When it comes to the crypto sector, how do you determine what’s fact and what’s fiction? John D’Agostino and Anthony Scaramucci discuss the future of Bitcoin and offer their advice on how to distinguish the truth behind crypto. In this episode of ‘Speak Up,’ Anthony Scaramucci speaks with John D’Agostino, Head of Strategy at Coinbase Institutional, for an in-depth discussion on Bitcoin, blockchain technology, and the disinformation behind the evolving regulatory landscape. John shares insights into the abundance of disinformation in the crypto space and its impact on investors and the market. The conversation also explores the unique attributes that make Bitcoin a revolutionary store of value, the future of digital assets, and practical investment advice for navigating today’s volatile market.
John D'agostino 0:00 If you don't think bitcoin's a good asset to buy or sell to own, we can have an intelligent discussion about that not everyone believes in every asset. If you think that it's a Ponzi scheme, or you think that it's, you know, has a higher probability of fraud, you're either you're either misinformed or using you're using weaponized misinformation, which some people absolutely are there. They're smarter than that they're aware of what's going on. They choose to weaponize misinformation, Bitcoin, crypto as a tool for money laundering for terrorism. The classic example of weaponized misinformation. We know demonstrably, it's not true. So if you're faced with that, you know, that that type of misinformation, I think you either have to, you know, again, if it's the first type of misinformation where someone's just genuinely unaware, you educate them. If you're faced with weaponized misinformation, you have to just fight that through either litigation or or through the political political means or through public appeals. And I think the industry is doing that very well. And so I think the industry is winning overall. Anthony Scaramucci 1:06 Joining us now on speak up is John D'agostino, who's head of strategy for Coinbase International, and a dear friend of mine for two decades, and John since I'm lying about my age, and I expect you to be lying about your age, when you get to my age, just say that we just met each other here on speak up. But welcome to the show. And before I get into it with you, though, tell us a little bit about your background is that you have a fascinating background. And I'm going to ask you as a result of this, I'm going to ask you a lot of macro questions, if you don't mind. John D'agostino 1:38 Yeah, sure. So, as always, thanks for inviting me, it's always a pleasure to speak to you on or off the air. You know, you and I grew up, I think in very similar circumstances. I was, you know, in retrospect, and it's funny, I think about these things. Now a lot as I get older, I never thought of myself as being disadvantaged, if you will. And then I took a trip to my childhood home, which I hadn't seen in about 30 years. And it kind of struck me the conditions we lived under. But I had, you know, an amazing, amazing set of parents who worked incredibly hard. My dad had three jobs, my mom had two jobs grew up in Staten Island, first generation Italian, Italian American, first one of my family to go to college. And, you know, again, I think back to what my parents had to do to put me through high school, college, and then graduate school. First one, I think it even my extended family to go to graduate school. And to have that all happen on the salaries, their combined salaries. Growing up with two children, was just extraordinary. So it like you, I've heard you speak about this, it taught me a work ethic. Unlike a lot of my family, I had a desire to leave not to get away so much just to explore. So at a fairly young age, I spent time studying abroad at Oxford, I lived in Dubai, I lived in Moscow. And I was always sort of the first that any job I took to put my hand up and say, you know, I'll try that out. You need someone to go and negotiate a transaction. You know, they sent the young guy because they didn't really expect it to work or they weren't really interested in it. I use those opportunities to do things I just didn't have the luxury of doing when I was a child. Anthony Scaramucci 3:28 Listen, I love you, I relate to you. You're you've got a hustle and a tenacity too. You've also got a huge brain. And so I want to start with the apple falling on your head related to Bitcoin. I've already talked about my apple falling on my head you got here before I did. So tell us what happened, why it happened. John D'agostino 3:51 So two ways one. So my life has been about marrying, I think to some of your years as well marrying the academic and the practical. I graduate from Harvard Business School. And instead of going into the Goldman Sachs training program, which is a wonderful training program, I went to go work on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange because I felt I would learn more from that. I had a ton of academia throughout my life. And then I wanted the most real practical scenario. So I say that I was very, very lucky. I was teaching at MIT, lecturing, not a full time professor, but so I was around people at the university that were looking at Bitcoin, looking at how to use blockchain as a store to produce a store of value fairly early. So I've heard kind of rumblings about it in the bowels of MIT at the Media Lab and connection sciences lab. And I was reading what they were writing and I was talking to people way smarter than me. And then around that time, I was extremely lucky to to write. So the Dow hack occurred. If you remember the Dow hack, and I wanted to learn more about it. The best way I know to learn about something is to is to work under are with someone who knows more than me. So I wrote a paper with a professor at MIT around problems that I saw from a governance perspective and how it was organized, that forced me to understand the underlying technology. So that was the academic part. On the flip side, as you know, I spent, I spent a significant amount of time in the Middle East. And I had a dear friend who comes from a fairly well to do family and I won't say which country but in a country where it's not unlikely that a well to do family could get a call, saying, hey, you know, give us your money, or you're not going to like what happens. And I'll never forget him telling me. And this is when, you know, back when that was a really, even more so than now and intense conversation about whether the volatility of a store of value, the volatility of Bitcoin exhibited, would ever make it useful to store value. I remember him telling me more or less, John, if I get that call, if I'm lucky enough to get that call, by the way, which means I've got an hour or two to get the hell out of the country. I'm not sure are we allowed to we'll have to use blue language on this podcast? Anthony Scaramucci 6:05 You can use any, listen, I'm running. I mean, come on. John D'agostino 6:13 He looks at me and says John, I can put $10 million onto something the size of my thumb, shove it up my ass and run. And he leans over the table. I'll never forget he goes, John. You can't shove $10 million of gold up your ass. So it's funny, it's silly, but but these these very, very simple attributes of Bitcoin immutability, storability, fungibility, partial distance from government intervention, make it so unique and something we haven't ever seen just an absolutely new series of characteristics that don't exist anywhere else. That was the aha moment for me. Anthony Scaramucci 6:52 Okay, I mean, that I mean, you know, I, I actually, you told me that story. I use that story in Saudi Arabia, you know, what somebody said to me, as I'm trying to fix my hair. You said to me, about $200 million. So you tell Do you know I could put $200 million? Because it's the same USB you but $200 million? And that's the magic. Yeah. And that's the magic but but want to go to the age of post truth in the age of disinformation. There is so much disinformation out there related to crypto Bitcoin, the markets, we had this great resistance coming from the SEC still, you know, to the extent you can comment, I would like you to comment on that. But let's just talk about the age of disinformation, tons of bad misinformation out there. Let's start with what's accurate and what isn't. John D'agostino 7:48 So maybe we just go one step further, who don't mind because, you know, I've got young kids, and I spent, I spend a disproportionate amount of my time doing two things with them trying really hard not to instill my biases in them, the beyond the biases that I know for sure are correct. I treat people well. And the other half and this is horrible, I have to spend time teaching them at seven and 11. How to distill truth from misinformation. And, man, it's hard. I'm certainly no expert on it. So I spend as much time filtering sources of information as I do actually analyzing that information. And I think we've got a really great tool now in AI. What I mean by that is, you know, before, let's face it, I don't know about you, I don't have time when if the ECB puts out a report on, on inflation. I don't have time to go through those 200 pages, at least not in any meaningful way. I'd love it if I did. I just don't have that leisure. I admire people who have the tenacity to spend it. I know folks just take like an hour a day and they just block it off just for hardcore reading. I can't do that. Now we have tools that can summarize that report fairly quickly. The way an analyst would have to be careful, they hallucinate. But I'd argue that the risk of a hallucination on a simple prompt of summarize the main points of this article is about as great as the risk of hallucination from an unbiased analyst. So you've got resources, you've got skybridge, I'm lucky enough. I've got for crypto, I have an incredible research, resource and Coinbase research, they produce phenomenal. And I view them as very, very unbiased because exchanges. You know, we don't care about price direction. We care about integrity of market structure. So I have that resource. I have the boards of directors of hedge funds I sit on that have to be unbiased because they need the need for it to make analytical investment decisions. But most people don't have that Anthony. So I'm going to put the question back to you. What advice do you give people? You're a bigger personality than I am in every sense of the word. What do you say to people who say I'm just so confused about Bitcoin per se, but crypto just in general? How do I get a handle on what's real and what's not in terms of making a personal financial decision? Anthony Scaramucci 9:58 Well, you know what I I'd say to them is that in my life experience, the Cognos sent day the mainstream hated Amazon. Mainstream hated a company like eBay, the mainstream poo pooed, Google, the mainstream said that we would never get the regulatory authority for Uber. And so then video was a gaming company, that was really a bit of a joke. And so we have to be very, very careful about the mainstream, you know, and so, I'm not saying that we don't have want to measure my words here, I'm not saying that we don't have charlatans in this industry. I'm not saying that we don't have levels of fraud in this industry. For those reasons, we need propitious and good regulation. But I do believe and I believe you believe this, and I think your organization believes this, that Bitcoin is a technology that is representative of value, it is a store of value it is it meets all the measures that you and I would look to, for money, the history of money, it has all of those characteristics, in fact, if anything is technically refined better than anything that we've used for money in the past, so therefore, in an age of digitization, it should be treated as an asset class, and it should trade to at least the value of gold. And so I would ask people to try to cut through the disinformation that's out there. And I would ask people to please, you know, take a leap of faith. You know, George Soros, they've polarized that name now, politically, but George Soros, one of the legendary investors on Wall Street would say, invest first investigate later, and I would tell people get off zero on something like Bitcoin. And if it's even a sliver of Bitcoin and you start learning about it, I think it'd be better off. I don't know, what do you think? John D'agostino 12:02 Yeah, I think everything is to this right. I'll go a step further, I think, you know, I got my star on the floor of the NYMEX. This was not 1960. This was 2002, 2004, and 868, roughly, guys were using hand signals and paper cards to price crude oil. And we knew back then that that was ridiculous. It worked. By the way it worked. It was wonderful. But we had the technology even at that it 2025 years ago, we knew so back then, as a freshly minted MBA, I didn't know when but I knew with 100% certainty that the NYMEX would go electronic at some point because it was clearly a better decision. Now, it had to be weighed in over time, there are issues and you can't just flip the switch and just you have the burn it down, folks, I'm not huge fans of it be thoughtful about how these very important systems get transitioned, I don't want to be in a plane with a pilot comes and says, Hey, good news, we have a much better engine design has never been tested. And we're gonna try it out today. I want that to go under rigorous testing. So pacing is important. I argue that standing here today I look at my 11 year old daughter, my seven year old daughter, the notion that when they're my age, they will a not have a ubiquitous digital store of value. Now, I'm not suggesting it's gonna be the demise of the US dollar, although all other asset classes go away. But the notion that they're not going to have that is insane. It's as insane as anything you hear in crypto, the notion that they're not going to be using tokenization to better represent assets and trading. But the notion that smart programmable digital securities will not exist, but with security that non security assets. That's crazy. Now, do I know exactly when that tipping point is going to occur? I do not. But of course, that's going to be there when they're my age. And so if you start with that, then it just becomes a matter of to your point. How much do you want to bet on timing? Because it's not really a question of when it's a question. I'm sorry, a question of if it's a question of what? Anthony Scaramucci 13:56 Oh, no, I agree. I'm gonna say very carefully, because it's a vexing time for all of us. To the extent you can comment on us regulation. And if you can't, that's fine, because I understand the situation with the company. But the extent you can comment generically on us regulation. Please do if not, I'll go to another question. John D'agostino 14:16 Generically, because Coinbase puts out public statements on it. I mean, you know, and I'll say my personal opinion, which I think aligns well with with the overall corporate view. You know, I believe that the average person who works at a US regulator wants what's best for this country? I generally do. I know, I thought that that's not very popular in crypto, this is attempt to demonize the entire staff. I think that's wrong. And I was like getting more from Coinbase has done that and I, I admire them for that. I think that it's scary for them. Faced with the new technology and faced with the burden they have to protect protect markets. I think that they've gone astray in terms of the direction I don't ascribe any malicious intent to that. Personally, I think that it's hard. It's that that bad way of governing is losing, I think it's clear that it's losing, its losing in terms of the market is telling them that it will survive, regardless of what they do. overseas markets are saying we will gleefully bring this business in. You know, one of the conversations I've had recently, which which, which struck someone I think is fairly compelling, at that level was, if you could go back in time, 5075 years, we have the time machine, go back in time and say, okay, and you can grab whoever whoever's in charge at that point and say, hey, you know, I know you guys don't think that computers are going to be a big deal. But just in case, you're wrong, maybe it's not a great idea to have all semiconductor fabrication occur on a small island at arm's length from China. Like, just maybe we want to rethink this just in case, this computer thing is not a fad. Virtually 100% of people say yeah, that would probably have been a good idea. And so when you frame it that way, when I when I meet somebody who's bizarrely antagonistic to math, that's really what it is. If you hate blog, if you if you don't think Bitcoin is a good asset to buy or sell to own, we can have an intelligent discussion about that not everyone believes in every asset. If you think that it's a Ponzi scheme, or you think that it's, you know, has a higher probability of fraud. You're either you're either misinformed or using you're using weaponized misinformation, which some people absolutely are. They're smarter than that. They're aware of what's going on. They choose to weaponize misinformation, Bitcoin, crypto as a tool for money laundering for terrorism. The classic example of weaponized misinformation. We know demonstrably, it's not true. So if you're faced with that, you know, that that type of misinformation, I think you either have to, you know, again, if it's the first type of misinformation where someone's just genuinely unaware, you educate them. If you're faced with weaponized misinformation, you have to just fight back through either litigation or or through the political political means or through public appeals. And I think the industry is doing that very well. And so I think the industry is winning overall, I'm disappointed in the reaction. I think, regulators when seeing that the markets are demanding something and seeing that they're working, I think they should, in the face of that information, reevaluate their position. That doesn't seem to be happening here. So that's disappointing. But I'm very, very confident that the smart, good people at these regulators will continue to do their work. And then over time, we'll see the US gain game back prominence in in this in the sector. Anthony Scaramucci 17:36 So Bitcoin has been in this range. It's sort of 60ish, 70ish, 58, 70ish, 58, 72. What do you think happens? John D'agostino 17:49 I love working for an exchange because I get to just punt on all this stuff. Because, again, I don't I care about market structure and integrity. I'll make one comment. I have never no backgrounds, commodities. I have never seen whether you believe Bitcoin is a commodity or something different. I think it was a commodity. I've never seen an ETF a single asset ETF, where the underlying referenced asset or commodity in this case, over time with the with the growth of that ETF, where the underlying asset has not exhibited two characteristics, increased price and decreased volatility. So I don't know when, but I know that the pressure of that ETF expansion and again, remember what it was, it was definitely top two, arguably top one ETF launches of all time, and it's still not a sold. It's not able to be sold at any of the broker dealer money center banks, right. So it did all of that with a with Hank handcuffed behind its back. It did all that. Eventually, when brokers are allowed to actively sell it. You'll see increased pressure by pressure by side pressure. And I think you'll see improved market dynamics, increase in price and decrease in volatility. Anthony Scaramucci 19:05 I'm gonna push this narrative on you and just test you Okay. Peter Thiel, an early investor in Bitcoin made a fortune off of Bitcoin, said at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week that he thinks it's done. It's fully valued. The ETF story is played out the having story is played out. There's no more incremental investors. And bitcoin is sort of done not that it's gonna go down, but it's sort of gonna plateau in value here. How would you respond to that? John D'agostino 19:37 I guess it's easy to say when you've when you've caught the initial wave embargo I wouldn't suggest people invest in Bitcoin because they think it's gonna go up another 10,000% That's silly. You know, I haven't seen this full comments, but I counter that with you've got really really smart macro and macro guys like Bob Elliott on Twitter talking about rewriting neutral inflation expectations from historical to pro sent the four and a half 5%. What does that do for risk assets? Like the coin? You know, do you think we're moving into an era of increased stability on this planet political or otherwise? No, I don't. We haven't. I mean no Anthony Scaramucci 20:15 you know, so unfortunately, no time soon. I don't see an era of you know, I mean, just terrible se but it's just not anytime soon, you know. John D'agostino 20:26 What I'd respond to is it's that analysis sounds like the analysis, we hear every four to five years about crude oil. You want to if you want to laugh, Google, Forbes, I think it's Forbes or Fortune magazine covers about crude oil for the last 30 years. Every two or three years, they do a cover saying we're awash in crude oil. Crude oil is going to zero. And then three years later, there's the same cover, except it's a desert, we have no more crude oil, it's going up forever. Anthony Scaramucci 20:53 Right. John D'agostino 20:53 So that's the nature of these commodities. Anthony Scaramucci 20:55 They do that a lot. Unfortunately, I'm trying to understand that. I mean, they did that to us in the 80s. They told us that we were running out of oil, they said it was well theory that we're running out of oil. And then of course, we didn't run out of oil, you know what I mean? John D'agostino 21:09 Yeah, so the scarce essential assets. And again, it depends if you believe I believe Bitcoin is a scarce essential asset. I think if you live in a part of the world, where the government could just break down your door, hang you up at a hotel beat you until you give you their money. Having an immutable, storable, fungible store value is scarce and rare, scarce and valuable. And if you believe that, then we'll go through these peaks and valleys, but the long term pressure should be consistently up. Now his argument is we're not going to have another 10,000% appreciation. We can have a discussion about that. I don't know how I feel about that. But, to argue it's done. You know, that's a bit of an entitled argument. I think that it's maybe done for you. But I don't think it's done for all the parts of the world that need it. Anthony Scaramucci 21:58 Okay, I want to switch gears because Coinbase is a brokerage company that does asset management as well, but a brokerage company that has a lot of different coins on its platform. Yep. So if you were a more Martian was landing from Mars and said, Okay, Bitcoin, I get that sort of digital gold could be bigger than that. How? How do you assess these other coins. John D'agostino 22:28 There's a ton of research on them. And there's no I think, consensus and how to value you can look at just traditional value metrics, you can look at sort of more tech oriented metrics, there's a ton of research available on coin base Research website. I teach about this. And I think about this a lot. The clearest analogy I give when I speak to people who want to learn about this, I think of these blockchains, and the associated tokens as business ideas. Very simple. So So Aetherium is a business idea that you can build on our platform, decentralized businesses. Bitcoin is a business idea that's problem seeking to solve is store value and use of currency, so on so on, so forth. Litecoin, a faster version of Bitcoin lighter version of Bitcoin. So I think we're very simply, if if these blockchains have our successful businesses, you will pay and let's say we live in a world now where for a long time where Fiat will continue to exist and dominate currency transactions. So the business idea the blockchain has to be worthy of the friction associated with getting in and out of Fiat the native token. And if it's successful, you'll do it. And my argument as to why people will do it is I asked this every to every class I teach, I asked people who use Amazon 100% people lift their hand up, I say, great, keep your hand up. Today, Amazon has announced that you can't use dollars anymore, you can use an Amazon token. And keep your hand up and lower your hand when I get to the exchange rate, at which point you will not use Amazon anymore. So let's say let's say I'd say one cent. So one cent friction to get to Amazon, everyone keeps a hand up, I keep going up two cents, three cents, four cents, at around 10, 12 cents, a few hands start going down. Most hands are down at around 15 to 20 cents. So that tells you that the friction that Amazon is so good at what they do that you'll pay 20% friction in order to in order to use them. So blockchains have to compete with that. And if they're able to you'll you'll pay the friction no different from Disney, no different from Amazon. Anthony Scaramucci 24:32 So I'm going to rephrase it back to you and then we're going to take questions from our audience. Okay. But basically, what you're saying is that the blockchain is representing a rail system, and it's going to help us with more frictionless lower costs in some cases, costless transactions among ourselves. Said differently it'll be a little bit late. By the way, I can do this call with you, the Speak Up Show costlessly over the internet, you know, or if I need to call Italy cost me $5 a minute 40 years ago, but today it cost me no dollars a minute. John D'agostino 25:15 And there may be some problems that the application of blockchain at least for now, can't be is not better at solving. And that's and that's okay. You know, I don't try to convince anyone about this. I don't try to convince anyone to buy or sell an asset. And by the way, me obviously, I don't think everyone I think everyone should experiment with Blockchain. And I think Bitcoin, Bitcoin ownerships a great way to experiment, but not every assets right for every person. So you know, if somebody if somebody understands it and says, I still don't want to buy the asset, whether that's derivatives whether that's real estate, crude oil, gold, platinum, US equities Munis or Bitcoin? There's fairness in that argument. Anthony Scaramucci 25:54 Let's take some questions from the audience. Are crypto exchanges secure How do I know my investments are safe? This is Rose from New Jersey? John D'agostino 26:09 Look, there's risk everywhere there has and I can just speak for a firm like Coinbase. There's two ways to store your assets in crypto exchanges, there's what's called a cold Wallet. So think of that as a hyper secure way to store your assets if you're not going to use them. So think of as your savings account, you don't need it in the short term. And there's never been a hack of that. So if you have the money, your savings account, equivalent, there's never been a hack associated with that. There have been hacks associated when you move it into the hot wallet to transact. Most of those occur. For complex transactions, we're using what are called bridges to get in between different currencies. But for exchanges like Coinbase, there has not been a just a standard theft of your assets. I want to talk about this for one second, because a lot of viewers even ones who aren't knowledgeable at crypto, they've heard of, say FTX. And it was it was a horrible situation. And I think I think I think about 9 billion roughly was lost. I think a lot of a good portion of that was recovered. I just want to put that into context. In the same year that that happened. The London Metal Exchange cancelled $38 billion of concentrates. They just decided end of day, if we settle all these trades, so many firms will go bankrupt. We just have to clear it all out. Now, if you're on the other side of that trade at that time, that is no different from having money robbed from you. It's absolutely the same. There's no if you if you say I made 100 bucks on this trade, or I had 100 bucks in this account, you wake up the next day and the exchange calls and Hey, sorry, somebody stole your $100. Or that trade, we made 100 bucks, we cancelled it. It is economically identical. But I bet none of your viewers have heard about that. So 38 billion was stolen. And I think net net less than like a billion, even less, maybe less than a couple 100 million. What missing from FTX after recovery. And yet, we're still talking about FTX is this kind of incredibly embarrassing thing to happen to crypto, and it's causing people doubt about crypto. And yet, we're not having that same discussion about the broader commodities markets. So my point being, there's risk everywhere. But if you're doing basic Buy Sell transaction of tokens like Bitcoin on regulated exchanges here in the US. I don't see any measurable difference between the risk of doing that and buying or selling commodities or stocks. Anthony Scaramucci 28:36 Okay, sounds good to me. Let's go to the next question. How do hurricanes like barrel affect markets? This is in your wheelhouse as an old oil trader, especially with big investors living in the Cayman Islands or Puerto Rico. This is Paul from Florida. John D'agostino 28:52 They can I'll tell you a quick story. So back in the day, when the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina hit the city of Houston. It was evacuated Houston was partially evacuated for the first time ever. And I was back in my NYMEX days I was had a strategy for the for the exchange there. And we had this very, very vibrant natural gas market natural gas one of the most important commodities in the world. It was a really vibrant market traded like water, very liquid, and it just died. And we were all kind of scratching heads what the heck's going on. And we realized that this very vibrant, wide and deep market we thought we had was actually like 19 hedge funds in Houston section showed like most of the liquidity and I learned a really valuable lesson. Concentration, whether it's geographic, whether it's by type or by motivation of entering a market can fool you into thinking markets are wide or deep. So now the good news is, you know Puerto Rico's suffered some massive because there are a lot of crypto people in Puerto Rico and despite suffering from some horrible hurricanes, we haven't seen that happen to to crypto. Nice thing about crypto is it trades 24/7 anywhere in the world can trade it if they have a computer. You don't require heavy infrastructure. And so while I'm not going to say there isn't a bit of a concentration issue in Bitcoin, because there is is, clearly is the ability of that market to diversify, both geographically, economically and otherwise, it's far more. It's far it's there far more than traditional markets. So we haven't seen an impact outside of humanitarian set best wishes. Anyone watching from the Overseas Territories right now, because I know Cayman and other places are about to get walloped. So we wish them well. But it doesn't really appear to impact crypto markets materially, I think that the lunar the lunar celebrations in China impact markets more psychologically than than hurricanes do. Anthony Scaramucci 30:46 Alright, let's go to the next one. Looking like nothing is changing in the Democratic support for crypto, which seems to be the case. So will this turn out to be a big issue during the election? This is Joe from Brooklyn. John D'agostino 31:02 So we have we have heard that the Democrats are making overtures into crypto over the last couple of weeks. I'm not sure if I agree with that. I think maybe if I had had one word, it looks like not enough is changing in Democratic support for crypto. I think that's a fair statement. But I think I think it is fair to say that since since Trump came out, decidedly pro crypto, and since the realization of 52 million, I want to make sure people understand this. So roughly 52 million Americans have bought crypto, roughly 52 million Americans have bought stock. What am I want to say that again? Now I'm not talking about stock ownership, do pensions and other ways that's much, much higher, but about the same number of Americans have made a conscious decision to go on to an online broker and buy a share of stock that have bought crypto. It's a very, very important voting contingent, that's now become known. I'm not we've been screaming this for years. But suddenly, in the last they'd say, two months, suddenly, for some bizarre reason, you know, God bless the good, the good folks at Coinbase policy who are helping with this, the stand with crypto pack has done a great job. But now everyone's suddenly aware that there's a lot of young people who vote who care about this enough to make it a single issue. And so the Democrats have made overtures, I think the consensus belief is that the ETF being pushed through is as part of those overtures isn't enough? I don't think so. Because we're still seeing regulation by enforcement. We're still seeing, you know, a bizarre reticence to be open minded about this technology. Again, I go back to I go back to my original point, do we want 50 years from now? Do we want future Americans to sit there and say, why the heck did we allow all this stuff to be built offshore? Like we're seeing now with Taiwan? It's not just an economic issue for Taiwan. It's a military issue. Most of my smart geopolitical friends think we will have a kinetic war with China over Taiwan, solely due to semiconductor fabrication. Do we want to make that same the same mistake for crypto and for AI? In 25 or 50 years? So there's been a shift but unfortunately hasn't been a significant enough shift. And yes, I think it will play into the results. Anthony Scaramucci 33:12 I love it. Not gonna say anything. Let's go to the next one. Ah, John D'agostino 33:19 so only because when I was a little bit younger, I got confused for him at the airport. I gotta go a Christian Bale. I got pushed through security because I thought I was Christian Bale. So I gotta go with him. Anthony Scaramucci 33:33 I think you better looking in Christian Bale. You're Italian. Christian Bale's not Italian. John D'agostino 33:41 Five years ago. I was jacked. I got a, he's great. He's great. And I gotta go, I mean, Michael Keaton for nostalgic, for nostalgic stake. I mean, I'll just always remember my I was a member of Michael Keaton being the funniest because there was no way he could beat up anybody. But um, and he's, he's the best actor without question, but I gotta say, I gotta go with Christian Bale and Henry Cavill for Batman and Superman. Anthony Scaramucci 34:04 Didn't Michael Keaton play Batman again? In a recent movie, The Flash? John D'agostino 34:10 No Beetlejuice. Anthony Scaramucci 34:14 But he was in The Flash. He played Batman in the movies John D'agostino 34:16 I did not see that, I got I gotta watch it. Because he's an American treasure. Anthony Scaramucci 34:20 Alright, well, you are an American treasure. You're somebody that I admire and respect in our industry. I appreciate you coming on. I wish you an amazing holiday. Thank you for joining us on holiday week for speak up. But I'm going to pull you for one last question though. Okay. John D'agostino 34:38 Yeah, sure Anthony Scaramucci 34:39 Actionable investment that our viewers can make right now. Something you see in the mortgage that you totally love. John D'agostino 34:46 Buy Bitcoin or buy the Bitcoin ETF if you don't want to hold Bitcoin directly. Anthony Scaramucci 34:46 You answer the same way I do. All day John D'agostino 34:46 Yep, small amount, treated is a risk asset. Learn about it. Take time, talk to your kids, talk to your nieces, talk to your nephews, talk to your younger friends. It is a bit of a generational divide in terms of acceptance, and comfort, but I'll just leave you with this. Not that long ago, the rules of the internet were Don't give anyone your phone number or your credit card, and don't get into a car with strangers. Now we now we send our information across and we gleefully jump into a stranger's car. Things change and they'll change in your lifetime. So be prepared. Anthony Scaramucci 35:36 Amen. Well said my friend. Thank you for joining us. If you like this video. You'll like this video as well. Check it out.
