“Prepare NOW!” Eric Trump’s Shocking Prediction For Stock Prices, Bitcoin, & The US Dollar

Why isn't finance 24/7? Why isn't it immediate? Why is it that every bank in the world has to have their fingers [music] in absolutely everything? >> Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe. >> Why can't you just send me a link and 3 seconds later it's in your bank account. We are on [music] the one yard line to to something incredible. Crypto and what we're doing. It's growing faster than the internet grew in the '90s. Can you make the argument that the government should be buying Bitcoin [music] >> because it's the single greatest performing asset over the last decade, increasing in value 70% year, year over year. When you look back in 5 years, the entire financial landscape is going to be much different. And that's all because of cryptocurrency. I became the most subpoenaed person in American history. 112 subpoenas for doing nothing wrong. I've never gotten so much as a a traffic ticket. 91 indictments toward my father, debanked by every major financial institution in the country. They came after us like we were dogs. I really believe it can never [music] happen again based on the moves being made in crypto. All the public criticism, all the attacks, [music] how do you deal with it? You know how you do it? You fight back. You don't give up, you fight back. >> Eric Trump, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. Really appreciate it. >> Good be on, guys. >> So, you tweeted today and it went viral that the Trump family has made more than1 billion dollars in crypto. How did you guys make it? Well, we started the the three most successful, you know, crypto projects probably in history. We started with a a meme coin, Trump coin for a period of time. It was uh I think above the market cap of Ethereum. It was pretty amazing. It went it went parabolic. I'll never forget we launched this on a Friday afternoon. I look at the price the next day was at like 70 bucks or something like that for for literally a meme. And um you know, just had a lot of fun. Obviously, we're really successful in the NFTs, you know, in the early days. And then we started World Liberty Financial. Everybody knows we're the fastest growing stable coin on on Earth right now. Uh, and then personally I'm doing a project called American Bitcoin and every, you know, bit of my heart and soul is in it. We just listed on the NASDAQ. So, we mine Bitcoin um out of West Texas using some of the cheapest energy anywhere in the world. We we mine a lot of Bitcoin. We're doing it about 50%, you know, of of spot prices right now for for BTC and um and having a great job doing it. So, we're we're going to accumulate. We're obviously, you know, mining and so crypto's become a big part of the portfolio. I was always a hard asset guy. That's what I I did. I think you probably know me from building hotels and skyscrapers and golf courses and residential buildings and commercial buildings and uh uh crypto's been incredible and it came out of us being debanked, right? I mean, because we wore a hat that said, "Make America great again." >> A lot of the financial institutions around the country, they were effectively told to weaponize our banks against us. And >> you know, I found some of the smartest, greatest people that you'll ever meet in the crypto world. And um it is the future. I have no doubt about it. It is the future of finance. And uh as a family, we're all in and and personally, I'm all in. What do you think separates great investors from good investors? >> Yeah, I think being able to see the future obviously um and also being passionate and and and oftentimes, I know this is going to be contrary and every Harvard professor is probably going to scream, but it's probably not always diversification. I wouldn't exactly say we made our family fortune based on great diversification when, you know, we were all into real estate. Everything we did was hard assets. We weren't diversified. We believed in a certain category. We were damn good at that category and that category grew extremely quickly. Um, you know, and and we made a fortune off of it. Um, I think a lot of times you have people who go out and they'll put, you know, 2% into bonds and 2% into stocks and 2% into crypto and 2%, right? And at the end of the day, you're not going to move any different than an ordinary market can move. It's a little bit hard to break out of the pack when you're doing the exact same thing as the pack is doing. So, um, listen, I think being able to look look ahead, um, and see the future. And that's certainly what I'm doing in crypto and the the future is is crypto on every single front on payment rails on on obviously Bitcoin being digital gold. There's no question just the modernization of finance having 24-hour finance having much more efficient finance having less fees having less costs being man more transparent but but listen if you look out and look look at what AI's done look at what quantum's you know done um you know look what's happening in so many of kind of the the energy advances and and look how parabolic those stocks and those companies are going you know I I I think you have to you know look out and and be very good and harness your efforts and exploit your talents and um you know that's how you do well in life see I'm a pretty firm believer, as is Graham, in saving more than you spend and then also investing that in index funds, a diversified portfolio. Do you think that that is still a good approach to go all in on like, you know, more, you know, cutting edge crypto? >> So, so break the two things apart. I mean, one is a savings strategy. The other is a, you know, career path if you're an entrepreneur, right? And and so, uh, yes, should you save a hell of a lot more than you spend? of of course otherwise you can't get to the pro like how do you invest in crypto if you have no money to invest right let's let's start at the very basics so you know you you better save money and you better be able to invest that money into something right um yes I I I do believe in that and I do believe that there's a big portion that you know in a way should be peeling off 12 13% in in in in great ETFs that are efficient where you're not going out with crazy money managers that are underperforming the market where they're charging you 220 and all sorts of crazy rates so so listen there's there's certain discipline finance. But I think in terms of of becoming a great investor and really making your money, you're not going to do it simply by investing in T- bills. You know, it's just never going to happen. No one's ever become wealthy, you know, investing in in a product that goes up 5% a year, 4% a year. You know, you can hold on to wealth. You can save money. If you've got a great career and you're siphoning off $100,000 a year or $500,000 a year or a million dollar a year and you're investing in a product that's stable, fantastic. Um, but you also need a career that can that can throw off enough money that you can actually get to that that promised land. >> What's the best investment advice that you've heard? >> Well, I mean, I guess there's difference between investment and and and career, right? I mean, I I focus so much of of my investments on my actual career and on betting on projects that I think I can effectuate and and do a great job with. And so, I I think you have to separate the two, right? And and then I think once you make a lot of money here, you can take that and you can properly invest it over here and you can do so very kind of safely and securely. But I I think the vast majority of our our bets have always been on ourselves and our talents. You know, we go find a messed up hotel. You know, great location, great property, you know, iconic as hell, run like hell. Um, you know, no money was put into it. Management team stunk. Uh, they weren't good with what they did. They didn't have the heart. They didn't have the soul. They didn't have the passion. The owners didn't have the vision. Um, and so often times we go in, we'd buy those properties for pennies on the dollar. We put money into them. we'd reinvision them and we would turn them into gold mines and we did that over and over and you know in a certain way it's almost like venture capital, >> right? But but but in a a little bit of a different space in like the hard asset space, right? And and that's always really rewarding when you can take something that was a mess. Hey, I did with this property that you're you're standing in right now. This was a Rich Carlton. They had run the thing into the ground. They didn't know the difference between, you know, T and a a fairway and a a green. They weren't golf people. They were sucking money. They were losing a lot of money every single year. I bought the property and nine months later I had the thing, you know, cash flowing positively and today is one of the most successful properties in all of Florida, right? And and so, you know, going in with a little bit of common sense and um and fixing a place, repairing it. Um, you know, I I like that kind of bet. I do have to say the team here was incredible. Thank you. We moved some of the furniture around and immediately when I texted Nancy, three people showed up within a minute and they came with tape measures and they were making sure everything was level and the same height. It was incredible. So, so that's my anal that comes through, you know, the teams and and you know, I've become famous for, you know, not walking through the front doors of our properties, going through the loading docks, you know, I know every single mechanical room in every single one of our properties, in every one of our attics, I know every HVAC unit, you know, it's we are very, very granular. And if your back house is perfect, if that mechanical room in the basement of a building is spotless, well lit, well painted, um, immaculately kept, you don't need to worry about anything else in the operation. And and that standard will will flow through all the employees and everything they they do. And and I can't tell you guys, especially with Secret Service in our lives now. >> Yeah. You know how oftentimes I go through the back of one of these famous hotels all around the world. They are normally dirty, grungy, lights are burned out, the ice machines are disgusting. They they they look gross. You will never find that one of our assets. So why can't we apply that same standard to politics? I'm curious, going from business into politics, what was the one thing that surprised you the most out of all of it? I'm sure you went in with an expectation as well. >> Yeah. I think the lack of competence of a lot of politicians if you want, you know, know the truth, right? I mean, these are mainly people who didn't have jobs. Look at Joe Biden, right? Joe Biden, you know, had been in politics for 55 years, 56 years, actually when he got out, right? I'm 41y old guy. I've got gray in my beard. Think about it, right? Never signed the front of a check. Never built anything. You know, most of his life had yes, no decisions, yes, no votes. Could you imagine if my life was a a yes no vote, right? I mean I might need to effectuate 500 things to get to the end result and it's all a road map in order to get there and so I think it creates very binary thinking you know and and and often times some of the politicians who are you know debating and voting on the most complicated you know items that we have in society know nothing about and have zero real world practical you know um skill in in I mean look look at like some of these minimum wage you know proposals that are going up in in New York you know doubling tripling minimum wage well you know that's great other than the fact that they're just going to, you know, automate every single service and you're not going to have any jobs in the state because they won't be able to afford to pay for it, right? And and and you see that like look at California, right? You know, they want to triple minimum wage, double minimum wage. And guess what Dunkin Donuts does? You know, they just automate all of their their processes and fire all of their employees. And and you know, I I think sometimes you need to be able to have a comprehension of the other side, you know, of of a topic. And so often times these politicians because they've never run a business and they've never signed a check and they've never had to make payroll and they've never lived through a recession or a depression, they have no idea what the hell they're doing. >> Now, in fairness though, isn't that advancing something that we're going in that direction anyway? So let's say they do raise the minimum wage and now it's $40 an hour. >> I feel like we're heading in that direction anyway. The jobs are going to be taken over by AI. So they're just speeding the process up. >> They're probably speeding the process up probably at the behest of of people. Um, and they're forcing it. All right. You know, right now it's not forced. It can, you know, capitalism can it can, you know, chart that path and the speed of that path. I think so often times, you know, they make bad decisions that that that forces something that wouldn't otherwise have to be. And I think that's again at the best of of a lot of people, right? And and so that always enamored me about about politicians, right? When you have people who really never had real world experience and all of a sudden they're on a you know, but yet you'll hear you'll hear from all these people, right? you know, Hillary Clinton, you know, what does Donald Trump know about foreign policy? Oh, haha. Well, I mean, in fact, from the fact that we've spent our entire life in just about every country around the world because we're in international real estate, you know, maybe nothing, but her foreign policy caused 20 years of of death and destruction and wars, whereas, you know, my father was serving French fries 12 months ago and all of a sudden we have, you know, peace in the Middle East. So, everyone knows that politics is extremely corrupt, but what was the exact moment in your life that you realized it's way worse than you could have thought? >> Well, you know, it's funny. I talk about it in this book and and congratulations by the way and I never thought I would be a number one bestselling author. I'm a guy who builds you know buildings. I'm I'm number one in in the United States. It's kind of a you know crazy thing. >> I'll never forget I I got a call from the FBI and they said we we need to see you at FBI headquarters in in downtown New York. There's a threat against your company. And so naturally I rushed down there and no one knew I was going. They and they specifically asked that like please no one knows you're coming. And I drive into parking garage. The only people who who knew I was there was Secret Service, a guy driving me down. And uh go up to the eighth floor into one of these, you know, skiffs. It's kind of this, you know, lead lined room where, you know, you can't, you know, you can't bring cell phones. You can't bring anything into it. And they go, "Hey, there's a cyber cyber threat against your company." I go, "Okay, great. I can see every cyber threat that's coming into our company, right? If you have a half decent IT department, you can see cyber attacks every single day, right? This is like, you know, 101 business stuff." And uh I go, "Where's it coming from?" You know? Well, sir, we can't tell you that, guys. Is it China? No. Is it Russia? No. Is it Iran? And their eyes just, you know, light up. Okay, so guys, so there's cyber threat coming out of Iran. Least shocking thing I've heard heard all day. But you can't tell anybody that this is happening. You know, this is this is absolutely secret. You can't tell anybody. And I Okay, I won't tell anybody. Thanks a lot. Like this whole thing's feel felt like it's a waste of time. You could have just told me, "Hey, there's, you know, cyber threats. Just be really careful with your servers and everything else." But they swear me to secrecy. I go down to the parking garage. I get in a car and no one guys knew I was there. My assistant didn't know I was there. No one the company who knew I was there. I was driving up the ramp in the FBI building in New York and I got a call from the head of ABC News, a friend of mine. Eric, I hear you're down at FBI headquarters. And I go, John, what are you talking about? He goes, I hear you're at FBI. I'm like, I'm not at FBI headquarters. He goes, yes, you are. I know you're in the building right now. I go, John, I'm not at FBI headquarters. He's like, Eric, listen, we've known each other for a long time. Don't lie to me. I go, how would you know something like that? And he goes, "Because their press office out of Washington DC just called to tell me that you just left their skiff and they were they were briefing you on a cyber threat from Iran." And I go, "You got to be freaking kidding me." Beyond the Secret Service agent in the front of the car, you know, who was with me for 3 years. He I had I had him on speaker phone at that point was clenching his fist like he wanted to fight. I I just couldn't believe that was the status of the government that they would they would do something like that. And then we get into under siege, right? That was kind of my my my first where they impeach my father twice, right? They make up dirty dossas. They, you know, I mean, the dirty dossier were talking about golden showers. They were talking about things. All they wanted to do was have my father, you know, divorced, lose his family, embarrassed, all paid for by Hillary Clinton, right? They made up the the Russia hoax. So, we had secret servers in the basement of Trump Tower communicating with the Kremlin. Give me a break. We don't have servers in the B. You know why you don't put servers in basements? Because basements flood, right? Uh, let's just start at the the basics. I became the most subpoenaed person in American history. 112 subpoenas for doing nothing wrong. I've never gotten so much as a a traffic ticket, right? 91 indictments toward my father. Debbanked by every major financial institution in the country. They came after us like we were dogs. They raided Mara Lago. They raided Melania's room. They raided Baron's room. >> It was it was the government. It was I mean it was the government. It was it was Joe Biden. It was Merrick Garland. >> You think Joe Biden is literally pulling the strings saying like you do this, you do that. because I I actually don't think that he was, you know, competent enough to >> Okay, fine. So, Joe Biden or the autopen or his underlings or Merrick Garland who was definitely, you know, capable enough of this. Um, they lied when they raided Mara Lago. They said it was on behalf of N Archives. Does anybody really believe that the National Archives has enough power to tell 30 armed FBI agents to raid Mara Lago and it not come from from the White House? And by the way, they've all but admitted that it came from the White House at this point, right? But you know, no one believes that, right? I mean, why was Leticia James at the White House every week, right? Why was Alvin Bragg at the White House every week? Why was Fanny Willis and Nathan Wade at the White House every single week? Was that their was that their jobs? You know, like isn't that a little bit Isn't that a little bit strange? You know, like we know that Hillary paid for the dirty dossier, right? We we know that Barack Obama was the one that that did, you know, the Russia hoax, you know, first because they wanted to try and make sure my father didn't get as many votes and then second of all because they were so embarrassed that a ragtag group of people who didn't know a damn thing about politics beat them that they wanted to be able to perpetuate this narrative for a long period of time, right? They weaponized every bank. They weaponized every, you know, financial institution. They weaponized the DOJ. They spied on our campaign. Kind of forgot to mention that before. You know, >> how do you handle all of this? all the public criticism, all the attacks, how do you deal with it? You know how you do it? You fight back. You don't give up, but you fight back. Right? And that's that's this story, guys. Right? They wanted to destroy us. They wanted to bankrupt us. They wanted to have our family get separated. They wanted certainly my father to get divorced. They wanted to see us voiceless. Hence the reason we all got stripped off Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. You know, they turned down all of our dials. It It's one of the reasons you guys are as successful as you are, right? because people are sick and tired of, you know, they want to hear independent media versus, you know, the nonsense that ABC and NBC and CNN and everybody else was shoveling for for years. I mean, they wanted to see us dead. They wanted to see us in a jail cell. And when none of this worked, you know what they did? They tried to shoot my father, right? Not not only the first time in Butler, but then they tried to get him 8 weeks later, you know, about 4 miles away from here at at Trump International. They wanted him off of the stage because they couldn't control us, right? you know, we weren't one of them. We weren't the establishment. Uh they couldn't believe that we beat them at their own game. I mean, guys, we self-funded our first campaign. Hillary Clinton raised 1.5 billion dollars and actually knew what a delegate was and we still beat her, right? It's it's kind of a remarkable thing. And we love this country. Uh we love our nation. We love the Constitution. We love God. We love faith. We love freedom. And our country was going to hell. And and so guess what? We fought. And we fought relentlessly. And and I talk about in the book, it it was guys, we either won the White House or we were going to be in jail for doing absolutely nothing wrong, you know, like that that was that was the pendulum. That was the the the Trump life. And I said that to my father in a car one day. We're coming out of a court courtroom in in downtown New York. And I go, "It's either 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or you and I for doing nothing wrong or going to be in use jail cells because that's how bad the system was weaponized." 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I mean, guys, we spent over 400 million bucks in legal fees, right? Just fighting off, you know, the Russia hoax and the dirty dossas and everything else that they threw at us. Um, you know, thank God we also had a voice and that probably came a lot from The Apprentice and being on TV before politics, you know, being pretty comfortable in front of the microphone before, >> but we have a family that fights together that's always stuck together. Uh, that was unbreakable. Um, we're a very, very close-knit group of people and um, and honestly, it's probably the only thing that kept us alive. That reminds me of what I thought was one of the most pivotal moments of the first candidacy, which was in the debate with your father and Hillary Clinton, and they were asked to compliment each other. And Trump said, "Oh, she's a fighter. She'll never give up. She's hard worker." And she said, "Oh, you have great kids." Yeah, >> which is kind of like everyone thought a backhanded compliment. It's like, well, you're not really complimenting his character. You're not compliment. You're just saying, "Oh, you have good kids." >> I'll take it as one of the kids as one of the benefactors of the compliment. >> But I'm curious, what is something that you learned from your father that's outside of politics, outside of business, just purely on a a human level? >> I think whatever you do in in in the world, be myopically focused on it, right? And that probably goes back to to what we were talking about with business. you know, everything I had ever seen him accomplish, you know, when it was the residential buildings, he was myopically focused on the residential buildings, you know, building Trump Tower, right? And and and he just it would be the only thing that was in his mind, you know, when he got to the golf courses. He loved doing the golf courses and and and me and him were myopically focused on is all we thought about is all we did. It's it was it was literally occupied 95% of the same thing with The Apprentice. like when I was apprentice just everything was ratings, it was the cast, it was it was you know the filming but you were just nothing else came in the way. He was always incredibly focused. When politics came around his only focus was politics 7 days a week, 24 hours a day and every single thing that he did he he he turned to gold, right? And and I think when somebody becomes myopically focused on their passion, whatever that might be and for whatever reason they're trying to do it, I think it's awfully hard to beat them. Uh, I think kind of the the weekend warriors are very easy to beat and the people who are lazy, the, you know, the, you know, people who show up at work at, you know, 10:30 in the morning and and and go home at 3:00 in the afternoon, they don't stand a chance against that person who's driven and will will will go through every single wall in order to get to their objective. But there's no denying that people like that exist. Do you think that they're just a product of their environment where being lazy is totally fine? There's no real push to be exceptional at anything. Or do you think that, you know, they're making the active choice and they're just like, it's nobody's fault but their own. For example, we have a question we asked on this podcast. We used to ask it quite often, which is, if you're poor between the ages of 25 and 45, do you think that it's your own fault? You better find a different career path and you better harness, you know, whatever your talents are, and you better run at those talents, you know, as hard as humanly possible. And listen, there's a lot of people have advantages, right, in the world. There's a lot of people that that have opportunities and there's a lot of people who who were given nothing who became the wealthiest people in the history of this nation out of out of nothing. I I mean, you know, I know so many of them, right? You didn't graduate high school and and and built billion, you know, billion dollar companies and uh have done tremendously well. And so, um, I I think if you're ever in that spot where you're bored as hell, um, and you're not moving forward, you should probably pull the ejection seat and and get out and find something that you're you a love or you're passionate about. Um, something that has high growth, something that you're able to monetize. And I would I would sprint toward whatever that might be in your life. And what that is for you is probably very different than it is for me. And it's probably very different than it is for you. Right? It's uh, you know, I think people have to harness their skills. Skills come in a thousand different forms, you know, and and ultimately monetize them. Um, if you're not passionate about something and you really are working, you know, three hours a day and, you know, and don't don't give a a damn about whatever you're doing, you're not going to break out from the pack. It's just it's very hard. Statistics will show you that it's going to be next to impossible for you to, you know, overachieve. What separates the people though that are not self-motivated with those who are? Listen, maybe it's attitude. Um, you know, I I I I would hope maybe the utopian view would be that, you know, everybody could self-motivate if they found the right thing that motivated them. And I would hope that'd be the case. I'm not saying that's the case. You know, you probably have people in society who are lazy. I I hate to say it. Um, in fact, I probably know a couple of those people. Um, and then I certainly know those people who are absolute overachievers and, you know, everything they want to do, they want to do to 110% no matter what it is, where it is. And um and I think those people are probably, you know, will we will overachieve. You know, as kids, we didn't have the opportunity. It it was we didn't have the opportunity to be lazy. I should say, you know, we were put on construction sites when we were 11 years old. You know, if we wanted a bike, congratulations. Go work for it. You know, go earn money. And you know, we we were spoiled as hell in the conventional fashion. We had, you know, a warm roof overhead. We were always fed and we have had great education. But, you know, if anybody thought that we were rolling around with $100 bills in our pocket, you know, we we weren't. We were working on I was doing demo all summer and again you wanted a fishing rod. Congratulations. You used the money that you earned, you worked for and you went and bought it. >> But what was your attitude towards the work when you were young? Were you excited? Because you right now seem highly industrious, highly productive. You love what you do, but back in the day to take a while to to foster that sentiment. >> Well, I loved it. I probably would have done it. >> So, you always loved it. >> Yeah. Honestly, I probably would have done it for free, right? And and so back to your last question, you know, was that built into your your DNA? Was that nature? Was that nurture? you know, I I don't know. It was built into my D and I I loved it. Um, but it also taught me the value of dollar. It taught me the the, you know, the value of hard work. Uh, it certainly taught me a skill set, right? Which is kind of the building blocks to what I do every single day. Um, and by the way, it tired out a young kid. You know, if you're a 13-year-old kid or 15-year-old kid and you're type A, do me a favor. Don't give them money and don't give them a lot of free time because bad things are going to happen, right? Like a terrible recipe. And and so my parents were were were exceptional were exceptional when it came to that. >> You know, we asked Dave Ramsey the same question and he said the reason a lot of people aren't motivated or they feel hopeless is that they believe that the work they put in is not going to have the result that they want. And I think for you, you could very well see that if I do this, >> this is what's possible and you see the reward of that. >> Light at the end of the tunnel. I think a lot of people in America feel like they're they're hopeless, that they can't get ahead, that they feel like housing is too expensive or the stock market's overvalued or that crypto they they could have gotten in at $1,000 and now it's $110,000. I feel like they can't do anything to get by. What would you say to those people? >> Yeah. Well, I think you have to find the, you know, industry that you're good at and I think you have to find the job that you're passionate about and I think you have to find, you know, the opportunity, whether it's self-employment or or not. Um, you know, I mean, I I can't tell you how many how many friends I have who started, you know, small electrical companies. You know, they were they were electrical foremen and, you know, they they they worked their way up and then they went out and they started doing their own jobs and all of a sudden they're they're running 30 40 50 crews with unbelievable companies and they built it from from nothing. And it's hard to get there. It's really hard to get there. But, you know, I think you have to take the initial step. I I think I agree with with Dave, but but what you have to do is you have to take the initial step toward whatever that is that you're ultimately passionate about. um you know so often times it's well the market's not right so I can't do it right now or life's not right or you know it's a hard time or this or that you know you have to take the step you have to be able to take that initial leap and and um I encourage people to do that you know follow their hearts follow their passions you know preferably in an industry um that has growth or that has you know real kind of potential. >> Do you think the national debt affects the average person out there? >> Yeah of course it does. And and what does that look like to the average person? >> Oh, listen, you have a national debt of what, 37 trillion right now? >> Um, yeah, you better believe it does because it hangs over everybody's head and and and whether you like it or not, at some point everybody's going to have to pay that national debt and it's compounding rapidly. Um, so in some way, shape, or form, you're going to pay that in taxes. I mean, if we didn't have national debt, you your taxes would be substantially less than what they are. That means you could probably afford a nicer home and and more belongings and to take a better trip with the kids. And yet every single year this thing goes up by by by an absolute fortune because the government's out of control um and has been um and absolutely rebelss against people who try and cut the hell out of it. And you see what's happening right now with the government shutdown. You know, they want an extra what, you know, $2.7 trillion for healthcare for illegal immigrants, you know, and and when you say no, not a single Democrat comes out and and votes in favor of reopening the government, right? Among other things, by the way. Um, yeah, I I think I I think it affects everybody that lives in this country. There's no question about it. And in fact, it might be the greatest risk that we have as a nation, you know, outside of serious armed conflict. How do we solve it? Is there any way out of 37 trillion? Cuz I've heard either you have to let it inflate away or you hope it doesn't go up so much that maybe AI could help boost our economy and make enough money to start shipping it away. Like, can we ever pay this thing back? >> Yeah, you have to grow out of it, right? I mean, anybody thinks you can cut out of 37 trillion, you can't. I mean, will cuts be important? Yes, you need to get rid of of fluff and garbage and fraud, waste and and abuse. No question about it. Um, at the same time, you have to have unbelievable growth. And I think that's what we're seeing. And how do you how do you get growth in society? You need the lowest energy cost in the world, right? You need to be champion of industry. I think my father did that better with with crypto than than anybody before. The entire world is following us. America is the crypto capital of the world by far, and we were losing our standing there. We're also losing our standing on energy. I mean, look at look at nuclear power. We haven't had a nuclear power plant in this country built in in 30-year period of time. And we are the ones that championed >> nuclear power. I mean, for a long time, France had more expertise in nuclear power than the United States of America did. You know how embarrassing that is. You know, what's France in terms of economic power of of of the world? What like 13th in terms of GDP? You know, it's a joke. America has to be number one at absolutely everything we do. We have to be number one at at energy and that's not not just nuclear that's oil and gas and everything else. You know any country that has low energy costs you know has has much better productivity. That's just pretty simple correlation that I think you know anybody can can can understand. We have to champion industry. We have to win the AI revolution. We have to continue to win the space revolution. You know we we have to be the most businessfriendly country on on earth. We we need to maintain the reserve currency under and by the way we are the reserve currency that no one can argue that it's not even close. No one no one wants any of the Asian currencies. No one wants any of the South American currencies. Certainly no one wants the euro for for obvious reason. No one wants the pound. Um so I think it's great advantage and we better we better maintain the greatest you know rule of law an honest rule of law because it's why we have so much direct inward investment in in the United States of America. You know they they look at their own countries and they see no promise. They see no future. They see no they see massive government corruption. They they know all of it can disappear like that. And guess where they park their assets? They park in the United States of America. We better maintain that safe haven for for people parking their money. And so long as we do, we'll maintain the greatest economy ever. >> Seems like energy is going to become a major issue over the next 10 years. Why aren't we going heavier into nuclear energy today? >> Well, I think we are. I mean, I think I think my father, what was his exact quote? If you propose a nuclear plant, I'll give you approvals in 7 days. You know, I mean, my father's the biggest proponent of nuclear energy. >> How many people applied >> in terms I have no idea. But, you know, I mean, these are big because these things cost $30 billion to build, but >> you know, you've how many times have you heard drill baby drill, right? And people are drilling. I mean, we're exporting energy for the first time again. We're exporting in the first administration. Then we stopped exporting. In fact, we became an importer of energy. Now, we're exporting again. And and that's not just oil, right? That's that that's natural gas. You know, you've got states, look in New York with Marcelis and Udica, and you've got the the greatest natural gas, you know, shale anywhere on Earth. You know, it makes Saudi, it makes it makes the UAE like look like small potatoes in upstate New York, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania. They're not even tapping into most of it, right? And and so we we need to drill. We need to be energy um independent. And by the way, there's there's a ton of other forms of energy as well. I mean, solar is doing great, right? We're in Florida right now. Every every day there's another solar field. And you know, it's it's working great. It's it's augmenting the grid and you know it has its purpose but nuclear is going to win the day especially these small nuclear uh reactors that are coming out these SMRs and it's it's it's fascinating what's happening. So we're huge advocates for financial literacy. I mean that's what Graham built his entire brand on. I joined because I became financially literate because of his content on YouTube helped us create this podcast. And I think that that is pretty much the main thing causing people to go poor or some people to go to go wealthy. Why is financial literacy not taught in schools? Some people speculate that there are elites that want to keep people poor so they can keep them under their thumb. >> Why is it not taught in school? It's the simplest thing. We learn the most. >> It's useless. I zoned out in high school. I hate it. Then why do we teach anything in high school? >> It's such an obvious. It's such an I mean I agree with you guys 100%. It's because our educational system is absolutely broken. I mean, I went to a school where I was taking Latin classes, you know, no no disrespect to, you know, formation language, but, you know, give me a break, right? I mean, you know, 100%. I mean, I listen, I went to Georgetown. Georgetown's what top 10 school in in the country and in in the world. It's, you know, it's up there every single year. You know, I can't tell you how many nonsense classes that we took on in and you know, I don't want to disrespect um you know, um I mean, I could go down the list of of of worthless classes that that I took there, but you you had liberal arts majors who who couldn't calculate mortgage, who had no idea what the difference between principal and interest was, right? I mean, >> compound interest, probably less than 50% of people know about compound interest. credit score. How to how to get an 800 credit score, >> how to open up a how to get a home mortgage, how to get a, you know, car lease, how to exactly the difference between interest principal or how to calculate any of it, right? I mean, you know, how the stock markets work, you know, how the bond markets work and I'm not talking about, you know, complicated quant, right? I'm I'm talking about just, you know, the fundamentals of of of all of it. Yeah. Exactly. you know, how how how the FICO system works and you know why you might want to actually maintain a high score and and um no and by the way even even just basics how to open up a bank account, savings account, all right, you know what a 401k is and how to utilize it effectively and what you should be doing with it. No, no, we are grossly and by the way and that's before you get into just the basic concepts of of economics and and other things that can help in your your your you know daily life and and business. But but why is that not taught? Because we have an incompetent educational system. I mean guys, we have an educational system in our country that's ran ranked 10th, you know, 30th in the world and and we spend like, you know, seven to 10 times the amount per pupil, you know, educating people, right? The curriculum, I mean, this is something my father's fought so hard against, right? I mean, look at the DEI curriculum that you've had over the last in the WO curriculum. I mean, they're teaching revisionist history. We couldn't get past the fact that they were going up to first graders, you know, drawing a line across a chalkboard, you know, male, female, you know, little Johnny, go put your your mark on the line as to, you know, where you think you are on the spectrum of, you know, confusing. I mean, we got over that about 8 months ago when my father got into office and absolutely killed that entire curriculum. But this is this is where our country was going in terms of the educational teachings, let alone trying to teach them, you know, financial literacy, which there is nothing more important to the world, right? Let me just let me say that there is nothing more important. I I would get rid of half of the curriculum and I would translate that over to and by the way, you know what else should be taught? Basic trades, >> right? I mean, >> I have some of the smartest friends who do exceptionally well who couldn't hang that picture on the wall. Zero chance. Zero chance. And if they did, the thing is going to be crooked as hell. You know, they're certainly not lining up two pictures and having them be within an inch of one another, right? They would have zero chance of being able to do it. Like, how about actually teaching some people some real world skills so when they move into their first apartment, you know, they can mount the TV and actually find a stud in the wall, right? And and I I think our educational system is broken and uh it's it's a great shame. Well, we were thinking that's something we're extremely passionate about and if there ever isn't an initiative to increase financial literacy in any way we could be that would make our dreams come true. We work for free. We just want to make sure people understand the basics of investing the safe way. >> I'll partner up with you guys. >> He's already taught millions of people like people coming to him. I opened up a Roth IRA because of Graham. You know, simple simple I would love to see. I did a whole analysis on this and it seemed like once the government began subsidizing a lot of public schools and colleges, uh the amount of money per student stayed the exact same, but the amount of money for administrative and staff skyrocketed. >> Have you ever seen like the charts where where they take the amount of student loans, meaning the actual like monetary supply of student loans outstanding, and they they actually track that to college tuitions >> and and you know, the more money that they put into the system, >> the more they charge. It almost tracks like perfectly, right? It's like it's like Bitcoin and M2, right? They almost like track perfectly. >> Who would have thought? >> No, it's crazy. and you know they'll be charging $90,000 for a degree and you know somebody will come out with a a basket weaving major and you're saying they're saying I I don't know like like maybe maybe some of these schools especially when you're getting financial assistance maybe should they should actually peg it to the amount your career will pay when when you come out of that very institution you know based on that that respective major because it's I mean how many times do you hear somebody coming out of school with with a with a given degree you know and and and they're making $25,000 a year and they spent $80,000 a year for a three-year period of time, four year period of time to get that respective major and they they're just never going to be able to pay it back. You're giving the person, you know, the chance of either you you default >> um you know, on your your student loans or just never fill it and and and live behind an interest lock and you know and and and interest payments for the rest of your life. Um I I I mean it's now what's also interesting is that also correlated with mortgages as well that the overall size of someone's mortgage was correlated almost exact to the amount of uh government loans that were issued. >> Yeah. >> So that's also something that I find kind of interesting that housing prices also went up along the same as what they were able to get as a mortgage. >> I'm the biggest proponent of higher education, right? the the biggest if done right. I can make a solid argument and it hurts me to say this, but I can make a solid argument for what the price of a lot of these colleges are charging and for the product that they're putting out. >> You know, you'd be much better off taking the $300,000 that that education would put in like anything else. Do anything else. >> Yeah. Yeah. Put it put in an ETF, >> you know, attracting the S&P 500, you know, down payment on a house. >> Yeah. 12% a year every year for you know in perpetuity you know add to that every single day by by going you know and saving you know starting a career saving and years of time too that you're sinking into 100% >> and get a get a great jump start uh there there's there's almost no question about it I think our colleges in this country have a lot of soularching to do a lot of soularching to do >> although really quick before we go into that I just want to say that eating healthy sounds simple until of course life gets in the way like a lot of us don't have the time to go and cook six cups of vegetables to hit her nutrition goals. That's exactly where our sponsor, First Leaf, makes it easy. They've created a microgreen supplement with up to 40 times the nutrients of fully grown vegetables. Just one scoop gives you the benefits of six cups of greens. 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Again, that's drinkfirstleaf.com/ ice to save 30% off your first month subscription or the link is down below in the description. Thank you so much to Firstleaf for sponsoring this episode. How has the quality of your life changed over the past few years? You know, I started fighting for cause um that that wasn't monetary um which is which is very different, right? I always I always wanted to build great buildings. I always wanted to have unbelievable teams. Um, I always want to, you know, recreate skylines and landscapes and and that's what we do in hard asset space. And I I was dead serious about that. And then all of a sudden, we were fighting for something that was a little bit less tangible. Um, we were fighting for the American spirit. We were fighting fight fighting for the American flag. We were fighting for our Constitution. We were fighting for our nation. And um, it changed in that every single day I started taking arrows for for for doing something that I thought was noble and and righteous and um, and and and right. Um, I I never thought that because you love America and you wanted to fight for its betterness, you would start becoming the most opinionated person ever. I I never thought that you'd have to spend $400 million defending yourself from shams because, you know, Hillary Clinton made up a, you know, Russia hoax and, you know, I I just I never thought that we'd be there. But it it's also been really kind of rewarding. I have this 99-year-old grandmother who always has a saying. She goes, "How many steaks can you eat?" And and I it means a lot to me. um where you know a certain point it's not monetary it's not about succeeding in business it's it's about it's about doing the right thing you know how many how many steaks can you eat and and uh I think um it it's it's changed me in that I think I have multiple purposes in my life now one certainly a company that I love and one of the great real estate companies anywhere in the world but also one you know fighting for American spirit and American people that I adore and in a movement that has become I think the most powerful political movement on Earth. >> You mentioned that you're very lucky that you were insulated from a lot of these attacks because of your your pocketbook. Basically, you had the money to stay protected from all of this stuff. Would you say money buys happiness? >> Um, no. Money definitely doesn't buy happiness. But hold on one second. I got to go back to the insulated. >> We were far from insulated. Um, they wanted us imprisoned >> and they did everything they could to affffectuate that. And the only tool that we had was the fact that we had enough monetary means and allowed enough voice to be able to go and and fight back against an incredibly rigged system. If we didn't have the voice, we would have lost. If we didn't have the the monetary means to pay a lot of lawyers, we we would have lost. Um, and it was touch and go. You better believe it was touch and go. Uh, I will tell you some of the most miserable people in the world are some of the wealthiest. and and uh you know I I've met people who have achieved every milestone in life. Um they have their private planes, they have their this, they have their that, they've got their beautiful houses, they've got their trophy wives, they've got their trophy husbands, right? And yet they're still miserable. So no, I don't I don't think money buys happiness. Um I think being a great person, I think being missiondriven, I think being loving what you do. So often times I think it's when you when you lose the passion um that you find the misery. you know, the the people who have done extraordinarily well but are passionate about what they do are normally incredibly kind of happy people um versus the people who are now sitting on, you know, tremendous fortune um with idle time are are typically the people um you know who who who go down the other path. And I've I've seen that a lot and it's a shame. >> So, what would you say for yourself are your primary sources of happiness? >> Yeah, I've got two unbelievable kids, uh Luke and Carolina. Uh they are absolutely my joy in life. I've got an unbelievable wife, Laura. You probably know her from um she's become a superstar in the world of politics and on Fox News and and she's amazing. Um I love building. I mean, in my free time, I I love projects. Uh I love the shooting sports. Um love the outdoors. Love being outside. Love dirt bikes. Grew up on dirt bikes and and uh still doing a lot of the ATVing stuff. So I I just I love the outdoors. I love waking up early. I'm up at five o'clock on the weekend normally in my truck and you know I'm watching the sun come up and uh I love fishing and and uh skiing. I mean >> how do you even find time to do that stuff? >> I I don't I don't but I try and I try and carve out a day a week. >> Is this a recent thing? Oh, a day a week. So you have like a schedule? >> No, it's Listen, on you know if I'm not traveling on a Saturday or Sunday, you know, I I I try and find some time for myself and you know it's listen it's difficult, right? We run a very big company and um work very hard and um don't sleep a whole lot and you know always get interrupted no matter you know what I'm doing and and and that's fine right that's it's the life I I love and it's life I enjoyed and I think if I ever had free time I'd probably be miserable and incredibly bored right you know I think there's certain people who are my grandfather had this great expression it's to to retire is to expire and and I think we're all built that way I think humans are probably actually built like that um but no I I like to run hard in everything I do and I can't tell you how many times I'll come off a plane at 1:00 in the morning and I'll be up at 5:00 in, you know, in the morning to to try and get a couple free hours of of free time. So, I think what actually gets compacted in my life is actually probably sleep, but that's okay. We we operate on very little sleep anyway. >> Would you ever run for president? >> I retired from politics. Um, I called my father the the morning of of the election after we won in in it was November 6th and I said, "Pops, I love you. I'm I'm going back to the company. I'm going back to the people I love. I'm going back to you know, doing this, you know, I'll run this side of of of life and, you know, you you do a great job for the country and you won't need to worry about anything over here and, you know, I know the country is in great hands and um I never thought I would have been in this race. Um I never thought I would have been a major player on that stage. Um and I was and and arguably without without me, my father couldn't have done it, right? Because there would have been no one watching over the actual company and you know that was everything he had ever built, everything he ever created as a major. Um he had an answer back in the 80s which is you know if it ever got so bad u that we had no other choice I would do it and that would probably be my answer as well. Um I've seen the best of politics. Um I've also seen the worst of politics. I've seen how they can try and destroy a family for doing absolutely nothing wrong. I see how they can lash out and try and imprison you and bankrupt you and then kill you as they did to my father twice. Um at the same time I see this kind of amazing transformational change that he's making every single day. Right? I mean peace in the Middle East. to who the hell would have thought, right? Look, look at where our economy is. Look at where our world is. Look at our standing around the world. And so, you know, the good news for the first time I can see, you know, I really see people who are making a difference. He's making a difference. And and I think that's a beautiful thing for our nation. And we better have good business leaders >> running this country and not these bureaucrats who have been I mean, can you imagine AOC ran a 32.5 trillion dollar economy? >> Yeah. Well, it's Deote. They're polluting the uh the oceans. Did you see that? >> Yeah. I I I mean [laughter] but but like I mean look at look look at you know Kamla right I mean she goes out and talks her big economic plan was to stop the price what did she say and no she say gauging price gauging >> oh sorry price gauging at the uh grocery stores. >> Yeah. Yeah price. So she wants her economic plan for this country is to stop the price gauging. Now I I >> have you seen the the margin though that they have at the grocery stores are making a ton of money. They're making 1% margins. >> Yeah. I mean those guys if anyone has money it's run the >> grocery the grocery store owners >> you know Casmatitis is a friend of mine right owns Christis and Dustinos and all those >> and um a lot of places are not even making that you know why because of the theft in some of these cities right when when you used to have a theft rate of you know half of 1% and now all of a sudden you know you have 7% of product walking out of your stores and high tax environments you know with spoilage and everything else that you have in the supermarket business you're not making anything and um the hardest business but yet mandami wants to go and nationalize iz grocery stores, you know, in in all the infinite wisdom of city hall in New York. I mean, I've saved them more times than you can count. We saved them on a skating rink in in in Central Park. We saved them on >> a golf course, which they spent 30 30 not three 30 years trying to build at a cost of almost $300 million to build a golf course and I got the thing done in 18 months, right? And yet in City Hall's infinite wisdom, they're going to go nationalize grocery stores and make these things profitable. Give me a break. >> How are you going to save New York in a sense? Like it it seems like he's getting a lot of attention and I would even love to have him on the podcast. >> Guys, we try to have people on the left on this podcast all of the time. I'm not just saying that. Seriously, >> they don't do it. They don't do it. We want We want more people on from the left. >> We have Eric Trump here right now. Guys, if we could just get Mandani, if we could get if we could get anybody, any AOC, Bernie Sanders, please >> ask all the same questions you asked me. >> We would love to. We we've thrown out the offer for years and zero response back. So if if you could help because I'm in real estate on talking terms. >> Well, I mean I can be honest. >> I'm in real estate. Yeah. >> I mean the reason they won't do it is you know they don't control you. They control ABC. They control NBC, right? I mean network TV was be became the the you know kind of the PR arm of the Democratic party. Everybody knows that, right? You know, the reason you guys are doing great is you have an independent voice and you can ask questions and you can ask them uncomfortable questions and because of that they won't go on your programs, right? Like if they go on CNN, they're going to just they're going to hold up little, you know, fluff tea balls, you know, and let them kind of hit it out of the park all day long with nonsense. And in the case of ABC, you saw what they did with, you know, Camala's interview. They literally edited all the questions to make her try and sound intelligent. They took questions, they edited her answers, and they tried to make her sound intelligent. like this is and that's the reason these people won't come on your podcast because they they have to do what I've done for the last 90 minutes where you actually have to be intelligent and run your mouth and you know know the answers to kind of farreaching topics of which these people don't because they've never lived in the real world and as I said before most of their votes have always been you know yes and no >> but seriously that is an honest offer so if anyone you know if you know Kamla >> are you worried about him getting elected and destroying a city and putting these policies in place and driving people out. He was talking today about a 52% tax rate in New York City. >> Well, listen guys, I left New York. I left New York because the weaponization in New York, but I left New York also because of the taxes. I mean, between, you know, between >> we left California. We left back in 2020. >> How can you blame me? I mean, let's just take a tale of two cities, right? New York, which was our entire life. I still have a lot of assets in New York. And let's take Florida for a second, right? >> You know, New York is thinking about increasing property tax, you know, just taxes in general more. You mentioned that the 52% you know kind of marginal rate >> yet Dantis is coming out every day saying he's going to eliminate all property taxes in the state of Florida right you know why Dantis has that much cash because everybody left New York and they all came down here there's an article in New York Times saying that the top 18,500 taxpayers in New York City paid 85% of the taxes and they all left. They all left and now all of a sudden they want to raise taxes again. You know what they should do? They should go the exact opposite way. cut wasteful spending, bring down the tax rate, and no no city in the world could compete with New York. I love New York. New York's me. >> I love New York. I love everything about the city. >> If if they had, and I'm not talking about bringing down to zero, but if they brought like, you know, state and city tax down to like what North Carolina has, you know, 4%, four and a half%. >> Oh, it would crush. Same with California. So many people would move back to California. >> People would pay the marginal difference 100%. You couldn't compete against New York. You could pay a little bit more, but >> you know what's going to happen? He's going to come in. Your streets are going to get dirty. Your streets are going to get unsafe. you know, he wants to defund the police as you know, you know, he hates the Jewish population. I mean, he says he's including last night on Martha McCallen, he said that he wants to imprison, you know, Netanyahu if he ever came into to New York. So Netanyahu comes to to speak at the UN and you're going to have the mayor of New York imprison him. This can't be serious. This this this can't be serious, right? So congratulations. You're just going to have major world leader that doesn't come to the UN, which is going to diminish what the UN function is, which is going to only diminish New York. It's uh it's it's hard to believe we're here. It's uh incredibly >> So, what are you planning to do, if anything? >> Listen, I no longer vote in New York. I'm a proud Florida resident. I I love it down here in Florida. Um it's sad. Again, I have a lot of assets in New York and I I only wish the best for the city, but it's um >> But you do have a big platform and a big voice. >> Oh, and believe me, I use that platform and voice. And um you know, it is hard to run against somebody who promises everything for free, right? It's it's kind of, you know, one of those life lessons that I think we've learned over hundreds of years. you know, somebody goes around, you know, promising, you know, the world for free. I mean, it's easy to promise something until you actually have to pay for it. And uh and I think they're going to run into that in the hard way. And I think if he does in fact increase taxes again, I think you're just going to see another exodus from from New York to Florida. And I think that's just going to continue to make Florida real estate more expensive. So guys, honestly, I want to bring in Asher Genude. He's one of our partners. He he's part of American Bitcoin. This company that we we started, we just listed. Um I've never been more proud of a company in my life. Again, as I said before, we're literally mining Bitcoin at $50. I believe in the future of of cryptocurrency, probably more than anything I've ever believed in my life. I think it's the the greatest complimentary asset uh to hard assets, which is what I do every every day. And and uh we should have him uh we should have him join. There's no no one sparter in the space. Real talk for a second. 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So now we're going to be adding in Asher Jenut from Hut 8. He's the CEO of HUD 8, which builds and operates data centers. How did you guys meet? >> Got it. Seemed like we had every mutual friend in the world who goes Eric, you need to meet Asher. And then I think they were saying to Asher, Asher, you've got to meet Eric. And uh the rest is history. We become dear friends. And no one better, smarter, no one better in the energy space, no one better in the crypto space anywhere in the world. And we we started uh American Bitcoin together. >> Yeah. Uh Mike and I were chatting about this actually last night. We were saying that one of the first uh nights that we met, we had like a pizza party and we were chatting about just what drove us and kind of what was the kind of intrinsic driver. And I think we connected really well because mining lives in the center of real estate development and also this crypto world. And so we started talking about and he's like, "Look, I grew up living on development sites. I grew up building these buildings, these real estate properties." And so we connected a lot on kind of our both of our passions to build infrastructure. >> Okay. So in the simplest ways possible, because we're going to do a deep dive on crypto. That was one of the main reasons we wanted to film this episode was to talk about crypto and its involvement in the United States. >> Explain what it is exactly that you do and how it ties in with what Eric does. >> Sure. So, HUT 8 is an energy infrastructure company and the idea is we're harnessing power to push technologies of the future forward. And what that exactly means is we're investing into power infrastructure. So that's power generation, interconnection to the grid. And then we're building data center capacity. Those are data centers that support Bitcoin mining compute. Those are data centers that support AI compute. And so when we formed American Bitcoin, HUD was one of the first Bitcoin miners out there, one of the first companies that was publicly traded to own Bitcoin on the balance sheet. And we said as we continue to become more and more of an energy company, we need to separate kind of the Bitcoin in in the energy businesses. And then so HUD basically builds and operates all the data centers. And then American Bitcoin owns the actual servers that mines all of the Bitcoin and is able to produce the Bitcoin. And so if you think about American Bitcoin, essentially the business model is we're increasing the amount of Bitcoin we have. So our shareholders increase their Bitcoin per share. So essentially it's like a Bitcoin yield. um if you were to own Bitcoin directly versus owning a percentage of the company. >> How profitable is it to mine Bitcoin? >> Depends on when. Right now it's been really great. I mean we have over 50% margins right now in in terms of how we're mining and the unique thing about our business is I think our competitive advantage is that relationship with HUD. Had a large shareholder in American Bitcoin. So I obviously serve as a CEO of Had and also the exec chair of American Bitcoin. And so there's this natural synergistic relationship where American Bitcoin doesn't have to go spend the money on all these low lower yielding assets. So like when you invest into a substation or into a building, you're not expecting to be paid back in two or three years. When you're investing into Bitcoin servers, you're expecting to be paid back really quickly. And so we have this unique relationship between the two companies that allows American Bitcoin to have these vertically integrated cheap economics without having to put out the capital spend up front and then without having this kind of large team and overhead that we have to carry. >> So when did the both of you first learn about Bitcoin? >> You go first. You go first because you you were first. [laughter] >> All right. Um so I mean I I learned of Bitcoin itself early on. And I mean we have two people in the room today uh who are partners in American Bitcoin as well. So early on Bitcoin and then crypto in general and Ethereum. I remember when Ethereum was sub $100, Matt Prusk who's our president sent me a long email and like if Bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum is digital oil and kind of the whole presentation. And then in terms of mining specifically is our CEO Michael Ho and he started mining really really early on 13 14 as kind of a hobbyist and then really 15 16 and 17 on an industrial level. And so when we started kind of the business, the idea was Bitcoin mining is now an industrial scale business and we can go and build a blue chip company within the sector and within this ecosystem and that kind of so really early on from buying interest hobbyists of buying GPUs and plugging them into racks and mining Bitcoin to now large scale infrastructure projects. >> But how early on like what age were you? What was the price? What was the price? the first time you bought. >> So my my story is a little my story is a little bit different because my story was when we started so we started a company called US Bitcoin Corp. emerged into a company called Hadate and so we run hot today and then we spun out American Bitcoin. So there's a lot of US America in in the story but when we started the company in 2020 that was basically my approach was very conservative which was I don't know Bitcoin that well. it's this awesome store of value, but there's also in crypto as folks I'm sure are listening for every one or two great projects, there's 100 200 not great projects, right? And so actually understanding which projects to actually invest into, what are the long-term stable assets. So Mike has owned Bitcoin since I don't know 2012, 13 um if not earlier. And then my experience coming into it was very different which was okay if I invest in Bitcoin, I'm taking volatility risk. It can go up, it can go down. And my thesis in Bitcoin grew as we started building the company. And the reason we started a mining company was if Bitcoin doesn't go to zero and we're one of the best operators, we'll always make money. When times are good, we'll make a lot more money. When times are bad, we'll make less. We'll always make money in betting on kind of this asset class. And so I have a very different and unique way of entering the space. It came from a energy background of if we understand energy and energy is the thing that produces Bitcoin when you're mining and we're a lowcost operator then I have a different so I'm not the bought Bitcoin super early on have believed in Bitcoin for the last uh two decades Mike our our partner is is much deeper I came from very much the power story which was how do we invest into Bitcoin in a kind of d-risk fashion and how do we manage through [clears throat] kind of volatility and obviously since building the business and growing we've become only more and were passionate about this asset class. When did you first learn about Bitcoin? >> I really got into crypto when we started getting debanked. Um the same people that were coming after us uh were going after all the crypto people. The same people that were shutting down our bank accounts were shutting down the crypto people's bank accounts all because those people believed in a different, you know, type of finance. Um a different way to move money. Think of Bitcoin. I mean, I think it's really important for people to kind of, you know, zoom out. Um we we have a company that literally can mine any product for roughly 50 cents on the dollar, right? So the spot price of Bitcoin right now is, you know, 115,000 roughly, you know, and we're mining it every single day for roughly 50% of that. Go talk to anybody who does copper. Go talk to anybody who does gold. Go talk to anybody who mines lead. Go talk to anybody who mines silver. Most of the time they're actually mining at about par. And then they're using complicated options and and and financial kind of mechanisms to otherwise get, you know, they're selling futures and and all sorts of other things in order to make their profit. You you also have a product that's limited, right? And I think it's the only commodity in the world, the only product, the asset class in the world that, you know, can't grow. You've got 21 million Bitcoin, slightly less because some of it has been lost over time, but you have 21 million Bitcoin. If if the cost of gold ever went up to $20,000 an ounce, I I would break down this wall. There's concrete behind it, you know, and we would extract gold from those columns because there's gold in, you know, virtually everything, right? as price goes up, Elon will put a a spaceship on Mars and he'll extract gold and and the supply of gold will go up. That can never happen with Bitcoin, right? So, it's this it's this unbelievable asset, but it's global. It has immediate liquidity. You know, try walking through an airport with a gold bar, right? They're going to arrest you and they'll probably call the IRS even if it's your own money. You know, around the world, it's become such a powerful tool, even maybe more so outside of the the United States in that you've got absolute government corruption all over the place. You've got massive inflation. You know, I often use Zimbabwe because I've I've been there and I've seen it. But, I mean, you had Zimbabwe, you had inflation that was going up a,000% a year. You had inflation that was actually going up more than that. And during certain periods of time under Mugabi, I mean, imagine getting a paycheck. You work in in Zimbabwe. The second you get the paycheck, it's gone. Set it on fire. It's it's gone. Now, all of a sudden, with a with a basic phone, being able to connect to, you know, the internet, which virtually everybody has in in the world now, you can buy an asset class that is has 24-hour liquidity, uh that's global, that's incredibly in demand, that has a limited supply, that can never be taken from you, that can never be confiscated from you, that you can't get debanked, you know, you can't be burned, it can't be taken out by a tornado or a hurricane, you know, it's it's not subject to your little local branch that can be robbed. Um, Bitcoin has become an unbelievable an unbelievable asset. Try and transfer money. We transfer a lot of money in because we're a very big company. Try and transfer money at at 5:01 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. Yeah. Through the Swift system, that money won't get to its intended recipient until, you know, Monday afternoon, maybe Tuesday morning. Why isn't finance 247? Why isn't it immediate? Why Why is it that every bank in the world has to have their fingers in absolutely everything? you know, if I want to go buy a watch out of Geneva, you know, why do I have to transfer money from, you know, Chase here or whoever the hell I bank with to to Geneva? You know, you have FX, you know, currency exchange fees. The bank's going to have his finger in the transaction. Why? Why can't why can't you just send me a link, you know, a link to your wallet and instantaneously you receive the funds at at virtually no cost to move that money and instantaneously that watch is in a FedEx coming over to the other side of the >> How does this compare then to the dollar? Couldn't the dollar be digitalized in such a way that it could do the exact same thing? >> It is being digitalized. >> Right. >> Right. It's called stable coins and but but you're then betting on on on completely you're you're betting on on the dollar, right? I mean, Bitcoin is a store of value. It's digital gold, right? That's here. Stable coins is obviously, you know, uh digitizing obviously a currency. It doesn't have to be the US dollar, but the vast majority of stable coins is the US dollar. We have USD1 which is the fastest growing stable coin on on earth right now and it's pegged onetoone with treasuries off of the US dollar. And so there's no question that the Swift system is going to disappear. There's no question that finance is going to become 247. There's no question that you're going to have this DeFi atmosphere, you know, using blockchain and smart contracts that can play a major role in the role that traditional finance is playing right now. If you have a million dollars worth of assets, right, and they're in they're in JP Morgan Chase, why are you going to JP Morgan Chase to ask them to give you financing and why does that financing take you 120 days to get after going through paper contracts and and know your customers while they have every skyscraper in every city around the world? Why why can't you just go on there and say, I want to borrow against my money. I'm going to do this in a smart contract. And 3 seconds later, it's in your bank account. Right? And that's what's going to happen to finance. We are on the one yard line to to something incredible. I mean, listen, crypto and what we're doing, it's growing faster than the internet grew in the '90s, right? That's just a fact. >> When you look back in 5 years and 10 years, the entire financial landscape is going to be much different. And that's all because of cryptocurrency. And that's why I'm so damn excited about it. And I would have never gotten excited about it had it not been for this, had it not been for a siege, had it not been for a debanking, had it not been for deplatforming and realizing that there are a couple people, you know, sitting in their ivory towers that can control what you do, what I do, what what all of us do. We've all been he's been on the receiving end of of being deplatformed all because he believed in industry that was the future of finance. And we we've all been there and um and I really believe it can never happen again based on the moves being made in crypto. >> What does it mean to be debanked? Does that is that just something that happens overnight? You check your accounts, there's no money in it. >> I'll give you an example. His is much more extreme, but we started the company. We're young entrepreneurs. Just raised our series A, right? All of our money was in Bank of America. All in one bank, one bank account. We were just starting the company. We didn't have a bunch of different bank accounts. And we get an email and said, "Your account is shut down. You'll receive a check in the mail in the next four to six weeks." And we just said what? Like >> four to six weeks. >> We have to pay bills. We have to pay employees. We have to pay our vendors. We raised the money to go buy equipment to go build a facility. >> And so we had this period of time where people said, "Do you actually even have money? Are you a real company or not?" We're like, "We do. We just don't know what's in the ether." decides that at Bank of Americ >> and you say, "Where is my accountant?" And they look it up and they say, "Doesn't exist. We can't help you here." >> But then what did what what does that escalate into? You say, "Okay, well, >> you literally just wait and check the mailbox. There's no person you can contact." >> It's insane. You go into the branch, you're not in the >> So, who's making that decision then? >> Bureaucrats. People who can hate you because you believe in something that they don't, which is exactly what's happening to us. So you were posing as competition for Bank of America, I'm guessing. >> I think it was just because we were in the we weren't even buying Bitcoin. We were in the business of buying equipment that were building data centers to support the Bitcoin ecosystem. >> A call in the middle of the night. >> I did. In fact, I got a letter in the middle of the night. >> I got it from Capital One. I got it from all the banks, but I I the biggest one was Capital One by far. Eric in your accounts are all shut down, right? You know, we give you a couple days to to migrate your accounts, but they're all shut down. Now think about a company like ours where you have some of the biggest commercial buildings in the world, some of the biggest hotels in the world where you have thousands of vendors, thousands of tenants. Um you've got lockbox provisions in in and loan documents, right? Where you know money has to flow in and out of certain accounts, right? So you know mortgages can be paid first after taxes and everything else and then it can waterfall. >> You've got a payments coming in from every direction. You've got real estate taxes. You've got, you know, you've got hundreds of employees. You've got every cost imaginable, right? Thousands of inputs. This isn't a this isn't a a personal account where you pay a credit card out of and you pay, you know, a couple bills, couple homeowner bills. You have thousands and thousands of inputs. And then you take that and you spread that out to 300 accounts that all have that scenario that all have that Christmas tree. >> And they call you up saying, "Congratulations, you know, you're done. You're closed or you give you a couple days, the account's closed, go somewhere else, right?" They wanted to take the rails out from under us, right? They wanted to see us bankrupt. They wanted to see us gone. They didn't want us to be able to, you know, to to conduct normal business. These are for condominium associations. These are for, you know, golf courses. >> And who is they? Who do you think it is? >> Well, I mean, two things. Um, in a lot of cases, it was the actual bank and the higherups in the bank who simply didn't agree with let's make America great again, right? They weren't wearing the red hat. Um, you know, and and they didn't like my father's political views and the fact that I was standing on that stage. So, so they assert that them. And then I think in a lot of cases it was it was well it's not that I think I know it was government regulators going in and you know they happen to flip to page 17 or whatever the hell page it was. Oh interesting. You have the Trump organization. I' I'd be very careful doing business with them because we're the regulators and you know we we we will you know start looking. I can't tell you how many of my friends ran ran big banks and they were shaken down by the government saying I hear you bank Trump and you better not do that anymore. Guys, this is real world stuff. This isn't this isn't makebelieve. This is and I would have never believed it could have happened in the United States of America >> if it didn't happen to me, right? If I didn't see see assets that had no affiliation with politics shut down in the middle of the night for no reason whatsoever other than political affiliation. >> What banks shut you down? >> Oh, let's start. Capital One, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, um, uh, First Republic. First Republic was was was big, right? and then about you know 12 others behind then but but beyond those you know I' I'd say just about every major financial institution in the country but then you had the AON insurancees of the world then you had the Shopifies of the world I'll never forgeting you know all our e e-commerce platform for for Trump was on Shopify at the time and you know congratulations you're hereby closed why like why are we closed because we're selling golf polos that say Trump national golf course on it right and that's when you realize that there's nothing that can be done in that world that can't be done better on blockchain using smart contracts. They can't do that to you. >> How is your relationship now with those banks? >> Well, they all kiss our ass. I mean, what do you what do you think they would do now? You know, how many of them have come back to me and lick their wounds, you know, >> and how does that look like? Do they just apologize? Do they ever give you a reason? >> Yes. Normally, uh, you know, we very much, you know, Eric, it's so great to see you again. You run into them at like, you know, cocktail party or or a lot of times they'll reach out to you and, you know, we we really like to bring the teams back together. You really have an amazing company. We're really proud of everything that you've been able to accomplish. And I'm sitting there gritting my teeth saying, "You dirty." I can't say it on the podcast because but you can only imagine my anger uh when I had hundreds of employees who didn't sleep for months on end, you know, as as as we're working on on Hail Mary after Hail Mary to find try and find every little small regional bank who by the way loved our accounts, right? Because of the the value of them >> after being thrown off for dogs for doing absolutely nothing, right? >> Could you ever talk to him and be like, "Hey man, let's just like go off to the side here." what happened? Like who told you this? >> Yeah. But my my conversations aren't I think the conversation you would have is probably exponentially nicer than [laughter] the conversation that I would have, right? And and I think maybe that's a little bit of bitterness over what happened. >> Sure. >> And you'd probably be in the same seat if they did the same thing to you. >> What's funny, my Bank of America account was shut down. This is back in 2020. And my theory, and I've had this account, by the way, for 15 years, and I had a mortgage with Bank of America. And my theory was that I had too much money going in the account that it flagged it. And they gave me thankfully 60 days. They said, you know, after 60 days, we have to shut down your account. >> That was very kind of them. [laughter] >> But I had everything going into one account, but I think too much money was going in and then I would transfer that to investments. And I think they saw like big transfers in and out within like I guess it was that. I'm not sure. I never found out. Exactly. >> Uh yeah, it was just it was a letter I got in the mail. I reached out and they say, "Oh, your your account has been flagged for something." And I I looked it up online. I couldn't find >> exactly what it was. the employees at those banks, right? Obviously on a smaller retail account, you probably don't have an exact account rep that just kind of owns you. >> I remember calling some of our account reps who would be crying, which is like their entire livelihood was managing the Trump accounts at these various financial institutions and they were they were gone. They were just they were out of they were out of work. I mean, you know, everything that you know, all our accounts were just closed down for no reason other than some call from above. Um, it can't happen. Uh, it can't happen. And I'm proud to say I've I've held a lot of the banks accountable. You know, I was one of the first that started talking about this. Asher is the first one to say it. It's like he's like, I never talked about this because I always found it embarrassing. And and by the way, back in the day, I almost found it embarrassing, too. Like, how can you lose a bank account? Like, we're we're a great business. We're one of the greatest real estate companies anywhere on Earth. How the hell do you lose a bank account? Like, it was it was almost like a mark of shame. And now, honestly, it's like almost like a badge of honor that we fought through it. And I've held every single one of those banks accountable. And there's probably one that I'll sue next week. Okay. But honestly, just to make the point, they guys, it wasn't just us. They were doing this conservatives all across the country, right? Like again, not not not back to this, but this whole concept of of what I wrote about under siege. It's they were coming after all of us. They had they weaponized the IRS against, you know, churches, right? Against conservative causes. They weaponized every aspect of this system. The fact that both you and you have been debanked and I've been debbanked, like that's more than coincidence, right? I mean, this was happening to a lot of people that they didn't like and and and so to crypto, like, why am I such an advocate of Bitcoin? Why am I such an advocate of of blockchain and and DeFi, you know? I would love to see so many of these banks fail to exist. >> Can you make the argument that the government should be buying Bitcoin and putting that on their balance sheet? >> Yeah, 100%. >> Why aren't why is the government not getting involved? Why are they simply taking crypto and holding it rather than the argument for for both sides, right? Why should any government be buying Bitcoin? Because it's the single greatest performing asset over the last decade increasing in value 70% a year, year over year, every year. Like Germany a couple years ago, there's a great article. You'd probably you might know the exact numbers, but Germany had like 30,000 Bitcoin or something along those lines and they they sold it right away. They monetized it into, you know, their currency and and it was like the worst investment ever made by a government. And and by the way, that's a pretty damn low bar as you know, right? Um the government should definitely have have um certain crypto assets on their on their balance sheet mainly mainly Bitcoin and actually the United States government does right you have a lot of for forfeitures >> correct >> and and and they've taken a great stance saying that we're not selling any of it um you have a lot of countries around the world that are actively buying if you go to you know the UAE if you if you go to a lot of countries they are actively putting that in their treasuries and you look at the Fortune 500 companies they are actively hoarding Bitcoin the biggest families the biggest [snorts] companies you know countries sovereign wealth funds and individuals are all hoarding Bitcoin, right? It's it's why it's been as explosive as it is. And it's funny, people like, "Oh, well, Bitcoin's down like 3% now." It's like, this time last year, Bitcoin was at like 55,000 or 60,000 roughly. >> Um, it's had unbelievable explosive growth. Why is the country not go just going out and taking billions to go buy it? Because America kind of doesn't work that way. You have sovereign wealth funds in other countries and they go out and they make investments on behalf of that country. And and honestly, I wish America had a sovereign wealth fund. I think it would be the greatest thing we ever did. But America doesn't kind of work that way, right? America's, you know, pretty myopic. You take in tax revenue, you pay the expenses, and you let capitalism in the private industry reign. Most of these other companies, you don't really let capitalism in or countries, you kind of let you know, government take every penny they can, invest it on behalf of the country, and then pay out dividends. And so, it's it's a little America has a little bit of a different way of thinking, and and obviously, thus far, it's served us well. So, what percentage of both of your portfolios are in Bitcoin and or crypto? And for the average person out there, the average listener, what percentage do you recommend that they would have reflected uh of Bitcoin in their portfolio? >> So, I have a pretty large percentage of Bitcoin. I am a large owner of Hadate. Had a large owner of American Bitcoin. We hold over 10,000 Bitcoin at 8. We have a lot of Bitcoin we're accumulating at American Bitcoin. I haven't shared uh the updated numbers yet, but I would say it's really what is your investment horizon. If you buy Bitcoin, you're buying it and holding it, and you don't want need or want that liquidity. And I think that's key. And so, everyone has to think about all right, what percentage of my portfolio can I just buy and hold? Like, Bitcoin is a volatile asset. Over the course of the last decade, it's compounded at over 7% on kind of an average annual basis. And so, but there are years where there's pull downs and you have to be able to withstand those pull downs and not sell. And so, I would say I mean, if you're just kind of passive and you say, "Hey, I want to dabble." Have a couple percentage points, 5%, potentially even 10% and just hold and leave in and pretend that that capital doesn't exist and in 10 years from today, you'll be very, very happy. Right? On the other hand, if you're younger, you're a bit more risk-taking and uh you want to build more generational wealth, then you can increase uh that percentage because you're a large earner and can have new income coming in that you spend instead of uh your assets. >> And also, where do you hold your Bitcoin? Like, do you have it in cold storage? Cuz I I mean, I don't maybe want to say exactly. I have mine in Coinbase. I don't know like, you know, how secure that is. This is like a very novice question, but for the people out there that want to buy Bitcoin, what's the easiest and best way of doing it? >> You know, the amazing thing now you can buy Bitcoin in a thousand different ways, right? Go back 5 years. You had to buy it on a ledger and you had to kind of put it in in cold storage. You were buying it mainly on DeFi and it was complicated process. It lost a lot of people, you know, and and and and it was it was it was hard. Now it's easy. You can go to Fidelity and you can stand up a digital asset wallet in 3 seconds. You can go to Schwab. You can buy you can buy ETFs. You can buy American Bitcoin. I mean, we're we're listed, you know, so so your your your stock account, you can literally go buy American Bitcoin on the NASDAQ as of, you know, 6 weeks ago when we listed the company, right? I mean, you can buy it through most the financial institutions and if you can't, you can buy spot ETFs and if you don't want to do that, you can buy pure plays like us and and you know, or or you can go to Coinbase or you can go to a Kraken or you can go to Binance or you can go to, you know, a thousand other, you know, places or you can go back and do it, you know, the traditional way and and and own it on ledger if if if that's what you choose to do. But, you know, Bitcoin has so many different kind of ways you can can own it relative to to where we sat 5 years ago. And I think it's one of the reasons that all of crypto has has exploded the way it is because a lot of people just didn't want to go through the hassle. A lot of people didn't want to go through the pain. And now now guess what? The market opens up at 9:30 in the morning and you know, you can put $10,000 into something that you believe in. But, you know, I think Asher said it best. You know, there's a lot of people who who love crypto and they'll hop in and they'll ride it up. They'll ride it up and they're seeing these compounding returns that are insane. 70% year-over-year as as as Asher said and then all of a sudden it draws down 10% or it draws down 20%. Right? And they lose their minds. They they can only see a a one-way arrow. And I think you have to have, you know, they call them diamond hands, right? But like you you've got to be able to hold and you've got to be able to understand that you might have 5 6x the return, but you also might have five sixx the volatility. And volatility is actually what's amazing in in crypto. Go buy the dips, right? the people who have been successful in in crypto or the the ones who bought bought in here rode it up. It might come down and guess what they they dollar cost average back in rode it up even higher it comes down they buy back in by the dips in crypto and the people who have done that historically have have made an absolute fortune. How manipulated is the price of Bitcoin? Because I see all of these charts and analysis on Twitter and they say, "Oh, this Bitcoin whale just came in and like shorted the market and then bought the dip perfectly and like all of this stuff and now there's this narrative out there that like someone's behind the scenes." Like, you know, being able to influence the market upper down like 10 20%. >> Well, I think it's certainly easier to do with memecoins, right, than than it is in Bitcoin. I mean, you know what's the average liquidity? Michael, our partner, would know this right behind us. Michael, what's the average like liquidity of Bitcoin on on >> 60 billion a day? So, you know, somebody going in with 100 million bucks isn't moving moving BTC at all. Right. It's And by the way, yeah, there there people who take these wild bets. And by the way, I've seen as many go right as go wrong where somebody goes in with 20x leverage on a BTC bet, right? And then, you know, BTC goes down $1,000 and they get totally liquidated. Like, that's not how you play this game in my opinion. I would never play the game like that. I I really do believe in in buying and holding longterm and I I think if you if you buy Bitcoin and you you buy and hold and you buy into some of the dips at obvious times and you open up your eyes in in a four or five year period of time, I think you're going to have done exceptionally well. >> You know what's funny is have you seen the stuff online where people are speculating that Baron is like a secret crypto whale? People on Twitter are like posting that. >> Yeah. What was really it was really bizarre is the same tweets that come up about Baron come up about me in the exact same verbiage with the same images just with a different face. I mean, apparently last week I bought a billion dollar yacht. I'm not sure if you saw this now. >> Oh, how is it? >> Hey, I you know, I've been really really busy with under siege. So So >> this is how you relax. [clears throat] >> No, I guess I guess I just forgot that I bought a a billion dollar yacht. I just I guess I didn't know about that. I don't know the name. I don't know where it's being built. I know nothing about this yacht, but apparently I bought a billion dollar yacht last week. And >> congrats, >> you know. So, so you guys will be the first guests when we get this. >> No, it's a joke. And then I I'll see the exact same picture of the same fictitious yacht and you know, Baron Trump just bought a yacht and it's it's >> Don't believe what you you know, believe credible people. Don't believe what you read on the internet. Right. >> That's what we've come to experience as well. >> People like to think though that Baron's behind the scenes. Like I see him next to Trump. It's like father by now or like father time to dump. It is funny and I think people like us he's a bit mysterious like people don't see him. By the way, Baron's a sweetheart and he's a he's a great friend of mine. Um, and and he's uh he's really I brought him into a lot of the crypto projects that that that we've done and and he's uh he's done great for himself and uh and we've had a lot of fun doing it together. But I I can tell you that I look at those memes and I literally >> I laugh. Right. And by the way, >> hilarious. Yeah. >> You know, a meme is meant to be funny, right? I think sometimes I I I hope I hope serious people or or or or or people who are are trying to get into a space don't take this crap literally. Um because I think that's dangerous and and I think you know once in a while the industry has to mature a little bit. It's matured a lot. I mean over the last 5 years it's matured a lot. You have serious people. I like I am dead serious about replacing traditional finance with cryptocurrency. I I'm dead serious about this. This isn't fun. This isn't trading meme coins. This isn't screwing around. This isn't gambling on on on brands you like. I am dead serious about the the the rails of what cryptocurrency will do and having America lead the way. um and and and and curing so many of the wrongs that have been perpetrated against so many people including both of you and me uh based on what you just said and and so um there's a lot of people Asher I mean he's building spending billions and billions of infrastructure electrical infrastructure the heaviest gauge wires you've ever seen be behind the the the biggest energy you know uh formulation I mean you know in the greatest complexities you've ever seen you Look at you look at one of our sites that mines Bitcoin, right? Every one of these computers is literally running underwater. It's all they're all liquid cooled. All the chips are liquid cooled. I mean, this is space age stuff. It is real. It's tangible. Um it serves an amazing you know, purpose. And it is the future of finance. There's just no question about it. And uh you know, you have to be able to differentiate that from the from the garbage and the meme warriors and you know, the people who haven't left their their their you know, their grandmother's basement in a long time and just want to spew nonsense and make up facts and you know, claim that Barrett and I both bought the same boat for a billion dollars last year. >> We're going to be giving away a hat to one iced coffee hour member. So this is it. One of you will win it. >> Pass me those other two books. >> Yeah, dude. Okay, so this is for us. Eric, thank you. Great. >> Thanks. >> Thanks, guys.