3 Stories of Crazy Geniuses: Fenn’s Treasure, Michael Saylor’s Infinite Money Glitch + more

Shaan Puri 0:00 So I think the theme of this episode is rich guys, crazy or genius? We've got the Bitcoin guy who's doing the treasure hunt, and he's either crazy or he's a genius, right? Is he crazy or is he awesome? Ralph Lauren, crazy or genius? Looks like he came down on the side of genius. I have another one for you. [upbeat music] Dude, have you heard about this guy who's doing the $2 million treasure hunt?

Sam Parr 0:32 No, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Shaan Puri 0:33 [laughs] Okay. Well, can I interest you in a treasure hunt story?

Sam Parr 0:37 Yeah. $2 million, that sounds good to me.

Shaan Puri 0:40 There's this guy named John Collins Black, and there's not a lot of info about this guy, but he has basically hidden somewhere between $2 and $3 million across America right now in different treasure chests. So he's got five treasure chests out there, each with a bunch of treasure inside. And this specifically, it's not just like cash, it's things that are valuable. So he spent the last five years buying valuable kind of artifacts.

Sam Parr 1:06 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:06 So one of them has, you know, rare Pokemon cards, a 2002 holographic Charizard card. He's got one with George Washington's jelly glass that he bought out of an auction. There's things from it, from old shipwrecks. And in total, the stuff is worth $2 to $3 million. He's split it between five treasure chests, and he's hidden it in physical locations across America. And then he released a book that was, that's called There's a Tre- uh, it's called There's a Treasure or something like that. I Buried a Treasure or something.

Sam Parr 1:34 It's called, uh, There's a Treasure Inside

Shaan Puri 1:34 There's Treasure Inside. Yeah, and it's basically just clues to find his treasure. And so there's maps and clues, and you can buy this book right now and go find this treasure.

Sam Parr 1:44 Dude, wait, hold on. It's a, this is, it's even funnier. It's on Amazon. It's a book on Amazon called There's a Treasure Inside, and the book is $35.

Shaan Puri 1:53 Yeah.

Sam Parr 1:53 So he's gonna recoup a little bit of his money.

Shaan Puri 1:55 A little bit of it. A little bit of it, but, you know, probably not as much. So he's got like, you know, a hidden, a Colombian green emerald and all, [laughs] all kinds of stuff inside. And I find this kind of fascinating. So this guy's story is interesting. He was like a musician in LA, and that didn't really work out. And then he was like, okay. He started creating, uh, websites for helping people find jobs, and that started going good. He used that to buy Bitcoin earlier, early-ish on. A, I guess the story is he's a Bitcoin multimillionaire who was also fascinated by adventure. And so there's this thing called the Fenn Treasure. Have you ever heard of this?

Sam Parr 2:32 Okay, yeah.

Shaan Puri 2:33 Yeah.

Sam Parr 2:33 Fenn Treasure. It's a cachet of golden jewels, uh, that Forrest Fenn, an art dealer, uh, hid in the Rocky Mountains. Yes, I actually do think I've heard of this. I believe Zack Crockett, Zachary Crockett, who used to work for me at The Hustle, wrote a big article where he spent a week trying to find this treasure.

Shaan Puri 2:51 [laughs] How did he do? [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:54 Well, he, I don't think anyone has found it, so.

Shaan Puri 2:56 So five people died trying to find this treasure 'cause he, it was like, is it up in the mountains? Whatever. So they're climbing. So five confirmed deaths chasing the treasure, then he announces somebody found it. I think this was in 2020-ish, 2022. He says that, um, [lips smack] somebody found it, and then he dies months later. It was revealed that former journalist and medical student Jack Stuef found it, and then he auctioned it off for what, uh, for a total of $1.3 million of what he found. And so this guy, John Co- or whatever, Collins Black, was searching for that in 2020. And so he was like, during COVID, he had s- he, he had searched for the treasure. He thought this was really cool, and when he, when we were all in lockdown, he decided, "I'm gonna do one of two things." He either was, like, gonna create a children's book publisher or create a treasure hunt. He did both. [laughs] And so he created this. He started accumulating assets for this, uh, treasure hunt.

Sam Parr 3:54 I have a friend named Chip Forsythe. Chip Forsythe is a crazy person. I've been friends with him for 10 years. His brother is AJ Forsythe, who started iCracked, if you remember iCracked.

Shaan Puri 4:05 Yeah.

Sam Parr 4:05 And Chip will go out ... He's friends with these guys who raise funding to go find shipwrecks that they think have ... Well, I guess some of them are valuable just because they're shipwrecks, but some of them are valuable because they were, like, ships that had gold or other, like, valuable stuff in the, in the ship. And they raise money to go out and find these shipwrecks, and he tells me all about it. And it's like the type of story where the people who are into this, it's the only drug that fills that need. Do you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri 4:37 Yes. [laughs]

Sam Parr 4:37 Like, it's, it's like int- it, it is an intoxicating thing to find this, like, treasure.

Shaan Puri 4:41 It's romantic. There's a romantic idea about a treasure hunt, right?

Sam Parr 4:44 Yeah. Like, it's awesome. And so, like, I understand why. It's not my obsession, but I understand why it is other people's obsession.

Shaan Puri 4:51 The other thing that I think is interesting is choosing to release a book for this. I feel like there's a missed opportunity. I feel like he should have done something with TikTok or social media where I feel like there was a more viral way to release the clues or to let people unlock the clues or search for this thing together.

Sam Parr 5:08 Like a weekly or a monthly announcement.

Shaan Puri 5:10 Yeah. You know, I don't know if you've seen, there's these things that go really, really viral on TikTok. It'll be like some woman say, telling this 39-part story of how her husband cheated on her, and these things just ama- it's like a true crime. They amass, like, tens of millions of followers that are trying to just follow them. They wait for that next piece of the story to drop. And I do think that there was probably a way to do this that somebody could do, which would be to let, do a bit of a treasure hunt but use, use social media, use TikTok as a way to uncover the clues as they go. Um, and then people go in the real world using those clues rather than a book. Steve Bartlett, who's the podcast host of, uh, what's it called? Diary of a CEO. Before that, he had a, like, a ad agency, whatever. Before that, he worked for me back, back, back when he was maybe 19, 20 years old, 21 years old, something like that. He was just, like, a young guy that we had that was, like, a growth marketer, and his job was to come up with great growth ideas. One of the things that he did at the time that I remember was he grew his Twitter and Instagram accounts like crazy by doing a very simple thing. He was doing these, like, cash drops where he'd put just 200 bucks in an envelope. And he would say at a college town, I think it was, he'd be like, "We've dropped it here." He would post a video of him p- hiding it, and then there would be videos of people going and trying to search for it, and they'd be... Basically, they would tweet where they hid it, um, in some way, and then they would tweet people going and finding it. But I don't remember if it was him that did this or somebody else that was doing this-

Sam Parr 6:36 Dude, I'm gonna start doing that

Shaan Puri 6:37 ... but it was this extremely effective strategy to grow.

Sam Parr 6:38 That's a great idea. It's fun.

Shaan Puri 6:40 It was a great idea, and it was, like, 200 bucks. It wasn't even that much money that they were doing, and they were doing these mystery cash drops as a way to just generate hype. But the genius of it was the content that they created kinda before the drop and then after the drop of people searching, it made it feel like a big deal, and then they would do the next one and the next one. I think it was just an account called, like, Mystery Cash Drop that was doing this, that was working, that was getting really big. Uh, th- this was w- uh, like 10 years ago, so I'm trying to remember.

Sam Parr 7:07 The guy who, who ran that account messaged me. He listens to the pod. Uh, like it's... You never heard of this guy, Mystery Cash Drop? Uh, he mess- I-

Shaan Puri 7:15 I mean, this was before we even started the podcast. This was a long time ago.

Sam Parr 7:17 No, but he still does it. Like, there's-

Shaan Puri 7:18 Oh, yeah, it was @hiddencache. I think that was the-

Sam Parr 7:21 Hidden cache

Shaan Puri 7:21 ... Hidden Cache was the guy

Sam Parr 7:22 ... one of these gu- one of these guys just messaged us. You don't remember this? And, uh, yeah, one of... For some reason, it came into our world where I, I forget what happened. Someone tagged us on his Twitter thing, and he was like, "I love those guys." And then he DM'd me and just said, "Hey." Something like that. But-

Shaan Puri 7:35 So may- maybe I got this wrong. Maybe Steve wasn't the guy doing it. Maybe Steve ta- showed me this and we were gonna, like, copy the strategy. I m- I don't remember the link. Steve definitely put me onto this, 'cause it was happening both in the, in San Francisco and also in the UK. The account now is suspended for Hidden Cache, which I remember happened back then. It got suspended. I'm not 100% sure but why, but let me just read this article. This was back in 2014, so this is literally 10 years ago. It says, "An anonymous benefactor has been leaving cash hidden a- across San Francisco, inviting strangers to find it via a series of clues. They left money under chairs in public parks, on stairways, or in public bathrooms," and they basically post a picture of them holding the cash and then, like, a zoomed-in thing of where they put it. Like, it's, like, under a toilet, but you don't know which toilet. And then they, they... Their quote was, "I've made millions of dollars the last few years, more than I could ever imagine, and yet many friends of mine cannot afford to buy a home in the Bay Area. This has caused me quite a bit of reflection, and I'm determined to give away some of the money I make to charity and it, and to do fun, creative things like this." And that, uh, he or she will leave it once or twice a week. Dude, somebody should just do this again. This was-

Sam Parr 8:37 This sounds awesome

Shaan Puri 8:37 ... this was 10 years ago. It w- it would work today.

Sam Parr 8:40 I think this is awesome. Uh, I think I'm gonna start doing this. The, the other day-

Shaan Puri 8:45 [laughs]

Sam Parr 8:45 [laughs] The other day-

Shaan Puri 8:46 It's like a hobby. It's like, uh, running. We just went jogging, we're talking about. Like, I think I'll s- I think I'll pick up this hobby.

Sam Parr 8:51 [laughs] It's like I wanna play real-life Willy Wonka. Like, I just wanna, like, start contr- I just wanna, like, start controlling people's lives $100 at a time and just seeing, like, if I can, like, make all the monkeys dance.

Shaan Puri 9:00 Yeah, yeah.

Sam Parr 9:00 That's kind of, like, what this is. It's like you just, like, wanna be a puppeteer $100 at a time a little bit. But it is, like, kinda fun. [upbeat music] Hey, guys. So a huge part of the growth of this podcast is thanks to our presence on YouTube, and without YouTube, I don't think we'd be as big as we are now, and it's all because of you guys for watching. We see you in the comments, even the negative ones. It definitely bothers me, but I read all of them, and we see how powerful this platform is for growing an audience. Well, if you're planning for the next year and you're thinking about investing in a YouTube strategy for your business, then you have to check out this new guide from HubSpot. It covers everything you need, so building a content strategy. It covers understanding the YouTube algorithm and how to leverage SEO tactics, and then it also talks about the different content types and examples to create engaging content. So don't miss out. Grab the guide and set yourself up for success next year. Now, let's get back to the episode. [upbeat music]

Shaan Puri 10:00 I think one of the problems is, like, you get that initial hit of, like, excitement and attention, and everyone loves it, and then it's gonna fade away. And then you're gonna keep hiding the cash, but you're not gonna get that same hit, so you're gonna have to... It's like an addict. You have to do more in order to get the... So then you're like, "Hmm, you know, it'd be a shame if somebody got hurt finding it, but that would make for a whole nother news cycle around this." And then you sort of ex- you just keep escalating the prizes and the danger involved.

Sam Parr 10:22 And it becomes weird after a while. It's like, "Hey, Willy Wonka, why do you have a chocolate river-

Shaan Puri 10:27 [laughs]

Sam Parr 10:27 "... and invite children over all the time? Like, this is just dangerous." [laughs] Do you know what I mean? Like, at what some point, it's gonna be like, "Hey, could you s- could, could we go out to dinner and you'd not, like, hide $200-

Shaan Puri 10:38 Right

Sam Parr 10:38 ... before walking into the restaurant?"

Shaan Puri 10:40 The funny thing is we're so old that, like, everybody who's listening to this that's, like, under the age of 25 is like, "Yeah, you know, this is how every YouTuber, you know-

Sam Parr 10:46 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:46 "... tries to get famous, is doing this exact same thing."

Sam Parr 10:49 Yeah, they're like, uh-

Shaan Puri 10:49 And we're like-

Sam Parr 10:49 "What are you gonna do next? Go give, like, a homeless guy $100 and film yourself, like, giving him a haircut?" Like, that-

Shaan Puri 10:54 Exactly. [laughs]

Sam Parr 10:54 ... classic shtick. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:55 Exactly. I think maybe the takeaway is, uh, you know, what's old is new, uh, for some of these things. Like, the hi- what the Hidden Cache is, the guy was doing, it's not really all that different than what MrBeast does and, uh, has done to great effect.

Sam Parr 11:08 All right. Can I tell you a story about a different way to look at adventure? S- About someone who's, like, I've obsessed over a little bit, and I think you know this person, or you know of them, and I think I'll, I'll tell you a few facts that kinda, like, shock you. But also, I think you're gonna be into this person more than before. So the story is about a guy named

Sam Parr 11:27 Ralph Lifshitz. He was a Jewish kid from New York City, grew up, I believe, in the '30s, and the story is basically that he wanted to be an actor. He grew up poor, but he loved, like, seeing all these movie stars, uh, on TV, and he was like, "You know, I love that you can dress up and pretend to be a, another person. And if you pretend hard enough, people kinda start treating you seriously and start treating you like that person, and I love that. I love the... And I also love the idea that you can write a story and make it a movie, and I can live my life through that lens, that, that, the lens of that movie, and it gives me hope." So he was, like, intoxicated by this, but he sucks at acting. And so he's like-

Shaan Puri 12:08 [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:09 "I can't go to Hollywood. I can't become an actor. However, what I can do is I can shape these movies and direct these movies, not with a camera, but with clothing." And so he gets super into clothing.

Shaan Puri 12:19 What kind of leap of faith was that? I can shape these movies not through writing or acting, but through clothing?

Sam Parr 12:24 Yeah, so, uh-

Shaan Puri 12:25 That's a pretty ridiculous statement.

Sam Parr 12:26 No, it's not. I'll give you an example. So he was like... He's got this quote where he was like, "I love how, like, these actors, like, I... Like, you could dress up as, like, a military person, and you kind of feel a little bit tougher sometimes. Or I could dress up-"

Shaan Puri 12:41 [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:41 "... like a farmer and, like, I actually wanna go outside and, like, get dirty a little bit. I could dress up like a cowboy, and I wanna go and, like, do cowboy shit. Like, if you dress up with a suit, people kinda take you seriously. And I think that's cool that you can, like, pretend, but it kinda... Like, what's the difference between pretending and reality if you do it long enough? Like, it kinda becomes, like, the same thing." And so he was like, "I can't really act, but, like, I can dress up like these characters, and I kinda a little bit start actually feeling like these characters." And l- eventually, Ralph Lifshitz, he got made fun of a, uh, a lot because of his name. Even, like, the Jewish kids were like, "Dude, your name has the word shit in it. Like, that's like sh- [laughs] like, you dork."

Shaan Puri 13:17 [laughs]

Sam Parr 13:18 And so he changed his name to Ralph Lauren. And so he starts, um-

Shaan Puri 13:23 Oh, man

Sam Parr 13:23 ... that is Ralph Lauren, the, the clothing company. He starts selling clothes for Brooks Brothers, like, in their store, and then eventually at the age of 28 he starts, uh, his own business. And he's like, "My first thing that I'm gonna sell is ties." He liked ties. And he goes and he pitches something like, um, Bloomingdale's, and he's like, "Hey, can you guys sell my ties?" And, and the guy's like, "These are great ties. I would love to sell them, but it has this name Ralph Lauren on the back of the tie. Like, no one wants that shit, dude. Like, no one knows who you are. I don't give a shit about Ralph Lauren. You gotta take that off there." And he had a, kind of a Sylvester Stallone moment where he was like-

Shaan Puri 13:56 [laughs]

Sam Parr 13:57 ... "Look, I'm a nobody, but I need my name to be on these ties. Like, this is just a, a deal breaker." And Bloomingdale's was like, "All right. Well, no. W- we're not gonna do this deal." And so eventually he keeps on hustling and he gets his ties into, like, Macy's or something like that. In the first year of business he does, like, half a million dollars in revenue, which is a home run. Uh, he did this in the '60s. That's the equivalent of, like, $3.5 million today. Home run. After year three or four, he starts coming up with different ideas and he comes up with this idea of polo, so the Polo brand, the collared shirt that you see everywhere, and he parlays this-

Shaan Puri 14:29 By the way, what's, what's the backstory of that? What was his inspo? Do you know, for the Polo shirt?

Sam Parr 14:33 Yeah, the-

Shaan Puri 14:33 Like, why?

Sam Parr 14:33 ... the inspo was basically... Like I said, he grew up as this poor Jewish kid in New York, but what he loved was this idea of, like, class and old money.

Shaan Puri 14:42 Mm.

Sam Parr 14:42 Uh, this idea of, like, WASP, even though he's not a WASP. He, like, loved the idea of, like, sophistication.

Shaan Puri 14:48 Right.

Sam Parr 14:48 And to, to him, the sport of polo, that, like, s- screamed, like, both utility, 'cause it's a sport, but also, like, sophistication, because it's, like, supposed to be, like, rich people who play it. And the collar that polo players wear, they would always wear a collar, and in particular they would button-down the collar. So an Oxford button-down cloth shirt, that's comes from the, the sport of polo. And so do, like, certain style boots, certain style pants. And so there was a little bit where it was, like, already considered, like, a fashionable sport.

Shaan Puri 15:17 Right.

Sam Parr 15:17 And so he says, like, "I'm gonna name my brand Polo." And so he builds Polo, and this shit, over, like, the course of a handful of years, it takes off. So now Ralph Lauren, he's worth something like $10 billion. He still owns, I think, 80% of the company, and he's a great businessman. But that's not what I actually am impressed by him. What I'm impressed by him is two things. The first, he has this idea of, like, you are the director of your own life, and your life is basically a movie. And he has this idea where he was like, "I would wear clothes that would..." I almost... I think Tony Robbins said this, uh, or you told me that Tony Robbins said this, where he was like, "If I wanna act tough or confident, I make my body tough or confident." So what do you call that thing where you, like, f- like, flex your-

Shaan Puri 16:04 Power posing [laughs]

Sam Parr 16:04 ... power posing, where you, like, flex your chest when you're not feeling comfortable, and you put your body into, like, a confident position, and your brain kinda follows your body. He sorta is saying the same thing but with clothing, where he was like, "You know, if I wanted to feel a little bit more sophisticated than I actually felt at the moment, I would dress a certain way and, like, my brain would follow." And I find that to be, like, a really cool idea. And the second thing that he did that was really interesting is... I don't know if you remember this, because we were kids, but do you remember Ralph Lauren advertisements? Do, do you remember any of those? Like, the photos in magazines?

Shaan Puri 16:39 No. What was it?

Sam Parr 16:40 What was interesting is that what he would do is he would... He had, he used a lot of the same models, and the models oftentimes were not professional models. But what he would do is if he wanted to, like... He would set the stage. So basically he would f- act like he's filming an entire movie. And so they would rent a home in the Hamptons. Let's say it's like a, uh, the ad is for some type of summer, summer wear for the beach. He would rent a Hamptons house and he would be like, "Well, if I'm a, like, a wealthy family in the Hamptons who has this, like, beautiful home, like, h- what would you guys be doing right now? Like, maybe you'd be playing football. Maybe you'd all be sitting on, uh, in the parents' bed in the morning as if, like, the kids just, like, woke you up." But he would create these, like, elaborate sets where he would, like, make you live like you're in a movie on set. And so he's like, "We're gonna all, like, pretend that this is, like, real." And they would do this whole elaborate thing just for a handful of photos. But if you look at a lot of the ads, they're really, like, in-depth. And it made me start thinking a lot about, like, with startups and what you and I do, we sometimes are just reactive to, like, to, like, whatever, like, customers are saying, not more so, like, how do we set the stage for what, what do we want the world to be? And I think Amazon used to do this small thing where they were like, "Before we launch any product, I want you to write the press release. Like, tell me what do you want a customer to feel about this? Or how do you want this to be described when it's all said and done?"

Shaan Puri 18:05 Right.

Sam Parr 18:05 And because the internet has such a low barrier to entry and it's really easy to adapt and change things, rarely do we sorta think ahead and, like, this is, like, my vision for the world and at least everyone in my small world, how I want them to feel, how I want my customers to think, how I want them to, uh, appreciate us.

Shaan Puri 18:21 I do think there's something cool about it. I'm looking up old, vintage Ralph Lauren ads, and I see what you're saying, which is, like, a really he- he- heavy lean into, like, yeah, like, true lifestyle shoots rather than studio or sort of framed, um, you know, just like, "Let's go here. Let's get this single shot. You in front of the water. Boom." Yeah. It's turn and burn. It's like, well, this is somebody's house in the Hamptons, wearing these clothes, doing what they do with all of the little, you know, family photos in the background and whatnot. Like, it's, it looks a lot more authentic. And this is one of those things that's i- interesting because as a business person, it never pencils out on a spreadsheet to do this, right? Like, up, up front, there's no way to sit here and justify this. But then there's things in your gut, and there's the, the, the people who do, who actually do make the bet and do pull it off. And then in retrospect, it sounds obvious. You know, I'll give you an example. There was a brand, um, a e-commerce brand, and they were talking about influencers. It was like, well, what's the, what's the... They were talking about an influencer campaign. They were gonna spend a million dollars on an influencer campaign with these Instagram moms. And I said, "What's the return on ad spend of that? You put a million dollars in, how much are you gonna get back directly?" And they were like, "Uh, it might be, you know, 50%," meaning we might put a dollar in, we might get 50 cents back.

Sam Parr 19:38 Like, uh, that's not the way to do it. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 19:39 I said, "Well, what's your Face- what's your Facebook ad's return on ad spend?" And they're, and they're like, "Uh, it's like, you know, $1.40. Put a dollar in, get $1.40 out." Like, why are you spending a million dollars on these influencers? And, uh, are you, are you able to measure the halo effect? I'm, like, using all this jargon. And he goes, uh, "Hey, does your wife, like, does she follow, like, any of these people?" And I asked my wife, and she's just like, "Yeah, all of these people." He goes, "Ask her, like, a que- couple of questions about these people. Like, 'Hey, do you know, like, how many kids they have? What's their names? What products do they use? What's the last product you bought that you heard them mention?'" And, like, my wife could just rattle these from memory. And my wife's memory is, like, I could te- You know, we watch all of Game of Thrones. If I, if I asked her today, "What's a Lannister?" She'd have no idea. She thinks it's part of a staircase. And so I'm like, "She's knows exactly what's going on with these influencers." And he goes, "That's why we're spending a million dollars with influencers." And, um, I was like, "Okay, you know, there's these things that if the result is not easy to measure but it is true, right? It's gotta be both. It's gotta be actually, actually work and not be easy to measure. Those things are usually pretty, uh, mispriced, meaning not, not as many people are willing to do them because most of us want the safety and comfort of things that are proven, measurable, and I can spreadsheet my way to conviction."

Sam Parr 20:56 Well, it's basically all rooted in, can I justify this if I'm about to get fired?

Shaan Puri 21:00 [laughs] Yeah, or, or just my, even my own self-doubt, right? Even at, like, my companies, I'm not always thinking I'm gonna get fired. Who's gonna fire me? I own the company. But I don't wanna be an idiot, and I don't wanna lose it. I don't wanna fail, and I don't wanna lose money, and it takes courage to make bets. And courage is easier when you can p- when you, when the logic, when you can logic your way there, when you can spreadsheet your way there. Do you do any of these courageous bets that are non-spreadsheet? 'Cause I think you, I, I think part of the reason you idolize these is that you didn't typically do those.

Sam Parr 21:33 I didn't typically do that, and I, and I still struggle with it. But I have to... Like, when I watch some of these things, like, uh, we talked about Martha Stewart recently, and now we're talking about Ralph Lauren. Like, when you ta- like, and when you talk about some of these, like, culture-changing brands or companies or people, uh, us internet or startup-y people, there's like... We think we are above the fold, where we're, like, logical, and we are like, "Well, it's easy. You put this mon- much money in, you get this much money out. Like, why would anyone do anything otherwise?" But then there's one step above that, which is it's the right thing 'cause it's the right thing. Like-

Shaan Puri 22:05 Right. [laughs]

Sam Parr 22:06 You know what I mean? Like, it's like, it's, um, like, uh, you know, I can't measure this thing, but, like, I know it's awesome.

Shaan Puri 22:14 Right. Do it 'cause it's awesome.

Sam Parr 22:16 Yeah. And so there's like, we try to act like we are some, like, savant-y internet nerds, where it's like the math says X, Y, and Z, but there's always, there's one above that, which is, yeah, but it's, it just makes sense. And so, and Peter Thiel, who's, like, the savant-iest of savants, has said, like, there's this fifth tent pole of this equation, which is called brand. And he goes, "I don't understand brand, though."

Shaan Puri 22:36 [laughs]

Sam Parr 22:37 Uh, but, like, I know it exists, but I don't understand it. And that's what we're talking about here, which is, like, it just feels right.

Shaan Puri 22:43 Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Sam Parr 22:44 So, so long story short, I don't do this, but I, I respect it.

Shaan Puri 22:46 [laughs]

Sam Parr 22:47 And I know that it's necessary, and I want to do more of it.

Shaan Puri 22:49 [laughs] Are you doing any of it with Hampton? Like, is there one you can think of that you do?

Sam Parr 22:55 Yeah. Like, we ha- we own this podcast called Money Wise, and, like, it, like, the only way that we think that it returns an ROI is if someone joins and they said they heard about it through us. But that's the, that's, like, the low end of the totem pole of, like, is it easily trackable?

Shaan Puri 23:10 Right.

Sam Parr 23:10 Um, but then n- no. Like, I don't do enough, but I, I do need to do certain things like this. The, the, the problem with this is you get caught in the day-to-day, and you also get caught in the bills. And there's also a lot of stories of Ralph Lauren where, like, he almost lost the company many, many, many times, where he, like, just didn't pay attention. And on one hand, you need a visionary who doesn't pay attention to the profit because sometimes the shit that makes the most profit doesn't make sense right off the bat.

Shaan Puri 23:36 Right. So I think the theme of this episode is rich guys, crazy or genius? We've got the Bitcoin guy who's doing the treasure hunt, and he's either crazy or he's a genius, right? Is he crazy or is he awesome? Ralph Lauren, crazy or genius? Looks like he came down on the side of genius. I have another one for you.

Sam Parr 23:56 All right.

Shaan Puri 23:57 And it's Michael Saylor.

Shaan Puri 23:58 Have you seen what Michael Saylor is currently doing with the market and, and Bitcoin and his stock?

Sam Parr 24:04 I don't understand it exactly, but I understand that he's always up to something. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 24:09 [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:10 Like, like, I, I always... I know that he's like the Barry Bonds of business, where, like, there's always an asterisk next to everything he does.

Shaan Puri 24:17 [laughs] Yeah, that's a good explanation. Um, okay. So can I explain what's going on? MicroStrategy is a software company. They sell, um, soft- You know, at the time they were selling software products, and the software business might make, like, 75 million a year of profit. It was like a small cap stock.

Sam Parr 24:36 It had been doing great for, like, ever. Like, it was a great... Like, he'd been rich for a long time, right?

Shaan Puri 24:41 Yeah, the, uh, the business had been... He, I think he's the longest tenured CEO of a public company.

Sam Parr 24:48 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 24:48 I mean, he's been the CEO of this company for, like, 24-plus years or something like that. And, um, but the stock had been flat. If you look, uh, if you just zoom out on the chart, it looks like a very flat line. And when he came on the podcast, it was because at the time he was doing something very interesting. He had taken his company's cash reserves, like their treasury, which normally you either keep in cash, maybe treasury bills, or you use it to buy back the stock, and instead he used it to buy Bitcoin.

Sam Parr 25:15 So basically, MicroStrategy was a software company. The software company had hundreds of millions of dollars in their bank account, which they're supposed to just hold in case they need it, and his plan was, "I'm gonna invest that money in Bitcoin."

Shaan Puri 25:28 Yeah, we're gonna switch our treasury strategy to being Bitcoin. So September 14th, 2020, Bitcoin's priced at $10,000 a coin, and he buys $175 million worth of it, and then a month later or so, he buys another $250 million of it.

Sam Parr 25:44 Which, looking back at it, that sounds great.

Shaan Puri 25:46 Yeah, at $10,000, $11,000 a coin. And he has since been buying, uh, more and more Bitcoin. He now holds $37 billion of Bitcoin.

Sam Parr 25:57 MicroStrategy.

Shaan Puri 25:58 MicroStrategy does.

Sam Parr 25:59 All right.

Shaan Puri 25:59 He himself also I think personally owns, like, hundreds of millions if not a billion dollars of Bitcoin.

Sam Parr 26:04 Wow.

Shaan Puri 26:04 They are up $15 billion on their Bitcoin position in four years. So he's generated for- $15 billion of value doing this strategy. So it starts out by saying, "I'm gonna convert my, you know, step one, convert our company's idle cash into Bitcoin." Okay, did that. But now the company doesn't generate... And the, the idea was every year when we generate more free cash flow, we're gonna do the same. We're gonna, you know, we make 75 million bucks, we're gonna buy more. But over time, he starts doing more aggressive bets. So what he starts doing is he starts issuing these convertible bonds. And now, so he goes to the market, he says, "Hey, uh, our, here's a corporate bond. You can buy the bond. We're gonna take the proceeds from the bond sale, and we're gonna go buy Bitcoin." And he does that over and over and over again. And on top of that, if you look at MicroStrategy's stock today, so when he was last on the podcast-

Sam Parr 26:53 Oh, so, well, let's just actually say this. In March of '20, the stock was $10. In March of '21, the stock was $78, and today it's $410.

Shaan Puri 27:05 Correct. And it is... So it's up in the last five years by 2,600%. [laughs] Okay? So it's shot up. It's, uh, if you compare it to even Nvidia's stock this year, it's outperformed Nvidia, which is pretty insane. And so what is going on here? Um, uh, this, you know, his company is now worth $80 billion as of, you know, as of today. It's-

Sam Parr 27:27 And how much revenue and profit does the actual m- business do?

Shaan Puri 27:32 The actual software business is declining 10% a year, and is something like a couple hundred million in revenue and under 100 million of net income.

Sam Parr 27:41 Okay.

Shaan Puri 27:41 So it is a rounding error. It is not, it is no longer relevant to the stock price.

Sam Parr 27:45 And does he have employees who, like, work there?

Shaan Puri 27:49 Yeah, they still have employees that just keep running that software business. But the stated strategy is, our job is to, uh, acquire Bitcoin in the most effective ways possible and hold forever. That's what he wants to do.

Sam Parr 28:01 That's, that's a influ- uh, that's a, that's a, like, inspiring, um, talk every Friday at your all hands.

Shaan Puri 28:07 [laughs]

Sam Parr 28:09 [laughs] Right?

Shaan Puri 28:10 [laughs] Yeah.

Sam Parr 28:12 Like, that's a, that's a-

Shaan Puri 28:13 Bitcoin price is up. Great job, everybody. [laughs] We did our job. And, uh, you know, to his credit, he's been buying throughout all the dips. So, like, you know, Bitcoin price went up to 60,000, then it goes down to 16,000, and even during that process, you know, Bitcoin, in December 2022, Bitcoin price is 17,000, he buys another 50 million. He buys another 14 million. He buys another 150 million. He has continued to buy throughout the whole process. He, and Bitcoin's at an all-time high, and, uh, as of today, he just bought another $5.4 billion of Bitcoin at the, uh, you know, sort of all-time high price.

Sam Parr 28:48 How did he have the money to do that?

Shaan Puri 28:50 Again, he's raising money in these bonds. And so there's... Here, okay, so what's interesting about this, here's what I wanna talk about, is genius or crazy? I guess, like, I hesitated to even bring this up because, A, this is outside of my zone of competence, meaning, like, I don't know corporate bond strategies. I don't know why, um, I don't know how options traders look at this. I don't know what the bond market is like. That is not something that I've spent 20 years of my career in. I'm, I'm a startup guy. Okay, so on one hand, unqualified to talk about this. On the other hand, I've been a crypto holder and believer since far before Ma- Michael Saylor, and have seen throughout each cycle how new players come in with new strategies and build, you know, massive profiles and success on the upswing, and I've seen things go very, very badly. Um, you know, last cycle there was Sam Bankman-Fried, uh, with FTX. There was Do Kwon. There was Three Arrows Capital. There were several people that for a moment in time looked like absolute geniuses. They were hailed by everybody. They were on the cover of magazines. You know, Sequoia's investing in, in FTX, and everything looks incredible. And, uh, then it all comes crashing down, either due to bad acting or bad risk management.

Sam Parr 30:01 I don't know anything about crypto, and I can give you an example of a red flag that was on air on our podcast. So I don't remember exactly, I think it was 30 or 45 minutes in, I asked him a question. I go, "So Michael, you're buying all this Bitcoin with your company's money. Cool. What are the downsides? Um, because, like, it's appears as though, like, one of the downsides could potentially be you're losing focus on your main money-making software. Um, but a- and I think you think that's worth it, but what are some other downsides?" And his answer was, "There are no downsides." And I was like, "Well, I mean, like, every decision has a downside. Like, the downside of being healthy is that you have to go to bed early when you wanna go out and hang out with your friends. Like, but it's worth it. Like, there, there are downsides." And he kept insisting, "There are no downsides." And in my head I thought If you can't be honest to me about this, like, pretty straightforward thing, are, is there anything else that you're being dishonest about?

Shaan Puri 30:53 Yeah. So, uh, uh, "There are no downsides," said every charlatan ever, right? That, that, that is a, uh, it is, could be a red flag. That doesn't mean it's damning. Now, let me give you first the-

Sam Parr 31:00 No, it does not mean it's damning, but it is a red flag

Shaan Puri 31:01 ... let, let me give you the generous interpretation of this. So I actually agree with Michael Saylor in one weird way when he said there's no downsides, which is that for him personally, there were really no downsides at the time. At that time, the... If you go back and you listen carefully to Michael Saylor's interviews, most of the interviews, he just talks about how he had the epiphany, and he realized that Bitcoin is the way, and he started doing it. The true story is that there's one, like, precursor to that epiphany, which was that he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He had this software business that was successful, it was profitable, and I think at the time it was even, you know, had shown growth or had been showing growth over the last 10 years, and he was getting zero credit in the stock market for it. And he's like, "What am I supposed to do?" Like, "We're a successful company."

Sam Parr 31:47 It's like that's insane, yeah.

Shaan Puri 31:48 "We've been operating successfully for, you know, 15 tw- plus years," and the market is basically saying, "Give us back the cash. We don't, we will not value you for any of the cash you have on hand. You should just give it back to us. We are gonna give you no stock credit for how you might invest it, how you might use that cash, how you might grow your business. We're gonna give you zero credit for it." And so he had this problem, which was, no matter what he did with his company at the time, he couldn't get the stock price to go up. He couldn't increase shareholder value. And so he had, in some ways, nothing to lose because he was stuck, and he had been stuck in this plateau for so long, and the market, he had sa- he says in some interviews, like, "The market was giving me a very clear message. We don't believe that you can invest this cash in any way that's gonna grow your business." Well, then he's like, "Well, screw that. Why don't I just do something else with it? If I can't grow MicroStrategy with it, maybe I can grow it through investment." And he went and he looked at real estate, and he looked at gold. He looked at all the different ways that he could do it, and he basically at that point deduced that Bitcoin was his best bet to invest the money to actually grow the stock. So-

Sam Parr 32:52 And was he, like, a crypto guy? So 2020, for a lot of the hardcores, was late in the game for crypto.

Shaan Puri 32:58 Yeah.

Sam Parr 32:58 Was he, like-

Shaan Puri 32:59 No, he was, he was skeptical. He, he did not believe in Bitcoin. Somebody had told him about it. He didn't believe it. He-

Sam Parr 33:03 So he wasn't one of these, like, early hackers, or-

Shaan Puri 33:04 But then he went back and looked, and he went and watched a bunch of Pomp's interviews, and he started reading about it, and he started learning about it. The other thing that was true was that he looked at the amount of, uh, inflation, and he realized that the kind of stated goal of 2% or 3% inflation was misleading, that it didn't count a bunch of other things. It also didn't take into account the fact that if you were an investor and you just put the money in the S&P 500, it was growing at, you know, 10%, 15% a year, and he was like, "Look, if I can't beat that, there's really no reason to invest in my company if I don't have the ability to beat that rate." And so what he wanted to do was, uh, you know, like m- most Bitcoin maximalists, they just, at the end of the day, they look at fiat currency, and they believe that here you have a, um, a weak currency, and if you could ever, if you could borrow a weak currency at 0% interest rate and use it to buy a hard currency like Bitcoin, that's a good trade. So that's the, the two things that he wanted to do, was he wanted to get out of fiat 'cause he didn't like the direction that fiat was going with inflation, and, um, and secondly, he knew his stock was stuck. Okay, so that was that part back then. But at that time, he wasn't doing this thing where he's borrowing billions of dollars to buy Bitcoin. And so [chuckles] let me just, like, kind of walk you through the model of what he's doing now. Okay, so basically, MicroStrategy issues debt. They use that, that convertible bond, corporate bond, and so they, like, today they just did a $5 billion or whatever corporate bond offering.

Sam Parr 34:27 Who'd they raise it from?

Shaan Puri 34:29 Uh, bond buyers, the bond market. So there's trillions of dollars that get invested in bonds, and one of the things that w- you know, you might say, "Why does, why do, why are people buying a MicroStrategy bond? Is it because of the underlying business?" And it was no-

Sam Parr 34:42 Versus just buying Bitcoin themselves.

Shaan Puri 34:44 Or just buy Bitcoin themselves. So the, the re- the arbitrage is that he realized there's, you know, a trillion-dollar plus market of people who, of people who buy bonds that, because of their structure, they're not allowed to buy securities. So they can't buy stocks. They can't buy real estate. They can't buy, uh, Bitcoin directly. They can't buy the Bitcoin ETF. So the bond market cannot access Bitcoin unless they access it through a bond.

Sam Parr 35:09 Got it. That's interesting.

Shaan Puri 35:10 The mandate of those funds is that they can only buy bonds. That's why people gave them the money, was you're gonna buy bonds. Uh, it's a 0%, uh, interest rate, but it c- you can convert the bond into MicroStrategy stock at a certain price, at $300, $400, $500, $600 a share, higher than the current price of the thing. So it's like a long-term call option on MicroStrategy.

Sam Parr 35:29 Okay.

Shaan Puri 35:29 So if you were in the bond market and you wanted access to Bitcoin, but your bylaws and your mandate does not allow you to buy Bitcoin directly, then an inadvertent way-

Sam Parr 35:38 That's a crazy loophole. That's a crazy loophole

Shaan Puri 35:40 ... s- supply and demand. So he's the-

Sam Parr 35:42 Yeah

Shaan Puri 35:42 ... only supply on the market to absorb this, this demand that's there to, to get access to Bitcoin type of yield, is by i- by issuing these, these things. Okay, so that's the first part. So then he buys Bitcoin, and he s- goes and he tells the whole market, "I'm, I'm a forever buyer of Bitcoin. I will increasingly be buying billions and billions of dollars of Bitcoin. I'm doing it at the market price, and I will continue doing that." That instills a bunch of confidence in the Bitcoin market because Bitcoin says, "Wow, there's this whale who says, 'I don't give a damn. I'm doing this. I'm deep-pocketed, and I'm gonna keep doing this.'" And so he takes supply off the market. He signals to the market that, "I'm a forever holder," and he says, "I'm gonna keep buying bigger and bigger amounts as we go." So the Bitcoin price goes up. So now Bitcoin price goes up, which then causes his stock to go up 'cause his stock is based on the fact that they have $30 billion of Bitcoin sitting there. And the stock goes up, and then he sells more equity at a premium, and he buys even more Bitcoin. Now he's selling sh- equity shares to buy Bitcoin. Rinse and repeat.

Sam Parr 36:41 Is he selling any of his equity in the company?

Shaan Puri 36:44 Um, I don't know. I'm not sure.

Sam Parr 36:46 And is he- ... liable for any of these, uh, convertible bonds or these bonds?

Shaan Puri 36:53 [laughs] No, it's not like a personal guarantee. No, it's a corporate bond. If this goes south and this collapses, then his, you know, net worth, which is highly based on his holdings of MicroStrategy, are gonna go down, right? And his reputation and everything else.

Sam Parr 37:05 And what's [laughs] his net worth now? How much of MicroStrategy does he own?

Shaan Puri 37:07 He owns 9.9% of MicroStrategy.

Sam Parr 37:11 So as of today, just off MicroStrategy, he's worth, uh, $8 billion. Okay. In 2020, the company was worth 1.4 billion, so he was worth a measly $140 million. So he's grown from $140 million net worth, a- assuming that is his only money, which it probably isn't, all the way up to close to 10 billion. So he's, he's-

Shaan Puri 37:31 And it definitely had asymmetric upside versus downside [laughs] for him, right? Like, uh, hitching his wagon to the Bitcoin rocket ship represented a way for him to like, you know, go explode up in a good way, in a way that he was never gonna be able to do with just MicroStrategy, the declining software business. At the same time, you know, there obviously is reputational risk and there's capital risk. Now, okay, so how is it going? They've basically acquired almost 400,000 Bitcoin. Um, they've outperformed every company in the S&P 500, and last week alone it saw $136 billion of trading volume. To put that in perspective, even GameStop during the GameStop... GameStop never saw this. So he's basically created... He's, uh, intentionally turned him- turned MicroStrategy into a meme stock. Meaning, he's detached it from the underlying business in the way that GameStop did, and, and created a, a product that the option traders want, that the bond traders want, that the Bitcoin maximalists want, that the Bitcoin skeptics hate and wanna go short. Now, what, what could go wrong? Let's go, let's go to there. Um, and by the way, I- and let's also say the craziness of not only doing this, but then spending the last four years just on tour being a Bitcoin evangelist is also, like, a really extreme step to take, right? Like, there were no half measures in what he did. This is a, a, you know, sort of Elon Musk style all in, reputationally all in, financially all in.

Sam Parr 38:56 And he has that personality. He's got the types of... I've... I don't know him other than the 60 minutes we spent virtually with him, but he seemed like he had the personality where he's super high IQ, super low, like, emotional normal human emotions, where he's like-

Shaan Puri 39:12 Right

Sam Parr 39:12 ... "But it makes sense. The math says this."

Shaan Puri 39:15 Right.

Sam Parr 39:15 "Therefore, I do that, even if that is a ridiculous thing-"

Shaan Puri 39:19 [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:19 "... to most people's standards."

Shaan Puri 39:20 High IQ, high T count. [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:22 Yeah. Like-

Shaan Puri 39:23 As well. [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:23 Yeah, like he, he ponies up.

Shaan Puri 39:26 Okay. So now what's the... You know, at the same time, maybe I'm just, uh, like, a, a PTSD'd from past crypto cycles, but like I mentioned, every crypto cycle this happens. Somebody gets uber aggressive, w- they're seen as a genius, they overextend or they commit malpractice, and they come crashing down when the cycle... You know, in- inevitably, these things are all cyclical, when it goes down. Last cycle it was FTX, it was Do Kwon, it was Three Arrows Capital. These were multi-billion dollar vehicles that were created very quickly. They, they burned bright and then they fizzled out, um, due to one of those two reasons. So I'm on the lookout right now. Bitcoin's at an all-time high. Instead of just jubilation, I'm just keeping an eye out. You know, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me type of thing. So I'm just keeping an eye on what might, what might it be this cycle. On the other side, he's made a couple of genius calls. So back in, I wanna say, uh, when was it? 2007-ish timeframe, there's a bunch of interviews of Michael Saylor talking about Apple. Uh, maybe 2012. And he basically is talking about, he, he's on a thing and he's like, "Apple's gonna go to $2,000 a share." And he's like, "You don't understand what's happening. Apple has inven..." And he, the same way that he's talking about Bitcoin, how Bitcoin is this, you know, the greatest invention ever, how it's gonna be millions of dollars a coin, he was talking about Apple the same way. He's like, "You have a sup- supercomputer in your pocket. Do you understand what this means? You kn- you know that 4 billion people are gonna be carrying this thing around, and that Apple's gonna be making x am-" All the numbers just sounded insane to people at the time and... When he was talking about it, and it's all come true. Like, his ins- his entire bet on Apple. He's like, he's like, "I don't know why you would own any stock besides Apple." And, like, if you had listened to Michael Saylor at that time, you would have been proven 100%

Sam Parr 41:10 So he's always, he's always had this like, "You all are stupid, this is obvious," and he's right sometimes.

Shaan Puri 41:17 Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's... These are over- oversimplifications, but yeah, like, I guess... The guy's fascinating. He is a fascinating guy. I think you described him well when... He's extremely high IQ, he's extremely high cajones, and when he gets conviction on something, he sounds insane. And so, okay, w- you know, I think the, the main thing is, uh, where does this go wrong? So I think the w- main place it goes wrong, obviously, if Bitcoin's price starts to crash, the problem will be if, for whatever reason, MicroStrategy's stock, which today trades at, like, a two and a half times multiple of NAV. Do you know what NAV is? The net asset value. So, like, the, the underlying asset that it holds, right? It owns $33 billion of Bitcoin. So the question is, why is it an $83 billion company?

Sam Parr 41:56 Which is what you think it should be. It should, if you own that much-

Shaan Puri 41:59 It should be, like, a $35 billion company.

Sam Parr 42:00 Yeah, it should be-

Shaan Puri 42:01 It should be-

Sam Parr 42:01 It should be whatever the asset is-

Shaan Puri 42:03 Yeah, it, it-

Sam Parr 42:03 ... plus, like, the multiple-

Shaan Puri 42:04 It's a Bitcoin, um-

Sam Parr 42:04 ... of profit for software

Shaan Puri 42:06 It's a Bitcoin holding and acquisition company, and so maybe you say, "Okay, here's its holdings. Great." And then on top of that, maybe there's some premium for the fact that it's able to acquire them on leverage. It could do things that a Bitcoin ETF can't, right?

Sam Parr 42:18 Right.

Shaan Puri 42:18 So a Bitcoin ETF can issue a bond. It is different, but the question is, is two and a half x the right multiple?

Sam Parr 42:24 Yeah, that's crazy.

Shaan Puri 42:24 And the question is, the down spiral looks like this, the unwinding looks like this, which is MicroStrategy, for whatever reason, either because Bitcoin price goes down or the stock market just changes its tune on it, starts to not trade at such a premium to the NAV. And now all this money that it's borrowed, these bonds expire 2027, 2028, 2029. If those were to convert, he would be forced into selling Bitcoin And once he becomes a forced seller, now the whole market, the whole Bitcoin market will start to crash because it'll say, "Oh my God, MicroStrategy's gonna have to unwind its entire Bitcoin position." That's gonna be $35 billion or more of Bitcoin hitting the market.

Sam Parr 43:03 How much is Bitcoin worth? Like, how mu- what percentage, uh, uh, of a player is he?

Shaan Puri 43:07 He owns about 1% of the Bitcoin float today, and he's trying to get, you know, 2% basically.

Sam Parr 43:12 Dude, this guy's intense.

Shaan Puri 43:13 [laughs] Yeah.

Sam Parr 43:16 This guy's-

Shaan Puri 43:16 So I, I, I guess my short story is I don't know what's gonna happen. I f- I guess my disclaimer is this: I do not know what's gonna happen. More than that, I'm a, a novice when it comes to this. However, I've been in a few crypto cycles before, and I've seen in every scr- every single crypto cycle, when crypto goes up, somebody starts being very aggressive, acquiring, uh, buying Bit- buying crypto, using leverage like he's doing right now. It hasn't ended well in previous cycles. And right now everybody is calling this the Infinite Money Glitch. You go on YouTube, you search MicroStrategy, Infinite Money Glitch. He's a god. He's the best. And it always makes you wonder, what is the scenario where this unravels, and do I believe that that could come true here? There is no strategy that is risk-free. There is no free lunch, and I think that right now the entire narrative is about how this is a free lunch, how this is a free money glitch, and, uh, I don't believe that. I don't know enough to know the specifics about this, but my spidey sense is tingling.

Sam Parr 44:14 Who's the, um, the most conservative Bitcoin per... So, uh, conservative being, um, like they're rational and they could explain the pros and the cons without being overly emotional. Who, who's that in the Bitcoin world?

Shaan Puri 44:28 So that's a good question. Who do I trust the most to have a rational opinion about Bitcoin? [laughs]

Sam Parr 44:34 That could-

Shaan Puri 44:35 That's a great question. [laughs]

Sam Parr 44:36 Yeah. Who could be, who could, who could-

Shaan Puri 44:37 So there's, there's this, a guy like Andreas Antonopoulos, who I believe is that, but he's a technologist. So you don't... You, you listen to him about how Bitcoin as a technology, um, has, uh, uh, has great potential. So, you know, you read his book, which is called, um, The Internet of Money, and he's extremely rational, and he's a good faith actor.

Sam Parr 44:59 Who's, who's the person that's like, "You know, if we all buy into this and if it works, you know, the upside is this, but if we don't, the downside is this, and this is..." And like who just says like, like, "Here's all the potential-"

Shaan Puri 45:11 And I, I think a lot of people say that. I think a lot of people understand this. Like-

Sam Parr 45:14 And-

Shaan Puri 45:14 ... a lot of people say like, "Look, Bitcoin has these properties. It could become X. It could become the next gold." Actually, most people fall into the bucket of they don't price that as 100% certainty, right? [laughs] They say-

Sam Parr 45:24 All right

Shaan Puri 45:24 ... "It's possible and there's a potential for that. That's why I own some of it, but I don't put my entire net worth in it, and that it is also possible that it doesn't, doesn't get adopted, or that there's a technical flaw, or that governments beat it down in these ways, or that it becomes, uh, unpopular for these reasons," and that's the risk in this, right? Like, there's a v-

Sam Parr 45:43 And those vocal-

Shaan Puri 45:43 There's a bunch of people that feel that

Sam Parr 45:44 ... those vocal thought leader rationalists, what do they say about Michael Saylor?

Shaan Puri 45:50 They, they don't take a position. Like right now, even as I'm saying this, I'm thinking to myself, "Yeah, I'm gonna go cut this in post," because why take a position? What's the upside? The u- the upside is what I-

Sam Parr 46:03 Well, there is some upside

Shaan Puri 46:03 ... I might be right a few years from now. I, I-

Sam Parr 46:05 You're gonna look good by like b- predicting things. Um, and there's also the upside of like just doing what's right and telling everyone, "Don't waste your fucking money on this thing."

Shaan Puri 46:15 Yeah, but I, I guess it's, uh, you have to be, A, smart enough to understand it. B, you have to have the desire to like look right by putting your neck on the line with a prediction.

Sam Parr 46:25 Yeah, the Bitcoin community has, doesn't seem like it typically has the like the-

Shaan Puri 46:30 The moral fiber. [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:32 No, no, I wasn't gonna say that. I was gonna say, uh, they don't mind expressing... They don't, they're, they're very vocal. They, you know, if someone thinks you're full of it, they'll say it.

Shaan Puri 46:39 Yeah, but they're also very wishful about their bags, right? That's, I think that's goes back to your question of who could you trust to not speak just hopefully about their bag, right? They just, they want it to be true so much that they convince themselves it's true and risk-free.

Sam Parr 46:52 I, what, what I'm trying to get at is who's the person who I can trust to find out what the opinion, uh, of Michael Saylor is?

Shaan Puri 46:59 I have searched long and hard because before this podcast, I did research to say, "Can s-" And I literally tweeted this out. So if you think I'm an idiot, I, I, I also think I'm an idiot. My tweet today was, "Can someone with a better brain than me explain what S- Saylor is doing? A, no strategy is without risk. What are the risks? What is the math? If Bitcoin drops to X dollars, it becomes a problem. And B, why is the stock trading at such a premium to NAV?" That post has, you know, maybe 100 plus replies. I read every single one of them. I read other threads that people have put out about this. If there was one great explanation, I would've just pointed you to it, and I would've read it out loud. I have not found one myself. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I have not found one myself that I can read and I can say, "Oh, in simple terms, I understand why he's doing this, why it's working today, what the risks are, how it would unravel if it unraveled."

Sam Parr 47:47 I'm only recently at the age where I don't trust everyone. Uh, like, like [laughs] like up until recently, like my logic was constantly like, "Well, the institutions are buying into this, therefore it must be safe." Or like, you know, like whoever's raising the money for this guy, like surely they know what they're talking about. So now I'm, I, I've just two years ago got to the age where it's like, you know, they're flawed humans just like me. And so I don't know who to trust with any, with these types of situations because I'm so uneducated on the topic, but I have, uh, my spidey sense is tingling. I wouldn't, I, I, with my own money, I wouldn't touch any of this.

Shaan Puri 48:29 Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Parr 48:30 That, that, that's what I would say.

Shaan Puri 48:31 I'm reading another 500 thread right now. Uh-

Sam Parr 48:32 I have, I have no proof, uh, other than it just, it doesn't feel good. Do you know what the, uh, I think, I think Su- the Supreme Court or someone like that like defined-

Shaan Puri 48:42 [laughs]

Sam Parr 48:43 ... pornography at, like they said like, you know-

Shaan Puri 48:45 You know it when you see it. [laughs]

Sam Parr 48:46 It's hard to ex- They're like, "It's hard to define, but you know it when you see it."

Shaan Puri 48:50 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 48:50 You know, what's the difference between pornography and like nudity in a National Geographic TV show?

Shaan Puri 48:55 Right.

Sam Parr 48:55 You know it when you see it. I don't exactly know it when I see it in this sit- situation with him, but I know that something doesn't feel right, and I can't explain why.

Shaan Puri 49:06 Okay, so here, here's my commitment. Um, I brought this up today half-baked, and I admit that. Um, I'm gonna go and try to find the smartest people I can to explain this to me until I'm satisfied with a simple explanation of what's going on, and then I'll share that. If I leave this in, I'm saying that as a bookmark to say, let's hold opinions till part two. I might just take this whole part out because I'm uncomfortable with the, uh, level of half-informed speculation that was in this section.

Sam Parr 49:37 Uh, I think it's interesting. I think it's interesting, but you know that, like, shockingly, people look to you f- for, like, this, like, you are s- Like, I asked you that question, uh, of, like, who's rational that people look to? There are many people who would say Shaan.

Shaan Puri 49:54 [laughs] I am rational, but you had two criteria. Who's rational and intelligent? [laughs]

Sam Parr 50:00 But a lot of people-

Shaan Puri 50:00 It's the second one that I fall a little short on in terms of these things, right?

Sam Parr 50:02 And, and I think, I think that you vol- like, voca- like, like, I'm still working through this problem. Uh, I think that's actually quite valuable.

Shaan Puri 50:12 Yeah, I guess I'm just, like, only 10% of the way working through it, and I'm just thinking maybe I should have gotten to 50% before coming on the pod and talking about it. But I will say this, a lot of B- a, a lot of the, uh, people who have done well with Bitcoin and the people who understand Bitcoin, it is the midwit meme. Like, th- they, they look at Bitcoin, and they look at all the information, and then they reduce it down into a very simple way of looking at things. And the, you know, the way, simple way of looking at things, which is either, um, this is, uh, it's a better version of gold, and so it'll be, you know, it's a, it's a tech improvement on gold. Um, there's people who reduce it down and basically just say, uh, would I rather have, would I rather have hard money or soft money? Meaning, would I rather s- save wealth in a, would I rather store wealth in a currency that can't inflate mathematically or a, a currency that will inflate? And if you just whittle things down like that to a level of simplicity, you can be right without even knowing all the details. And so I think one of the challenges with your question of who are the smart, intelligent people is that the smartest, most rational people I know about Bitcoin, a long time ago, you know, eight years ago, told me a very simple thing, bought it, put it in cold, cold storage, and moved on with their life. Um, and they don't follow all the twists and turns, and they don't try to hop on the next wave and the next trend, and they don't do crazy options trading or 100X leverage. They don't do any of those things. And they made a simple opinion based on a very simple assessment, um, and they proved it to be right. And not overcomplicating it, this has been the signal of who's actually intelligent about this versus somebody who's every day on the news, has an opinion on every single thing, is trying to outsmart everybody. Those tend to not be the people that I actually, you know, trust their opinion on this stuff.

Sam Parr 51:53 Have you seen that show Love on the Spectrum?

Shaan Puri 51:54 [laughs] Yeah, I have actually.

Sam Parr 51:58 It's-

Shaan Puri 51:59 It's a show about autistic people dating, right?

Sam Parr 52:01 Yeah, and there's this one episode where these two, a guy's dating this girl, and he was like, "Do you like tacos?" And she goes, "Yeah, I like chicken and cheese." And he was like, "I don't have anything else to say, but I wanna let you know I'm having a good time."

Shaan Puri 52:15 [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:18 And I wanna normalize that on, in both dating and on this podcast, which is, um, [laughs]

Shaan Puri 52:29 [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:29 And that's sort of how I feel right now.

Shaan Puri 52:31 [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:32 Which is I don't have anything else to say, but I wanna let you know I really enjoy this topic.

Shaan Puri 52:36 That's it. That's the vibe.

Sam Parr 52:39 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 53:04 That's the vibe. [upbeat music]