The Pomp Letter

To investors,Retail investors have long been thought of as the “dumb money” in financial markets. The hedge funds and large institutions were the sophisticated money. They had the Ivy League degrees, lots of technology at their fingertips, and they were paid millions of dollars per year to find the edge to create massive profits.But multiple data points in recent years suggest individuals on the internet are catching up to the institutions in terms of intelligence and sophistication.Here are some examples — individuals beat institutions to understanding and buying bitcoin, the best performing asset in the last 15 years. Individuals understood the structural imbalance in Game Stop a few years ago and exploited it, while bringing one of the largest hedge funds to their knees. Individuals bought the dip in 2020 from the pandemic and they bought the dip in April of this year thanks to the tariff uncertainty. And individuals bought Tesla and Palantir stock early when most institutions didn’t believe the companies could thrive.Just because retail is getting smarter and driving better results doesn’t mean the institutions are dumb. In fact, the opposite is true. Wall Street is full of incredibly intelligent, hard-working people who are obsessed with finding an edge when allocating capital. But what is also true is that independent investors now have access to more information than ever before. The playing field is becoming more level, which disproportionately helps the little guy.Due to this increased success of independent investors, it has become increasingly important to pay attention to what retail capital flows look like. Yesterday we saw this group of investors trade $4.1 billion in the first 3 hours of trading. This is the largest capital inflow from retail in history.Amit is Investing shows JPMorgan data that reports the two biggest stocks during that time period? Palantir and Tesla. Palantir saw more than $430 million of inflows, while Tesla saw $675 million. Even more interestingly, single stocks were $2.5 billion of the purchases while ETFs comprised $1.5 billion.Simply, retail investors are optimistic and they are deploying capital into the market like their financial lives depend on it. This coincides perfectly with social sentiment exploding higher. Mike Zaccardi shows the Goldman Sachs Social Media Sentiment Index hit its highest level since July 2019.Mike also points out that while retail investors are going long, the P/E ratio of US stocks has returned near the highs of 21.7x. Does that spell danger? Maybe. No one actually knows yet, but the data is overwhelming that retail investors are jumping headfirst into the market.So what is the “smart money” doing during this time? They are caught offsides on this recovery rally. Institutions and hedge funds have the lowest allocation to US equities since May 2023 right now. Stocks have been going up, yet the big pools of capital are not participating at the same rate that independent investors are. Why could that be?An account on X called The Short Bear had an interesting take: “The institutional world relies on a “never be the outlier” model. The name of the game isn’t to outperform but to never underperform the peer group. As long as you are as bad as your neighbor your AUM is safe. As the market recovers and exposure is low, fund managers risk their AUM by not chasing. Also keep in mind they have to create the perception of “managing” so investors feel like they are paying for their management fee.”This is ultimately one of the big differences in how institutions and retail will diverge in their allocation decisions for the coming years. Institutions are managing capital with a focus on not being fired by their clients. Retail is managing capital with a focus on making as much money as possible. Neither strategy is right or wrong — they can both work. But it is important to remember the different motivations from each group.And if you are ignoring retail’s rise, I think that will be a mistake in hindsight. As I shared yesterday, retail investors saw their share of the market hit 36% in April. That is more than 1 out of every 3 dollars coming from independent investor already, which probably will continue to accelerate in the future as well. You love to see the independent little guy getting a seat at the table. Let’s just hope they continue to do well in their investments over the coming years.Have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementREADER NOTE: We launched a new product this weekend to help investors manage their financial lives. The product uses AI models to track your net worth, analyze your portfolio, answer any questions you have about your finances, and make suggestions on how you can improve. You can add public stocks, private investments, crypto assets, cars, houses, investment properties, collectibles, and any other assets you own.You can text, email, or call the CFO too

🚨 New Product Launch: Introducing Silvia, your new personal CFO. We built this product for me and now we are opening it up for everyone else. The product uses AI models to track your net worth, analyze your portfolio, answer any questions you have about your finances, and make suggestions on how you can improve. You can text, email, or call the CFO too which is really cool. The video below has a live demo of the product.Silvia currently has more than $1.1 billion of assets connected to the platform from every major financial institution. Sign up now: https://www.cfosilvia.com/To investors,Volatility is the name of the game in financial markets for the foreseeable future. You will likely struggle if you don’t know how to invest in uncertain and chaotic times. Take the last few weeks as a perfect example.Creative Planning’s Charlie Bilello highlights “the S&P 500 is up over 19% in the last 27 trading days, one of the greatest comebacks in market history.”It hasn’t just been the S&P though. Zerohedge shows the Nasdaq 100 went from oversold to overbought in a single month — insane!Up, down. Up, down. Welcome to the new normal. We live in a world where information can spread like a digital virus infecting the minds of millions within minutes. Fear is contagious, but so is enthusiasm. Once an emotion starts to take over it can be spread on social media in a way financial markets have never seen before.And don’t forget that retail investors are increasingly taking market share in public markets. Adam Kobeissi writes “retail investors’ stock market share hit a record 36% in late April, according to JPMorgan. This is more than TRIPLE the 10-year average of 12%…Retail investors have bought a record $50 billion in equities since April 8th. Retail is stronger than ever.”These retail investors are allocating to markets at the same time they are under attack in other parts of their life. Look at the 30-year mortgage as a good example — the 30-year mortgage rate hit 7.4% this week, which according to Barchart is near its highest level since 2000. The same team shows that “Serious Credit Card Delinquencies (unpaid balances for at least 90 days) just hit their highest level in 14 years.”But it is not just credit card delinquencies that Americans need to worry about. We also see Mortgages, Home Equity Credit Lines, Auto Loans, Credit Cards, and Student Loan delinquencies rising as well.So on one hand we have the average American under pressure in their financial life, but an increasing number of them are looking to financial markets for relief. They are literally trying to use stocks, gold, and bitcoin to increase their net worth so they can keep up with inflation and the ever-expanding wealth inequality gap. Which speaking of bitcoin, the digital currency is up 13% year-to-date, 58% over the last 12 months, and the asset has appreciated more than 10x in the last 5 years. Not bad, right? Well, before you get too excited, remember that bitcoin’s compound annual growth rate has been dropping aggressively. This is not something to worry about, but it is worth paying attention to — Willy Woo said it best when he wrote:“People think BTC is like a magical unicorn that climbs to infinity on moonbeams. Here's the actual CAGR chart. We are well past the 2017 year where we'd see many 100s of percent growth. Now look at 2020, that was the year BTC got institutionalised, corporations and sovereigns started accumulating. Note there was a drop from >100% CAGR to 30-40% CAGR. And it's trending downwards as the network continues to store more capital. BTC is now traded as the newest macro asset in 150 years, it'll continue to absorb capital until it reaches its equilibrium. Given long term monetary expansion is around 5% growth and GDP is 3% growth, I'd say 8% is where BTC CAGR will settle at. Until then, maybe 15-20 years away, enjoy the ride because almost no publicly investable product can match BTC performance long term, even as BTC's CAGR continues to erode.”Volatility will rule the day. Stocks, bitcoin, gold or any other asset can not hide. Investors must get comfortable dealing with uncertainty and chaos, because neither of those are going away. But the real secret of investing is that the best investors seek out volatility. They know this is where opportunity lies. And it looks like we are going to get the opportunity of a lifetime in the coming years — just make sure you don’t miss it because you got nervous with rapid change.Hope you all have a great start to your week. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow. - Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementJordi Visser Talks Bitcoin, Tariffs, Bull Markets, and Artificial IntelligenceJordi Visser is a macro investor with over 30 years of Wall Street experience. He also writes a Substack called “VisserLabs” and puts out investing YouTube videos. In this conversation we evaluate economic data, bitcoin, stocks, inflation, acceleration of AI, and the global economy.Enjoy!Podc

To investors,Humans are full of fear and greed. They get over-excited in the good times and they run in fear during the bad times. This is a story as old as time. You can’t change human nature, therefore you can’t change markets. So the only thing you can do is study history to be prepared for the future.That is why I posted on X on April 6th two words: Study reflexivity.Reflexivity is one of the core concepts embraced by every great investor I know.“Reflexivity can lead to self-reinforcing cycles where positive market sentiment or expectations cause prices to rise, attracting more buyers and further driving up prices. Conversely, negative sentiment or pessimism can lead to price declines, further discouraging buyers and intensifying the downward trend.”This is exactly what we just lived through. Investors became fearful, so they started selling assets. As they sold assets, the fear became contagious and more people started predicting doom and gloom, which led to more selling of assets. But nothing was fundamentally changed about the market or the underlying financial assets. As soon as people perceived good news in the market, the exact opposite played out. Optimism and enthusiasm returned, which led to significant buying, which drove stock and crypto prices higher. What a beautiful thing to watch as a student of investing.Creative Planning’s Charlie Bilello writes “After a 22% rally from the April 7 lows, the S&P 500 is now up on the year. One of the biggest short-term comebacks in market history.”This is interesting to see because it essentially proves the old adage of buy when everyone is scared and sell when everyone is excited. Following the crowd can be a very dangerous strategy. Charlie points this out further by reminding everyone that the probability of a recession hit the highest in history back in 2023, yet we never got the recession that everyone believed was coming.Investing is hard. You are trying to predict what will happen in a complex system that changes dynamically day-to-day. The difficulty involved, plus the objective scoreboard, is what attracts so many smart, hard-working people. They want to capture the economic incentive for figuring out the puzzle. But obviously most people are not good at a difficult game. So be very careful listening to the consensus view. I explained yesterday how I knew the crowd was wrong earlier this year, along what gave me confidence to predict stocks would recover in a breathtaking fashion. The simple idea is that economists were all in agreement about economic pain coming. I have a simple framework — every time economists 100% agree on something, I take the other side. The reason is that economists almost never agree on things, so when they do it generally means that dissent has been outlawed. If dissent is outlawed, then you know the thing being outlawed is probably true.You shouldn’t be a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. But it does help to have healthy skepticism of academics when discussing markets. They don’t have true skin-in-the-game, so their feedback loop is less than ideal. Market participants on the other hand have a punishment for being wrong. Plenty of people lost money so far this year, but many people were making money as well. Winners and losers in a meritocracy. There is nothing better than capitalism.And now we have stocks in a bull market and bitcoin inching closer to the previous all-time high. I would expect asset prices to continue to do very well through the end of 2025. Sit back and enjoy the positives of reflexivity. We will visit fear and doomsday predicting again at some point in the future, but thankfully that is behind us for awhile.Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementIs Wall Street Surrendering To Bitcoin?Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin, the economy, why everyone screaming about tariffs was wrong, what the signals were, China, UK, trade deals, stock market, and future outlook.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Xapo Bank: Fully licensed bank that integrates traditional finance and Bitcoin. Earn up to 3.9% interest in BTC. Spend globally with a debit card that gives 1% cashback in BTC. 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To investors,There has been a wave of publicly-listed crypto companies in Canada trying to crossover into the United States. The idea is that America has the strongest, most liquid capital markets in the world. If you can get listed on the Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange then you appeal to a wider investor base.The problem for the last few years was the prior administration’s SEC was not willing to approve these companies to cross into the US market. That is all about to change though. Galaxy Digital has previously announced they will start trading on the Nasdaq on May 16th, so everyone has been excited about the inflow of these crypto companies to America.But Galaxy is not going to be the first to crossover. DeFi Technologies, a company that I wrote to this group about in April 2024 and has since increased in share price by almost 800%, has been approved by the SEC and is going to start trading on the Nasdaq today. DeFi Technologies ($DEFT) is a crypto holding company that owns Valour (ETP asset manager with ~ 60 ETPs) and a number of other interesting assets, along with a balance sheet that was valued at $44.7M across cash, stablecoins, and digital assets as of April 30th.This is a VERY BIG milestone for a company that was trading at $0.02 per share in January 2020 and saw its stock decline from $3.17 back down to $0.06 in 2022 and 2023. The only way to survive those types of drawdowns, and be fortunate enough to come roaring back, is to execute relentlessly and build an attractive business. That is exactly what the DeFi Technologies team has done over the last few years. Here are the 2024 full year financials published by the company (link to announcement):* Adjusted revenues: $144.8 million US* Adjusted net income: $84 million US* Adjusted EBITDA: $80.3 million USBased on Friday’s closing share price, DeFi is now valued at just over $1.3 billion. This means the business is trading at less than 10x their 2024 adjusted revenues. Given the growth they have experienced, there is a strong argument the company is still undervalued.It seems like many other investors agree. According to the CBOE Canada website, DeFi Technologies was the most popular stock on the entire exchange by volume as of Friday.Now, to be clear, I am biased here — I have been an advisor to the company for awhile and I sold a company I started (Reflexivity Research) to DeFi Technologies in January 2024. As part of that deal, my partners and I took 100% of the purchase price in stock because we believed the company was significantly mispriced in the market. Zero cash, all stock. You only do that as an entrepreneur if you have strong conviction on something. I love seeing this progress for the company as a shareholder.So today should be an interesting development in the lifecycle of this business. DeFi Technologies ($DEFT) is graduating from the Canadian exchange into the US capital markets. The US-China trade deal progress has markets exuberant. There seems to be a persistent tailwind to bitcoin and crypto right now. And DeFi is going to break the seal on Canadian companies crossing over. There will be many more, but DeFi being the first to my knowledge under this administration signals a sea change underway. US capital markets are now open to crypto companies from around the world. That incentive will be too strong for companies to resist, so expect these crossovers to be a recurring theme in the coming months. Good luck to the DeFi Technologies ($DEFT) team today. Hope you all have a great start to your week. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementNote: I have been fairly public about my lessons learned during the 2021 bull market and the subsequent 2022 bear market. No one likes to hold assets through a big drawdown, so I am planning to sell many of my liquid investments outside of bitcoin at some point in 2025 (first rule of bitcoin: never sell your bitcoin!). I don’t know when, how, or why at the moment, but I want to give everyone fair warning about my current thought process.Jordi Visser Says Bitcoin’s Price May Be Setting Up For A Short SqueezeJordi Visser is a macro investor with over 30 years of Wall Street experience. He also writes a Substack called “VisserLabs” and puts out investing YouTube videos. In this conversation we discuss a potential bitcoin short squeeze, current macro environment, public vs private markets, trade deals, inflation, AI, and where he sees opportunity.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Xapo Bank: Fully licensed bank that integrates traditional finance and Bitcoin. Earn up to 3.9% interest in BTC. Spend globally with a debit card that gives 1% cashback in BTC. 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To investors,There has been fear and maximum negativity dominating financial markets in the last few months. All the pessimists are wrong though. I believe things are about to get very crazy in markets.The sell-off in stocks, bitcoin, and other assets earlier this year was based on uncertainty. As we get clarity on the economic policies of this administration, we should expect asset prices to aggressively recover. But the thing is that asset prices have already recovered without total clarity — the S&P 500 is only down 4% year-to-date, while bitcoin and gold are both positive. Given this recovery has happened without a single trade deal announced or the Fed cutting interest rates suggests we should see new all-time highs in various asset prices before the end of 2025. Why? Because the trade deals and rate cuts are coming.The President announced this morning that his administration will be revealing a comprehensive trade deal with the UK later today. Although it is only the first deal, the market will likely be excited about progress and momentum. They want to know that the President and his team are going to be able to execute these trade deals. Announced deals brings certainty and certainty brings higher asset prices. You can see this clearly in the bitcoin price today — the digital currency is knocking on the door of $100,000 per coin again. This is after the asset traded down to about $76,000 just a month ago. The rapid recovery in bitcoin and other assets have also brought enthusiasm back into the market. Green candles have a way of putting everyone in a good mood. So my expectation is there will be more trade deals announced throughout the summer. How many? I don’t know. How robust or comprehensive will they be? I don’t know that either. But I don’t think it matters much. The market doesn’t care about the specifics of the deals nearly as much as it cares about the deals signifying the disappearance of uncertainty. Which brings me to my next point — the Federal Reserve will have to cut interest rates in the coming months. Inflation remains at depressed levels according to alternative, real-time inflation metrics. These alternative readings usually show up in the government’s data a few months later, so we should see the falling inflation numbers continue through the summer as well. As inflation continues to prove less of a problem, the Federal Reserve will be pushed to lower the interest rate to ensure that cheaper capital can come into the market. If the central bank doesn’t do it, there is a risk of an economic slowdown. No one wants an economic slowdown. In fact, the President will likely go hard at tax cuts and deregulation to spur economic growth. The Fed will cut rates to pursue the same goal. And, of course, whether we like it or not, many politicians are going to do their best to print money and stuff it in every corner of the economy. Thankfully, this administration seems to be more focused on budget issues than previous administrations, but that doesn’t mean the national debt won’t continue to go higher. So if you think about where we are — we have asset prices in a neutral to positive position. This all happened without policy clarity, announced trade deals, or interest rate cuts. If we get those three things in the coming months, asset prices will push higher and investors will have amnesia about their ridiculous freak-out just a few weeks ago. The market is a voting machine in the short-term and a weighing machine in the long-term. Nothing has structurally changed about the US economy. It was all media-induced fear that pervasively spread like a mental virus through the investment community. Some people were immune to the distraction, while others fell ill when they came in contact with it.You can’t change the past. However, you can position yourself to benefit from what is coming on the horizon. The good times are going to roll again. We may party like it is 2021 again. Just make sure you apply whatever lessons you learned last time, so you don’t make any mistake twice. That is what learning is about. That is why most of us are drawn to the intellectual challenge of investing. And we should thank the market gods for giving us another chance at such an attractive setup.Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital Management🚨 READER NOTE: Polina Pompliano published an in-depth profile of Ryan Serhant, the entrepreneur using his social media following to build a multi-billion dollar real estate juggernaut. She followed him around for a day, spoke to more than 20 people in his orbit, and got his competitors to go on the record with their true feelings about Ryan. Lastly, my favorite part is when Ryan tells Polina that he is driven by revenge against the gatekeepers who tried to keep him out of the industry. You can read the full piece here.Anthony Scaramucci Explains Bitcoin In Light Of The Current AdministrationAnthony S

To investors,Gold has been dominating Bitcoin’s performance this year. The precious metal is up 27%, while bitcoin is only up 4% year-to-date.But there is something fascinating happening — investors are pouring capital into the bitcoin ETFs at an unprecedented rate. Split Capital points out that inflows for BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF have now surpassed inflows this year for GLD, the most popular gold ETF.Bitwise’s Hunter Horsely said it well when he tweeted “I don’t know if people appreciate how significant this is. Gold is having its moment. And despite that, investors are buying more Bitcoin than gold. Now imagine when it’s flipped.”Think of how crazy this situation is. Investors are not chasing the better performing store of value in 2025, but rather they are looking forward to position themselves to benefit from what is about to happen.So what do these investors see?Global liquidity is just ramping up. Take China as one example — ZeroHedge writes “China's central bank cuts key rates [and] injects 1 trillion yuan 3 hours after agreeing to trade talks to prop up economy and give communist party ammo for negotiations.”Remember, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is meeting with China this weekend in Switzerland to start trade negotiations.Wait, what?! China is throwing every monetary stimulus tool they have at their economy. Maybe those 145% tariffs are extracting more pain than the media wants you to believe. But if China is stimulating, you can bet that most central banks will start doing the same over the coming 6-12 months. Charles Edwards asks “Are we entering the next big wave of global fiat expansion?”No one can predict the future, Charles, but it sure looks like we are about to get a rush of cheap capital into the market. And asset prices, especially stocks, bitcoin, and gold, have never seen cheap capital they didn’t like. This brings me to the Federal Reserve. The market believes the Fed will hold rates constant right now. I think this is a major policy mistake. The central bank has been behind the curve for years and right now is no different. We are seeing an economic slowdown because of the tariffs, which can be easily seen by inflation crashing, so the stimulus from a rate cut would help spur economic growth. Regardless of whether the Fed decides to make the move today or over the summer, the setup is obvious — the Fed and other central banks around the world have to return to lower interest rates.Bitcoin is the single biggest beneficiary from global liquidity and cheap capital. As we enter another round of quantitative easing, bitcoin should push much higher. Which makes sense when you remember investors are pouring more capital into Blackrock’s bitcoin ETF than the largest gold ETF. Investors are forward-looking. They are positioning themselves for what is going to happen. And capital flows are telling us to brace for asymmetry to the upside. Let’s see what happens. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementWhy Isn’t Bitcoin At $150,000 If Everyone Is Buying?Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin, what you need to know about the economy, jobs, Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway, and future market outlook.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets – Bitcoin backed loans so you can buy more Bitcoin with your Bitcoin or earn 8% lending cash to HELOC providers! Learn more about Figure Markets and their Crypto Backed Loans!* Maple Finance - Maple enables BTC holders to earn native BTC yield. Learn more at Maple.Finance!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. 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To investors,Growing up most of us were taught to never talk about politics at work, but that is no longer possible — politics and investing is so intertwined that you have to evaluate the totality of the situation. If you ignore one or the other, you will end up uninformed.Let me give you a few examples.First, we can look at tariffs. There is new data out suggesting a massive shift in the attitude of Americans towards free trade. It appears that liberals and moderates significantly changed their position as President Trump and his administration spoke more about tariffs and related economic policies.It is not every day that you see a chart where one side of the political aisle doubles the percentage of people who believe in an idea right after an election. But we are not living through some random time. We are living through a re-ordering of the global monetary order and that calls for significant changes in various parts of our lives.Another area where you can see the data telling us a story worth paying attention to is around who supports the economic policies of this administration. Our friends at Geiger Capital say this is the most important thing to understand about American politics today:Every category of men or women, except for single women, are neutral to positive on the President. Single women are vehemently opposed to him and have a negative 26% approval of him.Now why is this political talk important for investors? Most of us don’t want to sit around thinking about politics all day, so why should we care about this data?Simply, the politics of the conversation lead to a public narrative that is highly detached from reality. Take the S&P 500 as a great example — the index is down less than 4% to start the year.And the same index is up more than 11% in the last month. So all you had to do was buy the dip earlier this year and you are doing great. It ain’t rocket science, folks.Of course, the story is even better when you look at gold or bitcoin. Bitcoin is positive on the year and up nearly 50% over the last 12 months. Gold is up 26% year-to-date and up 45% in the last year.These are not numbers you see from financial assets in Great Depressions or massive recessions. Instead, these are numbers you see from assets when we are in the normal ebb-and-flow of financial markets. They go up and down in the short term, but long term asset prices go up and to the right. Don’t take my word for it though — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently said “the entirety of our economic history can be distilled in just five words: Up and to the right.”Compare that to the mainstream media this morning — Bloomberg’s top 5 headlines on their website are all some version of fear porn. US stock futures drop, The cost of Trump’s Trade War, Wreaking Havoc on Holiday Shopping. This is all insane. The economy is creating jobs. People are spending money. Stocks are going back up aggressively. And significant business transactions are being done, including Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square investing $900 million in Howard Hughes Holdings, OpenAI buying Windsurf for $3 billion, and Google buying Wiz for tens of billions of dollars.This brings me back to where we started. Financial markets are based on math. Prices go up when there are more buyers than sellers. Prices go down when there are more sellers than buyers. But the conversation around financial markets is no longer based on logic and reality, instead it is rooted in politics. If you like the current administration you see a bright future ahead. If you don’t like the administration, you see pain and destruction on the horizon. The truth is probably somewhere in-between. These economic policies will lead to some positive impact and other things will be negatively affected. The world is not binary, especially with the complex economic machine operating globally. So make sure you are paying attention to what is happening. Everyone was talking about the world becoming financialized in the last decade, but I would argue the world also became politicized. And now politics and finance are married for the long-run, so I don’t see us going back to the world we once knew.Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementDarius Dale Explains Why Bitcoin & Stocks Look Better Than You ThinkDarius Dale is the founder & CEO of 42Macro. In this conversation we discuss why the economy is more resilient than most think, stock market, gold, bitcoin, DOGE, government spending, tax cuts, and his future outlook.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets – Bitcoin backed loans so you can buy more Bitcoin with your Bitcoin or earn 8% lending cash to HELOC providers! Learn more about Figure Markets and their Crypto Backed Loans!* Maple Finance - Maple enables BTC holders to earn native BTC yield. Learn more at Maple.Finance!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bi

To investors,Warren Buffett held his annual conference this year and it did not disappoint. The event has become the Woodstock of Capitalism. More than 40,000 Buffett disciplines make the trip to Omaha as if they are visiting Mecca to hear from their prophet. There are parties, there are side events, and there is a lot of worshiping of one of the greatest investors of our lifetime.And this year was extra special because Warren Buffett announced his retirement as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, which should happen later this year. He will become Chairman of the company and promises he will still go to the office every day. The reason there is so much attention on Buffett’s annual meeting is because of his stellar performance over the years. Adam Kobeissi points out:“Since 1964, Berkshire Hathaway has returned over 5,500,000%. That's 5.5 million percent. A $10,000 investment in 1964 would be worth $550 million today. This compares to a ~39,000% return in the S&P 500. Buffett has outperformed the S&P 500 by over 140 times.”Berkshire Hathaway’s compound annual growth rate is approximately 20% since 1965 when Buffett took over — this is ridiculous performance compared to the S&P’s compound annual growth rate of about 10% during the same timeframe. Maybe the most impressive part of this performance is that Berkshire Hathaway has achieved this track record while holding an insane amount of cash on their balance sheet. As of March 31st, the cash pile now stands at $347 billion.It is hard enough to drive outperformance in the market. But imagine doing it while holding hundreds of billions of dollars in cash — this makes the track record even more impressive.So what did Buffett have to say during this year’s meeting? What does the GOAT of investing have on his mind?First, Buffett and I agree that the recent market volatility is a nothing burger. All the fear-mongers and doomsday predictors look ridiculous. Buffett said “What has happened in the last 45 days, 100 days, whatever you want to pick up, whatever this period has been, it's really nothing.”Then Warren Buffett went on a heater and laid out the perfect argument for bitcoin:Buffett says he is worried about fiscal policy. He says governments devalue currencies at rates that are breathtaking. Buffett even calls out the printing of money as a major cause for concern.Now everyone knows that he doesn’t like bitcoin. He even called it rat poison. But at least we have confirmation that the Oracle of Omaha understands the value proposition better than people thought.So what do I think of Warren Buffett, one of the greatest investors of our generation, stepping down? I think people underestimate how impactful the passing of Charlie Munger likely was to this decision. If you work with someone for over 50 years, they become a friend and confidant. I can’t imagine it is the same to go to work every day without that person there. It isn’t as fun anymore. I doubt Buffett is stepping down exclusively because Munger passed, but it is hard to argue that the absence of Munger had no effect. Additionally, there is one more argument that no one wants to say — maybe Buffett is stepping down because he wants to claim victory while he can. The more than $300 billion on the balance sheet suggests Warren can’t find good enough deals, or large enough deals, to do anymore. You can’t buy companies worth $1 billion - $10 billion because it will have no impact. I won’t be inflammatory and argue that Buffett has lost his touch, especially given Berkshire hit a new all-time high last week, but I don’t think it is crazy to argue Buffett could be stepping down because he doesn’t know what else to do with the money. So regardless of whether you like Warren Buffett or not, the man has an incredible investing track record. He is stepping away as one of the best to ever do it. There will be plenty of people vying to replace him on the Mount Rushmore of current investors, but my bet is the next Warren Buffett will look nothing like the current one.Hope you all have a great start to your week. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementJordi Visser on Why Bitcoin Could Double In Price This YearJordi Visser is a macro investor with over 30 years of Wall Street experience. He also writes a Substack called “VisserLabs” and puts out investing YouTube videos. In this conversation we discuss what is happening in the economy, monetary global policy, bitcoin, gold, financial assets, and handicapping the odds that bitcoin will win.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets – Bitcoin backed loans so you can buy more Bitcoin with your Bitcoin or earn 8% lending cash to HELOC providers! Learn more about Figure Markets and their Crypto Backed Loans!* Maple Finance - Maple enables BTC holders to earn native BTC yield. Learn more at Maple.Finance!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.* Simple Mining offers

To investors,Bitcoin is up over the last 5 days, while gold has been falling. This outperformance is a departure from the trend year-to-date where gold has been significantly outperforming bitcoin.Gold is up more than 20% since January 1st and bitcoin is only up 3%. As I continue to say, both assets embody the sound money principles that investors are seeking during times of uncertainty.But there is one key data point to understand to get an idea of what happens next — bitcoin usually lags moves in gold by about 100 days. Jack Green put together this great chart to show how the relationship worked in the last two years.The trend holds if you go back for the last decade as well. David Foley shows that with this graphic.This is important because gold has been appreciating aggressively while bitcoin lagged behind. This is actually normal and not something to be concerned about. Instead, you should think of bitcoin as a coiled spring.The harder that gold runs without bitcoin, the more violent the move in bitcoin should be 3-4 months later. A big reason for this is that bitcoin is much more sensitive to global liquidity than gold. The digital version of sound money is always going to be the better performer because of the smaller market cap and larger addressable investor base that has yet to allocate to the asset.So gold has had a great run, but I believe it is bitcoin’s turn to join the party. The world is adopting a new monetary asset at a time the global monetary order is being restructured. You couldn’t draw up a better script for the rise of bitcoin.Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone on Monday.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementThe CIA Deputy Director Talks China, Technology, Bitcoin, and CartelsMichael Ellis is the Deputy Director of the CIA.In this conversation we talk about the relationship between US and China, Taiwan, how they evaluate technology and AI, bitcoin, cartels, and what Micheal pays attention to on a daily basis.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets – Bitcoin backed loans so you can buy more Bitcoin with your Bitcoin or earn 8% lending cash to HELOC providers! Learn more about Figure Markets and their Crypto Backed Loans!* Maple Finance - Maple enables BTC holders to earn native BTC yield. Learn more at Maple.Finance!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit Simple Mining here.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pomp.substack.com/subscribe

To investors,Liberation Day was about one month ago. It feels like years ago at this point. But the Declaration of Economic Independence brought market uncertainty, chaos, fear, and a hell of a lot of screeching from the cheap seats about how the economy was going to be destroyed.All that noise ended up being just that — noise.The S&P 500 is essentially flat for the month of April and the Nasdaq 100 is up more than 1% in the same timeframe. And to think there are still people talking about the Great Depression. Ridiculous! It is insane how disconnected the conversation has gotten from reality.As I have continued to say, the fear-mongering and doomsday predicting is going to look ridiculous in hindsight. You may ask why I am confident in that prediction and the answer is really simple — markets are forward-looking. Investors understand the uncertainty around tariffs. There is no secret here. Everyone is talking about it. Investors know consumers are slowing their spending, while companies are making business decisions that will contribute to slower growth in the short-term. That is normal and well understood at this point.But investors also realize there is more clarity around tariffs today than there was a month ago. These capital allocators understand trade deals are on the way, along with hearing the administration promise lower tariff rates than originally announced. That clarity, and a more rational approach to the tariff rates, is giving investors confidence to put capital into the market. They know the ride could still be a little bumpy, but they have now line-of-sight to the other side of the volatility.Add in the fact that the Fed will likely cut interest rates in the coming months and it is hard to be bearish over the medium-to-long term. And if you are a bull over the medium-to-long term, than you want to buy assets when they are down year-to-date. But not every asset is down year-to-date. Both gold and bitcoin are up since January 1st, which is largely attributed to investor desire to find safety from uncertainty in sound money principles. The S&P 500 is up 12% in the last year and the Nasdaq is up 14% in those 12 months as well.So every capital allocator has a choice moving forward — you can buy into the insane predictions of a depression or you can remember that the United States of America is the greatest economy ever constructed, and our economy is built on the shoulders of the most technologically advanced, innovative companies in the history of the world.I don’t know how it became cool to be a pessimist. That strategy has never worked out over the long-run, so be a student of history and remember that reflexivity still rules the day. The faster stocks fall, the faster they can recover. And I still believe it is more likely than not that bitcoin, gold, and US stocks hit new all-time highs by the end of the year.Plenty of people disagree with that assessment, and that disagreement is important, because that is how markets are created. One side will win and one side will lose. Risk is the name of the game. So if you have an opinion on what is going to happen, put your money where your mouth is. Take a side and win or lose in the market.There is nothing better than capitalism. I hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementThe CIA Deputy Director Talks China, Technology, Bitcoin, and CartelsMichael Ellis is the Deputy Director of the CIA. In this conversation we talk about the relationship between US and China, Taiwan, how they evaluate technology and AI, bitcoin, cartels, and what Micheal pays attention to on a daily basis.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets – Bitcoin backed loans so you can buy more Bitcoin with your Bitcoin or earn 8% lending cash to HELOC providers! Learn more about Figure Markets and their Crypto Backed Loans!* Maple Finance - Maple enables BTC holders to earn native BTC yield. Learn more at Maple.Finance!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit Simple Mining here.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big name

Today’s letter is brought to you by Consensus!Consensus is Crypto’s Most Influential Event20,000 of the world’s most ambitious builders and boldest investors are coming to Consensus to make connections and shape the future of the digital economy in Toronto this May 14-16, 2025.Here’s a glimpse at what’s ahead:* New! Bitcoin & Mining Summit: Discover Bitcoin’s potential with insights on energy, hardware, L2s, ETFs, and more* World-Class Content: Gain and grow with firsthand advice from 400 expert speakers on Web3, Crypto, and AI* Business & Dealmaking: Shake hands and set meetings onsite with high-caliber VCs, institutions, startups, and enterprisesWith over ten years of seeing tens of thousands of attendees, Consensus remains your best bet for market-moving intel, meaningful connections, and career-defining deals. You can’t afford to miss it.To investors,Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on a heater this weekend. First, he called out the media for their lopsided coverage of recent volatility in financial markets. Bessent said in an interview with ABC:"There was a story ten days ago that said this is the worst April for the stock market since the Great Depression. Ten days later, the Nasdaq is now up on the month of April, and I haven't seen a story that says 'stock market has biggest bounce back ever.'"Regardless of whether you like the current administration or not, you have to acknowledge the coverage has been biased to say the least. Most investors are not looking to inject their politics into their portfolio. They want to understand the facts of the current situation, combined with the probability of what is going to happen in the future, so they can correctly position themselves to profit. Bessent wasn’t done there though. He went on to explain the barbell economy that makes of up the United States of America:“The U.S. has a barbell economy. We have a financial system and tech sector that's the envy of the world. On the other side, we're a natural resource economy led by energy. In between is where working class Americans have lost out — and we want to fix that.”By reiterating his commitment to the working class, Bessent is clearly articulating exactly what the goal of this administration’s economic policies are. Frankly, the people who are critiquing the policies tend to agree on the admirable goal, yet they disagree on the path to achieve these goals.Take Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC and NY Times — he was on the All-In podcast recently and most people were surprised to hear Sorkin and David Sacks agree on the high-level strategic goals. Take a listen:It is obvious that we need more conversations like this in America — smart, successful people having open dialogue about current events. Some of the people agree some of the time. Other people disagree some of the time. But we are all more similar than different, so it is powerful for these types of podcast episodes to be recorded and published — kudos to everyone involved in this one.Let’s go back to something David Sacks said in that clip though:“The fact that you’re saying that you don’t disagree with where Trump is trying to get to, but it’s mostly just tactical, is a huge shift in the conversation.”So what exactly is the goal? Well, we got more clarity on that this weekend — President Trump said multiple times he wants to cut taxes for a large portion of American citizens. He started the weekend by posting it on Truth Social:Then he followed that up with an interview yesterday where he said “We're gonna cut taxes for the people of this country. It'll take a little while... it's possible we'll do a complete tax cut. I think the tariffs will be enough to cut all of the income tax.”As expected, the supporters of the administration think massive tax cuts are right around the corner. The critics believe Trump is blowing smoke and won’t be able to cut taxes at all. The truth is somewhere in-between in my opinion. Tax cuts will probably happen, but they will take longer than expected and they won’t be complete elimination of federal income tax.It won’t matter though — millions of Americans who make $200,000 or less would welcome a lower tax rate. I don’t blame them. And lower taxes means more money in people’s pocket, which leads to more consumption and economic growth. Again, there is plenty of disagreement on the tactical decisions, but almost every person I know thinks it would be powerful to cut taxes for majority of Americans without losing government revenue.If you remember, the state of Mississippi announced back in March they would be eliminating the state income tax. That is just one example in recent history. The Governor said at the time “our people should be awarded for hard work, not punished.”You are not going to find many people who disagree with that sentiment. So this brings me to the market reaction from the administration’s economic policies — everyone thinks financial assets have been suffering, but the exact opposite is true. Since t

Today’s letter is brought to you by Consensus!Consensus is Crypto’s Most Influential Event20,000 of the world’s most ambitious builders and boldest investors are coming to Consensus to make connections and shape the future of the digital economy in Toronto this May 14-16, 2025.Here’s a glimpse at what’s ahead:* New! Bitcoin & Mining Summit: Discover Bitcoin’s potential with insights on energy, hardware, L2s, ETFs, and more* World-Class Content: Gain and grow with firsthand advice from 400 expert speakers on Web3, Crypto, and AI* Business & Dealmaking: Shake hands and set meetings onsite with high-caliber VCs, institutions, startups, and enterprisesWith over ten years of seeing tens of thousands of attendees, Consensus remains your best bet for market-moving intel, meaningful connections, and career-defining deals. You can’t afford to miss it.To investors,I sat down with Chris Camillo yesterday to discuss his big investment idea for the next decade. Chris is famous from the Unknown Market Wizards book as one of the best traders you have never heard of. His famous strategy is now coined “social arbitrage” and it is defined as an investment strategy that involves analyzing social media trends and sentiment to identify and capitalize on market inefficiencies.But Chris is making a much bigger bet these days — humanoid robots.He believes this is the largest total addressable market opportunity in his lifetime. He sees a future where tens of billions of humanoids are roaming the earth helping humans do a variety of tasks. This technology revolution could add more than $10 trillion to Tesla’s market cap, along with create multi-trillion dollar winners in Figure AI, Apptronik, and others.This conversation was fascinating. I have been going deep down the humanoid rabbit hole in the last few weeks. It seems to be the largest investment opportunity since bitcoin. I would argue that humanoids will probably be an even bigger market cap than bitcoin.You can watch my interview with Chris on YouTube or watch the interview on X by clicking here.I will share more as I learn about the market, the players, and the opportunity. Hope you all have a great day.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementHamilton Lane CEO Explains Why They Are Tokenizing Many Of Their FundsErik Hirsch is the Co-Chief Executive Officer at Hamilton Lane. In this conversation we talk about global uncertainty, bitcoin, gold, investing strategies, tokenization, and why they are putting so much effort and time into it.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets — Trade, borrow, and earn on your crypto with full transparency. The future of finance isn’t TradFi or DeFi—it’s both. Learn more about Figure Markets!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit Simple Mining here.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pomp.substack.com/subscribe

To investors,The last few weeks in financial markets have been a roller coaster. Fear is running wild and investors are worried there is no end in sight to the recent market drawdown. I come bearing good news though.Fidelity’s Jurrien Timmer writes “Statistically speaking the further the market falls the more likely it is to recover. Yes, some 20% declines become 50% “super bears,” but more often than not the market has historically started to find its footing at -20%, as it appears to have done last week.”This doesn’t mean the market is done declining, but the historical data suggests the odds are in our favor. That is better than nothing.Raoul Pal shared the bitcoin price overlaid with M2 global liquidity at the end of last week. You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to realize we are likely close to, or have already seen, the bottom of this drawdown. If we have already bottomed, the question becomes “how will stocks, gold, and bitcoin perform going forward?” Sam Callahan created an updated chart on various asset’s performance after recent economic events.As you can see in the chart, bitcoin has almost always outperformed stocks and gold coming out of the major economic events over the last 5 years, including the US-Iran escalation in 2020, the pandemic, Russia invading Ukraine, and the regional banking crisis in 2023. Again, there is no guarantee bitcoin will outperform this time, but the odds are in our favor.Don’t take my word for it though. Cole Walmsley reminds us that bitcoin remains one of the most attractive financial assets in the world to anyone who can avoid worry in the short-term. Cole writes “This is the most significant chart in financial markets. It's Bitcoin - measured with a 200 week moving average (aka 4 years at a time). Zoom out, and the truth becomes crystal clear: Bitcoin has never lost purchasing power. What does this hint at? Bitcoin is the most reliable savings technology on Earth.”So what is going to happen in the short-term? I have no idea. It appears the odds are in our favor that financial markets have bottomed and bitcoin will likely outperform other assets coming out of the recovery. But that may not be right. No one can predict the future.But you can find great comfort in bitcoin’s 200 week moving average — it continues to aggressively appreciate at an attractive rate. As I have discussed many times before, bitcoin is the new benchmark rate for young people. If you can’t beat it, you have to buy it.I don’t make the rules. And if you think you are smarter than bitcoin, I wish you the best of luck out there.Hope everyone has a great start to their week. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementJordi Visser Explains Whether He Thinks Bitcoin Will Hit All-Time High In 2025Jordi Visser is a macro investor with over 30 years of Wall Street experience. He also writes a Substack called “VisserLabs” and puts out investing YouTube videos. In this conversation we discuss what is happening in the market, world reserve currency outlook, how tariffs could impact markets, AI, machine learning, stock market, small businesses, and what a bitcoin future could look like.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets — Trade, borrow, and earn on your crypto with full transparency. The future of finance isn’t TradFi or DeFi—it’s both. Learn more about Figure Markets!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit Simple Mining here.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pomp.substack.com/subscribe

To investors,The Financial Times reported this morning that Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, has been advising numerous countries and sovereign wealth funds on crypto policy and establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve. It makes sense that countries would reach out to industry players to ensure they have informed views on policy. This happens in every industry and in most countries. But the part of today’s article that caught my attention is that so many nation states are considering a strategic bitcoin reserve. This is the game theory that bitcoiners have been talking about for decades. Once one large nation starts to acquire bitcoin, all countries are incentivized to compete to acquire bitcoin. This graphic perfectly explains the dilemma countries face now:A strategic bitcoin reserve was a cute idea when El Salvador or Bhutan were doing it. Those countries could be easily ignored by the mainstream media and larger countries (although I wouldn’t be so fast to discount them!). But it is not possible to ignore the United States of America — the greatest economy ever constructed in human history.If America says bitcoin is strategically important, then other countries will start seeing the asset that way as well. And it sounds like the Financial Times is reporting this theory is being supported by action right now across the globe.This week we also saw another interesting development out of Panama City. Mayer Mizrachi Matalon shared with me that the “Panama City council has just voted in favor of becoming the first public institution of government to accept payments in Crypto. Citizens will now be able to pay taxes, fees, tickets and permits entirely in crypto starting with BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT.”This is noteworthy because we are watching countries embrace bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in a multitude of ways — some are buying and holding, some are allowing crypto payments, some are mining, and others are probably doing things that they haven’t revealed yet. While it may be tempting for bitcoiners to yell “I told you so!,” I think it is much more important that we collectively keep our foot on the gas. There is more educating that needs to be done. There is more progress that needs to be made. Stay focused on the inputs to the process. The price will take care of itself. Hope you all have a great day. I will talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementDC Power Broker Explains What Government Is Doing With BitcoinDavid McIntosh is the President of “The Club For Growth” and the Co-Founder of The Federalist Society. In this conversation we talk about bitcoin, stablecoins, what is going on inside the US government, taxes DOGE, tariffs, and much more.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets — Trade, borrow, and earn on your crypto with full transparency.. The future of finance isn’t TradFi or DeFi—it’s both. Learn more about Figure Markets or click here to claim your $50!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit Simple Mining here.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pomp.substack.com/subscribe

To investors,There are more than 37 million crypto tokens in existence today. That number blew my mind when I saw it recently. Most of these tokens are obviously inactive or not viable, but the fact that so many tokens have been created over the last 15 years tells a broader story — there is intense competition for attention and capital in the crypto industry.This increasing competition makes it even more impressive that bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency asset created, has continued to be the largest and most liquid asset in the market. Bitcoin Magazine pointed out this morning that bitcoin’s market cap dominance recently hit a new 4-year high.Pretty incredible, right? The story is even crazier when you look at bitcoin compared to Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency. Benjamin Cowen shows the bitcoin/ethereum pair has been down only for years.Parker Lewis points out that ethereum is down 61% against bitcoin in the last year.There are many theories as to why bitcoin continues to hold this dominance. One argument is a tech argument — bitcoin has perfect product-market fit, which is very hard to reverse once the right product has momentum. Another argument is a financial one — things in motion tend to stay in motion. Some will argue from a psychology perspective — bitcoin’s brand is the most well-known, which means that mindshare turns into capital flows. But my favorite argument, mainly because I think it is the most true, comes from a common sense perspective. Fred Kruger tweeted this morning a great articulation of this idea:“The rich need a place to store their wealth. In the 80s that was US Bonds. In the 90s, it was US Stocks. In the 00s, it was US and London Real Estate. In the 2010s, it was US Tech Stocks. Since 2020, Bitcoin has massively outperformed. And now we have trade wars. Bad for stocks. Bad for real estate. Bad for bonds. Good for gold. and ultimately great for Bitcoin.”Bitcoin is dominant because it provides the right solution to one of the biggest problems in modern society. Governments continue to debase their currencies, so the people run and hide in sound money assets. The 37 million other crypto assets have different focuses, but none of them are as big of an idea as bitcoin.I don’t see bitcoin’s dominance disappearing. It may fluctuate from year-to-year, but ultimately — bitcoin is the idea whose time has come. I can’t believe we are so fortunate to be able to live through this historic development in human history.Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementBitcoin And Gold Are Winning Together?Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin, crypto, gold, tariffs, Anthony recaps his trip to the White House, and he explains why he thinks bitcoin will skyrocket past gold.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets — Trade, borrow, and earn on your crypto with full transparency.. The future of finance isn’t TradFi or DeFi—it’s both. Learn more about Figure Markets or click here to claim your $50!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit Simple Mining here.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pomp.substack.com/subscribe

To investors,I went to the White House last week to interview Bo Hines, the Executive Director of the Presidential Council of Advisors on Digital Assets. He is responsible for shaping our national policy on bitcoin, stablecoins, and crypto assets.You can watch the full episode by clicking here.Here are some of my personal takeaways from my conversation with Bo:* Crypto has become a bi-partisan effort. There are Republicans and Democrats who understand the importance of the technology and see the industry as politically important.* People from every major government agency are involved in shaping our national crypto policy. The industry touches everything from economics to geopolitics and energy to law enforcement. We are better off having a well-rounded perspective in the room.* The administration understands that bitcoin is unique. They see the digital currency as digital gold and believe it is strategically important for the United States. There is a large appetite within leadership to acquire as much bitcoin as possible. I now believe a good framework to use is “what would happen if bitcoiners infiltrated the White House?” because that is what seems to have happened.* Stablecoins are a big focus at the moment. The administration understands these digital dollars are driving greater global adoption of US dollars, which is ultimately good for the US in the long-run.* Bo Hines and the administration see bitcoin and a strong dollar co-existing in the future. They believe bitcoin is good for the dollar and a strong dollar is good for bitcoin.* Large players, whether we are talking big financial institutions or foreign governments, are all interested in figuring out their strategy for crypto. The White House is fielding calls from all of these groups.* Recent changes at various regulatory organizations should signal a tailwind for the crypto industry. The SEC, CFTC, OCC and other regulators are changing their tune, which can be seen in the personnel changes and some early rule changes.* The administration knows they have to rebuild trust with the industry and with the American people. This is difficult to measure, but they want to work with industry players rather than work against them.* We should expect to see Wall Street and legacy financial firms embrace blockchain technology in various ways, including tokenization.* There is a persistent optimism in the administration about technology in general. Bitcoin and crypto are a key part of their strategy.Overall, not only was I impressed by Bo Hines, but I also found the administration’s approach refreshing. I did not expect to hear comments like “bitcoin is unique” and “we want to acquire as much as we can.”With that said, talk is cheap. The administration followed through on an important campaign promise of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, but it would be disappointing if they stopped there. The tens of millions of Americans who own these assets are looking for a material improvement in the United States’ position.Hopefully that is exactly what we will get. Have a great day and I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementAmerica Is Going All-In On Bitcoin with Bo HinesBo Hines is the Executive Director of the Presidential Council of Advisers on Digital Assets. This conversation was recorded at the White House. In this conversation we talk about the US bitcoin strategic reserve, stablecoins, regulation, how decisions are being made, gold, tariffs, law enforcement side, motivational aspect inside Trump admin, biggest surprises so far, and what Bo is looking forward to.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets — Trade, borrow, and earn on your crypto with full transparency.. The future of finance isn’t TradFi or DeFi—it’s both. Learn more about Figure Markets or click here to claim your $50!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit Simple Mining here.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.You are receiving The

To investors,Bitcoin and gold are brothers from a different mother. They both embody the sound money principles that allow an asset to benefit from the debasement of a currency. Those principles include being outside the traditional financial system and the inability for anyone to create more of the asset.Simply, sound money can’t be messed with.And both assets have had an epic run over the last 15 years, while the US dollar continued to see its purchasing power erased by undisciplined fiscal and monetary policy. But given that bitcoin has significantly outperformed gold over the last 15 years, many people have been wondering why gold is outperforming bitcoin over the last 12 months? If both assets benefit from the same thing, shouldn’t they be moving together? And if bitcoin is the smaller, more volatile asset, then shouldn’t bitcoin be outperforming gold during that timeframe?Bitcoin is down ~ 10% since the start of 2025. Gold is up about 20% in the same period. That isn’t supposed to happen, right?!The reason for this big outperformance is that central banks and large pools of capital are aggressively buying gold right now. There is economic uncertainty, so people want a store of value. These very large pools of capital are not used to buying bitcoin yet. In fact, many of them are not approved to buy digital gold, so they have to stick to analog gold. You can see this chart from Goldman about the PBOC buying way more gold than they have previously been disclosing:If you are a bitcoin investor though, you don’t need to worry. David Foley and Lawrence Lepard published a chart showing gold tends to lead in rallies, but bitcoin follows shortly after.David writes:“Gold vs BTC chart…running each on separate price axis, you can see Gold typically leads by a few weeks/months, and then Bitcoin follows. Nice gap setting up right now for Bitcoin. BTC probably back to somewhere in the $108K area within a few months.”Is David right? I don’t know. We are going to find out. But we know Goldman Sachs recently raised their year-end gold forecast from $3,300 to $3,700 per ounce. So if Goldman is raising their gold forecast and bitcoin historically does a great job of catching up, then it could be an explosive second half of the year for digital gold. It is not fun for bitcoin investors to watch gold gaining, while bitcoin is falling, but just remember that both assets are likely to do well over time. The government can’t stop printing money. And sound money is undefeated, regardless of whether it is analog or digital.Have a great start to your week. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementJordi Visser Explains The Decentralization Of Global Monetary OrderJordi Visser is a macro investor with over 30 years of Wall Street experience. He also writes a Substack called “VisserLabs” and puts out investing YouTube videos. In this conversation we discuss how the market broke, what is going to happen, what that means for your portfolio, how US gets out of this situation, how China will react, and how bitcoin plays into all of it.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Figure Markets — Trade, borrow, and earn on your crypto with full transparency.. The future of finance isn’t TradFi or DeFi—it’s both. Learn more about Figure Markets or click here to claim your $50!* Core - Earn trustless Bitcoin yield. No bridging. No lending. Just HODLing. Begin Staking Your Bitcoin.* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit Simple Mining here.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pomp.substack.com/subscribe

To investors,Everyone is prepared for a volatile week as the reality of US tariff policy sets in. There have been plenty of negative reactions from investors and market participants, but it is important to stay focused on the signal, rather than the noise.We can start with Stanley Druckenmiller, one of the best-performing and well-respected investors in the world. He explained in a recent interview that tariffs are the lesser of two evils. Take a listen:Druckenmiller mentions that 10% tariffs would be the ideal level and we obviously have much higher tariffs announced at the moment, so I would expect intense negotiations between countries before the April 9th deadline for implementation.Regarding those negotiations, we learned that more than 50 countries have reached out to the White House to begin discussing potential solutions. And these countries are not showing up empty-handed to the negotiations. Take Taiwan as an example. The country is offering to remove all trade barriers with the US and commit to zero tariffs moving forward. Taiwan will also increase their investment in the United States, including purchases of agricultural products, industrial products, energy, and weaponry from America. No tariffs. No trade barriers. And more capital headed to the US. That seems like the ideal outcome, right?Speaking of ideal outcomes, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been saying for weeks that the administration wants to get oil prices and the 10-year yield lower. Adam Kobeissi points out both of those have been happening in recent weeks. Adam writes:“The real plan all along was to lower interest rates and lower oil prices as soon as possible. The 10-year note yield is down -90 bps and oil prices are down -25%. The tariffs are "working" as planned.”But oil prices and the 10-year yield are not the only things falling. We are also seeing inflation continue to crash lower over the last few weeks. Truflation shows inflation has gone from over 3% in December to 1.22% as of Sdun. This is the lowest level for inflation since November 2020.This inflation number is important to keep an eye on for two reasons. First, this is a good reminder that tariffs are not inflationary, they are deflationary. Remember the timeline of what has transpired. Perplexity, my favorite AI search engine, shows the initial 10% blanket tariff on China was put in place on February 4th and an additional 10% increase to the tariff was implemented on March 4th. The 25% tariffs were put in place on March 4th as well. So although the US implemented tariffs of at least 20% on three of our largest trading partners, inflation has been going down for months. The falling oil prices are helping drive inflation down, but ultimately tariffs are deflationary, not inflationary.Second, if inflation keeps falling this aggressively, the Federal Reserve may be forced to make an emergency interest rate cut. I am not predicting they are going to do that, but rather the odds increase as inflation falls further below their 2% target. The biggest issue the economy faces right now is economic slowdown. Odds of a recession are spiking, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow is falling, and investors are nervous — this all points to the importance of the Fed encouraging economic activity and employment by lowering interest rates. Maybe they do it in an emergency fashion, or maybe they do it in their next two meetings, but I expect interest rates to be lower by the end of the summer.Which brings me to the future — what do I think will happen over the coming weeks and months?Overall, I think we will look back at the fear in the market right now and realize it was an overreaction. Look at the fear and greed gauge sent out by BTIG. This is exactly what blood in the streets looks like when on a graphic.I believe we will see the tariff rates negotiated down closer to 10% globally. Some countries will be higher, some will be lower, and some countries will end up with zero tariffs against them. Most of these countries will have to remove all tariffs and trade barriers against the US in order to have tariff rates reduced. We will also see many countries commit to spending a large amount of money in the United States as well.Asset prices will bottom out in the coming month. We will likely see new all-time highs in stock prices and bitcoin before the end of the year. There will be no high inflation and we will not experience a crushing recession. Instead, this economic and global trade reset will lay the foundation for an economic boom. All Americans, both the wealthy and the working class, will get to participate. And the golden age of innovation and growth will be an incredible sight to see.It may be dark in the tunnel right now. But if you squint you can see the light at the end. Be patient and the light will get bigger in the coming days and weeks. Eventually we will be out of the tunnel and all will be good in the world. Study reflexivity. The faster we go down, the faster we go back up.

To investors,President Trump stood in the Rose Garden yesterday and fulfilled his promise of Liberation Day with historic words: “This is our Declaration of Economic Independence.”That sentence kicked off a firestorm of opinions online as Trump announced sweeping tariffs on almost every country in the world. Perplexity, my favorite AI search engine, summarizes the top three points of the announcement as:* Baseline 10% tariffs on all imported goods to the United States.* Reciprocal tariffs targeting approximately 60 countries deemed “worst offenders,” with rates ranging from 20% to 50%. Notable examples include 34% on Chinese goods and 20% on EU imports.* A 25% tariff on foreign-made vehicles and the closure of duty-free loopholes for Chinese goods under $800.The reaction to these announcements have been exactly what you would think — his supporters cheer them on and his critics loudly condemn them. Such is the world of politics.But if you can ignore the partisan noise, there is something profound happening via these policies.First, Trump is transitioning the United States from a punitive tariff system to a tariff incentive system. We have historically used tariffs to punish select countries as a response to actions they take. Now we are moving to a system where the default tariff on all imports is a minimum of 10% and we will reduce tariffs to incentivize certain products to come to the United States.This is very smart. It will raise substantial revenue for the government, while providing a persistent incentive for companies to manufacture their products in America.The second thing happening here is President Trump is leveling the playing field for American companies and workers. He had a great line yesterday where he said “they do it to us, we do it to them.” Seems fair, right?The idea is that foreign countries have been taking advantage of the United States for far too long. They have been setting tariffs against us, subsidizing their producers, manipulating their currencies, and generally trying to gain an unfair advantage in bilateral trade.It makes sense for them to do it. I would consider it rational for national leaders to try to do what is best for their citizens and their economy.But enough is enough.Mexico’s economic policies are Mexico First. Canada’s economic policies are Canada First. China’s economic policies are China First. India’s economic policies are India First. Why shouldn’t America’s economic policies be America First?See this is the thing — people may hate change, but the United States is now following the playbook of every other country in the world. We are taking steps to protect our companies and our workers. The critics claim consumer prices will increase under this model, but I don’t think that is right. Tariffs are actually a deflationary force, not inflationary. As I previously explained, the prices of every tariffed good from the 2018 tariffs was lower than pre-tariff levels within 18 months.There are many reasons why prices end up going down. Tariffs don’t operate in a silo. For example, Walmart is already telling suppliers they have to eat the cost of tariffs and the large retailer says they are not going to pay higher prices for those goods. This shows that American companies have the leverage to squeeze the foreign companies, rather than be forced to pass higher prices on to customers.But remember, there is one big loophole in this whole tariff kerfuffle — you don’t have to deal with tariffs if you make products in America and you don’t have to deal with tariffs if you buy products made in America. That is the whole point of this exercise. Protect American industries. Create American jobs. And raise revenue for the government. Now some people are very worried about the stock market and their investment portfolio right now. I thought Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a great line in his interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins yesterday:“I think what's going to be important are the underlying economic fundamentals, because at the end of the day, as Warren Buffett says, in the short run, the market is a voting machine. In the long run, it's a weighing machine.”Ain’t that the truth. Rather than judge economic policies based on a few hours of stock market performance, we should wait to judge the efficacy over the first 6-12 months. The weighing machine is what ultimately matters. My guess is we will see stock prices of American companies rally later this year as they start to see the benefits of tariffs.Stock portfolios don’t ultimately matter though. These economic policies aren’t aimed at helping the wealthy. They are fully focused on creating wealth and opportunity for the working class. The US failed a large portion of the American population over the last few decades by exporting jobs, devaluing the dollar, and prioritizing other nations over our own. The mandate in November was to reverse globalization and create a strong domestic policy. That is exactly what voters are g

Today’s letter is brought to you by BMAX!Introducing BMAX: Your Link to Bitcoin Convertible BondsExplore a first-of-its-kind ETF that gives you access to convertible bonds used by companies to acquire Bitcoin. The REX Bitcoin Corporate Treasury Convertible Bond ETF (BMAX) lets investors tap into this institutional strategy—without the complexity of direct Bitcoin ownership.To investors,The tariffs are working. Most people just haven’t realized it yet. And you definitely would not know it by reading the mainstream media headlines. They are telling everyone the world is ending, the economy is on the verge of the next global financial crisis, inflation will come raging back, and your portfolio is poised to lose big in the coming weeks.None of that is true though. In fact, the exact opposite has been happening. Inflation went from over 3% in December to under 1.4% this week, according to real-time alternative inflation measurement Truflation. We have seen gasoline prices drop to a 4-year low. Egg prices have fallen off a cliff. If someone is worried about inflation right now, they should question whether they understand how the economy works. Our biggest issue at the moment is a potential economic slowdown, not an economic acceleration. On top of that, we are now seeing foreign countries, such as Israel and Vietnam, drop their tariffs against the United States in anticipation of the Trump administration’s reciprocal tariff program that will be announced later today. This is the whole point of a reciprocal tariff — you are free to tariff us however you would like, but we are going to match you. If you don’t want us to tariff you, than make sure you aren’t hitting us with tariffs.It is pretty simple. The benefits don’t stop there either. The 10-year treasury yield, which the administration has explicitly said was a key metric for them, has been falling over the last few weeks. The 10-year yield has not broken below 4% yet, but I believe we are well on our way to that milestone. The government needs to refinance trillions of dollars this year. Home buyers want lower mortgage rates. And businesses want cheaper capital available to them. We are going to get a lower 10-year treasury yield one way or another and tariffs are definitely helping the situation. So to recap — what happened when the initial tariffs got announced? Prices went down, inflation went down, yields went down, and some countries took down their tariffs. This is what winning looks like. And before people accuse me of being some partisan hack, it is important that I remind you I am not pro any political party. I am a registered independent. I take my allegiance to independence very seriously. Each administration has pros and cons. There were good things done by the Biden administration and there were very bad things done by them too. Same will be true of the Trump administration. No administration can be perfect. The current administration has strong economic policies that are good for American citizens in my opinion, but there will be plenty of things to disagree with them on for other issues. The world is not black and white, but rather gray. With that said, you are going to hear lots of yelling and screaming from critics in the media about these tariffs. But that doesn’t change the facts. Tariffs are already working. They are making America stronger and protecting the working class. They are creating an even playing field for international trade. And tariffs are a big reason why the United States has a potential path to refinancing our government debt at a lower interest rate this year.Personally, I'll give up some short-term gains in my portfolio if it means that tens of millions of Americans have a better chance of finding stable work so they can feed their families, afford a home, and benefit from lower consumer prices.Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementBlackRock’s Insanely Bullish Bitcoin Take Will Surprise YouJohn Pompliano and Anthony Pompliano discuss Larry Fink being a big bitcoin bull, tariffs, stock market, recessions, crypto assets, and is a recession coming?Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit here to learn more.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Franzy - Ready to leave the 9-to-5, start a side hustle, or expand your portfolio? Franzy is your gateway to franchise ownership—research, compare, and fund the right opportunity with confidence and transparency.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $

To investors,The Wall Street Journal broke the news yesterday that the Trump family was jumping into the bitcoin mining game. Vicky Ge Huang writes:“The president’s two oldest sons are investing in a bitcoin-mining company, adding to the Trump family’s expanding portfolio of cryptocurrency businesses.Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.’s American Data Centers will merge with and take a 20% stake in American Bitcoin, a mining operation majority-owned by Hut 8, the publicly traded crypto-infrastructure company. Together, they aim to create the world’s largest miner of the digital currency, with designs on building its own “bitcoin reserve.””Given the President’s fascination with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, I am surprised it took this long for his family to get involved with the infrastructure side of the industry. There is nothing more American than using energy to produce profits. It is smart for Eric and Don Jr to partner with an existing bitcoin miner, rather than trying to build a dominant mining company from scratch. These businesses are capital intensive and the boom/bust price cycles make it a very difficult environment to operate in. Hut 8, a company where I am an advisor and shareholder, has an unique strategy of owning energy infrastructure focused on powering modern energy consumption use cases. The two most popular consumption clients are bitcoin miners and AI data centers right now — you can read my original thesis for the company in my letter from October 30, 2024 titled “My plan to become an energy dealer.”If things are going well, why would Hut 8 take their bitcoin mining business and spin it out into a majority owned subsidiary? The answer is simple — they want the market to have clarity on their business.Bitcoin mining businesses usually trade at a 6-7x revenue multiple. Advanced computing companies providing data centers to artificial intelligence use cases trade at 19-22x revenue multiples. If you have a business that does both bitcoin mining and AI data centers, the market doesn’t know how to value you. So Hut 8 is breaking the businesses out into separate entities. Investors can now allocate capital to a pure play bitcoin miner if that is what they want. Or they can allocate their capital to a pure play AI data center and energy infrastructure provider. This is an interesting approach because the business world is one big cycle of bundling and unbundling. We saw the bundling of bitcoin mining and AI data centers over the last 5 years. Hut 8 is one of the first companies I am aware of to unbundle the two from each other. In addition to the unbundling, the legacy Hut 8 business is able to lower their cost of capital as well. The company becomes more financeable having its high volatility, high capex business (bitcoin mining) spun out and thus makes it easier to finance data center development projects down the road.This all makes sense if you are trying to create shareholder value. Existing Hut 8 shareholders will own 80% of the new American Bitcoin business. Eric Trump will become Chief Strategy Officer and the shareholders of American Data Centers will own the remaining 20% of the business. So now Hut 8 shareholders have a two way option — they benefit from the bitcoin mining and they benefit from the AI infrastructure. As I wrote in my original letter about Hut 8 last year, “Public market investors usually underestimate the importance of creative dealmaking when evaluating companies because it requires qualitative analysis that doesn’t fit into a spreadsheet.” This deal to create American Bitcoin is a perfect example of what I was talking about. When you have a dealmaker at the helm of a company, you don’t know when or how they will strike — but it is almost guaranteed they will strike. And that is exactly what Asher Genoot and the Hut 8 team just did.Dealmakers make deals.And this deal is probably one of the most interesting ones I have seen in recent months. Keep an eye out on the impact to the stock price of both entities. If there is a positive impact in the coming weeks, I would expect other companies with bitcoin mining and AI data centers bundled to follow in similar footsteps. Time will tell. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementReposting what I shared yesterday: Speaking of learning, I have been fairly public about my lessons learned during the 2021 bull market and the subsequent 2022 bear market. No one likes to hold assets through a big drawdown, so I am planning to sell many of my liquid investments outside of bitcoin at some point in 2025 (first rule of bitcoin: never sell your bitcoin!). I don’t know when, how, or why at the moment, but I want to give everyone fair warning about my current thought process. I would love to hear from all of you about how you are thinking about the 4-year cycles and holding, selling or buying the dip. Overview of Bitcoin & AI Data Centers with Hut 8 CEO As

To investors,There are very few crypto-related publicly traded companies available to investors. If you remove energy companies like bitcoin miners and bitcoin treasury companies, such as MicroStrategy or Metaplanet, the available pool of companies gets even smaller.One company that I have talked about a few times over the last year is DeFi Technologies (CBOE CA: DEFI) (GR: R9B) (OTC: DEFTF). They trade in Canada and describe themselves as “a financial technology company focused on the convergence of traditional capital markets with the world of decentralized finance.” I wrote to this group in April, in May, and in August about why I thought DeFi Technologies was undervalued. During that timeframe, the company saw its stock price rise from ~$0.51 to $2.51 at the close on Friday. A big part of the increase in stock price was because the business has been performing incredibly well. The numbers for full year 2024 were released this morning and it was a record year of growth and results.Here are the key financial takeaways from the press release:* Adjusted Revenue: Adjusted Revenues of $31.1 million USD (Q4) and $144.8 million USD (annual) for the three and twelve months period ended December 31, 2024* Adjusted Net Income: Adjusted Net Income of $13.9 million USD and $84 million USD for three and twelve months ended December 31, 2024, reflecting robust operational performance.* Adjusted EBITDA: Adjusted EBITDA of $14.7 million USD and $80.4 million USD for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2024.Remember, DeFi Technologies did ~$10 million in revenue for all of 2023, so these are monster improvements. The company did approximately 8x more in Adjusted Net Income and EBITDA in 2024 than it did in revenue the year prior. Not bad, right?But here is the thing — even though the stock has appreciated ~400% in 12 months, the company is probably still undervalued. We can see in the earnings press release that the total value of DeFi Technologies’ Cash, Treasury, and Venture Portfolio is $93.8 million USD as of December 31, 2024. This means the company is valued at approximately $700 million after taking those balance sheet assets out.If the business did ~$80 million in adjusted EBITDA/net income then the company is currently trading at a 8.75x multiple to the last 12 months EBITDA/net income. That is insane.Galaxy is trading at 10.7x trailing 12-month net income. Coinbase is trading at just under 17x trailing 12-month net income. And Blackrock is trading at 22.9x trailing 12-month net income.Now I am not claiming that DeFi Technologies should trade at the same multiples as Coinbase and Blackrock, but I am arguing that having a net income multiple that is 50% lower or more is probably the wrong answer too. Add in the fact that growth is measured in hundreds of percent for DeFi and it only bolsters the argument that the company is undervalued.So where do we go from here?A big part of how DeFi Technologies, and many other crypto-related public equities, will be valued depends on how the underlying liquid crypto assets perform through the rest of 2024. A good amount of DeFi’s revenue comes from their crypto ETPs, which see their nominal management fee amount fluctuate with the AUM of the funds. That AUM changes substantially as the price of crypto assets goes up or down. So if you think crypto prices have not peaked for this cycle, then crypto-related equities are probably a place you will spend time looking for opportunities. If you think the cycle peaked and we are headed towards a bear market, then you are likely running for cash and perceived safety.In my humble opinion, I don’t think the market has peaked. It is hard to be bearish when the US government and other countries are embracing bitcoin. But I am wrong all the time, so who the hell knows what will happen.Additionally, the thoughts I have shared with you today are biased. I hold shares in DeFi Technologies personally as an investor and advisor, along with indirectly through my investment firm Professional Capital Management after we sold Reflexivity Research in January 2024. I do my best to share my thoughts transparently in these letters, but if you disagree with something that I have written today please reach out with your rebuttal. I am always trying to learn. Many of you are smarter and more experienced than me. Don’t cheat me out of an education! Speaking of learning, I have been fairly public about my lessons learned during the 2021 bull market and the subsequent 2022 bear market. No one likes to hold assets through a big drawdown, so I am planning to sell many of my liquid investments outside of bitcoin at some point in 2025 (first rule of bitcoin: never sell your bitcoin!). I don’t know when, how, or why at the moment, but I want to give everyone fair warning about my current thought process.I am a believer that the 4-year cycles may look slightly different, yet they have not ended. But for now, companies like DeFi Technologies (CBOE CA: DE

Today’s letter is brought to you by ConsensusConsensus is Crypto’s Most Influential Event20,000 of the world’s most ambitious builders and boldest investors are coming to Consensus to make connections and shape the future of the digital economy in Toronto this May 14-16, 2025.Here’s a glimpse at what’s ahead:* New! Bitcoin & Mining Summit: Discover Bitcoin’s potential with insights on energy, hardware, L2s, ETFs, and more* World-Class Content: Gain and grow with firsthand advice from 400 expert speakers on Web3, Crypto, and AI* Business & Dealmaking: Shake hands and set meetings onsite with high-caliber VCs, institutions, startups, and enterprisesWith over ten years of seeing tens of thousands of attendees, Consensus remains your best bet for market-moving intel, meaningful connections, and career-defining deals. You can’t afford to miss it.To investors,Technologists are assaulting Wall Street and it looks like the technologists are winning. Nowhere is this more obvious than Robinhood, the commission-free investing platform started in 2013.The $40 billion market cap business is using software to attack every corner of the legacy financial system. But the ride hasn’t been completely smooth since they went public in 2021. The stock debuted at $35, ran up and peaked at $55 in August 2021, and then fell to $7 by the summer of 2022.Not exactly the start to your public market life that company CEOs dream of. But the good news is that Robinhood has been shipping products, driving solid financial performance, and they have risen from the dead. So what exactly is driving this financial performance? In my opinion, Robinhood has perfected the Costco model for finance. They are offering every financial service you could imagine for the lowest cost possible. We already know they have no commissions on trading. The finance app also launched a $5 per month subscription service called Robinhood Gold that gives members up to 4% on their uninvested cash, extended trading hours, and interest-free margin borrowing. All that for only $5 a month is basically a no brainer. Like I said, Costco of Finance.Prediction market Kalshi is showing 95% odds that Robinhood reports more than 3 million Robinhood Gold subscribers this quarter.Yesterday the company took it a step further — Reuters writes the company launched “'Robinhood Strategies' — a wealth management service with a 0.25% annual fee, capped at $250, for its premium 'Gold' subscribers.Users with as little as $50 in investments can access portfolios of exchange-traded funds managed by Robinhood's investment experts.”And if that wasn’t good enough, the fintech also launched a new feature where you can have physical cash hand-delivered to your front door. It is going to be hard for legacy banks to compete if software companies are able to pull off intricate services like that. So this brings me to the question of whether Robinhood is a good stock or not. Rather than pontificate on the question myself, I asked Perplexity AI to become a professional stock market analyst and then evaluate $HOOD stock.Here is what Perplexity told me: Robinhood Markets (HOOD) has shown resilience and strategic evolution in 2025, but its stock carries distinct advantages and risks. Here’s a balanced analysis of its pros and cons:Pros1. Expanding Product Ecosystem* Launched Robinhood Legend, a new web-based platform with advanced tools like Level II market data and upgraded charting for active traders.* Plans to introduce index options and futures trading on mobile, broadening its asset offerings beyond stocks, ETFs, crypto, and event contracts (e.g., presidential election derivatives).* Growing focus on cryptocurrency and prediction markets, aligning with fintech innovation trends.2. User Growth and Retention Incentives* Robinhood Gold ($5/month) offers a 3% IRA contribution match (vs. 1% for basic users), high-yield cash sweeps (4% APY), and interest-free margin borrowing up to $1,000.* Presidential election event contracts and crypto trading attract retail investors seeking speculative opportunities.3. Financial Resilience and Analyst Confidence* Rebounding as Yahoo Finance’s “Comeback Stock of the Year” after a 90% post-IPO decline, with revenue at $1.87B and gross margins of 71.2%.* Major banks like Deutsche Bank and Barclays raised price targets (up to $54–$60), citing strong Q4 2024 trading volumes and crypto activity.4. Retail-Friendly Features* Zero-commission trading, fractional shares, and an intuitive interface remain core strengths.* Free stock rewards and recurring investment tools enhance accessibility for new investors.Cons1. Limited Sophistication for Advanced Traders* Research tools and screening capabilities lag behind competitors like Charles Schwab, despite recent upgrades.* No mutual funds or bonds, restricting portfolio diversification4.2. Revenue Dependency on Volatile Streams* Heavy reliance on payment for order flow (PFOF) and crypto trading fees, which are sensitive to market

To investors,There is a global race under way to see who can acquire the most amount of bitcoin. We have seen Microstrategy buy more than $33 billion worth (506,000+ bitcoin) since August 2020. Companies like Metaplanet, Semler Scientific, Tesla, and Block have all followed suit in recent years.We have various large financial institutions pounding the pavement to help their clients get exposure to bitcoin via the newly approved ETFs — Blackrock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Ark Invest, Bitwise, and many others. There is no denying that Wall Street has arrived.And the nation states aren’t going to be left behind, so El Salvador, Bhutan, Abu Dhabi, and Russia all started buying and mining bitcoin. This was quickly followed by the leader of the free world, the United States government, who decided it was time to establish the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve a few weeks ago.That is a lot of large capital pools competing to purchase as much bitcoin as possible. As if that wasn’t enough, we found out there will be a new entrant to the race yesterday — Gamestop. The former meme stock announced unanimous board approval of an update to its investment policy allowing bitcoin to become a treasury reserve asset.This isn’t just another random company announcing the desire to buy bitcoin though. Gamestop has a legion of retail investors that want to see them put their nearly $5 billion of balance sheet cash into the digital currency. I spoke with two different Gamestop shareholders after the announcement yesterday and both could only be described as giddy.It is not clear how much of that $5 billion will be put into bitcoin, but my guess is it won’t be 1-2%. Instead, Chairman Ryan Cohen is likely to take a big bet on bitcoin as a balance sheet asset.Why do I think that?First, you don’t go through the bureaucratic board approval process for a small 1-2% allocation. You only put the time and energy to get the change to your investment policy if you are looking to put a material amount of your cash into bitcoin.Second, Ryan Cohen only follows three accounts on X. They are Gamestop’s corporate account, along with the @Bitcoin handle and Bitcoin Magazine.That is behavior of a hardcore bitcoiner that is looking to buy more bitcoin.Because here is the thing — we are going to see many more corporate executives fall victim to the same feeling that retail investors have felt for nearly 15 years. You hear about bitcoin. You buy a little. You start learning more about the asset. Eventually you realize you don’t have enough bitcoin. And now you are scrambling around looking for more money so you can buy as much bitcoin as possible.Corporate executives will start with their personal money, but eventually they will be tempted to use balance sheet cash. If it is good enough for the US government’s reserve, then it should be good enough for a corporation’s balance sheet, right?I think so. And the companies that have pursued this strategy in public markets have been rewarded financially. So we should expect more companies and governments to buy as much bitcoin as they can.Young bitcoiners are rising into positions of power and influence. That should continue for the next few decades. And they all believe they are underexposed to the best performing asset of the last 15 years. They’ll do whatever they can to get more bitcoin, including the use of balance sheet cash to make monster bets on their best idea. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementBitcoin Rises As Trump Rebuilds The American DreamPolina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin, US economy, stock market, tax rates, tariffs, and how we can improve the future for millions of Americans.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit here to learn more.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Franzy - Ready to leave the 9-to-5, start a side hustle, or expand your portfolio? Franzy is your gateway to franchise ownership—research, compare, and fund the right opportunity with confidence and transparency.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* Bitdeer - A global technology company focused on Bitcoin mining, ASIC development and HPC for AI, backed by advanced R&D and a massive 2.5 GW global power portfolio.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out

To investors,Home affordability is the worst it has been in decades. The problem is so bad that I decided to do something about it just over a year ago — I cofounded ResiClub, the leading residential real estate analytics and content platform, with Lance Lambert, who I believe is the best residential real estate reporter in the country. Our thesis is simple — you can’t solve a problem if you don’t understand it well. Below is a guest post from Lance where he explains just how bad home affordability has become in the United States. You can subscribe to ResiClub and receive a free daily email about the housing market here: Subscribe to ResiClubStrained housing affordability isn’t just squeezing household budgets—it’s holding back the entire U.S. economy. Some of the nation’s most talented workers are unable to move to the top job markets where they could contribute the most. That loss of mobility means less innovation, fewer startups, and slower economic growth. At the same time, high housing costs are forcing many Americans to delay starting families—or have fewer children than they otherwise would—reshaping the country’s demographic future. And with more household income tied up in housing payments, consumer spending in other areas suffers, further dampening economic momentum. America’s housing affordability pinch isn’t just a personal problem—it’s a national one.Here’s the annual U.S. household income needed to purchase a typically valued $356,776 U.S. home:* Jan. 2020 -> $51,646* Jan. 2021 -> $51,740* Jan. 2022 -> $62,669* Jan. 2023 -> $86,184* Jan. 2024 -> $92,006* Jan. 2025 -> $92,538That’s a +79% shift in just 5 years.And here’s the thing: This is a very conservative methodology. Zillow calculation assumes a 20% down payment and the homebuyer spends less than 30.0% of their monthly income on the total monthly payment. This is a financed purchase, of course. For typical home value, Zillow economists used the latest Zillow Home Value Index reading.Click here to view a searchable version of the chart below displaying the analysis in 400 metro area housing markets [best done on a desktop]How did we get here?During the Pandemic Housing Boom, housing demand surged rapidly amid ultralow interest rates, stimulus, and the remote work boom. Federal Reserve researchers estimate “new construction would have had to increase by roughly 300% to absorb the pandemic-era surge in demand.” Unlike housing demand, housing supply isn’t as elastic and can't quickly ramp up like that. As a result, the heightened pandemic-era demand drained the market of active inventory and sent national home prices soaring. The typical U.S. home value measured by the Zillow Home Value Index in January 2025 ($356,776) is still a staggering +44% greater than in January 2019 ($247,106).That overheated home price growth, coupled with the ensuing mortgage rate shock, with the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate jumping up from under 3.0% to over 7.0%, has created the fastest ever deterioration in housing affordability.This affordability squeeze has been broad-based.Click here to view an interactive version of the January 2020 map below.Click here to view an interactive version of the January 2025 map below.The problem, of course, is that incomes haven’t kept up.While the annual U.S. household income needed to purchase a typical U.S. home has increased by +79% between January 2020 and January 2025, average weekly earnings of U.S. workers have risen by +25%, and overall U.S. consumer inflation has grown by +23% during the same period.What’s the impact of this housing affordability deterioration on the housing industry?The biggest immediate impact of this affordability deterioration is that across the country existing home sales have been constrained since mortgage rates spiked in 2022. Some of that’s the result of suppressed housing demand, but a lot of it is due to the fact that many homeowners who’d like to sell their home and buy something else simply can’t afford to do so or don’t want to part with their lower monthly payment/mortgage rate.I hope you enjoyed this guest post from Lance Lambert, cofounder and Editor-in-Chief of ResiClub, your gateway to the US housing market. You can subscribe to ResiClub below to receive a free daily email about the residential housing market.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementThe Best Performing Stock Of Last Year Embraced BitcoinSimon Greovich is the President & CEO of Metaplanet. This conversation was recorded at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. In this conversation we discuss Metaplanet buying bitcoin and becoming the best stock of the year, the best tools are for acquiring bitcoin, economic conditions in Japan, getting exposure to global markets, growth expectations, educating Wall Street, and how people can help.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit here to learn more.* Reed Smith - S

To investors,Ray Dalio said the famous phrase “cash is trash” on national television in 2020. He was warning market participants that inflation was coming and anyone sitting in US dollars would be destroyed by the currency debasement. Take a listen:Ray Dalio was right in hindsight. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates artificially suppressed at 0% for too long, while the government continued to print trillions of dollars in an effort to stimulate the economy. Inflation spiked to over 9% and the cumulative inflation since January 2020 has now topped 26%, meaning that $1 from 2020 can only buy $0.74 of goods today.This is the hidden tax that has destroyed the financial lives of many American families. According to Perplexity, approximately “40% of Americans have no investable assets, meaning they do not own stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or other financial instruments outside of cash or retirement accounts.”This 40% of Americans are the ones who got hurt the most when the dollar devalued by more than 25% over the last few years. They were sitting in cash and took the inflation on the chin. Brutal. This brings us to the other side of the story — Mike Zaccardi highlights that investor allocations to public equities is at an all-time high. So in a weird way, investors—both individuals and institutions—were listening to Ray Dalio and the other famed asset managers who were issuing warnings back in 2020. Capital has relentlessly poured into the public equity market and now more than 50% of aggregate financial assets are allocated to the stock market.This is good for the people holding stocks because they benefitted from the out of control inflation over the last half decade. But while asset owners were winning, those sitting in cash have been falling further behind — this is why the income inequality gap continues to widen. Rich get richer, poor get poorer.Things may be changing quickly though for these stock investors. Owen Tucker-Smith wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend titled “Investors Who Were All In on U.S. Stocks Are Starting to Look Elsewhere.” He points out that non-US markets have been outperforming the S&P 500 year-to-date.Investors are going to chase performance. Momentum is a hell of a drug. And Tucker-Smith shows the recent inflows to US-based ETFs that invest in European public equities — investors are shoveling capital into these funds like their financial lives depend on it.So one of the big questions right now is whether investors should be allocated to US stocks or international equities. Depending on who you talk with, you will get a very different answer. Which brings me to the current conversation about stock valuations, tariffs, and the economic policies of the new administration. Could the stock market be overvalued right now? Maybe. Could a recession come? Maybe. Could the stock market recover and take-off to new highs like it did in 2020? Maybe. No one knows the future.It is all noise in my opinion. There will always be short-term gyrations in the market, but stocks are structured in a way where they have to keep going up over the long run. Don’t get distracted by the fear-mongering or the doomsday predictors. A broken clock is right twice a day.The dollar will lose purchasing power over decades. Assets like stocks, bitcoin, and real estate will keep pushing to new all-time high after all-time high. I like the K.I.S.S. method — keep it simple, stupid. Wall Street and finance like to make things confusing and complex. Don’t be one of the victims to complexity. Your portfolio will thank you in the future.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementIs A Recession Coming Soon? with Jordi VisserJordi Visser is a macro investor with over 30 years of Wall Street experience. He also writes a Substack called “VisserLabs” and puts out investing YouTube videos. In this conversation we discuss the Fed’s interest rate decision, stock market outlook, Tesla, AI, Nvidia, and how investors are approaching April 2.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit here to learn more.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Franzy - Ready to leave the 9-to-5, start a side hustle, or expand your portfolio? Franzy is your gateway to franchise ownership—research, compare, and fund the right opportunity with confidence and transparency.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* Bitdeer - A global technology company focused on Bitcoin mining, ASIC development and HPC for AI, backed by advanced R&D and a massive 2.5 GW

To investors,The Federal Reserve decided not to cut interest rates yesterday. I believe this is a mistake on their part and is another data point proving the Fed is continuously behind the curve when it comes to monetary policy in the modern age. If you remember, the central bank didn’t raise interest rates until inflation was already out of control during the pandemic. We eventually saw inflation officially hit 9% according to the government data. Inflation was not transitory as they predicted and the American consumer suffered dearly. A big reason for the Fed’s persistent lag is they have a data problem. Not only is the data backwards looking and lacks real-time accuracy, but the economic data is no longer trustworthy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics was forced earlier this year to revise down the number of jobs created in the last year by nearly 600,000 jobs. It is insane how inaccurate the jobs number has become. But that is not the only issue with economic data. I have been convinced that you can not trust most of the reported data. Do you believe the official inflation metrics? I don’t. A good question to ask yourself is whether you think more than 50% of the data is accurate or inaccurate? I am in the camp of majority of the data being inaccurate when it is reported. You may not care what I think, so what if I told you that new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent agrees with me. Here is Scott explaining the problem with current economic data on the All-In podcast:I don’t think it gets much clearer than the Treasury Secretary being asked point blank whether he trusts the data and he says “no.” So this is not some big conspiracy theory, but rather a rational understanding of how the data is collected, analyzed, and reported. The problem with inaccurate economic data is that it makes the job harder for policymakers and investors alike. How do you decide what to do if you can’t trust the data? And how do investors allocate capital in the market if they can’t trust the data?This has been a major problem for awhile. It is good to see the current administration acknowledging the problem. That is the first step to fixing it.This brings us back the Federal Reserve’s decision yesterday to hold rates at the current level. That would be prudent if you were looking at the last CPI report of 2.8% year-over-year inflation growth. The issue is you can’t trust that number and real-time alternative inflation measurements like Truflation are telling you the government data is off substantially.Truflation is reporting CPI at 1.7% right now, which is below the Fed’s target rate of 2%. If Truflation is right, which I tend to think is the case, then the Federal Reserve should be cutting interest rates right now because inflation is not a concern. We need to refinance trillions of dollars in federal debt this year, homes for the average American family have become unaffordable, and businesses desperately want to access cheaper capital — all of this is positively affected by lower interest rates. Rates are too high. The Fed should cut. But they are hiding behind the government inflation data as reason to stay at current interest rate levels. When inflation data shows up lower in the next few months, we will all once again have proof that the Fed is behind the curve. A story as old as time. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementBitcoin Senator Reveals US Bitcoin PlanCynthia Lummis is a U.S. Senator from Wyoming, and is the first-ever chair of the new Senate panel devoted to digital assets. In this conversation we discuss stablecoin regulation, what the bitcoin strategic reserve could look like, what the US should do to embrace crypto, how bitcoiners are working with politicians, and what the bitcoin community can do to help.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit here to learn more.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Franzy - Ready to leave the 9-to-5, start a side hustle, or expand your portfolio? Franzy is your gateway to franchise ownership—research, compare, and fund the right opportunity with confidence and transparency.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* Bitdeer - A global technology company focused on Bitcoin mining, ASIC development and HPC for AI, backed by advanced R&D and a massive 2.5 GW global power portfolio.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.* Gemini - T

To investors,The US government established the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve recently and many in the crypto community were upset because no new purchases of bitcoin were announced.If America finds it valuable to hold the bitcoin we already have in our possession, we should also find it valuable to buy more. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.Thankfully, the President’s Executive Order was well written and included an important sentence granting the Treasury and Commerce the opportunity to acquire more bitcoin in a budget neutral way. The sentence specifically reads “the Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies impose no incremental costs on American taxpayers.”Most people realize this is significant yet they don’t understand what the government is going to do next.Well, we just got our answer yesterday. Bo Hines, the Executive Director of Digital Assets, said the US government wanted “as much as we can get” in reference to how much bitcoin would acquired over time.That is a big statement coming from someone focused on acquiring more bitcoin for the United States. This brings us to the most important question — how can the US acquire more bitcoin in a budget neutral way?VanEck’s Matthew Sigel shared 6 ideas on how this could happen. Coinpedia did a good job summarizing the ideas here:1. Revaluing Gold to Unlock FundsThe U.S. holds vast gold reserves, but they are valued at a much lower official price than their current market worth. VanEck suggests that Congress could update this valuation, instantly increasing the paper value of these reserves. The extra capital generated could then be used to buy Bitcoin—without printing new money or raising taxes.2. Issuing Bitcoin-Backed BondsAnother option is for the government to create and sell “Bitcoin-backed bonds.” Investors would buy these bonds, and a portion of the money raised would go toward purchasing BTC. When the bonds mature, the government could repay investors either in Bitcoin or U.S. dollars, offering a flexible investment opportunity.3. Using Federal Reserve SurplusBefore 2015, the Federal Reserve was allowed to keep a larger surplus of funds. VanEck suggests bringing back this policy so that the Fed can build up extra reserves and use them to buy Bitcoin. This would provide a direct way for the government to acquire BTC without needing new congressional spending approvals.4. Adding Bitcoin to IMF’s Special Drawing RightsSpecial Drawing Rights (SDRs) are international reserve assets issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). VanEck proposes convincing the IMF to include Bitcoin in SDRs, making it a recognized global reserve asset. If approved, this would further cement Bitcoin’s role in international finance.5. Selling Surplus Cheese for BitcoinThe U.S. government holds large stockpiles of surplus cheese. VanEck suggests selling off these reserves and using the proceeds to buy Bitcoin. Since this involves selling existing assets rather than increasing spending, it wouldn’t impact the federal budget deficit. At the same time, it would help the government manage its excess inventory more efficiently.6. Using the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization FundThe Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), controlled by the U.S. Treasury, is used to manage foreign exchange reserves and stabilize the dollar. VanEck’s final proposal is for the Treasury to use this fund to buy and hold Bitcoin. Since the ESF operates outside the normal budget process, this method would offer a more flexible approach to BTC accumulation.No one knows exactly how the government is going to acquire more bitcoin, but it is obvious that multiple government agencies are working to get more bitcoin into the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. I liked Bitwise’s Hunter Horsley’s comment about Bo Hines interview yesterday: “When Bitcoin is at $200k — We will look back on March 2025 and say, how was everyone not buying. It was so obvious.”I could not agree more. The United States of America, the greatest economy ever constructed, is openly telling you they want to acquire as much bitcoin as possible. It is incredibly obvious what happens when a nation state pours billions of dollars into a finite supply asset. Just hope you weren’t late to the party.Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementBitcoin Is Taking Over Wall Street with Jan Van EckJan van Eck is the CEO at VanEck. This conversation was recorded at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. In this conversation we talk about the relationship between bitcoin and gold, how bitcoin will disrupt Wall Street, the impact Trump will have on financial markets, and what crypto milestones Jan is looking forward to in 2025.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit here to learn more.* Ree

To investors,Government spending is out of control. We already knew that, but now we have data that suggests the problem is getting worse and at an alarming pace. Our friends at Geiger Capital were rightfully outraged at the February spending deficit:“In the month of February, the US Government collected $297 Billion. Just one problem… They spent $605 Billion. A $308 BILLION deficit. In one month.”But the problem is not confined to only February. The first five months of the fiscal year have been disastrous at best. Geiger Capital says:“The train is out of control… The first five months of FY 2025 produced a deficit of $1.15 TRILLION. That’s $319 Billion more than the deficit recorded in the same period last fiscal year. We’re running a $2.75 TRILLION annual deficit.”As if it wasn’t bad enough to see a widening deficit, Heritage’s EJ Antoni explains that “51 cents out of every dollar the federal government spent in February was borrowed!”It is impossible to state how serious of a problem the national debt has become. Not only has every recent President overseen an explosion in the annual deficit, but we have financed our out-of-control spending with debt because politicians are incentivized to spend everyone else’s money.Spending more money than you take in as income can only end in one way — disaster!But government spending is part of a much larger story. We are a country that became dependent on the government. The United States was built on the idea of a small government and a powerful private sector, but we lost our way in recent years.Mike Zaccardi points out a recent Bank of America investment note that puts it perfectly:“In 2024, the US had never been more government-dependent: for 85% of job growth, 33% of all spending, 6-7% budget deficits; all record highs ex-crisis.”One area where you can see the increased dependency on the government is what percentage of someone’s personal income comes from the government. The bipartisan Economic Innovation Group point out a report last year stating:“Income from government transfers is the fastest-growing major component of Americans' personal income. Nationally, Americans received $3.8 trillion in government transfers in 2022, accounting for 18 percent of all personal income in the United States. That share has more than doubled since 1970.”The most insane part of the report is what happened in the approximately 50 years from 1970 to 2022. We went from less than 1% of counties in the US receiving 25% or more of their personal income from government transfers to now more than 53% of all counties receive a quarter or more of their personal income from government transfers.1% to 53% in 50 years. Absolutely insane.But there is even more nonsense to be found. Our friends at Unusual Whales have been hard at work uncovering the absurdities in the US economy for years. Did you know that 25% of jobs added to the US economy in the last two years were government jobs? Now you know. According to Apollo, that number is up from 5% in 2021 and 7% in 2022.The United States has become dependent on the government. The government is responsible for blowing out the US debt because we have zero discipline when it comes to spending. We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. Both political parties are responsible for this mess. And nothing is going to change unless the Department of Government Efficiency is successful and politicians realize there are consequences for a lack of fiscal discipline.But I wouldn’t hold my breath. Out-of-control government spending makes a lot more sense once you understand that most government spending is a legal way to convince people to vote for a certain politician. Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementThis Public Company Wants To Buy More BitcoinEric Semler is the Chairman of Semler Scientific, Founder of TCS Capital Management, and serves on the board of Fundstrat Global Advisors. This conversation was recorded at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. In this conversation we talk about why Semler Scientific put bitcoin on the balance sheet, feedback from customers and shareholders, challenges, thinking through leverage percentage, potential market reaction if companies start to sell bitcoin, and more.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit here to learn more.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Franzy - Ready to leave the 9-to-5, start a side hustle, or expand your portfolio? Franzy is your gateway to franchise ownership—research, compare, and fund the right opportunity with confidence and transparency.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet addre

To investors,Don’t read mainstream financial news headlines today. If you do, you will be told the world is ending and the market is crashing. You will see doom and gloom everywhere. If you aren’t careful, you may believe that asset prices are destined to fall forever and your portfolio will never recover.This is all nonsense though.Another way to describe the current market is that the S&P 500 is flat over the last 6 months. That is right — insane! Traditional investors are freaking out in recent weeks, yet the stock market is still slightly positive over the last 180 days. Not exactly the big market crash that you were programmed to believe.But maybe the S&P 500 is an outlier. What about the Nasdaq 100? Also slightly up in the last 6 months.Maybe the Dow Jones Industrial Average is different? Nope. That index is up 1.4% in the last 180 days.Think of how absurd this is — Wall Street is not freaking out because they lost money in the last 6 months, but rather because they didn’t make an absurd amount of money. The story gets even crazier if you look past stocks though.Gold is up 15% over the last 6 months.Bitcoin is up 43% over the same time period.“Zoom out” is a common phrase repeated by investors who are holding assets that are going down in price, but these investors are usually talking about multi-year timeframes. Zooming out to the last 6 months tells a very different story than what is being portrayed in the mainstream media. But lets say you think 6 months is an unfair time period to evaluate. The big, bad market crash has been happening in recent days, right? Let’s define a market crash if we want to try to identify it. According to Perplexity, my favorite AI search engine, “a stock market crash is typically declared when there is a sudden, steep decline in stock prices across a major index or market, often exceeding 10% within a single day or over a few days.”Obviously the S&P 500 has crashed in recent days, correct? Wrong! The S&P is not even down 4% in the last 5 days. The major index hasn’t fallen 10% in the last month either. So much for that big market crash. In fact, none of the three major indexes have fallen more than 5% in the last 5 trading days. The traditional definition of a 10% drawdown being a crash has not been met, so all the hysteria is misplaced.Creative Planning’s Peter Mallouk points out “the S&P 500 is down over 8% from its February closing high. Over the last 75 years, the average intra-year market drop has been close to 14%.”We aren’t even close to the average intra-year drop yet.Maybe you think President Trump is worried about the recent price volatility? It appears he is unfazed by what is happening. Here he is telling the media that markets go up and down:The stock market may have gone up and down, but it is flat over the last 6 months. Not a bad trade considering inflation has dropped 50% in the last 60 days and items like gas, eggs, and other staple consumer items are quickly falling to more affordable levels.Remember, we are up 153% since COVID and 646% since the Global Financial Crisis.Next time someone starts complaining about the market “crashing,” remind them you aren’t allowed to complain if you are still making money in the last 6 months. And you definitely aren’t allowed to complain if you are outperforming the stock market average for more than a decade.Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementJack Mallers Thinks Bitcoin Is Going Much HigherJack Mallers is the Founder & CEO of Strike. This conversation was recorded at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. In this conversation we evaluate nation state adoption of bitcoin, what happens when US starts to accumulate bitcoin, how bitcoin can help Americans, operating on a bitcoin standard as a private company, bitcoin cycles, regulation, Wall Street, and what Jack thinks the future of bitcoin looks like.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Simple Mining offers a premium white-glove Bitcoin mining service. Want to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit here to learn more.* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Franzy - Ready to leave the 9-to-5, start a side hustle, or expand your portfolio? Franzy is your gateway to franchise ownership—research, compare, and fund the right opportunity with confidence and transparency.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. Learn more at BitwisePomp.com* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $1,000 in rewards.* Bitdeer - A global technology company focused on Bitcoin mining, ASIC development and HPC for AI, backed by advanced R&D and a massive 2.5 GW global power portfolio.* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications pow

To investors,The big question in financial markets over the last two weeks has been “is Donald Trump intentionally trying to tank the US stock market?”This would have been an absurd question before the inauguration. The general thought process was President Trump is a businessman and investor. He measures the health of the US economy through the stock market performance, so you can expect the stock market to go up if Trump becomes President. I know this was the consensus because I believed it too. There was no obvious reason why Trump would allow the US stock market to drop, let alone take actions to crash the market himself.But that is exactly what is happening now. Here is President Trump talking over the weekend about his plan to get interest rates and energy down:Kris Patel and Amit Is Investing highlight how this plan works:1. We have $7T of debt we need to pay in the next 6 months…if we don’t pay it, we’ll have to refinance. 2. The Trump admin does NOT want to refinance at a 4%+ rate…the 10yr at one point this year was 4.8%. 3. How do you get the 10yr to come down? Markets need to show weakness in growth, DOGE has to be perceived as actually working, interest rates need to come down. The way to do that is to create massive uncertainties — aka tariffs — which can slow down growth in the short term, get the bond market to start BUYING bonds ASAP because of how scared they are of touching stocks (causing yields to fall which is what we need to refinance the debt) and then that gives the Fed the authority to lower rates which continues to bring yields down. So, although conventional wisdom says tariffs are inflationary and the 10yr should be spiking on more tariffs — it’s actually going down because its bringing so much uncertainly to equity markets that people are selling stocks and buying bonds! Which is exactly what the Trump administration wants to happen in the short term in order to bring refinancing costs down.Now this is not the easy way to get interest rates down. The easy way was to have the Federal Reserve cut interest rates at the start of the year, but that didn’t happen. In fact, many of you may remember that Trump kept telling Jerome Powell to cut interest rates last year. Powell was public in his defiance of Trump’s request, so now Trump and Scott Bessent are taking matters into their own hands.They are crashing asset prices in an attempt to force Jerome Powell to cut interest rates. We will see who blinks first. Don’t believe me? Here is Trump explicitly saying you can’t watch the stock market right now:So the entire administration has their eyes on the 10-year Treasury yield. But even without Powell stepping up to the plate and slashing interest rates, we have already seen the 10-year drop from 4.8% in January to 4.25% this weekend.That is a good start. We are going to need much more movement on interest rates though if we want to have a profound impact on our refinancing costs. Lower interest rates don’t merely affect the US government though. The drop in interest rates since the start of the year have helped drop mortgage rates as well. Kris Patel points out “as interest rates decline, more buyers will emerge, but so will many sellers. We need the housing market to thaw.”Housing is not the only game in town that benefits from lower interest rates. Perplexity, my favorite AI search engine, explains:“Lower interest rates generally benefit American consumers by reducing borrowing costs, making it cheaper to finance large purchases such as homes, cars, or education through loans or mortgages. This can also increase disposable income, encouraging spending on big-ticket items and boosting economic activity”So how many interest rate cuts can we expect in 2025? Prediction market Kalshi says the market has increased its expected number of rate cuts. It now gives >75% odds of two or more cuts this year.Kalshi is also showing a 38% chance of a recession this year. So is Donald Trump, Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick and the current administration trying to pull down asset prices? Absolutely. They claim to be focused on Main Street over Wall Street. The big goal is to get interest rates down, which will lead to more economic activity thanks to the access to cheap capital. This is not your grandfather’s economy. And this is not your grandfather’s economic policy. No wonder there is so much controversy over the strategy — people hate new things, especially when they are bold bets coming from one side of the political aisle. But if we end up with lower interest rates and can somehow avoid a recession, then we will all have to tip our cap to the current leadership team. I don’t envy their position. Something new has to be done since we can’t continue on the path we are on. Let’s all hope this plan works. Millions of Americans are depending on it. Have a great start to your week. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementWhy Bitcoin Crashed After Trump

To investors,President Trump signed an Executive Order last night in the Oval Office to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. This is a monumental milestone for bitcoin — the nation states have officially arrived.There have been a few countries like El Salvador and Bhutan that previously embraced the digital currency, but America is the big dog and their entrance into the global accumulation race marks a new era. Here is Trump signing the Executive Order, which David Sacks describes as a “digital Fort Knox for digital gold”:The details of the Executive Order were written in a near perfect way too. First, the United States is going to use the ~ 200,000 coins already in their possession as the seed capital for the strategic reserve. This decision makes the US government one of the largest holders of bitcoin globally. You can see in the language used that the author of the Executive Order understood bitcoin. They explicitly call out bitcoin as digital gold, they reference the fact that bitcoin has never been hacked, and they highlight the digital scarcity created by bitcoin’s 21 million coin limit.But the Executive Order did not stop there. The US government is also opening the door for Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick to purchase more bitcoin over time. The specific language in the EO says “the Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies have no incremental costs on American taxpayers.”You have to hand it to the administration — this is a perfect balancing act.They figured out a way to buy more bitcoin without requiring more taxpayer dollars to do it. This strategy alleviates the concerns of critics who didn’t want to see the US government increasing spending to buy a digital asset. But the strategy also appeals to bitcoiners who were concerned the United States would merely put the 200,000 existing coins in the reserve, but not work to acquire more bitcoin over time. Win-win situation. So where do we go from here? I believe there are a few important points to keep an eye on. First, the President and his team were able to construct a plan that explicitly called out the difference between bitcoin and the altcoins. They aren’t going to be abrasive to ETH, SOL, XRP, and ADA — they will actually be supportive of them via a digital asset stockpile — but the US is not going to work to accumulate more altcoins through open market purchases. Second, the United States has a lot of options at their disposal to find money to buy more bitcoin. The Treasury Secretary was on CNBC this morning and explained how he views buying more bitcoin. Take a listen:It sure sounds like the United States is going to continue buying more bitcoin over time.Third, and maybe most importantly, the US government just put the global accumulation race for bitcoin into hyperdrive. Every country in the world has now been put on notice that nation states are trying to accumulate as many of the 21 million coins as they can. Interestingly, the price of bitcoin did not skyrocket on news of the Executive Order. We saw the price dump instead because the general public seemed disappointed that the US did not announce a monster buy of bitcoin to go with the announcement. But I view the price decline as a perfect example of how markets don’t understand nuance and this will likely be seen as a moment of arbitrage in hindsight. If you had asked me 8 or 9 years ago what would be the most bullish development for bitcoin, the idea of the US government buying bitcoin would have been near the top of the list. Fast forward about a decade and here we are — it is almost unbelievable. The federal government is now hoarding the hardest money ever created. US states are going to quickly follow, along with foreign countries. There have been few times in history where individuals were able to front run government for a financial asset, but that is the beauty of bitcoin. The digital currency is available to anyone with an internet connection. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, what language you speak, or what school your parents went to. You just need the ability to think independently and act boldly. On this historic milestone, I can’t help but think about how crazy this whole thing has been. Satoshi invented the perfect solution to one of the hardest problems in the world. That solution was met with abrasiveness and critiques from people around the world. But in a free market where the best ideas win, bitcoin continues to succeed in the face of adversity and now the United States has capitulated.Bitcoin is winning.Just make sure that you are gracious in victory. There are still billions of people who need to learn about bitcoin and the economic freedom it can provide. The job is not finished yet. I can’t wait to see what else we can all accomplish together.Hope you have a great weekend. I’ll talk to everyone on Monday.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO,

Today’s letter is brought to you by Osprey Funds!The Osprey BNB Chain Trust (OBNB) is the first U.S. tradable ticker for BNB and provides secure exposure to BNB right from your brokerage account—no custodial wallets or private keys required. Due to its unavailability on centralized exchanges in the U.S., OBNB offers one of the only paths for U.S. investors to access BNB exposure via USD.To investors,Rumors continue to circulate about the White House Crypto Summit planned for this Friday in Washington DC. This will be the first time industry leaders meet in a public setting with the President’s working group to discuss key issues related to bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry. One of the main topics of conversation leading up to this meeting has been the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. President Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would implement a bitcoin-only reserve, but more recently posted online that a crypto-related reserve would include altcoins like ETH, SOL, XRP, and ADA.The backlash on the proposed bait-and-switch was loud and swift. Most people in the crypto industry, including those who hold some of the altcoins mentioned, agreed the country’s strategic reserve should be bitcoin only. As I wrote earlier this week, there is nothing strategic for the US with the altcoins. But it looks like the administration understands this point. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick gave an interview earlier today and explicitly called out the different treatment of bitcoin. He shared the following statement with The Pavlovic media outlet:“The President definitely thinks that there’s a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Now, there will be the question of, how do we handle the other cryptocurrencies? And I think the model is going to be announced on Friday when we do that.A Bitcoin strategic reserve is something the President’s interested in. He spoke about it all during the campaign trail, and I think you’re going to see it executed on Friday.So Bitcoin is one thing, and then the other currencies, the other crypto tokens, I think, will be treated differently—positively, but differently.”This is an important development in the broader conversation. If the United States creates a strategic bitcoin reserve, without the altcoins, then most bitcoiners will feel like Trump delivered on his campaign promise. Does that mean he will be abrasive towards the other coins? No, not at all. He can be supportive of other coins without putting them in the country’s strategic reserve. My guess is that is where we end up, but we will learn more on Friday. In the meantime, there are a few trends worth paying attention to across the bitcoin network. For example, the balances on exchanges continues to plummet, which suggests bitcoin holders are unwilling to sell their bitcoin at these levels.Prices will have to substantially increase in order to unlock more liquidity from the long-term holders. What could drive that substantial increase in price?More buying from various sources.You can see here the ETFs continue to accumulate more bitcoin regardless of the price action. The collective funds started with approximately 650,000 bitcoin in January 2024 and today hold nearly 1,140,000 bitcoin for various investors.The ETFs are not the only buyers either. Take a look at Japan’s Metaplanet. They continue to acquire as much bitcoin as possible for their balance sheet, including 497 bitcoin in the last 24 hours.That number 497 is important because that means one company bought more than 100% of all the new bitcoin that was created yesterday and put into circulation. It doesn’t take a genius to realize the price has to go up if people and companies are buying more bitcoin each day than what is being created. Supply and demand is one hell of a concept. This brings us back to the White House Crypto Summit on Friday — if the United States announces a strategic bitcoin reserve that includes the nation buying more bitcoin, all bets are off on what could happen to the digital assets’ price. There will be a lot of speculation between now and Friday. But something tells me we are going to get fireworks in DC to close out the week. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementDarius Dale Explains Why The Government May Be Crashing The Market On PurposeDarius Dale is the Founder & CEO of 42Macro.In this conversation we talk about global liquidity, what’s going on with inflation expectations, why the government may be tanking the market for a foundation of strength, and how this impacts asset prices.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com.* Franzy - Ready to leave the 9-to-5, start a side hustle, or expand your portfolio? Franzy is your gateway to franchise ownership—research, compare, and fund the right opportunity with confidence and transparency.* SimpleMining -* Bitwise

To investors,We have entered the Age of Economic Chaos. It seems like each day brings a new announcement, a new decision, or a new action. Rather than a simple, predictable plan being executed, President Trump and his administration are moving fast and breaking things. His critics see this strategy as detrimental to the US economy and America’s position globally. His supporters are applauding the President for following through on what he promised while on the campaign trail. They want the swamp drained of the bureaucracy, government waste ended, and an America First strategy that rolls back the globalist agenda from the last 50 years.Let’s look at the last 24 hours as an example of how this is playing out.The White House confirmed last night that President Trump has suspended all military aid to Ukraine amid the disagreement with Ukraine’s Zelenskiy. The United States is seeking a mineral rights deal that will ensure repayment for the hundreds of billions of dollars that is being sent to support Ukraine, while the European country continues to demand security agreements and other onerous terms. This decision to pause military aid was a surprise to the market and created another news cycle filled with fear, which doesn’t help to calm investors.According to Perplexity, investors are worried because freezing aid “could potentially escalate the conflict and increase geopolitical instability, which often leads to market volatility and economic uncertainty. Additionally, this move might signal a shift in US foreign policy that could have broader implications for international trade relationships and global security alliances, factors that significantly influence investor confidence and financial markets worldwide.”As if that wasn’t enough, Trump confirmed he will impose the 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico, along with an additional 10% tariff on China, starting at midnight last night. These penalties had been threatened for weeks, but many were holding out hope for a last minute deal — instead of getting that deal, the US government is moving forward with the tariffs as a way to exert pain on our largest trading partners. Stocks immediately fell after Trump confirmed the tariffs would be implemented and the S&P 500 is now negative year-to-date.You can actually watch the stock market fall while Trump is speaking about tariffs in this video:Just these two developments would be enough news for weeks of analysis in any other administration. Add in the fact that the stock market is crashing and you can understand why hysteria has started to take over.But we were just warming up yesterday. And not all the news was bad.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company held a press conference with President Trump, AI czar David Sacks, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The company announced plans to invest an additional $100 billion in the United States by building 5 new manufacturing facilities and creating at least 20,000 American jobs.Trump’s supporters will argue this investment from TSMC is a result of the tariff threat, while his detractors will point to Biden’s CHIPS Act as the main driver. The truth is that both Presidents are likely to be partially responsible. Regardless of who gets the credit, American citizens should be excited about the prospect of more investment, more domestic manufacturing, and more jobs.So what is going on here? It feels like every 24 hour period brings a flurry of good and bad news. It seems to the untrained eye that action is the goal, rather than results. But I want to make a different argument — I want to lay out a scenario where the President and his team are intentionally cratering the economy and the stock market to reset the foundation on which to build upon.Kyla Scanlon pointed out that one user on X named Fischer King posted in October of last year the following:“If Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit - there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy - this economy propped up with debt (generating asset bubbles) and artificially suppressed wages (as a result of illegal immigration). Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.”This innocuous post got a reply from Elon Musk who said “sounds about right.”This begs the question — why would a President and his team intentionally hurt the economy or the stock market? The answer is a little more complicated.Cem Karsan had the best breakdown of anyone:If you didn’t already understand the current White House’s approach from their budget, Bessent is telling you loud & clear, if you care to listen. This is what he is saying in plain English: They want to slow demand in the real economy & hence slow inflation, by distributing less to people, vi

To investors,The big news over the weekend was President Trump announced his intention to create a crypto strategic reserve for the United States. While there were plenty of surprises in the details of how this will be implemented, the idea of a crypto-related reserve had been rumored for weeks. Trump posted on Truth Social the following message:The internet immediately exploded in hot takes, but the most popular response was whether this crypto reserve would include bitcoin or not because Trump’s post on Truth Social did not explicitly name the largest crypto asset. Within minutes, Trump posted again to clarify that bitcoin and ethereum would be included in the crypto reserve as well. It is important to call out that we don’t have all the details on the administration’s plan yet. We can only go off of what we have been told — it will be crucial everyone keeps an open mind until we have more information.With that said, there is a lot to unpack in this development, so lets start with the historical context. President Trump promised the bitcoin community that he would create a strategic bitcoin stockpile while speaking at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville last year. There was no mention of other crypto assets being included in the reserve.Various people will claim that Trump made a promise on the campaign trail and now he is fulfilling it — I completely disagree. And I say this as someone who stands to substantially benefit financially from the announcement over the weekend. Even though Solana is our second largest crypto position, and various public equities I hold are heavily correlated to altcoins, I still think this decision on a wide-ranging crypto strategic reserve is an unforced error that will be regretted in the future.Instead of the United States creating a reserve of hard money, which has strategic importance due to the finite supply, the relationship with low-cost energy, and the backing of the strongest computer network in the world, we seem to be getting a random smattering of speculative tools that will enrich the insiders and creators of these coins at the expense of the US taxpayer. See here is the thing — the United States is not in the business of buying stocks or other investment assets. Maybe the soon-to-be-formed sovereign wealth fund will do that, but there is no precedent for the government to play capital allocator in this way. Instead, the US has strategic reserves of assets like gold, oil, cheese, and other assets that are important to the strength of our balance sheet or have national importance. Crypto tokens like ETH, SOL, XRP, and ADA don’t fit that framework. These tokens are more akin to technology stocks, rather than hard money or natural commodities. If the United States is willing to put these tokens on their balance sheet, we should also be willing to put stock from Amazon, Facebook, Tesla, Palantir, and Gamestop. If we are speculating on capital appreciation, we can even add LP interests in Blackstone, Citadel, Millennium, Tiger Global, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and your favorite real estate or private credit fund. We obviously wouldn’t put those stocks or funds on the country’s balance sheet, so we shouldn’t put these altcoins on the balance sheet either. There is nothing strategic about ETH, SOL, XRP, or ADA.This begs the question — how did we get here? How did the President of the United States get swindled into announcing a shitcoin fund? The answer will probably surprise you. See, the crypto industry is a magnified version of the traditional finance industry. Anything you can find on Wall Street, you will find in crypto but on steroids. The perfect example is what just happened. We watched crypto projects, lobbyists, and special interest groups co-opt the President of the United States. There pitch was perfectly laid out. They told the President that any crypto-related reserve should hold tokens that were “made in America.” This pitch was the perfect trap for a President who ran on the America First agenda. How do I know? Because numerous people who met with the President told me that was their pitch. I remember thinking to myself when I heard their pitch — “I hate how good that probably sounds to the President.” I never thought the pitch would actually work though. My belief was the President is surrounded by too many people who deeply understand bitcoin and the geopolitical importance of the asset. It appears I was wrong in that assumption.You have to hand it to these crypto projects and their ecosystems — they understood exactly how to appeal to President Trump and his administration. The “America First” agenda was weaponized to provide exit liquidity using taxpayer dollars for crypto businesses.The crypto projects that are being included in the reserve didn’t hire the boring K Street lobbyists who wear cheap suits and work the political system like a cocktail party. They were much more blatant. These organizations had their leadership teams meet directly wi

To investors,The United States of America is open for business. We voted a real estate developer and famed businessman into office. He has appointed everyone from Elon Musk to Howard Lutnick to Scott Bessent as members of his team to help change the economic status of the country. The plan is to increase government revenue, decrease government spending, weaken the US dollar, and bring the 10-year bond yield down as a way to spur economic growth. This may sound like a dream, but I think we should take the plan more seriously than the market is currently taking it.This new economic strategy is being called the “Mar-a-Lago Accord” and contains three important components:* Tariffs to increase government revenue and incentivize American manufacturing.* The sovereign wealth fund and External Revenue Service to increase government revenue.* DOGE to cut government waste, abuse, and fraud.The last few weeks have been dominated by news pertaining to tariffs and the Department of Government Efficiency, but yesterday we got more information on how the government is planning to increase revenue through various business deals or activities.First, Ukraine is reported to have agreed to a mineral rights deal with the United States. The Wall Street Journal described the deal with the following:“Ukraine has agreed to a mineral-rights deal with the U.S. that could be finalized as soon as Friday at a White House meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.People close to the negotiations said the text had now been agreed, and the U.S. had dropped its previous demand for the right to $500 billion in potential revenue from the development of Ukraine’s mineral resources.“It’s a very big deal. It could be a trillion-dollar deal,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Ukraine and Russia fighting a war that should have never ever happened.”The signing ceremony would be a personal victory for Zelensky, who has been pushing for a face-to-face meeting with Trump but has instead had to watch as the U.S. opened discussions with Moscow about how to end the war—excluding Ukraine. The Ukrainian president had refused to sign the mineral-rights deal presented by a lower-level official, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.”The details of the agreement are not known yet, but the Wall Street Journal went on to write:“Under the terms of the agreement, Ukraine would pay some proceeds from future mineral resource development into a fund that would invest in projects in Ukraine. Resources that already make money for the Ukrainian government—such as existing oil and gas production—will be exempt from the deal.The size of the U.S.’s stake in the fund and joint ownership deals will be hashed out in future agreements.”This is a prime example of where the current administration is leaning on their business experience to strike a deal that creates revenue for the country and ensures that any foreign nation that wants services from the US will be paying for the service. According to Perplexity, my favorite AI search engine, here is the American history with these payment for security agreements:The next development of the day came in the form of an announcement from Donald Trump and Howard Lutnick in the Oval Office. The pair created something called a “Gold Card” which will be sold to foreigners for $5 million and give these individuals benefits equivalent to a green card. Here is Trump and Lutnick announcing the idea:If the United States government can sell about 200,000 gold cards, we have a shot at eliminating the annual deficit. If the government can sell about 7 million gold cards, we have a shot at eliminating the entire national debt. Critics are already screaming that no one will buy these new gold cards, but the truth is no one knows what demand will look like yet. There has been demand for immigration investment programs in the past and I anticipate there will be some portion of the global population willing to part with $5 million in exchange for an American green card. Your guess is as good as mine on the exact number of people.But this was not the only announcement made by Trump and Lutnick in the Oval Office yesterday. They also announced a brand new probe into copper and copper-products. Bloomberg explained it with the following description:“President Donald Trump has signed an executive action directing the Commerce Department to examine possible copper tariffs, the latest in a string of measures aimed at imposing sector-specific levies that could reshape global supply chains.Trump said the order would have a “big impact” as he signed it in the Oval Office, joined by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.Senior administration officials earlier on Tuesday cast the step as necessary to address what they said was a national security issue. They argued that dumping and overcapacity in world markets had impacted domestic US copper production, leaving weapons systems and other cri

Today’s letter is brought to you by Osprey Funds!The Osprey BNB Chain Trust (OBNB) is the first U.S. tradable ticker for BNB and provides secure exposure to BNB right from your brokerage account—no custodial wallets or private keys required. Due to its unavailability on centralized exchanges in the U.S., OBNB offers one of the only paths for U.S. investors to access BNB exposure via USD.To investors,Bloomberg published an article yesterday titled “Citadel Securities Plots Jump Into Crypto Trading After Trump’s Embrace.” The piece explains:“Ken Griffin’s market-making giant Citadel Securities is looking to become a liquidity provider for cryptocurrencies, betting President Donald Trump’s embrace of the industry will usher in a boom for the asset class.It’s a clear pivot from the firm’s previously cautious stance on crypto market-making. Citadel Securities has had a limited presence in crypto trading, having steered clear of exchanges frequented by retail investors due to a lack of regulations around it in the US.The firm aims to get added to the roster of market makers on various exchanges, including those run by Coinbase Global Inc., Binance Holdings and Crypto.com, according to people familiar with the matter.Once the firm is approved on exchanges, it initially plans to set up market-making teams outside the US, the people said, asking not to be identified as the plans aren’t public. The extent of the push and Citadel’s desire could change based on how or if new regulations roll out in the coming months.”This is a perfect example of the impact a pro-innovation, pro-technology regulatory environment can have. Major players like Citadel were sitting on the sidelines waiting to participate in the best performing financial asset markets because they felt the rules were unclear. Think of how insane that is — Citadel Securities, one of the best capitalized investment firms in the world, could not figure out how to participate in crypto markets without regulators coming after them. Thankfully, the industry now has a tailwind and every market participant is trying to figure out what their crypto strategy will be. You can expect market-making firms like Citadel Securities to drive substantial revenue without having to take significant directional bets on the market. That could be a good decision at a time where the macro economy is in a weird spot. Mets owner and famed investor Steve Cohen recently said he believes economic growth is going to slow from 2.5% to as low as 1.5% — that would be a very big deal.Here were Cohen’s negative comments on the economy:These comments are important because Steve Cohen is one of the smartest investors in the world. He intimately understands financial markets and is well-versed in the complex economic machine. What Cohen is essentially arguing is that government waste propped up financial markets, so removing that waste will be a headwind for economic growth. I don’t disagree with him. Add in the tariffs and you have an even slower growing economy in the short term.So what should the Federal Reserve do? How about the Trump administration?The answer may be right in front of our face. Another article in Bloomberg titled “The Bond Market Isn’t Fully Buying What Musk’s DOGE Is Selling” lays out what Trump, Secretary Bessent, and Elon Musk are currently thinking:“Musk recognized that the ultimate scorekeepers of the success of his small band of cost-cutters were 200 miles away — on Wall Street. There, bond investors had pushed up yields sharply in the run-up to, and aftermath of, Trump’s election and were now refusing to bid them back down.Musk got the message loud and clear. The bond market was doubting him, demanding more evidence that the cuts were adding up fast enough to actually rein in the bloated budget deficit and curb the ever-growing national debt. This, Musk insisted, was a mistake they’d come to regret.“The bond markets do not currently reflect the savings that I’m confident we can achieve,” he said during a freewheeling, hour-long discussion he led on his social media platform, X. “If you’re shorting bonds, I think you’re on the wrong side of the bet.”Trump has famously obsessed with the stock market as a real-time referendum on his presidency. But now, with Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in his ear at the start of his second term, much of the attention has shifted to another benchmark — the 10-year Treasury bond yield.With good reason. As powerful as the Federal Reserve is, with its control of short-term rates, and as much sway as it has on stock market sentiment, it’s the 10-year Treasury rate that largely determines the cost of money for homebuyers and the biggest US companies. Bring that rate down and it’ll pave the way for millions of Americans to buy the house they’ve wanted for years and, in the process, stoke faster economic growth and curb the alarming surge in the government’s annual interest tab.”So to recap — Steve Cohen is sounding the alarm on a s

To investors,I remember sitting in economics class during college wondering what it would have been like to live through Bretton Woods or the Plaza Accord. Both events had significant impacts on national currencies, asset prices and the macro environment. But we should be careful what we wish for. Jim Bianco has recently popularized the idea of a “Mar-a-Lago Accord” that is already being put into motion. He says you should take this idea (and President Trump) seriously, but not literally. We may not see photos from a big meeting at Mar-a-Lago, but we are virtually watching the economic machine evolve into something different. First, you have to accept that the US dollar is overvalued. This is creating problems for the United States and many trading partners around the world. Jim points out that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said on Dec 4, 2024 - “the U.S. federal budget is on an unsustainable path. The debt is not at an unsustainable level, but the path is unsustainable, and we know that we have to change that.”Jim’s response was “we can no longer do nothing. That will result in disaster. Something has to change. And that is not trying harder to raise taxes and cut spending. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. New approach is needed (Mar-a-Lago Accord).”This is where things get interesting. What is the new approach? According to Jim, we are watching this new economic system roll out in front of our eyes. This approach includes the following:This is not a potential idea — Jim Bianco says the plan is already in motion. “Step one has already been done ... Tariffs. They have two objectives, leverage (Mexico 10k troops on the border) and revenues. But to drone on and on about tariffs is to lose sight of the entire forest in this tree.”“Step two is being done, the US Sovereign Wealth Fund. How does this get funded? Treasury Secretary Bessent ... sovereign-wealth fund would allow the government ‘to monetize the U.S. balance sheet for the American people. We’re going to put the assets to work.’”“Step three - reduce the debt via payment for the security arrangement. Trump Jan 23rd to the WEF - ‘I’m also going to ask all NATO nations to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP, which is what it should have been years ago. It was only at 2%, and most nations didn’t pay until I came along. I insisted that they pay, and they did, because the United States was really paying the difference at that time, and it was unfair to the United States. But many, many things have been unfair for many years to the United States.’”Many people I know are not taking any of these developments seriously. They thought the tariffs were merely a negotiating point. They currently think the sovereign wealth fund is a random announcement that will never get implemented. And the thought of the US demanding payment for security of other nations makes them want to scream in rage.But every investor has a choice to make — you can ignore what is happening or you can adapt your perspective as new information is presented. The goal of these various programs according to Bianco is to “reduce the debt burden, lower the dollar and bring down interest rates.”Majority of investors agree those three outcomes would be good things. The controversy and debate comes from disagreement on whether the Mar-a-Lago Accord can actually accomplish these desired results. Here is my biggest takeaway though — whether you believe the desired outcomes can be achieved or not, you have to accept the fact that the new administration is going to use these programs and tools to attempt it. Tariffs are being implemented. The sovereign wealth fund is real and will be created. Europe is going to pay a higher price for the security agreement as well. Those are facts that can’t be ignored.Market participants are going to wager trillions of dollars on the outcome of this new “Accord.” The good news is that American citizens will be better off if the plan succeeds. The important question is whether asset prices will benefit or not.Interest rates coming down should be a tailwind. Debt reduction could be a short-term headwind. And a weaker dollar should drive asset prices higher. Those three statements mean the situation is complex, but I am in the camp that we would see a net positive for asset prices. Ultimately, assets like bitcoin or tech stocks will go the way of global liquidity. The Mar-a-Lago Accords idea is fun to think about, but everything you need to know will be told by the liquidity charts. Hope you all have a great start to your week. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow. - Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementWill Bitcoin Generate Yield?Anthony Pompliano joins Squawk Box to talk bitcoin, regulation, current macro environment, memecoins, and where bitcoin could be headed next.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com*

READER NOTE: I have spent the last few years mostly managing balance sheet capital. There have been a few people who have reached out asking if they can invest with me or our investment firm. While I have not made a decision yet, I am increasingly open to the idea. As a way to gauge interest, I made this Google Form. If you are interested in potentially investing alongside me in the deals we do, please fill out the form to indict your interest: Click hereTo investors,American consumers are feeling immense financial pain. I started thinking about the problem after I saw this post from my friend Balaji Srinivasan showing credit card debt hit a record $1.21 trillion:If you dig into the data further, you see that the average credit card balance is $21,000 and Americans are paying an average of 28.6% interest on that debt. This is insane. Imagine paying 28.6% on your debt — you would double your debt in about 30 months.But credit cards are only part of the story.Home affordability is at the lowest levels in four decades. The median US home price has gone from ~ $280,000 in 2016 to more than $400,000 today. There is a decreasing amount of people who have the cash laying around to make a downpayment, let alone the increasing wages to keep up with this level of real estate appreciation.Home prices accelerating are helping the boomer generation who have around 50% of their net worth in their primary residence, but it is pricing out the younger generations who have become a renter generation. We can also see this financial pain for the American consumer in their spending behavior. Retail sales in January fell 0.9% and has caused a number of stocks to fall in recent days — retailers are calling out the weakened consumer demand as a significant headwind. Not only is the consumer frustration showing up in spending patterns, but we are now seeing the sentiment surveys come in negatively for President Trump and his administration. Here is the data:“According to a recent Gallup poll, Trump's approval rating on the economy stands at 42 percent. This is lower than any president's first-term February reading in recent history, Gallup notes, including those for Joe Biden (54 percent), Barack Obama (59 percent), George W. Bush (53 percent) and Bill Clinton (45 percent).”Economies don’t turn around overnight obviously. But the American consumer bought into the campaign promises of inflation coming down and a strong, growing US economy. Vice President JD Vance said Americans should expect the positive impacts to “take a bit of time.”Another data point worth paying attention to is the rising prices of gold and bitcoin. Both assets benefit from sound money principles and operate outside the system. They serve as a safe haven for investors who are nervous about the economy or seeking protection from inflation. Gold continues to hit new all-time highs and sits right below $3,000 per ounce. The precious metal is up more than 50% over the last 12 months. Bitcoin is also on a tear. The digital currency has doubled in the last year, while continuing to hover around $100,000 per coin. Consumers are feeling the pain of 3% year-over-year inflation (if you believe the official government metrics). They are starting to contract their spending. They can’t afford a home and they are living on credit more frequently. Plus investment capital is seeking assets that benefit from inflation.These various trends lead back to one big idea — the American consumer is in financial pain. Thankfully, we don’t have to spend all of our time complaining. There are solutions we can pursue. First, we need DOGE to be successful in slashing government spending. This will act as a deflationary force on the economy and help keep inflation under control. Second, we need the private sector to create the products, services, and companies necessary to get GDP growth cranking higher. This will also create a deflationary force that leads to more economic gain for the average American family. Citizens can’t impact the political apparatus until the next election, but we can focus our time and effort on making sure that GDP is growing faster. The future will be bright if we can do that. Grow our way out of the problem. Until then, people will continue to use bitcoin and gold as a way to store their hard-earned economic value. Stocks and real estate will also benefit from the high inflation environment. Investors are winners in today’s economy and savers are losers. Crazy situation. Let’s hope the new administration is successful for the sake of all Americans. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone next week. - Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementWill Bitcoin Generate Yield?David Tse is the Co-Founder of Babylon Protocol. In this conversation he explains two use cases for bitcoin, why he is trying to build a third use case, staking in the bitcoin network, and what David thinks the future looks like.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Reed Smith -

To investors,Howard Lutnick, the new Secretary of Commerce, was on television last night discussing the administration’s goal of eliminating federal income tax. This is the type of big, bold thinking that can change the direction of a country. Here is the clip:It is important to understand what appears to be the playbook. DOGE is focused on cutting $2 trillion from the government budget. That would eliminate the current annual deficit and bring us very close to a balanced budget. The tariffs being levied would increase the government’s revenue, combined with Lutnick’s plan to create an additional $1 trillion of revenue from the government’s balance sheet, would lead to an annual surplus. As soon as you get to a surplus, you can start to lower the tax rate of American citizens. I don’t see a world where the tax rate goes to 0% overnight, but we could see a slow, steady reduction over the next four years. We saw a reduction from 39.6% to 37% in 2018, which was obviously well received by Americans.The most interesting part of this entire situation is that I don’t remember Trump or his team promising a balanced budget on the campaign trail. I don’t think they ever mentioned abolishing the federal income tax either. In fact, I spoke on numerous podcasts about my disappointment that neither major party candidate was even pretending they wanted to balance the budget. But here we are.The ramifications of this achievement would be profound. The simple increase in money available to hard-working families would be obvious, but you could see second order effects on stock prices (higher!), bitcoin (higher!), real estate (higher!), money market funds (higher!), etc. According to prediction market Kalshi, the market is putting a 54% chance on Trump being able to reduce the national debt. On one hand, that is a much higher number than you would expect, but it is still far away from a near certainty. Just as I continue to say the single most important thing in bitcoin is whether the United States creates a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, I believe the most important thing for the long-term status of the US economy is whether the federal income tax is significantly reduced or not. This single number represents the success or failure of so many other things — tariff program, External Revenue Service, national debt, interest rates, etc. If I had to guess right now, we will not see federal income tax reduced to 0%. Instead, I could see a world where we get the rate reduced under 30% and long-term capital gains tax is dropped to 15%. These two reductions would increase investments in America and serve as a boom to the US economy. It is a big, bold idea. But we need these types of ideas to get back on track. I don’t care who is in the White House — I want to see Americans with more money in their pocket and a country that is accelerating towards a bright future. Hopefully that is what we are going to get. Have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementThis Bitcoin Bull Run Is Just Getting Started Says Abra CEOBill Barhydt is the Founder & CEO of Abra. In this conversation we talk about bitcoin, regulation tailwinds, how we think about DeFi for institutions, memecoins, stablecoins, and what Bill is excited about in the future.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Reed Smith - Smart legal solutions for complex disputes, transactions, and regulations. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com* Ledger - Ledger secures 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management.* Franzy - Ready to leave the 9-to-5, start a side hustle, or expand your portfolio? 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To investors,The widely quoted annual deficit number is $2 trillion. In layman terms, the United States spends $2 trillion more than we pull in as revenue. That is obviously not good. But we got even worse news recently. The US government is not running a $2 trillion deficit. They are actually running a ~ $2.5 trillion deficit based on the annual run rate from the first four months of the 2025 fiscal year. Geiger Capital points out “the first four months of FY 2025 produced a deficit of $838 Billion. That’s $306 Billion more than the deficit recorded in the same period last fiscal year. We’re running a $2.5 TRILLION annual deficit.”The most shocking aspect of these numbers is not the nominal values, but rather the rate of growth. It is unsustainable if our annual deficit is growing 25% year-over-year or more. This explains why we are adding approximately $1 trillion to the national debt every 100 days — insane!Thankfully, we have the Department of Government Efficiency working around the clock to stop wasteful government spending. Here are the various savings DOGE was able to create for the American taxpayer yesterday:* The Department of Agriculture terminated 18 contracts for a total of ~$9 million.* The Department of Education terminated 29 DEI training grants totaling $101 million.* The Department Of Education terminated 89 contracts worth $881 million.This means that the agency tasked with eliminating government waste was able to stop ~ $1 billion of spending in the last 24 hours. These $1 billion days are a great start, but we are going to need even larger cuts to get to a balanced budget. But lets stick with the national debt for a second — we know the higher the number goes, the worse off Americans are. But there is a weird solution in bitcoin that has presented itself over the last 15 years. Before you roll your eyes, hear me out for a second. We know inflation is bad for people who hold dollars. So what do smart people do? They exchange their cash for investment assets. Now inflation works for the smart people, rather than working against them.The same is true of bitcoin and the debt. Porter Stansberry said it best on Marty Bent’s podcast recently:“Their debt is your problem until you own bitcoin. The moment you own bitcoin, their debt is your greatest asset.”Plenty of people understand this phenomenon. Historically, they have not held bitcoin though. Gold has been a winning asset for these investors. As gold hits a new all-time high and nears the magical $3,000 price level, we can see that the precious metal has benefitted significantly from the insane monetary policy and debt explosion over the last 5 or 6 years. Here is inflation-adjusted gold prices since the early 1970s:And you want to know the craziest part? The gold price is not being driven by American capital allocators. Instead, the price is being driven by Asian investors. You can see here the recent rise of gold trading volumes in China as one example:The incumbent investors want gold, but the new generation wants bitcoin. You can see bitcoin is quickly closing in on gold’s market share. A great prompt to think about for your portfolio is whether you think bitcoin will continue to make up ground on gold or if you believe gold is poised to turnaround this trend?You can probably guess where I stand on this. And now that the national debt is actually growing faster than we previously thought, we can hope DOGE is successful while simultaneously protecting ourselves with a little bitcoin. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementToday’s letter is brought to you by Bitcoin Investor Week!I am hosting Bitcoin Investor Week in New York City from February 24-28th. It is the largest annual meeting for sophisticated Wall Street investors who are interested in bitcoin.Speakers include Cathie Wood, Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Novogratz, Senator Cynthia Lummis, Jan van Eck, Anthony Scaramucci, Jack Mallers, Natalie Brunell, and many more.This is an entire week of high-quality conversations with the top people across traditional finance and bitcoin. The venues are incredible. The planned events will be incredibly fun. And I promise you will learn something, along with make important connections, if you attend this year.This will be one of the highest quality bitcoin conferences of the year. 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To investors, The crypto industry has become essential to national security. That is one of my big takeaways from the first press conference held by Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks. Most people are focused on the strategic bitcoin reserve, which I believe will happen in 2025, but that is not the most interesting part of Sacks’ focus from my perspective. The bitcoin reserve will help the United States over the long-term. That is obviously important. However, we have short-term issues we need to address too. One of the big issues is demand for US treasuries. China and Japan used to be 22% of treasury demand, but they have recently fallen as low as 7% of the demand. This is important to watch because nation states and their central banks tend to be price insensitive buyers. State Street produced a research report in 2024 that highlighted the issue:“Growing US federal budget deficits and higher refinancing costs are bringing renewed attention to the US Treasury market. Over the next decade, an estimated US$2 trillion of net issuance is expected annually. This issuance will take place in a market environment quite different from that of the 2010s, where price-insensitive buyers, such as the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and foreign central banks, were the sources of increased demand. This landscape has shifted with the end of quantitative easing (QE) and reduced foreign reserve accumulation. By simple arithmetic, price-sensitive buyers, such as US households and corporates, are expected to account for a growing share of Treasury investors.”Thankfully, we are watching a net new buyer of treasuries show up right when the United States needs them the most — stablecoin issuers. Stablecoin issuers are already a top 20 holder of US treasuries collectively. This trend is accelerating in recent years, so there is a strong argument that stablecoin issuers will be a top 10 holder in short order. Don’t take my word for it though. David Sacks said he believes stablecoins could ensure US dollar dominance globally, increase the use of US dollars as the global reserve currency, and create trillions of dollars in demand for US treasuries. Given the potential positive impact from stablecoins, it makes sense that lawmakers are focusing their time and effort on creating stablecoin frameworks to accelerate that aspect of crypto.This brings me to the national security component of crypto. It is essential that stablecoins continue to become popular. The demand for US treasuries depends on it. Bitcoin is going to serve the exact role that it was created for — a perfect store of value to protect economic value over the long term. But stablecoins are a short-term solution to a big problem on the horizon for the United States. Dare I say stablecoins are too big to fail now. The United States has to play ball, so they are taking the right steps to embrace the industry rather than fight it.Issuing stablecoins will be a great business. Having stablecoins buy your treasuries will be a great transaction. And stablecoins will improve the financial experience for billions of people globally. Bitcoin is for saving, stablecoins are for spending. A digital savings account and a digital checking account. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow. - Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementHow To Reduce Taxes When Buying or Selling BitcoinChris Kline is the Co-Founder & COO of Bitcoin IRA. In this conversation we talk about the bitcoin strategic reserve, what Trump administration could do for bitcoin, Czech central bank consider holding bitcoin as reserve asset, how many other countries are getting into the game, repeal of SB121, banks holding bitcoin, and putting bitcoin in their your retirement account. Checkout Bitcoin IRA by clicking here.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* Ledger - Ledger secures 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management.* Franzy - Ready to leave the 9-to-5, start a side hustle, or expand your portfolio? Franzy is your gateway to franchise ownership—research, compare, and fund the right opportunity with confidence and transparency.* Bitwise - America’s largest crypto index fund manager and the only Bitcoin ETF issuer that publishes its wallet address plus donates 10% of profits to open source developers. 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To investors,President Trump fulfilled his campaign promise of implementing tariffs on Canada and Mexico over the weekend. This comes after majority of the country voted for Trump to assume office and implement his America First strategy. Tariffs, especially the blanket tariffs that were implemented in the last 48 hours, are one of the most controversial parts of the America First strategy. Most market participants critique the tariff decision as being negative for the US consumer, while also being ineffective in driving the other policy goals.I know these critiques well because I believed this mainstream narrative until a few weeks ago. Given my increasing focus on reading source material and spending the time and energy to come to my own conclusions, I went down a deep rabbit hole to better understand tariffs, their history, the policy goals, results in modern society, and the impact on prices, domestic manufacturing, and national security. What I discovered surprised me. The information ran counter to almost everything I had been told about tariffs. The overwhelming consensus opinion from economists and media outlets previously seemed like common sense, but now it appears to be more similar to state talking points that could be compared to “inflation is transitory.”I have completely changed my mind on tariffs, so I thought it would be important to share what I learned and how I think about these economic tools now. Tariff ExperimentIn order to understand the current situation, it is important for us to get context on what I believe to be happening. My best guess is that Trump learned from his experiment during his first term on how to use tariffs as a lever to drive down income tax without creating inflation and simultaneously increasing domestic manufacturing and jobs. Now Trump is back in office with a mandate and he is going to transition from the Tariff Experiment (2017-2020) to the Tariff Era (2025 and beyond). As a reminder, President Trump implemented tariffs during his first term against solar panels and washing machines (January 2018), steel and aluminum (March 2018), and Chinese goods (four separate tariffs from March to September 2018). During the same time period, Trump dropped the federal income tax from 39.6% to 37%. A good summary of the Tariff Experiment is that the President was able to increase tariffs, drop federal income tax, avoid inflation, and strengthen American manufacturing. But before we dig deeper into what happened in 2017/2018, or why the mainstream narrative around tariffs is highly inaccurate, we have to talk about why tariffs are one of the longest standing American traditions. Tariff HistoryThe United States used to have no federal income tax and the country survived almost exclusively through tariff revenue. George Washington signed tariffs into law as the second bill of his administration as the first President of the United States. A year later, the US Revenue Cutter Service (which later became the US Coast Guard) was created to collect the 5% tariff on all imports to the country.Tariffs continued to be the main source of government revenue for about 70 years. These tariffs also protected American industries from foreign competition and ensured America was able to become self-sufficient, which was considered a national security issue at the time.However, as you can see in the chart below, we went from more than 90% of US government revenue via tariffs in 1850 to almost 0% of government revenue via tariffs by 1950. It took about a century to destroy one of America’s greatest advantages. Tariffs are widely credited as an essential tool for the success of the Industrial Revolution, which created the American economy we know today — the greatest economy ever constructed by a nation state in human history. “Tariffs have historically served a key role in the trade policy of the United States. Their purpose was to generate revenue for the federal government and to allow for import substitution industrialization (industrialization of a nation by replacing imports with domestic production) by acting as a protective barrier around infant industries. They also aimed to reduce the trade deficit and the pressure of foreign competition. Tariffs were one of the pillars of the American System that allowed the rapid development and industrialization of the United States.The United States pursued a protectionist policy from the beginning of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. Between 1861 and 1933, they had one of the highest average tariff rates on manufactured imports in the world. After 1942, the U.S. began to promote worldwide free trade.”Historical figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt were all outspoken supporters of tariffs as a necessary tool for America to thrive. The famous Lincoln quote on tariffs is “Give us a protective tariff, and we shall have the greatest n

Today’s Letter Is Brought To You By Consensus: Hong Kong.The world’s most ambitious builders and boldest investors are coming to Consensus Hong Kong (Feb. 18-20, 2025) to make connections and shape the future of digital assets. Whether you’re focused on Bitcoin’s evolution or the latest breakthroughs in Web3 and DeFi, this is where the industry does business.Here’s a glimpse of what’s in store:* Bitcoin: The Basis for a New Financial System – Unpack Bitcoin’s role in reshaping global finance.* Bitcoin, DeFi & L2 Innovations – Explore how layer-2 solutions are expanding Bitcoin’s utility.* Bitcoin Mining & the Future of Layer 2 – Get insights into mining, scalability and what’s next.Beyond Bitcoin, you’ll gain access to discussions with leading Web3 builders, institutional investors and global brands, plus exclusive networking with top decision-makers shaping the future of digital assets.Take 15% off your registration with code POMP and secure your seat at the table.To investors,The stock market sell-off yesterday has everyone predicting a larger crash on the horizon. But as we have discussed in the past, the more people talk about an incoming market crash, the less likely the crash will occur. Let’s play a hypothetical game though — what if a market crash did occur right now?Creative Planning CEO Peter Mallouk shared this chart to show “bear markets pale in comparison to bull markets, both in market movement and duration. Remember this chart during the next - and inevitable - correction or bear market.”The secret to handling bear markets is to simply keep buying great assets that you can hold for a long time. Young people have the greatest advantage because of the long period of time they will continue investing in markets for, but the rule of thumb applies to everyone. You make more in bull markets than you lose in bear markets. We must have a grasp of the accurate data in order to better understand this concept. Discipline Funds Founder Cullen Roche recently analyzed the nominal and real stock market returns over the last 125 years. Here is what he found:* US Stocks Real: 6.65% per year * US Stocks Nominal: 9.85% per yearThis data suggests that most investors are actually capturing only 2/3rds of the financial return they previously thought they were capturing. As Roche eloquently put it, “Inflation. The biggest fee of all them all. By a mile.”So lets go back to the events yesterday. We saw approximately $1.5 trillion erased from the US stock market. That is an amount comparable to the entire GDP of Spain. People are worried. But everyone is forgetting the most important development in financial markets — Donald Trump is back in the White House. He measures the success of the US economy through the price appreciation of the stock market (and increasingly the bitcoin price). It would be devastating to him if the stock market crashed throughout his administration. This is why you have seen him advocating for lower interest rates, along with spending so much time with corporate leaders. Donald Trump wants to command the stock market to go higher. And given he is the most powerful man on the planet, and the leader of the free world, I wouldn’t bet against him. Take the comments Trump made last night about Deepseek and the market response:We are locked in a global competition for AI supremacy. The United States has the talent, capital, and regulatory environment to win. If we accomplish what we are capable of, there should be an explosion of economic activity and stocks will go much, much higher. Bears sound smart in the short-term, but bulls make money in the long-run. A great example of this is Nassim Taleb. He was screeching in Miami yesterday about a large market crash on the horizon. For a guy who wrote a book titled Skin in the Game, you would expect Taleb to have material skin in the game. Of course, it doesn’t appear that he does. Taleb and the market crash predictors are looking for headlines and attention. Thankfully, the stock market and bitcoin don’t care. They will continue to go up as the United States adds $1 trillion to the national debt every 100 days.Betting against the American economy during a golden age of innovation has never played out well. There is no reason to believe it will work this time either. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital ManagementAnthony & John Pompliano Discuss The Deepseek Market Crash John Pompliano and Anthony Pompliano discuss bitcoin, why the price is crashing, why you shouldn’t care, the future outlook for bitcoin, Donald Trump tariff threats, DeepSeek, why investors are scared, and why America needs to compete.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* BitcoinOS - The operating system for bitcoin applications powered by zero-knowledge technology. Check out @BTC_OS on twitter to learn more.* Ledger - Ledger secures 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, fea

Today’s letter is brought to you by Bitcoin Investor Week!I am hosting Bitcoin Investor Week in New York City from February 24-28th. It is the largest annual meeting for sophisticated Wall Street investors who are interested in bitcoin.Speakers include Cathie Wood, Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Novogratz, Senator Cynthia Lummis, Jan van Eck, Anthony Scaramucci, Jack Mallers, Natalie Brunell, and many more.This is an entire week of high-quality conversations with the top people across traditional finance and bitcoin. The venues are incredible. The planned events will be incredibly fun. And I promise you will learn something, along with make important connections, if you attend this year.This will be one of the highest quality bitcoin conferences of the year. See you there!To investors,A new artificial intelligence model out of China is creating uncertainty and volatility in the market this morning. Deepseek, which was supposedly developed by a startup with ~ 200 employees, has proven to be more effective than OpenAI’s ChatGPT in a number of tests. The mobile app associated with Deepseek is currently sitting at #1 in the charts in the United States and China. Usually a launch that gains momentum like this so quickly is celebrated, so why is the market freaking out?The short answer is because majority of investors don’t understand how technology and financial markets are related. In order to understand the miscalculation, we must first understand what the average investor believes right now. They have seen a new Chinese model published that was reportedly created for under $6 million and the LLM has been open-sourced for anyone to use. This immediately begs the question of why American companies have spent so much money to build inferior models, along with creating a narrative that the US may be losing the competition for AI supremacy. But here is the thing — you can’t believe anything coming out of China right now. The government has a track record of misleading financial markets on various metrics and Chinese companies have been caught making fraudulent claims over and over again. I have no idea how much money it cost to build Deepseek. But it feels odd that OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, xAI, and many others have raised billions of dollars each and then a random startup claims they built something better for less than 1% of the capital investment. Could it be possible? Sure. Is it probable? Absolutely not. But lets assume that Deepseek actually pulled this off for $6 million. The next question is whether investors should be excited or scared — I feel strongly that a better, cheaper model available to anyone in the world should be a net positive for society. You are going to hear everyone talking about Jevan’s paradox in the coming days. The idea states an increase in efficiency in resource use will generate an increase in resource consumption rather than a decrease. (Even Microsoft’s Satya Nadella tweeted it already!)More companies are able to leverage the technology to create economic activity and drive GDP growth. Individuals should be able to save time and become more effective at their jobs. And more problems will be solved. So Deepseek’s innovation will drive more use of AI, rather than less. This is all positive on a macro basis. The fear starts to come into investors’ minds when they wonder if they have bet on the wrong companies. Many of the investors I know couldn’t explain the intricacies of artificial intelligence. They throw around buzz words and hope no one digs below surface level in their conversation. Instead of allocating capital based on technical understanding, most of these individuals and institutions are merely momentum investing. NVIDIA has gone up a lot, so they buy the stock because odds are it will continue going up. Same with a variety of other companies. The funny thing is that momentum investing in growth stocks is a good strategy most of the time. However, it can be brutal to go through the few times that momentum investing is the wrong strategy. So ask yourself — why are investors selling NVIDIA because a better model came out? Shouldn’t NVIDIA investors be excited that AI will become more prevalent and NVIDIA’s products will be used more often?The concern this morning is Deepseek claims they built the new model using inferior chips to what many American companies have access to. This is supposed to make people bearish on NVIDIA, but instead I think people should be more bullish since NVIDIA’s competitive advantage is so obvious. For example, if Deepseek could do this with inferior chips, imagine what they could do with NVIDIA products?This brings me to how I see the market today. First, AI models are largely thought to be infrastructure but I don’t agree with that framing. I see them more as cars. All cars have four wheels and an engine, but they come in a variety of wrappers. Some people like fast cars and some like big cars. Some people like red cars and others like black. Some peo

Today’s Letter Is Brought To You By Consensus: Hong Kong. The world’s most ambitious builders and boldest investors are coming to Consensus Hong Kong (Feb. 18-20, 2025) to make connections and shape the future of digital assets. Whether you’re focused on Bitcoin’s evolution or the latest breakthroughs in Web3 and DeFi, this is where the industry does business.Here’s a glimpse of what’s in store:* Bitcoin: The Basis for a New Financial System – Unpack Bitcoin’s role in reshaping global finance.* Bitcoin, DeFi & L2 Innovations – Explore how layer-2 solutions are expanding Bitcoin’s utility.* Bitcoin Mining & the Future of Layer 2 – Get insights into mining, scalability and what’s next.Beyond Bitcoin, you’ll gain access to discussions with leading Web3 builders, institutional investors and global brands, plus exclusive networking with top decision-makers shaping the future of digital assets.Take 15% off your registration with code POMP and secure your seat at the table.To investors,Wall Street is embracing Bitcoin in a way that was previously thought to be impossible. Over the last 48 hours we have heard a flurry of positive comments from numerous CEOs and leaders.First, Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio said on CNBC that he thought non-government money, including bitcoin, reduced risk in a portfolio. He explicitly stated that he owned bitcoin and thought it was interesting.Second, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan shared a belief that banks “will come in hard” to crypto if they get the regulatory approvals necessary to reduce their risk. Moynihan specifically talked about the benefits of stablecoins, along with the benefits of crypto rails for payments.Third, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said this morning that he does not believe bitcoin is a threat to the US dollar. He sees the digital currency more akin to an interesting speculative tool.Fourth, the SEC recently announced a new crypto task force led by Hester Pierce. The group’s goal is to create common sense, clear rules for the crypto industry. This is a substantial 180-degree difference from the previous regulatory approach under the past administration. Lastly, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink said this morning “if you are frightened of debasement of your currency…you can have an internationally based instrument called Bitcoin….I’m a big believer.” Pretty big statement coming from a powerful and influential leader on Wall Street. My conclusion from hearing these various interviews and announcements is that bitcoin has finally arrived on Wall Street. The ETF launches were the initial crack in the dam, but now we are watching full-blown adoption of bitcoin by the traditional market. If we fast forward a few years, I fully expect banks to be custodians of crypto assets, crypto tokens will be stuffed in every traditional finance wrapper, and investors will be normalized to investing in tokens just like they invest in stocks today. As the new and old world collide, we will end up with a hybrid. The best parts of the old world will survive. The bad parts of the old world will disappear. This is how technology innovation works. And it will be a win-win for market participants regardless of which world they started out in. Macro investors. Bank CEOs. Regulators. Asset managers. They all agree — bitcoin is here to stay. While it was once cool to be a detractor on bitcoin, that position has quickly become an unpopular one that makes someone look uninformed and ill-prepared for the future. Hope you have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow. - Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital Management🚨 READER NOTE: I am hosting Bitcoin Investor Week in NYC from February 24-28th. This will be the largest finance conference of the year focused on bitcoin. Speakers include Mike Novogratz, Cathie Wood, Jan van Eck, Anthony Scaramucci, Jack Mallers, and many others.You can purchase tickets here: Get ticket for Bitcoin Investor WeekAnthony Pompliano Discusses Bitcoin, Trump Presidency, and the US EconomyJohn Pompliano and Anthony Pompliano discuss bitcoin hitting another all-time high, meme coins, Trump’s inauguration, why so many tech CEO’s were there, how Stanley Druckenmiller looks at the economy moving forward, Joe Biden’s legacy, and the outlook for the Trump presidency.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $500 in rewards.* Ledger - Ledger secures 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management.* Bitdeer - A global technology company focused on Bitcoin mining, ASIC development and HPC for AI, backed by advanced R&D and a massive 2.5 GW global power portfolio.* Meanwhile - The world’s first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Learn how to tax-optimize your BTC holdings for your life and beyond.* Gemini - The future is being built tod

To investors,The state of financial markets have been changing for the last 15 years. The Federal Reserve’s decision to conduct massive quantitative easing during the Global Financial Crisis broke the market and things have not been the same since. But the way investors interact with the market has also been evolving over time too. There has been a rise of self-directed investors, who are investors allocating their personal capital into various financial assets without the need for a financial advisor or stock broker. This evolution began with the increased access to financial information. Companies like The Street, founded by Jim Cramer, were early to the trend of giving Wall Street quality information to the masses. As self-directed investors became more informed, they started to invest more capital into the market. The problem at the time was the self-directed investor still had to go through a financial advisor or stock broker. It was hard to access the market directly without the third-party. This friction started to disappear with the rise of Robinhood, Public, WeBull and other retail trading platforms. Fast forward to today and it is obvious that self-directed investors have immense access to information and markets, which is allowing them to invest in a more efficient way. As efficiency increases, more investors participate with more capital.Win-win for markets, asset owners, and investors. But then bitcoin and crypto came on the scene and this trend accelerated even faster. Now self-directed investors are able to deploy immense amounts of capital, while consuming 24/7 real-time information on platforms like X and Reddit. Digital wallets can be spun up in seconds. Economic value can be whipped around the world in minutes regardless of the hours of operation for a bank or brokerage company. And everything can be done from your phone whenever you want. You can buy, you can sell, or you can hold. But the one thing you couldn’t do previously was stake your crypto assets from your phone. This yield-generating activity still required a desktop application or a traditional website. Staking was stuck in the old world user interface, while everything else in crypto was operating in the new world.That seems to be changing today. Sol Strategies, a company that I have been working with to scale, announced their first technology product — a Solana staking app. The app is “the first non-custodial staking solution that allows investors to stake Solana (SOL) directly from their phones, delivering a streamlined and intuitive experience.”The press release says the key features include:* Non-Custodial Model: Investors retain full control of their keys, enhancing security and ownership of their assets.* Higher Staking Returns: Investors can expect returns ranging from 8% to 10%, significantly surpassing traditional custodial platforms.* Compliance and Security: Orangefin, an ISO 27001 compliant validator, upholds the highest standards of security and reliability.This is fascinating because we are starting to see where the world is headed. Self-directed investors are not only going to have better information, along with better access to markets, but the entire user experience is going to be available on any device, from anywhere, at any time. This is what digital finance looks like — mobile, real-time access to markets.Congratulations to the Sol Strategies (CSE: HODL, OTC Pink: CYFRF) team on the product launch. But even more exciting is to understand where the world is headed. I can’t wait to see what other companies and products help push us further into the future. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital Management🚨 READER NOTE: I am hosting Bitcoin Investor Week in NYC from February 24-28th. This will be the largest finance conference of the year focused on bitcoin. Speakers include Mike Novogratz, Cathie Wood, Jan van Eck, Anthony Scaramucci, Jack Mallers, and many others.You can purchase tickets here: Get ticket for Bitcoin Investor WeekGlobal Liquidity Is Pushing Bitcoin’s Price AroundPhil Rosen, the Co-Founder of Opening Bell Daily, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin’s relationship to global liquidity, inflation moving forward, interest rates, Donald Trump, federal reserve, and what is going on with TikTok?Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $500 in rewards.* Ledger - Ledger secures 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management.* Bitdeer - A global technology company focused on Bitcoin mining, ASIC development and HPC for AI, backed by advanced R&D and a massive 2.5 GW global power portfolio.* Meanwhile - The world’s first licensed and regulated

To investors,This morning CPI was reported right in-line with market expectations at 2.9% year-over-year. The big surprise came from core CPI, which was estimated to be at 3.3% and instead came in at 3.2%. Adam Kobeissi and his team pointed out that immediately S&P 500 futures surge over +85 points when the report hit.This response is interesting because it highlights the complexity of the situation we find ourselves in. On one hand, the market is looking for any sign of relief from the higher inflation levels. Optimism shows up for a simple 0.1% beat on expectations. On the other hand, CPI is nearly 50% higher than the Fed’s target and it has been increasing in recent months. Add in the fact that critics believe Trump’s policies could be inflationary and you can clearly see one future scenario involving a return of higher inflation. Asset prices aren’t waiting around to see what happens though. On top of the S&P 500 futures surging, bitcoin also jumped to nearly $99,000 after the CPI report. Plenty of people continue to yell and scream about a potential market crash right around the corner, but those voices are becoming fewer in number. Even Blackrock’s Larry Fink came out this morning to say the US economy is in very good shape. Just because the economy is in good shape doesn’t mean that risk is gone. Goldman Sachs sent out this chart. Mike Zaccardi highlights “the equity market is currently near its most concentrated level in 100 years.”And Heritage’s EJ Antoni tweeted:“This is the worst start to a fiscal year EVER: * Spending is up 10.9% * Receipts are down 2.2% * FYTD deficit up 39.4% at $711 billion They're handing Trump a ticking time bomb...”So the situation is not as straightforward as everyone wants to think. The economy is strong, but the first weeks of 2025 are showing signs of problems ahead. Trump is ready to come into office with his economic policies and people are excited — the big question remains though: What will these policies do to inflation that seems to be stuck around 3%?The answer to that question is going to determine much of the market’s future in coming months. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow. - Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital Management🚨 READER NOTE: I am hosting Bitcoin Investor Week in NYC from February 24-28th. This will be the largest finance conference of the year focused on bitcoin. Speakers include Mike Novogratz, Cathie Wood, Jan van Eck, Anthony Scaramucci, Jack Mallers, and many others.You can purchase tickets here: Get ticket for Bitcoin Investor WeekAnthony & Polina Pompliano Discuss Bitcoin, LA Fires, Joe Biden and Mark ZuckerbergPolina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss Jamie Dimon’s recent comments about bitcoin, why global liquidity matters so much, what is going on with the LA fires, who is responsible, President Biden’s comments on the economy, and Mark Zuckerberg’s recent changes at META.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $500 in rewards.* Ledger - Ledger secures 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management.* Bitdeer - A global technology company focused on Bitcoin mining, ASIC development and HPC for AI, backed by advanced R&D and a massive 2.5 GW global power portfolio.* Meanwhile - The world’s first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Learn how to tax-optimize your BTC holdings for your life and beyond.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadotis a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pomp.substack.com/subscribe

To investors,There is only one chart that is dictating financial markets right now. You can watch it exclusively and essentially tell where markets are headed for the next week or two.Global liquidity.It really is that simple. Stanley Druckenmiller famously said “it’s liquidity that moves the market.” He is the GOAT for a reason.We know global liquidity has been dropping in recent weeks, so it is clear why the S&P 500 is going down — it is following global liquidity. George Noble points out you can see the same thing affecting the MSCI World index as well. But stocks aren’t going to do this exclusively. Back in November, Michael Howell showed bitcoin was poised for a pullback after global liquidity decreased.We know bitcoin is the asset most sensitive to changes in global liquidity thanks to the analysis that Sam Callahan did. Raoul Pal highlights just how closely bitcoin has followed M2 supply.And he also shows that M2 supply seems to be following the 2016 and 2017 performance. Sometimes investing is more simple than we like to think. Watch global liquidity. As Druckenmiller said, it will move the market.Almost everything else is noise.I hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow. - Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital Management🚨 READER NOTE: I am hosting Bitcoin Investor Week in NYC from February 24-28th. This will be the largest finance conference of the year focused on bitcoin. Speakers include Mike Novogratz, Cathie Wood, Jan van Eck, Anthony Scaramucci, Jack Mallers, and many others.You can purchase tickets here: Get ticket for Bitcoin Investor WeekDave Collum Highlights The Potential Financial Disaster He Sees AheadDave Collum is a Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. In this conversation we discuss his 2024 year in review, bitcoin, gold, stock valuations, frontier justice, cancel culture, Elon Musk, government spending, healthcare administrations, and much more.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $500 in rewards.* Ledger - Ledger secures 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management.* Bitdeer - A global technology company focused on Bitcoin mining, ASIC development and HPC for AI, backed by advanced R&D and a massive 2.5 GW global power portfolio.* Meanwhile - The world’s first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Learn how to tax-optimize your BTC holdings for your life and beyond.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadotis a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intedneded to serve as financial advice. Do your own research. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pomp.substack.com/subscribe

To investors,Every once in awhile I come across a data point that surprises me. The latest surprise came from a chart comparing gold and US stocks over the last 25 years. If you had invested $10,000 in either asset two and a half decades ago, you would have ~$90,000 in gold and about $65,000 in US stocks. Yes, this includes dividends for US stocks too.Equities are supposed to outperform gold over the long-run due to the earnings driven by their products and services. But that hasn’t been true over the last 25 years. This would be noteworthy as a single data point, but the more interesting part is that bitcoin has been significantly outperforming gold and the S&P 500 for years. Here is the aggregate performance for all three assets:Here is the compound annual growth rate of the same three assets:An area in financial markets where we can see a large difference in gold and bitcoin is the ETF inflows for each asset. Bitwise, a crypto-native asset manager, put together this graphic comparing the first year of the gold ETF to the first year of the bitcoin ETF.It shouldn’t be shocking to see the asset with the best performance receiving significant inflows, nor should it surprise us given how many more investors are deploying capital into ETFs today compared to 2003 when the first gold ETF launched. As if bitcoin needed any further tailwinds, Scott Bessent—Donald Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary—recently revealed that he owns up to $500,000 of Blackrock’s bitcoin ETF. We are going to go from an abrasive administration to a supportive administration in a matter of months. That should be a very big deal for bitcoin. Remember, bitcoin is only 15 years old. As Matthew Mežinskis recently pointed out, there are only four central bank balance sheets larger than bitcoin now. So bitcoin is “winning,” especially when you compare the progress to critics’ expectations. Now here is a big idea — maybe bitcoin should replace bonds in investors’ portfolios.We know that bonds deliver horrible performance. The 10-year treasury return for the trailing 10 years is about 1.5%, yet inflation was approximately 2.8%. This means investors had a negative real return on government bonds for a decade. If we look at iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF, the story is not great — the fund is down 38% over the last 5 years. And as I pointed out two weeks ago, bitcoin has a higher sharpe ratio that stocks, bonds, or gold.If you had put 60% of your portfolio in the S&P 500 and 40% in bitcoin, your return would have been about 430% over the last 5 years. Maybe that is the new 60/40 portfolio. 60% domestic equities. 40% bitcoin. 0% bonds. Never say never. There are more and more financial advisors and capital allocators wondering if they should own bitcoin as a larger percentage of their portfolio. Let’s see what happens in the coming years. Hope you all have a great start to your week. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.- Anthony PomplianoFounder & CEO, Professional Capital Management🚨 READER NOTE: I am hosting Bitcoin Investor Week in NYC from February 24-28th. This will be the largest finance conference of the year focused on bitcoin. Speakers include Mike Novogratz, Cathie Wood, Jan van Eck, Anthony Scaramucci, Jack Mallers, and many others.You can purchase tickets here: Get ticket for Bitcoin Investor WeekMeet The Man Trying To Get Amazon & Microsoft To Buy BitcoinEthan Peck is the Deputy Director for the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project. He also wrote a proposal to Microsoft and Amazon for them to put bitcoin on their balance sheet.In this conversation we discuss what he did, why he did it, how these shareholder proposals work, Saylor’s 3 minute pitch, how it gets approved, and what the impact will be.Enjoy!Podcast Sponsors* BitcoinIRA - Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Pay less taxes. Earn up to $500 in rewards.* Ledger - Ledger secures 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management.* Bitdeer - A global technology company focused on Bitcoin mining, ASIC development and HPC for AI, backed by advanced R&D and a massive 2.5 GW global power portfolio.* Meanwhile - The world’s first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Learn how to tax-optimize your BTC holdings for your life and beyond.* Gemini - The future is being built today. Go Where Dollar’s Won’t. With Gemini.* Xapo - Xapo Bank is the only way to bank with Bitcoin.* Polkadotis a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Innovation leader, making it a preferred choice for big names.You are receiving The Pomp Letter because you either signed up or you attended one of the events that I spoke at. Feel free to unsubscribe if you aren't finding this valuable. Nothing in this email is intedneded to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.