What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompeo. Know most of you know me as pump. You're listening to the pump podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Max, Keiser is a Bitcoin maximalist who first started buying the digital currency around. $1, he is a popular podcast called the Orange Bill podcast and co-host the Keiser Report. With Stacy herger on Artie Network. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, economics, geopolitical strategy, mainstream adoption decentralization.
List of famous people. Max told about Bitcoin under $10 and his price predictions through the end of this year. I really enjoyed this conversation with Max, and I think you will too. Before we get into this episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is cracking for the last 10 years. Kraken has been one of the best platforms for trading crypto online. Now, with the new kraken app, it's easier than ever to buy and sell Bitcoin and over 60 of the most popular cryptocurrencies on the go. 24/7, simply download the crack in it.
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Again, L Max digital.com / pump. All right, let's get this episode Max. Hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony promptly on, oh, Ron's pomp Investments, all views of him and the guest on his podcast are sholay, their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy. But only, as an expression of his personal opinion, this podcast is for informational purposes. Only
Max, what's up, man? Pump pump pump it up during the break when I was making sure that everything was good here. You were telling me that you don't follow me on Twitter but you follow my brother Joe.
Yeah Joe's the brains of the operation you know he's got all the sports stuff. I follow Joe. He's a mature guy you know he's the guy to follow Joe promptly. Oh
no. I mean the fact that you figure that out so quickly shows your intelligence level because you're definitely right there, all right.
To
talk Bitcoin for those that don't know you and your story give us kind of the 30 60 seconds on when you discovered Bitcoin and how the hell you had such deep conviction. So early,
I was I was gangbanged by Satoshi and that impregnated me with the idea of Bitcoin and 2011, when it was a dollar and I had already been involved in digital currencies, going back to the mid 90s, I invented one called the
It's the Hollywood Stock Exchange. So when I heard about Bitcoin in 2011, I was already prepped to dive into it. And so I started buying it at a dollar. As you know, we started covering it on Keiser report. The first TV show in the world to do so, we covered it all extensively. So, millions of people the first time they heard about Bitcoin was through Keiser Report with Max and Stacy. And we started aggressively buying into early stage Bitcoin companies, in 2013 with a venture capital fund. We started. So we are early investors and cracking.
In better shape shift, bit fornax. We just made some Investments recently in Casa and Swan Bitcoin. And infinite Fleet, which is a Samsung Mal or mile creation. So we've been really deep into it as, you know, pop for 10 years now and that's our story.
So when you first came across Bitcoin, you already had kind of this this mental framework to think about digital assets, digital currencies other folks Like Jesse pow.
Powell, Etc. I think very similarly, they've been doing things in video games and so when they saw this, it just kind of fit into this world view. What was it for you? Because I think you were into gold quite a bit beforehand. Then when you saw Bitcoin was there one or two specific things were like bam. This is it like this is going to work this time.
Well, a couple things so I kind of quickly figured out that this was a new asset class. You know, I started my career in the 80s as a stockbroker so I'm sensitive to looking at asset classes.
What is an asset class with Bitcoin? Is it a stock? Is it a bond is in the commodity, you know, where does this fit as an asset class and then you realize that it's actually a new asset class. And if that's true, then the world money management, which is huge, you know, there's a hundred trillion dollars worth of funds looking for investment. You know, if they get into this is going to be huge. The second thing is my background and digital currencies and gaming back in the 90s. I know that virtual currencies
to the mind of people online. There's no differentiation between a digital currency and anything else. It's money to anyone who's in the gaming world and the 1990s, you know, you once you get into it, whether it's Second Life, which side the Linden dollar or the world of Witchcraft had gold swords and things like that. Once you cross over your mind starts thinking about this and that way, you just adopted as money. So I knew that people would accept us as money. So you put those things.
Together, and then the price action just keeps going up. So that's that number go up technology. And it keeps you keep going down the rabbit hole keeps push pulling you down the rabbit hole. Even today at these prices. I'm just you know, we're still stacking SATs because it's just it just seems like the only logical thing you can do. It's like a bulwark against the insanity that's going on in the world. You know in Washington and elsewhere. When you stack SATs, it's like a calming thing that you do to ground yourself in the Satoshi Bitcoin
reality.
So one of the things that's fascinating to me is, most people know you for all of the crazy Antics people have seen the videos of you, ripping up the ten dollar bill or at the Bitcoin conference yelling and screaming with Michael sailor Etc, right? Which as I've gotten to know you, I think is part of the magic of Max and Stacy. But when you think about it from a pure investment standpoint, most great investors would tell you that in order to be great, you have to cut your losers faster than anyone.
And you have to press your winners harder than anyone else. So from a pure Capital, allocation standpoint, you all started buying Bitcoin at a dollar and have continued to buy since then. Now the reason why I bring that up is because there's a lot of people who discovered Bitcoin early on. Maybe they didn't have the conviction to buy a lot or along the way they said, hey, I bought it at a dollar. I went to five dollars, then they sold it. And so what is the thing that has kept? You kind of so convicted to knowledge. See it early and have the conviction that this could work but also to ride the most
volatile asset over the last decade to what became the best performing asset over the last decade as well. Yeah. You know and it
Bitcoin is it has the ability to work on you that the investor in the many different ways and part of it is psychological and part of it is just from a pure money management perspective. How much do you want to allocate? How much do you want to go into this? And as you get deeper into it
You realize that other people that are talking about it, their arguments are terrible and that adds to my conviction. So, for example, I don't want to go on a huge Peter Schiff diatribe here, but his arguments are terrible and he I told Peter to buy it I sat down with him at his house in Connecticut for a couple hours and walk them through it when Bitcoin was under $10 and every single year since then over 10 years he still he mentally can't get into it. And when I see somebody like,
Like that, you know, I'm open to any argument against Bitcoin. You know. I listen to everybody every single day, give me the argument against it and every time I hear something, I know it's, it doesn't work the Fudd, it never works. And it just increases my conviction and it increases the the idea of what is the total addressable Market of this asset class. You know, and certainly Michael Sailors, done a great job and saying, you know, that melting Ice Cube on the balance sheet. You look at the corporate world, there's trillions of
Dollars, you look at the money management world, there's trillions of more dollars. You look at a versus gold and is it going to capture part or all of gold as monetization? That's a 9 to 10 trillion dollar market cap? Yeah, that's all happening. So the price is still cheap and then as a money manager, you know you figure. I got it own it, you got to keep nibbling at it. It's still cheap Bitcoin at this price is still incredibly cheap. Yeah, what you came
from a Fascination interest in gold,
Actually, now I have pretty much hard right into Bitcoin for a very long time. Now probably one of the earliest people I know of that that had conviction and held
on when you think
about gold today is it just writing on the wall? It's over. Do you think that it's still has a place in some people's portfolio? How do you think of that specific
asset? Well, I think we're seeing a migration out of gold into Bitcoin and the ETF Market proved that the money flows. The reports.
Adding from brokerages, tell you that money is being dumped from the gold ETFs and moving into Bitcoin Bitcoin surrogates gbtc and other other areas. So we're seeing that migration happened right now and it makes sense because it does Everything Gold does what it does. It a lot better, it's absolutely scarce. Whereas gold is only relatively scarce, it's obviously more portable. It's more divisible, it's more useful and it's on confiscated bubble which is gold doesn't have that attribute people can confiscate your gold. It's
cheaper to own than gold you know gold has insurance cost, it has storage cost it has verification cost you know every time you do a major gold play, you've got to get the gold verified by a third party with Bitcoin. The transaction is the verification. I mean, that's a phrase that I picked up on early on and as a former stockbroker, you know, you realize that a lot of the cost that goes into brokering is in verification on the transaction, there's a huge. What's called the back office? Just hundreds of people back.
They're verifying trades and doing all the paperwork with Bitcoin that lat completely taken out of the equation. The transaction is the verification that right there. Do you know that eliminates an enormous amount of our current Financial system? So you just compared to Gold it just again, it just Stacks up but gets better and better and I think that Trend will continue certainly in the millennial Gen-X. They're totally sold on bitcoin, they're never going to
Adopt gold and in the only buyers left for gold are really the sovereigns. You know Russia, China and others. And their I think one when one of those sovereigns breaks Rank and says you know we're putting Bitcoin on our balance sheet that's just going to be another nail in the coffin of gold and another huge boom in Bitcoin. So we're seeing a Once In A Thousand Years migration pump from the perception of the Premier store of value. Number one, global
Top tier money into something new and it happens to be Bitcoin.
So before we talk a little bit more about the geopolitical landscape, which I think is probably the most fascinating conversation right now. You were so early, but you also tried to orange pill a ton of people. You mentioned Peter. Are there other folks that you went to that people either don't know about or folks that you had conversations with that? Just didn't get it still don't get it like any stories from the very early days that would surprise.
People
right? You know II, as I've said many times, I was really hard, trying to get Russell Brand, who's a famous guy in the UK into Bitcoin, you know, he was not really able to get what it was all about. This was again, when it was, you know, 50 bucks or so, I gave them some Bitcoin. I don't know what he ever did with it, I'm pretty sure he lost it. I saw him recently on his podcast asking people to explain to him what bit.
- you know we had if you look at cars or report, we had several shows in his actual flat in London talking about Bitcoin so he must have amnesia, my friend Alec Baldwin, who I knew from New York University when Bitcoin was under 10 bucks, 20 bucks. You know, I was talking to him about it and trying to get him into it, Alex Jones. Of course when Bitcoin was under five bucks, I offered to give him 10,000 Bitcoin to give to his audience as to spread the word because
You know, pop back then. And the 2011, a lot of people were giving away thousands of coins as a way to spread the word, you know, when it was cheap like that, it was easy to do. So he Alex Jones. He rejected the idea and said no, no. That's that's that's a that's some kind of CIA coin. I don't want it. So he rejected it, he rejected that offer of 10,000 coins and the list goes on from from there. You know, everyone I met I was trying to get it get
Orange pill that as we do. And I guess those are some of the celebrity instances.
How much Bitcoin do you think you've given away over the years? I don't know how much you have, but how much do you think you gave away in the early days when you were trying to help people spread the word or drive? Adoption it tens of thousands of Bitcoin
thousands.
Thousands I mean when you think back to that worth it well
you never
/. You know, you never have enough. I mean it's you know what can I say? It's in some you know, the Bitcoin phenomenon. Ultimately you know, I like to think about Buckminster Fuller, you know, Buckminster Fuller was a Visionary thinker and he made a decision early on in his life that he wouldn't do anything in life that wasn't beneficial for Humanity. And he created the geodesic dome. He created the first electric car or one of the first electric cars and he thought strategically about humanity and Bitcoin.
Something that's Pro humanity is Paul Tudor Jones even said that gold is a bet on disaster. Bitcoin is a bet on Humanity that it's going to get better. So I mean this is part of this is being involved in something that's going to improve Humanity improve what our experience as humans you know on this Earth because Bitcoin D monetizes violence whereas fit Fiat money, really monetizes violence, you know.
The the Petro dollar and the whole War Industry and it's all based on Fiat money and money Printing and the Ponzi scheme of money printing. It's a very violent area Fiat. Money is, is the source of violence. Bitcoin is D, monetization of violence. So, in that context, you're like, well, you know, I'm doing something. I'm part of a bigger thing and and with Bitcoin everyone who gets involved to it and it with a big in a big way.
Really learns to get humble and say you know at this is bigger than me and there's something potentially that could be great for Humanity here. People who are narcissistic ego. Maniacs, have a big difficulty getting into Bitcoin. I think that's the Nassim taleb story. He's he's rightfully proud of the work, he's done with his books Etc. But he developed his narcissism that prevented him, a prevents him from seeing that the humanity of bit.
Coin. And so, he's essentially committed professional suicide with his antics of the past few months, and we see that with nouriel roubini are Paul Krugman. They've committed professional suicide because they don't have the humility to approach Bitcoin on that on that level. So to answer your question, sure, I gave way thousands of coins, but if it's part of the journey, that if it ends up being beneficial to humanity as a whole, then I think that that's something.
We can all be proud
of, I completely agree and I think people probably don't think you enough along with a bunch of other people from early. In the day of the work you did to drive adoption right? Frankly is we can't know for sure but we may not be here with some of those efforts. So it's pretty incredible when you look towards today. We talked a little bit about geopolitical landscape. We had El Salvador, obviously Embrace Bitcoin and create this legislation around legal tender. I'm assuming that with the nice El Salvador had their. I'm assuming that
It is your opinion but correct me if I'm wrong that this is just one of many countries that will ultimately make this move. How do you see this playing out and is there a number of countries or a specific country that ends up being like an inflection point or a Tipping Point where there's no kind of point of return?
Yeah well they Game Theory, it's baked into the protocol. So the protocol is essentially a three-sided piece of the the protocol with the developers to speculate errs Miners and the
Is perfectly balanced to create this beautiful, perfect money that has within it. This game theoretical aspect, that's a track that keeps moving up the ladder in terms of attracting more more enemies. If you will you know, Bitcoin is a tract is built is designed to attract attacks and we saw it play out recently in the geopolitics of mining in the mining concentration. Remember, the idea was all China is to concentrate.
Rated, there's too much Mining and China. We saw that resolve itself by the distribution of mining etcetera. And so as we move up to get into a nation like El Salvador, then also I would has been the victim of u.s. foreign policy for decades as has been the entire region. The u.s. essentially traits that entire region as a vassal State. They use it for as Jack mahler's eloquently describes. You know, the Dynamics politically between Latin America in the U.S and how the read.
This model is really just as kind of a slavery model and it's gross. Its disgusting.
So Jack mahler's goes there. He spends three months in El Salvador and he is, Jack is so fully, you know, within the Bitcoin ethos. And, you know, I'm you've met him. I know you guys are pretty tight and we've met him and his family and his dad who's a thoroughbred from Chicago the future.
Is trading, and the whole family is completely inculcated in the ethos here and he went there and essentially, orange pill, the president. And then the president, now is dropping this huge bomb of Bitcoin as legal tender, and that immediately spread throughout the region. So now you've got eight countries and total in the region that could go to bitcoin as legal tender. Then on the other side of the world you've got Nigeria which is going hyper Bitcoin is ation companies like
Well, which is huge there. And so now the country is also kind of come out and said we can't stop it. We don't know, you know we just got to go with the punch. So there's Nigeria with 200 million people, huge mobile phone penetration. They're going to go fully Bitcoin eyes so these two areas are exploding in Bitcoin, and that's part of the game theory is that they want to become their competitive. You know, this is the thing about America, America. Thanks that
It's the really this entrepreneurial super competitive place that's running the world. It's when you compare it to like a Nigeria, with the average age is less than 25 and you've got people now hyper Bitcoin as eyes and there
are,
they're out, hustling, like unbelievably every single day. They're, they're like mad if you've ever been to countries Africa's, I have or the Middle East as I have or different countries all over the world. There's a different perception of what constitutes hustle right now me.
People are mad hustling, absolutely 24/7. Working it and now they've got Bitcoin. So, these economies are going to grow really fast Pomp and that's going to attract. And the game theory is that attracts other countries other people and they're on the phone and they were we're doing it. So it that's how the Bitcoin Revolution is taking hold is totally peaceful without a shot fired. The Bitcoin Revolution will take hold and so I think that Africa is as a
Continent. You see it spreading wildly in Botswana Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, you know, that's where this is. This is really where the huge Revolution is taking place and then Latin America. I think the u.s. is one of the last countries to really get into it because where the beneficiary of having the world Reserve currency, the US dollar, you know, we're basically the running the this colonial US dollar hegemony nightmare for decades.
And certainly since 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window when we went on the Petro dollar so at the u.s. is kind of the last country to get on board. I think sadly and we see that being played out in Washington DC right now you know Bitcoin hit Congress, you know Bitcoin went to Washington and we're seeing the Dynamics play out and so you stack up stack, what's happening in Congress this week vs. Nigeria vs. El Salvador. And you see that and and Senator lummis makes its excellent point. You know, she says the u.s. is way behind
Find, right, that's exactly right though. U.s. is way behind so is it going to catch up? Well, if it is going to catch up pop this gotta start making some moves fast quick.
If you were the u.s., what would you do right now? Is it a hey go spend a bunch of money in the infrastructure build to set up, mining operations. Do you make Bitcoin legal tender? Do you buy Bitcoin and put it in the balance sheet? Like what would you do if Max Keiser is President and wants Bitcoin to be successful? What is Max Keiser?
Well, I think I was the one who coined the phrase hash War maybe two and a half years ago, that countries would get into competitive hashing and because the idea is, that governments are going to ban Bitcoin. The smart governments are going to start hoarding and and Mining Bitcoin. So, to the extent that the u.s. becomes competitive, they would have to immediately start to underwrite mining, right? So, I mean, that's,
It's what he'd have to do right away and that's the way to build a solid economy, going forward. So I would start directing funds toward Mining and I would obviously, look at a place like, Texas, where the cost of energy is competitive globally and build that out right away, he who has the Bitcoin makes the laws and the countries that are really active in this. The most are going to be extremely happy that they did those countries that lag behind are going to be, you know,
Our that new second world, right? We're reordering. How what, what constitutes a first-world nation. The first world nation will be heavily into Bitcoin. And then the second and third world would be lagging in Bitcoin. So if the US wants to be competitive, they need to immediately start directing resources and and multiple ways to start to accumulate and mine Bitcoin. My
brothers have a couple questions for you, but before I let them ask one more for you is the difference between the federal government and the states.
It seems like State seem to be taking the lead here. Is that a good thing? Should we encourage more states to do that? How do you see the difference between the two and how that plays out for Bitcoin,
right? Well, the US has an advantage over Europe in this regard that the states have autonomy to a large degree and they can push through laws and make big differences. And we saw that in the marijuana industry, the state's got on to it first and then it's heading up to a federal level in the in Europe, though. It's generally more of
Not talk or see top down from the EC, the European commission. And there's very little room to maneuver and Europe isn't a really bad shape Pop. I mean, I see in Germany right now the entire yield curve is negative and more something many, many banks. Almost all the banks that are charging customers negative interest rates to hold their cash Europe is in deep deep problems. But in the US, as you point out that you do have the state's the States can be are somewhat autonomous and they can
Take the ball and run with it and we're seeing it Wyoming. You know, in Miami the mayor is pro Bitcoin in that has a huge impact so we can see it if Wyoming suddenly steals a lot of business from Delaware, where a lot of companies, incorporating Delaware, and they start grabbing that whole business and you see a migration to Wyoming. That would have an impact. The Miami economy is set to do well based on the Bitcoin in, you know, activity there.
The US Austin. Texas is becoming a huge Bitcoin Hub. Texas is becoming huge Texas, at the governor of Texas, could could really break away and say, we're going to start mining Bitcoin on the state level in a big way and it's a big state. Its they, there are tracked and congressional seats. They're pulling congressional seats away from California because people so many people are leaving California and they're becoming more of a political Powerhouse. And if they go full on bitcoin you know, that's going to be a
Each difference. I mean, maybe that's where I would put my efforts. You know, more strategically is to get one big state fully on to bitcoin instead of trying to get the federal government on to it and that that I think that's a good point. I think that's a good idea
Joe. What questions do you have for? For Max? Ensure the favorite pomp I was just going to say Max and I are already friends. After that intro where he gave me a shout out. I appreciate that Max, you're someone who was buying Bitcoins at $1, you
Earlier that you continue to buy Bitcoin. Even at the the prices of today, forty fifty sixty thousand dollars. What is something? When you look 10, 20 30, even a hundred years down the road, like what is the bear case for you? What is something that keeps you up at night? What could go wrong? What stops total adoption? Is there any scenario where you see Bitcoin doesn't become the global Reserve currency?
Here's my bear case, is that humans will become extinct before. They realize the benefits of Bitcoin and let
Explain big nothing's going to stop Bitcoin, you know, it's on its own vector and it was the discovery of absolutely scare synthetic digital commodity that can only happen once everything else, but that's not Bitcoin is a security and should be looked at as such and it's powered in a way that it can. Now grab that energy from wherever it gets it through solar etcetera.
Almost to some degree self.
Self-aware to some degree. I don't want to go too far down that path but humans on planet Earth seemed to be on another path of self-destruction. I mean, humans seem to be really anxious to get into another world war. We seem to be on a course to tragically destroy whatever biosphere we have left. So the human seem to be really messed up. So you know, the the bear case is that humans actually go extinct while Bitcoin still powering forward. That's the bear case. The rare cases the
Never figure out that they can solve the problem that they are experiencing here by adopting a Bitcoin standard. That's the bear
case. John J Max. Thanks for doing this. Nice to meet you. I'm also on Twitter if you want to give me a followed but. So you started learning about Bitcoin around 10 years ago. Run decade ago, where do you see Bitcoin going in the next 10 years?
Right, I see it. Can I say Fiat? Fiat money? All Fiat money for the past 300 years has gone to zero or lost ninety-nine percent of its purchasing power. See it Fiat. Money is never worked. And so now we're see something that's come along this going to eat gold lunch so that gold Bitcoin competition is very active. So that means that Bitcoin is going to Eclipse gold. That means that it's a tendon.
Eleven trillion dollar asset, right? So that's, that's a huge move still to come. And then if you look at the bond market, the bond markets and horrible shape, it's all zero percent and going negative. So you could see a migration out of the bond market. The bond markets, a 200 trillion dollar, Global markets so that that money could come into Bitcoin, the total addressable market for planet Earth of stuff that people invest in property precious metal stocks bonds Etc.
Era it's like 400 trillion dollars its enormous. You know that's the total addressable Market of Bitcoin. There's nobody there's no youth. There's no reason why anyone who is investing in something as a store of value would not want Bitcoin and is no way to show that it's not Superior to anything out there as a store of value, in terms of the kind of tration that will make in the market going, you know, the next five years.
I mean I think that the heavyweight asset over the past several hundred years has been the Ming Vaz, you know. And as a stockbroker you'd always hear the story about the best performing asset ever has been the Ming Vaz, the Ming Dynasty. Vaz has been, you know, compounding at a great rate for like 400 years, you know, it's been the the heavyweight champion, people still buy the Ming Vaz, you know, Bitcoin will eclipse the Ming Vaz, you know, it'll be the
Champion heavyweight compounded annual interest return of any asset ever in the history of the world, it will outperform the Fabergé egg. It will outperform the van, Gogh, it'll outperform. Amid, big Leon e, it will outperform everything and that that that attract because it's perfect and and so that is going to keeps attracting people into it. It's the black hole of Bitcoin is sucking in every single possible value of anything everywhere
And so that's where we're heading. And and it's Unstoppable. It's on confiscated bubble, it's uncensor a bowl and it's available. You know, you can still buy under under a hundred thousand dollars a coin. That's a frickin
bargain Max, my brother. John has one more question for you then I got a couple to finish up. Prepare yourself though because I don't want you to hurt yourself. When you answer this
Max all my money gone. Come at me.
Come at me and these
are so my question is I don't own any but I know some of my friends do own Dogecoin. What are your thoughts around it? What would you tell them? What mistakes are they making? And not he's 25 Max and a bunch of his his 25 year old friends. Give or take are buying
Doge.
Right. Well, I understand that. You know, Bitcoin, as I said before, it was the discovery of an absolutely scarce. Synthetic synthetic digital commodity that is perfect in many ways and everything else is is less than or even, everything else can be seen as a security and everything else is centralized to some degree, right? Those is centralized to the degree that it revolves.
Run a character a charismatic character. Elon Musk said that's a that's a point of centralization. If Elon Musk were hit by a bus today and windows would collapse because there's no there's no competitive reason why you would own do jobber the over Bitcoin because it doesn't offer anything that in that sense. So it has it has a flaw a fatal flaw of it's over. Centralize everything that is not Bitcoin is
Either absolutely centralized like ethereum now has become absolutely centralized or it's relatively centralized in depending on how you look at it. So there, there, there is, no, there there is. There is no happy ending for Doge owners, the. But this is a, the learning curve that people go on. There's no way that people are going to not decide that they know better than
This looks cheap or they think you know the person at the center of it is a charismatic genius and therefore they're going to participate and they're going to get rekt. So getting rekt is part of the learning curve. And you know that's true of anything. You know, the Wright brothers. Had a lot of failures and every major entrepreneur, you know, your you entrepreneurialism is not about being successful, it's about dealing with failure because, you know, for every success, you have many, many, many failures.
And he, how you deal with failure, determines your success. That's so, you know, you're going to have, You're Gonna Get Wrecked with those, You're Gonna Get Wrecked and you're going to learn from it and you're going to end up in Bitcoin. So you can save the the tragedy and by just going directly into Bitcoin now. But, you know, I mean there that show remember on TV called jackass Where Are, You know, guys would run, you know, drive a car into a cliff and set themselves on fire. You know, that's what people do, you know, they like to get rekt sometimes.
Well, that's what people do
you mentioned. That aetherium is centralized and I'm scared. Give you the floor but explain what you mean by that and and kind of maybe the the way that you view the smart contract platforms and the inevitability that they all end up being centralized.
Well, it's not the it's not decentralized and for a few different reasons. So, you know, first of all, you don't have the ability to run your own node like you do in Bitcoin. It's a huge Albatross. That's not it's not workable. Nobody.
Runs their own. No, they're all outsourced to centralized locations. A lot of them are on AWS America, Amazon web services. Number two. We know that transactions are reversible that's happened before, that doesn't that doesn't tell me. It's decentralized tells me it's more centralized they keep coming out with these upgrades. That's not decentralisation that centralization. They're moving to proof of stake. Proof of steak is just Fiat money version. If it's anything proof of stake is not any different than the Fiat money world.
The Earth, your steak essentially gives you governance, you know, priority, which is very similar to what we have to the Fiat, money world. So you go down the list and you're like, you know what? This is actually not a decentralized protocol. I'm sorry, this is, yeah, it's not decentralized, it's centralized, and this is true, you know, you can make the same case for just about anything else out there. Everything that's not Bitcoin. Give me five minutes and I'll tell you the point of centralization that.
Sighs it as a decentralized protocol to the extent that Bitcoin is decentralized. So that's just the beginning of that
argument. I think that you do a fantastic job articulating this, you've been doing it for a decade but what everyone wants to know is price prediction for this year, price prediction for 2030. What do you got for us?
Well for my 2021 prediction is still the same as it was on the last day of last year and that's
Joan are 20,000 for a Bitcoin in 2021. So I'm still holding to that prediction and after, you know, I mean, I'm using this for your having cycle where you see these types of moves and it's kind of fitting into that scenario right now. And following 2022, let's say getting into the 2023 2024 period at the moment, my feeling is that it might not be a great ear. Actually, we might see
See more of one of our historic pullback years that we've all. I'm I've been through three ninety percent, Corrections and Bitcoin, going back to 2011. You know, I've seen that we haven't seen them, you know, those are very, very damaging or, you know, to one's Spirit. But nevertheless for 2021 though, I'm still very, very wildly bullish for 20 21. I think we're now starting to see this cross over from the 200-day moving average. You're starting to see that Washington DC.
- on people that, you know what, Washington's actually powerless against this thing, you know, everyone is hoping. Oh, you know, we're going to Outlaw. We're going to ban Bitcoin and they all went there and they had their meetings and they have their votes when they had their sessions and then Bitcoin, you know, Tick-Tock next block. It doesn't stop. And I think people are scratching their head. Like, wait a minute. You mean, the US government really can't stop this thing. You know, I'm going to buy more. So we're seeing the u.s. kind of fail in and its attempt to stop it and that's
Bullish and I so that's going to offer a lot of price support, the Michael Sailors of the world you know he is he's aren't spilling trillions of dollars worth of cash on the sidelines. You know Michael sailor is you know is got the best pitch. I'll say that he's got the best pitch of anybody which is great because he's got a lot of money and a lot of Bitcoins. So we've got like Ted Williams in the batter's box.
Right now, you know, or Gordie Howe or Wayne Gretzky or whoever you want to use gel, use a Joe Sports analogy because I know he's into sports, but you know, we've got the Babe Ruth of, you know, pitching Bitcoin pictures, you know, there and doing his job and that means a lot of companies all over the world. The Dominoes will fall, it's just like countries to a fall. I think one all we need is one other country to announce Bitcoin, legal tender, and a big way or one.
major company with multi trillion dollars on the assets balance sheet that they're going to go Bitcoin always one more in 2021 and you're going to see a 40 to 50,000 Point Gap dollar Gap, you know in a week
So 20 30, what's the price prediction basically decade from now?
Yeah, again, you know, you get into a different kind of thinking when you look over that period pop because because we're talking about a world where Fiat money, as we know, it is no more, and that's a very, very different world. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's a world where you
Have consensus that's built into the Bitcoin protocol apply to Society at large and countries in the world. That's that's where we're headed. So it means just a completely different world beyond the price. I think we're getting to a point in by 2030. I think people the last thing people will ever talk about when they talk about Bitcoin is the price because they'll just be living inside the protocol so to speak, they'll be
That protocol. The Genius of the incentive model the protocol, will it will bring in our society you know we all have this kind of not to get to metaphysical here but we all live kind of what this common unconscious or combined you know the collective unconscious. That's a completely unexplored area. We know as a human species were all one but we act as if we were different and we're always in contention okay put the perfect consensus protocol
Call into the societal mix of humans and see what happens. And I think we're going to see war and violence completely weeded weeded out of the situation where we're heading to a very loving and peaceful future. That's where we're headed and within 10 years. Potentially. So all the profits from all the ages, going back, Thousand Years, who spoke about potential in these terms. They weren't wrong.
But they never had Bitcoin.
I think that you are now I directionally correct through the end of this year very bullish. I do think there's a point in the future. Who knows? If it's five years or 50 years from now where the US Dollar exchange price doesn't matter anymore and I think one piece that when people hear your kind of monologue will focus on is price. But the idea that this is all done peacefully, right? Basically this asset with no bombs, no bullets, no Soldier.
I know anything is going to be able to bring Financial Security and really frankly close the wealth inequality Gap in a material way because you take away that debasement of the currency there is a philanthropic element to this that I've said before you know will outweigh all flan through be combined because you actually from a first principle standpoint, get at the root cause of what drives the wealth inequality, who drives a lot of the violence exception. I think that's exactly what you're articulating.
Here.
Yeah, if you ask anybody in the anybody anywhere, you know what will give me what price do you assign to the love? You have of your significant other, your wife, your husband, or your family. What what, what price would you give that? They'd be like, that's crazy. You know, it's Priceless. I wouldn't give a price to it. It's beyond price, and people understand that on an individual level with them, their loved ones, their family. Now, apply that globally,
There's no price to it and we could potentially be answering it, you know, the Bitcoin Singularity which is approaching within the next 10 years is a love bomb. Essentially would that unites everybody on that? That base layer of humanity that is love that. We've all been, we all know about it and we all we have it's spoken about through.
Art and through even science. You know science is an expression of love in many ways. You know, I think Copernicus or Galileo or Einstein they loved what they did and the prophet and they changed the way we think. Right on. Well, Einstein introduced an idea that completely changed the way, we Orient ourselves to the universe R Buckminster Fuller or Galileo or Copernicus and the artists like a Picasso or the other artists. They we change the way we see as
Not only an individual but almost doesn't Globe. So now take perfect money. Take the Bitcoin protocol. And in the most fundamental aspect of anyone's daily experience is the interaction. They have using some kind of medium of exchange or store a value. That's how we quantify Our Lives. Once we made the transition from, you know, from from a, just a nomadic tribe out there.
Wandering in around, you know, I saw something very, very interesting pop that according to archaeological studies it was approximately 400,000 years ago when the idea of fire went around the world like fire. So, in other words, the population of the world was all separated, all tribal and then the tribe started the press in on each other and there's a lot of mistrust, they didn't really trust each other, but then that crowding in on each other.
Got to the point where they were kind of like forced to consider the other tribes around and one. And so, the idea that one tribe had, which was using fire constructively using fire to cook, using fire, taming fire caught on and it went Global and so the similarly with Bitcoin, you know, it started off very tribal, you know, they the Geeks the Nerds, the freaks, the cypherpunks with Bitcoin. And now it's getting to the point.
Were it becomes. So obviously utilitarian, so obviously beneficial such a leap of for Humanity that it's undeniable. It's Unstoppable. It's on confiscated belitz, unsensible. And, and so, that's the moment in the threshold where on, you know, you me are in an incredible moment in not only history in terms of the last few hundred years but in the
The in the history of our species. Me, why were we born to witness this? I mean we are seeing something I remember 1969 when man landed on the moon. Yeah, you know that was something that took a hundred thousand years to figure out. And and here we are 20 21 and we're going about to let plant, our flag on monetization of the global unconscious on the base layer of love with Bitcoin. And we're going to have a fucking party.
Look, before I let you go, you have a whole bunch of stuff going on. You got the podcast, you've got the show and then you've got this party coming up. Maybe start in. Reverse order. Where's the party? When is it, how do people get tickets to it? Tell us about that and tell us about the the content,
right? So I've been doing these parties, maximalist parties, I think Bitcoin maximalism or so-called toxic maximalism, gets a bad name.
I think there's a place I'm trying to, like, almost brand toxic maximalism. I got another Max God. I got this merch thing at this from Samson Mao, this toxic maximalist hat, but I think there's a place for it. And so, we've been doing these parties, we didn't want an Austin recently. This next one's in Phoenix, on August 19th, you can get tickets. If you follow me on Twitter, there's always links to the, to the tickets. There's still a few tickets left. So it's, it's like a me.
Up meets like a punk. Punk rock. I mean, it's like, it's a, the bar is open, you know. It's a conference without the, without the conference. It's just the Party part of the conference. So we have like, will reave some fold. It's going to be there talking about fold. We've got other people in the Bitcoin space. We're going to be there, we've got the local Bitcoin crowd is showing up to this, so it's a way to go into town, get all the Bitcoin folks. There have a huge meet up, but add some booze and I do like a 30-minute rage. Where I
Go nuts for 30 minutes which I've been doing for many years and it's developed its own unique art form the rage as an art form. So we've been doing more and more of these and it's called, you know, this is kind of the title of it. I, you know, we go after Ilan because, you know, he's kind of a clown in a lot of ways and he said some nasty things about vet about El Salvador and about node operators. And, you know, we have some fun with it. But anyway, that's coming up on August 19th and
Phoenix tickets are
available, Alright, and then what's the show in RT and the podcast,
right? So the podcast is the orange pill podcast on YouTube that's Max and Stacy and we do two of those a week, sometimes, three awake, the Arty show still going. It's on Artie. You can find it on YouTube. It's been going on for 13 years. We've done over Seventeen hundred episodes three or four years ago, they started to dub that show into Spanish and now it's the
The most watched show on the entire RT network, both English and Spanish, you gets 20 million viewers a week. It gets a lot of times 1 or 2 million views on YouTube. It's as you know, we've been talking about Bitcoin this whole time. So it's, we've had everybody who's ever, you know, the players on bitcoin, we've always had them going back many years. And so that's that's the the Artesia.
And if people want to follow you,
On Twitter for obviously, all of the articulate content that you have there. Where can we send them?
Yes. Well, admittedly a lot of the things I say are doing Twitter, are you know, not they'll qualify as articulate. But nevertheless, my Twitter handle is Max Keiser. Stacy Herbert is Stacy Herbert,
absolute creative Geniuses, both of you. Listen, thank you so much for for taking the time to do this. People absolutely enjoyed it. And I think
that the same message you've been saying for a decade more and more people need to hear it. So, thanks so much for for all the efforts. You and Stacy, both had early on and the work you guys continue to do. We we all just well, it's great to meet John Papa Leon. Well, if you don't follow him, he's going to be really heartbroken. So I'm just gonna follow him.
Prepare to get a thousand new followers,
John. Hi Max. Thank you so much for doing this. Will definitely get in the
future. All right, thanks so much, pop. See ya, I got it.
