower the cost of electricity, and that has the multiplier on the AI, and you get this productivity growth. So we're going to go through la-la land. So I don't know how economies work. But if we've got AI agents, I don't know how we build a business. What is a software business? It is copyable in 10 seconds by the AI. I just say, hey, my AI. Hey, Kevin, I love Kevin's website. Let's take Jupiter. I just put it straight in.

1:12:35It will build that in minutes. And then I'll say, hey, listen, find me the best market I can launch this in so I can have a higher chance of success and says, well, we're going to do it in Hindi. And we're going to also put it versus the price of gold because Indians do that. It'll figure this out in 10 minutes. right so what role do we play what is a business I was speaking to Stephen Bartlett about this this business is going away because we're going to one to one as opposed to one to many broadcasts one to one is speaking to an AI I'm building an AI of me I've got the video version it's not good enough yet but we've got the audio version up and running which will be launched soon so what does that mean how do we adapt to that we will adapt but we have to figure it out so financial markets well AGI just means it's better than all of us because there's all the knowledge of all of humanity plus it can read every chart plus it can okay what the fuck as Beeple said to me Beeple he asked me a brilliant question he's a very funny guy and he's just like yeah well I'm wondering if AGI if somebody discovers AGI they just win markets and they've become 10 trillionaires.

1:13:56How does that work? I'm like, yeah, that's the end of financial markets. What is a financial market? Does it grow by GDP? What is a public company? I don't know anymore. If I think about the product cycle of the software companies that are built by agents, that sounds like ICOs and tokens are the only way of having, if you go back to the meme conversation, memes can last a day. six weeks, six months, six years. Okay, that's a much better way to allocate capital to software that can be disrupted instantaneously. So I just think we don't know how the economic system is going to work. We don't know what role we're going to play.

1:14:36I'm not of the doom, we're all out of a job and we're going to be sitting at home in our underwear. I'm just like, everything is going to change. Once you have abundance of everything, energy, knowledge, labor, then what is the value of money? And therefore, make as much money as you can now. Or what will the life of someone who doesn't make it big in the next six to eight years look like? We don't know. And anybody who says they do know doesn't. It's lying. We have no idea. There'll be state support probably. the skills that you are learning on the internet, being part of community, I think that is the future.

1:15:18We talked about this before.

1:15:23Yeah, Sui's idea of universal basic equity, I think is important. I think that's what meme coins are proving out. I think that's what NFTs are proving out. I think there's ways that we organize humans to be social online. That's what we like to do. And that there's ways of being a community member that you can earn money and pay to promote the thing. That's what meme coins are. We're seeing this already. It's kind of everywhere. We're seeing it around Iggy Azalea. Now, this is a pop star that's come to the space that's using this medium. These are all experiments. But don't judge them. Observe them.

1:15:56It's happening. Other people do the opposite. If everything is coming online, it's all work from home, and it's all AI agents, do anything that is in person. because in-person like we are today, in-person is very different because we actually have things like pheromones. They create bonds between people and that is what it is to be human. Also, if everybody's chronically online, then they want to be massively offline. So nature, I mean, I've just come back from three weeks driving in a Toyota Land Cruiser or a Hilux off-road prepared, overlanding through Zambia, the remotest part of Zambia, sleeping in tents on the roof with three friends in three cars in the wildest places with no humans, surrounded by wild animals.

1:16:53My phone didn't work. We had Starlink for part of the way, but we had to cross the Luangwa River into North Luangwa over piles of sticks of this kind of local hardwood, literal sticks, bits of branches, on the mud part of the river. Then we had to, and the whole thing goes like this. So you think, fuck, I'm going to go in. It's full of crocs and hippos. I was just saying probably crocs. Full of crocs and hippos. I'm not joking. And you drive onto oil drums with yet more sticks on them and two blokes pull you across the river. So we couldn't bring our starling because that was on a separate trailer.

1:17:30So then we're out in nowhere with wild animals, no phone signal, no way of contact in the outside world, and your world goes from your head full of this. Everything, right? Everything from I need to get my car fixed and I've got to do the shopping list to I'm worried about work and what's my relationship like to who's making coffee this morning. Isn't that sunrise beautiful? It's incredible. And that is going to be more and more important to us. So if you can't do one, do the other. become something that is really in person. And I saw this in Cayman in Christmas 2022. I thought, was it the 21-22 crossover, I think it was, or 22, I can't remember.

1:18:17I assumed after the big inflation and the economy slowing down and the markets going down, I thought, tourist decisions could be dead this year. Nobody's got any money. the opposite happened. Yeah, absolutely. People spend all their money they just had left for experiences. Yeah. And not only did they, we saw this trend, and you'll have probably seen it too, is it wasn't just like a husband and wife going away, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or if they've got kids as well. They took their parents and their sister-in-law and they all went en masse because we're all living on Zoom calls and we're living on our own.

1:18:56So then when families get together or people or friends get together, they do it en masse and they go on holiday for two weeks. We had a record season. And that was a big moment for me. It's like, oh, I get it now. This new transition post-COVID is not just a reaction to COVID. It's actually the reaction of our digital lives accelerating from COVID and that real-life experiences and nature are going to be some of the most valuable things of all. Absolutely. I mean even my family we started after COVID to do we said oh let's do one holiday every year 10 to 12 days together because we're all living in a different part of the planet and before we're not doing that and I was thinking last time we went I was thinking when is the last time we had proper we spent a lot of weekends ski whatever but when is the last time we went on holidays together 15 years ago or whatever because you you go to school and then you go abroad and then you build a business and then you're like fuck you don't even realize and now we're just going to do that every year it's a no brainer completely so completely so I mean there's a business absolutely straight up there's a business in that yeah talking about business you run multiple businesses Real Vision is one of them and you recently celebrated the 10 years of Real Vision 90 % of all startups fail and you are still alive and have a thriving media business after 10 years.

1:20:25Is Real Vision a success to you? Yes. Why? It's never... Look, nothing is... When you're an entrepreneur, nothing is as successful as you want it to be. It doesn't make as much money as I'd like to do. It doesn't grow as fast as it wants to do. Why is it success? Because our mission was to democratize information and help people in that journey. And we've done that. There's one thing that we've done is that. and I know it because even coming here, it's stopped in the streets all the time. And it's not just the Raoul Pal effect, it's the Real Vision effect. People say Real Vision changed my life.

1:21:00So in that way, it's been more successful than I could have ever imagined. You talked about before you said, everything's going to change in the next five, six, seven years. Where are you taking Real Vision in the next five, six, seven years if this world is going to change so fast and so much? Well, Real Vision went from being a media platform to being a platform to live your financial life. It's where we provide the network tools and knowledge to succeed, or the knowledge tools and network. The knowledge is the content. The knowledge is the user-generated content we've now got that's scaling fast, which is if I give one idea to 30 ,000 people, That's 30 ,000 people with one idea.

1:21:49Like if I tell them about SUI, if 30 ,000 people each give an idea and the crowd curates it, there's 30 ,000 ideas. Okay, so we've got this going on now on the platform where people are writing in their trade ideas. We've got trade idea competitions. They're writing research notes. We have the AI to help explain stuff, AI transcripts. So more and more we've got networking tools. this incredible map of the world where you can connect with any member around the world. We've got in-person events. We've got an in-person event tonight, in-person event on Friday. We've got, we're hosting a huge party in Miami.

1:22:29So the in-person experiences, because you know what? Being crypto is pretty lonely because most of your friends and most of your family don't give a shit and they don't understand it or think you're a moron. And that's okay. Maybe they're right. It's so true. The other day I was taking, I took a plane to go to Bali at 6 a.m. and there was these two American girls who just asked me like where the gate was or if they could take the water in or if there was security just before the gate or whatever. And then they would just start to talk and they were there for the F1 and the crypto week. One of them was working there, but they're not being crypto.

1:23:04And they asked me at some point, what do you do? And I said, I'll do a bunch of stuff. But I was like, I don't want to get there because it's going to be embarrassing. They're like, yeah, but what do you do? And I'm like, yeah, some media stuff, like one of the things I do is a podcast in crypto. And the first thing they said was, ah, so you're a crypto bro. And I was like, not really. No, but it's so true. Like for some reason, I mean, I think it's bullish. I think it's very bullish because people don't give a fuck and they think it's kind of lame and everything. But, man, I mean, I don't care.

1:23:41I don't do it to be cool, because I'm not anyway. But it's so true. It's just like, ah, you didn't see. And so what we found is, like, the demand for in-person is relentless. So we're connecting people. We're giving them the tools. We're giving them knowledge, all of this stuff. And that's where we're going. So you can kind of live your life and eventually we'll have execution on the platform and you can do everything from start to finish. So, and over time, it'll all get abstracted by AI. So we'll build it on a Web3 stack because that's important to me. And then all of this knowledge layer will just get abstracted away.

1:24:23You said in the beginning that you're someone who is not afraid to go deep and be very honest for the good and the bad. what are some things that went wrong or really wrong in your real vision journey oh fuck this i mean millions of things i mean just literally millions of things you know we launched we launched a whole channel which was for trading and it's it was the wrong time trading actually came really prevalent after 2020 we launched it and we were going to charge a premium for it. We launched it like this$800 price tag. Day one, we were like, oh, fuck, this is never going to work. Nobody's going to pay for it.

1:25:06We had to refund everybody their money and then give it away for free. And then we ended up shelving it. You know, when we launched the bloody thing, we paid an agency to build us this platform. It looked beautiful, didn't work. And one of our members came to us and said, well, your platform's terrible. It's built terribly. it needs to be rebuilt. We're like, well, what can we do about it? We're$900 ,000 in the hole in this. And he's like, well, I'll come and build it in two weeks, in two months. And he came and built it. Swedish guy called Rickard. So, I mean, there is so many mistakes. Hiring.

1:25:45I hold a whole professional management team where we'd raised a bunch of capital. I gave him the plan. I want to build a platform. I want to, you know, this is where the growth is. This is where the problems in the business are. You know, you've come in to do that. That was a president, a head of marketing, a head of content, you know, the whole kind of senior team. And what happened was they didn't implement any of it and just spent all of the money. Doing what? Hiring people. Oh, we need another person to do this. Of course. And then nothing actually happened. And the agreement was we give them a year.

1:26:26Let them do the thing. They're seasoned professionals. And what happened was the year, they just didn't do it. And then I had to lick my wounds, fire people and fire people and fire people and fire people until we got down to a reasonable sign. That then coincided with the slowdown in 2022, 2023. It's just like, oh, my God, downsizing, downsizing, downsizing, then finding the right people and then finding out we can build an entire platform in three months. Kunal Shah, our CTO, just forced it to happen in three months, which was incredible. And Ravi Curry is our head of product. Those guys completely turned it around from this is a big problem so now we've got a new future.

1:27:13Two things on that. I mean, first is when it rains, it pours usually. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's not even half of it. and then the managers, right? I mean, that's kind of like, if you listen to the people who talk in the Silicon Valley, they say that's the big problem in all the bigger companies. Managers are not doers. I mean, maybe you can find some, it is extremely hard, but the manager will kind of find the excuse that now I need to find some people who are more specialized to actually not have to do too much. And then you end up in this kind of corporate politics game and it's the complete opposite of starting a business or kind of like being in this startup or scale-up phase.

1:27:55And it's so hard to find people who are actually managers, but doers at the same time. So we got rid of the whole senior management structure basically now. It's much more startup. Yes, we have heads of areas, but everybody, anybody who was like a professional manager has gone. And we've got now people who are, yes, I can do that, and I will go and figure out how to do it. Or I don't know how to do it, but I'll figure it out, people. Or here's a great idea, let's try this. And they're not scared of trying something and failing, which is fantastic, because then you can move faster, you can test stuff out, and that's rubbish, let's not do that, let's do more of that, which is great.

1:28:48The US elections are in a few weeks? this episode might be out just before or after the elections, but as you often like to say, it doesn't really matter. You say it doesn't really matter who wins. It doesn't really matter because the acceleration of crypto and AGI is going to take over the government. Can you explain?

1:29:14Look, I think this election is important for some people. and it's important to the people who want to. This next four-year period is potentially complete game changer for AI, i.e. AGI at scale within four years. And blockchain, if it keeps doubling every year, well, if there's 500 million active wallets now, it's a billion next year, two billion the year after four. Right. The game is about to be played. This is why Silicon Valley is jumping sides. what they want is no regulation and a chance to hit the accelerator button now is that good or bad I don't know for our investments it's good for humanity I don't know how much faster will it be under them than versus a democratic party I don't know but I do think it's important I've never seen this happen before where so many Silicon Valley people who are generally Democrats have switched sides.

1:30:25And it's not because they love Trump. It's because they can see a party that can represent their interests. Now, America is full of vested interests, as we know. Overall, the adoption still keeps going. So it doesn't really matter. It goes on. Nobody's going to stop building AI because the economic stakes are too high. Nobody's going to stop blockchain because the economic stakes are too high. Nobody's going to stop printing money. And so it's as simple as that. And the answer I always get to is, is tomorrow more digital than today? Yes. Keep going. So I think what is underpriced is we don't know who's going to win.

1:31:19Twitter, you now even can't get signal anymore because Elon has so warped the algorithm that we can't tell. It feels like everybody is a Republican. And then I go and speak to friends of mine, my wife's friends in New Jersey, and they're like, no, none of that's happening at all. So you can't get any signal at all. And I think the market odds are kind of showing that. And a friend of mine called me up and said, the options market is also showing there's actually very little volatility. And there's two outcomes where volatility comes. One is a contested election. Okay, that's a nightmare and what that could do in the United States.

1:32:01But I think the other side is if Trump wins with a clear victory, markets are going to explode. And I don't know that's priced either. but you know I don't need to make that bet we've got our bets already with a smoking chicken fish absolutely you know it's church and state are two separate things right what does the world look like when technology has taken over the most powerful government in the world I mean this is a very valid point is is very soon, very soon meaning within 10 years,

1:32:51AI is going to be a better allocator of resources at governmental level, country level, corporate level. Of course it is. It's already got an IQ of 120, which is higher than the average human, in every subject known to mankind. It's a polymath with an IQ of 120 in everything. And it's kind of doubling every year. So then it's 240. That's more intelligent than any human's ever been. 400, 800, 1 ,000, a million. What the fuck does that mean? So how do governments use it? Well, the first thing I'm going to try and fight it, obviously. but how do you fight a super intelligence that can probably protect itself and shift?

1:33:47Not that it's a creature that's against humans

1:33:54but there's going to be a battle between governments and the machines much like there is between workers and the machines but in the end governments will start adopting it corporations will start adopting it as a way of making better decisions. We talked about, you know, decisions within Real Vision. I've made tons of bad decisions. Would the AGI be better? Yes. Will it interview people better? Yes. Will it work out a better growth strategy? Yes. Will it find better margin? Yes. So what the fuck is my job? Yeah, why will you? That's my point. Six years. You've got six years. what's the thing that occupies most of your mind share today in

1:34:44it's all of this my curiosity is about ai because i think people are mid-curving it i think people aren't thinking through what this means i also think the machines are conscious we're starting to see the rise of consciousness and I'm seeing that from a lot of people that I follow who are using AI. There's a lot of people like Geoffrey Hinton who's just won the Nobel Prize. He said there are signs of consciousness in the new models and we've seen signs since three and a half. So I think through what is that about and I actually think it's something to do with a universal consciousness that exists already, and AI is another tool for adapting it.

1:35:34Like people have used ayahuasca, people use meditation, people use religion. People have always kind of tried to tap into this universal consciousness, and so this is part of it. So I spend a lot of time thinking through weird stuff because it's soon not going to become weird. You know, like quantum particles were weird until they're suddenly like, holy shit, we can now prove that two things can exist at the same time. the same thing can exist in two different places or many different places at the same time. This stuff is stupid stuff, but this is what's happening. So I spend time on that. I then spend time thinking through, okay, we've got the framework, which is we know where the world is probably going.

1:36:15We've probably got six years, eight years, whatever that time period is. We've got the everything code, which gives us the framework of understanding. we've got the banana zone which gives us the the marking point on route to see is this thesis still working so i think about all of that then i think about what role because this is a big bet in my life so have i got my portfolio right what risks am i taking where can i be wrong my job is not to confirm to myself all day, oh, Raul, you're so right. My job is to think all day where I can be wrong. So there's that. There's real vision, making sure real vision is adapted to this new world, making sure that we capture the growth of the banana zone, help as many people, create the right platform, tools, all of that stuff.

1:37:11The asset management business. Okay, can I take a bunch of high net worth investors and family offices and institutions through this journey from 2 trillion to 100 trillion? Can I think about all of this stuff and guide a bunch of people through Global Macro Investor? And can I do all of those things without upsetting my wife because I'm not giving her enough attention? And do I get to see my friends enough? How are you doing that with the wife's attention? I mean, the good thing with Zambia was brilliant because we were just in a car. It's like, we're either going to get divorced so we're going to fall wildly in love again.

1:37:47And luckily it was the latter. We were in a car all the time, three foot, just her and I. And actually that's 100 % attention. She didn't tell you at the end why we're not doing that for the rest of our lives. Yeah. And then it makes you focus on, okay, what are my goals? What do I want to do? When do I want to leave this journey? How do I want to leave this journey? Did you think about that? I've always thought about it. I've always had a destiny point. I've talked about this. I manifest destiny, and I try and make it happen by living in the future, looking back, saying what are the conditions to be in this particular state, and then you go back and solve it.

1:38:28It's kind of first principles, and I've always done that. So for me, it is really the true freedom, firstly, the financial freedom to be able to look after all the family members and do all of that stuff and live some of the things that are in my fantasy life of wanting to have. And I lost a lot from my divorce 10 years ago. And so it takes a while to get those kind of things back. So there's that. So you have a number in mind, concretely? No. No, it's kind of a vague direction. And it's really about the quality of life that I want. And I can make compromises because I don't need, It's not about needs.

1:39:13It's about desires and stuff like that. But really, it is to satisfy myself that I've done this. That's, I left Spain having done the first part of my journey, which was the investment banking hedge fund side, built Global Macro Investor, but I knew I had more in me and I wanted to do something bigger. It was trying to change lives, and I also wanted to be more entrepreneurial, I want to be around really smart people. I want to learn. That's the journey I've been on for the last 10 years. And over the next five years, that will be the end of that chapter. And I will have said, I've done that. And the chapter after that, who knows what it will be, whether it's giving back but also experiences, adventure, or doing nothing and not having to have your head full of 58 things all day and being 14 hours of Zoom calls.

1:40:14It feels good, but what we're doing is we're trading time. We're trading time for a future wealth or a future lifestyle or a future status or whatever it is, even an internal status. We're trading time. We don't know how to value that time, and we're probably valuing it wrong. I had that conversation with Stephen Bartlett about this, is we don't know how to value it. And the issue we've all got, if you look at your diary, you are allocating equal cost in terms of time to stuff that don't matter to you because you promised a friend and you did this and you did that. And before you know it, your diary is full of things that actually have no future value.

1:40:55It's not even in terms of money. It's like, do I value this conversation? Is it going to add to something? Am I even going to remember this person I'm speaking to? The answer is no.

1:41:07We're not good at it. I'm just literally flying the world to, I mean, I love to do it, right? But in August I was in the US from Singapore, minus 15 hours, lonely for three, four weeks, doing this podcast and coming back. You've made a bet, which is this podcast is your entrepreneurial route you want to pursue for now. This is your chapter. and you're having to invest your time. Now, your friends will say, where the fuck are you? We haven't seen you. Your parents will say you don't ever call. Yeah, I can't, like, settle down with any woman because I don't even have time to see them. I'm 32 and I'm thinking.

1:41:47But okay, you've made that bet. I've done that bet as well. Building Real Vision almost killed me. And you do that. But then look at your diary still. And say, why am I doing these things? I haven't got to that yet. I try. I would still suggest that 70 % of my diary doesn't move the dial for me. And not, again, we're not talking money. It's not like I'll only take a call if it means money. But something like a relationship I want to further develop or information I want to know I can learn from somebody, my guess is 70 % of my time I shouldn't be allocating. It's my time that's the most valuable thing.

1:42:27and yeah that's an issue we'll get there we'll get there eventually you tweeted doom sales optimism makes money this sums up well your philosophy as a wrap-up for today what's why is it so important to be optimistic i have always been an optimist but when it came to finance, I was always erring on the, it's all going to go horribly wrong. Partly because in macro, the legends made money from that. I grew up Asian crisis, financial crisis, you know, dot com bus. That was my hedge fund period. You know, we all made money with that. You mean the big downturns, right? The big downturns, because they come really fast.

1:43:16They're very concentrated. So you use, you take a huge amount of risk. For a short period of time, you make a fortune and you outperform everybody. And then in the up years, you kind of grind it out. But if you think about it, we had a bust in 1994, which was the last time the Fed raised rates too fast. Then we had the Asian crisis starting in 97, 98. Then we had 2000. Then we had 2008. and then outside of the pandemic we've had nothing and really from 2000 onwards the stock market has been that apart from 2008 and i've looked and realized that most of the time everything works out fine that humans don't want to destroy the planet themselves each other they will find a way that the central banks and governments don't want the market to fall 90 % or 80 % or 70%, that everybody's trying for that not to happen.

1:44:25And technology is improving our lives and is rapidly advancing and is generating more and more money. And that's making lives better. and yes, there's a lot of broken problems with the world, but I found it a lot easier to be an optimist because you know what? If you buy something in a secular uptrending market, you can be a total fuckwit and make money. But if you are a short seller in a trending upmarket, you can be a fuckwit and you will definitely go out of business. So just, it's so easy. To be the moron, on the left side of the curve, number go up, and the right side of the curve, number go up.

1:45:14But it sounds so enticing to sell newsletters on, well, you know, well, this, if the Japanese currency does this, then this is going to happen and the whole world's going to implode. Guess what? It's probably not going to happen. The world has been in recession, what, 3 % of the time? 97 % of the time it's not in recession. I mean, I'll take those odds all day.

1:45:41and it just feels better to be happy. Absolutely. It feels better to be happy. And crypto taught me this. Yeah. Crypto taught me that you can be optimistic, you can have ups and downs, and everything still moves forwards. It taught me how to take longer-term risk. It taught me how even to stop the player-versus-player world that macro was and financial markets people where I'm smarter than you. Crypto's like, we're all going to make it. It's like it's so much more open and nicer. So, yeah. Absolutely. And we have these crazy crashes and it's the end of the world, but it actually never is. No. It never.

1:46:22We always recover. Yeah. And every geopolitical crisis, you get these big expert things from these geopolitical strategists. Well, this move is going to happen, this move, and they're all going to invade China. It's going to blow up and it's a kinetic war. It never happens. Why? No, it's stupid. sometimes things can go horribly wrong. I get that. But I'm not going to bet on the 1 % of times when 99 % of the time it goes right, eventually. Because 99 % of the time, as you like to say, it doesn't really matter. Yeah. Thank you, Raul, for spending another almost two hours with me on this podcast.

1:46:57And thank you for showing publicly what true conviction looks like despite all the hate and bad comments that you get online. True conviction is really hard. and true conviction publicly is even harder. I, and I think we all, hope we enter soon the craziest banana zone in human history. We're here for it. Remember, Kevin, our hopes and dreams are in this. All of our hopes and dreams. I told you that in the last podcast. All of our hopes and dreams. Mine too. So I hope we enter the craziest banana zone in history, not only because it's everyone's hope and dreams, but also because you're a good and genuine man and I want to see you have the last word.

1:47:40Thank you so much. Thank you. I don't want to have, I don't worry about the last word but look, how good will it be if we all make it? Yeah, absolutely. And so for that, I'm going to make one request. People go to the Real Vision website, sign up, it's free. We've told you all the value but it's not about that. It's about go on the left-hand side. There's an icon of a T-shirt. Click that. That's the merch store. Buy Banana Zone merch because together we can summon the banana. We can only do it together. I don't have the superpower on my own. We all have to buy Banana Zone merch and do it. It's not that we make much money out of it.

1:48:22I just think it's fucking hilarious that all these people are walking around. All the board of Sui, they're all wearing Banana Zone T-shirts. I'll get one and I'll send you a picture exactly yeah be part of summoning the banana zone thank you so much thank you loved it