Anthony Pompliano
Bitcoin OG Predicts What The World Looks Like In 20 Years
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TL;DR
Research summary
▶ Bitcoin origins and investment journey
The host introduces Dixon as an investor and early Bitcoin participant, then asks why he moved from Bitcoin-only exposure into other assets and back toward Bitcoin. Dixon says he entered the space after leaving investment banking around 2006, having tried to create a non-fractional-reserve bank but been unable to obtain a banking license. After attending an early Bitcoin conference and writing what he describes as the first book to include Bitcoin, he redirected the bank toward supporting Bitcoin companies. His investments included Coinbase, BitPay, Kraken, Bitstamp, Ripple Labs, Bitfinex and Circle. As portfolio companies added Ethereum, stablecoins and tokenized securities, went public, or exchanged equity for tokens, the business expanded beyond Bitcoin; he says it was difficult to remain Bitcoin-only while investing in and servicing more than 100 companies. As companies went public, he says they chose to buy back assets with Bitcoin, help investors acquire Bitcoin and self-custody it, and convert remaining assets toward Bitcoin and greater investor sovereignty. Dixon says his first Bitcoin purchase was at $3 and recalls accumulating through purchases, mining and Bitcoin dividends. In hindsight, he thinks monthly dollar-cost averaging into Bitcoin would probably have outperformed financially, though the intervening investments gave him experience. He cites periods when Kraken, the Bitfinex recovery security token and Exodus did well, alongside disasters; he also recalls giving away Bitcoin and spending one Bitcoin on a Mars bar.
▶ Geopolitics, power and capital flows
Asked how his worldview informs his Bitcoin thesis, Dixon says he approaches geopolitics and macroeconomics through what he calls radical realism and monetary flows rather than national-team loyalties. He interprets developments as changes in flows and world order, not necessarily as doom, and argues that national leaders and states can serve competing military, financial and technical power interests. He characterizes the US as having radical capitalism alongside what he calls socialism for banks through central banking, and China as combining radical capitalism with an authoritarian government that prevents companies from becoming more powerful than it. He says he sees America as powerful interests using the state to advance their interests. He describes the US, Europe and UK as governed by capital and a financial-industrial complex, naming BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard among asset managers; JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs among investment banks; and Chase, Citigroup and hedge funds among financial actors. He says this capital is global rather than necessarily nationalistic and can include Chinese, Middle Eastern and sovereign-wealth-fund capital. He also identifies military-industrial and technical-industrial complexes, and raises both the opportunities of data and algorithms and the risks of a global control grid. His practical stance is radical realism about how the world works combined with optimism for individuals, and a focus on sovereign countries, businesses and people.
▶ Bitcoin, institutional adoption and custody risks
Dixon says Bitcoin initially offered a way to resist the banking system: people could self-custody money, make peer-to-peer payments without government permission and rely on a fixed monetary policy. He recounts a progression from efforts to associate Bitcoin with illicit activity, to promoting “blockchain” while distancing it from Bitcoin, and then attempts to centralize Bitcoin under asset managers and Wall Street. In his view, Bitcoin now has a symbiotic relationship with institutions: individuals and businesses can use it to become more sovereign, but many will hold it as an asset through Wall Street custodians, adding institutional power. He says his company, Bank to the Future, did not need venture capital because it maintained a Bitcoin treasury, and that he holds most of his wealth outside the financial system. He describes El Salvador as an early sovereign-level experiment, while saying attempts at legal tender and a Bitcoin bond faced obstacles, including the IMF stopping the bond, and that the country was then moving toward stablecoins. He answers that Bitcoin’s effect on the system depends on how it is used: custody can co-opt it, while self-custody and peer-to-peer use can support exit from the system. Discussing the Coldcard hack, Dixon calls it tragic and says, in his account, the compromise affected people who relied on the wallet to generate their seed phrase, while those who generated their own were okay. He says the incident was used to argue for custody, but people should distinguish sovereignty from protection against financial ruin. He recommends tailoring key security to wealth and risk, including allocating only an amount one can afford to lose through key loss and using multisignature as wealth grows. He says custodial storage may be a valid choice but has costs, and argues key-security skills will also matter for personal data, decentralized AI and hosted environments. The opening teaser likewise frames control of keys as a crucial future skill and warns that giving keys to others may allow them to weaponize one’s data.
▶ Tokenization and the future of sovereignty
A Figure advertisement says customers can borrow against Bitcoin rather than sell it, quoting interest around 8.91%, 9.9% APR at 50% loan-to-value, and optional liquidation protection. It describes MPC custody and segregated wallets, and advertises a separate product earning up to 9% APY, paid hourly and backed by real-world assets. The host then broadens “tokens” from cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenized securities to compute tokens consumed by large language models and other digital services. He asks what people may need to self-custody over the next 20 or 30 years, including money, data and intelligence, and how to protect themselves from future threats.
▶ Centralization, asset ownership and long-term planning
Dixon argues that power has historically centralized among wealthy and powerful groups across political and economic systems, and expects radical centralization to continue. He thinks the world is moving from a US-dominated order toward a multi-node system of regional blocs and collective regional sovereignty, alongside China’s manufacturing base and financialization in the US and the West. He describes tokenization as a likely next stage of financialization, with centralized and decentralized tokens. On household finances, he says people whose wages do not rise as quickly as inflation fall behind if they do not own appreciating assets; he characterizes 401(k) wealth as delayed access that often requires working and contributing throughout one’s life. He argues that people closer to the money printer have greater leverage, while people without savings can become exposed through debt, mortgages and credit cards, deepening a K-shaped economy. He recommends owning more assets over time and treating sovereignty as a spectrum and a long-term effort. He says fear-driven algorithms can push people toward short-term thinking, gambling and poor decisions, and advocates a long-term outlook that regularly assesses whether one is becoming more sovereign and improving one’s decisions, mindset and health. On AI and geopolitics, he says the US and China are interconnected and that he does not expect a conventional World War II-style conflict, describing instead compromised diplomacy and bounded escalation. He is enthusiastic about AI’s productivity, while concerned it may mean fewer human workers and greater central control. He says people can use AI while building their own infrastructure, services and data, and urges learning skills such as storing a private key and running a node, or involving someone in one’s community or family who can do so.
▶ Surveillance and a mixed sovereign life
The host raises surveillance concerns around cameras, self-driving cars, robots, biometric logins and street cameras, while noting the claimed benefits of crime reduction and finding kidnapped children. Dixon says he does not believe individuals can stop the surveillance state from being built and recognizes that opting out or living off-grid is possible for some but unwanted or impractical for most. He describes maintaining both a “sovereign life” and a “control grid” or subordinate life. He uses bank accounts while anticipating questions and restrictions, and says he also knows how to buy Bitcoin peer-to-peer and use coinjoin transactions; he suggests gradually shifting more of one’s life toward sovereign assets and capabilities, including running personal LLMs. He questions whether destructive protest such as tearing down data centers is productive, reasoning that facilities may be insured and damage could benefit bankers and increase corporate dependence on the financial-industrial complex. A Lava advertisement claims its card offers up to 5% back in Bitcoin, no annual or foreign-exchange fees, and access to Bitcoin credit, yield on cash, stablecoin transactions and other services; it also promotes borrowing against Bitcoin and earning yield.
▶ Compute, inequality and discontent with the system
The host argues that prosperous countries will need to consume substantial energy and, in the future, compute; he says a country’s digital prosperity will depend on data centers and compute, while where they are built and how they are powered remain important unresolved details. He urges national agreement on competing in the compute race before settling their location. Dixon links opposition to the system to the K-shaped economy: some people want housing and stock prices to fall to gain access to assets, while the host questions whether some instead want destruction or to see perceived successes suffer. Dixon says such people may be communicating dissatisfaction and a sense that they are not participating in the American dream, and mentions redistributive or more socialistic approaches without claiming to have worked through their details. He distinguishes national sovereignty from individual sovereignty: he calls China highly sovereign as a country but says sovereignty can coexist with authoritarian control over individuals. He cites Eastern Europe and China as examples he says have around 95% home ownership, and describes Singapore’s housing program and strict government alongside its role as a global financial and trade hub. He contrasts ownership patterns he attributes to real estate in Europe and the UK with stock ownership and 401(k)s in the US, saying people excluded from asset gains see their net worth lag as prices rise, which could encourage redistribution or socialism. He describes empire decline as a cycle in which shared ideology breaks down and groups become extractive. He says data is becoming a crucial commodity alongside energy and argues that countries need data centers to participate in what he sees as an emerging global control grid.
▶ What could change his view
Asked what would change his mind, Dixon says he discounts politicians and media unless their claims align with capital and monetary flows, which he studies intensively. He calls ETF flows a new currency war and says the City of London–Wall Street partnership persists. He points to BlackRock’s ETF activity, its stated $15.3 trillion in assets under management, and its Aladdin technology, which he says is used by sovereign-wealth funds, central banks, treasuries, endowments and pension funds. He says that with about 60% of stock trades made by robots, shared tools and scenario inputs could cause institutions’ systems to allocate capital in somewhat coordinated ways. He sees financial, technology and military systems becoming integrated. As evidence for his current view, he cites America’s share of global GDP falling from 60% to 25%, capital seeking factories in China and rare earths from Africa via Chinese rail routes, and BlackRock assets under management increasing; he interprets these as signs of multipolarity, financialization, securitization and tokenization. He says a reversal of those flows back to America and a currency strengthening relative to others would falsify his view.
▶ Bitcoin price, network resilience and closing
Dixon interprets Bitcoin’s price as reflecting institutional inflows into treasury companies and ETFs. He estimates about 70% of Bitcoin remains in self-custody and 30% in Wall Street wrappers or exchanges. He says roughly 40% of hash power came through the US stock market and that some miners have pivoted toward AI, raising the possibility that Bitcoin’s security may have peaked, though he also points to geographically diverse mining in China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, the UAE and El Salvador. He cites around 100,000 nodes, open-source development and the ability of individuals to run nodes and verify transactions as healthy features, and says recent disputes over possible corruption among developers prompted scrutiny. He warns that if Bitcoin were concentrated in ETFs and treasury companies, mining centralized, development unchecked and node participation reduced, a radical supply increase could become possible; he says the network is nowhere near that situation. He says central banks are choosing gold, which he prefers for now, while Wall Street and institutions are accumulating Bitcoin and earning from liquidity, trading and products. His confidence in Bitcoin’s long-term price depends on retaining ownership, peer-to-peer transfers and unchanged supply. At the end, Dixon says he is active on X, where he tries to publicly follow money flows for three or four hours each Friday, and is building a decentralized setup at SimonDixon.com to back up his content in case algorithms disfavor it. The host closes by saying Bitcoin, AI, sovereignty and decentralization will matter in coming decades; Dixon agrees.
Full transcript
[0:30] they can weaponize your your data. What's going on guys? Today we got a great conversation with Simon Dixon. He's an investor and one of the Bitcoin OGs from all the way back in 2011. In this conversation, we're going to talk about some very important topics. They're going to help you update your worldview, how capital flows, and who actually is in control [clears throat] of power. We talk about decentralization, sovereignty, Bitcoin, AI, and many other topics that you're probably feeling in your everyday life, but haven't yet been able to articulate. I think Simon has a very unique view of the world. And he's going to help you think through what's happening, where's the world going, how should you invest
[1:01] your money, and what are the things that you should be preparing for to make sure that you and your family are in a much better spot 10 or 20 years from now. Here's my conversation with Simon Dixon. All right, Simon, you've been in Bitcoin since 2011. And I think over the last, I don't know, decade, 15 years or so, uh, a lot of people who are Bitcoin OGs, they started to dabble in other coins, other technologies, other areas of the industry. Some of those people were doing it purely for like profit motivation. Other people were doing it because they were interested in like, hey, how do you take this blockchain technology that I got excited about in the early days and then use it for
[1:32] different use cases. talk a little bit about your journey and specifically because I think you kind of went from like Bitcoin only you had exposure to a lot of other stuff and now you're pretty much back to Bitcoin only and see that as the the future of where all the value is going to acrue. >> Yeah. Um thanks for having me. So um you know well well I got involved yeah when when it was only really Bitcoin and then people were playing around with forking off and creating different versions where it's like Piercoin, Litecoin, all these types of things. Um and uh you
[2:02] know I uh I got involved in the sector cuz I tried to create a non-fractional reserve bank. So as a monetary reformer I I understood like you know the the the concepts of banking reform, fractional reserve banking and that was pretty much my life after leaving investment banking in about 2006. Um, so when I got involved, um, it was cuz we couldn't get a banking license for a a nonfractional reserve bank. Um, and then, you know, I was invited to the
[2:34] first Bitcoin conference in Prague. Um, and I was writing a book at the time and it was the first book to include Bitcoin. Um, and so for me, I understood banking as a way of building a bank outside the system. And so we pivoted our bank to um someone that was supporting Bitcoin companies. Uh so my first introduction was investing in many of the early Bitcoin companies. Coinbase, Bit Pay, Kraken, Bitstamp, Ripple Labs, Bitfinex, like um a lot of
[3:04] these uh really early companies, Circle. Um and you know, we were But as as you raise finance for these companies, inevitably you kind of share a part of the journey from them all being Bitcoin companies to them slowly adding Ethereum or adding a stable coin or starting getting into tokenized securities. um and then they become public companies and then they're no longer you know in how I remember Bitcoin which was us versus the banks in the room um kind of
[3:34] you know activists. So um when you when you have a business and you're invested in over a 100 different companies inevitably weird stuff happens like one of those companies say we invested in securityize and it becomes a security token then you have to figure out how to deliver a security token cuz we were cussing assets for other people. um we were you know looking at investing in Bitcoin mining um then suddenly Ethereum comes along and everyone's talking about well I want that was funded by the
[4:05] Bitcoin community initially it was a it was a Bitcoin I ICO um and so you you inevitably get taken in all these different directions and then someone will swap their equity for tokens and so it's virtually impossible to remain a Bitcoin only from that just initial journey of saying right no venture capitalists were investing in a sector. How do we support the companies? Um and kind of you know we we hit this stage where a lot of our portfolio companies started going public. Um and so at that
[4:37] stage we we actively just thought well what's the best we can do for our shareholders investors and we were just thinking actually it's just to maybe buy back with Bitcoin help them get some Bitcoin and self custody manage the portfolio and just make everyone's life a bit more easier and a bit more sovereign. So at the moment is yeah just about converting those assets into Bitcoin and helping people be more sovereign. If you had never gone into the equity of companies, if you had never, you know, ended up with all these
[5:07] tokens, etc., would you have made more money just holding the original Bitcoin or [snorts] going down the path that you went down? >> Yeah. So, my first Bitcoin purchase was $3. Um, and you know, we were acquiring more Bitcoin every month. Sometimes we were mining, sometimes we were doing receiving Bitcoin dividends. Like I think if I just look back at everything there was a massive amount of complexity for like 15 probably be another 5 years 20 years if it was just literally just
[5:37] uh buying bitcoin every month dollar cost averaging I reckon I would have outperformed but I wouldn't have gained the experience you know then that was 15 years of going through everything in this journey to kind of get to the place where you are now but I think just pure financially I mean yeah dollar cost an averaging. I think a lot of, you know, we I was giving away a lot of Bitcoin in the early days. Like I'd give a Bitcoin to anyone that would show up at a seminar in the early days, >> but it was $3.
[6:07] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bought a Mars bar at the first Bitcoin conference for a Bitcoin like some one of the hackers in a hackathon hacked together like a Bitcoin vending m a vending machine and like a Bitcoin QR code and stuff. But yeah, I mean if it was just purely from an analyzing financial returns then all of that stuff in the middle. I mean you know we had I think Kraken outperformed Bitcoin at a certain period. Um we we were involved in the Bitfinex recovery. That was the first security token. Uh
[6:38] that paid significantly higher than Bitcoin returns. Exodus was one of the companies they did really well. Um so we we had our fair but but I also had our fair share of disasters along the way. Mhm. When uh when you think about Bitcoin today, you're Bitcoin only, but I think a lot of the Bitcoin maybe uh thesis that you hold is driven by your world view. And one of the aspects I think is very interesting is you and I I think have some agreement on where the world is going, but also some disagreement. And so maybe uh I think
[7:08] you know where I stand on a lot of things or maybe at least what I I talk about like what are some of the areas that you think we disagree the most? I think that's probably the most interesting stuff to talk through. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um I think so when I think of the world um I think of uh geopolitics and macro a lot of people kind of think of geopolitics and macro as a bit like how they think of their own world which is like picking a team sport. And so you're either on like team America, team China or something like that, you know, just based upon your own
[7:38] environment. Um, I kind of think of the world of geopolitics and macro as radical realism in terms of trying to figure out through monetary flows how the world works and what's happening. Not seeing it better than it is, not seeing it worse than it is. And so some people when I'm doing my like macro geopolitical analysis, they come from a perspective of I mean a lot of my followers are American, right? So if I'm talking about what I think's happening in America, what I think is happening in
[8:08] China, what I think is happening in the Middle East, um they may see that as doomerism, uh because I think we're going through a change of world order and a change of empire. Um but actually what's good for one country is good is like you know bad for another country or good for another region. And so it's not really doomerism, it's just change of flows. And also one of the things I try to focus on is actually is there even a concept of America as a sovereign nation. Um the reason I focus on that is
[8:38] because you know I was born in UK and I've seen like UK we've had seven regime changes in 10 years I like to call it you know and when I think about our prime ministers and our leaders I I don't see them as people that work for the people or work for the country. I see them as people that work for power in different factions of power, whether it be military power, financial power, technical power. And so, you know, when when you engage in these different types of conversations, you see like I see
[9:09] like America as, you know, radical capitalism, but through the central banking system, we've kind of created socialism for the banks and capitalism for everyone else. M >> um then when I look at China, I see a government that doesn't allow any company to be subordinate to it, but radical capitalism at the bottom, but then a very authoritarian regime that won't allow you to become bigger than the government in terms of capital. So, I'm always trying to figure out there's I don't see like American as a nation
[9:41] state. I see America as a series of powerful interests that uses the nation state in order to further their interest, whether that be through lobbying, whether that be through allocation of capital. Um, and so a people find my framework a little bit different. Um, but then when it comes down to the individual, I'm always focused on solutions. like if I think certain parts of the world are going to um it's about understanding it so that you can decide how to react to that. Once you know the rules of where
[10:12] you're playing the game, then you need to react. And so then you need a bit of radical optimism. Um you know, and and so I think it's optimism for yourself, radical realism for how the world actually works. Um a and just really focusing on like sovereign countries, sovereign businesses, sovereign individuals. That's kind of where the Bitcoin ethos came to me. Um, having been around the block with uh with Bitcoin and all the all the different stories that have happened over that 15 years. >> Who do you think runs America?
[10:42] >> I I call it it's run by a financial industrial complex, the same complex that run Britain, the same complex that run um Amsterdam. And so, you know, the three parts of the complex is you tend to have a vehicle for privatizing gains. In the case of the the Dutch and British Empire, it was the Brit the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company. In today, I'd say it's a more decentralized version consisting of um a whole financial industrial complex.
[11:13] Black Rockck, State Street, Vanguard at the asset manager level, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs at the investment banking level, um you know, Chase, uh Cityroup at the retail banking level, um and a bunch of hedge fund managers. Now they tend to partner with global capital. So just cuz they're hosted in a country it doesn't mean that they're nationalistic in nature. They're global in nature. Um so for them you know you have a global transnational capital that consists of
[11:44] China, the Middle East um and uh different sovereign wealth funds and uh the financial industrial complex in general. Then you have a bit of a nationalistic side which is the militaryindustrial complex. It tends to be ideologically aligned with a country, but it can be co-opted by capital. And so if a company, a large global company needs oil, they're able to rent the military and say, "Go get that Venezuelan oil for me," you know. Um and then now obviously as everything's becoming algorithms and data, the
[12:14] technical industrial complex, which is um this global ying and yang, I I kind of spend half my day on this is the most amazing opportunity that we will ever live through in our lifetime versus what does this implicate once we start centralizing all this data like this and what does this global control grid look like. So, you know, I I try and like put on different hats. um to to try and analyze and get a realistic picture. But to answer your question, I believe that
[12:44] the mil the the US, Europe, UK, the collective west is run by capital and capital is it encapsulate is is the financial industrial complex. >> Does Bitcoin starve the system of capital? >> It [snorts] did. So, you know, when I got into Bitcoin, it was all about how can we resist the banking system? It was us versus the banks. Um, and Bitcoin gave us the ability to own our own money in self- custody um, without a bank, spend it peer-to-peer without government permission, um, and have a monetary
[13:15] policy which you can rely upon and you can prepare for with a fixed supply. Um, so that very much is, you know, many of the properties of gold but improved in many aspects. Um, and it was very much like my memory of the early Bitcoin community, we it was always us versus the banks. Now, we hit a stage where they tried to, I think, take us out, whether it be, you know, connecting it to Silk Road and gambling and all that type of stuff.
[13:47] Then it kind of went through the whole blockchain phase. Let's turn everything into a blockchain. Let's not mention the word Bitcoin. Blockchain good, Bitcoin bad. Um then eventually it hit the phase where I think they just wanted to centralize as much Bitcoin as possible under the control of asset managers and fin and and Wall Street companies um and co-opt as much of the ecosystem as possible which is I think the phase that we're in right now. It exists. Uh there's money to be made. So uh let's uh
[14:18] let's try and centralize as much of it as possible and get everyone to custody it with us. So now we're in a bit of a symbiotic relationship where the individual can become sovereign but many people will just hold it as an asset class you know with Wall Street which will give them equally more power. Um so it is more at the the individual level a business can use use it to be more sovereign. Um you know at our company Bank to the future we never needed venture capital because we had a a Bitcoin treasury throughout the whole
[14:48] thing. Um, and uh, at the individual level, I've been able to get outside of the financial system with the majority of my wealth. Um, and we're starting to see, you know, at the sovereign level, I think El Salvador was the first experiment, uh, where can you take yourself outside China's belt and road initiative and America's IMF um, and build your own sovereign wealth. and that there was a couple of attempts making bitcoin legal tender and then
[15:18] eventually um the IMF stopped like the bitcoin bond um and uh and now it's kind of going very stable coin at this moment. So um it can be >> is the answer no. >> I think it's how you utilize it. But I think uh Bitcoin just like gold will be co-opted through custody. Um but if you use it self-custody peer-to-peer um and you understand the properties of its monetary policy then you can use it to exit the system.
[15:49] What about the people who, you know, bought into self-custody, uh, all of the what I would consider like the hardcore Bitcoiner ethos, values, talking points, and cold card habits. Yeah. Yeah. >> Or there's like uh you know I almost think of it as uh one of the most sensitive things and and disastrous things that could happen in America would be a strike in New York City similar to the Twin Towers in 9/11, the Pentagon, the White House. You know, there's four or five kind of like
[16:19] strongholds of American uh both perceived dominance but also uh the running of the country, the running of, you know, uh um the government. Bitcoin, it's decentralized, but definitely one of the most kind of sensitive catastrophic things would be a quote unquote, you know, theoretical strike at the hardcore Bitcoiners who believe in self-custody who then start to question how was I doing this? I thought I did everything right. You know, there was this issue that I was outside of my
[16:50] control. It's not my fault, but I still lost the Bitcoin, etc. And so we kind of just like we're living through that right now where I think there are a lot of people who say, "Hey, I I took the time I learned I I figured out self- custody. I went and I got this thing, >> but I still somehow got hacked." >> Yeah. >> How do you think that impacts, you know, Bitcoin and maybe the broader, you know, kind of uh view of Bitcoin going forward? >> Yeah, I think um the cold card hack was tragic. Um there were it was a very
[17:20] niche community. It was hardcore Bitcoiners that wanted additional control over their self-custody. So they got the wallet that many people were recommending. Um but they didn't go all the way into in terms of understanding it. So you know to simplify it there was a if you relied upon the wallet to generate your seed phrase then it was the ability to compromise it existed. Whereas if you generated your own seed phrase then those people were okay. Um so that was I
[17:53] think a lot of people learned from that. I think it was tragic for many. Um and I think it was weaponized to really attack self custody. So a lot of people immediately would start saying the benefits of custody. Now there's you as the individual sovereign and there's you as protecting yourself so that you're never financially ruined. And so to protect yourself so you're never financially ruined, you know, you'd have an allocation of Bitcoin that would protect yourself from you losing your key. You then have a strategy as your
[18:23] wealth grows. Um you'd have multi- signatures. So it's a bit like as Bitcoin grows is it's like your own wealth, right? Initially you just invest in a few stocks, then you start setting up a trust structure. Then you start looking at offshore vehicles. then you look at different insurance policy as your wealth grows and that's the same with Bitcoin. But I think if the lesson is I can't store a key, that's a decision and it comes with consequences.
[18:54] It means that I think we're moving to a world where there's kind of two types of people. There's as we all start using more AI, as we all start using more social data, as we all start centralizing more and more into these, you know, very centralized, more powerful companies, there's going to be and it doesn't have to be all or nothing, but you know, there's people that are going to be able to secure their key and secure their data and those are going to give it to someone else. And some people it might be the right decision, give it to someone else. You know, that's not a judgment, but it
[19:24] comes at a cost and so people should understand that. Um, and it is going to be, you know, people that own their keys and learn the cold hard lesson of how to secure them because the best practices of how to secure them are still valid despite the cold card hack. Um, a lot of people didn't know that. Um, so they need to learn from that and if they had all their wealth on the line then it's it's tragic. They have to start again. >> [snorts] >> Um but the practices of how to secure your key I think is the most essential
[19:56] uh skill that anyone needs to learn in the next couple of decades ahead. And so if you can learn it through trying to secure some Bitcoin and then later that becomes your data, your decentralized AI, your own LLMs and hosted environments like there's only going to be two options. You have to embrace this technology and you're either going to do it in a way where you control the key or you give the key to someone else and they can weaponize your your data. Today's episode is brought to you by
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[21:27] token inflation. So whether you're trying to hold your Bitcoin longterm or actually put capital to work, it's [music] a pretty interesting setup. If you want to check it out, I've got a link in the description that you can go to or you can go to figurearkets.co/p. So this idea of a token I've become fascinated by in terms of um Bitcoin there's a token, cryptocurrency, there's a token. tokenization. There's a token stable coin, there's a token, but there's also how many tokens do I
[21:58] consume from an LL? How many tokens do I consume in just the digital world more broadly? And so it does feel like we are moving towards this like tokenbased society. I think that if you came at this from Bitcoin or crypto more broadly, you thought about it as like Bitcoin stable coins tokenization. That was generally what the limiting, you know, kind of uh uh maybe the boundaries of tokens was. When you expand your mind to bring in now compute tokens, it feels like everything becomes all about, you know,
[22:28] this idea of a token. And so you're talking about self- sovereignty when it comes to your money, your data, your intelligence, all of these different components. Maybe fast forward 20, 30 years. I'm sitting there, what does my life look like? H how am I what am I self-custodying? What technology am I using? How am I protecting myself from, you know, some of these potential threats that are on the horizon? >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we're moving to a world of radical centralization. If you look at the entire history of human civilization, whether it's cap, you know, whether it's capitalism,
[22:58] communism, whether it's dictator, monarchy, um whether it's democracy, uh the rich and wealthy and powerful have always centralized power and and had disproportionate more influence over the system. Um so that's that's never going to change whatever system you live under. Um and there is a parto principle and there is a you know the minority will actually do this. The vast majority will do what everyone else does. Um here um so we're moving to radical
[23:29] centralization. Um we understand so I think if we start from the top you got the geopolitics at the moment we live in or through most of my life we have lived in since the fall of the Soviet Union a US dominated hegeimon. Um on the large geopolitical stuff uh world I think America's becoming more regional. Um I think we're moving to a multi-node system. I think the world is going to be divvied up into regional blocks,
[24:00] regional security, regional sovereignity, collective sovereignity. Um and that's what the world looks like on the geopolitical side with this ginormous manufacturing base in China. uh radical financialization within um America and the collective west. And so what is the future of financialization? Well, it's securitization which is now tokenization. So if we move into this blockchain based world um where everything is going to be tokenized um
[24:30] and then there is centralized tokens and decentralized tokens. And so it all comes down to like the same thing. On the macro side, I think you often talk about we talk about similar things in terms of a K-shaped economy. If you don't own the assets to outperform, you know, the fact that your wage isn't increasing at the same rate as inflation, um then you're falling behind. And um you know, mo most people own their assets via a 401k. So that's
[25:00] like delayed wealth. it it sorts out your retirement, but it means you're working your whole life, contributing to that. What can you do with those assets in the meantime? So, those that are able to build wealth outside of that, access it, they're getting closer to leverage. The closer you are to the money printer, the more you're on the right side of the K. Um, if you're not using any of those tools, you don't have savings, you are the product, you know, you are the debt, you are the mortgage, you are the credit card. Um so the K shape is just
[25:30] accelerating further and further. Um and at the individual level you know you need to own more assets um every month whatever those assets may be. Um and if you um are that then you need to be working on your sovereign freedom. Now most people will see this and get very overwhelmed. Um sovereignty is a spectrum you know it's a it's a lifetime job. I think one of the one of the tragedies of today is that I think when I look at my algorithm, my algorithm is
[26:02] telling me to be um scared, fearful, there's no future. Um things are getting worse. It's never been worse. You know, my my algorithm is telling me that. That drives people to short-term thinking, gambling, short-term decision- making, like bad decisions. The worst decisions you make is when you believe there's no long prosperous future. Um, and so, you know, that's driving people to a lot of short-termism, dumerism, and that that type of stuff. Um, if you have a long-term plan, you'll gradually you'll wake up every day, every week, every
[26:34] month, and you'll say, "Am I more sovereign, less sovereign? Am I making better decisions or worse decisions? Am I growing or am I shrinking?" You know, am am I getting is my mindset better or worse? Is my health better or worse? Um, you know, and and and these types of things. But that means that you're looking out a lifetime and you believe there's a a prosperous future. So when you're when you have that kind of mindset that there's there is a prosperous future um then you will be building a sovereign strategy along the way. Uh because there's only two ways
[27:04] about it. Um I think that we're definitely moving towards just look at technology dominance. You know we've got this AI alleged war between America and China but they they very much fit together. They are one system. You know, America can't produce a weapon without China. So, there's no World War II in my in my map of the world. You know, it doesn't work. There's no such thing as World War II today. There's just compromised diplomacy and bounded
[27:34] escalation in order to try and reset the world order as it were. Um, so everyone's got to everyone's got to navigate that. But I do believe that technology is this ying and yang. Um, you have I mean I'm never more excited than when I wake up in the morning and I don't need to look at my emails anymore and uh you know I I can just build and I can just have like and I've got the best PA I've ever had ever like you know um but you start to think about
[28:04] what's the implications of that. That's just less and less humans, you know. Um and so we're I don't think anyone really knows what the world looks like in 20 years. I do think that there's going to be people that have navigated this well and people that haven't navigated it well. And the ones that haven't navigated, they're going to be more and more subordinate and controlled by an ever more centralizing system. Um, and then there's going to be those that resisted it. And I don't mean resisted it in terms of not using technology. I mean you were using your AI, but you're
[28:34] also building your kind of own infrastructures and services and data. So to me, everything comes down to if you can learn the skills of storing your private key, understanding what it's like to run a node. This may sound like really geeky pointless things, but that's going to apply to everything in the future. So now's the time to learn those skills. And if you don't feel that you're at an age where that's right for you, then you just need to have someone within your community or circle or family or or whatever that's going to
[29:04] take that on. Because if you don't take it on, you're going to be controlled by the system. And that's the decision. >> How does this change when you think of, you know, AI is one thing where if I type on my computer, uh, I'm giving it data. I'm, you know, kind of doing these things I think are fairly well understood at this point. But now we're living in a world where people are freaking out about flock cameras. They're freaking out cuz they think, uh, self-driving cars are recording all this stuff. Humanoid robots are supposedly going to be in our homes. You know, if I go and I try to log into certain things, they want my fingerprint or my iris scan. And like if I walk on the street
[29:35] in New York City, there's cameras everywhere, right? Like it does feel like the quote unquote surveillance state or technology on one hand, the flock camera data objectively shows crime goes down. They find kidnapped children. Like there's a ton of positives, but then people are worried about, hey, are you reading my, you know, are you filming me or you know, whatever the thing is. And in New York City though, you don't see anyone like protesting or blocking the cameras on
[30:06] the street corner cuz it's kind of just like that's the way of life. >> How do you balance sovereignty in a world where also, you know, defense, security, like all this stuff has become so important as well? >> Yeah. Well, um I think the first thing is there's an element of submission that I have to things I can't control. And I don't think there's anything I can do in the world to stop this police and surveillance state being built. And so then you're faced with a choice. Do I opt out? Do I go off- grid? Do I go find
[30:37] a ranch and bury some gold in the ground and figure out how to earn enough income in like some kind of community? Some people might be able to do that, but most won't. Mhm. >> Um, >> most don't want to. >> And most don't want to. Yeah. So then what what what do you do with that? Well, the the answer that I've kind of come to is that you have a split personality. Um, you have a ying and a yang. You have a sovereign life. Um, which you're building. Um, and then you
[31:07] have your control grid life. Um, and you know, I need a bank account. That's part of I know that I'm lucky to if I put too much money in a bank, I know that I'm going to ask be asked a bunch of questions. I know that there's going to be restrictions on what I can do with that money. I know that I'm going to have to provide all the data, source of funds, source of wealth, KYC. It it just it's what it is. Um, but there's also a part of me that knows how to purchase Bitcoin on a peer-to-peer exchange. Um, and manage, you know, via a coin join
[31:38] into new transactions for every single So, so there's my sovereign life, um, and then there's my subordinate life. And I think you have to get that mix. And this one, initially, probably for most people, your subordinate life is significantly, um, larger in terms of value um, than your sovereign life. your your job is to get more of this and start pushing and learning new skills, pushing more and more of your life over there, seeing if you can invest in sovereign assets, see if you can start running your own LLMs
[32:09] and stuff. But to me, there's an element of submission. And I I don't think there's anything we can I mean, to me, is it a good use of my time to start, you know, um tearing down data centers? Is that a good use of time? Well, what's the impact? Well, they're probably insured and they'll probably make a bunch of bankers a load of money as a result of it and a company more subordinate to the financial industrial complex. When you really work through the money, is this productive use? This episode is brought to you by Lava. The
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[33:10] borrow against your Bitcoin at the lowest rates, earn yield, move money globally, and stack Bitcoin with each and every purchase you make. Most financial services squeeze you with high fees, confusing rewards programs. Lava keeps it simple and they help you build your long-term savings via your everyday spend. Visit lava.xyz/pump to get started in just a few minutes today. lava.xyz/pump to get started today. >> Well, I would even argue uh tearing down the data center is the opposite of what
[33:41] they're trying to accomplish. Yeah. >> Right. Like we know that prosperous countries consume lots of energy. There is no prosperous low consumption, you know, energy country. Same thing I think is with compute in the future. There's not going to be a prosperous country that does not consume a lot of compute. Now, how do they do it? Where do they do it? How is it powered? Is it in your neighborhood? Like there's a lot of nuance, right, and details that frankly are not part of the conversation. It's pretty much there's two groups in America. Data centers are good, data centers are bad. That's pretty much it.
[34:11] But it is very clear whoever has the most data centers and consumes and processes the most compute they are going to be prosperous in the digital you know world. That almost is like not part of the conversation. >> Yeah. >> It immediately goes to like I don't like data centers. Take them down. >> Yeah. >> Well, it's kind of like what if the future of your children is dependent on our country having these now? You still may not want it in your neighborhood. You still may not want it down the street. You still may not like you know
[34:41] XYZ thing about it but at least let's all agree that as a country we need to win the race. We need to be the largest consumer of power and compute and then we can figure out do we go put them in space? Do we put them, you know, in the desert? Do we put them in a neighborhood? All of that stuff is almost secondary to like let's just all get on the same page. We got to win the race. And I don't actually don't think the country is in agreement there. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I think this comes down to the K-shaped economy. You know, there there are people that um want to tear the system down. They're not happy
[35:12] with the system. They want real estate to crash. They want stocks to crash. They want an opportunity to get in where the boomers got in. >> You know, there there are people that um >> do you think they want to get in or do you think they actually want to see the world burn? Um, and it's hard to generalize an entire group, but I do wonder how many of them because it would be understandable if someone said, "You know, I wouldn't mind another global financial crisis where housing prices crashed, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50%." And then I could go buy a home. Okay. Again, I I don't know if I necessarily agree that that's the best way to do it, but
[35:42] like I at least understand the economic incentive to buy a home at a more affordable price. What I worry though is that a lot of the people who are cheering for, you know, basically destruction, they don't even want to own a home. like they actually just want to rent or you know be mobile and and kind of travel and all but like they also want to see home prices go down because that means that somebody that they perceive is successful is suffering. Yeah. What what I think they want is that they're communicating their dissatisfaction with the system. >> They're communicating that we are a you
[36:15] know we we are the majority of people. um they're um I think advocating for I I probably haven't worked through the detail in terms of like more socialistic ways of trying to redistribute wealth. Um and uh yeah, they just don't feel like they've that they're participating in the quote unquote American dream um at the moment. Now, here's the interesting thing that I've is I I found
[36:45] that there's polar opposites in terms of country country sovereignity. I always say that sovereignty. I always get that wrong. Um, country sovereign. There'll be in the comments everyone winds me up about that. Country sovereign most important word to me and I can never get it right. Country sovereignty and individual sovereignty. I'd argue that China is the most sovereign country in the world today. But a sovereign country can also exercise a lot of authoritarian on the individual. And so if you live in >> maybe those two things are intertwined.
[37:16] >> Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Um and and even if you look at it, if you look back at the history, the the the countries where real estate is distributed to the highest degree is a country that had communism came out of communism and then there was radical privatization where everyone got to own their own homes. And so if you look at like Eastern Europe and you look at China, like you know, you got like 95% home ownership. Even a country like Singapore when it went through decolonization, it had um a
[37:48] scheme that before it became a global hub, a massively important decolonized um uh port. Um you know, it it had a program to make sure everyone gets their real estate. And so there's radical authoritarian I mean, if you've ever been to Singapore, it's it's a beautiful place, like absolutely pristine, perfect, beautiful in every way, even too perfect. um but very very strict government at the same time as being a global financial center and hub for
[38:18] global trade. Um so it's a very interesting type of country but everyone feels like a shareholder in the country because they own their property right in the case of America I think that's more stocks in Europe and UK it's very much real estate property but in America it was you know the concept of the 401k and and everyone owning stocks and you got rat you got higher stock participation than any other country um if you're not a part of that you're not benefiting from the system and you're getting
[38:48] further and further further away and they can't understand why the price of everything's going up, but their net worth is just going in the wrong direction. So, you're going to be pissed. Um, and if you can't figure out how to solve those, what that tends to lead to is is more of a movement towards redistribution, um, socialism. Um, and and when you start getting, you know, the the breakdown of come to America, the American dream and all that
[39:18] stuff, uh, there is no shared ideology anymore. And then everyone gets extractive and everyone's trying to extract what they can. And this is the the cycle of empires like that we've uh we've always seen. Um but there's no doubt in my mind that one of the most important let's call it commodities you know before it was energy. Uh now we're still energy still oil um you know choke points and trade routes and all these things but you know whoever owns the data [laughter]
[39:48] you know is going to control the control grid. And China [clears throat] has got loads of data centers. America has got loads of data centers and everyone else is trying to use their sovereign wealth to fit in that side of the ecosystem whether it means working with China, working with America, getting Nvidia chips or whatever it can be. But every every country needs the data centers if we're moving to a global control grid. And I'm no doubt we are moving to a global control grid.
[40:18] >> What is like what has to happen for you to change your mind on all of this? Um I think I just um one one thing that I find incredibly useful is I don't listen to politicians and I don't listen to media unless it matches capital flows and monetary flows. So I I spend a disproportionate really almost um obsessive weird amount of time trying to study monetary flows um and figure out whether we're being lied to by politicians or you know so
[40:48] whenever I um so to me I'm looking at I think ETF flows is the new currency war. So it used to be the city of London used to launch currency wars which would determine the future of military intervention. um that still happens. Um a partner, you know, that partnership between the city of London and Wall Street, I think still exists. You know, we've recently destroyed Iran's currency um to do a civilian target to destroy all their wealth so that we could, you know, we
[41:19] could regime change. Um [clears throat] but uh I think now um we've entered into a world where I I look at Black Rockck a lot in terms of ETF flows cuz they created artificial intelligence technology at the financial level way before everyone else. They were the main beneficiary of the global financial crisis. Um they have you know 15 trillion $15.3 trillion of assets under management. That's a significant influence now whether it's
[41:51] ETFs and other people all you can debate all that but they've also got the technology um through Aladdin that sovereign wealth funds central bank treasuries endowment funds pension funds are all using and so when everyone right now as we move to programmable investment like 60% of all stock trades are robots um and everyone all the sovereign wealth funds are using the same technology and treasury departments to scenario man and you put in Aladdin's technology, you know, uh what happens if
[42:22] the straight of moose closes for x number of days, then the bots are all being fed the same type of trades and the same type of data. So, it's allocating capital in somewhat of a coordinated fashion. Um and you can see uh you know that that this control grid is being integrated uh with financial technology grids and now military is becoming drones and uh and and humans. So you know this is where we're heading [laughter]
[42:52] what does it what does it look like? That's what we're all trying to navigate. Um and so what what would change my mind? Well, when the capital flows indicate that, you know, the I mean, America's 25% of global GDP that used to be 60%. Um, so the world's saying we're moving to multiparity and capital is saying, I want cheap factories in China. I want rare earth from Africa that go via the Chinese rails. Um, and uh, Black Rocks assets under management is going up and up and
[43:23] up. So that means hyperfinancialized, securitized, tokenized um and a multi-node system. If we get back to all the flows going back to America, the currency strengthening um relative to all other currencies, then that can falsify it. >> What does the Bitcoin price tell you? uh Bitcoin price to me tells me that there was a period of trying to centralize as much Bitcoin as possible into treasury companies, ETFs.
[43:53] Um and um we still have approximately 70% of Bitcoin in self-custody, you know, 30% in Wall Street rappers or or exchanges. Um so we're still healthy there. Um if we've got an interesting Bitcoin mining industry I think um you know a lot of it was privatized via the US stock market um about 40% of the hash power came through there they've been pivoting a lot to AI and so there's an interesting
[44:24] we may have hit um you know we may have he like the peak in terms of the security behind Bitcoin that may have adjustments from here I think there's evidence to state that countries like if you look at who's mining the most Bitcoin. You still got a chunk in China, a load in Russia, a load in Kazakhstan. Um you've got Iran I think was using it um with nuclear power. Um UAE was building um I think El Salvador is trying to build. So we've got a lot of
[44:54] countries that are very geographically diversified engaging in mining. Um and then we've still got about you know 100,000 nodes as long as um we we recently went through a bitcoin war like where people were questioning corruption within the developer community. I think all of these are things are very healthy. Um so a lot of people are looking at making sure the development is unccorrupt and open source. Um I think we've got a lot of geographical diversification in terms of the mining
[45:25] side. Um, and I think we've got, you know, we still got anyone can run a node and people can verify their own transactions and and and remain sovereign in that side. So, Bitcoin price seems to be a lot of inflows into institutions right now. I think a result of a lot of hacks is people started to say, I'd like someone else to custody. This is this is I think the the interesting thing about Bitcoin from here. The price is very much institutional flows. Um, but the value
[45:56] in Bitcoin is remaining, you know, keeping to the original ethos of what Bitcoin was created because if it all ends up in an ETF all in Treasury company, um, and centralized mining and, uh, no one's watching developers and no one's running nodes cuz the block size goes up or something, then you can, uh, enter a situation where some radical policy of increasing the supply could come through. So, we're nowhere near that right now, but um the Bitcoin price
[46:26] is telling me um that a lot central banks are choosing gold. Uh which is good. I I'd rather central banks don't choose Bitcoin. They they will eventually, I believe, but the longer they don't do that, the better as as far as I can say. >> Um but Wall Street and institutions are loading up. >> Um and they're making a lot of money out of um liquidity and trading and products and stuff like that. Um, I I have as long as I can maintain owning my Bitcoin, sending it
[46:56] peer-to-peer, and the supply doesn't change, then I have no doubt about the price will reflect that decades into the future. >> Mhm. Where can we send people to find you on the internet? >> Um, so I spend a lot of time on X. Um, I try every Friday to kind of like follow the money and like these long 3 four hours. It's it's more for me, but I do it in public as a discipline. So you can listen in if you really want to sit through that. Um, and then I'm kind of setting up, you know, my own uh
[47:26] decentralized setup on Simon Dixon.com where I'm backing everything up in case the algorithms don't like my content or anything in the future. >> What What is your ex handle? >> Uh, [snorts] Simon Dixon Twitter. >> Amazing. >> From when it was Twitter. >> Well, thank thank you for taking the time to do this. I could talk to you forever and uh I think we agree on much more than uh than we both realize. So, um, it's going to be a fascinating, you know, two or three decades here to to see how this all plays out. And I think Bitcoin, AI, sovereignty, decentralization, all of these themes are going to be, uh, very important for
[47:57] people to, uh, continue to embrace going forward. >> Absolutely. Thanks for having me, pump.