Bitcoin is struggling to maintain its footing at $38,000, down over 5% in the past week.

From NFTs to DeFi to metaverse, we’re in a bit of a rut.

But, despite the fear and uncertainty, there are still plenty of reasons to be bullish on crypto.

Consider just two news stories that dropped this week…

Fidelity just announced they’re letting their clients hold up to 20% of their investments portfolios in BTC. This is a way bigger deal than the long-awaited approval of a Bitcoin futures ETF.

Fidelity currently manages $2.4 trillion, so max exposure could be $480 billion injected into the crypto ecosystem.

And, no less, Bitcoin is now the official currency in the Central African Republic.

Here’s a good BBC radio interview with a journalist in the country about CAR's surprising move. (Turns out, the bill has been in the works for the past month, and there’s a surprising reason why the bill was passed unanimously. Worth a listen!)

Last year, James interviewed Anthony Pompliano, an early bitcoiner and major bitcoin bull.

Pompliano laid out the bull case. Everything he said in this interview is still true. In fact, it’s even more true than when he said it.

In short, nothing has changed. Despite the bears, the news just keeps getting better.

Also worth a listen. Check it out below.

Enjoy your weekend!

[Note: The crypto update below was originally published in Altucher’s Investment Network (ALN). Members not only get all of James’ most time-sensitive insights and recommendations, they also get to tap into his network of entrepreneurs, investors, and lifestyle gurus. Want more? Interested in becoming a member? Click here to learn how to get ALL of the ALN plays, recommendations, and insights as they happen.]

The Pomp

James here.

It wasn’t long ago that bitcoin was trading at all-time highs — last November to be exact. Right before that happened, I invited Anthony Pompliano to talk on my podcast, The James Altucher Show.

For those of you who aren’t yet familiar, Anthony Pompliano (or Pomp for short) is an entrepreneur and investor. He has built and sold numerous companies, ran Product & Growth teams at Facebook, and manages a portfolio valued at more than $500 million in early-stage tech companies.

Even though I’m (obviously) a huge crypto bull, I still like to play the skeptic. And just about everything we discuss in this episode is just as relevant as it was when this episode aired last October, including some of my criticisms of bitcoin that led me to personally sell all of my Bitcoin this year.

Lots of great stuff in this interview, so click here to listen…

Podcast Notes

James:

If you look at the history of the internet, it started around 1970, 1969 with email and the internet protocol, but it wasn't until 20 years later that the web was developed and people outside of just the academic community and the defense department knew what the internet was. Even then it was, "Oh, it's just a fad, it's going to go away." People were saying that until 2002, 2003, "Oh, it's just a fad," and now here we are. It's part of everybody's life all day long every day. I feel like the same thing is happening with Bitcoin, but we're still in that phase where people are not sure if this is a fad or not. I think they understand Bitcoin's a digital currency and the benefits of a digital currency over other currency, you don't have a bank in the middle.

James:

There's less fraud. There's no forgery. There's nobody who's deciding the value of your dollar by printing up more of it because that's all regulated by the code, so they understand that. I want to ask you some basic questions and you're the expert, so I'm going to explain who you are in the intro so we don't have to do that, but you're the expert. Your newsletter is probably the one or two newsletters I read religiously every single day, because you're always on top of what the latest is happening with Bitcoin. Obviously, you like Bitcoin and crypto, but it's not like you're biased. It's not like you're hiding negative news, which I see in some other newsletters. It's always a vacation in crypto world and some other newsletters and-

Anthony Pompliano:

Hard to be on vacation when it goes down 80%.

James:

Yeah, no, that's the reality. I've been a fan of Bitcoin since 2013 and I was on CNBC then talking about it. Of course, I was on it a lot in 2017, 2018. Then people were all over me because Bitcoin went from 20,000 to 3000. Now, of course, that it's at 56,000, nobody contacts me at all about any of that's stuff, but that's par for the course. I'm a believer, but sometimes I wonder, so I want to ask you the questions I have. I'm always a beginner, a beginner's mind, so first off, how did you get involved in crypto?

Anthony Pompliano:

Yeah. I got started off with mining. I literally, in 2016, started to mine. I actually started with Ether and then over time started to build larger and larger mining facilities and then eventually migrated from GPU mining to ASICs and Bitcoin, and got much more involved in that side of the market.

James:

Okay, great. Then when did you decide to start a newsletter?

Anthony Pompliano:

I didn't start the newsletter until May of 2017. Oh no, I'm sorry, May of 2018. I started it after being on Twitter for about a year-and-a-half and really trying to grow the Twitter audience, and it was explicitly because I was nervous that one day my Twitter account would get shut down. So I said, "I probably need to have a second platform," and email seemed to be the one that had the least amount of risk, and then from there it grew.

James:

Yeah. With an email audience, you control your audience. You choose yourself, basically. You don't let Twitter choose whether you should live or not. Speaking of which, in the past day, your YouTube channel was shut down for two hours. What the hell happened? Why would they shut you down?

Anthony Pompliano:

Timely conversation, short answer is we don't know for sure. They publicly told us that there was a human reviewer who made a mistake and accidentally deleted the channel, D platform does, whatever you want to call it, which is pretty crazy that one single employee at the company is able to essentially erase channels like that. But we got it back and a lot of it's, frankly, just due to the fact that we have large audiences and other platforms, could make enough noise to what's get their attention. There's hundreds, if not thousands of people on an annual basis who get their accounts on various social media platforms deleted and they have no other voice. They essentially just get taken off the internet.

James:

That's a serious thing. How many subscribers do you have on YouTube?

Anthony Pompliano:

250,000 or so.

James:

Roughly with 250,000 subscribers and they're pretty loyal, they watch your stuff, what could you make per year with a YouTube channel like that?

Anthony Pompliano:

Our YouTube, we basically reinvest it all, so I don't know that the exact number off the top of my head. I bet you that we make 180 to $200,000 off of it just based on the CPMs.

James:

That could be a living. So YouTube, within one second, you could ruin someone's living. You don't get fired or anything, that's horrible. I'm glad it was a mistake and you got your platform back up. Then your newsletter has become very popular. People could find it. We'll describe it the end, and I'll describe it in the intro, but you have a very successful newsletter. How many subscribers do you have with the newsletter?

Anthony Pompliano:

The free list is almost at 200,000. I think we're at 196, 197,000-

James:

That's great.

<<Want more? This monthly crypto update was originally published in Altucher’s Investment Network (ALN). Click here to learn how to get ALL of the ALN plays, recommendations, and insights as they happen. >>

Sincerely,

James Altucher
For Altucher Confidential