The Next Bitcoin Move Will Be MASSIVE… But 99.5% Won’t Survive | Anthony Pompliano

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Why do you think that Bitcoin is going up during  this period of economic volatility as related to the war? People seek out an asset that gives  them certainty and Bitcoin is the best asset to give you certainty. How much of an impact to  the market structure do you think STRCS made? I think the risk is pretty clear. They've been  pretty clear about what they're doing. Would you put money into STRCS? 11 12% a year. That's  what Kevin Warsh is saying. He's basically saying, look, AI is going to be the force that actually  guides us. AI and crypto all about automation. So, are you still part of this four-year cycle camp or  do you think something else is going on? I don't think I'd ever see the fear and greed index go to  single digits, but we saw that happen and so I'm pretty confident that was the bottom at 60k.  So, Hyperliquid pump.fun derivatives, you're bullish. The question is which side of the trade  are you on? Are you the one providing the venue to gamble or are you the one who's sitting at the  table? Does Bitcoin still excite you as much as it used to? We're here at Consensus in Miami. Our  coverage here continues. Guess who I find walking on the floor. Pomp. I don't think I've interviewed  you since I was at CNBC. Let's do it again then.

[00:01:01]Let's do it again. Let's do it again. So, here we  are in what is supposed to be the middle of the four-year bear market and we're supposed to, if  everything goes according to plan, bottom sometime in October. Are you buying that thesis? Are you  still part of this four-year cycle camp or do you think something else is going on? No, I generally  think that volatility is significantly compressed, which means that timelines compress as well. And  that's why you saw the flush out down to 60k. I don't think I'd ever see the fear and greed index  go to single digits, but we saw that happen. And so I'm pretty confident that was the bottom at  60k. And so if that was the bottom, that means that that timeline compresses. And so we've kind  of broken out of that four-year cycle. Now the question is how much upside is there the upside  case. My guess is that there is material upside, but it's just not going to be the super parabolic  things that we've seen in the past. Why do you think that Bitcoin's going up during this period  of war economic volatility as related to the war?

[00:01:56]Why do you think that Bitcoin is catching such a  bid? It's been the best performing asset. If you look at the chart, if you look at the Bitcoin gold  chart, or if you look at the Bitcoin SPX chart, and if you look at where the Bitcoin SPX chart  turned, it turned on the 28th of Feb. That was the day that Iran was invaded. Became uncertain.  When the world becomes uncertain, people seek out an asset that gives them certainty. And Bitcoin  is the best asset to give you certainty. You know exactly what the monetary policy is. You know  exactly how many are going to exist. You can actually audit on any given day how many are in  circulation, who owns what, all these instances.

[00:02:26]So, Bitcoin is certainty in a digital world. So,  what happens when there's a lot of uncertainty around you is you want that safety. You want  that certainty. So, you go towards that asset.

[00:02:35]Treasuries or dollars used to provide that. But  those are the only things in a portfolio that are engineered to lose value over time. And so what  you're seeing is investors around the world are saying, I want something that is certain. I want  something that is digital. I want something that is scarce. And I want something that is neutral,  non-sovereign, and decentralized. And so Bitcoin is the only asset in the world that provides those  things. So why hasn't gold performed? Because gold doesn't provide those things. Gold is not certain.  How much gold is in the world? Nobody knows. How much gold is being taken out of the earth today?  Nobody knows. What is gold's emission going to be over the next six months? Nobody knows.  Where is all the gold? Nobody knows. So, and you look at it, gold doesn't provide the same  as Bitcoin. Doesn't mean gold's a bad asset. I am not a gold hater in the sense that people should  not own gold. It's just that in a moment like what we just saw where you would think that stocks  would go up, that gold would go up, all these things. That did not happen. Why did gold go  up before? I mean, gold had a massive, massive, massive run. So, if you look at who was buying the  gold, it wasn't really retail investors. Actually, retail investors were selling gold in 2025. What  was happening is the central banks were buying it and they were all doing it after a Russia  Ukraine situation where the United States decided to sanction the hell out of Russia and was  pretty onerous I think in terms of how they went after people who weren't even getting involved  etc. A lot of countries around the world said, "Wait a second. I'm friends with the United States  today, but what if I'm not in the future?" And so, they all decided to get off of fiat currencies.  Now, they didn't drop dollars and then go buy euros. They didn't drop dollars and go buy yen,  yuan, etc. They said, "Maybe we just don't need as much fiat currency." And so, they started  to get away from fiat currencies, buy gold.

[00:04:03]Gold had a persistent non-economic bid. And so,  that drove the price up because people didn't care what the price of gold was. They simply  were buying it because they wanted the security that it provided. So, I was looking at the Bitcoin  price this morning. It's 81,500. It's broken out of that bear flag. And I've kind of been asking  around like, hey, why do you think Bitcoin's going up? And everyone's saying it's because Sailor's  going to buy next week. And so I feel like there's almost like this anticipation that Sailor's going  to buy. People are trying to buy ahead of Sailor's buy. Sailor's going to come in and buy because  STRCS is going to hit the 100 at some point and he's going to go out and raise capital. How much  of a force how much of an impact to the market structure do you think STRCS made? Well, I think  that any additional flows of capital will always help Bitcoin because it's a scarce asset. So,  you have more buying and selling. But I don't think that you can put all of the performance on  one single buyer whether it's Sailor on STRCS or anything else. I think that it is a confluence of  events. You have a lot of businesses around the world that are saying, "Hey, I want to keep  dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin." A lot of individuals. We now have heard that they are  saying that there's going to be an announcement coming for the strategic Bitcoin reserve. Well,  if all of a sudden in a couple of weeks if we hear that the US government was buying Bitcoin,  then that would make this price action make a lot more sense. We don't know. Maybe they announce  that, maybe they don't. We don't know. And so, I get very nervous. People start to say it's one  single thing that's driving the price. Instead, I think that people were very scared back in  February and early April or early March. And now they're not scared. They realize Bitcoin is going  to come back and so they're buying rubbish. But I think that you can see that there's a correlation  because when Sailor announces big buys the price moves up a lot and when Sailor doesn't announce  big buys generally it doesn't until this week.

[00:05:43]So this week was the first week where Sailor said  look we didn't buy anything. Everyone looked at the charts was like hold on a second the price  went up a lot. So I think Sailor is having a big impact in the charts. Now the big question is  is that healthy or unhealthy for Bitcoin? You've got one entity now which is a public company but  it has one CEO and one board and today they own 800,000 Bitcoin which means that if they carry  on buying at this pace at some point they'll own 5% of the Bitcoin maybe 6% of the Bitcoin. Is  that a good thing or is it an unhealthy thing in a market structure? Both things are true and I  think that's why it's so controversial and people like to debate it so much. On one hand having one  single entity that owns a lot of the Bitcoin is usually not looked at positively from the Bitcoin  community. On the other hand, a company is very interesting. It is not just Michael Saylor that  owns it. There are hundreds of thousands maybe millions of shareholders that technically own that  Bitcoin. It's just sitting in a simple pot for all the shareholders. And so on one hand, yes, it is  a centralized entity that owns the Bitcoin. On the other hand, there are millions of shareholders  that all have a claim on that Bitcoin. And so both things are true. And I think what gets  people very nervous is when you start to see people get a lot of influence and people always  say like what happens if they start to do things that I don't agree with. Is that good for the  industry? Is it not? So maybe a way to think about this is the words may be more important than the  ownership or the holding of the Bitcoin. But look, I think Michael Saylor's done a great job with the  Bitcoin community. I think anyone who says he's done a net negative is wrong. I think he's  done a great job of understanding Bitcoin, of going out and telling people about Bitcoin, of  acting instead of talking. And so ultimately, I think it's a good thing. If I said to you, Bitcoin  was going to be at $200,000 regardless. Would you prefer a world where Sailor has 6% of the Bitcoin  supply or 4% of the Bitcoin supply? Of course, you want to be as decentralized as possible. You want  the network to be as decentralized as possible, ownership to be as decentralized as possible, etc.  But one of the things that I think people forget too is it's not like one entity or one person  has some ability to go buy Bitcoin and nobody else does. Everyone in the world at this point who  is paying attention knows about Bitcoin. You can go buy as well and so there's a race going on and  I don't think you can blame somebody for saying look this is a good asset. I want to own as much  as possible. So you like the STRCS instrument?

[00:07:56]You think it's a net net positive? A lot of people  have called it a Ponzi. You're taking money from one person to pay another person. You're paying  yield. You're paying 11.5%. I think that what people are really identifying is there's risk.  Anytime that you have high yield on an instrument, that means that somewhere somebody is taking a  risk. I think the risk is pretty clear. They've been pretty clear about what they're doing. It's  not like it's opaque and people are like, hey, how are you paying the interest, etc. And so for  an investor, I think they got to ask themselves, am I willing to take that risk? Am I willing to  do this thing? But it's no different than when you buy treasuries, there's a risk. When you buy  an equity, there's a risk. And so I think that people kind of they almost want their cake and  eat it too. They want to get 11% return and I want no risk. That just doesn't exist. Bro, would  you put money into STRCS? 11 and a half percent a year paid monthly. Would you put some of your  reserves into STRCS? I think again it all goes back to risk mitigation. Would I go put 100% of  my portfolio in? Absolutely not. I wouldn't do that with any asset, and definitely not in STRCS.  Would I put one or two percent? Sure. Of course.

[00:08:54]I think it's all about diversifying in terms of  getting exposure to these assets. And so again, when you see a big number in terms of that yield,  someone somewhere is taking risk, understand what the risk is, and then you can mitigate that risk  by sizing it correctly in your portfolio. Does Bitcoin still excite you as much as it used to? In  the beginning, you were all in, you were a Bitcoin spokesperson. You had the same suit that you used  to talk about all the time. I know that you've now moved away, not moved away, but I think you've  expanded your horizon quite a bit and you're doing a lot of other things. Is that because you  lost conviction in the asset? Is that because you lost conviction in the potential upside of the  asset? Those days, Bitcoin was at $1,000. We had 100x potential. Now, Bitcoin's at $100,000  or $80,000. I mean, there's not 100x potential, at least not anytime soon. Do you still find the  asset and the industry as exciting? Again, I think that Bitcoin itself, I've got more conviction in  it today than ever before. One of the things that was very clear to me back in 2016, 2017, 2018 was  I knew that I could not talk about other things if I wanted to be able to communicate the idea of  Bitcoin. I had to be very focused on communicating this idea. But what a lot of people don't know is  I was still investing in lots of other stuff. If you look at our venture portfolio across all of  the different funds and investments I've made, etc., more of the investments are not in Bitcoin  and crypto than are in Bitcoin and crypto. Now, if you think about the actual dollars that we  put out, a lot of it went into Bitcoin. So, we just didn't talk about everything we were doing  outside. Now, I think it's pretty clear. I like Bitcoin. I think I've done my job as best I can  to go and communicate that to the world. And so, I still talk about Bitcoin a lot, but also  I think that there's other things that are going to interact with Bitcoin or be areas where  people should be paying attention to. And so, one of the things I always talk to investors about  is 100% of my portfolio is not in Bitcoin. That doesn't mean that I've got a million altcoins.  I actually have Bitcoin and then I've got some public stocks, I've got private investments,  I've got businesses I own, etc. And it's not because I've lost conviction in Bitcoin. It's  just that to your point, when you're buying Bitcoin at a 1,000 or 2,000, 3,000 dollars, it's  a very different asymmetric kind of risk profile than buying it at 80 or 100K. I think Bitcoin  is going to go up. I think it will hit a new all-time high where it'll provide a better return  than the stock market going forward. But I don't think that Bitcoin's going to be 100x. Let's talk  about the stock market. Stock market is really resilient. We're in an environment where we're in  a war. Gas prices and oil prices are through the roof. I mean, oil was like 110, 115 dollars last  week. The war has gone on for much longer than we anticipated. The inflation numbers are starting  to come through. The last reading was 3.3%. The reading before that was in the low twos. Why is  the market so resilient? I mean, the market's at all-time highs. It's as if the markets decided  not to look at the war. Why do you think nothing matters other than will the government print  money? Literally, nothing matters. War doesn't matter. Are they going to print money? COVID  doesn't matter. Are they going to print money?

[00:11:43]What's going on in the local economy doesn't  matter. Are they going to print money? Inflation, asset inflation is a monetary phenomena. If they  print more money, then that is going to drive asset prices higher. Now what's interesting  about that is we actually have an opportunity in this country to have asset inflation with  consumer deflation and people are not really ready for that because ultimately what ends up  happening is what if we are printing money and that is driving people to put money into assets  but at the same time AI and robotics and all this stuff is bringing down consumer prices. That is  an environment that we are not used to that is not in academic textbooks but it seems like you're  inching more and more towards that. That's what Kevin Warsh is saying. He's basically saying look  I'm going to lower growth, low inflation economy.

[00:12:24]Yes, I'm going to lower interest rates. I'm going  to use the Fed balance sheet to manage things, but AI is going to be the force that actually  guides us. How long do you think until we get the impact of AI actually reducing prices? Do you  think it's already in the market? Well, if you look at true inflation, which I think is a better  economic measurement, there's housing, transport, utilities, etc., you are starting to see that  deflation, the actual negative year-over-year growth. Now, if you look at the government  data, that's not showing up there. And so, it's a little bit of like who do you believe? But  the fact that there are some data points showing it and some don't means that we're closer to it  than people probably want to admit. Pomp tweeted the other day he said something like most people  don't realize that none of the or a lot of these crypto assets ain't ever coming back. And I agree  with you that there's a long tail of assets that pretty much if you look at the comments majority  super majority 99.5% of them ain't coming back.

[00:13:17]Correct. How bullish are you about the rest of the  industry? And when I say the rest of the industry, I'm not talking to you about the memecoin or  the scam project areas that I'm interested in. I think Bitcoin survives. I think stablecoins  survive. I think equity infrastructure survives.

[00:13:28]And I think tokenization stuff survives. Those  four areas I think are going to be the bulk of where all the returns are generated. Pretty  much everything else that people are talking about. It's not serious. I'm walking around  this conference. They've done a great job putting the conference on. There's great people  here. But as I'm listening to conversations, there are still people who are stuck in 2018. They  do not think things that are not going to happen.

[00:13:47]So do you not think that there's a casino use case  for crypto and let's use pump.fun as a proxy for that? Do you not think that there is going to be a  subsector of people who are going to launch coins and the only purpose of those coins is a casino?  Well, of course. I mean there's literally a booth here that is the crypto carnival. And I thought  that was so applicable because you walk in and you get met by the crypto carnival. And that's kind  of what part of the industry has become. Not the whole industry, but part of the industry. And so  gambling speculation that is as human experience as there is since literally humans got on this  earth we have been speculating. So Hyperliquid pump.fun derivatives you're bullish. I think that  you're never going to stop people from doing this stuff. Now the question is which side of the trade  are you on? Are you the one providing the venue to gamble or are you the one who's sitting at the  table? You probably don't want to be sitting at the table. You want to be the one providing the  venue. And I think that's a very different thing.

[00:14:43]Crypto AI, Bitcoin AI. You've had a lot of  conversations with Jordi Fissa about crypto AI, Bitcoin, Bitcoin AI. What's the convergence  between Bitcoin, crypto, and AI? I have a theory. I'd like to hear your theory before I tell  you what I think. Well, I think that it's easy in that AI is going to need some sort of assets to  use. They're going to use Bitcoin, stablecoins most likely. And then also I think that people  are probably drastically underestimating how much these crypto kind of components whether it's  the actual currencies and assets or even just the infrastructure is used for automation. To  me AI and crypto are usually talked about as two separate industries. I've always talked about  the age of automation. It's basically there's one big umbrella of automation. AI is in there,  crypto's in there. There's some other technologies but it's all about automation. Don't know if you  saw, but a16z just raised a fund. And that fund is specifically to invest in things that merge  crypto and AI. And I think that's the message. The message is automation. When they built crypto or  when they built the blockchain, I don't think they imagined that these bots were going to be the ones  that are actually using it. And I think that when the bots actually start using it, that's the only  financial system that they could use. Now, whether or not they're going to use Bitcoin, stablecoins,  or some kind of new currency that they create on some kind of blockchain, I have no idea. But I  think that that's pretty much the trajectory.

[00:15:59]Pomp. Good to see you again, my friend. Thanks  for doing it. Thank you, my buddy. Guys, that was Anthony Pomp. Remember, if you haven't  yet, subscribe to our channel. Subscribe to the channel. More of these interviews coming out right  through Consensus. And if you enjoyed what Anthony had to say, like the video and give him a good  comment at the bottom. See you guys again soon.