爱泼斯坦文件余波、英伟达风险、伯里的错误押注、谷歌突破、Tether 繁荣

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Alright, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. We are together in person. Yes. The besties are together in Vegas. It's gonna be a great time. We're here for f one. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:09): This is the test. This is Jason Calacanis (00:00:10): the test. Friends at the Venetian have been amazing, gracious hosts. They gave us their beautiful studio here. We're gonna play some cards. We're gonna have Phil Hellmuth, Jason Kuhn, all of our besties are coming Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:23): and I've never stayed at The before. It's amazing. Jason Calacanis (00:00:27): Wonderful suites they gave us. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:29): It's beautiful. Jason Calacanis (00:00:30): They VIP'd us out, and this is the place you wanna play cards. They've got a beautiful brand new poker room. They got high stakes room. We'll be playing here later. We'll be playing Playing all afternoon. Game. David Friedberg (00:00:40): And and yes, trackside for Formula One. Jason Calacanis (00:00:44): And we're here for F1. We're gonna be releasing I brought Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:46): a car dealer with me. Jason Calacanis (00:00:48): Wait. You brought a car dealer with him? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:50): You know Matthew? Oh, your car Jason Calacanis (00:00:52): dealer from your home game Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:53): is Yeah, Matthew, car dealer. Jason Calacanis (00:00:54): Is he dead money? What's the story here? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:56): Sadly. That Sadly. No? Okay. Sadly. Jason Calacanis (00:00:59): I haven't been in the home game for a little bit, and it looks like people got out of line. But anyway, thank you so much to our friends at The Venetian. They're doing a ton of poker content here, you can look at that on their YouTube. Alright, everybody. You've wanted us to talk about the Epstein Files, and we're gonna talk about it today in a stunning turn of events. The house and senate voted nearly unanimously to release the Epstein Files. The vote was 427 to one, Chamath, for the Epstein files Who abstained? Act. No. The person who abstained, well played, was Republican Clay Higgins from Louisiana. Thanks for asking. He said it reveals and injures thousands of innocent people, witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members. He makes a great point, but AG Panbandi, of course, has addressed that already that they're not going to release any open investigations and they're going to remove names if it would harm anybody. The Senate passed it by unanimous consent, which requires a sign off from every senator and Trump in a reversal, signed the bill last night saying, give them everything. We did see some emails come out from the Epstein files last week. Friend of the pod, Larry Summers, was a main character in them. And he was communicating with Epstein up until 2019 asking him for advice on dating. He's since stepped down from OpenAI and several other public facing roles. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:20): And was just, I think, put on leave from Harvard. Jason Calacanis (00:02:24): I mean, what do you guys think's gonna be the fallout from this, I guess, David Friedberg (00:02:28): is what From the release of the files? Is that the question? Jason Calacanis (00:02:31): I mean, I guess we'll put our tinfoil hats on. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:34): Let's break this down. So I think the first question is, what is the relation between the Epstein files and Donald Trump? And I think the answer is it's flimsy. And the reason is because this is the most investigated, most litigated human being on Earth. And I think that if you had something that was incredibly salacious and accusatory of Trump, it would have been released during the Biden administration because it would have made a Alan Keating (00:02:58): lot of sense politically to try to damage his candidacy. So the fact that we haven't seen much of anything other than some photos means Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:06): that there's nothing there related to Trump. So then the question is why didn't the Biden administration release more of the files when they had them for four years? And it's probably because there are a nontrivial number of democratic operatives that are touched by these things. Jason Calacanis (00:03:20): Well, also, they did have I think the reason they didn't release them was because there was an open Maxwell case as well, and Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:27): she was appealing it so they couldn't release There's there's probably two of them, but but you know how this works. There's innumerable number of ways to leak stuff. Right? Alan Keating (00:03:33): Mhmm. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:33): My point is now what you're starting to see in these documents is that it seems to be tainting the Democratic establishment elite more than the Republicans. It explains why there was so few leaks in the last four years. The point is Jeffrey Epstein was a total creep. Right? That island should be covered in cement and drowned. The house should be burned to the ground and replaced with something nice. And you have to make sure that these you're the one that said this. It's a thousand women? David Friedberg (00:04:03): That's what I saw a Jason Calacanis (00:04:04): report They keep saying a thousand women. Okay. David Friedberg (00:04:06): Someone said a thousand women. Have to Apparently, in there, there's claims that it's a oh, it was one of the victims who said there's a thousand of us. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:13): Okay. I mean, you have to be incredibly careful and thoughtful to protect their rights and just to respect what they've gone through. But I think now we need to just release these files in an orderly manner and put this episode behind us, learn what we need to learn from it, get better, be better, treat these people with respect, and move on. Jason Calacanis (00:04:31): Yeah. I think But do you David Friedberg (00:04:32): think the release of the files is meant to help the the victims, or do you think it's meant to identify fodder to go after political enemies? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:40): Neither of those two things. The releasing of the files at this point is one of these things that is about a compact between those that have power and those that ask for something. This is an issue that has animated millions of Americans. So when they constantly keep asking for these things to be put out there, I think it's a good signal for the government to listen to folks and release them, again, in a respectful way. Similarly, there are other things that I think fall into this. We've heard about the JFK files. Right? Killing of Martin Luther King, the Amelia Earhart files. And so David Friedberg (00:05:21): All the UFO files. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:22): All the UFO files. I think what it does is it shows a pattern of being responsive to the voting public. And I think that that's a good thing. David Friedberg (00:05:30): So Higgins, who, by the way, was a sheriff, he was an army staff sergeant, and he's been in congress for, I think, nine years. In addition to talking about the victims, he said, you know, this abandons two hundred and fifty years of criminal justice present procedure America and, releasing broad reveal of criminal investigative files released to a rabid media will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Do you think this is, like, a singular situation with Epstein because it's so extraordinary and there's so many people tied up in it? Or does this set a precedent where any time people and the media start to say, hey, we wanna know what's going on in the middle of an active investigation or former investigation that these files kind of get released and this becomes a new standard where we're just gonna start to open up investigative files like this? Do think you it's like a singular thing? Because this is his whole point. Jason Calacanis (00:06:16): This feels like a singular thing. Like and also, it'll bake for a lot of these issues have to bake for a decade or two before people want them to come out. This has been going on for now Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:25): for how many decades? David Friedberg (00:06:26): Well, this like Jason Calacanis (00:06:27): a twenty year Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:27): story now? Year story. David Friedberg (00:06:28): I feel like investigative piece missing is how did he get away scot free in Florida? I actually When there was He was criminally charged, he was convicted and plead out, and he was basically let go. I Jason Calacanis (00:06:40): actually He told David Friedberg (00:06:41): the story that I feel You you know about this. Jason Calacanis (00:06:43): I I know a little bit about it because I met Epstein half dozen times at the Ted conference. Oh, you did? Yes. So interesting. I've talked about it on my Twitter David Friedberg (00:06:50): incessantly because I You you you are in his book. Jason Calacanis (00:06:54): I I am amongst the thousands of people in his black book. I met him at the TED conference. My Do you know who agent Jeffrey Epstein. David and I. Okay. Congratulations. You guys weren't in New York. I went to the TED conference. David Friedberg (00:07:05): I just avoided that room. Jason Calacanis (00:07:07): Well, there was a billionaires dinner at the TED conference. I didn't actually go to the TED conference. My book agent would host the billionaires dinner. And if you type in billionaires dinner, I'd David Friedberg (00:07:16): go to the TED conference. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:17): You'd go Jason Calacanis (00:07:17): to the TED conference. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:18): It was Jason Calacanis (00:07:18): like I was David Friedberg (00:07:19): never invited to the billionaires dinner. Jason Calacanis (00:07:20): This is in the 1990s. Like, this is how old this is. Yeah. He was there giving donations to scientists, Marvin Minsky, MIT, all that stuff. And when he went away and he got busted in Miami, the way it was framed in the TED community was that he was set up, this was just like an underage girl, they had checked her ID, and it was like some sort of setup, and that he had been given a work from home sentence. He could go to work every day and then he had to report to jail, and that it was all just like a misunderstanding is how they framed it. I think, looking back on it, I think he's a spy. I think he worked for intelligence agencies. Now I am not the conspiracy theorist of this podcast. Worked for or shared intel with? Because those Okay, are sure. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:10): It could be any that sector. David Friedberg (00:08:12): We all know people in the intelligence community, and there's easy ways to pass intel without it being Sure. Working for. Then I Jason Calacanis (00:08:19): think the question becomes, was he an asset? Was he sharing information? To what extent? And the reason I think this is because why would he have an interest in the top scientists in the top universities to get close to them? And then who did he want to pass that information on to? Who would want top intelligence from scientists? Russia, Israel, the CIA. And then the Compromat thing does seem also likely because he had cameras everywhere, and they've talked about this. So I think cameras David Friedberg (00:08:51): You're saying he recorded famous people and then used that to get things? I think there is a non zero chance that that part of the story is true. The part of the story that's unanswered But I don't Jason Calacanis (00:09:04): know that it's like a 90% chance that happened. And I think that when we go back and we look at this, there's a bunch of people who have embarrassing interactions with this person who spread money everywhere. Everybody wanted his money. That's where they were lining up. All the scientists, Joey Ito, Reed Hoffman, all of these folks were trying to get his money, which is peculiar. And he was also giving tax advice to the Microsoft people, to Peter Thiel. So he was always trying to integrate himself into powerful people with money and scientists. Why? Was it to make money or was it for some other purpose? I think it was not to make money, I think there was some other purpose here. Now I am not a conspiracy theorist, but because this thing has gone on so long and it has not been released, I think there's David Friedberg (00:09:48): mechanisms that are keeping it at bay. Jason Calacanis (00:09:50): That's what that's to me like the Occam's razor version I of think there's gonna be very embarrassing or compromising banks for intelligence agencies, which is I think the same thing behind If I could have one thing F. K. Assassination. David Friedberg (00:10:02): If I could have one question answered for me out of the Epstein files or if I could just have the question answered, I'd wanna know where did all his money come from? Because it is not very clear how a guy who was managing money for a billionaire Wexler. Wexler. We all know, like, if you're a money manager, maybe you're making half a percent a year. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:18): No. They that was documented. Leon Black, who's the founder of Apollo, in one year paid Epstein a $168,000,000 for tax advice. That came out in the lawsuit that ultimately led to Leon Black resigning from Apollo. Right. And But did was David Friedberg (00:10:38): it tax advice? Like Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:39): That's what he said it was. Now look. I'm not trying to high roll anybody, but I've had all the tax advisers come and give me their advice. It didn't cost you 168,000,000. Jason Calacanis (00:10:48): They cost you 1,200 an hour. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:50): No. It's cost me millions. It's give me 30 points. But it's never I am hard pressed to understand what advice could have been given to me David Friedberg (00:11:00): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:01): That where I would have paid a $168,000,000 Jason Calacanis (00:11:03): Chamath, breaking news. Here's your accountant. They just sent the bill. It's a 172,000,000. No. No. No. And it's crazy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:09): Right. You're right. And and look. If you go to the the best estate lawyers in The United States Jason Calacanis (00:11:14): Okay. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:14): It will cost you 5 to $10,000,000. Jason Calacanis (00:11:17): What do you think he was getting paid for? I mean, was he getting a portion of the savings for doing tax loopholes? Maybe he was charging on some sort of a commission, but he was a money manager for many of these Microsoft executives, etc. And when Peter Thiel said, Why did you meet with me? He said, Tax advice. That's a total Peter Thiel legitimate, That totally tracks. Peter Thiel was known for his Roth, and he's known for studying these kind of things. Makes total sense to me. I think that we're gonna have a bunch of Larry Summers like embarrassing things. There could be embarrassing things there for Democrats, Republicans, everybody in between, the scientists obviously who went to the island and all that stuff. It's gonna be all embarrassing. And I think we're gonna get to the end of the day. We're gonna find out that some intelligence agency was somehow involved in this, and that's why it's being covered up, and that's why it's David Friedberg (00:12:06): so That's your prediction. Jason Calacanis (00:12:07): That's my prediction. David Friedberg (00:12:08): Yes. Nostrad Canath has spoken. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:10): Which intelligence agency will you pick? Yeah. Oh, good, sir. Look into your crystal ball. I mean, Jason Calacanis (00:12:18): it would be one of the big three, the CIA, which he was talking to I think in this latest volley of emails, was talking to people from Israel, from the CIA, and he was talking to Russians. He was talking to all three in the emails that had been leaked. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:33): So you can He search David Friedberg (00:12:34): was talking to Russian intelligence? He was talking to Russians. My God. Really? Jason Calacanis (00:12:38): Yes. Russians, I think, is just generally, he was very involved with Russians. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:43): Could you imagine how much anxiety we would have if that was our job? Could you imagine? I can't even imagine. I just wanna go to my office, build some stuff, make a few investments Rock on going Twitter. Play with my kids. Text people. You know? Mess around. It just seems like, what? What? David Friedberg (00:12:58): Oh my god. So, Jason, when they make the movie, you gonna play yourself or Jason Calacanis (00:13:02): I mean, if you look online, if you go to the edge.org site and you look at those billionaire dinners, you'll see me in a couple of pictures with Larry, Sergei, Zuck, Ev Williams, when we were all twenty nine, thirty years Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:16): Can I nominate Jesse Eisenberg to play you? I know his hair is I curly and yours is Jason Calacanis (00:13:20): think it's more like Leo, Or people might say Ethan Hawke. I get a lot of those, but David Friedberg (00:13:26): Who I would play Ghislain? Jason Calacanis (00:13:29): I mean Who plays Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:31): Which young Ghislain? Who plays Reid Hoffman? Reid Hoffman. Jason Calacanis (00:13:34): Who would pay Reid Hoffman? Yeah. I just don't see a world in which Reed was involved in shenanigans. I'll be totally honest. I think he was just trying to raise money. I think it's unfair that everybody who met him is being dragged into like, oh, they were somehow a pedophile. Like, that's just crazy. Think they were all Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:55): trying Yeah. David Friedberg (00:13:55): Because this get guy was a consummate networker, obviously doing a bunch of stuff. Jason Calacanis (00:14:00): He funded all of those dinners. He was funding all of these dinners. He was hosting dinners in New York. In New York, he was known for having these dinner parties with all kinds of famous people. You can look online. Was constantly David Friedberg (00:14:14): That was his business, much. His business was Jason Calacanis (00:14:16): to meet with people, and he was David Friedberg (00:14:18): To throw Jason Calacanis (00:14:18): dinners? To dinners, Shimon. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:21): That seems calorically taxing. You know what I mean? Like, dinner parties, like, you overeat at a dinner party. Imagine having, like, three of those a week. Jason Calacanis (00:14:27): I don't I don't know. Jason, know anybody who's having three dinner parties a week? David Friedberg (00:14:31): It's a lot. Alright. Jason and I went to Carbone last night. Well We'll talk about it when Keating gets here. Jason Calacanis (00:14:36): That got a little heated. Mean, speaking of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:38): Come on. David Friedberg (00:14:38): We'll talk about it. Alright. We'll talk about Jason Calacanis (00:14:39): it when he gets here. Somebody got out of line. Alright. Thanks Thanks again to our friends at the Venetian. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:45): I had dinner last night with Paulo Arduino, CEO, founder of Tether. Jason Calacanis (00:14:49): Can't wait to meet him. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:50): Amazing, amazing guy. That is an incredible business. What are they? Jason Calacanis (00:14:56): A 150,000,000,000 in treasuries now? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:58): It is it is incredible. And here's why that business is incredible. This is what I like. Jason Calacanis (00:15:02): You're talking about Tether the stablecoin? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:03): Tether the stablecoin. Yes. There are 500,000,000 people using US dollar backed stablecoins from Tether all around the world, Africa, all over Central America, all over Asia, number one. Number two, his user base is growing by 30,000,000 users a quarter. It's the financial inclusion that then ties back to US dollar hegemony is unbelievable. David Friedberg (00:15:31): So if you think about Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:32): So wait. David Friedberg (00:15:32): Buy a stable explain it to me like I'm an idiot who's never bought Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:35): a stablecoin. Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:15:36): What is Just every week. Yeah. Just like every other week. So so Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:40): let let's look at these businesses as roughly the same. There's Circle. There's Tether. There's World Liberty Financial. They all have a stablecoin. What is it? Okay. So let's just say that Jason is a cash worker in India. Let's just use that example. Sure. He gets paid a 100 rupees and he's like, you know, the rupee is constantly getting devalued. I'm constantly losing purchasing power. I wanna swap that into a US dollar. So he would create a crypto wallet, and what Tether will say is, great, give me your INR, your €100 sorry, your 100 rupees. They immediately swap it to a US dollar. So now there's a US dollar and there's a token for that dollar. I give Jason the token for that dollar. Now I have this dollar. What do I do with it? When I accumulate enough of these dollars, 50,000,000,000, 100,000,000,000, I can take that and I would invest it in treasuries so that it's completely safe. Jason Calacanis (00:16:38): US treasuries. US Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:39): treasuries. Now, if Jason decides to send it to you and then you redeem, I can sell a little bit, $1 of those treasuries that I own undo And the David Friedberg (00:16:49): does Tether earn all the interest on treasuries? I'm getting Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:51): to this. So now Tether and Circle and World Liberty, they earn interest on that. And so now when the number gets big enough, this number gets ginormous. Then what they do in Tether's case is they then reinvest this capital into all kinds of distributed assets, Bitcoin, gold, real estate. But what they also do is they now invest in things like financial inclusion in Africa. So he walked me through kind of a bunch of things that he's doing yesterday. It is an incredible business. David Friedberg (00:17:20): And so as a holder of the coin in my wallet, I'm not earning any of that treasury yield. I just have a flat dollar denominated or dollar protected stable coin. Pegged to the dollar. You have Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:30): a dollar pegged stable coin. Right. Jason Calacanis (00:17:32): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:32): And that is sufficient risk management and risk mitigation for half a billion people in David Friedberg (00:17:38): the world. They're not trying to get a 4% or 3% interest yield. No. Jason Calacanis (00:17:42): So now David Friedberg (00:17:42): They care more about Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:43): You're you not being in bringing up the big point, which is in The United States, what is what is the big fight now? The big fight in The United States in this thing called the clarity bill that is meandering through the house and the senate is what should happen in the market structure. So meaning, if you, David Friedberg, is the one that gave me the dollar and I am, let's say, for example, say Coinbase, and I issue you a stablecoin, do I share that revenue with you? Do you earn all of it? Obviously, the banks, like the JP Morgans of the world, the Citibanks, they don't want that. Right. Right? Because that's their net interest margin. Right. That's what that's what happens today. Right. You deposit money in the bank. Jason Calacanis (00:18:23): And Sacks said this on the program. Citibank goes off the bus. The stablecoin legislation, they weren't able to give the stablecoin providers the ability to pay interest to consumers. They did that concession, but that will change over time. But the banks were able to fight for that concession. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:38): The banks were able to fight for it. But then you have the emergent crypto companies who say, hey, this is like, let's find a way where we can do a sharing mechanism. How they hack around it is they do kind of sharing, but this via this kludgy way called rewards. Yes. So like you earn rewards and you earn reward points, but it's not really what it should be. It should be that if you earn net interest margin, you should be able to share that. And by the way, you should be able to have different rules in different markets because again, if you're in Kenya, the last thing you're probably thinking is, do I get the 4%? What you're more worried about is the Kenyan currency, whatever it's called, is about to depreciate another 60% this David Friedberg (00:19:14): year. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:15): Let me just hedge that. And that's more than enough value. Anyways, I thought Paolo was incredibly impressive. Jason Calacanis (00:19:20): Well, will say this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:22): Business is really impressive. Jason Calacanis (00:19:23): I have been super critical of Tether publicly, and they had a lot of challenges as a business. They were banned in many markets. They didn't do any audits. People didn't know what was in there. They 've done an incredible job cleaning all that up. Now they are starting to do going from attestations to audits and they desperately want to be legal in America in that legislation. They have three years to do it, and they have to then unwind being banned in New York, banned in Canada, all these places I like a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:52): have an offer for you. Okay. Which Jason Calacanis (00:19:54): is I just want to say, let me finish my thought for a second. I just want to give credit to David Sacks. What we saw under Biden and what we saw with the anti crypto approach that they took, and Trump in his first presidency was anti crypto as well, that decade of anti crypto led to a lot of people doing offshore stuff like Tether, a lot of shenanigans. And actually, Sachs, who can't make it this weekend, he has now created a framework which is helping people do it the right way and taking out all of these questions. And Tether is example one. The tethers have been the default for all kinds Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:31): of Do you know that human for sure? Jason Calacanis (00:20:34): Has been in our congressional hearings. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:37): Have Let's documented very not make the accusation if we don't know. I saw yesterday was a very, very, very credible and thoughtful entrepreneur and a great business. The other thing, sorry, that I'll say is I would like to invite you to come with me to the Tether conference at the January. Are going David Friedberg (00:20:57): Oh, we've never turned down an invitation. Here we go. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:58): Here we Here's what we're gonna do. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna fly together to El Salvador. Jason Calacanis (00:21:03): El Salvador, we're do a tour Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:05): of the prisons? No, we're gonna do an interview with Bukele. Jason Calacanis (00:21:09): Okay. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:10): And then we're gonna do an interview with Paolo, and then we'll fly home. Will you come with me? Jason Calacanis (00:21:15): If I can ask him any question I want Ask any question? David Friedberg (00:21:18): And you have to go check out the prison. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:20): No, I've been told you I'm not going anywhere near cannot that go to ERCOT the first trip. You go to ERCOT the second trip. David Friedberg (00:21:25): I don't wanna Jason Calacanis (00:21:26): go anywhere near that prison, but if I can ask him any question and he'll be fine with it. He's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:30): great dude. Jason Calacanis (00:21:31): Yeah. I'm happy to go. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:32): Course. In any other world, he would have been in Silicon Valley doing the same thing. Jason Calacanis (00:21:35): Anyway Half a trillion dollar. The other challenge they're gonna have is when interest rates go down, these businesses are gonna have to figure that out as well. But $183,000,000,000 in circulating USDT, that's a ticker symbol right now. 135,000,000,000 of that's in treasuries and then another like 10,000,000,000 in Bitcoin and gold. And land. That means they're throwing off whatever 5%. They were making $7.8000000000 a year just on the holdings. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:04): Not gonna tell you what the details are, but I've never seen a business in it. Jason Calacanis (00:22:08): No, they said it's a 500, the word on the street is a $500,000,000,000 market cap, which would be roughly 50 times price to sales ratio. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:16): Well, me say it differently. They're making 10,000,000,000. What's more, do you think their profit margins are? Forget the growth quantum. Jason Calacanis (00:22:24): So Oh, you only need a 100 people to run the business. David Friedberg (00:22:26): Yeah, if the interest is the revenue, it's probably 70% margin business. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:31): Upwards of more than 95%. Jason Calacanis (00:22:33): It makes total sense because you I mean, how many people You know Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:36): what I thought last night of dinner? Here we are grinding away, trying to get to 30%, 40%. It's so many of our businesses. And I and he's like, yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. It's incredible. Jason Calacanis (00:22:46): The the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:47): Good for him. Congratulations. Congratulations. Jason Calacanis (00:22:48): The congratulations as bad as David Friedberg (00:22:50): There's there's a there's a financial theory, though, that high margin businesses like that invite competition more. But that's literally where competition gets ground down. Jason Calacanis (00:22:58): Bought the like, stablecoin provider. It's pretty well known. Stripe, Visa, everybody's gonna have their own stablecoins. So Tether will not have the market all to themselves, and obviously Jeremy Lehrer and Circle is a very viable David Friedberg (00:23:12): Fortunately, margin like that's only got one direction to go. Correct. If the Alright. Let's talk about it. Jason Calacanis (00:23:17): Yeah. And if the margin if the interest rates go down, which is we'll talk about that as well, that's gonna be headwinds for that whole space. Alright, we've been talking a bit about Brad Gerstner personally deciding to blow up the AI bubble and then destroying the stock market. I'm joking. Shout out to Brad Gerstner. My gosh. This short Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:36): Bitcoin thing has been a bonanza. Really? Is it below 90? It is. Right? It's like Jason Calacanis (00:23:42): 80 I know it hit 88 or something, but I mean Watch out below. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:47): Let's see the price. Okay, David Friedberg (00:23:49): let's talk about Nvidia. Jason Calacanis (00:23:50): So Nvidia had a blowout quarter, revenue up 62% year over year, 22% quarter over quarter, net income 31,900,000,000, that's up 65% year over year. They expect 65,000,000,000 this quarter. Jensen, friend of the pod has said that they can't keep their product on the shelves. 's sold out everywhere. And then at the same time, Michael Burry, who has got the short on it, he's been mixing it up. He is posting in response, I think, to you Freeberg last week making it a defense of the reasonable life of an H100, of these new chipsets that Nvidia sells. Is it four years, five years, six years, seven years? When do they get replaced? When do they have a useful life? End gap accounting. He believes, just to make it easy for the audience to understand, that major tech companies, big tech, are cooking the books in order to spike their earnings, that this is the house of cards, and that he's going to short Palantir because it's a 100 to one sales price to sales ratio, but he's going to also short Nvidia, etc. Because of the depreciation. What's your thoughts? I know you've seen his comments. Friedberg? David Friedberg (00:25:07): I downloaded the GAAP depreciation rules. I was going to play Accounting Corner jingle, which a fan, by the way sent me over the week. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:13): Oh, David Friedberg (00:25:13): great. I Super cannot get the internet working. Want put in post? Jason Calacanis (00:25:17): We'll put I wanna hear it then. Alan Keating (00:25:18): Depreciation and round trips too. Let's talk about some unearned revenue. Sharpen your pencils, let's see what you got It's accounting corner, Eckie Jason Calacanis (00:25:28): Almond Park Very nicely done, I'll bet David Friedberg (00:25:31): you thank you for joining me here at accounting corner, and thank you to Roxanna Martinez for that incredible jingle. I think we should adopt it. Love it. Love it. Send in your jingles, folks. Jason app. The appreciation rules, accounting standards, three sixty. Here we go. Depreciation must reflect the assets estimated useful life, not market innovation. The specific language. Can Jason Calacanis (00:25:57): you call us at 11:30 tonight and put us to bed? Wow. Is you found you found a corner even more boring than science corner. Come David Friedberg (00:26:05): on. People love accounting corner. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:07): No. No. Jason Calacanis (00:26:07): Explain it David Friedberg (00:26:07): because wanna yes. Jason Calacanis (00:26:08): It is actually important. David Friedberg (00:26:09): Under the GAAP standards, the general accepted accounting principle standards. So you set a useful life and you reset that useful life as you do a reassessment on when you're actually using that asset, not necessarily if there's a better asset that makes more value. So let's just explain this again. You make a big investment in property plant equipment, PP and E. And that investment, you write down over a period of time that you as an accountant estimate to be the useful life of that asset. So if you're going use a building for twenty years, every year you write down the cost of that building by one twentieth. You don't get to write it all down in the first year. In fact, what Burry is arguing is that if you wrote it all down in the first year, your profit would go down and your business would look worse. So when you make an investment that you can use over a period of time, unlike salary, when you pay someone a salary, you're paying them for the hours they're working that quarter, that year, and so that money is an expense. Gets recognized and paid But out that when you make an investment in a building or a piece of equipment that you're going use over time, you depreciate it. Just to go through that principle again. And so there's standards in GAP on how do you recognize the depreciation schedule, what's the useful life? And the useful life is when you're actually realizing return value from that asset. Burry's point is incorrect on Twitter, he said. The idea of a useful life for depreciation being longer because chips from more than three to four years ago are fully booked confuses physical utilization with value creation. That is incorrect. There is value creation because they are generating revenue from those chips this year, six years later. So there is in fact a useful life for that chip that has extended into year six. Jason Calacanis (00:27:52): Now let me ask David Friedberg (00:27:53): And you so it doesn't matter, and this is a part of the gap point that I wanted to bring up. So what he's arguing is you should depreciate it over say three years, which means you're doubling the cost every year and that it's all written off in three years. But if you did that, to give you a point of example, in Google's case, their total net profit would come down by roughly 10 to 12%. So it's not like they're cooking the books and recognizing some massive delta in their profit by doing this. The difference between three and six years is roughly 12% of their profit. And they're still using these chips. And what Gap says is that only if the new asset, meaning the new chips, replaces the old one, then the old assets remaining useful life has to be marked down and you take accelerated depreciation Or that if the maintenance costs spike, which means you have to money fix the asset, which is not the case with chips. The third is if the throughput requirements exceed the old equipment capabilities forcing early retirement. They're not retiring, they're still making revenue off the old chips. Or if technological obsolescence means that you're putting it up for sale, you can meaning you stop using it after a period Jason Calacanis (00:28:56): of If you put it up for sale, you would actually know the market value of it. You could take that from the This is David Friedberg (00:29:00): almost textbook gap, which is that if you're still using the asset after six years, you can depreciate depreciate it it over over six six years. Years or whatever. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:07): I think this conversation lacks technical literacy. So let's assume you're Google, and let's just say that the equivalent of an output token was the equivalent of a link. David Friedberg (00:29:18): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:19): The first thing you would tell me is, hey, Chamath, not all links are made equal. So for example, if you generate a link for a pharmaceutical drug, Google charges a price per click that's way different than the link that they generate that goes to Amazon to buy toothpaste. Right? Now, for Amazon, it actually costs the same amount of money to generate that link. For Google, sorry. Right? I think the thing that he needs to understand is he's equating this to energy, but the reality is that in AI models, the thing that we care about is what is that output token? What is the revenue that's being generated? David Friedberg (00:29:53): That's right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:54): What is the revenue that's being generated by the output token? And, ultimately, what he doesn't appreciate is that, obviously, Google and Facebook and Microsoft and OpenAI and X are not gonna be in the business of generating negative revenue output tokens just for the sake of it. How do you know that? My wife got to the end of the Internet this week. She launched X, put it on voice mode. She was stuck in traffic going from our house all the way to San Mateo and back. David Friedberg (00:30:21): That's like ten minutes. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:23): And she no. No. No. It's twenty five minutes up, twenty five minutes back. And she said, hey. You know what? I ran out of tokens. Like, it said, you can't use it anymore in David Friedberg (00:30:31): this Oh, on Grok, you mean? On Grok. Yeah. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:32): Yeah. Do they do that? It's because they are very conscious of there's a certain energy output, there's a certain revenue potential, and then beyond this, they start to gate it. You do it on OpenAI, do it on all these things. So they are already keenly aware of the value of these output tokens. Know the revenue it's generating. Sorry, just one thing. And then the second thing is, in the bowels of these organizations, everybody has completely rebuilt all of the decoder infrastructure. What does that mean? Before something gets to you, the user, there's all kinds of different manipulations that people are doing in the models, after the models, before the models, and all of that stuff has been rebuilt. So I think what he needs to understand, look, in fairness to him, what I would say, what Gap needs to appreciate is when those laws were written, it's for a factory, it's for a turbine, and it's a static thing. It probably doesn't do a very good job of understanding the world of chips. But could he take a little bit of effort to call somebody and actually learn how this works? Yes. Is he doing it? No. There you David Friedberg (00:31:36): go. Yeah. Mean, hold on. Jason Calacanis (00:31:37): Think the most important point of what you said there is, Chamath, this is a new asset and it's a new space. There might be some companies that are like, we're gonna lose money on this and we're gonna let you build, don't know, Sora videos, right? And that's just going to be a money loser for five years as we get ChatGPT to 2,000,000,000 users, we don't care about it. And those machines are going to have 90% of their utilization in the first three years. And then for the next seven years, it'll be 10% of their value. They'll be doing some small jobs in the background that won't be as important. Accounting isn't built to do this kind of refined depreciation schedule. David Friedberg (00:32:17): What do mean 90% of their utilization? If they're still making value Jason Calacanis (00:32:22): to the consumer, so that if you theoretically think about the value of that H100, what value did the users get out of it? Well the value today is like I'm making goofy Sora videos that generate no revenue, it's all money losing. But down the road, that might actually be advertising and it might create some number of clicks, it might create some number of subscriptions, so we'll actually be able to attribute revenue to it. There's no way to look at these devices right now and to know how much of them are actually generating revenue in the first two Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:56): years versus the next Jason Calacanis (00:32:57): few years. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:57): I think we know now much more than we did even six months ago how to value an output token. Jason Calacanis (00:33:03): And then what is the instructions we give to the accounting community on how to deal with that? David Friedberg (00:33:09): Dude, this is not that complicated. In the past, there have been efforts to try and change straight line depreciation, but your point of utilization, I don't think is necessarily the correct one. If they're still making revenue on that chip every year, year four, year five, year six, then they're still using it, it's still generating revenue for them. Remember, the cost of electricity and the cost of running the data center is still an expense in that period, so all of that shows up as an operating expense. So if it's generating negative profit, negative gross profit, the market sees that. And I will say one more thing that I think is really important. Jason Calacanis (00:33:47): And they would turn it off. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:48): They'll tolerate it to the point and then they'll stop. David Friedberg (00:33:51): Look, There's no hidden information here. Burry's implication that they are cooking the books or hiding accounting is completely false because all of the accounting is apparent in the cash flow statement and in the balance sheet. Remember, companies have three financial statements, an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement. The cash flow statement reconciles the income statement, balance sheet, makes the the linkage, and it shows you all the cash that's going in and out of the company. And many analysts and many investors that are intelligent and do their homework will look at the cash flow statement and they will see the capex, they will see all the investments going out, and they will calculate a number typically called free cash flow that will allow them to estimate the true cash generation of the business in a particular period and make an assessment of should they be valued on free cash flow or should they be valued on the GAAP standard of EBITDA and the investor has the choice on how they want to value the company. And Burry is incorrect in thinking that they're hiding anything because it's all there. They're following GAAP standards. Then investors make a market and they all decide what do I want to value this company on? Cash flow? EBITDA? Let them choose and then the market sets the price. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:55): I think we've given this guy way too much airtime. He's not very good at what he does. I'm sorry, but like Come Jason Calacanis (00:35:02): on the program, Burry. We'd love to Why? Double click on Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:05): Is there any other random person out there on the internet you wanna take? Let's just Who's a magic default to generate numbers I and Jason Calacanis (00:35:12): would say that there's a lot of people who think highly of his analysis. Doesn't mean they're right Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:17): and Jason Calacanis (00:35:17): doesn't Of course, mean but I think it could be a good conversation. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:19): You know who we've never had on the pod? Stan Druckenmiller. Let's get Druck before we get Michael Brooks. David Friedberg (00:35:23): Have both Jason Calacanis (00:35:24): of them. Why are we choosing here? Okay, Google released Gemini three. It's pretty great. They regained the lead on most of the benchmarks. Polymarket now has Google at 89% to finish the year as the top LLM. And all the speculation that Google was going to have their search franchise absolutely slaughtered by ChatGPT has turned out to not be true, at least not this year, with their searches going up, revenue going up. But the big story is speculation around Gemini three being trained only on Google's TPUs, not NVIDIA's GPUs. Your thoughts, Jameth? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:01): I think TPU is an incredible product. I'm biased, but I think it's an incredible architecture. This latest spin is very profound. But I also think that what we are quickly seeing is that there's going to be a highly fragmented layer of decoding chips that exist in the marketplace. Grok is one. TPU is one. Microsoft has a spin. Amazon has Inferentia. Facebook, I think, is apparently spinning up their own silicon. So we're going to get to disaggregated decode pretty quickly. The question is who will win? There'll be a bunch of different solutions. I think what's incredible about Google is, I don't know if you saw the stats, but they went from, like, 8% share to, like, 16% share of the entire chat market as of, like, this last month. That's an incredible stat. On the enterprise side, Anthropic is just absolutely crushing. So what are we seeing? We're seeing a nascent market get created. We saw an allocation of traffic that basically favored one company over everyone. And now we're starting to see a sorting function in a classifier in all of these different markets. It's like breaking apart. Right? There'll be winners in science. There'll be winners in enterprise level coding. There's gonna be winners on the chat side. And where are the advantages going to be? On the enterprise side, it's going to be model quality, Anthropix is excellent. On the chat side, it's probably going to pivot around your existing inherent distribution. Jason Calacanis (00:37:35): Which is the operating system, which is your browser, which is your phone, is Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:41): Yeah. The only thing that I would push back on what you said though, is that I agree that Google has done an absolutely incredible job in defending search. Yeah. But I think what this creates is the setup where now they can cannibalize themselves versus having their market cannibalize for them. That's still going to be a very tough decision for Google to make. It's gonna happen. Jason Calacanis (00:38:04): I'm gonna take the other side of it. I think what's going happen is the AI gains in advertising targeting and the number of searches is going to go up. So while the revenue per search might go down, the number of searches goes up and then the targeting goes up. So I'm going to take the other side of it. I think the search franchise is going to grow and that Google is not going to lose to ChatGPT, and I think the big loser in all this is going to be OpenAI because they started with 100% of the market and they're only going down and they're facing Google firing on all cylinders, Anthropic and Grok beating them in the leaderboards pretty consistently. So I think the short in all of this, if you were going to put on the paratrade, is short OpenAI, which I think is overvalued and is going go down. And I think I would be long Google, Grok and Anthropic. I think that they're going to have many challenges. Also I don't think the startup community, I'll just add this as my final thought on it, the startup community is not trusting OpenAI with their data. If you use OpenAI and you see them releasing products like Sora, if you were in the space of doing image generation social networking, why would you trust OpenAI with your data? If you're doing a cursor and OpenAI has that product, they're not going to trust them. They're going to go with a model like Anthropic, which is taking a more neutral, we're not going to go to the application level, and they're also using deep seek and open source models, again because they don't want to give their data and their advantage over to a person and enabling somebody who might compete with them. David Friedberg (00:39:33): Let me just make two comments. Sure. Number one is I think what we will see over time is probably a differentiation of general purpose workhorses in chip architecture to more of these kind of special purpose chips that work well with certain models and certain applications. You can kind of think about inference in machine vision in robotics. You don't necessarily need an h 100 to do that. You can use a purpose built chip to do that in a way that reduces power cost, reduces ultimate capital cost to deploy that in an edge environment. In the core data center environment, you may end up having models that are different for graph neural nets versus LLMs. There are going to be different chips that'll likely fit very differently with different architectures. So, you know, I would say that the general workhorse is what we had, but now that everyone's making these investments, and you should expect that the investment dollars in chip design is only gonna ramp up, not down. Massive. There's gonna be differentiated chips for different markets and different applications. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:39): 100%. David Friedberg (00:40:40): And that's where there's a risk to NVIDIA. The other kind of Jason Calacanis (00:40:42): Who do you think has the best chance of challenging NVIDIA? So this is where David Friedberg (00:40:47): I was gonna go. The the other black swan that I think is missing in the equation today, and I my my early prediction for 2026 is Huawei, where I think that there's a lithography technology that exists in China that is not publicly discussed, that is gonna be deployed in Huawei and all these fabs that they're building in Mainland China. And Huawei can create at a very low cost, probably very high volume and probably in reasonably short order chips that can start to rival for certain market applications chips that might be expensive and long Jason Calacanis (00:41:20): Give me a timeline for that. Two years, three years out? Start David Friedberg (00:41:24): to make announcements. And by the way, remember chip architecture, and even Jensen's talked about this, is being redesigned with AI. So AI can design better chips. Jason Calacanis (00:41:32): Okay. So announcements 2026, Impact '27? David Friedberg (00:41:36): Probably fair. Sure. Jason Calacanis (00:41:38): Yeah. Love Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:38): it. Is this what it'll be like when we have to be in a studio? When we get to this level of scale where our show actually matters and we need Jason Calacanis (00:41:46): to a studio? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:47): We could be in Jason Calacanis (00:41:47): a studio together. Yeah. I mean, we'd have to The show would have never happened or worked. Yeah. I mean, have four people with actual schedules and jobs. It's not like we do this for a living. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:57): But Oh, you do? Jason Calacanis (00:41:58): No. I mean, I invest in a 100 companies a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:01): year. Not well, but Jason Calacanis (00:42:02): I'm saying you do it. No. My main job You could Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:04): have carved out the time. The rest of us actually have jobs. Jason Calacanis (00:42:06): No. Actually, I literally just got back from watching Founder University in That's what I'm saying. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:12): Watching. That's the keyword. You didn't say doing. Jason Calacanis (00:42:14): Launching Founder University in Tokyo, thanks to my partners there. David Friedberg (00:42:19): You watch Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:19): that And Jason Calacanis (00:42:22): investing in 100, 150 companies per year and launching the fifth launch fund next year. So go to launch.co, and you can email Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:30): me distribution from you, by the way, recently. Jason Calacanis (00:42:33): Yes. Good. That that first fund is, like, five, six x now. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:37): Yeah. But it was on $8 Jason Calacanis (00:42:38): top fund? Have you have you hit a five x fund yet? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:40): Yes. Okay. Great. So welcome to the club. Welcome to the club. It was on May. So is it Okay. Great. Awesome. Well, me talk It's to actually you more than a five x. Jason Calacanis (00:42:47): Okay, great. I'm happy for you. I'm happy for you. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:52): I should have just done it with all my own money. Jason Calacanis (00:42:53): That is actually the question that a lot of people have. Do you feel you're a better investor when you're investing your money, or do you think you're better when you have the discipline of having to report into LPs? It's actually a good question. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:06): My returns have been better when I've been by myself, but I think that there is something really valuable about working for other people, which it does keep you accountable. I mean, what's happened is my dispersion has increased massively investing on my own, which means I cut the losers off far longer than I would have if I was running a fund because I think what I signed up for when I was running a fund was never lose money ever and return the money as quickly as possible and then run the upside. And so I would have traded a seven x with high vol for a guaranteed three and three and a half x because I think that was my responsibility as the GP because my LPs were Memorial Sloan Kettering, the Mayo Clinic. I wanted to give them the money back because they have programs. Jason Calacanis (00:43:49): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:50): And it's not my job to hold the money back. With myself, I can keep it out so then the ups are higher, but then the lows are also lower. Yes. Because some of these things just get annihilated. Like, look, like relativity space, you know, I took a $400,000,000 goose egg. Yeah. And Jason Calacanis (00:44:08): this is the challenge, Friedberg. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:10): Eric Schmidt shows up and he's like, here, it's a billion dollars. Pay to play. And I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna do it. Jason Calacanis (00:44:14): Yeah. So it goes Friedberg, had a venture studio for a little while. You had to deal with outside investors. Now you're obviously in the driver seat CEO of Ahalo. You also had that pressure. You have to answer to LPs. Did it make you better at the job or did it make you do. David Friedberg (00:44:28): Same investor. My venture studio owns the majority of Ohalo. So just So it's our biggest driver of value, so I'm spending all my time on Ohalo. That's kinda my But do Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:36): you run do you run the production board still? Like, are there investments that Jason Calacanis (00:44:40): you I'm David Friedberg (00:44:40): on a few other boards. But no active investment. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:42): I'm not David Friedberg (00:44:43): doing any new investing. Actually, a lot of folks moved into OHalo or moved out to stop doing new investing. And then slowly, we're kind of as we have a liquidity event, we'll do a distribution. But the goal is for TPB to end up being a holding company with just Ohalo in it. That's where all the value is gonna come from. So we're we're we actually just did a distribution and then we're gonna do kind of distributions as we have other kind of events for the other things that are in our portfolio, and then we'll just focus on Ohalo. When you came into this venture studio model, did you anticipate, which is what most people do anticipate with venture studios, Jason Calacanis (00:45:19): that you'd have one breakout and you would go all in on that. David Friedberg (00:45:21): I was delusional. Okay. In 2011, two years before I sold Climate Corp, I started a company called Metro Mile. I was the chairman of the board of the company. I hired an outside CEO, fired him in a year, brought promoted the CTO to be CEO. For years I worked with him as the chairman of the board, I invested close to 10,000,000 of my own money in this company, spent years on it, it had raised a series b, a series c, series d, was doing great. I'm like man, this is awesome, I can be a chairman, not a CEO, run these companies, this goes great, scale to like whatever it was, a 100,000,000 of revenue. I started Eatsa, which as you guys recall was this quinoa fast food restaurant. Jason Calacanis (00:46:00): Put three Robotic as well. Were way ahead of your time. David Friedberg (00:46:03): I put 3,000,000 of my own capital in the business, and then I had a CEO run it. And then we raised outside money, which I was not planning to do in that business. And I'm like, man, I am so good at starting companies and being a chairman. This is what I should do, and that's what led me to start The Venture Studio. Both those companies ended up being net negative returners for me, and over time, many of the other projects that I was a founder of, a chairman of, didn't succeed financially. And over my years being on boards, I realized how frustrating it was to be on a board where you would tell a CEO a bunch of stuff, they wouldn't listen, they would do whatever they wanted to do. I was frustrated pulling my hair out watching them do things I wouldn't do, not doing the things I would do. So after many years of failure after failure, I realized this was the moment where we had this amazing outcome, series of outcomes at O'Halo. And it was a research project for several years. We put close to $40,000,000 into this project before these results started to come in. I'm like holy shit. This is the game changing business of my career. This is the power law. And that's when I made the decision, I'm gonna go all in on this, and I'm gonna run it Jason Calacanis (00:47:10): as soon How'd you communicate it to them? David Friedberg (00:47:12): Everyone was very supportive and very active. They were like, this is what we always hoped you would do, was to find a winner, and I never thought that that's what I would do. Because I swore after I sold Climic Corp, I swore I would never be a CEO again. It's too stressful. It was damaging to my health. It's, like, overwhelming. I'm so into it. I cannot stop building the business. It's just it consumes me. Everything about it, I have to win. I have to make the business an ultra success. It consumes me. And I knew that it would happen to me again, and I've got kids and all this stuff. So I had to really, like, dig deep to make the decision to do it. And actually, you know what changed my mind about this was I saw the movie Oppenheimer in IMAX, and I left that movie and I cried, and I realized I wasn't doing what I should be doing with my life by being, you know, this board member who was useless. I'm like, what am I doing here? And I said, I'm gonna make this, and I've been thinking about this, and I'm like, that's it. Took me over and I made a decision to step in as CEO. So yeah, the LPs, the investors were all thrilled because they had all said, like, we hope you would run something one day, and then more capital came in and we've been running Ohalo for the it's been two years now, this month that I've been running Oh Hollow as CEO, and I'm really happy I did it. Jason Calacanis (00:48:16): That's incredibly inspiring. Jamat, would you like to mock Friedberg for crying at Oppenheimer in any way? I saw you doing it. David Friedberg (00:48:23): He's doing it. He's like Yeah. Great movie, by the way. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:27): I cried I cried when I got married. I cried when my kids were born. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:48:31): He cried it off and I he's like, oh my god. He's flipping out. Do you David Friedberg (00:48:35): ever give or but do you ever ask yourself what I do with my life? Like, you ever think, like, hey. The impact I thought I would have in my life, that there's a missing piece to that? There's something that I didn't accomplish that I always expected I would? That there's something I didn't achieve as a person? And then you see these kind of extraordinary outcomes that others do, and you're like, man, what am I doing with my life? What am Jason Calacanis (00:48:54): I doing? I think that's a pretty profound insight you had, and it sounds like you made the right decision. Alright. Next up on the program, one of our favorite human beings. You know him from high stakes poker. The one, the only, the mad man of the poker tables and the mensch in our poker group, Alan Keating. What's up? Alan Keating (00:49:14): Thank for the kind introduction. Jason Calacanis (00:49:16): Have a seat. A seat. Alan Keating (00:49:17): What's up, brother? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:18): How are you? David Friedberg (00:49:18): You sit next to me. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:19): Oh, good. Good. David Friedberg (00:49:20): Good. Morning. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:20): Now, Alan David Friedberg (00:49:21): Just like at dinner last night. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:22): Yeah. You David Friedberg (00:49:23): were my right. Me Alan Keating (00:49:25): introduce. You David Friedberg (00:49:27): were out at dinner last night. Jason Calacanis (00:49:28): Hold on. Let me just do a proper introduction so the audience understands who Alan We'll Keating get to it. Alan Keating, just type that into YouTube, watch a bunch of Alan Keating clips. Alan, very famous. Paraphore's Keating. Alan Keating (00:49:40): That's what I call it. David Friedberg (00:49:41): Paraphore's Keating. I that. That was incredible. Oh, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:44): that was legendary. Jason Calacanis (00:49:45): Alan Keating ran the high stakes game here, the elite big game for many years. Then he started investing in companies. He was the seed investor in a little company known as Polymarket. And he's gotten into our friend group, I don't know how many years ago Chamathi brought him in and he fit right in and we started hanging ten years ago. And we got to know him. In that time, he also started to play high stakes on TV, stopped running the big game here in Vegas. And on TV, you're known for playing way above the rim in a way that to call it non traditional would be an understatement. Take us through No, my message. Okay, go ahead, Chamath. You wanna Yeah, look. Yeah. Chamath will explain your career to you. Ahead. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:34): Listen up. Keating at his core, is an exceptional player. Not a traditional you'll see some of the other guys who are more solver oriented, but Keating has incredible, incredible live reads, kind of like modern younger generation of Helmuth. I mean, Helmuth has good live reads, but now he's like an aging horse. We're gonna have Jason Calacanis (00:50:58): to Yeah. He's older. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:59): We're gonna send him to the blue factory soon. But Keating is in his prime, and what he can do is he can soul read people, which when you're you're playing at the high stakes, honestly, that's all that matters because you can't play solver based. The stakes in which we play, you cannot. You're just gonna get run over. And that's why you see him being able to do these things because everybody else steps into the game. They're like a deer in the head headlights. They're so afraid, and he is very comfortable. Yeah. And so he can see it and he can pick people off, like when he picked off Doug Polk with a floor. How does that happen? It's because he can soul read people and he's he's he's attuned to play this game. David Friedberg (00:51:35): Ketan, true or false? Can you soul read people? Alan Keating (00:51:38): Yeah. I think I I've I'm navigating fear on the poker table better than most. Uh-huh. So I I think when people are, you know, afraid, they tend to give things away or get scared or act different, and I I to Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:54): Bet sizing. The duck the problem with the duck poke hand was that he up the bet sizing on the turn. Yeah. He ships the turn you fold. Yep. He puts himself in a horrible situation where he's b fortying the river. I mean, you just soul wrecked. And it was great. It was incredible. Alan Keating (00:52:10): There were a few different tells that I wonder if I should Jason Calacanis (00:52:14): delve into, but break Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:16): it down because these guys most By David Friedberg (00:52:17): the way, I think this is important because a lot of people think poker became solved because of computers and AI and everyone uses trainers now. But to your point, to Chamath's point, like, there's still at the core of the elite level of the game, very much a tell and psychology making kind of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:33): We'll Nick to play picture in picture this end. How how big was a pot in the end? A million something? Alan Keating (00:52:38): No. Probably six six hundred. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:40): Six seven hundred k. Doug Polk, who's a phenomenal heads up player, had Ace King. Alan Keating (00:52:45): Like the best in the world. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:46): You, a ding dong, had Alan Keating (00:52:48): Four two. Four Jason Calacanis (00:52:49): two. It's playable. David Friedberg (00:52:53): It's a $75. Jason Calacanis (00:52:54): Oh, okay. Somehow it somehow it keeps one hand. Raised flop. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:01): But it was, what? Like, $1.50 on the flop? Alan Keating (00:53:04): 75 free, $35.75 all in. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:08): Yeah. Okay. So take us behind the hand. Like, what what's what's the read? Jason Calacanis (00:53:12): And and why are you playing two four to begin with? Why why don't you explain that to the Well, he was a big watching. Yeah. But explain the thinking there because a lot people Let him trained. Let them talk. Alan Keating (00:53:22): Lot of people want to, like you said, put everything into a solver and reduce something into a vacuum and navigate that situation, and I don't really have a passion for that. I have a passion for what's happening in this moment, what's happening with this person, what's happening with me, what are they perceiving me as, and in that moment Doug had gotten some confidence around a couple hands, and there was a player in between that I knew he didn't think much of his hand, and he didn't think much of my hand, and it seemed like an obvious situation for him to pull it away from me. And I thought about re raising all in pre flop just to simplify it, and I think that was probably a better way to do it. But at the same time, do a lot of things for the fun of it, and I thought it'd be a little bit more fun to get him in a spot later on a couple streets down where I could, you know, bluff him out or call him down. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:23): And did he have a tell on the turn or Yeah. Alan Keating (00:54:26): Yeah. He goes 75,000, like kinda directly, And about an hour and a half before then, he had the same tonality, same cadence, and he was just Airballing. Stealing, airballing the situation. And there was just a myriad of things where it was like, that might be something. I'm not sure. That might be something. I'm not sure. Well, here here's a lot of things that might be something, and I'm pretty sure that the combination of them leads into this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:54): What happens if you call any shows pocket jacks or something? So, you know, and then do you like, in those spots where you call off and you lose, how do you process losing $700,000 that way? Do you think this is so stupid. Why did I do that? Or do you are you saying what's the self talk? What's the internal monologue? Alan Keating (00:55:15): I know where it came from, but I wanted to always kind of have a sense of humor around whatever happens to me. The things I can't control, the things I can control. You know, if I put myself in a spot, I've gotten to a point where I can immediately recognize how ridiculous what I just did was and kind of laugh about it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:36): And be okay with it? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Like, So you're forgiving yourself enduring the hand? Alan Keating (00:55:42): Yeah. There'll be, like, an internal part that's just, yeah. Of course, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:45): that was stupid. Why am doing this? It's so dumb to do that. David Friedberg (00:55:48): So so so to be able to pull off the hand you pull off, you have to have a I don't give a kind of attitude about Alan Keating (00:55:54): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:55:54): This is all a game. It I don't take it too seriously because that's where fear comes from. Alan Keating (00:55:59): It's about mastering the fear. Yeah. I think I think I just recognize that people make bad decisions when they're scared, and that's why I like Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:05): But sorry. Say that again. Mastering fear. You put in reps. Jason Calacanis (00:56:08): How do Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:09): you put in reps to master fear? Because that extends to many other things in life. Alan Keating (00:56:13): Right. Absolutely. Like we talked about this in investing and different strategies about how big of a bet you want to make relative to your bankroll and venture and stuff like that. Well, I I like making the bet where if it doesn't work out, I'm in a little bit of trouble. Right. Jason Calacanis (00:56:28): You like Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:29): to feel the pain. Jason Calacanis (00:56:30): You like David Friedberg (00:56:31): that that you like it feels real. Alan Keating (00:56:33): It's a motivator. It's it's something that drives, and I I I like poker. I'll put myself in the same type of situation. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:39): Two years ago, Keating calls me. He's like, hey. This is, like, about portfolio construction and, like, a specific company. We won't say the company. Talk for a fucking hour, and I am trying to give him my best advice. Look. Here's how you structure it to minimize volatility. You know, take some of these chips off the table. Do this. Do that. He goes, I really appreciate this. Calls me two days later. Yeah. So I doubled down on this thing, and I just Jason Calacanis (00:56:59): put it all on my life. Was like, I'm like, David Friedberg (00:57:01): Throw that. You're worth calling a management out of the window. Alan Keating (00:57:04): You you don't you don't know this, but I've tripled down. Exactly. Jason Calacanis (00:57:07): Well, here's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:07): the issue. Jason Calacanis (00:57:08): What was David Friedberg (00:57:08): your purpose in calling him then? So if you felt that that was where you were gonna go, why are you checking it? Were you trying to check your sanity or, like, what were you doing there? Why do Jason Calacanis (00:57:17): you check? Alan Keating (00:57:17): I'm I'm inviting him to the deep end. I'm saying Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:21): You wanna come with no. No. You're talking about me? David Friedberg (00:57:23): No. I'm asking why he called you. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:25): Oh, why Jason Calacanis (00:57:25): he kicked you. Oh, you're talking about Doug Pope. David Friedberg (00:57:26): No. I'm asking why you called Chamath. In that situation where you're gonna double down, triple down, you really don't Alan Keating (00:57:31): like was I I have access to someone that's, like, infinitely smarter than me at the thing that I'm trying to understand. David Friedberg (00:57:37): You're deep jumping in end? Alan Keating (00:57:39): Yes. Yes. David Friedberg (00:57:40): Why are you asking him, like, should I jump in the deep end first? Alan Keating (00:57:42): Because I wanna earmark, like, all the reasoning. Right? I'm setting I'm trying to understand everything about this decision because I'm going to live with the outcome of that decision no matter what. Right? So I want to remember his take, my take, my feelings, other people's thoughts, and I wanna put that into like a little bit of a folder that I could come back Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:04): to. Jason Calacanis (00:58:05): You unconsciously, you've discovered something which is referred to as super forecasting in like behavioral sciences, which is if you write down and you understand all the permutations of your decision making and then you reflect on it years from now, you'll just be better at decision making. So that's actually what you're doing and I think it just comes natural to you and you were gonna say when you thought the question was about the Pokan, about inviting him to the deep end. Unpack that concept of saying, Hey, we both know that this hand's out of control. We're in the deep, dark waters. There could be sharks in there. Explain what you're doing, because I've been in hands with you where I feel like you just dragged me out to the deep water, where I've got jacks or queens, then all of a sudden I'm gonna be playing for my entire stack, and they don't feel good anymore, even though I have an over pair to the board or whatever Yeah, that's a great point. Alan Keating (00:58:59): I just think there's some purity or beauty in the chaos after you get past where everyone's prepared, and I'm interested in that space, I and have no interests in in the space that everyone's prepared. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:18): Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in David Friedberg (00:59:19): the face. Jason Calacanis (00:59:19): You remind me of Alex. You're the Alex Honnold of poker. Alex Honnold is the guy who David Friedberg (00:59:25): Oh my god. Oh my Jason Calacanis (00:59:26): god. Is this? We're in Vegas. Look guys, Helmut decided for this special occasion with us here taping all in for the first time in Vegas, Helmut decided to wear a tracksuit that's only 12 years old. It's one of his newer tracksuit. David Friedberg (00:59:54): A few years ago at Helmuth's birthday, we each chipped in, I think, $3 to buy him a new wardrobe. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:59): There was like 60 it was like 70,000 in total. David Friedberg (01:00:02): Yeah. There was 20 of us. Went back. Put in $3. Jason Calacanis (01:00:05): Clothes. We bought all clothes, and Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:08): he hasn't he he hasn't won a single thing. He showed you his size. Jason Calacanis (01:00:11): To the public. No. No. This shirt you guys bought for me. I will say this. Why? It's the No. Hold on. Between that wall between that wall and that wall, you guys gave me all David Friedberg (01:00:20): I'm telling you all those clothes. Did you sell them? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:21): Ton of clothes. David Friedberg (01:00:22): No, no. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:22): Gave them to my sons. Jason Calacanis (01:00:23): Oh, okay. Alright. Sit down. Phil, me. Please sit down. I gotta close the show. Hold on. David Friedberg (01:00:29): And then we're Jason Calacanis (01:00:29): gonna play everybody stand by. Supplemental. Yeah. No. Three, two. Alright. Alan Keating, you're a mensch. It's a pleasure to know It's a to play with you. And we're gonna have some exclusive content on our YouTube channel of the besties playing poker with incredible professional poker players like Jason Kuhn, Alan Keating, and then I think Phil hung with my children. David Friedberg (01:00:50): We'll let your winners ride. Jason Calacanis (01:00:56): Rain man David Saxon. I'm going home. David Friedberg (01:01:01): And it said we open sourced it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:24): We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orangey because they're all just useless. It's like it's like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow. Jason Calacanis (01:01:32): Wet your feet. Your feet. David Friedberg (01:01:35): Wet feet. My wet? Jason Calacanis (01:01:37): Fucking feet. Where did you get merch? Are back.