Top of the morning Dan and Amy. You know, I'm never one to count anybody else's money. Make all the money you can make, it's wonderful. Yeah, but I think some of these crypto guys do have too much money. Really, should they share it with us? I'm saying that because a crypto guy named Justin Sun bought that banana duct-taped to a wall for 6.2 million from Sotheby's auction yesterday. Here it is in all its splendor.
We're going to begin at $800,000. $800,000. $850,000 now. $850,000. $900,000. Thank you, sir. $1,100,000 is your bid, sir. $1,200,000. $1,300,000. $1,400,000. $1,500,000. We are looking at an ordinary banana and an ordinary piece of duct tape. However, what makes the ordinary extraordinary is the intention of the artist who put this together. Intention was to fleece our... and the art community looking for... there it is, $4 million. Say five, please. $5 million. Don't let it slip away. $5,100,000. So exciting. World's most expensive banana at $5,200,000. It's slipping through the auction room at $5,200,000. And I'm going to sell it here, fair warning, at $5,200,000. The Catalan is yours. Congratulations. Thank you very much indeed. It's paddle number 17.
Yeah, and it goes to 6.2 when you include all the auction house fees. But anyway, yeah, Maurizio Cattelan's 'Comedian' is the title of this work of experiential art. And what did Justin Sun say he's going to do? Well, first of all, he says it's a cultural phenomenon that bridges the world of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community. Okay, boy, you're really reading a lot into that banana. But anyway, where is he going to place this banana? He plans to, quote, personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience honoring its place in both art history and pop culture. And I might add, his stomach. 6.2 million to eat a banana. Okay, I hope it's not me.
On a more serious crypto note, it's just a wild story. You know, Trump is apparently making good on what he discussed during the campaign, which is to set up a Bitcoin strategic reserve. He's reportedly set up an advisory council that includes Coinbase and Ripple, and he plans to stack Bitcoins into his... he plans to develop a Bitcoin strategic reserve, swapping some essential treasury gold for digital gold. The importance of that? Well, we're pleased to have somebody who's an expert in the field on that and was called for a $250 billion strategic reserve of Bitcoin. He is Anthony Pompliano. He's founder and CEO of Professional Capital Management. His substack is The Pomp Letter, pomp.substack.com. He's also the author of the book 'How to Live an Extraordinary Life.' Anthony Pompliano, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, guys.
You weren't one of those other five people bidding on that banana and duct tape, were you?
No, I will leave the bananas for those people who understand why it's worth $6 million.
Okay, very good. So the importance of the Bitcoin strategic reserve, and you, as I said, pegged at $250 billion would be a good start.
Yeah, my general thought process is $250 billion obviously sounds like a lot of money, but we have seen the national debt now cross over $36 trillion. The government has printed about $10 billion per day. It's like $850, $860 billion in the last 90 days. And so we're putting the money, rather than spend it on whatever nonsense we already are, why don't we go ahead and invest in the future and buy Bitcoin? And so whether we actually print $250 billion to buy Bitcoin or we sell $50 billion worth of gold, I think the real kind of goal here is to get Bitcoin into a strategic reserve for the United States and then allow the United States just to wait, and that'll end up being pretty good, I think.
But I mean, does that, in some respects, sort of run counter to part of the philosophy of Bitcoin in the first place, which was to be sort of to transcend the state, if you will?
Yeah, one of the beautiful things about Bitcoin is that no matter how much somebody owns, they still don't control the network. You know, if you think of the traditional financial system, kind of whoever the richest people are, they set the rules. In Bitcoin, you can own, you know, 50% of all the coins that are out there, and you don't have any more power over the network than you or I do. And so the amount that is owned by somebody doesn't really matter in terms of that control. Now, one thing I will say is there's a lot of people who bought Bitcoin because they like the fact that it was outside of the system, and the more that is bought by, you know, financial organizations, countries, etc., that changes a little bit. But the control of it is still outside the system, which I think is important. And the last point I would say is that countries are already buying. You know, El Salvador has already bought quite a bit of Bitcoin. The country of Bhutan, which I always joke no one can spell or point out in the map, they now have over a billion dollars of Bitcoin on their balance sheets, about $1,500 per capita. And so, you know, these countries, they're small, they have the ability to do it because they're not really rocking the boat of a large economy. But I think that the United States has always been a leader in innovation and financial technology, and we should go ahead and do this.
Well, how important was it to the future of Bitcoin to have a pro-crypto president be elected?
Well, you know, it's something that bitcoiners have talked about for a long time. You know, I used to always say that a bitcoiner one day will be the president, not because they're going to run on Bitcoin as a campaign topic, but because everyone's going to own Bitcoin just like they own stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. And so, you know, we don't talk about the fact that there's an equity investor in the White House right now in Joe Biden, but he owns stocks. And that was my thought process. I think that President Trump surprised a lot of people by actually making Bitcoin a campaign topic, and he ran as the first pro-Bitcoin candidate. And the market believes him, right? The market is going up because they think that he is going to, in his words, protect Bitcoin and protect the right for people to self-custody Bitcoin. And so if you put somebody in office who cares about the stock market, as Trump appears to kind of measure success of the economy based on stock market, the stock market's going to go up. If you put somebody in there who says that they are pro-Bitcoin, it's likely that Bitcoin's going to do pretty good. And so I don't think we should be surprised by the results.
