Trump's market impact: Bitcoin, M&A, IPOs + transition picks; Polymarket CEO raided by FBI

00:00:00.000 | Hey, everybody, welcome back to the all in podcast with us

00:00:04.400 | again today, yawning from Milan, your favorite, the chairman

00:00:10.720 | dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya. You look a little tired, my

00:00:14.720 | friend. How you doing over there, buddy?

00:00:16.080 | I left Monday, I flew to Singapore. I was on the ground

00:00:22.080 | for two days. And I flew here. I'm here for two days. And then

00:00:27.520 | I go to London. Five days. I'm exhausted.

00:00:31.120 | You are on a whirlwind tour.

00:00:33.360 | I mean, I'm flying around the world. Literally flying around

00:00:37.440 | the world. Moving west, man.

00:00:41.280 | Right. I'm tired.

00:00:42.720 | And this is all in service. I mean, at our age, you feel it.

00:00:48.080 | It hits differently when you when you pass 40. And I'm

00:00:51.600 | assuming this is 80-90 business. You're out there selling, you're

00:00:54.400 | selling, you're selling grok, you're selling 80-90, you're

00:00:56.880 | out there doing BD.

00:00:58.720 | Little selling little closing. And then I'm speaking at the

00:01:02.640 | Oxford Union on Wednesday.

00:01:04.080 | Okay, okay. Well, that sounds fancy.

00:01:07.440 | Checking the bucket list.

00:01:08.400 | Okay, there you have it.

00:01:10.800 | And in his camo hat, and in his election afterglow, look at the

00:01:17.280 | glow. He is in that afterglow. He is post coitus here post

00:01:23.120 | election.

00:01:24.320 | Anybody got a cigarette? I need to I need to light up a

00:01:26.960 | cigarette.

00:01:27.520 | That was a close one. I didn't think I was going to make it,

00:01:32.640 | but you did.

00:01:33.280 | Do you like my camo hat, J-Cal?

00:01:35.200 | This is, this is the hat.

00:01:36.800 | Well, it says Trump fans on it.

00:01:37.920 | You look like Elmer Fudd. What does it say? You're hunting

00:01:40.160 | libs.

00:01:40.960 | No, remember, remember when Tim Walz rolled out the camo hat?

00:01:44.880 | Oh, yes.

00:01:45.440 | And you said it was going to win the election for Harris Walz?

00:01:47.680 | It might. It might. I thought that he might have a shot. Yes.

00:01:50.400 | No, I was wrong about that one. Be bowie bowie quiet.

00:01:53.680 | We got all the camo guys. They voted for us.

00:01:55.840 | Hunting liberals. Nobody's gonna get this impersonation,

00:02:00.160 | but it's very good. It looks good.

00:02:01.360 | Is that Elmer Fudd?

00:02:02.320 | That's Elmer Fudd. Be bowie bowie quiet. We're hunting liberals.

00:02:06.720 | That sounds like Mike Tyson.

00:02:08.400 | Well, I'm gonna mess up that. Jake Paul.

00:02:13.760 | How about I wear a different Trump hat every week for the

00:02:16.080 | next four years?

00:02:16.880 | Absolutely fantastic. I mean, the ratings are so many good

00:02:20.320 | ones. I mean, all I care about at this point.

00:02:23.360 | I'm getting savage in any way possible. All I care about is

00:02:27.280 | ratings now. Let's go.

00:02:28.560 | You're fine.

00:02:29.280 | MAGA. Get in the comments. Let's get these ratings up.

00:02:33.200 | And with us, of course, the CEO of Ohalo. Ohalo. David

00:02:39.920 | Freeburg. How are you doing, buddy?

00:02:42.160 | Thanks for having me again, Jacob. Thank you.

00:02:44.000 | All right. Well, it's good to have you. It's good to be here.

00:02:46.560 | Yeah. How are you doing?

00:02:47.440 | I'm chilling, man. You know, just nice to the executive

00:02:51.440 | producer to have you on the show.

00:02:53.120 | Yes, I've been executive producing here.

00:02:55.040 | Well, it's always I'm always thinking about your best

00:02:58.640 | interests. I was hearing a little I heard you on a phone

00:03:00.960 | call before you said you had a perfect body. What was that in

00:03:04.240 | reference to?

00:03:04.720 | My wife makes me go. Yeah, she makes me go to the

00:03:07.040 | dermatologist where they she examines your whole nude body

00:03:10.560 | to look for moles. So this morning, I went in early to the

00:03:13.680 | dermatologist. She examined it. She said, perfect. I said,

00:03:17.360 | does she have to wear sunglasses? Because you're just

00:03:20.000 | so white. Like it just like it's blindingly white. She's a

00:03:23.520 | woman. She can hazard pay the poor that poor dermatologist.

00:03:27.680 | My God, she's like, she's like, thank you for the experience.

00:03:30.880 | But this is why we need to. In all seriousness, this is why

00:03:35.680 | sacks we have to legalize psychedelics. This poor woman

00:03:38.240 | has PTSD. After that, we need to get out of here. Get out of

00:03:41.840 | here. It was a wonderful examination. She was thrilled.

00:03:44.720 | I mean, all right. Okay. And of course, I'm Jason canis.

00:03:49.600 | And, you know, there's been a lot of scuttlebutt sacks. I

00:03:53.360 | don't know if you know this, but comedy might still be legal

00:03:56.000 | here on the olympicus. But there's been a lot of scuttlebutt

00:03:58.560 | a lot of debate, a lot of energy, dare I say around, are

00:04:01.920 | we going to break the rules today? Finally? I don't know.

00:04:04.880 | We'll see anything's possible. People get a little sensitive

00:04:07.440 | sometimes with the car. Do I have to put my pronouns back in

00:04:10.560 | my zoom?

00:04:10.960 | pronouns back in shabbat. Polly happened to you, douche bag.

00:04:16.880 | Here we go. You you might not know this, but a lot of

00:04:20.560 | appointments are being made sacks. Did you know this? Are

00:04:22.480 | you aware that the appointments are being made? I'm aware. Yeah,

00:04:25.520 | it's happening. You'll have seen you've seen the flow of them.

00:04:27.680 | Well, I got a dump. I'm not going to say who sent these to

00:04:31.280 | me. But I actually got the next five or six announcement that

00:04:36.400 | Trump's going to make. I'm not going to say who gave to me.

00:04:38.400 | This is this bit has the potential to be so good. I'm so

00:04:44.560 | tired, but you've got me awake. Okay, I'm awake. Well, I'm

00:04:47.840 | ready. Here's our first one. Here's our first one. This is a

00:04:49.920 | very interesting one. Good. Yeah, here it is. This is a

00:04:52.320 | statement from Donald J. Trump. It is my great honor to announce

00:04:56.240 | that under Biden of Delaware will head a new department, the

00:04:59.920 | Bureau of founder mode procurement, founder more

00:05:02.560 | procurement, you notice sacks dropped off. He doesn't want to

00:05:05.280 | have a reaction shot here. Next one up. This is interesting.

00:05:09.360 | Tony Hinchcliffe. I don't know if you know him. He has been

00:05:12.240 | appointed to a new role. He's the ambassador to Puerto Rico.

00:05:15.120 | That's a good one. Chamath. Actually, your wish has come

00:05:21.920 | true. You are now your sole duty is to ensure all executive

00:05:26.800 | branch knitwear is on point. The sweater Inspector General

00:05:30.000 | everybody's going to have perfect knitwear. knitwear.

00:05:32.880 | Absolutely knitwear. And I just so you know, that's a that's a

00:05:36.480 | lower piano cashmere sweater in that picture. Apparently,

00:05:39.120 | apparently, I'm actually decided I would flip I've gone

00:05:42.000 | full Maggie. Here I am. I've been appointed as chief virtue

00:05:46.720 | signal that I like that. Every time you're gonna have stiff

00:05:52.480 | competition from Mark Cuban for that. For that post. I know I

00:05:55.200 | beat him out. I beat him. Yeah, I went down to me. He deleted

00:06:00.480 | all of his pro Kamala tweets. Have you done the same? No, no,

00:06:04.480 | I haven't yet. You're gonna get the job. Look at the lusty eyes

00:06:09.200 | in this. Yeah, I know. It's pretty great. That's really it

00:06:12.640 | really you you have there you have the virtue you didn't want

00:06:16.240 | to just burrow yourself. Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

00:06:19.280 | Hey, Friedberg. You've been appointed. Here we go. As Bobby

00:06:24.160 | Kennedy's whipping boy. You will be officially his little

00:06:27.600 | boy. Anything any innovation you come up with is officially

00:06:32.080 | blocked. And here he is. My great honor to announce David

00:06:36.640 | Sachs is now the chief retribution officer.

00:06:40.080 | Retribution must be had Jekyll payback is a bitch. There were a

00:06:47.440 | lot of people who are out of line just a little bit. A little

00:06:50.560 | bit. They deserve to get smacked a little bit just on Graham's

00:06:53.040 | gonna get his shoeshine box. A little bit.

00:06:55.760 | Rain Man David Sachs we open source it to the fans and

00:07:07.840 | they've just gone crazy. There's been a lot of talk about

00:07:15.600 | a holiday party free break. You want to give us an update on

00:07:18.160 | the holiday party? Quick plug on the party. So the party is

00:07:21.280 | coming up in three weeks. The all in holiday spectacular Steve

00:07:25.040 | Aoki, Andrea Bowtas, Gary Richards, aka Destructo are

00:07:29.840 | going to be DJing. I'm doing a secret DJ set. I may. It's

00:07:36.960 | actually a good idea. We will have we will have chess

00:07:40.480 | challenges with Alex Bowtas. Several sections are sold out.

00:07:44.240 | VIP is sold out. Draymond's joining us. Draymond Green from

00:07:48.720 | the Warriors. He's gonna come and do a little bit with us on

00:07:51.520 | stage. It'd be great. He's great. So should be great.

00:07:54.880 | Get your tickets at all in.com slash events.

00:07:57.520 | All right, let's get into it. Everybody. I just want to start

00:08:00.080 | with a little bit of finance here. Bitcoin and finance stocks

00:08:04.160 | way up since the Trump win, which was now 10 days ago,

00:08:09.120 | Bitcoin peaked at 92,000. Unbelievable. It's dropped down

00:08:14.800 | to 89. But obviously, that's an all time high. And as we all

00:08:21.120 | know, we talked about it on the show, Trump heavily, heavily

00:08:23.760 | courted the crypto industry during his campaign. In

00:08:26.720 | addition to the Bitcoin news, since early August, a firm

00:08:30.880 | Robinhood, PayPal, Coinbase all up double, or 50%. It's an

00:08:36.400 | extraordinary run. In July, Trump headlined a Bitcoin

00:08:40.560 | conference, he laid out his plans. Number one, he was going

00:08:44.000 | to fire SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. Here's the clip.

00:08:48.000 | On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new

00:08:52.400 | SEC Chairman.

00:08:53.360 | I didn't know he was that unpopular.

00:09:15.600 | I didn't know he was that unpopular. Let me say it again.

00:09:18.400 | On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler.

00:09:23.760 | There it is. Okay, enough of that. Technically, president

00:09:29.840 | can't fire the SEC chair, but he can appoint a new one when

00:09:33.120 | Gary's term ends in 2026. Or Gary could resign and Trump

00:09:37.360 | takes office that happens sometimes. And folks are

00:09:41.280 | speculating Gensler has already made that decision to step

00:09:44.080 | down. He put out a press release with a quote in it that a

00:09:47.920 | number of people took note of, where he said it's been a great

00:09:51.680 | honor to serve with them, the people who work at the SEC,

00:09:54.480 | doing the people's work and ensuring our capital markets

00:09:57.440 | remain the best in the world. Trump also said the federal

00:10:00.800 | government will never sell, never ever sell its Bitcoin

00:10:04.320 | holdings, which they own through criminal assets, as you

00:10:07.520 | know. And number three, he said he would create a Bitcoin and

00:10:12.560 | crypto Presidential Advisory Council, where Trump said,

00:10:16.480 | quote, the rules will be written by people who love your

00:10:19.840 | industry, not heat your industry. And he also advocated

00:10:25.040 | that all future bitcoins would be minted in America. I don't

00:10:27.520 | know that he gets to make that choice. But there have it

00:10:29.920 | freeberg. Any thoughts here on the crypto market, and this

00:10:35.040 | incredible bull run here we've seen in the last, you know, 10

00:10:39.280 | days, and then before that couple, I mean, I think like

00:10:41.520 | you said, it's not limited to crypto. Crypto is one market of

00:10:44.880 | several that have been significantly affected by the

00:10:48.960 | outlook based on Trump's election. I think that Trump's

00:10:51.840 | election has a couple of key features that are changing

00:10:55.760 | market dynamics. One is folks kind of view some of his

00:10:59.840 | policies to be obviously stimulatory, with lower tax

00:11:03.360 | rates and more deregulation. This is, you know, theoretically

00:11:07.600 | going to drive up investment and economic growth. The

00:11:10.400 | deregulatory nature on its own benefits markets that have been

00:11:14.400 | encumbered by regulatory oversight and regulatory

00:11:17.680 | challenges like crypto finance and fintech. So those types of

00:11:21.520 | businesses are clearly going to benefit or expected to benefit

00:11:25.440 | significantly by being able to launch products more quickly

00:11:28.640 | and have features and ways that they can generate revenue that

00:11:30.880 | they might be challenged to do under the current regulatory

00:11:33.360 | schemas. And then there's also this element of kind of things

00:11:36.800 | being inflationary, the feature of tariffs, if we don't get

00:11:40.080 | spending cut fast enough, there's an effect on market. So

00:11:43.360 | you know, we're still seeing tenure treasury sit at about

00:11:45.840 | four and a half percent up from three and a half percent, which

00:11:48.400 | is where we were right around the rate cut beginning in

00:11:51.040 | September. And remember, since those rate cuts began in

00:11:52.960 | September, we've cut 75 basis points. And we're still seeing

00:11:58.480 | the kind of tenure treasury hold high, which kind of implies

00:12:02.080 | that there's expected to be persistent inflation. In fact,

00:12:05.280 | the October inflation number accelerated again. So it's back

00:12:08.800 | up, not going down, it's I think it went up to 2.6% up from 2.3%

00:12:13.040 | the month prior, these general kind of effects that are

00:12:15.840 | predicted from the Trump policy plans is having an effect in

00:12:19.360 | different markets, obviously, in equities, we're seeing more

00:12:22.080 | kind of risk seeking risk taking. And then in the bond

00:12:24.880 | markets, because of the four and a half percent treasury yield,

00:12:28.240 | there's a really interesting dynamic. And I kind of sent this

00:12:31.280 | this link out yesterday. But if you look at the spread on yields

00:12:37.200 | between US treasuries, which have historically been kind of

00:12:40.240 | considered and talked about and are deemed the risk free rate,

00:12:43.600 | and the yield that corporates have to pay to borrow money, we

00:12:49.920 | haven't seen a spread this low in 26 years. So it's a 17 year

00:12:56.080 | low for the spread between the yield that companies that issue

00:13:00.640 | junk bonds have to pay from treasuries. And it's a 26 year

00:13:05.280 | low for credit grade bonds. So this means the market is either

00:13:08.880 | more risk seeking, meaning they're looking for more yield,

00:13:11.680 | and they're going into corporates because they feel

00:13:13.840 | like there is a higher probability that these companies

00:13:16.880 | are going to be successful in the future, they're not going to

00:13:18.640 | have higher default rates, etc. So the market is becoming much

00:13:21.760 | more risk seeking. Or the alternative is that parts of the

00:13:26.080 | market are reassessing the risk free nature of treasuries

00:13:28.880 | themselves. If spending doesn't get under control, the treasury

00:13:32.320 | market appetite is decreasing. So there's this kind of spread

00:13:35.600 | that's shrunk in the last couple of months. So we're seeing

00:13:38.480 | capital flooding into the markets for risk seeking assets.

00:13:40.800 | And this is obviously affecting crypto equities, and, and bond

00:13:44.320 | markets all across the board. And we'll talk a little bit

00:13:46.960 | about IPO and M&A later. Great. Chamath, your thoughts? Aside

00:13:50.560 | from yum yum? I mean, yum, yum, you could say it. It's gonna be

00:13:58.320 | just say it. No, I mean, look, what did I say at the beginning

00:14:02.880 | of the year was going to be the biggest risk asset? Winning

00:14:07.920 | trade? Yeah, it's great. Bitcoin's great. Lord, I haven't

00:14:12.080 | seen you this happy.

00:14:12.880 | What made you more happy? Getting to Momon and spending

00:14:21.280 | time with your white truffle dealer? Or watching Bitcoin

00:14:24.320 | break 90k? Which one was more exciting for you?

00:14:28.880 | Honestly, you know what I think about? I actually think about

00:14:31.200 | all the Bitcoin I sold.

00:14:32.480 | I had a bunch of Bitcoin in my funds when I managed outside

00:14:40.400 | capital. You know, that's a, I don't know, a $3 or $4 billion

00:14:45.680 | mistake and growing now, because my partners at the time

00:14:48.960 | capitulated and I wanted to be a good team member and we

00:14:52.960 | distributed and it was profitable. But obviously, I

00:14:56.640 | shouldn't have sold it. Would have made them a lot more money.

00:14:59.440 | And then I think about like, I bought some land. I remember

00:15:04.640 | Tahoe. It was in the Wall Street Journal. I'm sure you can find

00:15:08.320 | it. But yeah, how much is that worth now? Probably a couple

00:15:12.800 | hundred million dollars, maybe more.

00:15:14.320 | Rough trade, rough trade. But you do have Bitcoin holdings.

00:15:17.360 | Can I ask you a question? Why do you say sold Bitcoin, as

00:15:21.680 | opposed to converted Bitcoin into dollars? Like when you

00:15:24.720 | think about Bitcoin, just as a participant, do you think about

00:15:28.960 | Bitcoin as a dollar denominated asset that you go and buy

00:15:32.240 | Bitcoin and then you're eventually going to sell it,

00:15:33.680 | turn it back into dollars and use the dollars? Or are you

00:15:36.400 | like, what do you think about the purist kind of idea that

00:15:38.720 | Bitcoin should be the de facto currency and store of value in

00:15:42.640 | the future and the dollar doesn't matter. And we shouldn't

00:15:45.040 | necessarily be talking about the value of Bitcoin in dollar

00:15:47.920 | denominated terms as something I'm going to eventually turn it

00:15:50.240 | back into.

00:15:51.120 | It hasn't happened yet. And so until it happens, I think you

00:15:54.080 | have to view it as like a very good gold proxy. But it's a

00:16:02.000 | largely dollar denominated asset.

00:16:07.600 | Now, why do you see it going the other way? Like, so a lot

00:16:10.960 | of folks thought that as a safe haven, it should do well when

00:16:14.400 | there's a negative economic outlook, but it has traded the

00:16:18.080 | last couple of years kind of the opposite.

00:16:20.560 | No, it's a totally correlated asset. I mean, yeah, there will

00:16:24.800 | be a point. And it's probably in our lifetime, where it is an

00:16:31.360 | independent asset, and a non speculative store of value.

00:16:36.640 | There will be that day, but that day is not now. And I think

00:16:41.040 | it's very important to see the conditions on the field as they

00:16:44.720 | are versus what you wish it to be. And, and the reason is that

00:16:48.960 | it allows you to risk manage more appropriately. Because if

00:16:52.640 | you don't see it, then when something happens to the dollar

00:16:56.880 | complex, good or bad, or when something happens to rates, good

00:17:00.960 | or bad, or when something stimulative happens, good or bad,

00:17:03.920 | you're not going to react properly if you're in the

00:17:07.040 | business of managing it as a risk asset. So if you're in the

00:17:10.560 | set it and forget it bucket, and there are some people, I think

00:17:15.280 | it's great. None of these conversations matter. But like

00:17:18.400 | most people, you're probably going to be motivated to do

00:17:22.640 | something. And I think if you're motivated to do something, or

00:17:27.200 | you have FOMO that stimulates you to do something, whatever

00:17:30.240 | the psychology is that leads you to action, it's probably

00:17:34.000 | important to just view things as they really are versus how you

00:17:37.920 | wish them to be. And so I think the purists may eventually be

00:17:42.400 | right, I think they will be right at some point in my

00:17:44.240 | lifetime, but they're not right now. And that's why these things

00:17:47.920 | are correlated. And the other the other thing I'll say just

00:17:52.480 | broadly about the market is, I think that there's a tremendous

00:17:55.840 | amount of optimism about the economy. I think that's why you

00:17:58.400 | see risk spreads get crushed. Definitely. Yeah. And I think

00:18:02.640 | that as long as we see the kind of prognostications that the

00:18:07.280 | Trump administration is putting out, I think people are going to

00:18:11.440 | be mostly bullish. I think the way that this trade turns around

00:18:16.320 | is when something actually breaks in terms of the inflation

00:18:21.440 | picture, or in terms of the deficit picture. And if those

00:18:26.160 | things look like going into 2025, that President Trump's

00:18:31.280 | actions are not going to be able to course correct it, then I

00:18:33.440 | think you're going to see people go massively risk off, which I

00:18:37.520 | think will not be great for markets, obviously, right now,

00:18:40.880 | we're not in that point.

00:18:41.840 | And you don't think that tenure reflects that already at four

00:18:45.120 | and a half percent? I mean, that's showing some degree of

00:18:47.600 | inflation and concern about the deficit. Right? It's like,

00:18:52.720 | I think, I think the tenure could be at 7%. Yeah. What is

00:18:59.200 | four and a half percent mean? I mean, if you're if you're going

00:19:01.760 | to run 8% of GDP level deficits for the next four or five or six

00:19:07.760 | years? Yeah. You're going to have the tenure at seven to 8%.

00:19:13.280 | That's just mathematical, right?

00:19:15.200 | facts, your thoughts on crypto before we get into IPOs and M&A,

00:19:21.120 | if and,

00:19:22.000 | yeah, just on crypto, the House Republicans already passed a

00:19:25.920 | framework for crypto regulation earlier this year, it actually

00:19:29.120 | got 71 democrats to join it, it was called the financial

00:19:32.720 | innovation and technology for the 21st century actor fit 21.

00:19:37.520 | And it would classify digital assets like crypto as commodities

00:19:42.000 | regulated by the CFTC. If the blockchain they run on is is

00:19:45.600 | quote, functional and decentralized. That's the key

00:19:48.640 | requirement. If their blockchain is functional, but not

00:19:52.320 | decentralized, then there'd be concerned securities and fall

00:19:55.600 | into the purview of the SEC. I think the the crypto industry

00:19:59.280 | basically wants a really clear line for knowing when they're a

00:20:02.560 | commodity, and they want commodities be governed, governed

00:20:06.160 | like all other commodities by the CFTC. So that's what the

00:20:09.280 | Republican bill would do. I think with the republicans now

00:20:12.240 | winning the Senate, the prospects for that bill to get

00:20:15.360 | enacted are now greatly improved, especially because

00:20:19.360 | Sherrod Brown, who used to run the banking committee just lost

00:20:23.600 | to Bernie Moreno, this was a seat in Ohio. Elizabeth Warren

00:20:28.720 | is still going to object to this legislation, but she's just

00:20:31.840 | going to have way less influence. And like you said,

00:20:34.080 | it's not clear that Gary Gensler is going to be sticking

00:20:36.480 | around very long at the SEC. So look, the bottom line here is

00:20:40.480 | that I think that we are close to having clear rules of the

00:20:43.840 | road codified by Congress, which is what the crypto industry's

00:20:47.200 | been asking for. And the days of Gensler terrorizing crypto

00:20:50.960 | companies by issuing Wells notices without clarifying what

00:20:54.880 | the rules are that he's in prosecuting, those days are

00:20:57.920 | about to be over. So I think this is why the crypto markets

00:21:01.040 | are rallying.

00:21:03.200 | And so to your point, if it's centralized, or partially

00:21:07.680 | centralized, you're going to be a security. If you're

00:21:10.720 | decentralized, anybody can join the network, no one person

00:21:13.920 | controls the network. And I guess most people would consider

00:21:17.040 | that Bitcoin versus say, ripple, which is partially

00:21:19.680 | decentralized, but largely centralized. And that's going

00:21:22.240 | to be, I guess, the new rules of the road. In addition to that,

00:21:26.400 | there are new rules that are being enforced that hopefully

00:21:30.560 | Trump's 21 passes, right? This bill is called 21. But I think

00:21:35.520 | much, much higher likelihood that it or something like it now

00:21:38.560 | can get through the Congress sense. Yeah.

00:21:40.400 | And then there's also legislation that's already been

00:21:43.120 | enacted. That's there's multiple ways and multiple paths, but

00:21:47.200 | accredited investors, there's going to be a path to becoming

00:21:50.960 | an accredited investor with a test. So that is something that

00:21:54.160 | is also on the docket. We'll see if it happens. Let's talk about

00:21:56.800 | IPOs and M&A yum yum boys. Just a level set here with the

00:22:01.920 | audience. Here's the number of IPOs per year. And as you can

00:22:07.200 | see, the last three years have been some of the lowest since

00:22:11.280 | 2008 and 2009. The Great Recession for those of you who

00:22:15.520 | are old enough to remember it. And if you look at VC, the

00:22:20.880 | number of distributions have been absolutely on the floor for

00:22:25.520 | the past three years. In fact, if you look at the

00:22:27.520 | distributions from 2022, through 2024, those three years

00:22:31.600 | combined, it's been around 200 billion, which is less than

00:22:35.440 | 2019 in total. And with this year projected to be about 100

00:22:41.040 | billion in distributions, that's about 14% of the peak ZURP era.

00:22:46.000 | When in 2021, we had $710 billion in distribution here. So

00:22:54.560 | the backroom buzz is that Donnie from Queens is going to

00:22:58.240 | make M&A great again. A couple of reasons there sacks the wrath

00:23:02.800 | of Lena Kahn's coming to an end. Mag seven, sitting on massive

00:23:07.040 | amounts of cash and that cash is growing as people have laid

00:23:10.320 | people off and they're focused on getting fit. Obviously, we

00:23:14.240 | all know the Fed did another quarter point cut last week,

00:23:18.080 | although some people maybe don't know that because it seems to

00:23:20.480 | have gotten lost in the election news. And psychologically, I

00:23:25.360 | think everybody's feeling very optimistic. So maybe these IPOs

00:23:28.480 | are back on the menu. Chamath, I don't know if you saw it, but

00:23:31.760 | Klarna just filed for their IPO. That's a Swedish fintech

00:23:35.280 | company. They were kind of the pioneers in buy now pay later.

00:23:38.160 | What are the other IPOs we could see file in 2025 Databricks,

00:23:43.040 | Stripe, Wiz, Canva, Plaid, Rippling and Airtable. There's a

00:23:48.080 | long shot that people have been buzzing about. I don't have any

00:23:51.200 | inside information, but people have been speculating SpaceX

00:23:54.000 | could IPO Starlink, their Starlink unit. And if you want to

00:23:57.440 | get really crazy, Chamath, maybe there's a long shot that Sam

00:24:01.440 | Altman jumps the fence and decides he's going to take open

00:24:04.000 | AI public during this window that people expect to be

00:24:07.680 | opening. What do you think Chamath? What's going to happen

00:24:09.440 | here in terms of M&A and IPOs in 2025?

00:24:14.160 | I think it's going to still be pretty subdued. I don't think

00:24:19.440 | that you're going to see these crazy M&A deals that I think

00:24:25.440 | everybody is expecting. I also don't anticipate a lot of these

00:24:33.120 | big companies going public, at least in the first half of the

00:24:37.520 | year. And the only reason I say that is I just think that

00:24:42.480 | this year, and the first half of next year, what's the

00:24:46.400 | difference? The IPO market is what the IPO market is. And if

00:24:49.600 | the 10 year is back to, you know, four and a half, 5%,

00:24:53.040 | that's not a compelling strategy for some SaaS company, or some

00:24:57.520 | internet business that didn't take an opportunity to go

00:25:01.600 | public when rates were at zero. So if you just look

00:25:05.520 | mathematically at what the actual fair value of these

00:25:08.480 | companies should be, I don't know, it's not like such a

00:25:12.160 | great IPO market. Then on the M&A side, if all you're doing

00:25:16.240 | is waiting for Lena Khan to not be there, to me, I think that

00:25:21.680 | that betrays what M&A is supposed to be, which is, you're

00:25:25.280 | supposed to underwrite some industrial logic from first

00:25:27.760 | principles where things are very accretive, and very

00:25:31.760 | accretive things should not hang by a thread on the emotional

00:25:37.440 | regulation or dysregulation of the FTC Commissioner.

00:25:42.160 | So I kind of think that you would have seen some of this

00:25:45.200 | stuff already as well, if the industrial logic was so high.

00:25:48.640 | And again, when rates are non trivially high, I just think

00:25:52.720 | that it's not the easiest thing in the world to pull off like a

00:25:55.280 | really big M&A event. Nor is it a really easy thing to pull off

00:25:58.400 | to pull off a huge IPO when Yeah, again, there's a reason why

00:26:01.920 | Warren Buffett has $325 billion sitting in T bills, making four

00:26:07.360 | and a half percent a year, he owns more T bills in the United

00:26:10.240 | States government, he's making about $15 billion a year in

00:26:14.080 | interest, when you can do that, with absolutely no risk. Again,

00:26:19.600 | relative to stocks, at least, yeah, what is this IPO going to

00:26:23.040 | give you two months, right? Like the 10 years at four and a

00:26:25.360 | half percent, you're basically paying 20 times cash flow to

00:26:28.960 | own a risk free bond, the US Treasury bond, or you can pay

00:26:32.800 | 23 times to 30. Yeah, it's 30 times to own the S&P 500. Right

00:26:38.400 | now. It's so yeah, it's but but there is a lot of risk seeking

00:26:42.400 | shifting happening to math, right. So I mean, we talked

00:26:44.400 | about like some of the crypto stuff, some of the fintech

00:26:46.640 | stuff, deregulation, that the PE might seem high today. But if

00:26:51.840 | you forecast out 10 years for some of these businesses in a

00:26:55.600 | deregulated, de taxed environment, or reduced tax

00:26:59.600 | reduced regulation environment, that the earnings should

00:27:03.120 | accelerate in a way that outpaces the multiple you're

00:27:06.720 | getting today, right. So I mean, this is part of why some

00:27:09.360 | of the fintech companies are ripping right now, why some of

00:27:12.000 | the finance companies are ripping right now, if under

00:27:14.560 | Trump, and the Republican control of the House and Senate,

00:27:17.280 | laws don't pass and regulations get reduced. Theoretically,

00:27:21.120 | earnings are going to rip. And you should pay a higher

00:27:23.520 | multiple today, because you're actually buying these things at

00:27:25.840 | eight to 10 times earnings five years from now. So there seems

00:27:29.760 | to be some risk appetite there. But I do agree with Chamath on

00:27:32.080 | the M&A point. If you think about what's gone on over the

00:27:35.760 | last couple of years, big hold on a second, can I ask you a

00:27:38.000 | question? Do you think that regulation is the reason why

00:27:40.320 | the SAS companies have never made $1 profit?

00:27:42.720 | No, no, I'm not talking about SAS. I'm not talking about SAS.

00:27:46.080 | I'm talking about industrial companies. No, the fintech

00:27:50.240 | market. Right. So we were talking about fintech and some

00:27:52.880 | of these assets earlier. Some of these equities, it's a very

00:27:57.920 | narrow part of the economy, right? Like, if you look at

00:28:00.800 | brought like on a broad based basis, the 10s and 10s of

00:28:04.560 | trillions of dollars of market cap that exist. I do agree with

00:28:09.120 | you that deregulation benefits a bunch of those companies. But

00:28:14.000 | it benefits sort of the non tech businesses more than the tech

00:28:16.960 | businesses. The tech businesses right now are relatively lightly

00:28:19.840 | regulated. Yeah, I would think that it benefits pharma

00:28:22.560 | businesses, it benefits ag businesses, it benefits real

00:28:25.840 | estate companies, it benefits a whole a whole swath of the

00:28:29.360 | economy. But we've started to see that re rating. And maybe

00:28:33.680 | we'll see a lot more. So maybe Jason, the more nuanced answer

00:28:36.400 | to your question is the kind of M&A that I think you want to

00:28:38.880 | see that I mean, let's face it that we all want to see here

00:28:41.280 | because we all have a vested interest, which is really

00:28:44.000 | specifically tech M&A. I don't think that any of this

00:28:47.040 | deregulation particularly accelerates that but maybe a

00:28:50.800 | more nuanced take on this would be that these other more

00:28:55.440 | regulated parts of the economy could do well and catch up to

00:28:59.200 | some of the earnings potential or the forward pricing of the

00:29:02.240 | tech businesses. But again, now you get into this weird trade

00:29:05.920 | where you can buy steady cash flowing businesses that can

00:29:11.360 | grow in valuation as fast as a as a fast growing but money

00:29:15.760 | losing tech business. But then you trade both of those two

00:29:18.880 | things off and it has effectively the same yield as a

00:29:22.480 | tenure. What do you do? Yeah, yeah, I you know, I, I think

00:29:26.880 | there's a lot of backed up inventory, where venture

00:29:31.840 | capital is boards and founders, people who control and make

00:29:34.720 | these decisions on M&A if they would sell the company to a

00:29:38.960 | larger company. I think there's a lot of exhaustion in the

00:29:41.760 | market. And that will drive the capitulation on valuation.

00:29:45.440 | What do you think the valuations will be? Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

00:29:47.840 | why would I know? I'm watching it right now. I mean, you think

00:29:52.000 | Warren Buffett's gonna take 325 billion of cash? No, no, but I

00:29:55.120 | do. I do these own stock. So I think in a pay in terms of a

00:29:59.120 | multiple, I think it'll be more like Salesforce or Microsoft or

00:30:02.000 | Google, or Amazon, getting off the sidelines, because they've

00:30:05.920 | looked at and said, you know what, the juice ain't worth the

00:30:07.680 | squeeze, we might as well put our efforts and our capital into

00:30:11.040 | buying big hardware, and building new products and

00:30:14.160 | services. But if they think, hey, I got a chance of pulling

00:30:16.480 | this through, I'm sitting on all this cash. What if I hit

00:30:19.440 | another YouTube and Instagram, you know, really great

00:30:22.800 | acquisitions that were transformative for those two

00:30:25.040 | companies meta would not be where it is right now, Facebook,

00:30:27.680 | you know that well, Jamal, if they hadn't gotten Instagram,

00:30:30.400 | and certainly, you know, Friedberg as an alumni of Google,

00:30:33.360 | if they didn't get YouTube, it would be a completely different

00:30:35.840 | picture for that company right now. I think there's a lot of

00:30:38.240 | those acquisitions. I think there's a lot of those

00:30:41.280 | acquisitions that have been sitting there waiting, and I'm

00:30:43.600 | watching the secondary markets to your question, what's the

00:30:47.040 | discount going to be? The discount was last year, I kid

00:30:50.080 | you not 70 8090% off the last round for SAS companies. And

00:30:54.880 | this year, it's 20 or 30. I'm seeing this when I'm getting

00:30:58.400 | offers to buy our shares in some private SAS companies, some

00:31:01.520 | private fintech companies. And then I also think, if you're a

00:31:05.760 | CEO, and you watch Robin Hood, Uber, Reddit, DoorDash, and

00:31:12.960 | Instacart, those five have actually after getting a little

00:31:16.640 | bit of an ass kicking, when they first went out, they have all

00:31:20.000 | rebounded massively. And for the people who held on to their

00:31:23.600 | Reddit shares, Robin Hood shares, Uber shares, they have

00:31:26.160 | been rewarded massively, massively for having faith in,

00:31:30.240 | you know, through this storm. So I think those two things, the

00:31:33.360 | capitulation of all these boards and founders are going to say,

00:31:36.720 | you know what, let's take the haircut, let's go public. And

00:31:40.000 | let's tell our story and see if we can make it work as a public

00:31:43.360 | company. And then the people who feel one step weaker than

00:31:46.000 | that, I think they want to catch their chips. And they've been in

00:31:48.560 | some of these investments, Jamal, it's year 11 1213 14. For

00:31:52.160 | some of these private companies, there is capitulation on those

00:31:54.800 | boards, people are exhausted. So that I just I'm gonna, I'm gonna

00:31:57.520 | take the other side of the argument on this one, all kind

00:31:59.840 | of play along. So I think, and I'll disagree a little bit for

00:32:04.800 | a couple different reasons. These big tech companies, the

00:32:07.760 | ones that have had, you know, media businesses, or because

00:32:12.480 | remember, there's tech, that's tech, right? Nvidia does not

00:32:14.800 | have a media business. But there's been a conversation over

00:32:17.440 | the last couple of years, where we need to break up big tech has

00:32:20.880 | been kind of part of the conversation with the dams. And

00:32:22.960 | now the republicans are coming in, and they're saying the same

00:32:24.960 | thing, we got to break up big tech. So there, I think, are a

00:32:27.600 | few of these companies, Google being one of them that are very

00:32:30.080 | much handicapped right now, with respect to what kind of M&A

00:32:33.840 | they can do without dealing with the regulatory sledgehammer

00:32:38.160 | coming down on them. So I don't think that those guys are buyers,

00:32:40.640 | Jay Cal, I don't think that Google's in a place right now

00:32:42.480 | where they can go out and make a bunch of acquisitions, they're

00:32:44.880 | going to do everything they can to avoid the regulatory

00:32:47.920 | sledgehammer that's coming their way. First, it was coming from

00:32:50.160 | the dams. Now it's coming from the new administration. There's

00:32:52.800 | a bunch of other companies, you know, that don't really fit that

00:32:55.440 | bill, like Microsoft probably doesn't fit that bill, Nvidia,

00:32:58.160 | Adobe, maybe they'll make some acquisitions, but I don't think

00:33:01.760 | it's as simple as well. We'll sell it a low price, we'll buy

00:33:04.880 | it a low price. I'm just not sure they really come to do that

00:33:07.760 | right with you. I completely agree. I think that these big

00:33:13.120 | tech companies will need to pay a pound of flesh for the

00:33:18.320 | deplatforming and the censorship that they did.

00:33:20.560 | And there's a perfect time if we're going to go to the

00:33:23.760 | political angle to bring you in sacks, what are the vibes? My

00:33:27.280 | perception is Trump likes to win. And Trump wants to see the

00:33:31.200 | economy soar. That is his platform. He's a business guy. I

00:33:36.240 | think he wants to see fluidity. I know JD has been not a fan of

00:33:40.560 | like the Googles, etc. So maybe you could help us navigate this

00:33:44.240 | who's right here. What's the possibility of M&A becoming more

00:33:47.520 | vibrant in a Trump administration?

00:33:50.320 | Well, there's no question that in general, President Trump wants

00:33:54.240 | to have the most vibrant economy we can have. And I think to that

00:33:57.680 | end, you're going to see the end of this era of deceleration of

00:34:03.200 | regulatory capture and lawfare. I think all those things are

00:34:07.520 | over. I think that equities that have been straining or tamped

00:34:14.080 | down under the weight of these abuses, you see them ripping

00:34:16.880 | now, for example, Tesla, it's gone from roughly 250 to 320 a

00:34:21.440 | share just since the election. And you could call that the

00:34:24.800 | lawfare discount. I mean, that basically is the discount on

00:34:27.600 | Tesla stock because the market was pricing in the risk of

00:34:31.760 | retaliation. If the Republicans lost, there's a widespread

00:34:35.120 | belief that the democrats would go after Elon and his company.

00:34:39.440 | So you can actually measure the lawfare discount based on

00:34:42.800 | some regulation, right? Because there's a lot of regulations

00:34:45.280 | around self driving, rocket ship launches, all those things

00:34:48.160 | he's involved in. There's a lot of regulation. There's this

00:34:50.480 | crazy thing where they they made some regulator made a put a

00:34:54.400 | headset on a seal. Did you see this to test the effect on

00:34:59.040 | loud noises? The sonic sonic booms? Yeah, this poor seal. Do

00:35:02.720 | you see this for sale?

00:35:03.520 | Don't do that to free bird. You don't know. Don't put it on

00:35:08.640 | the screen. Put it in post. Don't put on the screen. It's

00:35:12.160 | free bird. It's gonna anyway, so they subjected this poor seal

00:35:15.600 | to exactly the thing that they were worried would harm seals.

00:35:19.520 | In any event, the seal seemed totally fine. It didn't. They

00:35:22.640 | torture sales to make a point. I got it. Yeah. Anyway, it's

00:35:25.520 | really crazy. So yeah, this crazy about this JD help us

00:35:29.920 | navigate. I know JD is the VP and then you have Trump is the

00:35:33.440 | CEO. Chamath pointed out maybe there's a little on the GOP

00:35:37.200 | anger resentment residual because of the you know, banning

00:35:43.520 | of Trump from YouTube and some of these other platforms. Do you

00:35:46.560 | think that makes its way into M&A or not?

00:35:49.200 | I guess sacks like, let me be specific to Jake house question.

00:35:52.240 | Not all tech companies are the same in that point of view,

00:35:55.280 | right? And so like, yeah, tech M&A generally is a thing. But

00:35:59.440 | specifically the companies that have had social media platforms

00:36:03.440 | may be kind of in a different lens from a regulatory

00:36:08.720 | perspective. Is that fair? Yeah, I mean, look, I think that

00:36:13.360 | not everything Lena Khan did was bad. In fact, she definitely

00:36:17.280 | has some fans among the populist Republicans and yeah, you know,

00:36:21.680 | some of them who've spoken out on her behalf in various areas

00:36:24.800 | have been JD Vance, Matt Gaetz as well. She did do some good

00:36:28.320 | things. Specifically, she was willing to take on the big tech

00:36:31.440 | companies. I mean, companies like Amazon, Apple, Google,

00:36:35.680 | frankly, they just had a free ride for the last couple of

00:36:38.080 | decades where they're allowed to do anything. And she came in

00:36:41.120 | and said there's a new sheriff in town and she was actually

00:36:43.360 | willing to apply pressure on them to not engage in anti

00:36:47.920 | competitive tactics. So I think she deserves credit for that. I

00:36:51.040 | think she did change the conversation. I think that we've

00:36:54.880 | talked about on previous pods that perhaps there was not as

00:36:59.360 | targeted and surgical an approach was used. And as a

00:37:03.040 | result of that, it did have a chilling effect on M&A. And so

00:37:06.880 | it hurt the, you know, the small tech environment. And so I

00:37:10.480 | think that we need to fix that part of it. But I hope that

00:37:12.880 | whoever replaces Lena Khan will continue to apply pressure to

00:37:16.560 | big tech because they are monopolies, and they will abuse

00:37:19.760 | their power if they're allowed to, and they need to be

00:37:21.920 | controlled.

00:37:22.400 | sacks, if you had to handicap the probability of a lawsuit or

00:37:31.360 | some kind of attempt to dismantle Google and Facebook,

00:37:39.680 | would those be the two companies at the top of your list? And how

00:37:43.440 | would you handicap that?

00:37:44.320 | So my view is that Google should be broken up. There's abundant

00:37:48.320 | reasons for that. There's at least three monopolies in that

00:37:51.440 | company. There's the search business, the advertising

00:37:53.600 | business and YouTube, I think they should be busted up. What

00:37:57.040 | are the odds that that happens? It's hard to say, but what are

00:38:01.680 | the odds that that is pursued in the next administration in some

00:38:06.080 | capacity, or at least investigated? I'd say hi. I'd

00:38:09.920 | say, Facebook or meta less, so I don't see the compelling need

00:38:14.880 | to, to bust them up. But quite frankly, I think the issue that

00:38:19.920 | meta is going to face is just there were a lot of abuses in

00:38:22.720 | terms of censoring the free speech rights of Americans. Now,

00:38:26.560 | I don't think that was all the company's idea. I think a lot of

00:38:30.240 | pressure was put on the company by the Biden administration. I

00:38:34.320 | think they wanted to do the right thing, and just didn't

00:38:36.640 | show enough backbone. I think

00:38:38.160 | it's Zuckerberg's been clear that he regrets it. Yeah. So I

00:38:42.000 | guess Anthony now he's like, Listen, I'm not gonna do it

00:38:44.560 | again. Yeah, he published a letter. And maybe it was done to

00:38:48.160 | some degree to inoculate himself against the result of this

00:38:50.400 | election. But I'd say, to his credit, it wasn't clear at all

00:38:54.160 | who's going to win the election when he put out that letter. And

00:38:56.880 | he basically said that he regretted the fact that meta had

00:39:01.200 | gone along with the censorship requests by the Biden

00:39:03.680 | administration. And he specifically referred to that

00:39:05.920 | whole Hunter Biden story that got censored in 2020. That was

00:39:10.560 | election interference. It was a completely true story by the New

00:39:13.600 | York Post that got censored by Big Tech at the request of these

00:39:18.720 | 51 former intelligence officials who were lying through their

00:39:22.480 | teeth claiming it was Russian disinformation. So he clearly

00:39:25.840 | regrets going along with that. In any event, I think there are

00:39:29.440 | better ways of handling the speech issue on social networks

00:39:32.640 | than busting up Facebook. But I do think, though, that Congress

00:39:37.440 | should investigate or continue investigating what went

00:39:40.400 | wrong there. And what exactly is the involvement of the

00:39:44.800 | intelligence community and the deep state in the censorship

00:39:48.720 | requests that we saw exposed by the Twitter files? Remember,

00:39:52.480 | can I bring up something maybe tangential and you can react to

00:39:55.360 | this? Just speaking of kind of like censorship, and then just

00:39:59.440 | the media complex that we have. I saw today that Trump filed

00:40:05.200 | like a 10 or $15 billion lawsuit against the broadcast

00:40:08.800 | networks. Maybe this is old news, but I may and maybe I just

00:40:11.920 | saw the news headline go by on x I don't I don't know. Yeah, I

00:40:15.120 | saw it as well. Yeah, didn't. And then separately, with Bobby

00:40:19.760 | Kennedy's nomination to HHS, one of the things that he has said

00:40:23.920 | that he wants to put an end to is the advertising that pharma

00:40:29.600 | does on these broadcast stations. If you put these two

00:40:32.160 | things together, where you deprive these folks of their

00:40:35.600 | largest revenue source, and at the same time, they have to sort

00:40:39.040 | of like answer for censorship or manipulating content. It does,

00:40:45.040 | do you think that that changes the landscape of how all these

00:40:48.400 | companies behave in the future? Or how do you think that that

00:40:50.880 | plays out?

00:40:51.360 | Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So all right, let's take each one of

00:40:54.960 | those. So on the the broadcasters, and we've talked

00:40:58.320 | about this before the big broadcast networks, and their

00:41:01.680 | affiliates receive free spectrum licenses from the FCC,

00:41:05.600 | and they get some of the most valuable spectrum there is

00:41:08.720 | through those licenses in exchange for certain requirements

00:41:13.280 | that their broadcaster in the public interest, namely, they

00:41:15.600 | have to follow a fairness doctrine, which is supposed to

00:41:19.040 | mean that you give equal time to both candidates. Well, in the

00:41:22.080 | final weeks of this campaign, we saw some really egregious

00:41:24.640 | abuses. NBC brought on Kamala Harris, but not Donald Trump for

00:41:29.200 | a very favorable segment on Saturday Night Live the week

00:41:32.480 | before the election. Separately, you saw 60 Minutes deceptively

00:41:37.360 | edit an interview with Kamala Harris, where they actually took

00:41:41.600 | one of her answers from one question and put it as the

00:41:44.320 | answer to another question. I mean, really deceptive. So you

00:41:47.360 | have a couple of examples with both CBS and NBC, which were

00:41:53.120 | violating the equal time requirement. We're clearly

00:41:56.560 | working on behalf of the Kamala Harris campaign. And when you

00:41:59.600 | look at the coverage itself, this election was the most

00:42:04.480 | unequal in terms of favorable coverage, it was something like

00:42:07.120 | a 60 point difference. So something like Kamala Kamala

00:42:10.960 | Harris received 87% favorable coverage and Trump received

00:42:15.440 | something like 85% negative coverage. So it there's no way

00:42:19.360 | it was that according to you know, yeah, there's a it's a

00:42:22.080 | report by Brent Bezell's media watchdog group that's been

00:42:26.640 | around forever and it's been recording this stuff in every

00:42:29.280 | election for the last 30 years. In any event, I think that

00:42:33.040 | there's a very strong argument that the broadcasters have not

00:42:35.600 | been fair. That's a violation of their licensed requirements.

00:42:38.640 | And we should be reevaluating their spectrum, especially

00:42:41.680 | because it's not the highest best use of the great irony of

00:42:44.240 | this, though, sex is that they have already been demolished. I

00:42:48.400 | don't know if you saw but a bunch of the anchors at CNN are

00:42:51.440 | not renewing because their advertising is so far off. That

00:42:55.200 | like Chris Wallace, I think was making 8 million a year, 9

00:42:57.680 | million a year. And he just said, I'm gonna go do podcasts

00:43:00.000 | because they think they lowballed his offer. And if they

00:43:02.480 | know, yeah, well, there's a bunch of advertising from pharma,

00:43:05.680 | which I think in some of these networks is a third or half. And

00:43:08.960 | that's all networks. That's from Fox to CNN, and every MSNBC,

00:43:12.160 | everybody combined. If they lose advertising from pharma, it's

00:43:16.800 | over. Like these, those news networks are going to lose half

00:43:20.800 | their revenue overnight. That would be a that would be a

00:43:24.800 | deathblow to your question. Yeah, well, let me let me get

00:43:27.440 | back to that. So just on CNN, and MSNBC, you're absolutely

00:43:30.640 | right that they're announcing a bunch of layoffs, their ratings

00:43:32.800 | are destroyed. I think they're down. MSNBC ratings are down

00:43:36.000 | like 50% since the election. What that tells me is that their

00:43:39.120 | own audience, right? Sorry, since the election? Yeah. And

00:43:44.000 | what that what that tells me is that their captive viewer base

00:43:47.040 | who's been tuning in for years to all of this TDS have has now

00:43:50.560 | realized that they were deceived by MSNBC, and they've

00:43:54.000 | lost credibility, even with their most fervent supporters.

00:43:57.680 | So there's no question that CNN, MSNBC, they're hurting. Now,

00:44:01.200 | Jake, I'll just make one small modification. They do not

00:44:04.080 | receive, they do not have spectrum licenses from the FCC,

00:44:07.040 | right? Because their cable network, so they're in kind of a

00:44:10.240 | different bucket. They don't have to abide by the fairness

00:44:13.040 | doctrine that CBS and NBC do, right? But they have different

00:44:17.920 | problems. And to your point about pharma, there's absolutely

00:44:21.520 | no reason to be allowing pharma advertisements on these TV

00:44:26.640 | networks. The fact of the matter is that people who are

00:44:28.880 | viewing those networks can't buy you can't buy pharmaceuticals

00:44:34.000 | without a prescription, right? It's up to doctors to write you

00:44:37.040 | the prescription. And this is why most countries most Western

00:44:40.400 | countries prohibit pharma advertising on the networks. And

00:44:44.320 | I think Bobby Kennedy has a very strong argument that it would

00:44:47.360 | serve the public interest not to allow this. We don't allow

00:44:50.880 | advertisements for tobacco, right?

00:44:55.280 | So I guess the thing that doesn't make sense to me, sex is

00:44:58.160 | you're so such a First Amendment, absolutist and free

00:45:04.480 | speech app absolutist, isn't it? And I'm not saying it's my

00:45:08.320 | opinion. But you know, my my challenge to you would be is

00:45:11.120 | tell me about freedom of speech and expression in relation to

00:45:15.920 | being able to do advertising for these products? Well, I mean,

00:45:18.880 | aren't they aren't consumers smart enough to figure it out?

00:45:22.240 | The point of the advertising is, I think is not at the end of

00:45:25.440 | the day to influence consumers, because consumers can't buy

00:45:28.160 | pharmaceuticals, they have to go. That's what they say in it.

00:45:30.160 | Ask your doctor about the purpose of the advertising is to

00:45:33.920 | buy favorable coverage. That's the point. And there are many

00:45:37.360 | examples. Explain that. Well, there are many examples of

00:45:41.280 | people who've worked in these networks saying that they had a

00:45:44.560 | story that was negative about pharma companies. And that

00:45:47.440 | story got spiked because the pharma companies are the biggest

00:45:49.920 | advertisers. In fact, I think it was there was a story about

00:45:53.520 | Fox News. And who? Who's the guy? Roger Ailes?

00:45:58.720 | Well, there's been a number of stories. I know what you're

00:46:01.920 | talking about. There's been stories about Anderson Cooper.

00:46:04.240 | Who's the the guy who does international coverage on the

00:46:08.960 | weekends? GPS is the name of a show. I'm drawing I can't

00:46:12.240 | remember right now read Zakaria. Thank you for reading

00:46:14.880 | Zakaria. Yes. I think a bunch of those shows were like literally

00:46:18.640 | brought to you by Pfizer brought to you by these things. And so

00:46:22.240 | those shows potentially would just go away. And then there

00:46:24.960 | were there was reporting on the number of times they would

00:46:27.440 | report on those companies. And it showed they didn't. So what

00:46:30.640 | do you think freeberg of should pharma companies be allowed to

00:46:34.640 | advertise to consumers to ask their doctors to ask them about

00:46:39.040 | Viagra? What's your take? He's thinking for those of you at

00:46:48.480 | home listening, he's giving a deep thought.

00:46:51.200 | Well, he's thinking, Jake, let me just say, yeah, I think I

00:46:53.600 | think there is there is a free speech issue that has to be

00:46:56.160 | weighed. Okay. So I don't want to be totally dismissive of

00:46:58.640 | that. However, I think that the Viagra example is a is on the

00:47:03.200 | like far end of the spectrum of a drug that by, you know, by

00:47:07.520 | advertising it, you could actually get consumers to

00:47:09.760 | request it from their doctor, I don't think most drugs are like

00:47:12.880 | that. And I think my contention would be that the real reason

00:47:16.800 | they're paying all this massive advertising is not to influence

00:47:20.640 | consumers, but to influence the coverage that they get. And

00:47:23.520 | there is something very corrupt about that. And I think that

00:47:26.960 | Bobby Kennedy has a really strong point that if you were to

00:47:29.520 | remove that incentive that many people inside the industry have

00:47:34.240 | admitted exists, then you get much fairer coverage of these

00:47:38.240 | pharma companies, and we would actually get to be a healthier

00:47:41.440 | country, because you wouldn't allow them to basically

00:47:44.080 | manipulate the public debate. So that that's the argument.

00:47:47.920 | Friberg, you want to chime in on it or no, I mean, I feel like

00:47:53.280 | there's some market correction that takes place here, which

00:47:56.640 | we're already seeing, which is the consumers are moving away,

00:48:01.040 | we just talked about moving away from cable news, moving

00:48:04.080 | away from legacy media, they don't trust it, the trust is at

00:48:08.320 | an all time low. I don't know if it's necessarily the

00:48:11.680 | government's job to determine who advertises what, where, how

00:48:15.840 | and why. I don't like the government having that sort of

00:48:19.040 | degree of authority, generally speaking, because it can then

00:48:21.680 | lead into the government having overreach and oversight to

00:48:24.640 | control entities that maybe are competitive with the government

00:48:28.480 | in different ways. I do believe that the the beef with big tech

00:48:33.280 | is a result of big tech's influence over the population

00:48:37.360 | where big government wants to have that degree of influence

00:48:40.160 | over the population. So it's actually a battle between

00:48:42.480 | government and private entities over who can influence the

00:48:46.400 | population, and who has the ability to control the

00:48:49.600 | narrative. And I think that the general concept that the

00:48:52.560 | government should be determining who advertises where, what, how

00:48:55.200 | and why is not a great one. And I don't think that consumers

00:48:58.720 | are dumb. I think that consumers are showing their

00:49:01.840 | proclivity for independent media and independent news

00:49:04.960 | sources, because they don't trust the influence that's been

00:49:08.400 | kind of imparted upon these other channels and these other

00:49:11.280 | sources. And they're moving away from it. So I don't know if

00:49:14.240 | it's as much kind of a regulatory question and big

00:49:16.480 | pharma needs to be affected. I think that the market to some

00:49:20.160 | degree does its job. I don't think the consumers are dumb. I

00:49:22.960 | will also just kind of counter one of sax's points, I think

00:49:26.720 | that there are drugs, like multiple sclerosis is a good

00:49:30.240 | example. There was a drug introduced a couple years ago

00:49:32.800 | called octopus, and it was a new therapy for multiple sclerosis

00:49:36.000 | that is extremely effective. It's a it's a really big step

00:49:40.320 | change in biological therapies. And a lot of people that were on

00:49:44.640 | Ms and have had Ms for decades, take kind of old school mall

00:49:48.720 | old school drugs that maybe aren't that effective. So to

00:49:51.760 | create awareness, and they're not regularly seeing their

00:49:53.760 | doctors, they may not go in and see their doctor every year like

00:49:55.920 | they're supposed to. So the pharma companies are creating

00:49:58.880 | awareness that there's this new modality in this new product

00:50:01.360 | that could help them to get them to go into the doctor's

00:50:03.840 | office. You know, so I don't want to say that these are all

00:50:06.720 | like evil, you know, trying to control and influence like

00:50:09.760 | there are good drugs that come to market, they are beneficial

00:50:11.840 | to people and people don't know about them. How else are they

00:50:13.920 | supposed to get that word out if they're not able to advertise?

00:50:16.560 | So I don't think that it's all like negative and all malicious,

00:50:20.000 | you know, kind of behavior and manipulation of media. People,

00:50:23.440 | we all have the resources, we all have the capacity. And we

00:50:26.880 | are all likely very frequently going to doctors. Most people

00:50:30.320 | don't. And so most people that have chronic disease or have

00:50:33.520 | health issues, there has to be a mechanism for, you know, making

00:50:37.440 | them aware of new options, new alternatives, new products that

00:50:39.920 | are coming to market. So I'm not super, like putting my foot

00:50:42.880 | down saying pharma companies shouldn't be able to advertise

00:50:45.040 | shouldn't be able to buy media out there and put ads up and

00:50:47.200 | tell people about stuff that they've discovered or that

00:50:49.600 | they've invented, that's been regulated, that's been tested,

00:50:52.320 | that's been approved, and that works and can help save lives.

00:50:55.040 | I think they should have the freedom and ability to do that.

00:50:57.760 | So I think there's a there's a bit of a nuance here to how this

00:51:00.480 | gets handled, is my point.

00:51:01.840 | Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not saying that there's no benefit

00:51:06.400 | at all to letting pharma companies advertise some

00:51:10.400 | products. I think the question you have to ask is, why is so

00:51:14.640 | much money going from pharma to these news outlets, because

00:51:19.600 | most of the products, you know, that you generally can't buy

00:51:22.800 | them. I'll tell you the reason. The reason is that the pharma

00:51:25.760 | companies make so much money off of government funded insurance

00:51:28.480 | programs. Let me just state that again. If we only had private

00:51:32.720 | insurance, or if consumers had to pay for their drugs and their

00:51:36.240 | therapies themselves, the cost of drugs would go way down. The

00:51:40.160 | reason the cost of drugs has gone way up is because so much

00:51:43.920 | of the government insurance programs don't negotiate drug

00:51:46.960 | prices. And there are all these middlemen and all these people

00:51:49.600 | that sit in between that have been regulated through

00:51:52.240 | regulatory capture into the system that has allowed an

00:51:55.280 | incredible inflation in the cost of drug prices. Therefore,

00:51:58.080 | there is a lot of money to kind of continue the capture of the

00:52:00.640 | system. I don't think that it is right. And I think that the

00:52:04.000 | free market generally or having a less regulatory captured

00:52:07.280 | market will allow an appropriate kind of pricing of therapies and

00:52:11.520 | appropriate kind of adjustment in the market, which doesn't

00:52:14.400 | exist today. So, so much money to kind of keep the market the

00:52:17.920 | way it is needs to kind of keep flowing. That's my sense of

00:52:20.800 | this. It's I don't think it's about bad drugs need to kind of

00:52:23.200 | stay in play. As much as it is this market's been allowed to

00:52:26.480 | inflate and the cost of health care and the cost of drugs has

00:52:29.040 | inflated in a way that's simply untenable. And it doesn't make

00:52:33.520 | sense. And I think that it's because of regulatory capture.

00:52:35.760 | And I think that that needs to change. And I'm hopeful that it

00:52:38.560 | does. That's the second reason then to get the this form of

00:52:41.440 | money out of advertising, because you're basically

00:52:43.840 | explaining it as like a self looking ice cream cone. But

00:52:46.560 | again, there's another reason as well. I think that explains

00:52:50.320 | the sheer magnitude, which is this influence buying its

00:52:53.520 | influence.

00:52:53.840 | To your point, sexism, that was what I was about to bring up,

00:52:57.680 | you know, there. It's very subtle, you're not going to have

00:53:01.760 | somebody at NBC, or CNN, or Fox come down and tell Tucker

00:53:06.080 | Carlson, or Rachel Maddow, or Anderson Cooper, hey, you can't

00:53:10.080 | cover the story. But there is a bunch of self censorship that

00:53:15.120 | occurs, I believe, where people just don't select certain

00:53:18.400 | stories to be on the docket. And they just shape the coverage.

00:53:22.320 | So they might not say something positive or negative about

00:53:25.520 | Pfizer, or Johnson Johnson, whoever it is, they'll just

00:53:29.280 | avoid that story. And because these anchors are getting paid,

00:53:34.000 | or have been previously paid 10 10 million 25 million a year.

00:53:38.000 | Do you think they're going to like, really go hard at Pfizer

00:53:41.520 | or somebody like that? No, they're just not going to I've

00:53:43.840 | been inside the machine. They just avoid those stories. Okay,

00:53:47.920 | let's keep going through the docket here. I think it was a

00:53:51.440 | pretty good conversation. I know, by the way, I just wanted

00:53:54.000 | to say to the Trump administration, if you want the

00:53:56.880 | economy to rip, let m&a rip. But my one caveat is is a really

00:54:01.600 | simple way to do this. If you're under a trillion dollar

00:54:04.240 | valuation, let those companies buy and sell each other because

00:54:07.600 | then we could go from a mag seven to a mag 70. That's where

00:54:11.120 | I think actually, it makes the most sense if you actually are

00:54:13.440 | concerned about the consolidation of power in the top

00:54:15.680 | seven, let them sit out acquiring more great companies

00:54:20.960 | and let the people under that who are the mid market cap

00:54:23.680 | companies, let them do the buying and selling because then

00:54:25.680 | you might have a mag eight, nine and 10 show up. That's not

00:54:28.240 | talking my book, it would be better for me Friedberg to let

00:54:31.360 | the mag seven participate because they can pay higher

00:54:33.440 | prices. They're not price sensitive. But I do think the

00:54:35.760 | mid market companies buying and selling would make a healthier

00:54:38.960 | environment for competition. So you think it sorry you think it

00:54:42.560 | creates more competition, which will that'll benefit and grow

00:54:46.240 | the economy? Well, look at it this way. If somebody wants to

00:54:49.280 | buy, let's say Waymo gets spun out, somebody wants to buy it,

00:54:52.320 | if Amazon can't buy it, and Tesla can't buy it, and Amazon

00:54:58.320 | can't buy it, but they could merge with Uber, Lyft, DoorDash,

00:55:03.440 | you know, all those mid Airbnb, if those companies could

00:55:06.000 | consolidate, can you imagine what would happen if Amazon

00:55:09.360 | couldn't buy those companies, but you could see Waymo spin

00:55:13.120 | out and then partner with DoorDash and partner with Airbnb

00:55:16.880 | and you had that as one company. Now you got a $400

00:55:19.520 | billion company that is nipping on the heels that is

00:55:22.240 | aggressively competing with Amazon. That's what you want in

00:55:25.280 | the market is more competition for the mag seven, you don't

00:55:28.480 | want the magnificent seven to run away with it. And we could

00:55:31.600 | create the eighth, ninth and 10. So just imagine that

00:55:34.000 | Friedberg there was a another trillion dollar company like I

00:55:37.760 | actually I think Tesla just became a trillion dollar

00:55:39.520 | company again. So now that they're up in those ranks,

00:55:41.920 | great. Don't let Tesla don't let Amazon, etc. Nvidia buy more

00:55:47.520 | companies, let those that mergers and acquisitions and

00:55:50.160 | that strength happen under the trillion dollar mark. What do

00:55:53.280 | you think of that general concept?

00:55:54.720 | Yeah, I generally think competition is good. I generally

00:55:58.960 | think free market should be allowed to operate. And I've

00:56:00.880 | shared my point of view, I think bigger is going to drive more

00:56:04.000 | innovation than lots of little. So okay, again, Waymo wouldn't

00:56:07.680 | exist if not for Google plowing billions and billions. And I

00:56:10.480 | don't know about you guys. I took Waymo around the city

00:56:12.720 | yesterday. Pretty sick. Like it is legit. I don't go to the

00:56:16.800 | city. Yeah. It's pretty legit. And I think that's a toxic

00:56:22.320 | cesspool. And by the way, I will say my other comment is I

00:56:26.000 | think San Francisco has gotten 10x better. Now that I've been

00:56:29.680 | working downtown the last week or two, 10x better from a toxic

00:56:34.240 | cesspool just being a cesspool. I think part of the fat part of

00:56:37.440 | the reason is all of Walgreens is gone. There's no Walgreens

00:56:40.720 | left. You can't buy deodorant. Problem solved. There's nowhere

00:56:44.160 | to do crime anymore. How do you buy a drugstore that doesn't

00:56:47.200 | exist in San Francisco? How do you do that? You gotta ask

00:56:50.160 | Jason. Jason, how do you get an Amazon package delivered? Yeah,

00:56:54.480 | I don't. Hey, man, I'm in Texas. You can do whatever you want

00:56:58.240 | here. Jason gets his supplies air dropped in once a month.

00:57:02.320 | What are you talking about? I'm bullish on the San Francisco

00:57:04.960 | turnaround because I think Daniel Lurie getting elected

00:57:08.000 | mayor was huge and this doesn't get really as much attention,

00:57:11.200 | but it's very important. The board shifted. The radicals got

00:57:14.720 | voted off the board of supervisors. So the board of

00:57:17.520 | supervisors are less progressive. Daniel's in the

00:57:19.840 | mayoral office. Good progress. And I think I think the city's

00:57:23.200 | already like turning around. I've been super blown away the

00:57:26.560 | last couple of weeks I've been downtown. I'm like, why am I

00:57:28.480 | not working downtown every day? It's actually really nice. It

00:57:31.360 | feels like San Francisco 20 years ago. Let's see. I'm

00:57:33.920 | pretty bullish. Yeah. I mean, safety is the number one thing.

00:57:36.640 | If they can and this budget needs to get put under control,

00:57:39.120 | San Francisco spends one and a half X per capita of what New

00:57:42.080 | York City spends and that's something that Daniel and his

00:57:45.440 | team have kind of said they're gonna address sort of like

00:57:48.000 | their own doge and there's a team going in there to address

00:57:50.720 | this. So, I'm really bullish on what's gonna happen with the

00:57:52.720 | city. It's just such a great place. It seems like the power

00:57:56.560 | resides in the supervisors and they seem to have flipped two or

00:57:59.840 | three of the really lunatic ones, right? Sax, they got rid

00:58:02.400 | of Dopey Dean Preston. Who was the other guy? Peskin. Peskin,

00:58:07.200 | he was an idiot and they, those guys are done. So, that's

00:58:10.560 | progress. Do you wanna talk about the Trump candidates,

00:58:13.600 | Jayco? Yeah, let's get to that in a second but before we get

00:58:16.960 | to that, FBI raided the home of Polly Market CEO, Shane

00:58:20.320 | Copeland. He was on the election night stream. He was

00:58:24.400 | raided on Wednesday, November 13th, 8 days after the election.

00:58:28.560 | They say Polly Market is Bloomberg says Polly Market is

00:58:31.440 | being investigated for allegedly accepting trades from

00:58:33.760 | US based users. Here's the backstory. In 2022, Polly

00:58:38.080 | Market paid 1.4 million to settle a case with the CFTC for

00:58:42.320 | offering option contracts without proper designation. The

00:58:47.600 | Commodity Futures Trading Commission also ordered the

00:58:50.240 | company to prevent US traders from making bets. They recently

00:58:53.840 | said Polly Market that is that they had taken additional

00:58:55.840 | measures to block Americans from trading. At the same time,

00:58:58.880 | Cali and Robin Hood were able to offer presidential prediction

00:59:01.760 | markets because Cali, it seems like they won their lawsuit

00:59:04.880 | against the CFTC last month. So, that allowed some betting

00:59:09.440 | markets to happen but Polly Market is still banned from the

00:59:11.760 | US because of that settlement in 2022. Here's the Polly Market

00:59:15.200 | claim. They claim the raid was obviously political retribution

00:59:20.000 | by the outgoing administration against Polly Market for

00:59:22.320 | providing a market that correctly called the 2024

00:59:25.920 | presidential election and Shane posted on X, discouraging that

00:59:29.600 | the current administration would seek a last ditch effort to go

00:59:32.640 | after companies they deem to be associated with political

00:59:35.200 | opponents. Bunch of conspiracy theories flying around. Peter

00:59:38.240 | Thiel and Founder Fund have made an investment into the company

00:59:42.480 | and Nate Silver is an advisor. I guess I'll just point out two

00:59:48.080 | things. They're much more accurate than Nate. Yeah. So,

00:59:51.840 | how manipulative can it be if they've got everything right?

00:59:55.040 | Yeah, I mean, that's literally the point I was about to make

00:59:57.920 | and I'll just end with this and then give it to you, Sachs for

01:00:01.040 | red meat. Americans are not allowed to participate in a lot

01:00:06.720 | of different markets and these kind of actions have been taken

01:00:10.400 | many, many, many times as we all know, poker, crypto, real

01:00:13.840 | estate, and prediction markets have all had actions like this

01:00:16.800 | taken against them and they typically are a speedy ticket.

01:00:20.160 | The offices too or just his house?

01:00:22.000 | Just his house according to the information we have right now.

01:00:26.000 | They bust into his house at 6am and they took his phone.

01:00:28.880 | Yeah, by the way, shout out to like, like if you're breaking

01:00:32.320 | the law, why wouldn't they?

01:00:33.600 | All that TBD offices. Yeah, it's a great, great speculation

01:00:39.280 | and important to note this action came after the election

01:00:42.880 | is resolved. So it's obvious the FBI knew that doing this

01:00:47.440 | beforehand would be seen as political and doing it after I

01:00:51.280 | don't know what I'm saying the decision. No, I know what you're

01:00:53.760 | saying. I'm adding something else, which is they obviously

01:00:56.960 | knew to be political sacks. And so they did it after they knew

01:01:00.400 | if they did it before that would be looked like, you know,

01:01:03.040 | really bad that the prediction mark that's predicting Trump a

01:01:06.240 | Trump win was rated. So they did it after. What do you think

01:01:10.480 | sacks? What's going on? Okay, I think it's political or not, I

01:01:12.960 | guess we don't know what was driving this. It's certainly an

01:01:16.400 | extreme action to bust into someone's home at 6am. But the

01:01:19.680 | FBI and take take your phone. So it's very curious. I think

01:01:23.360 | there's three theories that I've heard that I think could

01:01:27.120 | explain this. And I want to just be very clear that there's no

01:01:30.320 | proof on any of this. It's just a speculation. Yeah, it's a

01:01:33.760 | speculation going on. Yeah. But by the way, just before I get

01:01:37.360 | into it, I think Shane Copeland had one of the funniest tweets

01:01:39.920 | I've ever seen. New phone. Who dis? New phone? Who dis? Next?

01:01:44.400 | You should show them. I mean, that was like ballsy. The FBI

01:01:47.360 | bus in your house takes your phone. And that's the first

01:01:49.680 | thing you tweet. This is a that means that this is probably not

01:01:52.000 | a serious situation. But anyway, go ahead. Well, who knows? But

01:01:55.200 | yeah. Or he's confident is what I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So

01:01:59.120 | theory number one is that what the feds are looking for is

01:02:05.040 | whether any domestic whales were illegally wagering on the

01:02:09.120 | election outcome because theoretically, the money is all

01:02:13.200 | supposed to be offshore because domestic wagering on the

01:02:16.160 | election was illegal. However, a court ruled just days before

01:02:20.000 | the election that domestic wagering was legal. So that's a

01:02:23.920 | theory number one doesn't really make a lot of sense

01:02:25.760 | because the FBI would be enforcing a rule or a law that

01:02:30.640 | the courts had just overruled just days before the election.

01:02:33.760 | So but that's theory number one. Theory number two, and this

01:02:37.280 | theory was raised by Fortune magazine, is that this that

01:02:41.040 | poly market was rife with what's called wash trading, which is a

01:02:44.640 | form of market manipulation, where shares are bought and

01:02:47.360 | sold often simultaneously, and repeatedly by the same people

01:02:51.520 | to create a false impression of volume and activity of

01:02:54.560 | liquidity. This is illegal in the US. And it does occur in

01:02:58.240 | crypto markets. So they could have been going after that. But

01:03:01.280 | again, it does seem like a very extreme thing to bust into his

01:03:04.560 | house. Why don't you just ask Shane? What authority would the

01:03:08.480 | US government have if it's all offshore in that context? I

01:03:12.160 | don't know. I'm just laying out possible theories. But

01:03:15.280 | fortune magazine did did raise that theory. But again, if

01:03:18.640 | that's what your claim is just subpoena poly market during

01:03:22.080 | business hours, I don't know why you need to raid the guy's

01:03:24.480 | home or raid the office, right where the files are. Right. And

01:03:28.080 | now let me let me lay out theory number three, okay, which is

01:03:31.840 | going to be a little bit controversial. But get the tip

01:03:36.720 | well, if if somebody was manipulating the sites, okay,

01:03:41.440 | then on whose behalf were they doing it, and what you'd have

01:03:45.600 | to say is that they were doing it on behalf of the Kamala

01:03:48.080 | campaign. Because in the last few days of the election, there

01:03:52.640 | was a weird blip where poly market and and calcium,

01:03:56.560 | especially calcium, even more than poly market, all of a

01:03:59.360 | sudden flipped to Kamala. And you can see this, particularly

01:04:03.200 | in Pennsylvania, where all of a sudden there was a big flip at

01:04:05.920 | the end, away from Trump towards Kamala that turned out to be

01:04:09.440 | totally fake. And Trump won Pennsylvania pretty, pretty

01:04:13.760 | handily. And so you got to wonder, well, wait a second, was

01:04:16.800 | a combo supporter, maybe trying to push the narrative that there

01:04:21.120 | was a last minute surge to Kamala, because that's what the

01:04:24.560 | action seemed to imply. And remember that the same time this

01:04:28.960 | was happening, there was a big, there was like a media push to

01:04:33.280 | create a narrative by her supporters in the media that

01:04:36.240 | there was a late break for Harris. Yes, by independents.

01:04:40.160 | And so you have to kind of wonder, was somebody trying to

01:04:44.240 | push the prediction markets at the last minute to feed a media

01:04:48.000 | narrative that they were trying to create? Look, I have no

01:04:50.160 | evidence of this whatsoever. But the the action in the betting

01:04:53.520 | markets and the narrative they're trying to create in the

01:04:55.520 | media do line up. So if somebody was going to investigate

01:04:59.200 | election manipulation, this is what they should look into.

01:05:02.400 | Chamath, you have any thoughts here? No, zero thoughts. I mean,

01:05:07.360 | yeah, you know, my thoughts on an error. I don't see him ever

01:05:10.960 | doing anything risky or illegal. So it makes no sense to me. I'm

01:05:15.440 | guessing that somebody made him aware, pure speculation of

01:05:21.040 | something in the system. And that probably was on his phone.

01:05:24.160 | And they probably wanted to get that. And it's probably like a

01:05:26.640 | speeding ticket, ticky tacky thing. And you're just have the

01:05:32.080 | law still working its way through the system because they

01:05:34.640 | sacks were under an order to not take us, but Cal, she had

01:05:38.400 | gotten the mark, the law changed with their successful lawsuit,

01:05:41.840 | or they had defended their their case. So I would say it's all

01:05:45.600 | allegedly folks. And so wait for more information is always a

01:05:50.320 | good idea. All right, Trump is building his team. And it's a

01:05:55.760 | long list. We've got, I guess, dozens of names right now. So

01:06:00.400 | let's start with the four. Who's your favorite Jacob? Well, my

01:06:04.880 | opinion probably doesn't matter all that much. But let me go

01:06:07.120 | with the four that are creating a buzz tomorrow. Let's let's

01:06:11.760 | create the let's go with the four that are having the most

01:06:13.920 | buzz. And then I'll let you each tell me what you think you

01:06:18.720 | love. The one Yeah, there is one actually I love but let's I'll

01:06:22.720 | say who's that I'm curious. I'm genuinely curious. The fake and

01:06:27.120 | Ilan doing doge is my absolute favorite. Yes. Anything else

01:06:30.960 | that I am fascinated by Bobby Kennedy, going in and trying to

01:06:38.640 | make the country healthier and the country is the most sick

01:06:41.840 | country think of all of the Western countries and I think

01:06:46.960 | our food system has massive problems. So I'm very excited

01:06:49.600 | to see what he does inside of the Health and Human Services

01:06:54.160 | Department. I think it's a little bit controversial,

01:06:56.800 | obviously, but I don't see how it could be any worse than what

01:07:00.080 | we currently have. How do you feel about that? Who's your

01:07:04.480 | favorite? I guess we can just go with people's favorites if you

01:07:06.480 | want to go that way. The way I interpret his cabinet picks is

01:07:09.760 | that he's creating a coalition. So I view it more as like a

01:07:13.120 | package deal. J. Cal, I'm not going to pick out one or two,

01:07:16.240 | although I do have my favorites. The person who I

01:07:18.880 | think very astutely understands what Trump is trying to do is

01:07:22.320 | Charlie Kirk, who's a major influencer on the Republican

01:07:26.400 | side. And he says that, that what Maha, which is make

01:07:32.240 | America healthy again, they get RFK, Bobby Kennedy, HHS,

01:07:35.280 | obviously, the libertarians get Tulsi at DNI, I would add to

01:07:39.200 | that that they also get Ilan of a vague at doge. The base, the

01:07:43.520 | populist base gets Matt Gaetz, they get heck Seth at do D, they

01:07:46.960 | get home and, and then the piece through projecting strength

01:07:49.840 | crowd, which is kind of a nice name for neocon gets Rubio as

01:07:54.160 | Secretary of State and Stefanik at the UN. So I think that Trump

01:07:58.080 | is basically trying to have his cabinet reflect the diversity of

01:08:04.320 | views within the Republican Party. He's not decisively

01:08:08.080 | choosing one side over another. What this means is that during

01:08:12.320 | his presidency, he's going to get all the views and all the

01:08:15.280 | options within the collective view. That's an interesting

01:08:18.320 | way. Let's go point by point to the most controversial ones.

01:08:21.360 | Matt Gaetz is obviously the most controversial attorney, though.

01:08:25.360 | That's what they are all young. That's another trend. Yeah. And

01:08:27.760 | he has been put up as Attorney General. He has to be confirmed

01:08:31.440 | by the Senate. Obviously, he's the house rep from Florida,

01:08:34.320 | sacks. How qualified is he for this job on a scale of one to

01:08:37.280 | 10? I think that Matt Gaetz would be a breath of fresh air

01:08:41.600 | at that DOJ. I mean, look, here's that the DOJ has been

01:08:47.040 | involved for the last eight or nine years in a completely

01:08:51.120 | fabricated effort to portray Donald Trump as an agent of the

01:08:55.760 | Russians. It started with the Steele dossier. They then opened

01:08:59.600 | an investigation based on that phony piece of opposition

01:09:01.920 | research funded by the Hillary campaign. They lied to the FISA

01:09:05.760 | court to spy on Donald Trump's campaign. They then worked with

01:09:10.240 | the various intelligence services and with the media to

01:09:16.000 | create this like hoax that went on for years and years. There's

01:09:19.040 | been no accountability for that. Furthermore, in the 2020

01:09:22.960 | election, you also had that effort to essentially cover up

01:09:26.160 | the 100 Biden hard drive that the FBI and DOJ were sitting on

01:09:30.320 | that for roughly a year. They created a phony story that it

01:09:35.200 | was Russian disinformation when it turned out to be completely

01:09:37.360 | authentic. So you believe there's a lot to clean up there?

01:09:40.000 | How qualified is he on a scale of one to 10? What the

01:09:42.640 | president, what the president ran on was that the DOJ needed

01:09:49.600 | to be de weaponized that it had been turned into a partisan

01:09:53.600 | political apparatus for the Democrats. I don't think anyone

01:09:56.160 | can argue with that at this point. I think the American

01:09:58.160 | people clearly bought into that argument. Now, in order to

01:10:01.600 | clean it up, you're gonna have to bring in a total outsider

01:10:03.600 | who's willing to break some eggs and shake things up. Is

01:10:07.280 | Matt Gaetz the only person who could do that? No, there are

01:10:09.840 | other people who could do it. But Matt Gaetz is definitely

01:10:11.840 | qualified for that role. He was one of the most outspoken

01:10:14.720 | critics in Congress of this weaponization of the FBI. He was

01:10:19.040 | never fooled by the Russiagate hoax. Most of the

01:10:21.200 | establishment was. And anybody who bought into the Russiagate

01:10:24.800 | hoax is not qualified to run the DOJ at this point.

01:10:28.000 | Okay, any concerns?

01:10:29.040 | Well, there's a bunch of unproven smears and accusations

01:10:32.960 | have been made against him.

01:10:34.000 | Any other concerns?

01:10:36.240 | Excuse me?

01:10:38.240 | Aside from the the the investigations and whatever in

01:10:41.840 | the smears,

01:10:42.480 | a bunch of unproven, yeah, smears and accusations were

01:10:46.480 | made against him. And my own view on that is that if there

01:10:50.400 | was really something there, I think Merrick Garland's DOJ

01:10:53.120 | would have acted on it two or three years ago. So I personally

01:10:56.880 | discount all these smears without there being any

01:10:59.920 | evidence whatsoever. And I think it's very predictable that

01:11:03.120 | what we're seeing with both Matt Gaetz and with Tulsi is that

01:11:05.920 | the worst accusations get made without any evidence in the

01:11:09.920 | media, when the blob or the establishment wants to stop a

01:11:14.480 | true populist reformer from cleaning up their backyard.

01:11:17.520 | Freeberg, your thoughts on Matt Gaetz? And that seems to be

01:11:19.600 | the most controversial one. Any concerns? You think he's the

01:11:22.000 | most suited guy for the job?

01:11:23.120 | I don't want to comment on Matt Gaetz, but I'd like to talk

01:11:27.040 | about... Why not? Because I'd like to talk about a broader

01:11:32.000 | point of view on it. Okay.

01:11:33.600 | So I think there's this kind of thing that happens in biology

01:11:43.040 | called evolution. And a lot of people think evolution is this

01:11:45.360 | continuous process, but it's not. Evolution is this process

01:11:49.280 | by which there is some significant growth for a period

01:11:52.560 | of time. And then there is an extinction event or an external

01:11:56.800 | force that causes what ultimately becomes what's called

01:12:00.240 | punctuated equilibrium. So the whole kind of system resets and

01:12:03.200 | then the healthier, stronger species survive and they grow

01:12:07.040 | and they persist. And if you look at the first chart, Nick,

01:12:11.920 | that I pulled up, this will just show you guys past extinction

01:12:14.880 | events, large amounts of biomass over the past half billion

01:12:19.040 | years get wiped out when these extinction events occur. And

01:12:22.480 | then evolution occurs because the species that can survive

01:12:25.360 | the extinction event persist in the environment and they grow.

01:12:28.640 | And that's how evolution kind of actually takes place, is

01:12:32.560 | there's an external force that changes what survives and what

01:12:36.000 | doesn't. It's kind of a testing force. If you look at federal

01:12:38.800 | spending, and this is a crazy link, but here's federal

01:12:41.760 | spending over the last couple of decades. And I would argue

01:12:46.480 | that many of the agencies, much of the bureaucracy, many of the

01:12:51.120 | jobs created, many of the spending programs, many of the

01:12:53.920 | operating models, many of the behaviors can kind of be viewed

01:12:57.360 | as a species or species within this ecosystem that have kind of

01:13:01.920 | grown a lot over the last few decades. And I think what Trump's

01:13:05.760 | mandate was by the people, and people don't want to hear this

01:13:09.280 | and they don't like it, but his mandate was to be kind of the

01:13:12.240 | extinction event. And whatever agencies, whatever operating

01:13:17.040 | processes, whatever individuals, whatever bureaucratic systems

01:13:21.200 | exist within the federal government that can withstand

01:13:23.520 | the scrutiny of the individuals that Trump is going to put in

01:13:26.880 | charge of each of these agencies, that they can survive

01:13:30.400 | and they can come out the other end, there is certainly some

01:13:33.120 | degree of strength and resilience and hardiness. This is

01:13:36.080 | not about right or wrong. You say they deserve to exist if

01:13:39.680 | they can survive? I'm saying this is going to bring in the

01:13:42.000 | most disruptive force that federal agencies have ever seen.

01:13:45.680 | And the intention with Trump isn't to find some person to

01:13:49.200 | keep running things the way they have been run in the past. His

01:13:52.240 | mandate from the people who elected him based on the message

01:13:54.800 | he put out there is to do the opposite, which is to go in and

01:13:57.680 | be as disruptive and damaging and destructive as possible. And

01:14:01.200 | whatever comes out the other side will be stronger, will be

01:14:03.760 | harder, and theoretically, will be, you know, more resilient.

01:14:10.240 | And I think that that's the event that's underway. Now, the

01:14:14.160 | people who are getting exactly what they want in Trump's

01:14:17.440 | candidacies are the Democrats. They were saying Trump is going

01:14:20.880 | to put a bunch of crazy lunatics in office, and he's going to

01:14:23.120 | make them the cabinet, and now they're able to kind of clap

01:14:26.240 | their hands and say, "We told you so. We told you so." And I'm

01:14:29.360 | not sure that if they're really getting the message, which is

01:14:32.080 | that the intention here isn't to keep things running the way

01:14:35.040 | they have been running, but to really fundamentally test the

01:14:38.240 | systems and test the systems with the most challenging

01:14:41.440 | oppositional forces the systems have ever been tested by, which

01:14:44.560 | is the candidates or the individuals that he's putting in

01:14:46.480 | charge of each of these agencies. So, I'm not saying

01:14:49.440 | it's right or wrong one way or the other, but I'm making an

01:14:51.840 | observation that this is going to be kind of an extinction

01:14:54.160 | level event, that Trump's decisions on who he's putting

01:14:57.280 | in place, I think, are going to drive an outcome on the other

01:14:59.920 | end that's going to make the government look very different.

01:15:03.280 | And, you know, I'm not going to sit around and say, "This

01:15:05.120 | person's good. This person's bad," because I don't think the

01:15:06.960 | point is to find someone that's, quote, "qualified to do the

01:15:09.520 | job." The intention is actually quite different, and the outcome

01:15:13.200 | may actually be positive for America if you fast forward a

01:15:15.760 | couple of years in some cases. And there's some cases where

01:15:18.080 | things could get really messed up, and people could suffer,

01:15:20.000 | and jobs will be lost, and all sorts of bad things will happen.

01:15:22.800 | But we cannot continue the way we have been with respect to

01:15:27.200 | federal spending, with respect to federal spending, bureaucracy

01:15:30.240 | and inefficiency in the federal government. And so something

01:15:32.800 | has to happen. And if this is the path by which this gets

01:15:35.200 | resolved in the limited window that's in front of this

01:15:38.880 | particular administration, which is probably two years,

01:15:40.800 | maybe four, maybe this is what has to happen.

01:15:43.840 | Shabbat, where do you stand on Freiburg's interesting metaphor

01:15:48.560 | here that we're sending meteors into each of these departments

01:15:52.640 | to blow them up and see if they survive an extinction level

01:15:55.840 | event? I saw you nodding. Do you think this is an interesting

01:15:59.280 | framing?

01:15:59.760 | Great take. I have nothing to add to Freiburg's take.

01:16:02.320 | Got it. Who's your favorite?

01:16:04.640 | Yeah.

01:16:05.280 | You asked me the question, I answered. Who's your favorite?

01:16:07.840 | Well, I think let's take Elon and Vivek off the table,

01:16:10.640 | because that's an obvious one that we've all been behind

01:16:13.520 | since the beginning. Yeah. And we know and we all support the

01:16:16.400 | idea who's not against more efficiency. I mean, you have to

01:16:18.640 | be an idiot to be against efficiency. It's like the

01:16:20.640 | easiest one to say you love.

01:16:22.320 | I think the highest beta pick so far has been Bobby Kennedy. I

01:16:26.640 | think the second highest beta pick is Matt gates.

01:16:30.160 | Explain highest beta pick in this context, please.

01:16:33.520 | I think the third is Tulsi Gabbard. That there is the

01:16:37.440 | potential for an enormously positive two or three sigma

01:16:42.880 | outcome. But there's also the chance that it can really not

01:16:46.960 | work. That was exactly why I picked Bobby Kennedy, because

01:16:51.600 | he's going to shake it up, right? Peter Thiel just did this

01:16:53.920 | podcast with Barry Weiss.

01:16:55.280 | And it was fantastic, by the way, highly recommend.

01:16:57.280 | Highly recommend. He's awesome. Yeah, the

01:16:59.680 | one of the great things he said is that he was talking about

01:17:04.000 | science, but I think the example works here as well, which is

01:17:06.560 | that we didn't have enough skepticism, and we had too much

01:17:10.160 | dogma. He was talking about sort of like the death of science.

01:17:14.400 | And I think that that idea applies here as well, which is

01:17:18.800 | that the federal bureaucracy has not really been challenged.

01:17:23.360 | And Vivek put out a very compelling post on x, where he

01:17:28.880 | basically said like, look, when you on the one hand, there's

01:17:32.400 | going to be radical transparency. But on the other

01:17:34.080 | hand, there's a lot of case law that we can use to kind of try

01:17:38.320 | to really dismantle the government apparatus. And they're

01:17:42.720 | putting themselves on a shot clock to do it by 2026 for the

01:17:46.720 | 250th anniversary. So I think I'm really predisposed to this

01:17:53.520 | idea that it'll force the government to be very resilient

01:17:58.640 | at the end of this process. And I think that's a good thing. And

01:18:00.720 | it'll probably be very different than what it is on the way in.

01:18:04.480 | And I think that that can be very positive.

01:18:06.480 | All right. So we got your mouth and myself actually giving some

01:18:10.960 | specific names that we thought were interesting. I'll go back

01:18:13.920 | to you sacks. Maybe I'll phrase it as to Chamath's phrasing,

01:18:18.720 | which one do you think has the greatest chance of creating a

01:18:22.240 | massive potential change that could be positive, but also has

01:18:25.440 | some possibility of a destructive downside. In other

01:18:28.160 | words, it could go either way. But man, if it goes the right

01:18:31.200 | way, it could be brilliant and amazing and great for all

01:18:33.760 | Americans, who would be your number one number two in that

01:18:36.320 | regard?

01:18:37.120 | Well, you have to identify what the potential downside is, I

01:18:40.400 | think the single biggest risk in a second Trump term is that

01:18:44.560 | somehow the United States gets into an unnecessary war, a war

01:18:47.680 | that we don't need another forever war. It's certainly not

01:18:50.880 | what President Trump wants. He's been abundantly clear on the

01:18:54.400 | campaign trail that he wants to avoid wars, he wants to avoid

01:18:57.840 | World War Three, it's clearly where all of his instincts are.

01:19:01.040 | But the fact of the matter is, we have a very fraught and

01:19:03.120 | difficult international situation right now, the Middle

01:19:05.520 | East is on fire, we have a proxy war going on with Russia. So

01:19:09.760 | there is the chance that things could always spiral out of

01:19:12.640 | control. And you need, I think, within the cabinet, not just

01:19:16.480 | hawkish voices, but also dovish voices, so that the President

01:19:19.840 | has the full range of options at his disposal. And so in that

01:19:24.240 | sense, I would say that, you know, Tulsi is being one of the

01:19:27.760 | more dovish voices is incredibly critical, just to balance out

01:19:32.160 | some of the other voices who are more hawkish. And so in that

01:19:36.000 | sense, I think, you know, just making sure that the President

01:19:38.640 | gets to hear from a wide spectrum of views, I think that

01:19:42.960 | that part's very important.

01:19:44.160 | So that would be Tulsi, Tulsi would be your pick for like,

01:19:47.920 | Yeah, just because like Tulsi could literally make the

01:19:50.160 | difference between whether we get in a unnecessary forever war

01:19:53.360 | or not. I would also just say that with respect to the other

01:19:57.920 | picks, there's obviously a lot of hysteria going on a lot of

01:20:02.080 | hyperbole about the downsides. I don't think it's going to be

01:20:05.360 | like a meteor hitting the earth. I don't think it's that

01:20:08.400 | destructive. I think that it's more like, will some eggs be

01:20:12.720 | broken up to make an omelet, right? That's, that's the

01:20:15.440 | analogy I would use rather than the meteor. And the thing I

01:20:19.120 | would just say is that we all agree the United States is

01:20:22.080 | currently on an unsustainable fiscal path. We know that we're

01:20:25.840 | spending too much money, we know that the bureaucracy is too

01:20:28.000 | big. What's the downside of shaking it up? There's just way

01:20:30.800 | more upside than downside in terms of shaking up this

01:20:34.240 | bureaucracy, because the current path is bankruptcy. Exactly. So

01:20:38.000 | why do we have to act like that it's so risky to bring in

01:20:43.040 | outsiders and populists and reformers into these agencies,

01:20:46.720 | we know there's going to be huge resistance to them. The

01:20:49.760 | biggest risk, frankly, is inertia taking over. And the

01:20:53.760 | reformers aren't able to do enough. And we all doing

01:20:56.800 | nothing is not an option. Yeah, and then we go bankrupt.

01:20:59.200 | That's the big risk. Why is Chelsea getting attacked? What's

01:21:03.520 | the Russian people are saying? Like, I don't I don't know any

01:21:06.960 | of the history here. So tell me, it's obvious. It's because

01:21:09.840 | Washington is a very hawkish place. It's basically run by the

01:21:13.760 | war machine. There's there's no money going to Washington to

01:21:17.520 | lobby for peace. All the money in Washington is coming from

01:21:21.280 | the military industrial complex. So by definition,

01:21:24.320 | it's extremely hawkish, and it's geared towards war. And

01:21:27.520 | told us there's some history with Tulsi in Russia. Yeah, just

01:21:30.560 | to finish my point. Yeah. Tulsi has been one of the few

01:21:34.000 | consistent voices advocating for peace. So of course, the

01:21:37.360 | establishment wants to basically get her nomination

01:21:40.960 | vetoed. But again, I think you have to see the cabinet as a

01:21:44.080 | package deal. I think it's very important to have Tulsi as one

01:21:47.840 | voice for peace within a larger cabinet that already has many

01:21:51.360 | hawkish voices on it. Okay. All right, everybody for your

01:21:54.240 | sultan of science from Ohalo. David Freeberg, the chairman

01:21:59.280 | dictator Chamath Paihapatia from 8090. And David Sachs, from

01:22:04.960 | craft ventures. I am Jason kalachannis your host here at

01:22:08.960 | the all in podcast and this week in startups. We'll see you

01:22:13.200 | next time on the all in podcast. Bye bye back at you

01:22:16.320 | chief retribution officer.

01:22:17.600 | Let your winners ride.

01:22:25.360 | Rain Man David

01:22:27.920 | We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy.

01:22:35.360 | Love you.

01:22:35.680 | We should all just get a room and just have one big huge

01:22:56.960 | orgy because they're all just useless. It's like this like

01:22:59.120 | sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

01:23:02.320 | What you're about to be. We need to get murky's are going

01:23:10.160 | on.

01:23:20.320 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Trump's market impact: Bitcoin, M&A, IPOs + transition picks; Polymarket CEO raided by FBI

Chapters