The Man Who Owns 4% Of All Bitcoin: "I Made $15 Billion By Using ChatGPT!" | Michael Saylor
2911 segments
I used AI to make $15 billion last year.
>> You did?
>> I did. Because the AI gave us a solution
to the problem that no one had ever
encountered before in the history of the
world. And so my advice is don't try to
outwork the robots. What you want to do
is ask the AI to do something that's
never been done before. And if you want
to create these incredible success
things, you want to locate the magic
opportunity. I know this because I'm an
technology entrepreneur. And we're
[music] the biggest buyer of Bitcoin in
the world. So what is my mission? I'm
preaching the gospel of digital
empowerment [music] in Bitcoin as
digital money. And it's going to be the
best long-term capital asset. And you
can actually own something and someone
more powerful than you can't take it
away from you.
>> What do you mean they can't take Bitcoin
from you?
>> So this is a stack of currency. You walk
through an airport on this, they ask you
if you have cash. They just take it. So
cash in a physical form is a problem. So
what do you do? You put it in the bank.
So the bank then decides whether you get
to keep it and whether you get it back.
But I could move a million dollars of
Bitcoin from here to anywhere, to
London, to anywhere in cyberspace in a
few seconds. So the last thing in the
world you want to save is money.
>> So what about this? Why not just put all
of my money into gold?
>> Well, gold is up 12% a year, but Bitcoin
is up 33.
>> What about the S&P 500?
>> You're going to get double the
performance from BTC that you would get
from like the S&P index.
>> So should I buy a house?
>> I will tell you why you shouldn't buy a
house.
>> And then you sold a bit of Bitcoin
recently after telling a lot of people
sell a kidney if you must but keep the
Bitcoin. So why did you sell the Bitcoin
instead of your kidney?
>> Because
>> Michael, beyond just buying Bitcoin,
[music]
what is a good strategy to build and
become wealthy in your view? And then
>> [music]
>> you have 10 rules for young adults
building a strong foundation for their
life and career. So let's go through
these.
>> So first,
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>> [music]
>> Michael, because of your success as a
technology entrepreneur, you are a
multi-billionaire from my
math and you're heavily focused on
digital currencies at the moment,
specifically Bitcoin. What else do we
need to know about you in terms of what
you've built and accomplished outside of
that?
>> I always wanted to make a technical
contribution. So, that the early
business was business intelligence. So,
how do you extract intelligence from
large raw data sources and that was what
MicroStrategy did. We created a global
business intelligence company. And
[snorts] I think in 2020, when the COVID
lockdowns took place and the world
turned upside down, that was when I
discovered my greatest idea and it
wasn't even my idea, right? It was
Satoshi's idea, but I discovered Bitcoin
in 2020 and the company today is
$60 billion, but we peaked about 125
billion. So, we got somewhere between
100 and 200 times bigger since we
discovered Bitcoin.
>> And when you speak to the general public
now, when you do podcasts like this,
what is the the essence of the message
that you're aiming to communicate to
them.
>> Bitcoin is is digital empowerment,
digital capital. We're living through
the digital transformation
of assets, and this is just as profound
transformation as digital intelligence.
The real profound breakthrough of
Bitcoin is this idea
that you can take economic energy,
convert to digital form, and tightly
bind it to the person, the family, the
company,
or the country. We can talk about how we
all hate countries, but you know, the
history of the world is all the weak
countries getting smashed by all the big
countries. So, if what you're interested
in in is empowerment and fairness and
equity for the small company, the small
family, the small person, the small
country, the weak,
how do you do it? Well, you basically
encrypt the money, put it in cyberspace,
protect it with a private key. So, like
now you can actually own something and
someone more powerful than you can't
take it away from you.
>> There's two types two types of money
there in front of you. There's dollar
bills, and then I've got a couple of
Bitcoin on the table. What do you mean
they can't take Bitcoin from you?
>> Okay, so this is a stack of currency.
You walk through an airport on this,
they ask you if you have cash. If you
do, they
Cash in a in a physical form is a
problem. So, what do you do? You put it
in the bank.
Well, the bank is is a counterparty. So,
the bank then decides whether you get to
keep it and whether you get it back. You
go to the bank and you ask for it back,
they might ask you why you asked for it
back. If you ask for that much back,
they file a form
with the Treasury Department. You know,
if you ask for too much money back too
soon, right, someone comes knocking on
your door. So, the challenge with this
this is fiat currency
and um you hold this at the pleasure of
the nation-state. I mean, not just your
nation-state. It's like every country on
Earth gets to decide whether you get to
spend this stuff, right? Which is
interesting and if you want to actually
transfer money to someone in another
country, you need the permission of your
bank, another bank, the central bank of
their country, the corresponding bank.
There might be seven different banks
that have to decide whether the money
gets from here to there. So, this is
permissioned money, you know, that's uh
managed by the state and with Bitcoin, I
can take a million dollars. I can
actually encrypt it in a chip in a
physical coin, the Cascascius coin,
and that's a million dollars. I slide it
across and it's literally a bearer
asset, you know, and so that's one
manifestation of it. But, you could also
put it into information form. I could
transfer this to you just in the form of
a private key that I wrote on a piece of
paper and I gave to you.
>> of letters you can give me.
>> Yeah, or I could send you a message. I
could send a text message. So, so, good
luck getting a million dollars of gold
from here to London if people don't want
you to move it, but I could move a
million dollars of Bitcoin from here to
anywhere in a few seconds. The idea was
I don't want to trust Apple or Google or
Morgan Bank or a central bank or a
government, right? And so, in the
extreme case,
you know, two people can meet in Africa
and I can trade you some Bitcoin for
your truck
and I don't need the permission of seven
banks and 16 governments and 32 other
bureaucrats
in order to buy that truck.
>> What is it that most people, the average
person, doesn't understand about the
nature of money as it sat in their bank,
as it relates to the debasement of it or
the sort of inflation of it. Because
most people think if they've got, you
know, $10,000 in their bank and they
keep it there, and maybe getting
interest on it at 4% a year, they're
going to be good.
>> So, this is about $10,000, I guess. Um
1 acre of land in Miami Beach on the
water cost $10,000 about 100 years ago.
I know this cuz I have a house on the
water and I have the the deed of sale,
and it was about on 2 acres and it was
$20,000. The entire house cost $100,000.
And uh it's about $20,000 worth of land.
Today, uh 1 acre of land on this the
same acre
on the water
$10 million?
Maybe $20 million. So, you know
what happened here, right? It's the same
dollar. It works out to be a thousand X
increase in price. So, when land goes
from $10,000 to $10 million, that means
that the currency, the dollar, the money
lost about 7% of its economic value
every year for 100 years running.
If you lose 7% a year
you know, then you get cut in half,
right? 10 times.
Right? So, what do most people not know
about about money? What they don't
realize is that the best currency,
money, my money being a medium of
exchange, unit of account, store of
value, the dollar, the best in the 20th
century and the 21st century, the US
dollar
lost 7% of its value every year going
for 100 years. That's the best it's ever
going to get.
It's not that good for everybody else.
If you go to most other countries, they
lose 14% of their value, and so they
collapse in about 30 years. So
what you have is a situation where if
you store your wealth and currency and
and the money of the society, the
question really is just are you going to
lose most of your money within 10 years?
That's the weak currencies in in Africa.
For example, most currencies in Africa
you couldn't hold you your wealth even
for 10 years, maybe 5 years.
Or are you going to lose all your money
in 30 years? Hyperinflation happened in
Brazil, happened in Argentina, you know,
that's Mexico, that's most places, and
that's the status quo. The average fiat
currency, you know, collapses in about
29 years, I think.
And then the best is if you happen to be
a citizen of the greatest nation in the
world and you win all the wars, you're
just going to lose all your money in
you know, half-life is 35 years. You're
going to lose your money over the course
of 100 years.
>> So, should I buy a house?
>> So, you get to the next interesting
point which is that $100,000 in 19, uh,
26
in Miami Beach
today would be worth $100,000, that
house,
50 to 100 million dollars.
So, the house is better, right? In fact,
if you're trying to preserve your
wealth, you have to acquire scarce
desirable property.
So, your choice is do I buy real estate?
Do I residential real estate? Do I buy
commercial real estate? Do I buy a
private company? Do I buy a public
company? Like stocks? Do I buy
collectibles?
So, let me tell you why you shouldn't
buy a house.
Because, uh, there's a 2% property tax
on houses in in Florida, which means
that if you buy a house, you pay 2% of
the value every year.
2%, you know, means that every 36 years
you actually pay the cost of the house
in tax to the government. Not a very
good store of value because, uh, you're
taking on a massive tax load
and you're taking on a maintenance load.
But having said it, it's still a better
deal than just holding cash in a bank or
holding cash in a safe. You know,
commercial real estate looks a bit
better, right? Because with commercial
real estate, you can offset the tax, the
insurance, and the maintenance cost with
rents.
So, what really works out with
commercial real estate most of the time
is you buy a million dollars commercial
real estate, you have a bunch of fees,
you charge rent. The rent offsets the
maintenance cost. You don't really make
any money on the rent, but the
underlying million dollars appreciates
7% a year every year. And so, you
actually can build wealth
with commercial real estate if you can
just cover the maintenance expenses.
>> Most people are are told that the way to
build wealth when they leave university
and they get into the working world is
to buy a house. So, most people that's
what most most people do. They They get
a job, a 9:00 to 5:00, they take the
money they get from that, they go and
get a mortgage, they buy a house, and
they move in. That's kind of what we're
all told implicitly. Is that a good
strategy to build and become wealthy in
your view?
>> The only way that it's a good strategy
is
you're buying the house in a
jurisdiction where the property taxes
are manageable. Then yeah, you can you
can generate some wealth. But if I flip
that and you end up taking a 7% mortgage
and you get massive tax and massive
insurance expenses,
then that same investment, you know,
works out the other way and it it
crushes you to death. So,
a better idea generally is commercial
real estate if you're if you actually
have the, you know, the business acumen
to to get into commercial real estate
business cuz you can pass all the
expenses through to your tenants.
These things are all hard, right? Real
estate business is hard, starting your
own company is hard. Investing in other
companies is hard. The conventional
thing, the safe thing is I just put all
my money in a money market and I get
paid 3% and then after tax I've got 1.5%
and the currency is losing 7% of its
value a year and you're just losing 5 or
6% of your wealth every year for your
life. So
that's why Bitcoin is such a compelling
thing. That's why people that believe in
Bitcoin are passionate about it because
the average person shouldn't have to be
a real estate expert. They shouldn't
have to be a tax expert. They shouldn't
have to be capable of launching their
own restaurant or bar or bakery. You
shouldn't have to be a stock picker. Why
shouldn't the typical person just be
able to take their money, put it into an
asset which appreciates in value 15% a
year and they don't have to worry about
it?
>> What about the S&P 500? They can just
put it into the stock market, right?
>> Yeah, John Bogle's real contribution and
the success of the S&P 500 is this idea
that
currency is not a store of value.
Real estate is illiquid and scary and
difficult and inefficient and high
maintenance. So what is the liquid
capital asset that it can I can buy and
it turns out to be like SPY. It's just
the S&P 500 in the form of an ETF. So
that has returned 15% over the past 6
years.
Over 100 years?
Maybe 10%? Something like that?
>> Every year?
>> And if the US dollar is losing 7% of its
value in scarce desirable terms over the
course of 100 years and you're getting
10%
you're getting a 2 or 3% boost and
in return for accepting the volatility
of being invested in the stock market,
but it's not a bad idea, right? If you
want the conventional best idea to
preserve your wealth without taking on
individual, you know, corporate risk and
individual real estate risk, I just buy
the S&P index and wait.
>> What about this?
This is gold.
>> Yep.
>> Why not just put all of my money into
gold?
>> It's not an awful idea to buy gold. Gold
is up, um,
12% a year
for the past 6 years. So, whereas the
S&P's up 15, gold's up 12, the NASDAQ's
up 18.
Bitcoin is up 33.
Okay, so,
generally, if you look at the world and
you say, "Where do you want to save your
money?" You want to buy a capital asset.
Gold's a winner, S&P's a winner,
diversified tech stocks are a winner.
Bitcoin is a winner. Now, you're going
to say to me,
"Well, so then, well, why Bitcoin?"
Well, the answer is, if you're living in
Turkey, if you're living in Argentina,
if you're living in Brazil before the
currency collapses, or Mexico, or
Venezuela, or any country in Africa, you
don't get gold, you don't get the S&P,
you don't get QQQ. You can't buy
diversified real estate in the US. Those
options I named are a Western world
conventional capital assets. So,
the big mistake,
don't invest in non-capital assets.
Don't put all your family's money in
soybeans, you know? Don't buy barrels of
crude oil, don't buy cotton, don't
invest in things that a factory or a
robot or an AI can generate infinite of.
You buy things that the robots and the
AIs and the big factories cannot pump
out by the million gallons. And so, what
is that? It is maybe an ounce of gold,
it is a share in the 500 most desirable
companies in the world, it is one out of
21 million Bitcoin. All of those things
are things that the robots are not going
to create infinite of. Those are capital
assets. Which capital asset
is a function of where you live
and what your mindset is. If you're
living in a war zone,
my advice is Bitcoin because you're not
carrying this through a checkpoint,
right? Like, you know, if if you need to
go through an airport, you want
something that you get to keep and take
with you.
>> You talked about the robots there.
>> Yeah.
>> And uh when we say the robots, I think
we mean both the the surgeon robotics
we're seeing, but also artificial
intelligence that's going to empower
them to be very, very intelligent.
>> Yeah.
>> How has this changed your thesis in how
you view the future? Cuz it's it's a
profound surprise, I think to all of us
that artificial intelligence is
accelerating at the rate we're seeing.
>> Technology fails until it succeeds. When
I was at MIT, people were trying to
make, uh you know, speech recognition
work. It just didn't work. For a
thousand years, people wanted to fly and
it didn't work. And in 1902, the New
York Times declared that every learned
scientist knows that you'll never be
able to fly. And then in 1903, we fly.
In 2023, you know, the AI started
working. You can see what's happening.
We've affected the digital
transformation of intelligence.
Cars are going to drive themselves.
It's pretty clear that anything that
takes massive human labor, you know,
whether it's lawyering, writing a
contract, or composing a poem, or
composing a script, or composing
It's like, you want a book?
Tell the AI what kind of book you want.
Here's my 10, you know, I want this. I
want it to be set in London. I want this
protagonist. Can you make it like that?
Put some more violence in it.
Uh you know, Voltaire, right, was
impressive because he created, you know,
this much literature. And and when he
did it, it came out of the mind of one
man, and that was quite amazing.
And you know, I think we're always going
to admire the people that did it first.
Right? But, you know,
the AIs will think for us.
You know, put the AI into the robot.
We're not that far, right? Like when I
sit when I sit and I talk to my voice
assistant, whether it's Chad or whether
it's Grok, and it's it's like she knows
everything, and she keeps getting
smarter.
You know, you know, every single week
she gets smarter, and it's like what
happens when they go into a robot? It's
like
Well, you can you pretty much can
imagine
a billion robots, and maybe we'll pay
200 bucks a month for a robot, and the
robot will just pretty much do
everything.
And so, the question is do you want
someone to do everything, to cook, to
clean, you know, to take out the trash?
Would you like a self-driving car? Of
course, you do. We're on the verge of
these perfect products, right? That
like we'll get to the point where we're
like I I I I
You used to actually have an oven that
burned things?
Like what?
What what it was stupid? Yeah, it was
too stupid to know it was going to burn
the
Huh? Why don't you just put intelligence
into the appliance, right? What why
would you ever have an unintelligent
appliance, right? At this point, when it
gets exponentially cheaper. We used to
get in traffic accidents.
Right? Like like the big reveal, right?
The big the big inversions when people
realize that the self-driving cars are
safer than the person-driven cars,
right?
It's like you used to make mistakes.
You know, the irony, of course, is now
when you send a message to someone, if
you want to prove that it came from you,
you have to actually put errors in it.
Right? It's like if you put errors in
it, I believe you typed it. You know,
the AI can draft the thing as though it
had a PhD in English, and it had 20
years experience as a copy editor. And
so, we're reaching this point where
lack of of effectiveness is just
laziness, right? Like, if you wrote
something which wasn't perfect,
it's cuz you're lazy, not because you're
not perfect. I mean, the AIs create
perfect documents. They do perfect
research.
The robots will do any amount of work.
And I I think Elon makes this point,
which is we're about to trip over an age
of abundance.
>> Do you believe that's true?
What What does that say about Bitcoin?
Because I'm looking at some of the
quotes here that Elon said about the age
of abundance. And he says, "In the
future, where anyone can have anything,
you no longer need money as a database
for labor allocation. If AI and robotics
are big enough to satisfy all human
needs, then the relevance of money
declines rapidly. I'm not sure we will
have it. If you are stranded on a desert
island with a trillion dollars, it will
be pointless because there is no labor
to allocate. In a benign scenario, we
will have universal high income. Much as
universal basic income mean anyone can
have any products or any services that
they want. Universal high income via
checks issued by federal governments is
the best way to deal with unemployment
caused by AI/robotics.
Because AI and [snorts] robotics will
produce goods and services far in excess
of the increase in money supply, so
there will be no inflation. Work will
become optional, kind of like playing
sports or a video game. You can go to
the store and buy vegetables, or you can
go and grow them in your backyard
because you like growing them.
That's what work will be like. AI and
robotics are going to make so much stuff
and provide so many services that they
will actually run out of things to do
for the humans. Money is fundamentally
information. The true constraints of the
future won't be financial. They'll be
energy and mass.
>> He's half right. I agree with with part
of what he says. That is, consumer
goods, consumables, utilitarian goods uh
will become abundant. But, there are
always going to be scarce desirable
goods that will not become abundant. And
I think he overstates the case. Money
will still be valuable, wealth will
still be valuable. But, I'll give you an
example.
Henry VIII didn't have clean water.
Did not have heat, did not have cooling.
These things the King of England did not
have. And technology gave all these
things to the middle class.
And so, if you live in the middle class
today, you know, you can have your
appendix out, you know. But, Henry VIII
didn't have dental crowns, he didn't
have x-rays. So, you get modern medical
care, you know, the infant mortality
rate has plunged. Life is safer, clean
water, clean air, right?
Clean food. And technology gave them to
us. We stamp out infinite Coca-Cola,
infinite Hershey's bars, ice cream,
right? Running water.
Right? Electricity. So, all of those
things have been given to the middle
class, the working class in the
developed world. Right? Not everywhere,
but let's say in the developed world.
But, everybody doesn't get a Hampton's
house, everybody doesn't get their own
private jet, they don't get their own
private yacht. So, what happened with
the explosion of affluence?
Massive utilitarian entitlement, lots of
cars. But, you know, okay, so everybody
gets a car, but how many people get a
Porsche? What happens with humanity is
we always invent the luxury car.
We come up with the trophy asset. And
And again,
>> But, but most people don't actually want
that. They want to be able to like feed
their family and not have to worry about
the bills. So, all of those people,
you're saying that those people are
going to be They're going to be good.
They're not going to have to work.
>> I'm saying that if if your aspiration is
a good life,
if you want infinite food, infinite
energy, infinite education, infinite
entertainment,
right? You're probably going to get it.
My point is, in theory, right, why does
money matter today?
Cuz everybody, you know, has electricity
and water. Because people want to buy
something more than water. By the way,
water is the proletarian drink.
>> What does that mean?
>> It means that if you go to a restaurant
and you don't and you can't afford
anything else, you ask for a cup of
water,
right?
>> [clears throat]
>> And then if you have some more money,
you get yourself a Coca-Cola or a soft
drink, and that costs five bucks. But if
you have more money, you buy yourself a
vodka. And then when you have more
money, you want to buy yourself the
specialty high-end tequila. And and
eventually people find a way to spend
$38 on a drink.
And uh, you know, in New York City, you
know, you can see that everywhere. Why
do we go to restaurants and pay $300
to eat at a restaurant? Because you can
actually feed yourself on three bucks a
day. And the answer is,
there's always going to be a hierarchy
of affluence, and people are going to
find things to aspire to that will be
more than
the utilitarian mean that everybody
gets. If I give you a universal health
care, people want private health care.
If I give everybody a house, someone's
going to want a house twice as big.
Everybody's always going to have a
reason to want something more, you
>> Because we're status orientated animals.
>> That's the cynical way to look at it,
but the other way to look at it is, I
wanted to be sitting on a mountain peak
skiing, but not that mountain peak,
because the snow's not good on that
mountain peak this week.
>> And it's too busy on this one.
>> Yeah, and that one was too crowded.
You know, it's like there's always going
to be
some exclusivity, you know, there's
going to be a quest. So I I think that
money's not going away. I think it's
pretty obvious if you look around you
that that Uh, people still need money.
It is true
that the basic needs in life, basic
transportation, basic energy, basic
health care, all of those things can be
manufactured in quantity and they'll get
progressively cheaper. We'll call them
consumer goods.
>> If this uh knowledge work does become
I guess taken by the robots and the AIs,
there's some people say there's going to
be new jobs created and everyone will be
fine. But it's not clear to me that
there will be enough new jobs created in
a period of time um to satisfy the
demand of people to have something to do
professionally.
>> It used to be everybody was a farmer,
right? And then all of a sudden in
America we have new jobs like called
accountants and lawyers and film
producers. You're a podcaster. Your job
didn't exist 20 years ago. It did you
know, the job description did not exist,
the business did not exist. There's a
lot of things that exist today. Yeah. I
There are people that make a living
putting on makeup and clothes and
posting on Instagram and that was not a
job that existed 30 years ago.
So, there'll be a lot of new jobs.
There'll be dislocation. There's going
to be political unrest. What do I think?
I think this is the best argument in
favor of encouraging a free market and
allowing uh liberal
uh unregulated
businesses to prosper because
if you have a progressive society and by
the way, the United States is sort of
more progressive.
>> Define progressive in this context.
>> You're allowed to start a business.
You're allowed to sell product.
It's not illegal
to
to create a podcast.
By the way, you you can't do what you're
doing in Cuba.
>> Yeah.
>> Right? In North Korea you couldn't do
it.
>> I read something crazy last night about
driving autonomous cars. It said lawyers
are trying to stop block EVs because
these particular lawyers make a lot of
money from litigating car accidents.
>> We wouldn't want people to not crash.
>> Yeah.
>> Like Yeah, so the point is there all
sorts of laws in restraint of trade.
Like you can't have an Airbnb. In the
face of modern technology, if you have
modern technology is creating
dislocation, if your goal is to
embrace the technology,
create maximum productivity,
and then minimize the disruption and the
inflammation,
then the more degrees of freedom you
offer,
the less pain there'll be because in a
more free society, you're going to have
10,000 new kinds of businesses pop up or
100,000 new business opportunities that
no one conceptualized. And they'll be
threatening to the status quo, but
they'll be rational and they'll create
value, and then they will create gainful
employment, and they'll create wealth
for all the people that are displaced
right by by the technology.
>> Steve, what you doing?
>> Uh just making myself a delicious
coffee.
>> From the freezer?
>> From the freezer. You not heard about
Cometeer?
>> No.
>> Oh my gosh. This is going to change your
life.
Couple of months ago, the founder of
this business called Matt sent a big
shipment of this coffee to our office in
London. What most people don't know is
that the processing of coffee takes out
a lot of the taste. So what they do is
they flash freeze it at the optimal
moment when it's most tasty. And they
send you in the post the coffee in these
little frozen ice cubes. Now Matt sent a
big shipment to my office. I moved it to
the kitchen. I said to the team, knock
yourselves out. And then I saw so many
messages in our Slack channel of people
going, "Oh my god, what the hell is
that? It's so delicious." All I have to
do is pop it out in the morning using
the little button on the back of this
thing. I pour my hot water in, and I mix
it,
and that is done. You can get $30 off
your first order of Cometeer Coffee if
you go to cometeer.com/steven.
Try it and please Instagram DM me,
LinkedIn me, and let me know if you love
it as much as I do.
One of the things you've heard me talk
about quite a lot over the last couple
of years, and this is something that's
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with everything in life, is that
consistency is the thing that really,
really compounds. The same is true in
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leaders look at it and think they have a
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You know, earlier you were talking about
how you can get AI to write a book. I
was thinking as you were saying it, the
interesting thing is, I now ask my AI
um what book I need to read.
And to make that book for me, versus
being prescriptive to it and because it
has what it this huge memory on me. It
knows what I'm I'm dealing with. It
knows the businesses I'm building, the
problems I have. And so, I just say,
"What What do I What's the question I
should be asking you? Or what should
book should I be reading?" And then,
"Can you make that book for me? Make it
20 pages. I like it in this particular
style cuz it's my favorite style of
author. And then I I want to download it
as an MP3 file and listen to it on my
way to work. I have 43 minutes.
Could you say what should What's the
question I should be asking you?
>> Yeah, you're you're using You're using
that as an example, but at the end of
the day, you have to govern the state
space. For example, anybody could say
what question should I ask, but the real
issue is what's the What are the input
constraints? If you're a baker in
Nigeria
in Lagos.
>> Okay, yeah.
>> Right? There's a certain set of
conditions that are different than if
you happen to be a fireman in Los
Angeles.
>> Yeah.
>> Right? And so
what's the state space that you're
exploring in order to create a
contribution?
And I'll give you an example like um
I used AI. I used AI to make $15 billion
last year.
>> Is that a true story?
>> This is true.
>> Okay.
>> You did?
>> I did. Yeah.
And I used an AI to make $15 billion in
a way that no one would ever conceive
that you could make $15 billion.
>> This is a true story?
>> Okay. Yeah, let let's let's go back to
me in 2025.
We have a company that has billions of
dollars of Bitcoin. Uh $30 billion of
Bitcoin. We want to actually raise
capital to buy more Bitcoin. We maxed
out the equity markets. Uh we became the
largest issuer of convertible bonds in
the in the world. And we maxed out the
convertible bond market. And And uh that
was our journey in the first 5 years of
our Bitcoin.
>> To simplify this for Jenny Davis, you
borrowed as much money as you could from
traditional means.
>> Yes.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> To buy Bitcoin.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> By the beginning of 2025, we had issued
as many convertible bonds as you could
issue. We were the largest issuer in the
world. And it wasn't scalable. So, we
needed to invent a new type of security,
a new type of credit instrument that we
could use to borrow money to buy more
Bitcoin.
So,
we went to the AI. I went to the AI and
I started exploring how do I design a
preferred stock.
And so I said, I think I want to create
a security that's not a common equity
and I don't want it to be a bond. I want
it to be some hybrid in the middle. A
preferred stock, you know, for the
layman, it's it's just a security that
could be anything. You can give it any
terms. I can sell you a preferred stock
and give you the right to put it back to
me in 12 months and it looks like that.
I can give you a guaranteed coupon on
it. I can give you conversion rights and
and make it look like equity. So, we
used AI to design a convertible
preferred stock called STRK. When we did
it, no one had ever created a preferred
stock that was backed by Bitcoin before
and and we'd never issued it and so it
was kind of a combination of financial
engineering and digital asset
engineering and legal work and
securities law.
So, we built it and
and, you know, when we asked the lawyers
and the bankers, they're like, well, no
one's ever done it before.
Okay. And and you know, their their
their answer, by the way, is no one's
ever done it before and people don't do
that. So, we don't think you should do
that.
And we're like, well, everything else
that people have done we've maxed out
and so we're kind of at the point where
our growth is going to stop unless we
find a way out of the box. So, we're
going to have to do something no one's
ever done before using
new technology, right? We're using
digital capital. We're using uh
digital intelligence and we're using a
digital treasury company. So, three new
forms of something in order to create
value.
And after we'd done three of them, we
decided what we wanted to do was create
a short duration credit instrument, one
that would be would trade stably around
$100, around par.
And we're trying to figure out how do
you get a preferred stock to trade at at
a stable level? It's what what you would
call technically short duration credit,
but it's like we're trying to create a
money market type instrument where
people can buy it at 100, sell it at
100, collect the yield, and not worry
about it trading up and down or being
sensitive to interest rates.
Well, if you do that, you have to vary
in order to get it to trade stable, if
you want the price to be stable, you
have to change the dividend rate.
And so, we created an instrument
that where we could change the dividend
rate every month. Now, had anybody ever
done it? No. In the history of the
world, no one ever created a variable
dividend rate preferred stock.
Is it illegal? No.
Why has no one ever done it? No one ever
had a reason to do it. They never
thought to do it.
The lawyers, the bankers, the
conventional investors, they're like,
"Well, we've never seen it done before.
We're not sure you can do it."
We go to the AI, we said, "Well, can we
do it?" They're like, "Of course you can
do it. Just do this, this, and this, and
this, and it Well, they said they don't
like that. Well, just do this, this,
this."
>> Which AI?
>> Chat GPT.
Open AI.
>> So, Chat GPT made you $15 billion?
>> Yeah, because the short of it is, we
brought our IPO to market, it became a
$2.5 billion IPO, the biggest IPO of the
year to date.
And then, we put a shelf registration on
it, we sold another $8 billion of it.
So, we sold 10 and 1/2 billion dollars
of that instrument, plus 4 billion of
the other instrument. So, we basically
sold $15 billion of credit, which kind
of equates to the company making about
$15 billion.
>> I'm thinking about what this means
generally for the average person
listening.
>> Yeah.
>> Because everyone's like searching for
business ideas.
>> Right.
>> New ideas. And you're telling me that
you you can use AI now to come up with
novel business ideas and solutions that
are outside of the box and that would
generate value for people. Um you though
there is it's almost like hearing that
there's an arbitrage opportunity with
this intelligence.
Now, I was reading something the other
day that said only 2% of households have
a Chat GPT or AI subscription still.
So, do you think there is an an an
arbitrage there for people who go to AI
now and and can build business ideas
from it?
>> If If you're an entrepreneur, right? If
you If you aspire to create a business
or create something of value, then it's
the no-brainer is you definitely should
pick one or more of these AIs and maybe
you want to become adept using multiple.
They're They're just different tools.
It's It's kind of like saying you got to
learn how to use a computer and you got
to learn how to read reading, writing,
arithmetic, right? Just basics.
And then
once you've done that, you you do need
to have some domain expertise in
something, right? The question is
what are you going to do, right? You
either want to create
a new product or you want to create a
new service
or you want to radically transform an
existing product or service using AI to
be much cheaper, much better.
But to my mind, you know, I would try to
create something magical.
Like for example can you create
something that does everybody's
accounting, does you know, does the work
of a million accountants and sell it for
10 bucks a month?
Right?
>> If you're 18 now, if your kids came to
you and said, "Dad, what should I
go and study at university? And what
shouldn't I study at university?
Would your answer be different now as we
stand on the foothills of this new
technology?"
>> You want to study the new thing, right?
You want to learn the new thing. And so,
if you look at the history of of
science, the real question is, what's on
the S-curve?
>> On the S-curve?
>> The whole theory of the S-curve is for a
thousand years we try to fly.
And infinite energy makes no progress.
You cannot fly. And then in 1903
all of a sudden we can sort of fly.
And in 66 years we go from flying 20
miles an hour to flying 300 miles an
hour. First a fighter jet, then a
passenger jet, then we have like rockets
that are unmanned. Then we have manned
rockets. And then we have rockets to go
to orbit. Then we have rockets to go to
the moon. And so that's an example of an
S curve. But then you know what happens.
In the mid 70s, we designed the 737, the
747.
And we hit a wall. You know, and 737 is
still the primary airplane for the next
50 years.
And if you look at the efficiency of an
airplane from 1975
uh to the year 2025, over 50 years,
the modern airplanes are 15% more
efficient.
Like So, what you got was a diminishing
return. And when you're on the S curve,
things are doubling every 3 years.
You're doubling, you're doubling, you're
doubling. You're exponential growth.
And then you hit diminishing returns.
And then you stagnate. And then you
stop. And then things are just not
getting any better. So,
>> Let's show an S curve on the screen. And
also
uh the the new S curve coming in below
it.
>> Like when I was at MIT, you know,
everybody basically flocked to uh
electrical engineering and computer
science. Because that was the cool
thing. And so, the mistake to make when
you go to school is
you get at the end of the S curve. You
basically start studying something that
has hit diminishing returns. And once
you hit that diminishing return,
no material progress may take place for
100 years. It might be that you just
can't break through. Propulsion
technology is the limiting factor. Like
why don't we have planes that will fly,
you know, supersonic, you know, on um
you know, a tank of gas that's that's
this much, right? Or fusion drives.
Well, cuz we don't. Now, on the other
hand,
semiconductors
uh started exploding. And semi And
semiconductor technology has continued
to advance. We haven't hit
that limit yet. And that's that's why so
many profound breakthroughs were made in
computer science over the past 50 years.
>> This is kind of hit a nice curve, hasn't
it? As a form factor, my iPhone here.
You know, that over since the iPhone, as
you said, since the iPhone like 6,
it hasn't really gotten thinner, but uh
the battery hasn't really taken a leap
forward as such. So, we're now looking
for another form factor to interface
with computers.
>> Yeah, you know, the iPhone 1 didn't have
cut and paste.
And we didn't get cut and paste till the
version 3.
And so, there was a rapid improvement
versions 1 through 6 or 1 through 7,
call it.
And at that point, you start hitting
diminishing returns. And if you were to
do some utility function, and you were
to score on a scale of 1 to 100, you
would have gone from like 5 to 70 in a
hurry, and then you would have gone from
70 to 90 over the next few iterations,
and then that you're 91, 92.
You hit that limit, and I if if you are
starting a company, right? You don't
create another iPhone.
Right? The [clears throat] real question
right now
is uh
can I create smart glasses where I have
something that's like my Maui Jim
sunglasses, I put them on, they weigh
nothing, and they have the camera, and
they see what I see, and they hear what
I hear, and they know where I am,
and plug that into AI, and in that
point, I can just say, "Hey, Eve, what
is that?"
You know, "Where am I? And tell me about
that." And and it's like
"Why do I have to type anymore?"
>> When I met Mark Zuckerberg, he showed me
the the device that's on the way from
Meta. This is not secret, cuz I know
they've talked about it publicly. Which
is just a it was just a plain wrist
strap with no screen on it.
But it linked to the glasses.
And in the glasses, when I looked
around, I could see all of my screens
and everything like that. And I And if I
just because of this wrist strap, if I
just click, it clicks on all the stuff.
So, I was just like, "Hey, with this
little wrist strap. The wrist strap
again was just like a cotton bracelet,
very thin cotton bracelet. And as I just
looked around, I could click on
everything and open things and call
people and send texts and go on YouTube,
etc. And it was just up here in my
peripheral. You imagine again, imagine
that on an S curve. At some point it's
going to be a some sort of like almost
like contact lens type thing
that's that I can just
>> By the way, this is why you should study
fantasy, right? Because they have this,
right? In magic worlds, right? This is
like
you know, like I just wear my talisman.
You know, I have a necklace. What does
it do? Oh, it makes me omniscient, all
powerful, immortal, indestructible. I
live forever. What what what do you have
to do to make the product work? Nothing.
I'm wearing the wristband and I walk and
every door opens to me and stuff
happens. And here's where Elon gets it
right. It's like the number one
engineering mistake is engineers want to
optimize the part that shouldn't exist.
Like make the parts go away, right? We
start on the topic of what should you
study,
right? It's It's study technologies that
allow you to create magic things that
your parents could never
If your parents would say that's magic,
you're on the right track, right? So,
like how about What's better than the
wristband? Just like How about you just
like implant one pellet?
>> Neuralink.
>> Yeah. Maybe it's a Neuralink. Maybe it's
Maybe it's when I'm born, there's a
slight implant and now I I hear like I
can talk to the AI in cyberspace
forever.
>> But should you go study that because
conceivably the artificial intelligence
and the robots are going to be the ones
that create that technology. If they
have a PhD in everything and that's
accelerating.
>> Yeah, well, I guess we're back back to
the what should you study? You ought to
study digital intelligence or digital
assets. If you can generate,
you know, generate proteins, generate
generate any kind of
life form or enzyme or protein or the
like, maybe it's interesting.
But I think with regard to AI,
you don't want to learn how to do things
that AI can do. What you want to do is
learn how to ask the AI to do something
that's never been done before. Like if I
were to go back to school, 95% of what I
learned, uh, probably wouldn't want to
study.
>> What about a surgeon? Do you think
you're going to be a surgeon?
>> No.
>> What about a a lawyer?
>> No.
>> Accountant?
>> No.
>> Driver?
>> No.
At some point, what you have to do is
ask
the AIs aren't really answering the
question yet, but you have but you have
to ask whatever is the marginal question
that hasn't been answered by the
civilization. Maybe I'll take it I'll
take that position, which is
the way you create value in the world is
you bring something into the world that
wasn't here before.
>> This is something that I've made for
you. I realized that the Diary of a CEO
audience are strivers, whether it's in
business or health, we all have big
goals that we want to accomplish. And
one of the things I've learned is that
when you aim at the big, big, big goal,
it can feel incredibly psychologically
uncomfortable because it's kind of like
being stood at the foot of Mount Everest
and looking upwards. The way to
accomplish your goals is by breaking
them down into tiny, small steps, and we
call this in our team the 1%. this
philosophy is highly responsible for
much of our success here. So, what we've
done so that you at home can accomplish
any big goal that you have, is we've
made these 1% diaries, and we released
these last year and they all sold out.
So, I asked my team over and over again
to bring the diaries back, but also to
introduce some new colors and to make
some minor tweaks to the diary. So, now
we have a better range for you. So, if
you have a big goal in mind, and you
need a framework and a process and some
motivation, then I highly recommend you
get one of these diaries before they all
sell out once again. And you can get
yours at the diary.com.
And if you want the link, the link is in
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Beyond just buying Bitcoin, is there any
sort of actionable steps that the
working class should take right now to
pre- prepare for this robot transition
that you're talking about?
>> I mean, the actionable step is is
learn
>> Learn about the robots.
>> digital. Right?
>> Digital.
>> Like understand digital. For example,
how much content's available on YouTube
right now? Like
>> Infinite, right now.
>> Right? What can you get for free on
YouTube and what can you create of
value, right? If you're in the business
of content creation, my advice would be
study digital channels. As As like,
should I go and become a stage actor on
Broadway?
It's It's a It's a
a much smaller thing. Mr. Beast can get
100 million subscribers, you can get 20
million subscribers. You're not getting
20 million subscribers if you do the
thing that your parents' parents did.
So, I think that you want to look at
digital platforms. There's There's
digital communication like Acts or
Instagram, there's YouTube and
and the like, but there's also
There's also digital intelligence.
>> Let's just just test that first point a
bit. I guess a lot of content creators
are thinking at the moment now because
of these frontier models that can
produce video content, pictures. A kid
in Mumbai or Manhattan, where we are
now, can set up an agent while they're
asleep and say, "Listen, just post 100
videos while I'm asleep on this every
single platform.
I actually I'll make five agents and
I'll ask all of them to post 100 videos
each. So, you're going to have this you
have in terms of supply and demand,
presumably that's a supply shock.
There's this slop tsunami coming in. And
then if you look at demand of attention
online, it is arguably fixed. Financial
Times did a report said that young young
people are actually starting to come
down in terms of time spent online. Uh
slightly older generations are starting
from a lower base, but they're still
going up, but they're starting from a
lower base. So, you've got a tsunami
slop of supply and fixed demand.
I get this even this business feels a
little bit insecure. Actually, a lot of
the major podcasters are actually down
on YouTube. If I look at the top who I
would consider the sort of top five
podcasters in my niche, um every single
one of them is down at least 50% in the
last 20-ish uh 12 12 24 months.
>> Well, the solution is certainly not to
not pay attention, right? So, for
example, if you're in the business of
creating content right now, you would
ask the question, can I enhance the
content with AI?
Or can I better market or distribute the
content with AI?
>> What is the moat?
>> The moat's going to be the most talented
content cre- the person creating the
best stuff that everybody wants to see.
There are videos being created like,
here's a walk-through of a 16th century
warship.
And you know, I don't know if you've
seen a guy constructs the entire warship
from the keel and he creates the ribs
and he shows you the lower deck and the
ballast and he takes you through every
step and it's a three-dimensional uh
video animation.
Takes about an hour and it's absolutely
riveting. I have no reason to care about
16th century warships, but I can't take
my eyes off it because it's just so
fascinating to see him explain
everything.
>> Are you saying creativity is the moat
still?
Or understanding what humans want and
then delivering it it which I guess is
creativity.
>> Let's say the Led Zeppelin example. But
what what you see in human history
is
within 10 years of whenever there's a
new technology platform, there's some
geniuses. They push it to the limit and
they do 95% of everything that can be
done and it all happens within 10 years
and they live forever. So
why didn't anybody before Beethoven do
stuff with the piano? Well, the piano
comes out, some genius does stuff with
the piano, right? And between Beethoven
and Chopin and you know, and a a few
players, it's like it's not clear to me
if humans try for another 10,000 years,
they'll do
much better.
So with Led Zeppelin, you had electric
guitars and amplification and everything
kind of clicked late 60s.
Like the sound of the early 60s was not
quite there and then by 1971, 72, you
could do some amazing stuff. And if you
think about all the classic rock between
1970 and 1980,
you have human creativity pushing the
edge of the envelope in so many
directions and then you hit this
diminishing return. And then along comes
sampling, right? And then you get
Swedish House Mafia and Avicii and
that's new technology and then they push
it to the extreme.
And then along comes YouTube and Justin
Bieber comes out of nowhere, you know,
and Mr. Beast comes out of nowhere and
they push it to the extreme.
And what you see with every generation
is
I give you a new thing, whether it's a
piano or electric guitar or internet.
Think about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg
and what he did at just about the point
when you could do that with the web and
then think about the early mobile apps,
you know, WhatsApp and the like and it's
like
what you want to do if you want to
create these incredible success things
is
you want to locate
the magic opportunity right at the right
point on the S curve where it just now
became commercially viable to do it and
is a zero to one moment and you want to
be there. You want to be the first
person
that applies that technology, right? To
this new idea. Like what did our company
do to to go from nothing to 60 billion
dollars or from 1 billion to 60 billion?
We were the first company to take
digital capital, Bitcoin,
and put it together with digital credit
and a digital treasury model. So, we
created a credit instrument, a security
that you could never created before. You
couldn't have made it 10 years ago. You
couldn't build it on top of anything
other than Bitcoin. So, we needed to get
to the point where we had 10 or 20
billion dollars of capital
and then we could create this thing that
was a multi-billion dollar thing and
that becomes resident and that window
is like 12 to 24 months. And you go
through that window and you create
something that might be a hundred
billion dollar thing because you go
through if you went through 36 months
early, you smack into a wall and you
fail. And if you wait,
like at this point, our company is 20
times bigger than the next biggest one,
50 times bigger than the company doing
something similar. Did we plan it? Not
at all.
We found some extraordinary cool thing.
We committed to it with all of our heart
and soul and we declared we were going
to make it work come hell or high water
and we got punched in the face a hundred
times and every single time we ran into
a problem,
we stopped, we recalibrated, we went a
different direction and the process of
creating something beautiful,
like the beautiful thing, like everyone
wants a bank account that pays 10%. So,
if you can figure out how to give people
this thing they want with a new
technology
that was impossible that did not exist 5
years or 3 years earlier.
Then you resonate in the society, right?
You would go viral. Like we were just
the first ones to get there. It
exploded. If you gave me a billion
dollars right now and said run a
marketing campaign, it wouldn't be as
effective. Like you couldn't buy the
success with a billion dollars of
marketing. You just have to that let's
up guys. They didn't spend a billion
dollars marketing. You got to be in the
right place, the right time,
and you have to have the courage
to offer people the new thing.
>> I have been thinking a lot about this.
This idea of you said, you know, if you
spend a billion dollars you couldn't go
as viral as that. And if someone came
along and spent a ton of money today,
they couldn't go as big as
let's say Michael Jackson.
When we go back through history, I was
thinking about this this idea because I
watched the Michael Jackson documentary
recently and he was
at a level of fame that is I don't think
we've ever seen since. And I think part
of the reason why it was because there
was a constraint on the distribution
channels back then. So in my house,
there was 20 albums over there, books of
albums, and Michael Jackson was like
three of them. And then the other way
that we could consume was the TV over
there and there was like six channels
and MTV was one of them and it was
Michael Jackson all day.
>> [snorts]
>> In the world we live in now where
there's my phone experience is a
completely different phone experience to
yours because of AI. AI is learning what
I like and showing me my own little
version of the world. I wonder [snorts]
if it's possible to be
as big as a
Michael Jackson once was for anybody
these days. And actually I even with the
YouTube you mentioned earlier, I wonder
now if fame or cool being a content
creator or a musician once looked like
this
this sort of like high ceiling and then
you're known for a hundred years like
Michael Jackson.
And now with algorithms that are
personalized, does it now look like
this?
Shorter and shallower.
>> Is it possible to get big? You could
say, well, I can't get as big as Michael
Jackson, but on the other hand, Elon
Musk got big.
Right? Like Like there are things that
get big, right? Companies get big.
OpenAI went from nothing to how many
users in just a few months.
So I I think what you could say is going
viral is about hitting a resonating
frequency in the civilization, whether
it's an artistic frequency or it's a
political frequency, or it's a it's a
technical frequency. Yeah, there are
some things
where there's going to be a glut.
There's going to be Well, let's take
Instagram, right? It's like
on one hand, a billion people have like
bad photos posted online, but on the
other hand, there are people that
managed to get, you know, 8 million
followers, and they, you know, are the
Kard- Kardashians, you know? You have
these people that get massively big, and
that's the other side of the equation.
So
I don't really know how it all plays out
except for the fact that it seems clear
that there is room for human creativity
and innovation.
And if your goal is to make a
contribution,
right? If you're at the If you're in
your working years where you want to
upgrade the world and make a difference
and be remembered for something,
then a a pretty simple principle is
don't keep doing the same thing over and
over, working harder and harder every
year, fighting against the modern
automation,
you know, epidemic, right? Don't try to
outwork the robots. It's like you're
you're lamenting, you know,
how difficult it is for a content
creator, but let me remind you that it
used to be you would go be a college
professor and teach 200 students a year
for 20 years and you would feel that
your life contribution was 4,000
people's whose minds you touched.
And now you get 4,000 people a second.
Okay? So, you're charging yourself
against,
you know, the next thing, but if you
look back in time, technology has given
us the ability to amplify
our intellect and amplify
our creativity
in a way that is
unprecedented in human history.
>> Yeah, I think I think in part it's I'm
wondering now if we're kind of
we technology said, "Okay, you can reach
more people." TV, radio, all these
things. And actually now with
intelligence, it's saying, "Ooh, we can
figure out exactly what Michael wants."
So, we're starting to live in these
smaller echo chambers where your
creative idea or your creative piece of
content reaching lots of people is going
to become harder because the algorithms
are now in the way and they're deciding
who sees what.
And they're optimizing for
the the I guess the platform, the the
platform's monetary desire. The other
thing that I think is really interesting
and I've been mulling for the last
couple of months is that that which is
really really hard and scarce and
actually you could say something being
hard and scarce are are the are the same
cuz to create something scarce is also
hard, like you did with that financial
instrument. Very few people on Earth
could have created that. We don't run
public companies, we don't have the
information, etc. Or even that YouTuber
you mentioned who walks you through
those
the 1600s or whatever. That is very hard
to do. I theorize that actually pursuing
that which is hard and scarce Getting
you to come here today is not easy. So,
that's kind of my moat. Michelle Obama
coming and sitting down with me here is
still kind of my moat. Um is is is what
we should aim at.
What do you think of that as a theory?
>> I agree. Let's say you have a business,
whatever your business is,
right now the right thing to do is to
spend an intense time with the AI
considering what are all the ways you
can upgrade and improve the product or
the service you create, right?
Uh, for example, like the it used to be
you do this in English and the issue is,
well, what if What about Japanese or
Chinese or French or whatever? And, you
know, the hard way is you learn 20
languages and, you know, but then how
does your guest How do we translate it
or you hire, you know, we used to spend
money to hire translators, but now
you could have the AI translate this
into a hundred languages, right? Now,
the question is should you
or not? Can I enhance it?
Right? It's interesting when someone
describes something, but you're like,
let's just put up a chart of the S curve
there. And then the next step is can I
market it better or distribute it
better? And the next step is
am I creating something that'll be
valuable in a decade? Well, will it be
valuable in a hundred years?
>> Well, this is probably a good time to
mention this. 24 months ago we started
exactly that, which is
>> They're all aliens, you just never see
them.
Arabic
>> Tell me.
>> Yeah, and and ask yourself how many
people that do podcast interviews offer
that level of quality of content? And
>> I can see that
>> I think that you're I think you're
outstripping like I don't know that
anybody else has done it that well.
Right?
>> We started almost three years ago and
for the first 24 months it was a tragic
failure. So, you had the data scientists
in the corner of our office failing for
24 months. And then about 12 months ago
for the first time ever we saw that the
translation technology underneath us had
improved and that we could get the view
duration in Spanish to be higher
[snorts]
than English.
>> And how many months do you think Jimmy
Page spent trying to master the electric
guitar?
More than 24 months?
>> a lot longer.
>> My advice to an entrepreneur is
you focus, you commit.
If you're successful in less than 4
years, you got lucky. It's pro- Yeah. If
it takes you 10 years, well, between 4
and 10 years is is very, very normal.
If you haven't had success by the
10-year point, you're probably not cut
out for the business. But, you know,
what you're doing is it's totally
logical. It's like, is AI going to
remake this industry? The first issue is
can you make the product better? And the
second question is what's it worth?
Right? Right? You can do that. Can you
get paid? You know? And by the way, even
if you didn't get paid,
I would argue that your audience have
limited attention span. It's like, I
don't have time to listen to every Lex
Fridman, every Joe Rogan, every Diary of
the CEO, and every one of the next 20.
And so, I'm going to become loyal. I'm
going to become a customer and a fan of
whoever serves me the best content. And
certainly, if I'm a native Portuguese
speaker
>> [snorts]
>> or a native Russian speaker, you all of
a sudden just leaped, right? To the top.
>> This gets to my point about hard and
scarce because
people in in Portugal maybe have never
heard Michael Saylor before in
Portuguese.
So, in terms of scarce, it's actually
the only interview now available that is
2 hours long of Michael Saylor talking
in Cantonese with Steven, you know?
And so, that the we then are competing.
We have That's kind of the moat then,
right?
>> And that that becomes a benefit to all
your guest. You're the distribution
channel for me
to send the message of digital capital,
digital empowerment to the world. And
then,
your guest become your moat. I think
that
with every single business, it's pretty
clear you have to ask the question, is
technology going to cannibalize my
business or disrupt it, and am I going
to be the one that embraces it and
evolves and grows with it, or am I going
to fight it? And then of course,
you're in a dialogue with the market.
For example, the great thing about what
you've done is if you've done it, you
can look and see how it runs and how and
whether YouTube actually expands your
reach, and then you can look at the
engagement and and figure out whether or
not you're able to monetize that,
whether you're able to
able to convert that, and then you tweak
it, right, and adjust, and you're
6 months or 12 months can be enough that
you have a lasting advantage forever,
right? If you're 12 months ahead of
everybody else,
>> and you're compounding in
>> Yeah, it compounds over time, and then
maybe they never catch you. Like it's
That's you know, but that's the story of
every business.
Right, that's the that's the story of
Ford Motor Company and Standard Oil,
that's the story of Microsoft, it's the
story of Facebook, it's everybody's
story, which is
you just have to focus, commit, and then
if you're good enough,
invariably what happens is is your
customers
will make you the winner.
The world needs someone to do what you
do.
Like someone had to has to win, right?
There needs to be a winner. The audience
out there wants they want what you do.
They want they they want to walk into
the living room and figure out what
Obama was thinking, or they want to
hear, you know, what Mark Zuckerberg was
thinking, and they want someone to bring
them into that living room. They want
you to host them in. They need someone
to do that job. You don't
you don't have to be
what, perfect or better than anybody
ever lived. You need to be better than
the people that are currently doing it
now, or you need to be one of
you know, a handful of people that are
that are doing it because at that point
right, the audience comes to you, the
guests come to you.
You're making a market, right?
You're the market maker in that
information.
It's just the real key is
know what your value proposition is,
stay in your lane.
You know, don't don't try to compete in
an area where you're not going to be the
best in the world.
But on the other hand
right, the the one thing that's pretty
clear is that anybody can have the best
in the world in like 2 seconds at their
fingertips. And so you don't want to be
the third best. You don't want to be
mediocre across a bunch of things. You
want to be exceptional in one area.
Figure out what that one area is and
then
maybe you have 2 million followers then
200 million followers, right? Then
eventually, you know, over 100 years 2
billion. You
You just You just have to have this
vision.
>> One of the things that comes with the
pursuit of being first is you go over
the hill, you take the arrows as the
phrase goes. And so even in that
experiment that I just showed you that
we started 3 years ago, which was trying
to figure out how we translate the
diversity into lots of different
languages. It sounds simple. Problem is
you you discover you could up.
Spanish words are longer. So the video
in Spanish is 3 hours 10, but in English
it's 3 hours it's just 3 hours. And then
the video's going to be out and then
Cantonese, how long is Cantonese words?
And then you go, "Oh my god." You have
to then translate all the thumbnails and
all the titles in 20 languages at the
same time. That's why you end up 3 years
in when you thought it was just a 1-hour
job. But also, if you zoom out even
further, there's this graveyard of other
things we tried that never worked.
There's this the other 90% of
experiments we ran in the corner that
did nothing.
And it's I I always say to the team,
there's two things a year that define
us.
And of that, in our failure and an
team, which is literally what it's
called. We tried 60 things. Now, but
there's this that you know, five of them
are meh.
Two of them
game-changing. So, the attitude of
dealing with failure at the very
forefront of trying to be first, I think
is something people don't talk about
enough.
>> Focus your energy.
Guard your time.
Just cuz you can do a thing doesn't mean
you should do the thing.
Right? Most of the time, the reason
people fail is they get successful in
their 30s and they're successful at one
thing and it's like all of a sudden
they've decided they're going to do 10
other things because they're good at
everything and they dilute their focus
in 10 ways.
People always underestimate the
maintenance obligation. Like always.
And so I the right the right solution to
growth is
I would like to make whatever I'm doing
twice as good.
And if I do 10 things to make it 10%
better, I'm probably diluting,
distracting the uh phenomenon that
causes most businesses to fail.
It's uh dilutive distractions or it's
it's dilutive expansions. They do one
thing, it works, and then instead of
turning their energy in
to make that better and better and
better and better, they start to
bifurcate and trifurcate and they expand
and they overreach
to too many areas. It's like the dude
with the great restaurant
and he's got the second restaurant and
he's got a chain of 37 restaurants and
they all suck.
And it's like, "Yeah, I remember the guy
used to have There's no one, by the way,
with a failed restaurant chain that
wasn't a successful restauranteur at
scale one.
>> Mhm.
>> Right? Like, you didn't get to a failure
of 37 or 62 or 437 until you had a good
one, but it's very, very common that
people think that they can just
cookie-cutter these things out and you
can't. And so, the conundrum that you're
putting your finger on is
I want to grow and progress, but I want
to not dilute and distract. And that
requires this maturity of saying, I
tried it,
had a moderate success, but it's not
enough. Kill it, right?
Like and and and move on because it's
just not going to work.
>> There's two things that came to mind
there. The first is a lot of young
people come up to me and they're 9
months into their idea and they're not
rich yet. So they're They look over
there and they see their friend has
started a thing with a CBD. And so
they're like, I think I need to go into
CBD. And so their careers kind of look
like this sort of like swinging through
the jungle grabbing onto the next branch
and letting go of the last and never
really making um
upward motion towards any goal. And then
the other thing I thought about as
you're speaking is I've been mulling
this um I've really only in the last 2
months this idea that if you take a
long-term approach to things, you make
foundational decisions today
that create huge competitive advantages.
And the simple analogy I would give, if
you gave me 10 seconds to make the
highest possible tower that I can, what
I'm going to do is I'm going to go like
this and I'm going to go like this and
I'm going to try and do something like
this and just by nature of the time
constraint,
it's unstable. If you gave me 10 years
and infinite blocks again, I would start
like this. I'd do this one here. I'd put
this one here. I'd put this one here and
I'd build something more stable. And
when I look at some of the great
founders and also when I saw that you'd
been at your you know MicroStrategy for
more than three, almost four decades I
think it was, I thought, oh, you're one
of the rare long-termists in a world
where most of my generation, we think
about our career or what we're working
on in like maximum 5-year periods. Then
we'd either quit and go do something
else.
Startup founders, they build so they can
sell and then they they they're sort of
holding it together with tape as the
acquirer comes to buy the thing. And
they're nervous as the contract's being
signed cuz they know if the the acquirer
looks under the hood they're going to
see some but then I look at Elon
and I go oh gosh he went and
rebuilt a brand new battery and then
built the charging network and SpaceX
took two decades. My question is about
this long-termism and does it create a
competitive advantage?
>> I think Elon thinks like a
like an engineer and uh if you if you
look at his businesses they're all built
upon each other. Like
if you figure out how to launch a rocket
and you have the
the highest payload capacity and the the
the cheapest cost to orbit
then you've got an advantage. Now the
question is what do you want to put in
orbit? We put satellites but what
satellite? Like Starlink satellite
because that's the thing everybody
wants, internet. And so all of a sudden
he's got an advantage,
you know, in the sky and then you build
on that advantage and you know, with
battery technology, right? You see that?
>> could have gone to Russia and bought a
rocket and just shot that up and
that would have been the short term.
Even with Tesla he could have bought the
batteries off Ford or
>> One great natural example is like a
chambered nautilus. If you look at if
you look at a creature and it's building
a shell and it's spiraling out on itself
and basically it keeps building on its
own structure and it's nature's solution
for growth under pressure. It's the
Fibonacci sequence too. If you look at a
Fibonacci sequence, if I have this and
then the next structure is here and the
next structure is there and the next
structure is there
part of my previous business is the
foundation for my next business. And so
if you're thinking your growth strategy
is to build on a foundation of something
you already had and extend its
functionality in a natural fashion
that's natural stable growth.
When your second business idea is
unrelated to your first business in any
way other than the fact that you own
both.
Right? Now you're not building on a
stable foundation.
So, most of these businesses that work
and and the the best ideas that they
start with someone dominating a market.
I'm really good at this.
>> Sounds like a bet.
>> Yeah, and now what is the natural thing
that I can add
that I can use my existing business to
to maybe I'm marketing it. Well, you're
Coca-Cola. Well, we deliver a pallet of
drinks to 87,000
restaurants in the UK every morning.
What's the natural extension? Well, I
can put one more type of drink on the
pallet, right? You need to use your
distribution strength, your market
strength, your technical strength in
order to lever. I think you look at all
the great businesses
in the history of the world. I got
Standard Oil, Ford Motor, Boeing,
Microsoft. The things they did that
worked were generally building on top of
their foundation, either loyal customers
or distribution or some financial asset
they already had. Another way to say it
is
if there's no one else in the world that
has that is better situated to do this
thing than you,
then you're probably in good shape,
right? If there are 97 other companies
that have more assets than you in that
space, well,
you got to bet that all 97 of them are
not going to react to you when you do
it. It's a bit harder. So,
>> And that's where the long-termism comes
in because to build that fundamental
advantage, it it it by definition is
going to take time.
>> Good example,
uh Amazon
Prime, right? Where Amazon started
giving free shipping, you know, first
free shipping or very cheap shipping and
one day shipping and and everybody said,
"Well, while losing money. You're losing
money. You're losing money." And they
lost money doing this for like a decade.
And then they got to some point where
like everybody in the country was a
member of Amazon Prime and then like,
"Okay, well, now it's 20 bucks a month
instead of 10 bucks a month." And it's
like an extra $10 a month times like 100
million people. And people like, "Oh my
god, they just made $12 billion
in one press release per year in cash
flow.
And that's worth like $250 billion." And
And you're all like, "Well,
what were you doing?" It's like, "We
were
We were building the moat." That story
is not uncommon with every other thing.
It's like you first believe,
you build the biggest distribution
channel you can. People are going to
tell you They're going to tell you, "Oh,
there's no future to whatever the
podcast. There's no future to
something."
And what'll happen is 99% of people will
drop out because they don't believe. And
the true believers, the ones that are
not creative, won't adapt.
And then there'll be some that'll say,
"I believe, but I also know there's a
threat, but I'm going to channel the
technology threat, and I'm going to
evolve, and I'm going to emerge as
something a thousand X better
than anybody could conceive."
And that's a beautiful story.
>> So, speaking of strong foundations, you
have 10 rules for young adults building
a strong foundation for their life and
career. And you've talked about two of
them here, which is focusing your energy
and not chasing every good idea.
>> Yeah.
>> The second one was guard your time. The
third one is train your mind.
And with that, you've got train your
body.
>> You know, the funny story of that is I I
was invited to a cocktail party of a
billionaire on the French Riviera in a
beautiful home. And I showed up, and I
walked into the party thinking I was
going to hang out. And another
billionaire showed up, and he said, "You
know, Mike, I just had twins, a boy and
a girl. And I'm walking around asking
all of all of my friends for advice for
them. And I want you to like write some
advice for them that I can give to them
on their 21st birthday.
And he's got this book where he's
actually collecting advice for his his
children that to give them on their 21st
birthday.
As young adults. So, I sit down and I
think think think think think and I'm
like, focus your mind, guard your time,
and train your mind. You got to learn
that you got to
learn something, right? You got to learn
reading, writing, arithmetic. You have
to actually develop a cultured base. So,
I was like, get an education, and then
train your body.
Like, because if if you're weak, you're
not going to make it, right? You're not
You're not going to survive. And then,
think for yourself. Everybody in the
world wants to program you to believe to
do something they want you to do.
And you have to have the presence of
mind to think, that's not right. Just
because everybody that I know and
famous, rich, and beautiful people tell
me it's right doesn't make it right. You
need to decide think for yourself.
And then, curate your friends.
Because you you know, you become who you
surround yourself with. And if you
surround yourself with positive uh
inspirational, talented people,
you'll be the best person version of
yourself. And if you surround yourself
with negative, cynical, failing people,
they're going to want you to fail or
they're not going to inspire you to
succeed. And
and they'll bring you down.
And so, after curate your friends,
curate your environment, right? Like,
make it a happy place where you can work
or you can live. And you know,
the world didn't say you had to be in
the dark and in an ugly situation. And
And after that,
keep your promises.
At the end of the day, people remember
if you didn't keep your promise. So, you
you tell you tell someone you're going
to do something, do it, right? If If you
keep your promises, you'll find those
are the people that invest in you. They
uplift you. They make you successful.
They may be the difference between life
and death or the difference between
success and failure for you and
and ultimately, you know, we're all in
relationships with each other, right?
And and no one is so powerful that they
can afford to take anybody else for
granted.
We all need each other and and um
finally,
stay cheerful and constructive. It
doesn't matter whether bad things
happen. The point is people want to come
to work with someone that's cheerful and
happy and constructive. They want to,
you know, they want to be in a
relationship with that person. All those
are just basic principles to get through
life and then the final point is upgrade
the world. If you have a plan, if you're
on a mission to upgrade the world,
you're going to feel better about
yourself. You get up every day, you have
a mission, you have something to do.
Like, what is my mission?
You know, I'm preaching the gospel of
digital empowerment, right? Satoshi
created
this
economic property right. He gave
economic empowerment to 8 billion people
for the first time in human history.
And we created the world's first perfect
money. We created, you know,
digital energy, digital matter, digital
property, right? We can be a thousand X
more as as humans with technology than
we were.
I look through all human history and I
see it's a story of misery.
You know, why do people die? Lack of
clean water, lack of clean air, lack of
clean food, lack of clean money.
What do we want? We want to live
forever. We want to live happily
forever.
>> Do you want to live forever?
>> I want to live as long as I can live in,
you know, constructively and make a
contribution. If if I could be if I can
be engaged and vital, then yeah. At the
point that I can no longer make a
contribution,
uh then I will move on gracefully.
>> But if there was a button in front of
you now, and the button, pressing it
guaranteed you immortality, would you
press it?
>> I think so. I suppose so.
>> Why aren't you then committing more of
your efforts to longevity? People ask
Elon the same question.
>> I think
there's 8 billion people on the planet,
and there are many people that I respect
that are much more qualified to pursue
that mission than me.
>> And the thing that you've chosen to
focus your efforts on and become the
leading voice on, and I've watched you
for many, many, many, many years as
I've, you know, when Bitcoin comes down
in price and when sometimes I need a bit
of a therapist to
remind me of why I've invested in
Bitcoin, and that person has been you
over the years.
And then when it's up, you know, you're
you're
to your credit you're consistent about
it. And that is,
you know, I I have watched you and
thought, I think this guy must be he's
either like batshit crazy or a genius.
And it's sometimes hard to tell. And it
goes back to what you were saying
earlier when people will say you're
crazy at first, and and then you'll be
proven right. Now, historically you've
been proven right.
>> If you if you zoom out from when you
started advocating for Bitcoin,
Bitcoin is down right now. So again,
we're back into fear. People are scared
again in that It's funny what happens
because when it was going up a couple of
months ago, everyone thought, "Oh my
god, this is going to be the future of
money." And now it's down, everyone is
like convinced that it's it was always a
Ponzi scheme and it's it's done. You've
got a
I guess trying trying to simplify this
for average people, you've taken a lot
of debt out to buy more and more and
more and more and more Bitcoin.
Is that accurate?
>> I guess we've got about 6 and 1/2
billion dollars of convertible debt and
15 billion dollars of preferred stocks
outstanding, and we're sitting on top of
about 58 billion dollars of assets right
now. So, we have raised
about 65 billion dollars in capital to
buy Bitcoin, but most of it was in debt.
>> Okay.
>> Of the 65 billion, for the most part
we've raised capital with equity and
some debt in order to buy Bitcoin, and
we've been doing that because we wanted
to pump 65 billion dollars of capital,
of money, of energy into the ecosystem.
So, we're we're powering the ecosystem
with capital.
>> Everyone theorizes, I've seen a few
people on my timeline that I follow
theorize how bad it would have to get
for Bitcoin in terms of price for you to
be in trouble. Because you have a lot
>> Bitcoin could fall to $5,000 a coin, we
would still be over collateralized
against the debt.
>> You'd still be fine.
>> Yeah.
>> And the other thing people theorize a
lot, and I again I did a comment
analysis to figure out what people want
to hear from you, is you sold a bit of
Bitcoin.
You've been asked this a few times, I
know.
>> Yeah.
>> You sold a bit of Bitcoin recently after
telling a lot of people maybe to hold on
to their Bitcoin.
People want to know why you sold the
Bitcoin.
>> Okay. Well, so let's make the first
point.
The only person that's never sold more
Bitcoin than me
>> Satoshi.
>> is Satoshi.
Satoshi never sold a million a million
one Bitcoin.
Our company has 847,000 Bitcoin. And so,
we bought more and we're holding it more
than anybody other than Satoshi and
Satoshi's not active. So, we have a
reasonable chance of of never selling
more Bitcoin than Satoshi if we just
keep at it for the next few years.
Um what I've said is um
>> So, I should probably share this. This
is This is why there's a kidney.
>> Yeah.
>> Cuz you said sell the kidney if you
must, but keep the Bitcoin.
>> I I have I have waged a campaign
non-stop every day for 6 years to to
promote and advocate Bitcoin as a
long-term store of value. Right? And and
what I would say is if you have money
that you don't need for the next 4 years
and your choice is do I invest it in the
S&P or a house or a private company or
soybeans or money markets or debt
instruments
I think that Bitcoin is the best. Right?
I think that Bitcoin is digital capital.
It's going to be the best long-term
capital asset.
And uh you know
>> So, why did you sell the Bitcoin instead
of your kidney?
>> Yeah. Um
We sold some Bitcoin a few weeks ago
because there was a narrative or a
belief in the market that our company
had become so systemically integrated or
important to Bitcoin that we could never
sell.
And if we sold Bitcoin would go to zero
and our stock would go to zero.
>> Because you own 4% of the total supply
of Bitcoin.
>> We own 4% because we're the biggest
buyer We're the biggest buyer of Bitcoin
in the world. So the first sentiment was
well Bitcoin will never succeed if they
don't keep buying. And the second
sentiment or belief
uh misconception was if we sell it'll
crash Bitcoin and it'll crash the
company.
And because of that short sellers and
and certain people in the market took
the position that the $55 billion of
Bitcoin we own was worth nothing.
And so what we had was this ignorant
uh skeptical notion that all of the
company's assets were worthless.
And because the company's assets were
worthless we wouldn't pay our dividends
and because we wouldn't pay our
dividends the credit would go to zero
and the equity would go to zero. The
company would fail and the coin fail.
And we said well Bitcoin is trades $20
billion a day or more and we've got 55
billion of it and if we were
0.01% of the market we could still meet
all of our obligations and it's not
going to change the price of Bitcoin but
no one believed us.
So if if you want people to believe that
you can do a thing you have to do the
thing. If you told me you could do a
backflip right now but I said you you
can't at some point you have to do the
backflip. Right? Especially if I tell
you that I'm going to throw you in jail
if you can't do a backflip.
>> Who told you that?
>> Well that's exactly what's going on in
the market. The market's position was
the company is worthless. the stock is
going to zero, Bitcoin is going to zero
because they can't sell, right?
So, if we want to defend Bitcoin,
like we have to prove that we can sell
it on occasion, right? So,
what we're doing is we're
commercializing the market in digital
credit. And if you have a billion
dollars of Bitcoin and they believe it's
worth a billion, you can sell 200
million dollars of credit and then you
can grow the business if they believe
that. If they don't believe
that the Bitcoin is worth anything, you
can't and you sell the 200 million of
credit, the credit's worthless and the
company's worthless.
And so, we were in a doom loop or the
market was in this doom loop this this
negative short I don't know, like a
psychosis almost like hyperventilating
saying that the largest buyer of Bitcoin
can't sell it and if they do sell it,
Bitcoin will fail. And what we needed to
do was demonstrate that if we sold
Bitcoin, it wouldn't fail.
So, when we sold the Bitcoin, it was 60
59,000 and it traded up. And so, we
broke that misconception, we broke that
that narrative.
It turns out that the break-even point
for us is about 3.2%, so if Bitcoin
appreciates 3.2%, we can pay the
dividends forever by just selling the
Bitcoin.
But you can imagine if you're a short
seller, you say, "Well, you can't sell
the Bitcoin, hahaha, because Bitcoin
will fail." And so, they want to say
that the credit is worthless because you
won't sell the Bitcoin. So, the way to
break that cycle is you sell the
Bitcoin.
Now you can illustrate that the credit
is actually good credit, we can pay the
dividends forever and now the credit
investors
>> without having to sell more Bitcoin.
>> No, the whole point of this was
we were selling equity in order to pay
the dividend on the credit.
>> Yeah.
>> And the short sellers took the position
that you're going to sell the equity
until the stock goes to zero
because you can't sell the Bitcoin.
>> Yeah.
>> So, how do you actually get How do you
break that? Well, you have to say
well, we can sell the Bitcoin.
>> And you sold enough Bitcoin to pay the
dividend.
>> So, we sold enough Bitcoin to pay the
dividend, to prove that we could fund
the dividends with Bitcoin, which means
we don't have to sell the equity. And if
if we don't have to sell the equity,
then the equity trades at a premium to
Bitcoin, trades rationally, and then the
credit trades rationally. So, it was a
benefit to the equity investors and the
credit investors to show that you can
power the company with Bitcoin.
>> Do you Do you intend to sell more?
>> It's not our primary strategy. So, if
the if the the common stock trades at a
premium
to the underlying assets, then probably
we fund with the common stock. But, if
the common stock ever sells at a
discount or trades at a discount to the
common to the Bitcoin assets, then you
sell Bitcoin in order to protect the
common stock.
>> And what do you think Bitcoin's going in
terms of monetary value? In terms of one
Bitcoin. Currently, what did you say
it's worth? 68,000 or something?
>> I think it'll appreciate about 30% a
year for the next 20 years.
Right? And then it'll slow down to being
appreciated about 20% a year. So,
>> You think it's the best asset to put
your money in really it really
respective of
who you are?
>> Another way to say it is I think it a
pre- I think it outperforms the S&P
index by a factor of
1.5 to 2.
>> Who shouldn't invest in Bitcoin?
>> The right people to invest in Bitcoin
are long-term capital investors. So, if
you have a certain amount of money
and you don't need it for the next 4
years
and ideally 10 years, then you would
take a portion of your capital
investment portfolio and buy Bitcoin.
And if you believe in it, if you're a a
Bitcoin maxi, if you spend 100 hours
studying it,
uh you'd buy a lot.
And if you're not sure, you'd probably
diversify that portfolio across, you
know, some real estate, some equity,
some other long-term assets, and some
Bitcoin.
The people that shouldn't buy it are
people that need the money back in 12
weeks.
>> What about like a regular 25-year-old?
Um
One of the questions that I saw emerging
from some of the interviews you've done
is if if a normal young person has a few
hundred dollars to invest today,
why should they bother with Wall Street
products like stocks or corporate stocks
instead of just buying a real Bitcoin
and holding it themselves?
>> Yeah, I think if you have money to
invest for the long term, you're going
to get double the performance from BTC
that you would get from like the S&P
index.
>> But for that 25-year-old, would would it
not be smarter for them to spend it on
something that's going to help them
train their mind, like you said?
If you only have a hundred dollars.
>> I wouldn't go spend five hundred
thousand dollars on an expensive, you
know, university education, but I would
spend twenty bucks a month on an AI
subscription. So So yeah, you should
definitely spend money necessary to get
the
the super grok or the pro or the
professional edition, whether it's, you
know, twenty dollars a month or two
hundred dollars Two hundred dollars a
month is the most I would spend. Twenty
dollars a month is probably the least I
would spend. But look, we're talking
about your Netflix subscription at that
point. But I
after you've done that, then you're
talking about what you ought to be
invested in.
I think that the that you ought to be
invested in digital capital cuz you can
take it with you anywhere in the world.
If you invest in an Airbnb or real
estate, you know, you're you're locked
into a certain city. You can't travel
with it. It's high maintenance. There's
a lot of risk. If you invest in an
individual stock, you have a lot of
anxiety because they come and they go,
and you got to pick the right stock. And
most stocks will fail, but some will
succeed, but but it it really is much
more challenging.
I I think really it comes down to
if you have a liquid portfolio,
you know, are you going to invest in
like the S&P index if you're a
conventional capital investor, or you're
going to invest in Bitcoin if you're a
digital or a you know, a a a technology
capital investor.
>> Michael, we have a closing tradition
where the last guest leaves a question
for the next guest not knowing who
they're leaving it for. And the question
left for you is what is one thing you
believe that maybe you haven't talked
about enough
that you think likely 99% of the world
don't yet believe.
>> If I look at my life and I think about
something that's been that's had a real
impact on me, it's after I got a full
education,
you know, uh
from college, I
I eventually
went back and I studied two topics on my
own.
One, uh like practical applied
statistics, all the stuff that Nicholas
Taleb wrote, like Fooled by Randomness
and Skin in the Game and The Black Swan.
And uh you know, how do you know the
difference between something that's
meaningful and something that's just
misleading random data. That was
profoundly valuable to me and I would
say, you know, anybody that hasn't read
all of those books probably ought to go
read those books and and obsess over
uh applied statistics.
That's the one thing that AI will not be
able to do for you when you have to
decide whether to cross the street while
you're typing on your phone, that you
know,
the AI will not give you a never-ending
real-time stream of common sense to tell
you you should or should not do that
thing. And so I I think that that's
really important. And the second thing
that I did after I left school and and
after a a lifetime of experiences,
like I went back and I just read uh
The Story of Civilization by Durant.
Every page.
11 volumes, 14,000
pages. Most of the history that you read
in school, it's the CliffNotes.
But if you go through the entire thing,
and I recommend that one just cuz I
think it was a pretty well-balanced
history that covered art and culture and
politics and technology, and
it's not just military history, not just
political history, but it was
you know, all
a very synthetic history.
When you go back and you read it all
as an adult,
then it gives you such a profound
appreciation for humanity, and it gives
you so much wisdom. And what you'll find
is all these things you think you're
discovering, they got discovered in like
15th century Russia. And then they got
rediscovered, you know, like most of
these things that people tell you are
this is new and profound. Oh, it's new
and profound 100 times in a row, or
1,000 times in a row. It's just the the
story was told a different way each
time.
>> Give me an example of a a thing
that we think is new, but history tells
you
>> Maybe the fact that currency started
getting debased when Nixon went off the
gold standard, you know, and
what happened in 1971, or whatever. And
the truth of the matter is that was the
point at which the US dollar started
weakening at a much more rapid rate.
But it turns out that every currency
everywhere in history has been debased.
My point here really is uh
I think people think that they that they
learn stuff in college,
but really it's not too late to go back
and relearn math, especially applied
statistics, and it's not too late to go
back and relearn history. And as an
adult,
you always appreciate those things much
better.
Yeah, you almost it's like the education
is wasted on the youth.
You know, because you don't you don't
have the life experiences to appreciate
what you're reading.
But also, you know, they're they're
summarizing, editing, and censoring a
lot of the stuff you read.
And and if you just go back and say I'm
just going to, you know, read the entire
thing in its entirety. And
there are a lot of other things you
could also read, full histories of other
things, but
as an adult
I think that that just makes you a
better person and makes you a better
business person, makes you a better
leader. And also, it helps you overcome
the arrogance of thinking, oh, I'm the
first guy in human history that ever
encountered it. And and what you'll
realize is no, you're not. And the
empowering part is someone else did and
this is how they worked their way
through the issue. And and that can be
very inspirational for you.
>> Michael, [snorts] thank you. Thank you
for taking the time. Thank you for
opening all of our eyes. And thank you
for
building a business which has continued
to innovate in such a way that people
never thought was possible. Thank you
for introducing me to Bitcoin.
I think you both introduced me to it,
but also you enabled me to have a mental
framework for not selling it. When
if I had, I would have lost a lot of
money. And thankfully now I don't even
know where it is. My brother my brother
and some of my siblings take care of it
for me. And I don't have to experience
the angst. And also just thank you for
pushing for this idea of sovereignty
because I think
in the world of increasing censorship
and centralization,
sovereignty I think is a really winning
idea. And I think that's what you're
sort of philosophically aiming at as
well. And um
>> [snorts]
>> yeah, I hope to speak to you sometime
soon because you're a very you're an an
individual capable of speaking about
such a broad range of subjects that I
care so much about.
>> It's a pleasure to be on the journey
together.
>> Thank you, my friend.
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Ask follow-up questions or revisit key timestamps.
The speaker, a technology entrepreneur and the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder, details how he leveraged AI to generate $15 billion by pioneering novel financial instruments, an feat deemed impossible by conventional finance. He passionately advocates for Bitcoin as the superior digital capital, outperforming traditional assets like fiat currency, gold, and the S&P 500 as a long-term, immutable store of value, citing the inherent debasement of conventional money. While recognizing the potential for an AI-driven "age of abundance," he posits that money will retain value due to humanity's perpetual desire for scarce, luxury goods. His advice for young adults centers on embracing new technologies like digital intelligence and assets, fostering long-term vision, and adhering to core principles like independent thought, careful relationship curation, and a mission to positively impact the world. He explains his company's strategic Bitcoin sales were to disprove market misconceptions about its inability to sell without crashing the asset.
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