Anthony Pompliano of Professional Capital Management thinks gold is a shiny paperweight and that Bitcoin is the bet of the future. The two join me now in a Fox Business exclusive to debate the issue. Great to have you both, gentlemen.
All right, Anthony, Peter says the Bitcoin bubble has burst. Okay, since its all-time high back in October of 126,000 and change, it has come way down. I believe about, you know, to it's really been not a pretty picture here. What makes you think that it's not a bubble and that the bubble has burst?
Well, first of all, when you have bubbles, usually what you end up having is an incredible amount of innovation. If you look at the tech bubble, then all of a sudden you got the tech industry and that seems to be driving all of the returns. And so the question is what is your time horizon? And what Bitcoin has shown is that it is the best performing asset over long periods of time. The 10-year compound annual growth rate of Bitcoin is something like 55 or 60%. Compare that to gold, it's about 12%. So if you're worried about what the return of an asset is going to be over the next year, then you need to go and you need to evaluate stocks, gold, Bitcoin, etc. But if you're looking over long periods of time, you know, my friend Peter here has a lot of experience. I happen to be a little bit younger than him, though. And so my time horizon is much longer, and therefore I like Bitcoin more than gold.
I'll say, so now we're hitting each other's age. Peter, Bitcoin was under $1,000 when you first started to become a critic of it. I remember this. And since then, it has become worth many multiples of that. So at what point does the asset stop being a bubble and becomes an actual asset class?
Well, I think actually it was well below a thousand when I first started criticizing it. And when Anthony grows up, he'll be criticizing it, too. But you know,
You said that, you know, or Anthony thinks that gold's a paperweight, right? Well, I mean, you could use gold as a paperweight. It'd be an expensive paperweight. I said that's how he put it. But if you tried to use Bitcoin as a paperweight, all your papers would blow away because it doesn't even have that functionality, right? It's basically nothing. It's not digital gold. It's digital nothing. It's a pyramid. It's, you know, like a Ponzi. People buy it because they think somebody else is going to buy it at a higher price. Whereas gold is an actual metal. It is a precious metal, the most valuable metal that we have, the most useful metal that we have. And you know, we've seen a pullback in the price of gold since the war broke out.
And that's led a lot of people to think, oh, wait a minute, maybe gold's not a safe haven anymore. It went down. It didn't go up.
Gold went up in anticipation of this war. One of the reasons that gold went to 56 or 4,600 or 56.
Yeah. 5600 was gold market started looking forward to the war, but also gold had a huge run.
Yeah. even before that. So, by the time the war came around, gold was very overextended, overbought. It was due for a pullback and the war ended up being the catalyst, more of a, you know, buy the rumor, sell the fact. But gold is still in a major major bull market. So is silver. Silver's had a little bit more volatility.
Gold, Peter, has performed less well since the war than Bitcoin did. So, that brings me to you, Anthony. Sure, Bitcoin looks better than gold since February 27th, but that said, Bitcoin has had extraordinary returns, unbelievable, since it first became a thing in January of 2009. However, it's also suffered multiple massive crashes. I think several of 50% or more. That to me is something where you look at an asset that can suffer that kind of retrenchment and that kind of hit. How is that even good? Forget retirees' portfolios, for anybody who cares about their money.
Well, first of all, I wore today this nice gold tie for Peter here because I wanted him to know not only do I like gold. I think gold is fine. This is just the closest gold is going to get to my portfolio is on my unfortunate tie. And the reason is because you actually want the volatility, right? One of the misconceptions about volatility is that volatility is bad. But actually what we find is the best returning stocks, the best returning commodities, they are all highly volatile. And so the reason why gold bugs all of a sudden got very excited, Peter and many others, is because all of a sudden gold woke up. It woke up after being asleep for a decade and it said, 'Hey, it's time to be volatile.' And so, welcome to the party. But Bitcoin, that is the entire asset is very volatile. And the reason why you need volatility is because when you get these massive moves up, of course, there's going to be draw downs and consolidations, but you need to look over a long period of time. And actually I do think that one of the things that the gold bugs and the Bitcoiners agree on is that the government's not going to stop printing money. And also they think very long term. And so those two things lead you to either gold or bitcoin. The truth is that both of them are going to go up. The reason why I'm interested in Bitcoin is I do probably have a longer time horizon given my age. And I want more volatility. I want more potential asymmetry than gold may provide.
Well look, volatility doesn't guarantee that it's going to keep going up. I mean it's certainly not a strength that Bitcoin can collapse by 50, 60, 70%. Now, yes, in its past there have been times where it's done that, but there is no real long term for Bitcoin. It's been around 16 years or 17 years, so it doesn't have a real long term. And the problem is most of the people who are in Bitcoin weren't in it back then. They don't have the big gains. Bitcoin is really no higher than it was 5 years ago. It's just been going sideways as all the money has been pouring in. The early money has been getting out. All the hype, all of the Bitcoin treasury companies, all of the ETFs, all that buying has simply allowed the people who got in early to cash out. That's what's been going on.
You're a libertarian and the whole at least initial attraction and still is for many people about Bitcoin is that the government doesn't touch it. There is no currency intervention by any government. Therefore, I would think that you would embrace that. Why don't you? I mean, I look, I mean, P.T. Barnum was a great capitalist who said there's a sucker born every day. I'm not saying that people can't go to the circus and see the fat lady or whatever, the bearded lady. So I have no problem if people want to gamble on Bitcoin. Just because it was invented privately doesn't mean that I think it's a good idea. There's a lot of bad ideas, but the government, unfortunately, now
The government is backing Bitcoin. The government is behind Bitcoin. The government is trying to misdirect resources into Bitcoin. The president's family, that's the family business now. Forget real estate. They're all in crypto.
Well, but hold on a second. Hold on a second here. The US government has been backing gold for decades and decades. I don't hear you complaining about that. Second of all, the United States money in the United States.
Hold on a sec. Second of all is that the United States has frozen Venezuela's gold. They've frozen Russia's gold. They've gone after China's gold.
Only if they have possession of it. Well, and again, but you can't do that with an asset that cannot be censored.
What do you mean? Look at all the Bitcoin we've seized. How do you think we have a Bitcoin strategic reserve? It's all seized Bitcoin. There was just some rumors, I don't know, that we seized Iran's Bitcoin or whatever they had. It's a lot harder to seize gold because if you have your own gold in a vault, unless you're going to send the military on the ground to get it, gold is far
