The Pomp Letter - Did I Change My Mind On Bitcoin?

To investors,

There seems to be a lot of conversation around my Twitter profile over the last day or two. It started with this viral tweet:

𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐬  🇺🇦 @BusinessFamous

Laser eyes, gone. Bitcoin in bio, gone. Pretty soon he’ll be tweeting about dividend stocks

September 8th 2022

685 Retweets10,997 Likes

And there are more tweets from other individuals in the crypto community. I even got phone calls and text messages from people I have great respect for. They wanted to know if I changed my mind on bitcoin? Did I sell my bitcoin? What was going on?

The truth is that I haven’t changed my mind on anything. Not only do I still have deep conviction in bitcoin and its future potential, but I have also been buying more bitcoin, both personally and professionally, over the last few months.

While my conviction in bitcoin is deeper than ever, there are a number of things that have changed though.

The first is that bitcoin will humble anyone. I have been one of the loudest and most public proponents for the digital currency for half a decade. It allowed me to amass a large online audience, it gave me the opportunity to travel the world, and it opened up opportunities that I could have never dreamed of. It has been amazing. And I am incredibly thankful.

But there are two essential rules of the internet — never believe your own bullshit and never become the main character.

In June 2019, with bitcoin sitting around $12,000, I predicted that the asset would rise to $100,000 within 2.5 years. Rather than the ~8x increase, bitcoin only went up ~6x in that time frame. Some people would argue that the difference doesn’t matter, but at the end of the day I was wrong. It was a great reminder that humans can’t predict the future and price predictions are a fool’s game. Bitcoin helped to humble me.

As for the main character, this is a lesson that I have learned more recently. The internet is a weird, wild place. You can be a nobody and quickly become a somebody. But, as with everything in life, too much of a good thing can ruin it. When you start to become the main character, you can fool yourself into believing that you know more than you do. People start to see you as the teacher.

But that is not who I am. I’ve always relished the student role. I know nothing and am hungry to learn. It is really hard to ask dumb questions and learn when people expect you to have the answers. “You are on television. You are speaking at conferences. You must have the answers!” Well, I don’t. I want to learn. This is a journey that never ends.

The second point of conversation is around identity. I’ve always preached that you should avoid tying your identity to any company or organization, but rather, the most powerful thing is to tie your identity to your own name. Be self-sovereign. But I violated my own advice over the last two years.

Laser eyes. #bitcoin in my Twitter bio. It is all noise.

The truth is that it is really hard to be an independent person who thinks critically if your identity is tied to a financial asset. How can you seriously evaluate an asset if you have it in your bio? Are you really willing to change your mind if you receive new information if your entire identity is tied to something? Maybe. But it definitely makes it harder. As I told a friend months ago, it is hard to see with laser eyes on.

The third point is around building. Anyone who has been around the bitcoin ecosystem for a few years knows that bear markets are the time for building. This is when the real work gets done. And that is exactly what I have been trying to do.

My team and I have been building products and services across the various companies that I own and operate. The most public one is Inflection Points Inc. We have built the largest employment business in crypto over the last 18 months, where we have helped more than 1,000(!) people get a new job, and we are now scaling a corporate training product that will likely bring bitcoin to hundreds of thousands of people within the next 12 months. (NOTE: If your team needs to learn about bitcoin and crypto, reach out here)

Twitter is not real life. There is an inverse correlation between the amount of time someone spends on that website and actually getting shit done. I love larping and doom scrolling as much as anyone, but bear markets aren’t the time for that. It is time to build. Tweeting isn’t conviction, building is.

To make sure I am abundantly clear — my views on bitcoin haven’t changed.

I have deeper conviction than ever that a finite asset, with a programmatic monetary policy, will serve as the single best store of value in a world full of undisciplined monetary and fiscal policy. I don’t need laser eyes or hashtags in my Twitter bio to hold those views. I express them by purchasing more bitcoin.

I am an independent person who tries to think critically. I am willing to change my mind if I receive new information. But my conclusion is that bitcoin will continue to gain global adoption and will be much more valuable in the future.

And to the haters and trolls, I love you. Every single one of you.

HeyBillyj @HeyBillyj

@APompliano @BusinessFamous You’re a loser POMP you bum!

September 9th 2022

You motivate me to learn each day. You drive me to get better. I wouldn’t have the conviction I have without you. So, thank you. Please keep the critiques and feedback coming :)

Hope everyone has a great day. I’ll talk to you on Monday.

-Pomp

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Andrii Baryshpolets is a Chess Grandmaster and has a PHD in Economics.

In this conversation, we discuss the path to becoming a grandmaster, machine learning, cheating, Bitcoin & Crypto, and books and resources to become better at chess. Andrii also gives us insight into the Russia / Ukraine war as a Ukrainian and shares his thoughts on the macro economic environment.

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My Conversation With A Chess Grandmaster

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