The Bill Bert Podcast - The Bill Bert Podcast | Episode 20 with Anthony Pompliano

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

Bill and Bert prattle with Anthony Pompliano about the fundamentals of currency, bank fugazi, and Bitcoin.

um hey what's up everybody and welcome and it's time for another wonderful episode of the bill bert pod asked there we go all right i'm in hollywood because i'm a big phony bert's in the middle of oklahoma because he's a man of the people. I saw the outsider's house today. What's that? I saw the outsider's house today. You know, D. Del Rey looked at that when he was out there. We'll talk about that in a minute. Let's get to our very patient guest here.

The one and only Anthony Popliano, who's going to talk to us about Bitcoin, right? Let's do it. How are you guys? Let's do it. All right. We're going underground on this podcast. We're going to circumnavigate the whole fucking US currency. We're going to get down to who Woodrow Wilson was and what the hell he did. Talk about what, Devil's Island

and the outsider house. We're going to cover it all. Let's start off with deflationary assets now Anthony I'm curious what is that all right let's let's back up shit out of me I was like oh my god I'm not gonna be smart enough for this so back up and just talk about first what is money right and I think that the key piece is just a belief system. The whole reason why any currency in the world's got value is because two people believe it has value and they're willing to exchange it for goods and services. And so when you kind of level set on that,

then it comes down to, all right, there's a lot of things that can be money and have been money in the past, whether it's gold, seashells, dollars, Bitcoin, whatever. Let me ask you a quick question here. Is it bad? So then it's really not bad that there's no gold behind the U.S. dollar as long as we all believe, you know, if I give you five bucks,

you know, it gives me this amount of M&Ms as long as we agree to that. It doesn't really need anything behind it, right? Yeah, so it basically comes down to how good is the money, right? So I think that's the key piece is anytime that you have a currency that can be inflated or printed at will, that's where issues come in. It doesn't mean that it's not money. It's still money. US dollar.

You guys use dollars. I use dollars. You know, a lot of people around the world use dollars. But the real conversation is around is what's the best type of money, right? And so that's where I think a lot of people in the Bitcoin and gold world think that the US dollar not being backed by anything and the government having the ability to print it is a bad thing. Well, it doesn't, okay, it has a big conspiracy theory. Doesn't the Federal Reserve, aren't they in charge of printing it and all that? And aren't they outside of the federal government?

Yeah. So that is what is reported. That is how the system is structured. To give you a sense of how much money gets printed this year alone, the Federal Reserve's balance sheets, think of that as like their bank account uh has grown by 75 percent they just created three trillion dollars out of nowhere uh and they started just sticking it in every nook and cranny of the financial system uh sending checks to people they sent you know over a billion dollars to dead people all kinds of crazy shit going on uh and the question why did they send it to dead people well the stimulus the stimulus, right? So what they basically did is the government, it's pretty bureaucratic and different divisions don't talk to each other.

So Bill's alive in January. Bill dies at the end of January. We're going to send out stimulus checks. We don't know Bill's a lot, you know, has died yet. So they literally just send the check to you and you're dead. So over a billion dollars they sent out in the stimulus program went to dead people. That sounds like the beginning of a really good movie.

Then a couple of jerk-offs like me and Bert find the check. We, of course, go out and try and cash it. And what do they do with the money? Hand's booty. All right. So how concerned? I don't even want to ask the question. So if you can just sit there and print money,

my thing, what I didn't, I understood inflation back in the day when gold was behind it. So you got whatever, you got a hundred million dollars in gold, you got a hundred million dollars in cash, each dollar's worth a dollar's worth of gold, right? Then if you print another hundred million, you just devalued the dollar by 50% because you didn't get any more gold. So once you go off the gold standard, why is there still inflation? If there's nothing behind it, why can't everybody, why don't you just print a million bucks for everybody and we just stop working? But I had to ask it. It's not so stupid. There's a lot of people who think that we should do that, right? Whether you call it universal basic income and don't give everyone a million bucks,

give them a couple thousand dollars a month. Some people think that modern monetary theory, we should just print a bunch and give it directly to people in other ways. But I think ultimately what ends up happening is think about if supply and demand, right? So if I have dollars and everyone else doesn't have a lot of dollars, then obviously my dollars can buy more things, right? So I can come buy your house, say your house a million bucks, and I want to buy your house and I've got a lot of dollars and nobody else does. I can then say, well, you know what? I don't want to pay a million dollars. I actually want to pay 800,000 because I got dollars and you want dollars and there's not a lot of dollars

floating around. So this all comes down to the fact that certain people want to have more than other people. Of course. If there's nothing behind it, you could just print all of this fucking money. Everybody could pay off their credit cards. Everybody could get out of debt, be in good moods, you know,

fix the roof or whatever. But then people will be like, well, if that guy across the street has the same kind of roof as me, then that doesn't make me feel special. Well, it's even worse than that, right? So here's the big thing. I keep saying that the virus basically exposed all the shams in society. And one of the biggest shams is all of this quantitative easing, people basically call it, it's universal basic income for rich people. So what do they do is they print a bunch of money,

they push it out into the economy, asset prices go up. So if you're holding stocks, real estate, all these different assets, the prices of those go up, but the currency gets devalued. So if you think of rich people versus poor people, rich people own assets

and 50% of Americans don't own stocks and about 40% or so can't come up with $400 for an emergency payment. So they live paycheck to paycheck with just cash in their bank. 100% of their wealth is in cash. And so poor people get poorer and rich people get richer. So look what happened in the economic crisis. So when you push out a lot more money, I get that the dollar's devalued sort of because even though we're not on the gold standard, because there's more money out there. So that causes inflation. Is that why the asset price goes up? So that's one of the concerns. So inflation is kind of this weird thing where there's official metrics and then there's all the unofficial metrics, right? All the finance crowd basically

wants to run intellectual Olympics is what I call it. But basically, the reason why the asset prices go up is because it takes more dollars to buy the same asset. So you're holding, you know, Tesla stock, Tesla's at 700 bucks. If they print a bunch of money, you need more dollars now to buy that same stock. The value of the stock didn't change. It's just that the dollar got weakened, right? So look at gold, for example, a lot of people argue that since gold went off the gold standard, for example. A lot of people argue that since gold went off the gold standard, gold's gone up like 45x. But is that because gold got more valuable or is that because the dollar, the price of the asset is denominated in dollars? Did the dollar go down? What was that from the fear that people had that there's nothing behind this

and someday I'm going to need to have a gold coin to get a turkey sandwich. Yeah, look what's going on in Lebanon right now. What's going on with Bert Kreischer? Bert Kreischer hasn't said shit in his tour bus. I am so fucking fascinated. I've never realized any of this. I feel like I'm just listening. Keep going.

Keep going. Tell me about Lebanon. By the way, Bert's going to go light all his dollars on fire by the end of this. I love Bert. Just do me a favor. Can you just ease him into this information? Bert is the coolest dude I know. Please don't make him who I was 10 years ago when I was carving the Federal Reserve into my pumpkins on Halloween.

Just please don't turn him into the fucking asshole I was. on Halloween. Just please don't turn them into the fucking asshole I was. So in Lebanon, for example, right now, their currency has fallen more than 50% against the dollar, meaning that went to sleep one night, you got 100 Lebanese pound, right? And that could buy you, let's say, you know, five loaves of bread. All of a sudden, when you wake up in the morning, you have the same 100 Lebanese pounds. But now you can't buy five loaves of bread. You can only buy two. So literally, the currency is not as valuable as it was before. How did that happen?

Well, because their central bank is, frankly, just doing stupid things, right? And so what ends up happening is the government or the central bank, depending on where you go in the world, the government or the central bank, depending on what, where you go in the world. Uh, there's a debate as to whether the central banks are actually controlled by the governments or they are independent agencies or organizations. And so essentially what happened is it dropped. And so two big issues occur. One is everyone who lives in cash, they don't have assets. They just see their wealth getting deteriorated away. Right. And then they're worried about, can I actually go to the grocery store and buy food tomorrow, right? I'm getting paid the same amount of money from my job, right? I'm still getting paid 111 pounds a month, but it can't buy me the

same thing. So in fact, I'm actually making less money and I have less in my bank account. But rich people love this stuff. Why? Because they own real estate, they own stocks, they own all the assets. And so now it takes more dollars or pounds or whatever to buy those same assets. So it would be like you sitting at home in a million dollar home. All of a sudden you see the dollar being devalued. Now your home's worth $3 million and you didn't do shit. They just literally devalued the dollar and now your house is worth more money. is worth more money. Can I ask you a question about these rich people? Yeah. What is their problem? Because I was a regular guy, right? I worked in a warehouse. I got arrested for drinking and driving. You know, I did those things. I ate pizza late at night. And then I started telling shit jokes on stage. And now I'm a wealthy guy. But I don't want this to happen. I don't want people to, like, even if I have more than the other guy, I'm not excited that then, oh, you got to pay more to go to my show or you got to pay more to buy my DVD back in the day. Who exactly are these rich

people that get excited that people have less and don't care that there'll be somebody where, depending on where you are economically, having less for one person is, okay, my job that I have isn't worth as much, but I can still support my family. Some people that just dipping that much is all of a sudden, somebody's not going to eat that night in the house. Like how can somebody get off on that kind of fucking misery? So there's really two buckets of people that I'd put it into. So one is there's definitely just dictators. So if you look in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, even in countries like Lebanon, that's not truly a dictatorship, but pretty damn close. It's like the dictator playbook.

They go into a country, they take control politically. It's like the dictator playbook. They go into a country, they take control politically, they own all the assets. They just start killing people, stealing stuff, right? They just accumulate as many assets as they can. And then imagine if your bank account as an individual, if I said to you, hey, every time you need money, you can just edit the number in the bank account so that there's enough there for whatever you need. That's essentially what the government gets to do through their central banks. And so if you're a dictator and you're a bad dude, that's what you do. You just start editing the number, right? You're printing more and more money and that's actually hurting the people and it's helping you because all the asset prices are

going up, you're getting rich. That's kind of at the political level. In terms of quote unquote rich people, I actually don't think that they're really that bad. All they do is they just understand the game, right? So from a financial education standpoint, most of the country doesn't understand how the system's set up and therefore they end up getting hurt by it. But the people who understand how the game works, they convert their dollars into assets. They buy stocks, they buy real estate, they buy, you know, all these things. And then they just let the system kind of run its course and they end up benefiting. But I don't think they're necessarily cheering for, you know, the pain of the kind of bottom 50%.

They're just saying, Hey, look, I know how the system works and I'm not going to see my wealth get deteriorated away. I'm going to go ahead and protect myself. That's fair. That's what I did. That's what I did. Go ahead.

Sorry, Bert. No, that's what I like in all of this. I remember getting a, when I, that's what I did. That's what I did. What did you do? I got, I bought stocks when it was, when it was really low and I was not previously invested in stocks and we bought a new house. So I'm listening to this going, okay, I'm one of the bad people, but I don't want to be a bad person. in this going, okay, I'm one of the bad people, but I don't want to be a bad person. Yeah. So like, here's the whole thing is the way that you solve a lot of these problems, right? Is the IMF wrote a paper in like 1998 or something. And they basically described that inflation is one of the leading causes of wealth inequality. So there's the people who buy assets

and the people who don't, that's about 50, 50 in the country. And so obviously the people who own the assets end up getting rich, rich, get richer, and the people that own cash, they get poorer, right? So poor get poorer. And so what you end up doing is Bitcoin and why everyone's so excited about it. There's a lot of people who call it like the people's money, right? Or a deflationary type asset. All that means is that no one can print it. The United States can't print more. China can't print more. China can't print more. Russia can't print more. Any other country, dictator, politician, nobody has control over it. And so if there's a set amount, 21 million that'll ever get created, basically you're protected from all of that inflation and the printing of money and all that crazy shit. And so people are slowly

just opting to this new asset and saying, look, I don't want to play this game anymore. I'm going to kind of peacefully protest it by going and buying this other asset and putting my wealth there. Let me ask you this. If Bitcoin was a band, where are they in their career right now? As far as the belief of Bitcoin? Did they got one hit? Did they come out with Appetite for Destruction and Instant Classic? Because I remember when it first came out, there was a big swell of publicity about it. And then I thought a couple of guys got whacked. I don't know. I fall asleep watching TV a lot. So I might be combining, you know, reality with fictional TV shows on Netflix.

But like, where is it right now? As far as the belief system, is there any sort of stat out there on the world population scale? Like how many people believe in Bitcoin versus people going like, that's fucking crazy. Don't take these devalued American dollars and buy Bitcoin. these devalued American dollars and buy Bitcoin. I thought I was riveting and interested. He was actually frozen. I think Bitcoin is like Cardi B. You've heard of her, but you've never heard of any of her songs. I wouldn't say that.

I mean, I know who Cardi B is. Yeah, but what name of song is that? You know what annoys me about Cardi B is she's fucking funnier than I am. She's fucking hilarious. Forget about all the rapping and all that shit that she does, which is great and everything. She's fucking hilarious. To Anthony, I had said to Bill that Bitcoin is Cardi B. You know who she is, but you aren't familiar with her songs.

Listen, I think that's probably pretty fair in the sense of every day becomes more popular, right? But it's gonna take a long time. And the big question is, does Cardi B become, you know, the next Madonna? Or does Cardi B just kind of fizzle out? Yeah, because she's huge right now. Ten years from now. of fizzle out because she's huge right now 10 years from now but you're saying that's all right well how did you get involved in um in all of this stuff 2014 um i was working at a facebook and somebody was talking about bitcoin i said hey it sounds interesting asked somebody if it was real and engineered told me it's stupid so i literally did nothing and then uh in uh 2016 uh somebody came to me and said hey like this

thing's pretty real you should take a look at it and so started building um mining facilities so the whole way that the system's run and kind of governed is uh people build these like data centers all around the world there's literally uh hundreds of thousands of them and uh we started building them and basically by taking computing power and running the software, you get paid to do it. And so that was kind of how we started doing it. And then it's like anything, right? If you put money into something, you start paying more attention to it, right? And then all of a sudden you're like, hey, wait, this is like, this thing is really real. And here we are. Who are the people behind Bitcoin? And how do I know that I can trust them when anybody,

it seems, who's ever run a system of money has not been trustworthy? Who are the people behind the Federal Reserve? Name one person at the Federal Reserve right now. Allen Ginsberg. I don't even know who that is. I don't either. It just sounded like a real name to me. I don't even know who that is.

I don't either. It just sounded like a real name to me. But the point being... Well, they always have, like, the spokesperson. I do find it funny, though. The president is always trying to guess. Are they going to raise rates? Are they going to go down? They're literally telling you that the president

has no fucking control over these people. Everybody has lost a shitload of fucking money, for the most part, during this pandemic, except for the banks. Like, they can't hit just pause on the economy, like everybody's been saying. And when we all get back to work, you just pick up again at your next payment.

They're like, we'll give you a three-month breather, and then you're always four fucking months. But 45 million people lost their jobs. That's the crazy part about all this. 45 million people lost their jobs over the last four months. Yet the stock market's hitting all time highs. Think about that for a second. Yeah. How does that work? It's because there's a dislocation between the asset prices, right? The stock market and all these things and the actual economic data, but it's because the Federal Reserve and lawmakers step in and they intentionally manipulate the economy. Now that's their job, right? So to be fair, the Federal Reserve's job is to keep people employed, manage an economy, do all of that.

It's to keep the Ponzi scheme going. would manage an economy, do all of that. It's to keep the Ponzi scheme going. You said it, not me, but I'm not going to disagree. And so here's like the big question, right? Like this is something that the Bitcoin community talks about a lot that I think has got a lot of credence. Why do they take your taxes if they could just edit their bank account for more money? Right? How do they do that? And so you start to kind of ask some of these questions and you realize like, look, there's a system in place. That system is built under certain rules and people pretty much don't know how

the system works. And so they just go along with it, right? I got to pay my taxes. Fuck. I'm here. I might, am I frozen? No, no, I'm here. Am I frozen?

No, no. I'm here. Did he have a stroke maybe? Popped out. Zoom stroke. You know he's saying all this fucking great shit. I think the Illuminati just is freezing his feet. Oh, Bill, I wouldn't be shocked if that was it.

The fucking government. Yeah, name one person in the Illuminati. Tupac. I love the paneling inside your bus, by the way. That looks like a nice one. We were in the middle of a great, you were answering a very interesting question. If you change the numbers in the bank account and they're keeping the system going. Oh, yeah.

So basically a lot of people want to know, look, if I pay taxes, why do I pay taxes if the government can just edit their bank account and add more money whenever they want? Right? Over the last couple of months, the government has increased the Fed's balance sheet by 75%. Why is that then? by 75 percent why is that then why do you think is that to keep do they just have this belief that if they just made everybody rich nobody or or that they didn't take taxes you can just fucking print money now if there's nothing behind it why the fuck do you got to take you know 30 from this guy you know you get past a certain tax bracket they'll take over 50 and you do the job and they like i did the job and you get more than i do and i did and i

fucking did it so my thing is is it a control thing is it just like i'm just a fucking bunch of haters whether the only thing that like what's the point of being rich if everybody's rich, then I don't feel special? Is that what the fuck they're doing? No, I think, look, and part of the problem is, right, in a very overgeneralized manner, is just they can't just print all of the money, right, and literally just print trillions and trillions and trillions forever. Because again, the currency will fail, right? Literally, it'll lose all its value.

So we've seen that in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, whatever. So there's this balance between what they basically would argue is they would say, hey, look, we don't ever print money or do anything. So you got to pay your taxes so we can pay for all the expenses we have. But in times of crisis, we're going to print a bunch of money. We're going to hand it to people. And so they do all kinds of crazy shit, right? Like it's one thing if you're going to print money. Let's go to fair if they're only doing it during times of crisis, I guess. The problem is that it's like a drug addict, right? So like a great example would be like a crack addict. You've been sober your whole life. You try crack for the first time. You get high. You're like, huh, that was interesting. Go do it a second time. Then all of a sudden you're like,

you know what? I like that. You do it a third time. If you keep doing it, you got to take more and more crack to keep getting the same high right and eventually if you take too much you just overdose and die that's basically what an economy does when it gets addicted to quantitative easing or money printing so we started to print some money we got a little high we liked it did it again liked it well now if you go back to 2008 2009 we only printed hundreds of billions. Now, this time around 10 years later, when we go to print money, now we're printing trillions. And so the number keeps getting bigger because we got to print more to get high, right? And so if they keep doing this,

at some point you pay for the sins, right? Now, I don't know if that's- Is this why the president ages in dog years? Because they look at all this stuff and are they just thinking like is is this ponzi scheme going to collapse during my watch let me ask you this question if bill and bert ran for president how long do you think you would last before you would literally just throw your hands up in the air just like fuck this i'm out oh what they just went into our twitter accounts i would think that we would that we would be over before it started. I would just be there for the inauguration party. I'd tap out the next morning.

You know what you would, Bert? And you'd fucking run for vice president so you could have all the fun. Be out there Al Gore-ing it, having a good time. And I'd have to be answering for everything. I did not call that woman a cunt at the funny bone. I mean, look, part of it is like- The vice president is where it's at. That's the job you want.

I still don't think you have to sit in traffic. You still get the private flights. It's not as nice as the jet. Do you know what I mean? But nobody's fucking nobody's talking about mike pence everybody's talking about trump by the way trump is not aging okay so there is something to be said about not giving a fuck about anything because you will age like a prince listen hey trump's got pence going out doing the uh the press conferences now he's literally just

said you go you go talk to him about the coronavirus. I think that that was probably Pence's call saying, like, listen, this is like a football team, okay? Some people are good at throwing the ball. Some people are good at catching. You know, some people sit on the bench every once in a while. Donnie, I think you threw the ball enough. I think you threw the ball enough. Let me get in there.

Let me take some of this heat off of you i mean he he just has got one thing after another and the twitter account by the way is like the best weapon ever for a president to have if you're gonna just say crazy shit because now you just say it right to the people right that's basically what he's done i mean no the god there there is absolute genius to what he's doing, but I feel way better as an American if Mike Pence is talking. Because then I'm like, okay, here's somebody sane. This guy is like fucking putting, I don't see him telling me to put household cleaner in me. Well, it worked for a countertop, you know?

Why not your fucking respiratory system? Thanks, Donnie. This is true. What about Joe Biden? Dude, Donald Trump is so fucking nuts. Like, I can't stand Joe Biden. Joe Biden, I am afraid that if he becomes president, like, it'll be literally like falling asleep at the wheel.

Like, we're just going to wake up. The whole country's going to wake up in a cornfield outside in a car. Like what the fuck just happened? But like, I mean, I don't know. I don't know shit about politics. I'm calling this next election the dud versus the dope. And we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens.

But let's get back on, how do I circumnavigate this whole fucking system? Okay? And get into like, I mean, is this what I'm supposed to do? I'm supposed to take my George Washingtons, my Abe Lincolns, and all of those.

And then who's on the Bitcoin? Nobody. Look, the whole value problem. That guy from Twitter, the dude from MySpace, remember that picture? If you stick that on every fucking Bitcoin dollar. Anthony, can you explain just who Satoshi is and just start with how it came up and what could happen? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let's start with what the fuck a Bitcoin is.

I don't even know what it is. This is it. Yeah, this is it. This is the guy I'm at. Long story short is there's something called a double spend problem. So let's talk about music. When Napster came around, right, basically what they did is they got all the music into some sort of player,

and Bert says, hey, send me the music. So I literally hit a button and I send Bert a music file. When I send Bert that music file, then Bert now can play his favorite Miley Cyrus song. And so can I, and we don't know who got the original file or who got the duplicate. All we know is that we both can play the music. That's fine in music. But if all of a sudden Bitcoin, which is digital money, you don't have the paper money now, now you got a digital thing. If Bert says, hey, send me that, those five Bitcoin. And I hit a button that says send, and he gets five Bitcoin, but I still have

my five Bitcoin. Now we don't know who's got the original, who's got the counterfeit, right? And so you got to be able to prove that when bird says send me the money i actually sent it to him and i didn't keep it a copy for myself and so that's what bitcoin solved they solved this double spend problem and basically the way they did it is they basically used the same system monopoly uses so let's say the four of us are all playing monopoly right and we put our money in front of us and then there's the bank sitting over in the in the side of the game there's no banker right nobody ever Nobody ever plays Monopoly and goes, okay, Bill, you're not going to play the game today. You're just going to be the banker, right? No, everyone gets a seat at the table. There's four people playing and there's no banker. But the reason why Monopoly

works is because everybody can see. Are you good there? You missed like half a cent. The reason why Monopoly works, go ahead. Yeah. So the reason why Monopoly works is because every single time a transaction happens, whether I pay Bert, Bert pays Bill, Bill pays the bank, Bert gets money from the bank, whatever, it's all transparent, right? We literally can see every single transaction. So if you ever play with like a kid and they take their money in monopoly they put underneath the table Everyone immediately starts yelling cheating, right? Like something's going on. Fuck this everyone put your money back on top of the table So that's what bitcoin does is bitcoin basically has a transparent ledger ledger It's just a big fancy word for it literally writes the shit down

So imagine if you're playing Monopoly and every time money changes hands, somebody sat and just wrote it down on a piece of paper. Bert paid Bill 20 bucks. Bill paid the bank 20 bucks. You know, pump, pass, go, he gets $200, whatever. That's what's called a blockchain in this digital money world. And so basically a blockchain is just every 10 minutes, the computers are writing down all the transactions and then they take them in aggregate for 10 minutes and basically say, okay, here's all the transactions for 10 minutes. And they chain it to the last 10 minutes of transactions, which changed to the last 10 minutes. And so the whole key to Bitcoin is it's digital money. Every transaction is written down and there's no central party or third party that's needed to validate it, right? I don't

need JP Morgan to say that Bert sent five Bitcoin to Bill. The system itself keeps track of that. And then the reason why people trust it is because it's transparent. Nobody controls it. Who runs the system and what stops it from being manipulated like any other system considering there's gene computer geniuses out there that can hack into governmental websites what stops somebody from from doing something just even the most basic like i'm going to give you 20 bitcoin but i really held on to it yeah or i just counterfeited 20 bitcoin that didn't exist what stopped someone from doing that so the creator creator of Bitcoin is an individual or a group that goes by a pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody knows who it is, right? It could

be one person, could be a group of people, we don't know. But in 2008, they wrote a white paper and they basically published it and said, this is how the system is designed. And then in 2009, basically published it and said this is how the system is designed and then in 2009 january 3rd 2009 they basically released the software people started using it and so literally you can go back and trace every single transaction all the way back to january 3rd 2009 on the bitcoin blockchain now the reason why that's important is he's back right the reason why that's important is because now I can actually go look at the computer code and see how Bitcoin's designed. The Federal Reserve, you can't check.

Like they tell you how it works, but we don't fucking know. Then in the traditional system, I don't know all the transactions that happened. They tell us what happened, but we don't know. In this system, you can go point at every single transaction,

who sent money to who. And then the reason why it can't be changed is one, it's transparent. So if anyone did change it, everyone would immediately know that it got changed. But also two is it's the strongest computing network in the world. And so this is something called Bitcoin mining, which is really important. Basically, how do you get people to run the software? Well, you pay them, just like anything. It's an economic incentive. And so the way it works is they said, all right, if you run your computers and run this software for us so that everyone in the world has Bitcoin,

the system, then we will pay you a preset amount of Bitcoin for doing that. And so there's this economic incentive to run Bitcoin software. When you run that software, you're one of millions of people who control the network, but you can't make any changes by yourself. The only way a change can get made is if 51% or more of people agree to do it. So it's like coordinating literally millions of people to all agree on something. It's nearly impossible. And the only way it changes is if more than 51% agree to actually do the change. Can I ask a quick question here? Have you guys been viewed, because this is almost like a startup league in sports, you know, and the established league always makes, ah, it's a Mickey Mouse

league. It's not going to be blah, blah, blah, blah. And then eventually the league gets to a level where the established league considers it a threat. Have you guys been considered a threat? And if so, what sort of tomfuckery has been going on with, you know, from some of the established currencies? Yeah. So I would say that depending on who you ask is different. So there's literally U.S. congressmen that have gone into congressional hearings and said, we can't stop Bitcoin, right?

There's a guy in Ohio, Warren Davidson. He keeps tweeting shit like, to defend freedom, we need Bitcoin. And literally like pictures of Bitcoin. It's crazy. But you also got congressmen who say we should outlaw Bitcoin immediately because it's the largest threat to the US dollar and is going on and on. And so really what ends up happening is I don't worry so much about the government because even if the government said, we're going to shut this down, they can't shut the system down. Remember Napster, how Napster got shut down,

Hollywood was freaking out about all the music sharing and they were all pissed off and all this stuff. Yeah, because people were stealing music. If we can really just put the thing, we weren't sharing it. You were stealing it. You weren't fucking paying. We're sharing it, man. No, you're fucking stealing it. Metallica was right. Metallica was right. And I stole it too. Well, Metallica was right. Metallica was right. And I stole it too. I fucking stole it.

And I got viruses and I paid the price. But at no point did I think I was sharing it. I was like, no, I want this shit for free. I was a cunt. But that whole system was file sharing, right? That's how the underlying system ran from like a technology standpoint. Okay. So, Bert, tell us about your tour bus while he unfreezes. Shut up.

Oh, is he frozen? He's frozen. Or he's about ready to make a hell of a point. I have an opportunity to buy. I have an opportunity to get Bitcoin when it started. When Bitcoin started, I was doing Rogan and people were like, I remember Red Band's like, you should get some Bitcoin. I'll give you some Bitcoin.

And I just didn't do it. This podcast is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Look, we all know how ExpressVPN protects your privacy and security online, right? But here's something you might not know. You can also use ExpressVPN to unlock movies and shows that are only available in other countries. Have you been watching a lot of movies over this quarantine, Bill? I have. You know what? I started watching that Ozark. That's not a movie. It's more of a TV show. I keep tapping out because everybody's such a piece of shit in it. I'm just like, I don't understand who I'm supposed to be voting for.

But then after like two days, I'm like, I got to know what happens. Well, you can run out of a lot of stuff to watch on Netflix. This week, Bill's been watching Ozarks. But if you use ExpressVPN app, you can change your location to the UK and refresh Netflix, and that's it. It's so easy now. It'll hide your IP address and lets you control where you want the sites to think you're located. You can choose from almost 100 different countries, so just think about all the Netflix libraries you can go through. Love anime like my daughter Isla? Yes. Use ExpressVPN to access Japanese Netflix and be spirited away. It's not just Netflix.

ExpressVPN works with any streaming service. Hulu, BBC, iPlayer, YouTube, you name it. There are hundreds of VPNs out there. The reason I use ExpressVPN to watch shows is just ridiculously fast. Never any buffering or lag. You can stream ind no problem expressvpn is also compatible with all your devices phones media consoles smart tv and more so you can why aren't we smart enough to build something like this this is just talk about filling in need i'm so stupid can you imagine if you were high in college and someone told you that they were starting a company like expressvpn i was like i'd be like hold on you got to tell me this sober, man. Yeah.

This is – I'm already – you're three-quarters of the way through the copy. I'm already sold. All right. Go ahead. If you visit our link right now at expressvpn.com slash Bill Burt, you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. Support the show. get an extra three months of express vpn for free support the show watch what you want and protect yourself with express vpn at expressvpn.com slash bill burt yeah so so basically the whole idea is

uh how do you shut down those systems when hollywood was freaking out saying you're breaking the law all that kind of stuff right they basically said They basically said, look, we're going to go and we're going to raid whoever's got the servers so we can shut the servers down and actually kill the services, the central point of failure. And there's a CEO of the business. We're going to go arrest them. So if you remember like the fucking kim.com thing, where they literally like sent a SWAT team and they infiltrated his property in New Zealand or whatever the hell happened. So like, that's the way you kill these um kind of quote-unquote decentralized services that weren't actually decentralized with bitcoin if they said hey we want to shut it down they'd have to go shut down millions of computers around the world it's not possible so the only thing the government's likely

to do if they did anything is they would outlaw americans from owning it right they did this with gold back in like the 30s they said it's illegal if you're a US citizen to actually own any gold. And so they can do that and prevent you and I from buying it. Why did they do that? Well, because that's when they really breaking from this gold standard. That's really when it happened. They were worried that people were going to actually take the paper claims on gold and go get the gold, right? And say, hey, look, I don't want this paper claim anymore. Give me the gold. And go get the gold, right? And say, hey, look, I don't want this paper claim anymore. Give me the gold. And so they needed gold, right? So what do they do? They outlaw it. When did that happen? When could you not go into a bank with the paper dollar? Because

that's what it was. Initially, paper money was a receipt for this gold that was too valuable and too dangerous to keep in your fucking log cabin. So they're like, we'll hang on to the gold. We'll give you these pieces of paper. And then eventually they never gave the people the gold back. And then they go, here's the paper. We'll make some more of the paper. So it really is one of the great heists in economic history, right? If you think that shiny rock is worth something. Yeah, exactly. And I think that part of this also is when you look at the Bitcoin system, like what can people do? They can either outlaw ownership of it for their citizens, or the game theory actually suggests that the countries that do the opposite, that embrace it, they're going to benefit most, right? So the first country that comes out and says,

we're going to put Bitcoin as part of our reserves for our government it's gonna kick off this like FOMO party everyone's gonna run and try to buy Bitcoin and there's only 21 million of them so what are the odds do you think that's going to happen when yeah do you think that that's going to happen do you have a country do you so we already know right now that uh countries that that are less good actors are doing weird shit, right? So you've got things like Venezuela right now. You can pay for certain government services with Bitcoin. So the government's receiving Bitcoin in exchange for you to get a driver's license or stuff like that.

They obviously accept other currencies too, but they're accumulating very small amounts to start with. There's certain countries like Iran and North Korea that they're getting sanctioned like crazy, right? And so they don't have access to the financial system. So they're actually building mining facilities and things like that to acquire Bitcoin. And then if you look at like Russia and China, they can't wait to get off the US dollar system, right? Because the US dollar system we control, and since we control it, we can do wait to get off the US dollar system, right? Because the US dollar system we control, and since we control it, we can do whatever we want. We can sanction people. Why is our currency considered the currency? Yeah, the global reserve currency. It's because we got the best military. Think of all the people who tried to get off of it or price gold,

or I'm sorry, price oil in something other than dollars. Yes, why would that devalue? Because I heard back in the day, what really happened with Saddam Hussein was he was getting together with Hugo Chavez and just said, hey, why don't, like somebody told me that the only reason why the American dollar has value

is because barrels of oil are measured against it, which I don't understand. I don't understand that. If you could explain that. And then I heard Saddam and Hugo Chavez were like, well, let's just start valuing our barrels of oil, euros per barrel or whatever, you know, and that would tank our fucking economy. We couldn't pay for our military. And then Saddam and Hugo could get out from under our hand. So if you think of, if I ask you how much is gold worth or how much is a barrel of oil worth, you price it in dollars. So you tell me it's worth $20 a barrel or $40 a barrel or whatever. You don't tell me

the price in euros or rubles or any other currency. And so oil being priced around the world in dollars is one of the main reasons why the dollar is the global reserve currency. Now, the reason why it's priced in dollars is because we have the strongest military. And so we basically went around the world. And after we won World War II and all this stuff, we basically started to say, look, we are going to protect the world in exchange, you're going to use our currency, right? And that's overgeneralized, but that's basically what happened. And so now all of a sudden, you've got a bunch of countries like Russia, China, et cetera, that are coming out and they're publicly saying, this system is great for the US and it's painful for us, right? We can get sanctioned, you can cut off our supply,

all that kind of stuff. Now, they haven't actually done anything yet to try to break out of the system. But to your point, there were people who were in charge of countries who started to get very serious about pricing oil in a different currency, whether it was their currency or somebody else's. And the US doesn't like that, right? All they would have to do, all you have to do to do that is just say, euros per barrel? I mean, it's that flimsy a system? No, because obviously if a country just started to price everything in one currency,

but everybody else was pricing it in a different one, like no one would take it seriously, right? So you almost have to get the entire system. And that's why somebody like a Saddam Hussein couldn't do it alone. They'd have to go build kind of a group of people who want to work together to do it. Right. So wait a minute. Is this why we're in the Middle East?

So if we control the oil, then we can still control like it being like dollars, U.S. dollars per barrel. And then if any if another network like China and North Korea and everybody all got together and said, we're going to say euros, right, on three. Three euros, right? We could be like, well, fuck you. We have the oil. I mean, is that what's going on? I mean, here's the crazy part. So I was in the army for a while, went to Iraq.

And when you're there, you're like, what are we doing here, right, for a lot of reasons. And look, 9-11, I'm all about, you want to go and respond to somebody who came and did a violent act and killed Americans and all that? Like, that's fair game. Yeah, get Osama bin Laden. Yeah, absolutely. But we've been at war in two countries. Think about this. If you're 18 years old or younger in the United States, we've been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for pretty much your entire life. Right? We've been fighting two in Iraq and Afghanistan for pretty much your entire life. Right. Two wars, 18 years old. I know. I know. But same thing is. Is there's the reason we're saying we're there.

Is that the reason we're there or is it the other thing that other people say we're there because we want to get control of the oil? because we want to get control of the oil. And then if we get control of the oil, then we can save our currency. Because, you know, China isn't exactly like a country of 4000 people. That's a billion people saying, rising up against this thing that is, according to them, oppressing them. That's like a serious threat. Is that serious enough for us to go over to someplace for 18 years, despite what it is doing to an entire generation of young people over there fighting for us? So the short answer is I don't know, right? But what I do believe is that as a combination of a lot of things, this whole idea of controlling oil is definitely one of the contributing factors for us being there. I'm sure that there's other reasons that were there as well, but it is a very important reason for us to be there. And what you end up seeing, I don't know if you guys heard

earlier this year, there was these option contracts on oil that went negative. So the price of oil, literally one day earlier this year went to negative $30, right? And so I'll kind of explain how this happened. Basically, Saudi Arabia and Russia, some of the largest oil producers and kind of oil players in the world. Right. And they said, look, we know that there's a certain price that American oil producers have to sell oil for in order for them to remain profitable. So call that, you know, more than thirty five dollars a barrel. Right. And they said, but we have a bunch of oil. And so we want to push the price down. What can we do? Well, we can flood the market with oil so that each barrel of

oil is less valuable, right? And if we drive that price down and manipulate the price, then all of a sudden the American oil guys will have to sell oil at the market price that's less than what makes them profitable. What they saw an opportunity for was coronavirus hit. So what happened? The world shut down. Well, if the world shuts down, there's nobody's traveling, right? The planes don't need gas, all this kind of stuff. So the demand for oil drops significantly. But here's the crazy part is all this oil sits in reservoirs and in storage facilities. And so there was a lot of places in the world where people basically had their storage facilities filling up with oil because there was no one who needed the oil while the country or the world was shut down.

And so Saudi Arabia saw this and said, you know what, watch this. And they started to flood the market with oil. And so there's these contracts in the finance world where basically everyone trades them around. It's like an IOU, right? But it's for a date in the future. And whoever's holding the IOU on the last day, they're legally held liable for taking possession of the oil that's assigned with that piece of paper. So if you all of a sudden are trading around this piece of paper and your storage facility is full and on the day that it was going to expire or this day that you have to take legal liability, oil was selling at $10 a barrel. And all of a sudden you're like, you know what? I'll sell it

for nine. I'll sell it for eight. I can't at the end of today, hold this piece of paper because I don't have anywhere to put the oil when it gets here. You know what? Fuck it. I'll sell it for nine. I'll sell it for eight. I can't at the end of today hold this piece of paper because I don't have anywhere to put the oil when it gets here. You know what? Fuck it. I'll sell it for $5, $4, $3. You know what? Shit. I'll give it to somebody for free if they take it.

But everyone else's facilities were filled up as well. And so all of a sudden people started saying, fuck it, I'll pay you $10 to take the piece of paper. I'll pay you $20, $30 to take the piece of paper. Well, how come they can't just go Saudi Arabia when nobody's using oil? We don't need you this week. Come back next month. Because Saudi Arabia, that's what Saudi Arabia wanted, right? They flooded the market and they drove the price down and they basically- Why would an American oil company accept their fucking oil if they

don't need it? They didn't want to accept it that was the whole thing is they didn't want to how can they make them take shit they don't that's like i got a grocery store and i got this bread on the shelves you're gonna keep bringing in more bread i'm good i got enough bread fuck off because they're because there's a contract so the whole thing is this whole world they just trade around these contracts and the contract is whoever's holding it on the last day, you got to take control of the oil. And normally that's not a problem. But because of this one point in time, whoever was holding it last, they got screwed. And so the question, how come none of this shit makes sense?

What you're saying makes sense, but why, why is that system in place? Yeah, look, here's what ends up happening in my opinion is you get a lot of smart people together in a room and they say, how can we make money? And they start coming up with all kinds of cockamamie ways to make money. Right. And sometimes it's easy stuff. Like, you know, Bert said, Hey, I bought stock and it went up and I can go buy a house. Cool. That's, that's pretty simple, straightforward. And then somebody goes, wow, well, you know what, Bert, when you bought those stocks, I'm actually going to do this other thing that's a little bit more complex. And I'm going to make money, more money than you're going to make. And somebody else comes in and comes up

with a more complex fucking, you know, scheme. And next thing you know, we get things like the housing crisis that's built on some financial scheme where everyone was making money until they weren't, right? And it broke. Or you see the oil industry, everyone was making money until they weren't right and it broke or you see the oil industry everyone was making money and then all of a sudden in this one day the price went negative so literally people were paying other people to take the oil and i feel like right now we're in this time right now where a bunch of shit needs to change and there's an old guard that doesn't want it to change and it it's everywhere from like, like from racism, sexism, and all of that, to the banking system, to being so dependent on oil. Somebody texted me something today said California just passed a law. I don't know how they did this fucking amazing. We're

saying that all trucks have to be electric out here by 2024. And you know, when you put on like, I used to love watching the Discovery Channel and there was a tipping point with this global warming shit and stuff going extinct that, like, I had to stop watching it because there was, the people that were actually in power weren't doing anything about it.

It was freaking me the fuck out. So is this like, do you think your professional opinion, is this a, do you think your professional opinion, is this a growing pain thing that, you know, white people who say the N-word and all this shit that you're saying, these fucking people, like, I can't even believe it. work for the government and thinking that that's going to stop like that are they going to die off is there going to be a young generation of people that's going to come up that's sociopath free and is not going to jump in to the archaic way that they're doing banking or or going to uh not get into oil businesses and will actually be like hey let's start our own tesla thing and and like because the only solution i could really come up with is like or going to not get into oil businesses and we'll actually be like, Hey, let's start our own Tesla thing.

And, and like, cause the only solution I could really come up with is like, what if we just gave the oil companies the sun and said, this is yours. And we all owe, we all owe you money every time it's in you. So you still get your fucking money,

but the polar ice caps stop fucking melting. You fucking lunatics. I think that the solution ends up being technology has to be built to prevent people from being human right and so bitcoin is a perfect example of that where to your question about like i don't think that people will stop doing shitty things in the banking system if the opportunity exists. And so instead, what you can do is you basically can build technology. You know what? I know your dog's a fart. What you just said to me was the first time that I thought our robot replacements are actually a good idea. Maybe

we are what Bill Hicks said. Bill Hicks said we're a virus with shoes. Maybe we shouldn't be here. No, but here's the thing. What the fuck did I just go, man? Here's the whole thing, right? So how do you fix the money problem? Well, as long as humans are in control, if they can print money, they're going to print money, right? They're financially incentivized to do that. So they're always going to do that. So how do you solve the problem? You build something that they literally, no matter how bad they want to, they can't manipulate. So that's what Bitcoin is for money, but that's going to happen in every industry, right? You're going to see,

even take like all of these social media platforms, right? All of this stuff around censorship and algorithms and all this crazy shit. Eventually, you're just going to get a decentralized solution and people aren't going to be able to actually control the system it's going to be something that is unmanipulated good or bad well because what i i'm seeing like like on social media and stuff not to open a hole in a can of worms is when you get a bunch of people

that don't understand the law that are simultaneously circumnavigating the judicial system, the odds of somebody innocent losing everything they have just grows exponentially. So like, you know, I'm in this weird place where I argue with the power structure. And then I also totally want to be controlled when you see what happens when everybody quote unquote has a say and there's no sort of like okay you need to go to law school you need to get a law degree you need to understand like i saw this thing when somebody said this guy got arrested for uh uh forcible rape and it started this whole trend of people going, please don't say forcible rape as opposed to what? Nice rape? Don't use those words.

Rape is, and then finally a lawyer got on and had to be like, look, they're classifying what kind of rape? Coerced, statutory, forcible. It's so they understand what happened. Was this, you know, and the level of fucking ignorance out there so that's the thing that just makes me nervous about like how how invested are you in bitcoin because that's pretty fucking wild where i'm sitting to take my shit that has nothing behind it but me and bert still

believe in it and get excited when we get a piece of paper that has those numbers on it to now take that and then I'm supposed to believe in Bitcoin which is still created by humans to say that's why every form of government doesn't seem to work in the end is because it's run by humans and we're all incredibly flawed how do I now go from this shit and not feel like I'm jumping out of the out of the frying pan into the fire? So basically the way I think about it is there's two financial systems right now. There's the legacy one, which is the dollar-based inflationary system that you've lived your whole life in. And then there's this new one called an alternative financial system that's based on Bitcoin that can't be manipulated, et cetera. And basically the way I think about a portfolio is what percent confidence do you have in the new one versus the old one?

So most people are like 99% old system in dollars and regular assets and 1% in Bitcoin, right? Or 2%. Me, I'm younger. I got a much higher risk tolerance. I understand this stuff super in a very nuanced way. So I'm 50-50. So I literally took 50% of my net worth and put it in the new system, right? And bought Bitcoin. How nervous were you on that day? Here's the thing that I basically said. One is I personally was comfortable losing 50% of the money I had. I'm a young guy, right? So I got a long time to get it back if I want to.

Two is I understand it. So I feel like I've got an information advantage over most people in terms of what this new thing is. And then three is I didn't take 99% and go and do it, right? So I'm very clear about like, look, this is super risky, right? Two is it's still very early. Like it's 11 years old, but gold is 5,000 years old, right? The dollar is a hundred plus years old and kind of its current form from 1933, et cetera, right? Or about a hundred years. And so when you look at it this way, it's like, can it become the next global reserve currency? And we have the kind of a decentralized, non-manipulated currency as the global reserve currency? Sure, it could. What's

the probability of that happening? It's probably still less than 20%. So it's a risky thing. But again, if you have two systems, my whole thing to people is just don't be 100% in the legacy system and 0% in the new system. I was just going to ask you, so this is a way you're diversifying your portfolio. Yeah. It's just, I literally went around the country last year talking to all of these, you know, finance organizations and asset managers and all this stuff. And the message was just get off zero, meaning get off zero percent exposure. Even if you go from zero to one percent, getting one percent exposure, it does two things. One, you invest in something, you start paying attention, you start learning about it, you start, you know, watching it, all that kind of stuff. And then two is that kind of breaks the seal, if you will. And over time, you start to

really understand the problems with the legacy system. And most people we see once they get to 1%, they go to 2%, 5%, whatever. And so if it doesn't- How much does one Bitcoin cost? It's like $9,000 right now, but you don't have to buy a full- Wait a second. So one coin is $9,000. If I want to buy a Snickers bar with a Bitcoin, how do I do that if one of them is worth nine grand? So one Bitcoin is worth nine grand, but just like one dollar can be split into a hundred pennies this basically can get split into a hundred million uh smaller units they call those units satoshi why is the buy-in so high why if i'm somebody watching this and i only got 300

bucks how come i can't buy 300 or 50 150 worth. You can. So you can go in and just buy a fractional piece, right? You could buy $150 of Bitcoin. You could buy $1 of Bitcoin. You could buy a full Bitcoin. Basically getting a slice instead of a full pizza. Exactly. And so a full Bitcoin, one single one, like 1.0 Bitcoin is worth $9,000, but you can buy 0.001% of one, right? Or 0.005 or whatever it is for a smaller amount of money. And who do I buy it from? There's all kinds of different platforms. In the United States, the big ones are BlockFi, Gemini, Coinbase, Kraken, etc.

So they're websites just like where you would go buy stocks. You basically go sign up for an account. If too many people try to buy Bitcoins, like at what point do you run out of Bitcoin? And even if I want to buy nine grand, it's like there's only 50 bucks left. Well, the price goes up, right? So think about it. If there's 21 million of something it's like land in la right take uh hollywood there's only so much land and if more people want land than

available people don't either sit on the sidelines the price of the land just goes up right supply and demand it's the same thing here is bitcoin has continued to grow it started out at three tenths of a cent now Now, when you say it's continuing to grow, they're not making more of it. It's just the value of what it is is going higher. Yes. More and more people every day. My fucking head is going to explode. More and more people want Bitcoin every day. And so because there's only 21 million ever going to be available, people are willing to pay more for that same Bitcoin as demand increases, right? Supply stays constant, demand increases, so price goes up. And so Bitcoin has been the best

performing asset in the financial world. It's like land. They're not making any more of it. That's why it's going to be worth more. Exactly. Jesus Christ. Bert, do you have any questions? No, you're getting all the questions I want to ask. How do I earn a Bitcoin? Yeah, so you can do two things, right? The easiest one is... You want to strip or pull in fucking the Philippines. No, the easiest way is... It's the same way that you earn dollars, right?

If you said, hey, look look i'm going to sell my comedy specials i'm going to go to my shows whatever and i now accept bitcoin people will pay you in bitcoin right just like they'll pay you in dollars you can earn it just doing whatever you normally do if you want to specifically go and acquire bitcoin not from kind of your your regular job stuff then what you can basically do is you can go buy computers to mine it, which really is just you run the Bitcoin software and you earn Bitcoin in exchange for running that software. But the easiest, fastest way for you

to actually earn Bitcoin is just say, hey, look, I accept dollars and I accept Bitcoin for my shows or my specials or whatever. And there's people out there who they want to pay in Bitcoin, they don't want to pay in dollars. But the goal isn't to have legacy money buy bitcoin with legacy money then turn bitcoin into more legacy money no right no you want to diversify you want to have a little bit you you

you're it's like you're playing roulette no you want to know what i really think is going to end up happening that's what it was no in the what I really believe happens is at some point, the US dollar will not be the global reserve currency, right? Every other global reserve currency in history has fallen. That's how the dollar eventually got there. So if you go back to Roman times, eventually the currencies fall. Now, I believe that Bitcoin in the future, whether that's 20 years, 50 years, whatever it is, at some point, Bitcoin is going to be the global reserve currency, right? Everything will be priced in Bitcoin. We don't know when that will happen. Your research, this is what you're betting on.

is, again, look, here's the best way I ask people. Do you really think the people running the United States and the Federal Reserve are intelligent and disciplined enough to keep the dollar as the dominant currency forever? No way. I mean, I think that when you are the dominant anything from a sports team to a culture to a to a country of just from day one people are scheming to knock you out they want they they want you to get the fuck out of there nobody's excited that somebody's doing better than them and then if you compile that with sort of having your foot in the back of some of their necks, that's not a good thing. One thing to bring up as far as who's betting on it, and Anthony can speak better to this. There was a day, it was like a Friday a few years back, and the head of JP Morgan said that if he caught any of his traders buying Bitcoin, he would fire them. any of his traders buying Bitcoin, he would fire them.

And then they found out that that weekend, the largest buyer of Bitcoin in Europe was a JP Morgan run institution. So he tanked the price, got everybody scared because people listen when he talks. And then they bought a bunch. And now Anthony can speak to all the other- And then everybody found out and that guy went to jail and he's still sitting in that cell, right?

Fucking ridiculous. That guy's name is Jamie Dimon. He's the CEO of the bank. Right? I swear to God, just being in the business that I'm in, the business of show, the level of fucking stealing in business and you audit them, you catch them fucking red fucking headed and nobody goes to jail. It's, you know, that's how business is done. It's like, what? But if you break into somebody's house,

cops show up, you just go in there and you steal, you know, Bert's fucking Hawaiian shirt. And all of a sudden you're actually going to do time. The one thing I don't understand about just business in general is just the fucking amount of stealing that goes on. And the law is not involved at all. It's sort of this legalized stealing, which is why I think any smart gangster in history, all the smart guys in the mob eventually went legit. Because it's like, you know, the banker can fucking, you know, be running a scam, can basically, whatever that, extort money out of you, except it's legal.

So then he can buy a big shiny car. He doesn't have to hide it behind his fucking house and act like he's broke. I don't know what I'm saying at this point. You remember, I think it's Henry Ford who said, if people understood how the monetary system worked, there'd be riots in the street before morning, right? I mean, that's basically what it is. And look, here's the sad part, right? As much as we all joke around and all this kind of stuff is there's people who get really hurt by this, right? Like coming out of this economic crisis, there's all kinds of people that are celebrating that the stock market's at all time highs.

They're making all this money. Life's amazing, all this kind of stuff. But if you turn around and you look, there's 45 million people who lost their jobs. And those are usually the people who keep all of their wealth in cash. They live paycheck to paycheck. And so if the dollar gets devalued, we just printed $3 trillion.

If the dollar gets devalued, those are the people who get hurt. And so you're going to see this widening inequality gap where the rich get richer, poor get poor. And so you basically are forced to choose. So how does somebody right now that is living paycheck to paycheck? Two things. So how does somebody right now that is living paycheck to paycheck? Two things. Okay, if they don't have any money right now,

like what's the best way for them to educate themselves as to how money works? Because somebody told me a long time ago, you get money, it can either set you free or imprison you. And it all depends on if you know what to do with it. I mean, there's still the risk involved. You can still get burned. But where could they go to educate themselves? And what can they do to help diversify what little they have so the next time something like this happens,

this pandemic where, you know, we're all in this together, but in reality, you're on your fucking own. How can people learn about this stuff? Yeah, look, there's a lot of resources out there. My suggestion always is two key things. The first is, uh, there's a series of books I read when I was like 20, 21 years old that changed the way I thought about money. And I think the mindset's really

important, right? Kind of your point of like, you got to know what to do with the money. And so I read a rich dad for dad. Uh, I read, um, uh The Richest Man in Babylon and then Thinking Grow Rich. And all three of them are pretty easy reads, but they basically just get you out of this mentality of like, if you're an employee working for somebody else, you're never going to get rich, right? It's just literally to your point, like the guy at the top is going to steal all the real money

and he's going to pay you basically the minimum amount he needs to pay to get you to show up to work tomorrow, right? And so that like- Yeah, because he doesn't want to pay you enough money minimum amount he needs to pay to get you to show up to work tomorrow. Right. And so that like, he doesn't want to pay you enough money where you can actually, Oh man, I knew a guy that was in that thing. He was, this guy ran this business and he had all of his employees living in a house that he owned and they were paying rent. And I told my buddy, I go, dude, his fucking thing is he can't pay you enough money where you can go out and go rent from somebody else.

Like they were basically this guy's slave. And I was trying to talk to this person about, and I think so much of this shit that they're showing on television, like the whole Kardashian lifestyle and all that. Those are all, none of that shit is assets. I guess those Birkin bags, who can fucking afford one of those? But I'm just saying they're just showing you to just how to buy all of these liabilities to like look rich.

And they're not like educating people on how to take your money and just have it start working for you. If there was anything we can get out of this shit is if you can help people to learn how to help themselves and empower themselves to these fucking assholes, you know, stop being in a position to fuck over so many people. Look, I tell people all the time, it's about personal responsibility, right? No one is coming to save you, nobody. And so you got to educate yourself. If you don't get educated, you're going to get screwed because the system's stacked against most of these people. And you

know, the person that actually, I think really highlights his best is, I don't know if you've ever seen a picture online of Jay-Z. They've got two pictures of him side by side. One of them is when he's real young and they say he's worth about $100,000. He's got chains and earrings and got all this stuff on. And then the picture on the right is when he's worth whatever he is now, a couple hundred million bucks. And he's basically just got like a black t-shirt on, right? And they say, this is what happens when you learn about money is you stop buying all the

stupid shit and you actually start investing and growing the money and doing all this kind of stuff. And so I think that that's really the key for people is they got to understand that buying or consuming the materialistic stuff, it's literally just making your situation worse, right? And you can tell people that all day long, but it's like food, right? Hey, don't eat the bad shit. But then they say, hey, it tastes good, right? And so, you know, like... Well, here's a question I have. How about all of these guys, right, who go out and they make a bunch of money and then they get a woman that won't stop buying shit that is just nothing.

How do men educate women who go on Amazon and just buy nothing but liabilities? You ready for this story? So my fiance one day comes to me and she hits me with, I'm using Rent the Runway. And so for people who don't know what Rent the Runway is, it basically allows you to pay a monthly fee and you go online, you pick clothes, they send them to you, you can wear them, you send them back, right? So you basically are renting the clothes to wear. And I was like, how much is that? It's like 180 bucks a month. And I'm like, why do you need that? And she goes, oh, see, buying clothes is a liability. They're a depreciating asset. But this way, I don't actually ever buy them. I just rent them.

And so you got to be careful about if they get real smart, they start to use it against you and start figuring out ways to spend money. I would take $180 a month. I'd take that any fucking day of the week. That's great. Any fucking day. $180. What's the name of that thing? I'm going to fucking, you know.

I'm not washing my wife. I was kind of universally asking that for everybody because, you know. No, but I think your point is spot on, right? that for everybody because, you know. No, but I think your point is spot on, right? And part of this, by the way, is people in the Bitcoin community would argue that like one of the biggest problems in society today is the consumption of goods, right? It's everywhere, whether it's you turn on television, you see it, you turn on music, you see, you watch the news, you see it's just consume, consume, consume. And we've gone after that as a society for growth, right? But all of a sudden, you have to do that. Remember, the way the system is designed is to force you to consume. Because if you hold dollars in your bank account,

they will be worth less in the future than they are today because of inflation. Yeah, it's put it on the crap table or we're gonna take through like you're free to do what you want with your money but through penalties and all of that bullshit they're gonna basically get you in the mainstream by the way i just just worked out that rent a runway fuck that because if she gets all of those clothes then she's gonna want to wear them out and i gotta take her out to dinner so i'm gonna i'll fucking end up losing it you She, no, I'm not going to wear this Gucci thing to fucking Chick-fil-A. You got to take me somewhere nice. Fuck, you can't win.

Yeah. So I think the solution, right, for many people in the Bitcoin community is you got to get into a money system where there's no inflation, right? And so Bitcoin has this deflationary system. And so now all of a sudden you can hold money, you can save, and it's actually grows in value rather than loses value. Because here's the most fucked up part of all of this. Take somebody who's a teacher, a fireman, you know, somebody in Tulsa, Oklahoma working at a, you know, the drive-in, wherever. We basically

ask them to be good at their job, right? Go teach kids, go put out fires, go make sure the venue works, whatever. And oh, by the way, we need you to have a second job, which is we need you to be a professional investor as well. You need to know how to deploy that capital so that you don't lose it. Because if you just hold it, it's going to be worthless. What world is it where everyone needs to be an investor on top of their day job? Right? It's crazy. So let's get into a system where now all you got to do is go be good at your job,

get paid, hold that money and save it. And you're fine. All right. I got a question for you. Say Bitcoin is Coke. Who's your Pepsi? Is there competition? Is there somebody else?

Because I can't imagine if I'm sitting in the Federal Reserve and I'm making all that fucking money at the eyes wide shut parties and I'm banging chicks with the goat head on and all of that, fucking Bitcoin comes along and all of a sudden the party's over. So these guys already have all of this fucking money. What's going to stop them from building the better mousetrap or an equivalent one and be like hey we're the mousetrap builders that you trust you know we've analyzed bitcoin and there's some things but there were some flaws let's here's here's the this has the american flag on it and i have a grumpy face holding up a bible literally you could go run for the Federal

Reserve because they're already saying everything you just said. Oh, that Bitcoin thing is not so great. We have this better one. And basically what they're going to do is they're going to create a digital dollar, right? And the digital dollar is a digital currency that's backed one to one to the dollar. Now, the problem with this strategy is they're acting as if the problem is a technology problem. Right. But the dollar works in terms of I can send it to you. There's Venmo, there's PayPal, there's Cash App, there's all these fucking things. It's not a technology problem. It's a monetary policy problem. And so what they're basically going to do is they're going to take the dollar, just create a digital one and claim victory.

Right. Say, hey, we've got a digital dollar. You don't need Bitcoin. and claim victory, right? Say, hey, we've got a digital dollar. You don't need Bitcoin. But what people are starting to realize is, no, if the monetary policy doesn't change, then nothing's really changed. And so China's rumored to be working on one of these digital currencies.

Like all of these countries are going to create digital currencies, but they're going to take their existing one and just digitize it. They're not actually going to change the monetary policy because they have value and power from controlling monetary policy. That have value and power from controlling monetary policy that's like feminism it's the same thing where they're acting like that they they want like

oh we just want equality and fairness and what i'm seeing is like no you just want to do what oppressive men did now you're now you're going to be in power and now what you say goes and now guys you shut the fuck up does that make sense i don't fuck yeah no no no it did so so just out of curiosity what's the difference between a digital dollar and a credit card so there's really not well first of all credit isn't technically money right it's like hey i'll pay you later uh type stuff uh but in terms of electronic money right so like when you go to the bank and you send a wire or whatever, the digital dollar is just going to be a more efficient way of using the same dollar in a new technology system. So like here, the crazy shit is the stock market's

closed more hours a week than it's open. If you want to go on Saturday or Sunday and send money to somebody at the bank, wire it, you can't do it. They're closed. All this crazy shit that was built for like 10, 20, 30 years ago. Bitcoin's open 24-7, 365. There's no hours of operation. There's none of this crazy shit. It's a currency that's built for an internet age, right? Where's my bank account? If I get some Bitcoin, So where's my bank account? If I get some Bitcoin, my bank account is now on the computer. Nobody can hack in and just take my Bitcoin. You basically have a digital wallet, right? So think of the digital wallet, similar to a bank account. The difference is that you hold the wallet, you hold all of the Bitcoin or the private keys, right?

So you're in control. Because remember, when you go and you deposit money at the bank, it's not your money anymore. And people forget this. So if you take $100 and go deposit it in the bank, the bank says, all right, Bert, we owe you 100 bucks back. And we'll pay you a little bit of interest. We'll pay you 0.05% interest on it. But they take Bert's $100 and they go lend it to somebody.

And they make two or three percent. Times three. Times three. They can actually come up with another $200 off that $100 that doesn't even exist. They counterfeit money off of that. Exactly. And so Bert, the only thing that Bert has a claim to is he's basically holding an IOU at the bank. And if that bank goes under, normally Burt would just lose his money because it's not his money,

it's the bank's money now. And he'd be left holding an IOU, but the bank would be bankrupt. And so they created something called the FDIC, which insures the banks up to $250,000. But if you have a bank account right now, let's say you put $300,000 in a bank account and that bank goes bankrupt, you only will get $250,000 from that insurance, right? This is what I don't get. Not only will they only insure you up to 250 grand, they only will insure one person. So there's no way to be like all right I got a million bucks so I'm gonna open four accounts 250 250 250 250 like ah you only get 250 grand why is that so the key if you want to outsmart that that nonsense is you got to go open

four accounts at four different banks and then you then you're protected because they give two hundred fifty,000 of protection per person. Why won't they fucking insure? I'm giving you all of that fucking money and then you can create it times three and you're making all of this fucking money off of me. And then if you fuck up your books because you overinflated the fucking price of houses

and made someone who shouldn't be qualified now fucking qualified. So now I got to bid against him. And you create this whole fucking bubble. And when the whole thing goes to shit, you still get a fucking bonus. And you're only going to give me $250 off my million bucks? How is that fucking legal? I'm bidding Bitcoin. Fuck this shit.

I want to buy the computers that mine Bitcoin. Yeah, you can buy them. I'll send you a link to it. And you can just put them in your laundry room and it just keeps mining Bitcoin? So they're like souped up computers basically. So basically what ends up happening

is they pull a lot of energy and it's a pretty intensive process. But if you get the right computer, you plug it in, connect it to the internet, and just leave it there, it literally will just mine Bitcoin and you'll keep growing more and more Bitcoin. What does that mean?

How are you mining it? It's a little bit more complex. But basically, the way that the Bitcoin algorithm works is there's all these people who are running the software, right? And in exchange, every 10 minutes, there's the Bitcoin reward. So it used to be 12.5. It just got cut to 6.25. So right now, every cut, 50% every four years.

So it started out at 50, got cut to 25, then got cut to 12.5. Now it's 6.25. So think of that in like the gold world as the incoming daily supply, right? And it's programmatically cut and everyone knows that it happens. So literally at the beginning of this year, there was 1,800 Bitcoin a day that were...

Fuck. Fuck. I got a great question for him too. I got a good one. Dude dude this is making me really scared because i make money but i i didn't i don't know any of this shit i've just hired a financial advisor to do all this for me i want to call my wife after this and be like hey i have a few questions how many bank accounts do we have yeah no. No, it's a fucking scam. What I want to ask him is what's the most expensive thing that's ever been bought via Bitcoin? Basically, who's validating this shit?

Can somebody bought a Ferrari or can you get just a Prius? All right, here we go. Hey, I got a question for you. All right. What's the most expensive thing that has been bought via Bitcoin? Like Bitcoin only, because somebody bought a house, a car. Yeah, they definitely bought houses. I don't know what the most expensive thing is.

I'd have to look. But there's been multiple transactions for sure that are in the millions of dollars with Bitcoin for like everyday things, whether it's a house, a car, all that kind of stuff. Where are these? In America, somebody bought a house with Bitcoin? Oh, yeah, for sure. There's a house. There's a guy who put his house up in New York. It's like a $10 million penthouse suite or whatever, and he wanted Bitcoin for it. There was a there's a lamborghini all right wait a second wait what american bank accepted bitcoin isn't that like they're playing with their cost their competition you don't need a bank with bitcoin you are the bank that's the whole beauty of oh i get it so then but then you got to buy from somebody that's going to actually believe in this currency

exactly so what he that guy when the penthouse was asking for, was another Bitcoiner to come in and buy this fucking thing. And then that guy's thinking, well, that's exciting. Here's this currency that I'm not even sure if it's worth something, and then I get this fucking penthouse that I could sell for American dollars or Bitcoin. I think that guy who sold the fucking penthouse is an idiot. Am I nuts?

Okay, so the Trump Soho condo was sold for 25,000 Bitcoins. A charter jet was sold for 54 Bitcoins. Someone bought citizenship with 20 Bitcoins. Yeah. It's a currency.

As long as people on both sides of the transaction believe it has value it's going to trade hands but again here's the crazy part is bitcoin used to be worth one bitcoin 0.3 cents less than one penny today it is worth nine thousand dollars in 11 years i know that's ridiculous that is ridiculous growth you just don't you just don't see that the only way it grows is because demand increases there's a finite supply well i think you got two new customers on this one buddy dude i am kicking myself in the house for a rogan podcast where i got too high and just said, nah, I'm a pass on the Bitcoin, gentlemen.

Send it over to Red Band. I did the same thing. Look, I'm obviously still going to do a bunch of research, which I suggest everybody does. But, you know, we're coming up on it here. I don't want people's frigging heads to explode with this. Do you have anything in closing advice, any information or anything? And by the way, thank you for coming on here and being clearly the most intelligent fucking guest we've ever had.

No, I think the only thing I'll end with is there's a saying that we use in the crypto community that I think kind of sums it all up, which is just long Bitcoin short the fucking bankers. Okay, well, there we go. All right. Thank you so much for coming on here. If you guys want to learn more about Bitcoin, follow Pomp on Twitter. There's a lot of other

good resources too. Crypto Zombie is a really good daily YouTube channel. Anthony, give them your information on where they can follow you in videos, YouTube channel. What do you got? Got it all. Just twitter's at a popliano or you can just search my name on uh on youtube oh that's great can you spell popliano for them p-o-m-p-l-i-a-n-o beautiful um all right well thank you so much for coming on and dude i gotta tell you you're welcome to come on here at any time as i get my slices of pizza here. You guys got to do me a favor. I'll feel like it's a victory when you guys start accepting Bitcoin

at the shows and stuff. Then I'll know that you guys are real believers. You know, what do I got to lose? I got to start selling something again at the fucking... Anthony, I'm selling tickets at the drive-in movie theater. If anyone wants to use Bitcoin at a drive-in movie theater,

that would be fucking ironic. While Bert is shirtless on stage at the drive-in movie theater, they'll just be trying to send him Bitcoin. Yeah, take your vitamins, dude. Don't get run down out there. And if you do, don't do any fucking meet and greets. All right, Andrew, thank you. I't get run down out there. And if you do, don't do any fucking meet and greets. All right, Andrew, thank you.

I mean, Andrew Thamelis. Anthony, thank you so much for coming on here. Thank you, everybody that's been listening. Once again, it's been another, dare I say, informative episode of The Bill. Todd. There you go. Thank you.