B (3:12)

I mean, there's something you're. First of all, you're very good at this because you let your guests talk. You're also asked provocative questions that you. You force guests outside of their comfort zone, and that's really where the intimacy is, and that's what people want to hear. But I think there's something going on in podcasting that my colleagues at Gohanger called parasocial. You've probably heard of this, but right now, someone's listening to you and me. They got their earpiece in. It could be taking a hike. They could be walking in a park, it could be jogging on a treadmill. But it's intimate. It's you, me, and the person listening. You know, if we were watching a television show, we sort of know in our minds there's millions of people watching, it's less intimate. If we're. Let's say you and I are having the same conversation on the radio. Well, guess what? It's less intimate. I'm driving the car, and I think millions of people are listening. Less intimate. But when I'm dialed in and I've got an earpiece right up against my. My eardrum, it makes people feel like they're in tight with the host and inside with the host guests, and they're just a third party voyeur in the conversation. So you're very good at it. You know, weirdly, Howard Stern is a great interviewer, but he's not doing as well as he once did because people are less interested in listening. And Moss, they're interested in listening in this sort of little tight, intimate circle. He would be better served now in his career if he just went into podcast.

A (4:42)

I totally agree. He should have done podcasting 10 years ago, and he would have been bigger than Rogan. Today, but that's a whole different story. Did you think that you were going to have the success? I mean, when you started and you've had podcasts before, you have your podcast where you talk about books, did you think that the Rest is Politics was going to be this sensation?

B (5:01)

Well, I don't think you ever really think that about anything. You know, I, I, I would say that the Rest is Politics is a sensation because of Goal Hanger. You know, I, I think it's a good product. I think Caddy and I get along well. We have good chemistry. I do think we're providing an interesting, unique insight. But Goal Hanger has this collection of podcasts and something brilliant. They put our podcast on the family's feet. So the Rest is Politics uk. The Rest is history. The rest is football. They were using those other sites and they were saying, hey, you just listened to the Rest Is History. Here's a new podcast from Gohanger, and they attached our feed to their feeds, and then they gave us eventually an independent feed. So what that did was there was a group of people listening to Gohanger podcast, like, oh, wow. I like going. I like their production capabilities. Let me listen to this. And it, and it germinated and created a following for us. You know, the open book podcast is interesting because it started out very slow. We're getting about a million downloads a month now, and it's rising. It's probably the fastest growing thing that I'm doing. Some of that's from the success of Trip Us, and some of that's just from good organic growth and having a couple hundred thousand people as subscribers on YouTube now. So, so people are starved for content. They want independent content. They want people to talk to them the way they talk to their friends. You know, if we're in the bar and I'm telling you something that I really don't want other people to hear about me. That's what people want to hear, you know, and ultimately, that's what's made you successful. I think Rogan has that understanding. He's also a really good comedian. He's got great comedic timing. But Joe Rogan does something that we should all think about. He's a phenomenal listener, pays attention, and he flows with the content. And I think that's important because when I see a host stepping over somebody, John, I know the host is in trouble. I know the podcast is not going anywhere.

A (7:05)

Yeah. If you're spending more than $50,000 a year on marketing, I've got something for you. It's a playbook I wrote called how to Build a Social Media Selling Machine. You can grab it now for free@johndavis.com playbook. This is the nine formula we use for our clients at Influicity to turn their social media channels into reliable revenue engines. Grab it right now@johndavids.com playbook. So there's. I told a few people you were coming back on. You were. I mean, we had literally, I don't know, 700,000 downloads on that episode that you were on last year. And so I said, hey, give me some questions for the Mooch again. So a couple of things I want to hit on. I want to know. I feel like, you know, you were talking about crypto and putting your money where your mouth was years ago. I haven't said the word crypto. I haven't really looked at crypto since 2023. Tell me, if I've been in a coma for two years, what is crypto today? What is bitcoin today? What does the landscape look like?

B (8:09)

Well, I mean, you know, I guess what I would say to you is that if you're not, you know, this, and I, I would say this to you. If you don't like crypto, it's totally understandable to me. Meaning I had eight years where people were exposing me to bitcoin, exposing me to crypto, and I was a total naysayer. I was totally negative about it. And it took me literally eight years to get my arms around bitcoin. I was introduced to it in 2012. I made my first Bitcoin investment in 2020. So if you're not into it, I don't like pushing it on people. I guess what I would say to people is they should learn about it because it's a technology that I think we're going to be using as it relates to transactions. We're going to use the blockchain for transactions. Second thing I would say to you is that if you believe that there's all different types of property, if you accept that the Mona Lisa, let's say we took it off the wall at the Louvre and we said, okay, we're going to put it up for sale at Christie's, somebody's going to pay value for it. You know. Now you could say to me esoterically, well, you know, it's a walnut based frame and it's got some acrylic paint on it and some pigmentation. It's really not worth anything. Well, there's a lot of group, groups of people in the world that would disagree with you, they may pay one to $3 billion for that painting, maybe more. I don't know. I say the same thing would be for, just imagine a baseball court. You have a, you have this piece of cardboard with three color processed ink on it. A Mickey Mantle baseball court from his rookie season is worth about $10 million today. So, so if it's in mid condition, so you say, okay, well maybe that's not for you, maybe that artwork isn't for you. But I think we can establish in human behavior that there are certain things that humans ascribe value to. Other humans may not, but some humans do. And I'm just saying to really understand the properties of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Bitcoin is hard money. Bitcoin is an immutable asset. There's value on that chain. And that token is part of a digital rail system that has hundreds of millions of people now on that network, a result of which there's value on the chain. And Listen, it has 2.1 to $2.2 trillion worth of market cap for a reason. I laugh at the guys that say, oh, the market has it wrong and they have it right. They're making the assumption bitcoin's going to trade to zero. But then they're not looking at the way we perceive money historically. They're not looking at things like artwork or other things that we hold valuable, even though from a philosophical perspective they may not be worth anything. You know, like, like think about this. You know, there's a piece of. I don't have any money on me right now because I'm old. But if I go, if I held up a hundred dollar bill on this show. The hundred dollar bill according to Google, is made out of cotton. 75% cotton, 25% linen. It has a counterfeit strip in it and it's got some paint on it, you know, color ink on it. That's it. Is it worth anything? Well, I mean, the short answer is no, it's not worth anything. If we were in freshman philosophy class, it's not worth anything. You know that, that hundred dollar bill piece of cloth, I mean we call it paper money, but it's not worth anything.

A (11:43)

The counterpoint to that, Anthony, is that piece of paper is backed up by the treasury of the United States. So I get that.

B (11:51)

It's not though. So it's actually not. So there's, there's nothing backing that. You're, you're, you're going to make the esoteric claim that there's the US treasury backing that, but all the US treasury saying you, we're going to print more of that. There's no gold backing it up. There's no, it's a fiat currency that's trading without backing. Now you're going to say, well, the U.S. army backs it up and all this other stuff. It does not really.

A (12:17)

So I get what you're saying.

B (12:19)

You're making an argument that I made in 2014. I literally said to myself, ah, it's not backed by anything, but bitcoin's backed by more things than the US dollar.

A (12:29)

So let me reposition that argument and I totally agree with you. I'm making a 10 year old argument. I guess what I'm saying is this. The best case scenario we have as humans is trust in something that's existed already. And not because it's a perfect element of trust, but because it's the best trust. We have to get someone to say that bitcoin is worth something. I agree with you. Why is the Mona Lisa worth something? I agree it's worth something because we've all been, since we were babies, we've been told it's worth something. So is that kind of the argument you're making?

B (13:00)

No, I'm making a three tiered argument. I'm making a collectible argument, which is the Mona Lisa argument, which would be the prizes of art and things like that. So that's one tier. So if you don't accept bitcoin as money and you don't accept Pokemons as valuable, or Mickey Mantle cards is valuable, or Mona Lisa is valuable, well, bad news, they're all valuable. And again, there's 8 billion people on the planet. You could have 5 billion people think something's not valuable, but 3 billion people think it's valuable. Guess what, it has value. So I'll make it three tiered argument. So just to say you hate bitcoin, you don't think it's money. Well, I'm telling you, there's only 21 million of them. It's a collectible, so therefore it has value. Second tier of the argument is I'm making is that bitcoin is money. If you read the Ascent of Money by Neil Ferguson and you went through the historical categories of what money is, bitcoin hits every one of those. Remember, what is money? It's a technology that we use with each other so that we don't have to border. And so we have used wampum, we have used seashells, we have used gold or Silver coins with Emperor Stamps on them. And now we're using dead president printed money or Queen Elizabeth's on the British pound. I think you get my point. It is literally just a certificate or a piece of paper that we're using in exchange. It's a database. Your bank account is a database. So you have digits in your bank account. Are they worth anything? They're just electronic digits. You go on to your bank account, there's plus numbers in your bank account. You want to buy the Mercedes, you take $200,000 out of your bank account, you wire it to the Mercedes guy, his bank account goes up, your bank account goes down, you get the Mercedes. But those. Are those digits worth anything?

A (14:50)

Well, it's all.

B (14:51)

Again, I hear your thing, but let me finish the support because I believe that the digits on the Bitcoin network are worth something. The same way if I believe the US Dollar is worth something or the Mona Lisa is worth something, I'll trade for it. I'll accept Bitcoin. Listen, you got a guy, probably the smartest person I've met in the world of financial services. His name is Jamie Dimon. He runs the most successful bank in the United States, JP Morgan Chase. He said that Bitcoin, and I repeat, bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. Bitcoin is a decentralized at lock. That's what he said. But you know what he's doing now? He's loaning money on it. You have Ibid shares, which are basically Bitcoin wrapped in an ETF. You can get 25% loan to value on your Bitcoin at JP Morgan. So I don't know he's willing to lend money on a decentralized Ponzi scheme. So if you want any greater evidence that Bitcoin is worth something, the most sophisticated banker that's lived in the past hundred years less J.P. morgan himself, is J.P. dimon. He's lending money on Bitcoin. So therefore it's got to be worth something. John.

A (16:08)

Listen, I'm with you on that one, Jamie Dimon. I'm still waiting for Buffett. I don't think that'll ever happen.

B (16:14)

Buffett's not. Buffett's going to be 95 this week. He said he's not going to change his tune on Bitcoin, but if he. Listen. Larry Fink hated Bitcoin, did the homework, now loves bitcoin. Ray Dalio hated bitcoin, did the homework, loves Bitcoin. Same with Druckenmiller. Same with Paul Tudor Jones and I don't, I don't think I'm smarter than those people. And I hated bitcoin, but I came around to, you know who hated bitcoin? Michael Saylor hated bitcoin. He's got $70 billion worth of bitcoin.

A (16:44)

He's bought in now.

B (16:45)

Yeah, these guys are smarter than me, John. You know, I'm not as smart as those guys. And I, and I was negative on bitcoin, I would just say to you, the market may not be wrong on bitcoin. And if I were you or I were your viewers or listeners, I would get off zero. And if you're not willing to get off zero, I would say, well, I would do the homework. I would take 12 hours of my life, learn about bitcoin and at least hear the bull story behind bitcoin. And then after you've done that, say, okay, well, I hate bitcoin. And even though I've heard the bull story, you could do that. You know what I mean?

A (17:20)

I hear you, I hear you. And for the record, I do have bitcoin. So I'm in the same boat as you. Maybe not quite as deeply invested. So I read an article a couple days ago in the Wall Street Journal. I think you might have been quoted in it, basically talking about how Eric Trump, one thing he mentioned in the article was that maybe one day he could tokenize Trump Tower. And, and that really got me thinking because then you're talking about taking a hard asset in the real world and simply using the token as Rails. Is that a play that you're seeing a lot of potential in?

B (17:51)

You know, I would say to you that the Trump Tower will be tokenized, other assets will be tokenized, stocks and bonds will be tokenized. Larry Fink is telling people that that's going to happen. You know, again, that's where the world is going. And if I was with you, we had horses and carriages, and then somebody came along with a horseless carriage. We may say, oh, that horseless carriage is a fat. That's never going to work. We have a horse and buggy. It works beautifully. But what ends up happening is over time, when the technology is better, we end up using the technology. If I can get to Europe in eight hours versus taking a steamship over eight days, well, the chances are more people are probably going to use the eight hour trip on the airplane than the steamship. And so the blockchain is able to do these transactions very quickly. 100,000 transactions per second on something like Solana, that's faster than the Visa network at a very low cost. And so if you're telling me that we're spending $7 trillion per year in the global economy on transaction verification, if that's the case, and you're telling me we now have a technology that could take that to zero, well, I think that will happen. You know, this phone call, this zoom call, whatever this is here, Riverside, whatever it's called, this could not have happened. 40 years ago. I would have been in a phone booth somewhere asking the AT&T operator to give me $15 of long distance credit to have the call. And we would be talking over a voice line. But today we're talking over a high bandwidth line that offers video conferencing and audio conferencing, and it's costless. The incremental amount, the price, if you will, of this call is zero. And so look, the phone company still exists, the bank will exist. But our transactions, like the long distance phone call or this video call is going to zero because we have the technology to do that. If you want to pretend otherwise, go ahead. But Jamie Dimon stopped pretending otherwise, spending 5,600 million dollars a year on blockchain technology at JP Morgan. And again, he's lending on Bitcoin, something that other people think is worthless.

A (20:16)

Okay, one last question on this. Is there a solution or is there an answer to the whole. Well, criminals are going to use this for all kinds of stuff. It's. You can't track it, you can't. I mean, case in point, going back to Eric.

B (20:28)

But that's the irony. Read, read Michael Morell's white paper, the former CIA director. He said this is a misnomer. Yes, it started out as criminal, but so did the Internet. The Internet was the pipes and plumbing of pornography. And people were making a lot of money in pornography. So they widened the pipes and then it became more commercially applicable. Pornography is still used over the Internet, but the Internet is trillions of dollars of value away from pornography. You know, this started as a silk road. Money laundering, arms dealership, drug dealership, et cetera. But it's morphed into something way more sophisticated, way more complex than that. But Mike Morell would tell you that the blockchain, the transparency on the blockchain allows for a replay of the transaction. You know, fdfbi people say, we're going to get paid in Bitcoin, that's fine. They find their wallet, they go and arrest the guy. Mike Morell basically said, if you're going to do it over the blockchain, you're Stupid. You'd be better doing it off of the thing that we use the most for money laundering, and that's the US dollar. So to me, I don't buy that argument either. Again, these are, no offense to you, my brother, but these are 10 year old arguments that are specious arguments today based on the available facts.

A (21:46)

Yeah, and listen, I'm also, I'm saying this because I think a lot of people still are stuck there. And yeah, frankly, we've been distracted by AI and all the other technologies. Crypto doesn't get the kind of talk.

B (22:00)

Of course, and I get that. But here's the thing I would say to you. Don't miss it just because you're distracted. And we're very early. Morgan Stanley just did a survey of its clients. 98% of them have no bitcoin exposure. So I don't think that's going to be the case in 10 years.

A (22:18)

This episode is brought to you by my AI Growth Cheat Sheet. Available now at johndavids.com AI if you're a business owner and you're wondering how to use AI to actually grow your business, this is the answer. It's a fully custom AI growth cheat sheet that'll give you the tools you need to grow your business today. Available right now@johndavids.com AI just answer a few questions, wait a few seconds and you'll have your list of tools and it's free. Get it right now@johndavids.com AI what does Skybridge look like today?

B (22:52)

At three and a half billion, maybe 55, 60% of it in crypto. Diversified fund of funds offering that has a lot of crypto in it, which has done very well. We have private equity exposure now. We have late stage private equity that we've, we've developed the private equity practice. It's done very well. We have our conference business, which is sort of an eternal business, knock on board. I mean, we just did a conference in Wyoming. It's a great business model for us. We, we curate high profile people, get them together. I think in an age of social media where everybody's talking to each other over a zoom call or looking at a black screen, a dark mirror, having interpersonal interaction at conferences is hotter than ever. And we've got a 15 year track record of curating some of the better conferences in the world. So look, it's been a great business, but it's also been a business where I've been able to delegate a lot of responsibility. So I can do podcasting, I can talk to you on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon with my kids screaming in the background, which I'm sorry about, but I can, I can be in a lot of different places as a result of the versatility of this business. But again, I will say this because you brought up Buffett, and I'll say this, and if anybody can only remember one thing from this podcast, and this is a 37 year observation of my career on Wall Street. Hold great assets, don't be a seller. I sold Apple too early. I sold Microsoft too early. I sold a company called Google a little bit too early. I may have made 3x on those and patted myself on the back, John, and left 20x on the table in an effort to exit things too early. I know that the line on Wall street is that bulls make money and bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered, meaning, you know, take profits and so forth, but on great assets. Think of great assets as pieces of heirlooms in your foundation, in your endowment, and hold the great assets. Buffett would tell you that. Of course, I missed that at the early part of my career. I'm not doing that now. You know, I haven't sold a stick of bitcoin over five years. I mean, I shouldn't say that I had a sell, believe it or not, a tiny amount of bitcoin in 22 to pay some taxes. I was like, I got caught on the wrong side or something. But other than. And I went out and bought that bitcoin back at higher prices. But I just think you got to hold great assets.

A (25:28)

I was talking to Mike Lazaro a couple weeks ago on the pod. And by the way, I've talked to lots of high profile people off the pod. And the biggest regret I hear constantly is I sold Amazon too early. I sold Meta too early. And these are people who know Bezos and Zuckerberg. Like they, they could see what was going to happen and they sold in 2011. What are you thinking?

B (25:51)

Well, you know what I was thinking. I'm going to embarrass myself further. Apple was $300 billion at the time. This is a staggering valuation. How could anything be worth more than $300 billion? And I got it wrong. We're 10x from there. So, you know, you get a lot of things wrong in your life, make a lot of mistakes, but holding on to good assets and staying with them and not getting yourself emotionally charged, the ups and downs of the volatility. I have a buddy of mine that participated in the Facebook now called Meta ipo. About two and a half Years ago, they misfired in the Metaverse and the stock went down 50%. If you sold it, you were a fool. You're six to one off of that bottom. You know, I mean, stay calm, hold great assets. That's got to be the message.

A (26:42)

I was a buyer. I remember the day my, my Meta stock, which is my biggest holding, went down 25% and I was buying as much as I could. Because you do not bet against Meta.

B (26:51)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's got a real, it's got a real long term franchise, you know?

A (26:56)

I don't know.

B (26:57)

You tell me. How many, how many companies have billions upon billions of people that are using.

A (27:03)

Their platforms, have half the planet on Facebook every month? Let me, let me ask you this, and I want to kind of end with this question, because this is the most asked question I got here. You are, I don't know, five, six years removed from pretty public embarrassment, humiliation, career turmoil. How have you changed over six years? For everyone listening who's maybe in a really rough mindset, how have you kind of grown in, in the last few years?

B (27:27)

Well, I mean, listen, I mean, it's been eight years since the White House firing. It's been three years since the FTX debacle. So, you know, I've got my. Get my ass kicked once every five or so years pretty hard. And unfortunately, I'm a public figure, unfortunately. So I got to get my ass kicked in public. So if you're listening in and you've gotten your ass fired somewhere, well, you know, chances are you got fired privately, it's you and your family members. It's not really as public as the stuff that's happened to me. At least I hope that's not the case. But I would say three things to people. Number one, who cares? Okay? You're going to be dead, okay? And the immortal words of Mel Brooks, relax. None of us are getting out of here alive. So whatever the hell you're worrying about right now, if you make it to 90 and you're on your deathbed, or you're 100 and on your deathbed, you'd be like, why the hell was I worried about that? That's number one. Number two, nobody gives a shit about, okay? And you can bleep that out because I know you got good YouTube algorithmic scores, but let me just say that again. Nobody gives a shit about you. So stop it. You know, don't care what other people think. Get out of the pity party business and get yourself up and go forward. Okay? That's something I've always done. I don't live in the back past. Last thing, and this is the most important thing, John. Tell me the person that hasn't made a mistake in their career, their family life, their personal life, their academic decisions, their career decisions. Tell me the person that has, has never made a mistake and I will identify the liar in the room. Okay, so every single person on planet earth has had forks in the road and some level of regret in terms of which way they moved and the decisions that they made. Drop it. Drop it. I don't wake up in the morning and say, wow, I did something stupid in the White House eight years ago, let me kick myself in the pants today. I don't do that. Get up in the morning, say that happened. I own it. Be accountable for things that go wrong. But don't be a baby. You know, don't have a pity party.

A (29:28)

Thanks for listening. If you enjoy this podcast, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And leave a rating or review that'll help other folks find the podcast and it lets us know we're doing something right. We'll talk to you guys next time. Quick break. So I can tell you about Toyota. And no, this is not a car commercial. This is a commercial for Influicity. That's the marketing agency I created in my apartment almost a decade ago. And man, have we outgrown my apartment. You can see how we help Toyota introduce their vehicles to a brand new generation of drivers. Check out the case study at influicity.

B (30:08)

Com.

A (30:08)

That's INF L U I C I T Y Influicity.

B (30:13)

Com.